FOOTNOTE:

FOOTNOTE:[7]"Letters of James Boswell to the Rev. W. J. Temple." (Sidgwick and Jackson.)

[7]"Letters of James Boswell to the Rev. W. J. Temple." (Sidgwick and Jackson.)

Athenæum May and Oct. 1909

Are people still interested in the Carlyles? Some are, we suppose. The older generation is interested in Carlyle, at any rate; though the younger, we believe, is not. For men and women under thirty the redoubtable sage has apparently no message; but for many of their fathers and mothers his least word still has a certain importance.

Such reverent curiosity, though it may excuse some bad books and much futile research, will, we fear, hardly justify the volume before us—Mr. Archibald's we mean, which tells us little about Carlyle and that little by no means new. One chapter only can be manufactured out of his sufficiently indefinite relations with Miss Gordon; thoughten more pages are filled out with a discussion of that wholly unimportant question "Who was Blumine?" The reasonable conjecture is, of course, that Carlyle's method resembled that of other writers; his heroine, no doubt, was the child of his own imagination, and when a model was needed he drew indiscriminately from the ladies with whom he was acquainted.

Should any one chance to be interested in Margaret Gordon, her ancestors, her kindred, or her husband, he may glean a certain amount of information from this book. Born at Charlottetown (Prince Edward Island) in 1798, she was left fatherless at the age of four, and brought up in Scotland by her aunt. Between 1818 and 1820 she may have had a love-affair or flirtation with Carlyle; and in 1824 she married Mr. Bannerman, a commonplace, good-humoured business-man from Aberdeen, who became a Member of Parliament. Mr. Bannerman speculated, lost his fortune, and was consoled with a colonial governorship and a knighthood. Lady Bannerman was drawn into the Evangelical movement, devoted the last years of her life to works of piety, and died (1878) in a little house at Greenwich and the odour of sanctity. As to what manner of woman she may have been we are left in ignorance; into her mode of thinking,feeling, and seeing—into her character, that is—Mr. Archibald has obtained no insight. The necessary changes in matters of history having been made, his volume might do duty as the biographical memoir of thousands of her contemporaries. But perhaps a couple of specimens of the style and substance of Mr. Archibald's prose will best give the measure of his understanding:

"Lady Bannerman dispensed the hospitality of Government House with the dignity and grace which might be expected of one who for over thirty years had moved in the best society of England. She had the power of putting all at their ease, of identifying herself with their individual interests, and of entering with animation into the affairs of the hour. But while she was kind and gracious and frank, and would freely enter into conversation with any one, there was always a certain dignity which prevented any attempt at undue familiarity."

Again:

"In St. John's she was exceedingly kind and charitable to the poor, and she and Lady Hoyles were active workers in the Dorcas Society. She worshipped at St. Thomas' (Episcopal) Church, and was especiallyinterested in her Sunday-school class. As we have seen, her sympathies were more with the Presbyterian Church, but probably because of her husband's official position, she always chose in the Colonies to connect herself with the Church of England."

If this be a fair account of Lady Bannerman, we may be pardoned for wondering why any one thought her biography worth writing. What it all has to do with Carlyle is to us far from clear. The eyes of publishers, however, are in these matters notoriously sharper than those of reviewers.

Having disposed of Carlyle's first love, we can attend to his second—if that is where Miss Welsh comes in order of seniority; for our text mercifully obliges us to say nothing of Miss Aurora Kirkpatrick, another claimant to the honour of having sat for Blumine, while on the glories of Lady Ashburton, who, to be frank, interests us no more than the simplest of these extremely simple "misses," the title of our essay precludes us from expatiating. But can we? Does not the great man, whowas to give Jane the splendour of his name, seem rather to demand prompt satisfaction for the insult paid him in our first paragraph? There we said, or implied, that he was obsolescent; and it is, perhaps, worth pausing to inquire how a man who seemed to his own age one of the great teachers and spiritual masters of humanity—the peer of Pythagoras and Buddha, of Plato, Epictetus, St. Francis and Rousseau—comes in this generation to be held a little higher than Emerson, a good deal lower than Matthew Arnold, immeasurably so than Renan. And is it not worth pausing again to reflect that, contemporaneously with these men, and almost unknown to Western Europe, lived one who bids fair to produce a greater effect on the world than has been produced by any teacher since the crucifixion?

It was primarily as a teacher, as a disseminator of ideas, that Carlyle appeared venerable to his own age; in a less degree they admired him as an historian and an artist. To-day, his ideas are as musty as those of Godwin—a better exponent of deeper speculations: as an historian—in spite of an undeniable gift for visualizing and describing scenes from the past—he is hardly of more consequence than Creighton or Stanhope: while, as an artist, he ranks with such faded rhetoricians as Châteaubriand.

What is the meaning of this? Why simply that the Victorians made the mistake about Carlyle that every age makes about its Carlyles. They took a thoughtful journalist for a master; and this they did because the journalist had the skill and conviction to persuade them, and himself, that what is commonest and most vigorous in human nature is also most sublime. Carlyle could, in perfect good faith, give tone to the vulgar instincts and passions; he could make narrow-mindedness, brutality, intolerance, obtuseness, and sentimentality seem noble; he knew, being an unconscious hypocrite, how, without a glimmer of open cynicism, to make the best of both worlds. For instance, Carlyle and his public wished to believe in Eternal Justice regulating the affairs of men. They believed in it as something emotionally congenial to them, not, you may be sure, as a metaphysical truth discovered and confirmed by the intellect. Intellectual processes were not in Carlyle's way: he was a popular philosopher. From this belief in Eternal Justice he naturally deduced the doctrine that Right is Might, which doctrine applied to history bore fruit most grateful to hero-worshippers—a sect that flourished uncommonly in those days. When, however, it was pointed out by earthy and eristic rationalists that if in the past Right was Might then it followed thatMight was Right, Carlyle, who had ever the shortest of ways with dissenters, drowned the argument in a flood of invective. Of course if Right is Might it does follow that the good cause has always been the successful one; and in that case it looks as though the successful one must always have been the good. Might, in fact, is Right. Carlyle knew better: and he who would be the prophet of his age must know, as he did, to reject unwholesome conclusions without invalidating the healthy premises from which they follow.

Each age has its Carlyles, but it never much respects the Carlyles of other ages. We have our Ferrero and our H. G. Wells, to say nothing of such small fry as Faguets, Marinetti,e tutti quanti. They are people who have something for their own age and nothing for any other, and their own age is pretty sure to prefer them to any great man it may produce but fail to smother: they are adored and duly forgotten. They must come forward as the critics and guides of society; whether they declare their messages in prose or verse, in novels, histories, speeches, essays, or philosophical treatises is of no consequence. It must be possible to make prophets of them, that is all. A pure artist or philosopher or man of science, one who is concerned with Beauty or Truth but notwith its application to contemporary life will not do. Darwin and Swinburne, therefore, the greatest of the English Victorians, were not eligible; but the age chose Carlyle for its select preacher when it might have had Mill. Naturally it preferred his coloured rhetoric and warm sentimentality to Mill's cold reason and white-hot emotion. It chose him because he was what Mill was not—a Carlyle. Yet, though Utilitarianism is discredited, Mill remains; the candour and subtlety of his intellect impress us still, and his Autobiography will seem to future generations one of the most moving documents of the nineteenth century.

As for Carlyle, "nobody marks him"; we only wonder that he will still be talking. The old controversy between those who wish to believe the truth and those who insist that what they wish to believe is true raves on; but neither side dreams of briefing the Chelsea sage. His vatic eloquence carries no conviction. Men and women of the younger generation, whatever their views, find no support in him, because he appeals to axioms and postulates which to them seem unreal. It is not that his arguments are old-fashioned, but that they are based on nothing and apply to nothing. A modern emotionalist may call in Tolstoy or Bergson or Berkley or Léon Bloyor Péguy or Plato himself to break the head of Anatole France or Bertrand Russell, but he will not trouble Carlyle. And besides finding him empty, the new age is quite aware of his positive defects. It cannot away with his peasant morality—moralizing rather—his provincialism, and the grossness of his method. From the beginning to the end of his works there is neither pure thought nor pure feeling—nothing but a point of view which is now perceived to be ridiculously plebeian. Nevertheless, Carlyle had one positive gift that the younger generation is perhaps not very well qualified to appreciate, he was an extraordinarily capable man of letters. His footnotes, for instance, might serve as models; he had a prodigious talent for picking out just those bits of by-information that will amuse and interest a reader and send him back to the text with renewed attention. His editing of Mrs. Carlyle's letters—letters which come not within our terms of reference and from which, therefore, we cannot decently quote—is remarkable: only, even here, his intolerable virtue and vanity, his callous self-content, his miserable, misplaced self-pity and his nauseous sentimentality parade themselves on almost every page. For all his "Oh heavenses," "courageous little souls," and "ay de mis," he never onceguessed the nature of his offence, never realized the beastliness of that moral and religious humbug which to himself seems always to have justified him in playing tyrant and vampire to a woman of genius.

The volumes before us, as we have hinted, were expected, not without excitement, by those people for whose benefit we are about to review them. It must be confessed that they have not wholly escaped the fate that is apt to befall the progeny of parturient mountains. Not that they are precisely what Horace would have expected them to be: they are anything but small; yet, about the contents there is something mousey—the colour perhaps. The fact is, they are disappointing. The letters they contain—a bare third of which are by Jane Welsh—were all written between the middle of 1821 and the end of 1826—that is to say, before either Jane or Carlyle had found themselves. At his best, Carlyle was not a letter-writer; he was a clever man who wrote letters. These have sometimes the personal quality of a good essay, never the charm of familiarcorrespondence. In these early days his mind is as undeveloped as his style; he is crude, awkward, over-emphatic; apter at catching the faults than the excellences of the eighteenth-century prose writers. That one should write to please rather than to improve one's correspondent was an idea which seems hardly to have occurred to him:

"When I sit down to write Letters to people I care anything for, I am too apt to get into a certain ebullient humour, and so to indite great quantities of nonsense, which even my own judgment condemns—when too late for being mended."

That is his own admission. Here is a specimen of his solemn admonitions to his future wife:

"I very much approve your resolution to exercise your powers in some sort of literary effort; and I shall think myself happy, if by any means I can aid you in putting it in practice. There is nothing more injurious to the faculties than to sit poring over books continually without attempting to exhibit any of our own conceptions. We amass ideas, it is true; but at the same time we proportionally weaken our powers of expressing them; a power equally valuable with that of conceiving them, and which, tho' in somedegree like it the gift of Nature, is in a far higher degree the fruit of art, and so languishes more irretrievably by want of culture," etc.

Even when writing to a lady with whom one is on the most delicate terms such austerity is excessive, especially when it runs into a dozen pages. Carlyle is at his best when describing people, and it is to be regretted that his editor, out of respect for the memory of Campbell's widow and others long since deceased, has felt obliged to suppress more than one passage in which contemporaries are freely handled. He is at his worst when writing, and generally complaining, about himself; and, like the majority of people who take themselves very seriously, most amusing when unconsciously so. In the October of 1824 he visited Paris and told Miss Welsh just what he thought of it:

"[I am] daily growing more and more contemptuous of Paris, and themanière d'êtreof its people. Poor fellows! I feel alternately titillated into laughter and shocked to the verge of horror at the hand they make of Life.... Their houses are not houses, but places where they sleep and dress; they live incafésand promenades and theatres; and ten thousand dice are set a-rattling every night in every quarter of their city. Every thingseems gilding and fillagree, addressed to the eye, not to the touch."

Mrs. Carlyle, on the other hand, had a genuine gift; her genius may be small, but it is undeniable. She was never in the first flight of letter-writers, a tiny band which consists, we take it, of Mérimée, Mme. de Sévigné, Horace Walpole, Byron, and whom else? But in that larger second class, the class of Gray and Julie de Lespinasse, Lady Mary Montagu, Swift, Flaubert, Leopardi, Charles Lamb, Gibbon, Fitzgerald, Voltaire, Cicero we suppose, and a good many more, she is entitled to a place. Jane Welsh, however, is by no means Mrs. Carlyle. She was but twenty-five when she married. Here we find her rather too conscious of her own superiority; not only was she the beauty, she was also the Muse of the village; had she been less vain she must have been unnatural. Yet, under all her pert provincialism, we can detect that mysterious quality which distinguishes the good letter-writer. She writes to please two people—her correspondent and herself; she has no need, therefore, to canvass general truths, but can afford to be personal and charming. Her artful wit gives pith and moment to the most trivial enterprises, and turns domestic projects into adventures ofhigh romance. She never makes great things small by declamation; she prefers to make small things great by insinuation. Her friend is assumed to be interested in all that concerns herself, so she is not afraid to be intimate; and a correspondent both clever and intimate is one of those things that make life precious. In a word, her letters (which, to our dismay, besides occupying a bare third of the two volumes, are towards the end disastrously affected by the style of her lover) succeed in giving a whimsical view of her ordinary and external life, viewed from standpoints above and beyond the reach of externals—the head and the heart. Her account of the affair with Mr. Dugald G—— is, in its way, a little masterpiece, but too long for quotation. We select a shorter specimen of her style:

"Such a week I spent in Galloway! There was no amusement within doors, and the weather precluded the chance of finding any without. 'Cœlebs in Search of a Wife' was the only book in the house, and even that was monopolized by a young lady who came to my Uncle's (I strongly suspect) on Cœleb's errand. The rest of us had no weapon of any sort to combat time with, and for four whole days I sat counting the drops of rain that fell from the ceiling into a bowl beneath,or in burbling the chain of my watch for the pleasure of undoing it. 'Oh, Plato! what tasks for a philosopher!' At length in a frenzy of ennui I mounted a brute of a horse that could do nothing but trot, and rode till I was ready to drop from the saddle—just for diversion. I left my companions wondering when it would be fair; and when I returned they were still wondering. How very few people retain their faculties in rainy weather!"

We can hardly make evident by short quotations the difference between the letters of a gifted person and of one who had a gift for letter-writing; the reader, however, who will be at pains to take Lamb's correspondence from the shelf and compare his letters with those of Mrs. Carlyle will no doubt discover what it is that they both possess and Carlyle lacks. We would say, if permitted once again to trot out the weary and well-fired hack, that you may think of Carlyle writing his "Frederick" in a tail-coat, or whatever costume you prefer, and feel sure, if your mind be not too literal, that his letters were written in the same full dress. Far pleasanter to imagine Jane Welsh, coming home from a rout, slipping a gay dressing-gown over a satin petticoat, and gossiping till the fire burnt low. What is more, before she had the privilege of "doing for"a great man with a Scotch sense of economy and a peasant's notion of wifely duties, she may often have so gossiped. The fact is, Carlyle, in his most playful moments, kept one eye on "the eternities," and Jane, in her most solemn, never lost sight of the comic spirit.

The volumes before us are well printed on good paper, and without are embellished by a device—two hearts, stamped in gold, linked with a golden ring, and supported by a plump little cupid; the same device is repeated on the title-page in mauve. Trifles may be significant; whether this symbol was suggested by the editor, or whether the editor was influenced by it, are questions deserving thought. Turning to matters less subtle, we wish that Mr. Alexander Carlyle had not found it necessary to rake up the ashes which reticence had allowed to grow cold. Also, we wish that he had adopted some other policy towards Jane Welsh; the pin, even between deft fingers, is an ignoble and unattractive weapon. In his notes he contrives a small and unpleasant sensation (vol. i, p. 319) which would be more effective were it supported by anything better than a piece of gossip, for which no authority is given, and the doubtful interpretation of one passage in a letter. We are grateful to him, however,for translating all the Latin, French, German, Italian, and Scotch words, and for several touches of unconscious humour, of which the following is a pleasant example:

"Pen (from Penfillan, home of Miss Welsh's paternal grandfather) was her pet name used to distinguish her from the Welshes of her maternal grandfather's household, especially from her mother's younger sister, whose name was also Jeannie Welsh. Conscious of procrastinating too long in writing, Miss Welsh here sportively enlarges Pen not into Penfillan, but into Penelope, the name of Ulysses' faithful wife, who put off so long the hateful task of choosing a husband from the wasteful and riotous horde of suitors assembled in her house during Ulysses' protracted absence. See Homer's 'Odyssey.'"

FOOTNOTE:[8]"The Love-Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh." Edited by Alexander Carlyle. 2 vols. Illustrated. (John Lane.)"Carlyle's First Love, Margaret Gordon, Lady Bannerman." By Raymond Clare Archibald. (John Lane.)

[8]"The Love-Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh." Edited by Alexander Carlyle. 2 vols. Illustrated. (John Lane.)"Carlyle's First Love, Margaret Gordon, Lady Bannerman." By Raymond Clare Archibald. (John Lane.)

[8]"The Love-Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh." Edited by Alexander Carlyle. 2 vols. Illustrated. (John Lane.)

"Carlyle's First Love, Margaret Gordon, Lady Bannerman." By Raymond Clare Archibald. (John Lane.)

Αι Χἁριτες τἑμἑνὁς τι λαβεἱν ὁπερ οὑχἱ πεσεἱται ζητοὑσαι ψυχἡν εὑρον Ἁριστοφἁνους.[Greek: Ahi Charites temenos ti labein hoper ouchi peseitai zêtousai psuchên euron Aristophanous.]Plato.

Plato.

Athenæum Jan. 1912

To Plato it seemed that the Graces, seeking an imperishable temple, discovered the soul of Aristophanes. To the grocers and statesmen of Queen Victoria it seemed otherwise. Their taste was a good deal nicerζητοὑσαι ψυχἡν Αριστοφἁνους than that of Plato, or of Shakespeare for that matter, or of Dante, Rabelais, Catullus, Voltaire,[10]Gibbon or Balzac, to say nothing of St. Chrysostom (who could not sleep without an Aristophanes under his pillow) or the author of "The Song of Solomon." They did not like vulgarity and they put a stop to it: alsoin that agePunchand theTimesflourished. What is decent or indecent, vulgar or refined, is, of course, a matter of taste; and each age has a taste of its own. The taste of Athens in her prime, or of Rome in hers, of Italy in the days of Dante or of Raphael, of the court of Elizabeth, or of eighteenth-century France was not the taste of Victorian England. And the strange thing is that, though not only in the arts, but in all the delicacies of life—in personal relations, in sentiment and wit—the great poets, artists and critics are admitted to have been more subtle and fastidious than most curates or tradesmen, in the matter of morals the curates and tradesmen are allowed to know better. In this one respect their sensibilities are to be preferred; in all others they modestly confess themselves inferior to the greatest minds of the ages. Things that seemed beautiful or interesting or amusing to Shakespeare or Plato, to Chaucer or Aristophanes, they know, for certain, to be evil. And since they are evil they are not to be mentioned; discussion of them even—since they are quite sure that they are evil—is a crime. Now the prevention of crime is a duty of the state; so very few of the world's great masterpieces could have been published for the first time in modern England; and it has been impossible for Mr. BickleyRogers to give us even a translation of theLysistrata.

Were Aristophanes alive and publishing now, not only would his plays be vetoed by the Censor for indelicacy, and boycotted by the libraries, he would be in personal danger on another account; for a judge of the High Court could surely be found to sentence the author ofThe Birdsto six months' hard labour for blasphemy. Mr. Rogers, therefore, who made this translation, not in the Athens of Plato, but in the London of Podsnap—in 1878, to be exact—is not much to be blamed for having allowed it to bear the mark of its age. Nevertheless, though pardonable, his compromise is deplorable, since it robs this translation of precisely that quality which gives to most of the others their high importance. For Mr. Rogers is one of those who during the last five-and-twenty years have been busy awakening us to a new sense of the possibilities of life. His share in that task has been to express and restate, in a form appreciable by the modern mind, some of the adventures and discoveries of the Hellenic genius. He is one of those scholars who, consciously or unconsciously, have joined hands with the boldest spirits of the age, and, by showing what the Greeks thought and felt, have revealed to us new worlds of thoughtand feeling. Now, to write like the sociologists, the subject of theLysistratais the fundamental nature and necessity of the interdependence of the sexes. But what Aristophanes thought and felt about the matter is just what we shall not find in this translation. For instance, the scene between Cinesias and Myrrhina is essential to a perfect understanding of the play, but the latter part of it (ll. 905-60) is not so much as paraphrased here. And so the spirit languishes; it could flourish only in the body created for it by the poet, and that body has been mutilated.

This version, then, fails to bring out the profound, comic conception that gives unity and significance to the original; nevertheless, it has something more than such literary interest as may be supposed to belong to any work by Mr. Rogers. The comic poet offers matter worthy the consideration of politicians and political controversialists, and this the translator has rendered fearlessly and well. For theLysistratais a political play, and cannot be discussed profitably apart from its political ideas and arguments. It can no more be treated as pure literature than the poetry of Keats can be treated as anything else. Frankly "pacificist," and to some extent "feminist," hostile, at any rate, to arrogant virility, it sounds in its ideasand arguments oddly familiar to modern ears; and, in the interest of those ears, it may be worth pausing a moment to consider the circumstances in which it was produced.

Some eighteen months earlier—towards the end of 413B.C.—had come news of the most stunning disaster that was to befall Athens till the final catastrophe at Aegospotami. The greatest armament ever assembled by a Greek state had been annihilated, literally, before Syracuse: the city, itself, was in danger. For that not the less was Aristophanes permitted to produce in the state theatre at the public cost his fiercely anti-militarist and anti-imperialist play. Was it the best, or one of the two or three best, comedies of the year? That was what the Athenians wanted to know. If it was, of course it ought to be presented.

During this long and horrible war (it lasted twenty-eight years), power, as was to be expected, slipped into the hands of vile and violent demagogues, of men who by rhetoric and intrigue induced the people more than once to reject on fair occasions reasonable terms, who in 420, guided by Alcibiades, contrived by an infamous stratagem to upset the Peace of Nicias, and by a combination of evil motives—private interest, public vanity, vindictiveness, greed, and sentimentality—prolonged the war until it ended in the ruin of the city and the irreparable debasement of ancient civilization. These men, as may be supposed, were the butts of our poet's bitterest satire and most furious invective. Yet even they, though incessantly attacked and exposed, never succeeded in prohibiting, and perhaps never wished to prohibit, the performance of his plays.

It has been said that Athens attempted to impose her civilization on the Hellenic world and became barbarous in the attempt. There is, of course, much truth in this. To wage war successfully a state must make itself to some extent barbarous; and the Peloponnesian War ended the progressive phase of Greek culture. The state conquered by Rome was something unrecognizably inferior to the state that Pericles so recklessly jeopardized; and it is interesting to note that the conquest of Greece by Rome did far more for the spread of Greek civilization and culture than any of those projects of aggrandizement and expansion so artfully devised by Athenian imperialists. No reader of Thucydides can doubt that as the struggle intensified Athenian civility diminished: yet, when we remember that even in the throes of war the right of the individual to live and speak freely was not lost, that, on the contrary, during thewar, came forth some of the finest and freest criticism with which the world has ever been blest, we shall incline to suspect that even in her decline Athens was decidedly more civilized than most states at their apogee.

ὁ δε ἁνεξἑταστος βἱος οὑ βιωτὁς [Greek: ho de anexetastos bios ou biôtos], said Socrates—a life unsifted is a life unspent. Because the Athenians really believed this, because they saw dimly that good states of mind, not wealth nor comfort nor power nor prestige—which are but means—but states of mind, which alone are good in themselves, are the proper end of existence, they refused to sacrifice individual liberty to any god of efficiency. It was to the mind of the individual they looked for absolute good: the state was but a means. Therefore at Athens, after twenty years of stultifying war, the right of the individual to free expression and self-development was scrupulously respected. In this truly liberal atmosphere vivid and original characters grew and flourished, thought and felt, and of their thoughts and feelings have left such record as still charms and tantalizes less fortunate generations. This belief in personal liberty, this respect for the individual mind as the sole source of truth and beauty, made possible Athens, a small short-lived state in the distant past, an ideal towards which the best minds are ever looking back,the glory and grand achievement of the Western world.[11]

Our enthusiasm for that Athenian spirit, which respected art and gave free rein to criticism even at the most desperate moment of the city's history, has carried us a little, but only a little, away from the matter in hand—the political ideas of theLysistrata. Political wisdom, like human folly, seems to obey a law known to men of science as "the Conservation of Energy"—quantity and quality are permanent, form alone changes. It is the Aristophanic method that differs so greatly from that of most modern satirists. For Aristophanes does not confine himself to driving the blade of his wit into the rotten parts of a bad case; he does not score intellectual points only. His method is more fundamental. A clever controversialist can always find joints in the harness of his foe. When Mr. Shaw meets Mr. Belloc in public controversy it is hard to say which makes the greater number of hits. Even harder is it to say that the cause of truth has been much advanced. One may hold, fairly enough, that both sides have been madeludicrous; but it is still fairer to admit that neither has been utterly discredited. If Aristophanes never succeeded in ruining a party, at least he succeeded in discrediting some pestilent opinions. This he did, not so much by a brisk display of intellectual handiness, as by showing that a pompous superstructure was baseless. He makes us feel a position to be absurd, instead of merely thinking certain things in it silly.

The superior, sneering official has not escaped shrewd knocks from the wits of every age. There is a type of mind which, under every form of government, pushes to the front by sheer lack of virtue. Wherever life has become sufficiently mechanical to support a bureaucracy, there will the Poloniuses and Shallows gather, and, wherever there is an official caste, there will be satirists or torture-chambers.[12]Yet, though the self-complacent magistrate has been the butt of the ages,Aristophanes and Shakespeare, and perhaps Flaubert, have alone revealed his essential nullity, because they alone have looked for something essential beneath the accidental. Nothing could be simpler than the character of Polonius; nothing could be more subtle. A rap here, a stab there, and the soul of a minister is exposed. We have come to see, we scarcely know how, that, if he ever had one, he has lost it. Some idea of the simplicity and subtlety of the Aristophanic method may be gathered from the following scene, but to illustrate the extravagance and beauty of the form, or the profundity of the conception, no quotation can suffice. Lysistrata has unfolded her famous scheme for stopping the war: there is to be a sympathetic strike; the women of all the combatant states, principals and allies, are to withhold their services until the war has been stopped:

Lysistrata[ending a speech]. Then shall the people revere us and honour us,givers of Joy, and givers of Peace.Magistrate.Tell us the mode and the means of your doing it.Lys.First we will stop the disorderly crew,Soldiers in arms promenading and marketing.Stratyllis[leader of the chorus of women]. Yea, by divine Aphrodite, 'tis true.Lys.Now in the market you see them like Corybants,jangling about with their armour of mail.Fiercely they stalk in the midst of the crockery,sternly parade by the cabbage and kail.Mag.Right, for a soldier should always be soldierly!Lys.Troth, 'tis a mighty ridiculous jest,Watching them haggle for shrimps in the market-place,grimly accoutred with shield and with crest.* * * * *Strat.Comes, like a Tereus, a Thracian irregular,shaking his dart and his target to boot;Off runs a shopgirl, appalled at the sight of him,down he sits soldierly, gobbles her fruit.Mag.You, I presume, could adroitly and gingerlysettle this intricate, tangled concern:You in a trice could relieve our perplexities.Lys.Certainly.Mag.How? permit me to learn.Lys.Just as a woman, with nimble dexterity,thus with her hands disentangles a skein.* * * * *Mag.Wonderful, marvellous feats, not a doubt of it,you with your skeins and your spindles can show;Fools! do you really expect to unravel aterrible war like a bundle of tow?Lys.Ah, if you only could manage your politicsjust in the way that we deal with a fleece!* * * * *Mag.Heard any ever the like of their impudence,these who have nothing to do with the war,Preaching of bobbins, and beatings, and washing-tubs?Lys.Nothing to do with it, wretch that you are?

Lysistrata[ending a speech]. Then shall the people revere us and honour us,givers of Joy, and givers of Peace.

Lysistrata[ending a speech]. Then shall the people revere us and honour us,

givers of Joy, and givers of Peace.

Magistrate.Tell us the mode and the means of your doing it.

Lys.First we will stop the disorderly crew,Soldiers in arms promenading and marketing.

Lys.First we will stop the disorderly crew,

Soldiers in arms promenading and marketing.

Stratyllis[leader of the chorus of women]. Yea, by divine Aphrodite, 'tis true.

Lys.Now in the market you see them like Corybants,jangling about with their armour of mail.Fiercely they stalk in the midst of the crockery,sternly parade by the cabbage and kail.

Lys.Now in the market you see them like Corybants,

jangling about with their armour of mail.

Fiercely they stalk in the midst of the crockery,

sternly parade by the cabbage and kail.

Mag.Right, for a soldier should always be soldierly!

Lys.Troth, 'tis a mighty ridiculous jest,Watching them haggle for shrimps in the market-place,grimly accoutred with shield and with crest.

Lys.Troth, 'tis a mighty ridiculous jest,

Watching them haggle for shrimps in the market-place,

grimly accoutred with shield and with crest.

* * * * *

Strat.Comes, like a Tereus, a Thracian irregular,shaking his dart and his target to boot;Off runs a shopgirl, appalled at the sight of him,down he sits soldierly, gobbles her fruit.

Strat.Comes, like a Tereus, a Thracian irregular,

shaking his dart and his target to boot;

Off runs a shopgirl, appalled at the sight of him,

down he sits soldierly, gobbles her fruit.

Mag.You, I presume, could adroitly and gingerlysettle this intricate, tangled concern:You in a trice could relieve our perplexities.

Mag.You, I presume, could adroitly and gingerly

settle this intricate, tangled concern:

You in a trice could relieve our perplexities.

Lys.Certainly.

Mag.How? permit me to learn.

Lys.Just as a woman, with nimble dexterity,thus with her hands disentangles a skein.

Lys.Just as a woman, with nimble dexterity,

thus with her hands disentangles a skein.

* * * * *

Mag.Wonderful, marvellous feats, not a doubt of it,you with your skeins and your spindles can show;Fools! do you really expect to unravel aterrible war like a bundle of tow?

Mag.Wonderful, marvellous feats, not a doubt of it,

you with your skeins and your spindles can show;

Fools! do you really expect to unravel a

terrible war like a bundle of tow?

Lys.Ah, if you only could manage your politicsjust in the way that we deal with a fleece!

Lys.Ah, if you only could manage your politics

just in the way that we deal with a fleece!

* * * * *

Mag.Heard any ever the like of their impudence,these who have nothing to do with the war,Preaching of bobbins, and beatings, and washing-tubs?

Mag.Heard any ever the like of their impudence,

these who have nothing to do with the war,

Preaching of bobbins, and beatings, and washing-tubs?

Lys.Nothing to do with it, wretch that you are?

The women conclude that one who talks thus is no better than a dead man; and when he sets out on some trusty platitude concerning women's sphere and the married state with

Truly whoever is able to wed—

Lysistrata takes him up sharply with

Truly, old fellow,'tis time you were dead.

Accordingly they prepare with sacrificial pigs, funeral cakes, fillets and chaplets to give the walking corpse a decent burial. The magistrate stumps off, taking Heaven to witness he never was so insulted in his life, which, as Lysistrata observes, amounts to nothing more than grumbling because they have not laid him out.

Twenty-three centuries are gone since Aristophanes wrote theLysistrata, but the safe official who dismisses with a traditional sneer or a smile the notion that any can manage, save those who have been trained to mismanage, is still with us. Perhaps he has outlived the class whose prejudices and limitations he formerly expressed; but in the days of Aristophanes such a class existed, and it is represented here by the chorus of old gentlemen. In those days the men were not the only fools. Aristophanes had no intention of making out that they were. He was a betterartist than party man. He was a comic poet who revealed the essential comedy of all things. The chorus of women, Lysistrata herself, and the other leading ladies, all have their foibles and absurdities; only the chorus of men, who are so keenly alive to them, seem never to guess that there are smuts on the pot. To seek in this age and country a companion for these old fellows would be to insult our Western civilization. Let us invent a purely fantastic character; one who could not sleep at night for fear of Prussians and Social Democrats, who clamoured daily for a dozen Dreadnoughts, conscription, and the head of Mr. Keir Hardie on a charger, and yet spent his leisure warning readers of the daily papers against the danger of admitting to any share of power a sex notorious for its panic-fearfulness, intolerance, and lack of humour; such a one would indeed merit admission to the χορὁς γερὁντων [Greek: choros gerontôn], would be a proper fellow to take his stand ἑξἡς Αριστογεἱτονι [Greek: hexês Aristogeitoni], beside the brave Aristogiton, and πατἁξαι τἡσδε γραὁς τἡν γνἁθον [Greek: pataxai têsde graos tên gnathon], beat down this "monstrous regiment of women."

Aristophanes was a staunch Conservative, but he disliked a stupid argument wherever he found it. He cared intensely about politics, but he could not easily forget that he was anartist. Neither the men nor the women are tied up and peppered with the small shot of his wit; they are allowed to betray themselves. The art consists in selecting from the mass of their opinions and sentiments what is most significant, and making the magistrate, who speaks for the party, deliver himself of judicious commonplaces. The chorus of wiseacres, the bar-parlour politicians, whom chance or misfortune has led to favour one side rather than the other, are less cautious without being less platitudinous. Their talk is all of "inevitable war" and "stripping for the fray," "vindicating rights," "tyranny" and "traitors," "spoliation," "innovation," and "striking good blows for the cause"; at least it was twenty-three hundred years ago.

Men Chorus.This is not a time for slumber;now let all be bold and free,Strip to meet the great occasion,vindicate our rights with me.I can smell a deep, surprisingTide of Revolution rising,Odour as of folk devisingHippias's tyranny.And I feel a dire misgiving,Lest some false Laconians, meetingin the house of Cleisthenes,Have inspired these wretched womenall our wealth and pay to seize.Pay from whence I get my living.Gods! to hear these shallow wenchestaking citizens to task,Prattling of a brassy buckler,jabbering of a martial casque!Gods! to think that they have venturedwith Laconian men to deal,Men of just the faith and honourthat a ravening wolf might feel!Plots they're hatching, plots contriving,plots of rampant Tyranny;But o'er US they shan't be Tyrants,no, for on my guard I'll be,And I'll dress my sword in myrtle,and with firm and dauntless hand,Here beside Aristogeitonresolutely take my stand,Marketing in arms beside him.This the time and this the placeWhen my patriot arm must deal a—blow upon that woman's face.

Men Chorus.

This is not a time for slumber;now let all be bold and free,Strip to meet the great occasion,vindicate our rights with me.I can smell a deep, surprisingTide of Revolution rising,Odour as of folk devisingHippias's tyranny.And I feel a dire misgiving,Lest some false Laconians, meetingin the house of Cleisthenes,Have inspired these wretched womenall our wealth and pay to seize.Pay from whence I get my living.Gods! to hear these shallow wenchestaking citizens to task,Prattling of a brassy buckler,jabbering of a martial casque!Gods! to think that they have venturedwith Laconian men to deal,Men of just the faith and honourthat a ravening wolf might feel!Plots they're hatching, plots contriving,plots of rampant Tyranny;But o'er US they shan't be Tyrants,no, for on my guard I'll be,And I'll dress my sword in myrtle,and with firm and dauntless hand,Here beside Aristogeitonresolutely take my stand,Marketing in arms beside him.This the time and this the placeWhen my patriot arm must deal a—blow upon that woman's face.

This is not a time for slumber;

now let all be bold and free,

Strip to meet the great occasion,

vindicate our rights with me.

I can smell a deep, surprising

Tide of Revolution rising,

Odour as of folk devising

Hippias's tyranny.

And I feel a dire misgiving,

Lest some false Laconians, meeting

in the house of Cleisthenes,

Have inspired these wretched women

all our wealth and pay to seize.

Pay from whence I get my living.

Gods! to hear these shallow wenches

taking citizens to task,

Prattling of a brassy buckler,

jabbering of a martial casque!

Gods! to think that they have ventured

with Laconian men to deal,

Men of just the faith and honour

that a ravening wolf might feel!

Plots they're hatching, plots contriving,

plots of rampant Tyranny;

But o'er US they shan't be Tyrants,

no, for on my guard I'll be,

And I'll dress my sword in myrtle,

and with firm and dauntless hand,

Here beside Aristogeiton

resolutely take my stand,

Marketing in arms beside him.

This the time and this the place

When my patriot arm must deal a

—blow upon that woman's face.

One is tempted to quote Mr. Rogers indefinitely; indeed, there are a score of good things to which we would gladly call attention. Having warned readers that this version is not a translation in the sense that the versions ofThe FrogsandThe Birdsare, we can, with a clear conscience, urge all to read it who care for good literature or are interested inpolitical ideas. They will not be disappointed; only, we would suggest to those whose Greek has grown a little rusty that a literal translation in French or German would be a suitable companion for the English paraphrase. Without it, they will hardly understand what provoked Plato's splendid compliment and would bring down upon the author, were he alive, the rigours of our English law.

FOOTNOTES:[9]"The Lysistrata of Aristophanes, acted at Athens in the yearB.C.411." The Greek Text Revised, with a Translation into Corresponding Metres, Introduction, and Commentary, by Benjamin Bickley Rogers. (Bell and Sons.)[10]Voltaire, by the way, was no admirer of Aristophanes. "Ce poète comique," said he, "qui n'est ni comique ni poète, n'aurait pas été admis parmi nous à donner ses farces à la foire Saint-Laurent." But that was not because he was indecent, but because to Voltaire, who said much the same of Shakespeare, he seemed extravagantly incorrect.[11]Of course this panegyric needs qualification. What panegyric does not? The Athenians condemned Socrates. Yes ... yes. But, as a statement of the general belief and, what is more, the practice of Athens, these rather excited paragraphs may stand.[12]Note: 1918. Though assuredly our satirists hide their light under a bushel, the tiny flickers do not escape the eyes of our officials. Let them beware. In 415, after the mutilation of the Hermae, there was a panic at Athens and a reign of terror instigated by some of the demagogues. Torture, though contrary to the laws of Athens and to all Athenian sentiment, was proposed. The proposal was accepted; but when the moment for execution came theecclesia—the mass meeting of citizens, that is to say—refused to allow it. Now Pericles would never have proposed such a thing; neither would Mr. Asquith: but suppose in these days some more popular and less responsible leader were to back the project, I wonder whether the English people would decline to follow him.

[9]"The Lysistrata of Aristophanes, acted at Athens in the yearB.C.411." The Greek Text Revised, with a Translation into Corresponding Metres, Introduction, and Commentary, by Benjamin Bickley Rogers. (Bell and Sons.)

[10]Voltaire, by the way, was no admirer of Aristophanes. "Ce poète comique," said he, "qui n'est ni comique ni poète, n'aurait pas été admis parmi nous à donner ses farces à la foire Saint-Laurent." But that was not because he was indecent, but because to Voltaire, who said much the same of Shakespeare, he seemed extravagantly incorrect.

[11]Of course this panegyric needs qualification. What panegyric does not? The Athenians condemned Socrates. Yes ... yes. But, as a statement of the general belief and, what is more, the practice of Athens, these rather excited paragraphs may stand.

[12]Note: 1918. Though assuredly our satirists hide their light under a bushel, the tiny flickers do not escape the eyes of our officials. Let them beware. In 415, after the mutilation of the Hermae, there was a panic at Athens and a reign of terror instigated by some of the demagogues. Torture, though contrary to the laws of Athens and to all Athenian sentiment, was proposed. The proposal was accepted; but when the moment for execution came theecclesia—the mass meeting of citizens, that is to say—refused to allow it. Now Pericles would never have proposed such a thing; neither would Mr. Asquith: but suppose in these days some more popular and less responsible leader were to back the project, I wonder whether the English people would decline to follow him.

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