The article on "Fontenelle" is nothing but a satire upon that ingenious and learned academician, whose science and talents are esteemed by the whole of literary Europe. The author has the effrontery to say that "his 'History of Oracles' does no honor to his religion." If Van Dale, the author of the "History of Oracles," and his abridger, Fontenelle, had lived in the time of the Greeks and of the Roman republic, it might have been said with reason that they were rather good philosophers than good pagans; but, to speak sincerely, what injury do they do to Christianity by showing that the pagan priests were a set of knaves? Is it not evident that the authors of the libel, miscalled a dictionary, are pleading their own cause? "Jam proximus ardet Ucalegon"But would it be offering an insult to the Christian religion to prove the knavery of the Convulsionaries? Government has done more; it has punished them without being accused of irreligion.
The libeller adds that he suspects that Fontenelle never performed the duties of a Christian but out of contempt for Christianity itself. It is a strange species of madness on the part of these fanatics to be always proclaiming that a philosopher cannot be a Christian. They ought to be excommunicated and punished for this alone; for assuredly it implies a wish to destroy Christianity to assert that it is impossible for a man to be a good reasoner and at the same time believe a religion so reasonable and holy.
Des Yveteaux, preceptor of Louis XIV., is accused of having lived and died without religion. It seems as if these compilers had none; or at least as if, while violating all the precepts of the true one, they were searching about everywhere for accomplices.
The very gentlemanly writer of these articles is wonderfully pleased with exhibiting all the bad verses that have been written on the French Academy, and various anecdotes as ridiculous as they are false. This also is apparently out of zeal for religion.
I ought not to lose an opportunity of refuting an absurd story which has been much circulated, and which is repeated exceedingly malapropos under the article of the "Abbé Gedoyn," upon whom the writer falls foul with great satisfaction, because in his youth he had been a Jesuit; a transient weakness, of which I know he repented all his life.
The devout and scandalous compiler of the dictionary asserts that the Abbé Gedoyn slept with the celebrated Ninon de l'Enclos on the very night of her completing her eightieth year. It certainly was not exactly befitting in a priest to relate this anecdote in a pretended dictionary of illustrious men. Such a foolery, however, is in fact highly improbable; and I can take upon me to assert that nothing can be more false. The same anecdote was formerly put down to the credit of the Abbé Chateauneuf, who was not very difficult in his amours, and who, it was said, had received Ninon's favors when she was of the age of sixty, or, rather, had conferred upon her his own. In early life I saw a great deal of the Abbé Gedoyn, the Abbé Chateauneuf, and Mademoiselle de l'Enclos; and I can truly declare that at the age of eighty years her countenance bore the most hideous marks of old age—that her person was afflicted with all the infirmities belonging to that stage of life, and that her mind was under the influence of the maxims of an austere philosophy.
Under the article on "Deshoulières" the compiler pretends that lady was the same who was designated under the term prude (précieuse) in Boileau's satire upon women. Never was any woman more free from such weakness than Madame Deshoulières; she always passed for a woman of the best society, possessed great simplicity, and was highly agreeable in conversation.
The article on "La Motte" abounds with atrocious abuse of that academician, who was a man of very amiable manners, and a philosophic poet who produced excellent works of every description. Finally the author, in order to secure the sale of his book of six volumes, has made of it a slanderous libel.
His hero is Carré de Montgeron, who presented to the king a collection of the miracles performed by the Convulsionaries in the cemetery of St. Médard; who became mad and died insane.
The interest of the republic of literature and reason demands that those libellers should be delivered up to public indignation, lest their example, operating upon the sordid love of gain, should stimulate others to imitation; and the more so, as nothing is so easy as to copy books in alphabetical order, and add to them insipidities, calumnies, and abuse.
Extract from the Reflections of an Academician on the "Dictionary of the French Academy."
It would be desirable to state the natural and incontestable etymology of every word, to compare the application, the various significations, the extent of the word, with use of it; the different acceptations, the strength or weakness of correspondent terms in foreign languages; and finally, to quote the best authors who have used the word, to show the greater or less extent of meaning which they have given to it and to remark whether it is more fit for poetry than prose.
For example, I have observed that the "inclemency" of the weather is ridiculous in history, because that term has its origin in the anger of heaven, which is supposed to be manifested by the intemperateness, irregularities, and rigors of the seasons, by the violence of the cold, the disorder of the atmosphere, by tempests, storms, and pestilential exhalations. Thus then inclemency, being a metaphor, is consecrated to poetry.
I have given to the word "impotence" all the acceptations which it receives. I showed the correctness of the historian, who speaks of the impotence of King Alphonso, without explaining whether he referred to that of resisting his brother, or that with which he was charged by his wife.
I have endeavored to show that the epithets "irresistible" and "incurable" require very delicate management. The first who used the expression, "the irresistible impulse of genius," made a very fortunate hit; because, in fact, the question was in relation to a great genius throwing itself upon its own resources in spite of all difficulties. Those imitators who have employed the expression in reference to very inferior men are plagiarists who know not how to dispose of what they steal.
As soon as the man of genius has made a new application of any word in the language, copyists are not wanting to apply it, very malapropos, in twenty places, without giving the inventor any credit.
I do not know that a single one of these words, termed by Boileau "foundlings" (des mots trouvés) a single new expression of genius, is to be found in any tragic author since Racine, until within the last few years. These words are generally lax, ineffective, stale, and so ill placed as to produce a barbarous style. To the disgrace of the nation, these Visigothic and Vandal productions were for a certain time extolled, panegyrized, and admired in the journals, especially as they came out under the protection of a certain lady of distinction, who knew nothing at all about the subject. We have recovered from all this now; and, with one or two exceptions, the whole race of such productions is extinct forever.
I did not in the first instance intend to make all these reflections, but to put the reader in a situation to make them. I have shown at the letter E that ouremute, with which we are reproached by an Italian, is precisely what occasions the delicious harmony of our language:—empire, couronne, diadème, épouvantable, sensible. Thisemute, which we make perceptible without articulating it, leaves in the ear a melodious sound like that of a bell which still resounds although it is no longer struck. This we have already stated in respect to an Italian, a man of letters, who came to Paris to teach his own language, and who, while there, ought not to decry ours.
He does not perceive the beauty or necessity of our feminine rhymes; they are onlye's mute. This interweaving of masculine and feminine rhymes constitutes the charm of our verse.
Similar observations upon the alphabet, and upon words generally, would not have been without utility; but they would have made the work too long.
After several weak or tyrannic reigns, the Roman Empire had a good emperor in Probus, whom the legions massacred, and elected Carus, who was struck dead by lightning while making war against the Persians. His son, Numerianus, was proclaimed by the soldiers. The historians tell us seriously that he lost his sight by weeping for the death of his father, and that he was obliged to be carried along with the army, shut up in a close litter. His father-in-law Aper killed him in his bed, to place himself on the throne; but a druid had predicted in Gaul to Diocletian, one of the generals of the army, that he would become emperor after having killed a boar. A boar, in Latin, isaper. Diocletian assembled the army, killed Aper with his own hands in the presence of the soldiers, and thus accomplished the prediction of the druid. The historians who relate this oracle deserve to be fed on the fruit of the tree which the druids revered. It is certain that Diocletian killed the father-in-law of the emperor, which was his first right to the throne. Numerianus had a brother named Carinus, who was also emperor, but being opposed to the elevation of Diocletian, he was killed by one of the tribunes of his army, which formed his second pretension to the purple. These were Diocletian's rights to the throne, and for a long time he had no other.
He was originally of Dalmatia, of the little town of Dioclea, of which he took the name. If it be true that his father was a laborer, and that he himself in his youth had been a slave to a senator named Anulinus, the fact forms his finest eulogium. He could have owed his elevation to himself alone; and it is very clear that he had conciliated the esteem of his army, since they forgot his birth to give him the diadem. Lactantius, a Christian authority, but rather partial, pretends that Diocletian was the greatest poltroon of the empire. It is not very likely that the Roman soldiers would have chosen a poltroon to govern them, or that this poltroon would have passed through all the degrees of the army. The zeal of Lactantius against a pagan emperor is very laudable, but not judicious.
Diocletian continued for twenty years the master of those fierce legions, who dethroned their emperors with as much facility as they created them; which is another proof, notwithstanding Lactantius, that he was as great a prince as he was a brave soldier. The empire under him soon regained its pristine splendor. The Gauls, the Africans, Egyptians, and British, who had revolted several times, were all brought under obedience to the empire; even the Persians were vanquished. So much success without; a still more happy administration within; laws as humane as wise, which still exist in the Justinian code; Rome, Milan, Autun, Nicomedia, Carthage, embellished by his munificence; all tended to gain him the love and respect both of the East and West; so that, two hundred and forty years after his death, they continued to reckon and date from the first year of his reign, as they had formerly dated from the foundation of Rome. This is what is called the era of Diocletian; it has also been called the era of martyrs; but this is a mistake of eighteen years, for it is certain that he did not persecute any Christian for eighteen years. So far from it, the first thing he did, when emperor, was to give a company of prætorian guards to a Christian named Sebastian, who is in the list of the saints.
He did not fear to give a colleague to the empire in the person of a soldier of fortune, like himself; it was Maximian Hercules, his friend. The similarity of their fortunes had caused their friendship. Maximian was also born of poor and obscure parents, and had been elevated like Diocletian, step by step, by his own courage. People have not failed to reproach this Maximian with taking the surname of Hercules, and Diocletian with accepting that of Jove. They do not condescend to perceive that we have clergymen every day who call themselves Hercules, and peasants denominated Cæsar and Augustus.
Diocletian created two Cæsars; the first was another Maximian, surnamed Galerius, who had formerly been a shepherd. It seemed that Diocletian, the proudest of men and the first introducer of kissing the imperial feet, showed his greatness in placing Cæsars on the throne from men born in the most abject condition. A slave and two peasants were at the head of the empire, and never was it more flourishing.
The second Cæsar whom he created was of distinguished birth. He was Constantius Chlorus, great-nephew, on his mother's side, to the emperor Claudius II. The empire was governed by these four princes; an association which might have produced four civil wars a year, but Diocletian knew so well how to be master of his colleagues, that he obliged them always to respect him, and even to live united among themselves. These princes, with the name of Cæsars were in reality no more than his subjects. It is seen that he treated them like an absolute sovereign; for when the Cæsar Galerius, having been conquered by the Persians, went into Mesopotamia to give him the account of his defeat, he let him walk for the space of a mile near his chariot, and did not receive him into favor until he had repaired his fault and misfortune.
Galerius retrieved them the year after, in 297, in a very signal manner. He vanquished the king of Persia in person.
These kings of Persia had not been cured, by the battle of Arbela, of carrying their wives, daughters, and eunuchs along with their armies. Galerius, like Alexander, took his enemy's wife and all his family, and treated them with the same respect. The peace was as glorious as the victory. The vanquished ceded five provinces to the Romans, from the sands of Palmyra to Armenia.
Diocletian and Galerius went to Rome to dazzle the inhabitants with a triumph till then unheard of. It was the first time that the Roman people had seen the wife and children of a king of Persia in chains. All the empire was in plenty and prosperity. Diocletian went through all the provinces, from Rome to Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. His ordinary residence was not at Rome, but at Nicomedia, near the Euxine Sea, either to watch over the Persians and the barbarians, or because he was attached to a retreat which he had himself embellished. It was in the midst of this prosperity that Galerius commenced the persecution against the Christians. Why had he left them in repose until then, and why were they then ill treated? Eusebius says that a centurion of the Trajan legion, named Marcellus, who served in Mauritania, assisting with his troop at a feast given in honor of the victory of Galerius, threw his military sash, his arms, and his branch of vine, on the ground, and cried out loudly that he was a Christian and that he would no longer serve pagans—a desertion which was punished with death by the council of war. This was the first known example of the famous persecution of Diocletian. It is true that there were a great number of Christians in the armies of the empire, and the interest of the state demanded that such a desertion should not be allowed. The zeal of Marcellus was pious, but not reasonable. If at the feast given in Mauritania, viands offered to the gods of the empire were eaten, the law did not command Marcellus to eat of them, nor did Christianity order him to set the example of sedition. There is not a country in the world in which so rash an action would not have been punished.
However, after the adventure of Marcellus, it does not appear that the Christians were thought of until the year 303. They had, at Nicomedia, a superb church, next to the palace, which it exceeded in loftiness. Historians do not tell us the reasons why Galerius demanded of Diocletian the instant destruction of this church; but they tell us that Diocletian was a long time before he determined upon it, and that he resisted for almost a year. It is very strange that after this he should be called thepersecutor.At last the church was destroyed and an edict was affixed by which the Christians were deprived of all honors and dignities. Since they were then deprived of them, it is evident that they possessed them. A Christian publicly tore the imperial edict in pieces—that was not an act of religion, it was an incitement to revolt. It is, therefore, very likely that an indiscreet and unreasonable zeal drew down this fatal persecution. Some time afterwards the palace of Galerius was burned down; he accused the Christians, and they accused Galerius of having himself set fire to it, in order to get a pretext for calumniating them. The accusation of Galerius appeared very unjust; that which they entered against him was no less so, for the edict having been already issued, what new pretext could he want? If he really wanted a new argument to engage Diocletian to persecute, this would only form a new proof of the reluctance of Diocletian to abandon the Christians, whom he had always protected; it would evidently show that he wanted new additional reasons to determine him to so much severity.
It appears certain that there were many Christians tormented in the empire, but it is difficult to reconcile with the Roman laws the alleged reported tortures, the mutilations, torn-out tongues, limbs cut and broiled, and all the insults offered against modesty and public decency. It is certain that no Roman law ever ordered such punishments; the aversion of the people to the Christians might carry them to horrible excesses, but we do not anywhere find that these excesses were ordered, either by the emperors or the senate.
It is very likely that the suffering of the Christians spread itself in exaggerated complaints: the "Acta Sincera" informs us that the emperor, being at Antioch, the prætor condemned a Christian child named Romanus to be burned; that the Jews present at the punishment began to laugh, saying: "We had formerly three children, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who did not burn in the fiery furnace but these do burn." At that instant, to confound the Jews, a great rain extinguished the pile and the little boy walked out safe and sound, asking, "Where then is the fire?" The account goes on to say that the emperor commanded him to be set free, but that the judge ordered his tongue to be cut out. It is scarcely possible to believe that the judge would have the tongue of a boy cut out, whom the emperor had pardoned.
That which follows is more singular. It is pretended that an old Christian physician named Ariston, who had a knife ready, cut the child's tongue out to pay his court to the prætor. The little Romanus was then carried back to prison; the jailer asked him the news. The child related at length how the old surgeon had cut out his tongue. It should be observed that before this operation the child stammered very much but that now he spoke with wonderful volubility. The jailer did not fail to relate this miracle to the emperor. They brought forward the old surgeon who swore that the operation had been performed according to the rules of his art and showed the child's tongue which he had properly preserved in a box as a relic. "Bring hither another person," said he, "and I will cut his tongue out in your majesty's presence, and you will see if he can speak." The proposition was accepted; they took a poor man whose tongue the surgeon cut out as he had done the child's, and the man died on the spot.
I am willing to believe that the "Acts" which relate this fact are as veracious as their title pretends, but they are still more simple than sincere, and it is very strange that Fleury, in his "Ecclesiastical History," relates such a prodigious number of similar incidents, being much more conducive to scandal than edification.
You will also remark that in this year 303, in which it is pretended that Diocletian was present at this fine affair in Antioch, he was at Rome and passed all that year in Italy. It is said that it was at Rome, and in his presence, that St. Genestus, a comedian, was converted on the stage while playing in a comedy against the Christians. This play shows clearly that the taste of Plautus and Terence no longer existed; that which is now called comedy, or Italian farce, seems to have originated at this time. St. Genestus represented an invalid; the physician asked him what was the matter with him. "I am too unwieldy," said Genestus. "Would you have us exorcise you to make you lighter?" said the physician. "No," replied Genestus, "I will die a Christian, to be raised again of a finer stature." Then the actors, dressed as priests and exorcists, came to baptize him, at which moment Genestus really became a Christian, and, instead of finishing his part, began to preach to the emperor and the people. The "Acta Sincera" relate this miracle also.
It is certain that there were many true martyrs, but it is not true that the provinces were inundated with blood, as it is imagined. Mention is made of about two hundred martyrs towards the latter days of Diocletian in all the extent of the Roman Empire, and it is averred, even in the letters of Constantine, that Diocletian had much less part in the persecution than Galerius.
Diocletian fell ill this year and feeling himself weakened he was the first who gave the world the example of the abdication of empire. It is not easy to know whether this abdication was forced or not; it is true, however, that having recovered his health he lived nine years equally honored and peaceable in his retreat of Salonica, in the country of his birth. He said that he only began to live from the day of his retirement and when he was pressed to remount the throne he replied that the throne was not worth the tranquillity of his life, and that he took more pleasure in cultivating his garden than he should' have in governing the whole earth. What can be concluded from these facts but that with great faults he reigned like a great emperor and finished his life like a philosopher!
The author of the article "Apocrypha" has neglected to mention a hundred works recognized for such, and which, being entirely forgotten, seem not to merit the honor of being in his list. We have thought it right not to omit St. Dionysius, surnamed the Areopagite, who is pretended to have been for a long time the disciple of St. Paul, and of one Hierotheus, an unknown companion of his. He was, it is said, consecrated bishop of Athens by St. Paul himself. It is stated in his life that he went to Jerusalem to pay a visit to the holy Virgin and that he found her so beautiful and majestic that he was strongly tempted to adore her.
After having a long time governed the Church of Athens he went to confer with St. John the evangelist, at Ephesus, and afterwards with Pope Clement at Rome; thence he went to exercise his apostleship in France; and knowing, says the historian, that Paris was a rich, populous, and abundant town, and like other capitals, he went there to plant a citadel, to lay hell and infidelity in ruins.
He was regarded for a long time as the first bishop of Paris. Harduinus, one of his historians, adds that at Paris he was exposed to wild beasts, but, having made the sign of the cross on them, they crouched at his feet. The pagan Parisians then threw him into a hot oven from which he walked out fresh and in perfect health; he was crucified and he began to preach from the top of the cross.
They imprisoned him with his companions Rusticus and Eleutherus. He there said mass, St. Rusticus performing the part of deacon and Eleutherus that of subdeacon. Finally they were all three carried to Montmartre, where their heads were cut off, after which they no longer said mass.
But, according to Harduinus, there appeared a still greater miracle. The body of St. Dionysius took its head in its hands and accompanied by angels singing "Gloria tibi, Domine, alleluia!" carried it as far as the place where they afterwards built him a church, which is the famous church of St. Denis.
Mestaphrastus, Harduinus, and Hincmar, bishop of Rheims, say that he was martyred at the age of ninety-one years, but Cardinal Baronius proves that he was a hundred and ten, in which opinion he is supported by Ribadeneira, the learned author of "Flower of the Saints." For our own part we have no opinion on the subject.
Seventeen works are attributed to him, six of which we have unfortunately lost; the eleven which remain to us have been translated from the Greek by Duns Scotus, Hugh de St. Victor, Albert Magnus, and several other illustrious scholars.
It is true that since wholesome criticism has been introduced into the world it has been discovered that all the books attributed to Dionysius were written by an impostor in the year 362 of our era, so that there no longer remains any difficulty on that head.
Of the Great Eclipse Noticed by Dionysius.
A fact related by one of the unknown authors of the life of Dionysius has, above all, caused great dissension among the learned. It is pretended that this first bishop of Paris, being in Egypt in the town of Diospolis, or No-Amon, at the age of twenty-five years, before he was a Christian, he was there, with one of his friends, witness of the famous eclipse of the sun which happened at the full moon, at the death of Jesus Christ and that he cried in Greek, "Either God suffers or is afflicted at the sufferings of the criminal."
These words have been differently related by different authors, but in the time of Eusebius of Cæsarea it is pretended that two historians—the one named Phlegon and the other Thallus—had made mention of this miraculous eclipse. Eusebius of Cæsarea quotes Phlegon, but we have none of his works now existing. He said—at least it is pretended so—that this eclipse happened in the fourth year of the two hundredth Olympiad, which would be the eighteenth year of Tiberius's reign. There are several versions of this anecdote; we distrust them all and much more so, if it were possible to know whether they reckoned by Olympiads in the time of Phlegon, which is very doubtful.
This important calculation interested all the astronomers. Hodgson, Whiston, Gale, Maurice, and the famous Halley, demonstrated that there was no eclipse of the sun in this first year, but that on November 24th in the year of the hundred and second Olympiad an eclipse took place which obscured the sun for two minutes, at a quarter past one, at Jerusalem.
It has been carried still further: a Jesuit named Greslon pretended that the Chinese preserved in their annals the account of an eclipse which happened near that time, contrary to the order of nature. They desired the mathematicians of Europe to make a calculation of it; it was pleasant enough to desire the astronomists to calculate an eclipse which was not natural. Finally it was discovered that these Chinese annals do not in any way speak of this eclipse.
It appears from the history of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, the passage from Phlegon, and from the letter of the Jesuit Greslon that men like to impose upon one another. But this prodigious multitude of lies, far from harming the Christian religion, only serves, on the contrary, to show its divinity, since it is more confirmed every day in spite of them.
We will commence with Herodotus as the most ancient. When Henry Stephens entitled his comic rhapsody "The Apology of Herodotus," we know that his design was not to justify the tales of this father of history; he only sports with us and shows that the enormities of his own times were worse than those of the Egyptians and Persians. He made use of the liberty which the Protestants assumed against those of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman churches. He sharply reproaches them with their debaucheries, their avarice, their crimes expiated by money, their indulgences publicly sold in the taverns, and the false relics manufactured by their own monks, calling them idolaters. He ventures to say that if the Egyptians adored cats and onions, the Catholics adore the bones of the dead. He dares to call them in his preliminary discourses, "theophages," and even "theokeses." We have fourteen editions of this book, for we relish general abuse, just as much as we resent that which we deem special and personal.
Henry Stephens made use of Herodotus only to render us hateful and ridiculous; we have quite a contrary design. We pretend to show that the modern histories of our good authors since Guicciardini are in general as wise and true as those of Herodotus and Diodorus are foolish and fabulous.
1. What does the father of history mean by saying in the beginning of his work, "the Persian historians relate that the Phoenicians were the authors of all the wars. From the Red Sea they entered ours," etc.? It would seem that the Phœnicians, having embarked at the Isthmus of Suez, arrived at the straits of Babel-Mandeb, coasted along Ethiopia, passed the line, doubled the Cape of Tempests, since called the Cape of Good Hope, returned between Africa and America, repassed the line and entered from the ocean into the Mediterranean by the Pillars of Hercules, a voyage of more than four thousand of our long marine leagues at a time when navigation was in its infancy.
2. The first exploit of the Phœnicians was to go towards Argos to carry off the daughter of King Inachus, after which the Greeks, in their turn, carried off Europa, the daughter of the king of Tyre.
3. Immediately afterwards comes Candaules, king of Lydia, who, meeting with one of his guards named Gyges, said to him, "Thou must see my wife quite naked; it is absolutely essential." The queen, learning that she had been thus exposed, said to the soldier, "You shall either die or assassinate my husband and reign with me." He chose the latter alternative, and the assassination was accomplished without difficulty.
4. Then follows the history of Arion, carried on the back of a dolphin across the sea from the skirts of Calabria to Cape Matapan, an extraordinary voyage of about a hundred leagues.
5. From tale to tale—and who dislikes tales?—we arrive at the infallible oracle of Delphi, which somehow foretold that Crœsus would cook a quarter of lamb and a tortoise in a copper pan and that he would be dethroned by a mullet.
6. Among the inconceivable absurdities with which ancient history abounds is there anything approaching the famine with which the Lydians were tormented for twenty-eight years? This people, whom Herodotus describes as being richer in gold than the Peruvians, instead of buying food from foreigners, found no better expedient than that of amusing themselves every other day with the ladies without eating for eight-and-twenty successive years.
7. Is there anything more marvellous than the history of Cyrus? His grandfather, the Mede Astyages, with a Greek name, dreamed that his daughter Mandane—another Greek name—inundated all Asia; at another time, that she produced a vine, of which all Asia ate the grapes, and thereupon the good man Astyages ordered one Harpagos, another Greek, to murder his grandson Cyrus—for what grandfather would not kill his posterity after dreams of this nature?
8. Herodotus, no less a good naturalist than an exact historian, does not fail to tell us that near Babylon the earth produced three hundred ears of wheat for one. I know a small country which yields three for one. I should like to have been transported to Diabek when the Turks were driven from it by Catherine II. It has fine corn also but returns not three hundred ears for one.
9. What has always seemed to me decent and edifying in Herodotus is the fine religious custom established in Babylon of which we have already spoken—that of all the married women going to prostitute themselves in the temple of Mylitta for money, to the first stranger who presented himself. We reckon two millions of inhabitants in this city; the devotion must have been ardent. This law is very probable among the Orientals who have always shut up their women, and who, more than six ages before Herodotus, instituted eunuchs to answer to them for the chastity of their wives. I must no longer proceed numerically; we should very soon indeed arrive at a hundred.
All that Diodorus of Sicily says seven centuries after Herodotus is of the same value in all that regards antiquities and physics. The Abbé Terrasson said, "I translate the text of Diodorus in all its coarseness." He sometimes read us part of it at the house of de Lafaye, and when we laughed, he said, "You are resolved to misconstrue; it was quite the contrary with Dacier."
The finest part of Diodorus is the charming description of the island of Panchaica—"Panchaica Tellus," celebrated by Virgil: "There were groves of odoriferous trees as far as the eye could see, myrrh and frankincense to furnish the whole world without exhausting it; fountains, which formed an infinity of canals, bordered with flowers, besides unknown birds, which sang under the eternal shades; a temple of marble four thousand feet long, ornamented with columns, colossal statues," etc.
This puts one in mind of the Duke de la Ferté, who, to flatter the taste of the Abbé Servien, said to him one day, "Ah, if you had seen my son who died at fifteen years of age! What eyes! what freshness of complexion! what an admirable stature! the Antinous of Belvidere compared to him was only like a Chinese baboon, and as to sweetness of manners, he had the most engaging I ever met with." The Abbé Servien melted, the duke of Ferté, warmed by his own words, melted also, both began to weep, after which he acknowledged that he never had a son.
A certain Abbé Bazin, with his simple common sense, doubts another tale of Diodorus. It is of a king of Egypt, Sesostris, who probably existed no more than the island of Panchaica. The father of Sesostris, who is not named, determined on the day that he was born that he would make him the conqueror of all the earth as soon as he was of age. It was a notable project. For this purpose he brought up with him all the boys who were born on the same day in Egypt, and, to make them conquerors, he did not suffer them to have their breakfasts until they had run a hundred and eighty stadia, which is about eight of our long leagues.
When Sesostris was of age he departed with his racers to conquer the world. They were then about seventeen hundred and probably half were dead, according to the ordinary course of nature—and, above all, of the nature of Egypt, which was desolated by a destructive plague at least once in ten years.
There must have been three thousand four hundred boys born in Egypt on the same day as Sesostris, and as nature produces almost as many girls as boys, there must have been six thousand persons at least born on that day. But women were confined every day, and six thousand births a day produce, at the end of the year, two millions one hundred and ninety thousand children. If you multiply by thirty-four, according to the rule of Kersseboom, you would have in Egypt more than seventy-four millions of inhabitants in a country which is not so large as Spain or France.
All this appeared monstrous to the Abbé Bazin, who had seen a little of the world, and who judged only by what he had seen.
But one Larcher, who was never outside of the college of Mazarin arrayed himself with great animation on the side of Sesostris and his runners. He pretends that Herodotus, in speaking of the Greeks, does not reckon by the stadia of Greece, and that the heroes of Sesostris only ran four leagues before breakfast. He overwhelms poor Abbé Bazin with injurious names such as no scholar inusoreshad ever before employed. He does not hold with the seventeen hundred boys, but endeavors to prove by the prophets that the wives, daughters, and nieces of the king of Babylon, of the satraps, and the magi, resorted, out of pure devotion, to sleep for money in the aisles of the temple of Babylon with all the camel-drivers and muleteers of Asia. He treats all those who defend the honor of the ladies of Babylon as bad Christians, condemned souls, and enemies to the state.
He also takes the part of the goat, so much in the good graces of the young female Egyptians. It is said that his great reason was that he was allied, by the female side, to a relation of the bishop of Meaux, Bossuet, the author of an eloquent discourse on "Universal History"; but this is not a peremptory reason.
Take care of the extraordinary stories of all kinds. Diodorus of Sicily was the greatest compiler of these tales. This Sicilian had not a grain of the temper of his countryman Archimedes, who sought and found so many mathematical truths.
Diodorus seriously examines the history of the Amazons and their queen Theaestris; the history of the Gorgons, who fought against the Amazons; that of the Titans, and that of all the gods. He searches into the history of Priapus and Hermaphroditus. No one could give a better account of Hercules: this hero wandered through half the earth, sometimes on foot and alone like a pilgrim, and sometimes like a general at the head of a great army, and all his labors are faithfully discussed, but this is nothing in comparison with the gods of Crete.
Diodorus justifies Jupiter from the reproach which other grave historians have passed upon him, of having dethroned and mutilated his father. He shows how Jupiter fought the giants, some in his island, others in Phrygia, and afterwards in Macedonia and Italy; the number of children which he had by his sister Juno and his favorites are not omitted.
He describes how he afterwards became a god, and the supreme god. It is thus that all the ancient histories have been written. What is more remarkable, they were sacred; if they had not been sacred, they would never have been read.
It is clear that it would be very useful if in all they were all different, and from province to province, and island to island, each had a different history of the gods, demi-gods, and heroes, from that of their neighbors. But it should also be observed that the people never fought for this mythology.
The respectable history of Thucydides, which has several glimmerings of truth, begins at Xerxes, but, before that epoch how much time was wasted.
It is neither of a director of finances, a director of hospitals, nor a director of the royal buildings that I pretend to speak, but of a director of conscience, for that directs all the others: it is the preceptor of human kind; it knows and teaches all that should be done or omitted in all possible cases.
It is clear that it would be very useful if in all courts there were one conscientious man whom the monarch secretly consulted on most occasions, and who would boldly say, "Non licet." Louis the Just would not then have begun his mischievous and unhappy reign by assassinating his first minister and imprisoning his mother. How many wars, unjust as fatal, a few good dictators would have spared! How many cruelties they would have prevented!
But often, while intending to consult a lamb, we consult a fox. Tartuffe was the director of Orgon. I should like to know who was the conscientious director of the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
The gospel speaks no more of directors than of confessors. Among the people whom our ordinary courtesy calls Pagans we do not see that Scipio, Fabricius, Cato, Titus, Trajan, or the Antonines had directors. It is well to have a scrupulous friend to remind you of your duty. But your conscience ought to be the chief of your council.
A Huguenot was much surprised when a Catholic lady told him that she had a confessor to absolve her from her sins and a director to prevent her committing them. "How can your vessel so often go astray, madam," said he, "having two such good pilots?"
The learned observe that it is not the privilege of every one to have a director. It is like having an equerry; it only belongs to ladies of quality. The Abbé Gobelin, a litigious and covetous man, directed Madame de Maintenon only. The directors of Paris often serve four or five devotees at once; they embroil them with their husbands, sometimes with their lovers, and occasionally fill the vacant places.
Why have the women directors and the men none? It was possibly owing to this distinction that Mademoiselle de la Vallière became a Carmelite when she was quitted by Louis XIV., and that M. de Turenne, being betrayed by Madame de Coetquin, didnotmake himself a monk.
St. Jerome, and Rufinus his antagonist, were great directors of women and girls. They did not find a Roman senator or a military tribune to govern. These people profited by the devout facility of the feminine gender. The men had too much beard on their chins and often too much strength of mind for them. Boileau has given the portrait of a director in his "Satire on Women," but might have said something much more to the purpose.
There have been disputes at all times, on all subjects:—"Mundum tradidit disputationi eorum."There have been violent quarrels about whether the whole is greater than a part; whether a body can be in several places at the same time; whether the whiteness of snow can exist without snow, or the sweetness of sugar without sugar; whether there can be thinking without a head, etc.
I doubt not that as soon as a Jansenist shall have written a book to demonstrate that one and two are three, a Molinist will start up and demonstrate that two and one are five.
We hope to please and instruct the reader by laying before him the following verses on "Disputation." They are well known to every man of taste in Paris, but they are less familiar to those among the learned who still dispute on gratuitous predestination, concomitant grace, and that momentous question—whether the mountains were produced by the sea.
ON DISPUTATION.
Each brain its thought, each season has its mode;Manners and fashions alter every day;Examine for yourself what others say;—This privilege by nature is bestowed;—But, oh! dispute not—the designs of heavenTo mortal insight never can be given.What is the knowledge of this world worth knowing?What, but a bubble scarcely worth the blowing?"Quite full of errors was the world before;"Then, to preach reason is but one error more.Viewing this earth from Luna's elevation,Or any other convenient situation,What shall we see? The various tricks of man.Hereis a synod—thereis a divan;Behold the mufti, dervish, iman, bonze,The lama and the pope on equal thrones.The modern doctor and the ancient rabbi,The monk, the priest, and the expectant abbé:If you are disputants, my friends, pray travel—When you come home again, you'll cease to cavil.That wild Ambition should lay waste the earth,Or Beauty's glance give civil discord birth;That, in our courts of equity, a suitShould hang in doubt till ruin is the fruit;That an old country priest should deeply groan,To see a benefice he'd thought his ownBorne off by a court abbé; that a poetShould feel most envy when he least should show it;And, when another's play the public draws,Should grin damnation while he claps applause;With this, and more, the human heart is fraught—But whence the rage to rule another's thought;Say, wherefore—in what way—can you designTo makeyourjudgment give the law tomine?But chiefly I detest those tiresome elves,Half-learned critics, worshipping themselves,Who, with the utmost weight of all their lead,Maintain against you what yourself have said;Philosophers—and poets—and musicians—Great statesmen—deep in third and fourth editions—They know all—read all—and (the greatest curse)Theytalkof all—from politics to verse;On points of taste they'll contradict Voltaire;In law e'en Montesquieu they will not spare;They'll tutor Broglio in affairs of arms;And teach the charming d'Egmont higher charms.See them, alike in great and small things clever,Replying constantly, though answering never;Hear them assert, repeat, affirm, aver,Wax wroth. And wherefore all this mighty stir?This the great theme that agitates their breast—Which of two wretched rhymesters rhymes the best?Pray, gentle reader, did you chance to knowOne Monsieur d'Aube, who died not long ago?One whom the disputatious mania wokeEarly each morning? If, by chance, you spokeOf your own part in some well-fought affair,Better than you he knew how, when, and where;What though your own the deed and the renown?His "letters from the army" put you down;E'en Richelieu he'd have told—if he attended—How Mahon fell, or Genoa was defended.Although he wanted neither wit nor sense,His every visit gave his friends offence;I've seen him, raving in a hot dispute,Exhaust their logic, force them to be mute,Or, if their patience were entirely spent,Rush from the room to give their passion vent.His kinsmen, whom his property allured,At last were wearied, though they long endured.His neighbors, less athletic than himself,For health's sake laid him wholly on the shelf.Thus, 'midst his many virtues, this one failingBrought his old age to solitary wailing;—For solitude to him was deepest woe—A sorrow which the peaceful ne'er can knowAt length, to terminate his cureless grief,A mortal fever came to his relief,Caused by the great, the overwhelming pang,Of hearing in the church a long harangueWithout the privilege of contradiction;So, yielding to this crowning dire affliction,His spirit fled. But, in the grasp of death,'Twas some small solace, with his parting breath,To indulge once more his ruling dispositionBy arguing with the priest and the physician.Oh! may the Eternal goodness grant him nowThe resthene'er to mortals would allow!If, even there, he like not disputationBetter than uncontested, calm salvation.But see, my friends, this bold defiance madeTo every one of the disputing trade,With a young bachelor their skill to try;And God's own essence shall the theme supply.Come and behold, as on the theatric stage,The pitched encounter, the contending rage;Dilemmas, enthymemes, in close array—Two-edged weapons, cutting either way;The strong-built syllogism's pondering might,The sophism's vain ignis fatuus light;Hot-headed monks, whom all the doctors dread,And poor Hibernians arguing for their bread,Fleeing their country's miseries and morassesTo live at Paris on disputes and masses;While the good public lend their strict attentionTo what soars far above their sober comprehension.Is, then, all arguing frivolous or absurd?Was Socrates himself not sometimes heardTo hold an argument amidst a feast?E'en naked in the bath he hardly ceased.Was this a failing in his mental vision?Genius is sure discovered by collision;The cold hard flint by one quick blow is fired;—Fit emblem of the close and the retired,Who, in the keen dispute struck o'er and o'er,Acquire a sudden warmth unfelt before.All this, I grant, is good. But mark the ill:Men by disputing have grown blinder still.The crooked mind is like the squinting eye:How can you make it seeitselfawry?Who's in the wrong? Will any answer "I"?Our words, our efforts, are an idle breath;Each hugs his darling notion until death;Opinions ne'er are altered; all we doIs,to arouse conflicting passions, too.Not truth itself should always find a tongue;"To be too stanchly right, is to be wrong."In earlier days, by vice and crime unstained,Justice and Truth, two naked sisters, reigned;But long since fled—as every one can tell—Justice to heaven and Truth into a well.Now vain Opinion governs every age,And fills poor mortals with fantastic rage.Her airy temple floats upon the clouds;Gods, demons, antic sprites, in countless crowds,Around her throne—a strange and motley mask—Ply busily their never-ceasing task,To hold up to mankind's admiring gazeA thousand nothings in a thousand ways;While, wafted on by all the winds that blow,Away the temple and the goddess go.A mortal, as her course uncertain turns,To-day is worshipped, and to-morrow burns.We scoff, that young Antinous once had priests;We think our ancestors were worse than beasts;And he who treats each modern custom ill,Does but what future ages surely will.What female face has Venus smiled upon?The Frenchman turns with rapture to Brionne,Nor can believe that men were wont to bowTo golden tresses and a narrow brow.And thus is vagabond Opinion seenTo sway o'er Beauty—this world's other queen!How can we hope, then, that she e'er will quitHer vapory throne, to seek some sage's feet,And Truth from her deep hiding-place remove,Once more to witness what is done above?And for the learned—even for the wise—Another snare of false delusion lies;That rage for systems, which, in dreamy thought,Frames magic universes out of naught;Building ten errors on one truth's foundation.So he who taught the art of calculation,In one of these illusive mental slumbers,Foolishly sought the Deity in numbers;The first mechanic, from as wild a notion,Would rule man's freedom by the laws of motion.This globe, says one, is an extinguished sun;No, says another, 'tis a globe of glass;And when the fierce contention's once begun,Book upon book—a vast and useless mass—OnScience's altar are profusely strewn,While Disputation sits on Wisdom's throne.And then, from contrarieties of speech,What countless feuds have sprung! For you may teach,In the same words, two doctrines different quiteAs day from darkness, or as wrong from right.This has indeed been man's severest curse;Famine and pestilence have not been worse,Nor e'er have matched the ills whose aggravationsHave scourged the world through misinterpretations.How shall I paint the conscientious strife?The holy transports of each heavenly soul—Fanaticism wasting human lifeWith torch, with dagger, and with poisoned bow;The ruined hamlet and the blazing town,Homes desolate, and parents massacred,And temples in the Almighty's honor rearedThe scene of acts that merit most his frown!Rape, murder, pillage, in one frightful storm,Pleasure with carnage horribly combined,The brutal ravisher amazed to findA sister in his victim's dying form!Sons by their fathers to the scaffold led;The vanquished always numbered with the dead.Oh, God, permit that all the ills we knowMay one day pass for merely fabled woe!But see, an angry disputant steps forth—His humble mien a proud heart ill concealsIn holy guise inclining to the earth,Offering to God the venom he distils."Beneath all this a dangerous poison lies;So—every man is neither right nor wrong,And, since we never can be truly wise,By instinct only should be driven along.""Sir, I've not said a word to that effect.""It's true, you've artfully disguised your meaning.""But, Sir, my judgment ever is correct.""Sir, in this case, 'tis rather overweening.Let truth be sought, but let all passion yield;'Discussion's right, and disputation's wrong;'This have I said—and that at court, in field,Or town, one often should restrain one's tongue.""But, my dear Sir, you've still a double sense;I can distinguish—" "Sir, with all my heart;I've told my thoughts with all due deference,And crave the like indulgence on your part.""My son, all 'thinking' is a grievous crime;So I'll denounce you without loss of time."Blest would be they who, from fanatic power,From carping censors, envious critics, free,O'er Helicon might roam in liberty,And unmolested pluck each fragrant flower!So does the farmer, in his healthy fields,Far from the ills in swarming towns that spring,Taste the pure joys that our existence yields,Extract the honey and escape the sting.