INITIATION INTO LITERATURE
BY
EMILE FAGUET
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
SIR HOME GORDON, BART.
The Translator begs to acknowledge with appreciation the courtesy of the
Author in graciously consenting to make some valuable additions, at his
request, specially for the English version.
PREFACE
This volume, as indicated by the title, is designed to show the way to
the beginner, to satisfy and more especially to excite his initial
curiosity. It affords an adequate idea of the march of facts and of
ideas. The reader is led, somewhat rapidly, from the remote origins to
the most recent efforts of the human mind.
It should be a convenient repertory to which the mind may revert in order
to see broadly the general opinion of an epoch - and what connected it
with those that followed or preceded it. It aims above all at being _a
frame_ in which can conveniently be inscribed, in the course of
further studies, new conceptions more detailed and more thoroughly
examined.
It will have fulfilled its design should it incite to research and
meditation, and if it prepares for them correctly.
E. FAGUET.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
ANCIENT INDIA
The Vedas. Buddhist Literature. Great Epic Poems, then very Diverse, much
Shorter Poems. Dramatic Literature. Moral Literature.
CHAPTER II
HEBRAIC LITERATURE
The Bible, a Collection of Epic, Lyric, Elegiac, and Sententious
Writings. The Talmud, Book of Ordinances. The Gospels.
CHAPTER III
THE GREEKS
Homer. Hesiod. Elegiac and Lyric Poets. Prose Writers. Philosophers and
Historians. Lyric Poets, Dramatic Poets. Comic Poets. Orators. Romancers.
CHAPTER IV
THE LATINS
The Latins, Imitators of the Greeks. Epic Poets. Dramatic Poets. Golden
Age: Virgil, Horace, Ovid. Silver Age: Prose Writers, Historians, and
Philosophers: Titus-Livy, Tacitus, Seneca. Decadence Still Brilliant.
CHAPTER V
THE MIDDLE AGES: FRANCE
_Chansons de Geste: Song of Roland_ and Lyric Poetry. Popular
Epopee: _Romances of Renard_. Popular Short Stories: Fables.
Historians. The Allegorical Poem: _Romance of the Rose_. Drama.
CHAPTER VI
THE MIDDLE AGES: ENGLAND
Literature in Latin, in Anglo-Saxon, and in French. The Ancestor of
English Literature: Chaucer.
CHAPTER VII
THE MIDDLE AGES: GERMANY
Epic Poems: _Nibelungen_. Popular Poems. Very Numerous Lyric Poems.
Drama.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MIDDLE AGES: ITALY
Troubadours of Southern Italy. Neapolitan and Sicilian Poets: Dante,
Petrarch, Boccaccio.
CHAPTER IX
THE MIDDLE AGES: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
Epic Poems: _Romanceros_. Didactic Books. Romances of Chivalry.
CHAPTER X
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: FRANCE
First Portion of Sixteenth Century: Poets: Marot, Saint-Gelais; Prose
Writers: Rabelais, Comines. Second Portion of Sixteenth Century: Poets:
"The Pleiade"; Prose Writers: Amyot, Montaigne. First Portion of
Seventeenth Century: Intellectual and Brilliant Poets: Malherbe,
Corneille; Great Prose Writers: Balzac, Descartes. Second Portion of
Seventeenth Century: Poets: Racine, Moliere, Boileau, La Fontaine; Prose
Writers: Bossuet, Pascal, La Bruyere, Fenelon, etc.
CHAPTER XI
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: ENGLAND
Dramatists: Marlowe, Shakespeare. Prose Writers: Sidney, Francis Bacon,
etc. Epic Poet: Milton. Comic Poets.
CHAPTER XII
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: GERMANY
Luther, Zwingli, Albert Duerer, Leibnitz, Gottsched.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: ITALY
Poets: Ariosto, Tasso, Guarini, Folengo, Marini, etc. Prose Writers:
Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Davila.
CHAPTER XIV
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
Poets: Quevedo, Gongora, Lope de Vega, Ercilla, Calderon, Rojas, etc.
Prose Writers: Montemayor, Cervantes, etc. Portugal: De Camoens, etc. The
Stage.
CHAPTER XV
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: FRANCE
Of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Fontenelle, Bayle. Of the
Eighteenth: Poets: La Motte, Jean Baptiste Rousseau, Voltaire, etc.;
Prose Writers: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, Jean Jacques Rousseau, etc.
Of the Nineteenth Century: Poets: Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Musset, Vigny,
etc.; Prose Writers: Chateaubriand, Michelet, George Sand, Merimee,
Renan, etc.
CHAPTER XVI
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ENGLAND
Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Pope, Young, MacPherson, etc. Prose
Writers of the Eighteenth Century: Daniel Defoe, Richardson, Fielding,
Swift, Sterne, David Hume. Poets of the Nineteenth Century: Byron,
Shelley, the Lake Poets. Prose Writers of the Nineteenth Century: Walter
Scott, Macaulay, Dickens, Carlyle.
CHAPTER XVII
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: GERMANY
Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland. Prose
Writers of the Eighteenth Century: Herder, Kant. Poets of the Nineteenth
Century: Goethe, Schiller, Koerner.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ITALY
Poets: Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Monti, Leopardi. Prose Writers:
Silvio Pellico, Fogazzaro, etc.
CHAPTER XIX
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: SPAIN
The Drama still Brilliant: Moratin. Historians and Philosophers,
Novelists, Orators.
CHAPTER XX
RUSSIAN LITERATURE
Middle Ages. Some Epic Narratives. Renaissance in the Seventeenth
Century. Literature Imitative of the West in the Eighteenth Century.
Original Literature in the Nineteenth Century.
CHAPTER XXI
POLISH LITERATURE
At an Early Date Western Influence Sufficiently Potent. Sixteenth Century
Brilliant; Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries highly Cultured;
Nineteenth Century Notably Original.
INDEX
INITIATION INTO
LITERATURE
CHAPTER I
ANCIENT INDIA
The _Vedas_. Buddhist Literature. Great Epic Poems, then very
Diverse, much Shorter Poems. Dramatic Literature. Moral Literature.
THE _VEDAS_. - The ancient Indians, who spoke Sanscrit, possess a
literature which goes back, perhaps, to the fifteenth century before
Christ. At first, like all other races, they possessed a sacred
literature intimately bound up with their religion. The earliest volumes
of sacred literature are the _Vedas_. They describe and glorify the
gods then worshipped, to wit, Agni, god of fire, of the domestic hearth,
of the celestial fire (the sun), of the atmospheric fire (lightning);
Indra, god of atmosphere, analogous to Zeus of the Greeks; Soma, the
moon; Varuna, the nocturnal vault, the god who rewards the good and
punishes the evil; Rudra, the irascible god, more evil than well
disposed, though sometimes helpful; others too, very numerous.
The style of the _Vedas_ is continually poetic and metaphorical.
They contain a sort of metaphysics as well as continual allegories.
BUDDHA. - Buddhism, a philosophical religion, sufficiently analogous to
Christianity, which Sakyamuni, surnamed Buddha (the wise), spread through
India towards 550 B.C., created a new literature. It taught, as will be
remembered, the equality of all castes in the sight of religion,
metempsychosis, charity, and detachment from all passions and desires in
order to arrive at absolute calm (_nirvana_). The literature it
inspired was primarily _gnomic_, that is, sententious, analogous to
that of Pythagoras, with a tendency towards little moral tales and
parables, as in the Gospel.
This literature subsequently expanded into large and even immense epic
poems, of which the principal are the _Mahabharata_ and the _Ramayana_.
THE _MAHABHARATA_; THE _RAMAYANA_. - The _Mahabharata_ (that is, the
_great history of the Bharatas_) is a legend or a novel in verse
intersected with moral digressions, with episodes vaguely related to the
subject, with discourses and prayers. There are charming episodes full of
delicate sensibility, of moving tenderness - that is to say, of human
beauty, comparable to the farewells of Hector and Andromache in Homer;
and everywhere, amid tediousness and monotony, is found a powerful and
superabundant imagination.
The _Ramayana_, the name of the author of which, Valmiki, has come
down to us, is a poem yet more vast and unequal. There are portions which
to us are quite unreadable, and there are others comparable to the most
imposing and most touching in all epic poetry. Reduced to its theme, the
subject of _Mahabharata_ is extremely simple; it is the history of
Prince Rama, dispossessed of his throne, who saw his beloved wife, Sita,
ravished by the monstrous demon Ravana, who made alliance with the good
monkeys and with them constructed a bridge over the sea to reach the
island on which Sita was detained, who vanquished and slew Ravana, who
re-found Sita, and finally went back happily to his kingdom, which had
also been re-conquered.
The most noticeable exterior characteristic of the _Mahabharata_ is
the almost constant mingling of men and animals, a mingling which one
feels is in conformity with the dogma of the transmigration of souls. Not
only monkeys but vultures, eagles, gazelles, etc., are brought into the
work and form important personages. We are in the epoch when the animals
spoke. Battles are numerous and described in great detail; the
_Ramayana_ is the _Iliad_ of the Indians; pathetic scenes, as
well as those of love, of friendship, of gratitude are not rare, and are
sometimes exquisite. The whole poem is imbued with a great feeling of
humanity, heroism, and justice. Victory is to the good and right is
triumphant; the gods permit that the just should suffer and be compelled
to struggle; but invariably it is only for a time and the merited
happiness is at the end of all.
After these two vast giant epics there were written among the Indians a
number of shorter narrative poems, very varied both in tone and manner,
which suggest an uninterrupted succession of highly important and
animated schools of literature. Nearer to our own time - that is, towards
the fifth or sixth century of our era, lyric poetry and the drama were,
as it were, detached from the epopee and existed on their own merits.
Songs of love, of hate, of sadness, or of triumph took ample scope; they
were more often melancholy than sad, for India is the land of optimism,
or at least of resignation.
DRAMATIC POETRY. - As for the dramatic poetry, that is very curious; it is
not mixed with epopee in the precise sense of the word; but it is
continually mingled with descriptions of nature, with word-paintings of
nature and invocations to nature. The Indian dramatic poet did not
separate man from the air he breathed nor from the world around him; in
recalling the moment of the day or night in which the scene takes place,
_the actual hour_, the poet, no doubt in obedience to a law dictated
to him by his public, kept his characters in communication with earth
and heaven, with the dawn he described, the moon he painted, the evening
he caused to be seen, the plants he portrayed as withering or reviving,
the birds which he showed everywhere in the country or returning to their
habitation, etc.
From the purely dramatic aspect, these plays are often affecting or
curious, possessing penetrating and thoughtful psychology. The most
celebrated dramas still left to us of the Indian stage are _The Chariot
of Baked Clay_ and the affecting and delicate _Sakuntala_ the gem
of Indian literature, the work of the poet Kalidas, who was also a
remarkable lyric poet.
GNOMIC POETRY. - Gnomic, that is sententious, poetry, which, it has been
indicated, very early enjoyed high appreciation among the Indians, long
continued to obtain their approval. It was always wise and often
intellectual. The collection of Barthari, who belonged to the sixth or
seventh century A.D., contains thoughts which would do honour to the
highest moralists of the most enlightened epochs. "The fortune, ample or
restricted, which the Creator hath inscribed on thy forehead thou wilt
assuredly attain; wert thou in the desert or in the gold-mines of Meru,
more couldst thou not acquire. Therefore, of what avail to torment
thyself and to humiliate thyself before the powerful. A pot does not draw
more water from the sea than from a well."
And this might be by a modern man opposing La Rochefoucauld: "The modest
man is one poor in spirit, the devout a hypocrite, the honest man is
artful, the hero is a barbarian, the ascetic is a fool, the unreserved
a chatterbox, the prudent a waverer. Tell me, which is the virtue among
all the virtues that human malice cannot vilify?"
Here, finally, is a truth for all time: "It is easy to persuade the
ignorant, still easier to persuade the very wise; but he who hath a
commencement of wisdom Brahma himself could not cajole."
Indian literature continued to be productive, though losing much of its
fecundity, until the fifteenth or sixteenth century of our era. Without
exaggeration, it is permissible to conject that its scope extended over
twenty-five centuries. It possesses the uniquely honourable trait that it
is, assuredly, the only one which owes nothing to any other and is
literally indigenous.
CHAPTER II
HEBRAIC LITERATURE
The Bible, a Collection of Epic, Lyric, Elegiac, and Sententious
Writings. The Talmud, Book of Ordinances. The Gospels.
THE BIBLE. - The Hebrew race possessed a literature from about 1050 B.C.
It embodied in poems the legends which had circulated among the people
since the most remote epoch of their existence. It was those poems,
gathered later into one collection, which formed what, since
approximately the year 400, we call the Bible - that is, the Book of
books.
In the Bible there are histories (_Genesis_, _History of the Jews
up to Joshua_, the _Book of Joshua_, _Judges_, _Kings_, etc.), then
anecdotal episodes (_Ruth_, _Esdras_, _Tobit_, _Judith_, _Esther_), then
books of moral philosophy(_Proverbs of Solomon_, _Ecclesiastes_,
_Wisdom_, _Ecclesiasticus_), then books of an oratorical and lyrical
character (_Psalms of David_ and all the _Prophets_). Finally, a single
work, still lyrical but in which there are marked traces of the dramatic
type (the _Song of Songs_).
THE TALMUD. - To the works which have been gathered into the Bible, it is
necessary to add the Talmud, a collection of commentaries on the civil
and religious laws of the Jews, which forms an indispensable supplement
to the Bible, to anyone desiring to understand the Hebraic civilisation.
THE GOSPELS. - The Gospels, published in the Greek tongue, have nothing
Hebraic except that they were compiled by Jews or by their immediate
disciples and that they have preserved something of the manner of writing
of the Jews.
BIBLICAL WRITINGS. - The Biblical writings, regarded solely from the
literary point of view, form one of the finest monuments of human
thought. The sentiment of grandeur and even of infinity in _Genesis_;
the profound and simple sensibility as in the _History of Joseph_,
_Tobit_, and _Esther_; eloquence and exquisite religious sentiment as in
the _Book of Job_ and the _Psalms of David_; ecstatic lyricism, vehement
and fiery, accompanied with incredible satiric force as in the
_Prophets_; wisdom alike equal to that of the Stoics and of the serious
Epicureans as in _Ecclesiastes_ and the _Proverbs_; everywhere
marvellous imagination, always concise at least, if not restrained;
lyrical sensuality which recalls the most perturbed creations of erotic
Greeks and Latins, whilst surpassing them in beauty as in the _Song of
Songs_; and throughout there is this grandeur, this simple majesty, this
easy and natural sublimity which in the same degree is to be found only
occasionally in Homer and which appears to be the privilege of the
people who were the first to believe in a single God. That is what
makes, almost in a continuous way, the astonishing beauty of the Bible,
and which explains how whole nations, of other origin, have made down to
our own day, and still continue to make, the Bible their uninterrupted
study, and draw from it courage, serenity, exaltation of soul, and a
singular ferment of their poetic and literary genius.
As has been the case with many other literary monuments, it is possible,
without owning that it is desirable, that the Bible may even survive the
numerous and important religions which have been born from it.
CHAPTER III
THE GREEKS
Homer. Hesiod. Elegiac and Lyric Poets. Prose Writers. Philosophers and
Historians. Lyric Poets. Dramatic Poets. Comic Poets. Orators. Romancers.
HOMER. - The most ancient Greek writer known is Homer, and it cannot be
absolutely stated in what epoch he lived.
Since the seventeenth century it has even been asked if he ever existed
and if his poems are not collections of epic songs which had circulated
in ancient Greece and which at a very recent epoch, that of Pisistratus,
had been gathered into two grand consecutive poems, thanks to some
rearrangement and editing. At the commencement of the nineteenth century
the erudite were generally agreed that Homer had never existed. Now
they are reverting to the belief that there were only two Homers, one the
author of the _Iliad_ and the other of the _Odyssey_.
THE _ILIAD_. - The _Iliad_ is the story of the wrath of Achilles, of his
retreat far from his friends who were endeavouring to capture Troy and of
his return to them.
It is the poem of patriotism. It is filled with the spirit that when a
people is divided against itself, all misfortunes fall on and overwhelm
it. Achilles, unjustly offended, deprived his fellow-countrymen of his
support; they are all on the point of perishing; he returns to them in
order to avenge the death of his dearest friend and they are saved.
The _Iliad_ is almost entirely filled with battles, which are very
skillfully diversified. Some episodes, such as the farewell of Hector to
his wife Andromache when he quits her for the fight, or King Priam
coming, in tears, to ask Achilles for the corpse of his son Hector that
he may piously inter it, are among the most beautiful passages that ever
came from a human inspiration.
THE _ODYSSEY_. - The _Odyssey_ is also the poem of patriotism,
of the _little homeland_, of the native land. It is the story of
Ulysses, after the siege of Troy, reconquering Ithaca, the small island
of which he is king, and taking ten years to acquire it. What makes the
unity of the poem, what forms the backbone of the poem, is the smoke
which rises above the house of Ulysses, which he always perceives in the
dream of his hopes and desires, which invincibly attracts him, which he
desires to see again before he dies, and the thought of which sustains
him in his trials and causes him to scorn all joys on his road thither.
The thousand adventures of Ulysses, his sojourn with the nymph Calypso,
his terrible perils in the cave of the giant Polyphemus and near the isle
of the Sirens, the tempests which he survives, the hospitality he
receives from King Alcinoues, the visit he pays to the dead - among whom is
Achilles regretting the earth and preferring to be a ploughman among the
living rather than king among the dead; these are vigorous, curious,
interesting, touching, picturesque scenes from which all subsequent
literatures have drawn inspiration and which still delight all races.
HESIOD. - Posterior, very probably, to Homer, Hesiod has left two great
poems, one on the families of the gods (_Theogenia_) and the other
on the works of man (_Works and Days_). The _Theogenia_ is very
valuable to us because we learn from it and it makes us understand how
the Greeks understood the divinity, its different manifestations, and, so
to say, its evolution through the world. _Works and Days_ is a poem
filled with both sadness and courage, the author finding the world wicked
and men unjust; but always concluding that with energy, perseverance, and
obstinacy it is possible to save oneself from anything, and that there is
only one real misfortune, which is to know despair.
ELEGIACAL AND LYRICAL POETS. - Almost from the most remote antiquity, from
the seventh century, perhaps the eighth century before the Christian era,
the Greeks possessed elegiacal and lyrical poets - that is to say, poets
who put into verse their personal sentiments, the joys and sorrows which
they felt as men. Such were Callinos, the satiric Archilochus, the
satiric Simonides of Amorgos, the martial Tyrtaeus. Then there were
the poets who made verses to be set to music: Alcaeus, Sappho, Anacreon,
Alcman. Alcaeus appears to have been the greatest lyrical Greek poet
judging by the fragments we possess by him and by the lyrical poems of
Horace, which there are reasons for believing were imitated from Alcaeus.
Of the poetess Sappho we have too little to enable us to judge her very
exactly; but throughout antiquity she enjoyed a glory equal to that of
the greatest. She specially sang of love and in such a manner as to lead
to the belief that she herself had not escaped the passion.
Anacreon sang after the same fashion and with a charm, a grace, a witty
ingenuity which are fascinating. He was the epicurean of poetry (before
the birth of Epicurus) and from him was born a type of literature known
as anacreonotic, which extended right through ancient times and has been
prolonged to modern times.
PROSE WRITERS. - Finally prose was born, in the sixth century before
Christ, with the philosophers Thales, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and with
the historians, of whom only one of that epoch has remained famous,
namely Herodotus.
HERODOTUS. - Herodotus, in a general history of his own time and of that
immediately preceding it, is often not far from epic poetry. His style is
at once limpid and warm, he possesses a pleasing power of distinction,
the taste for and curiosity about the manners of foreign peoples, a
laughing and easy imagination without any pretence at the philosophy of
history or of moralising through history. He was, above all, a delightful
writer.
AESOP. - To this period (albeit somewhat at hazard) it is possible to
ascribe Aesop, about whom nothing is known except that he wrote the
fables which have been imitated from generation to generation. The
collection that we possess under his name is one of these imitations,
perpetrated long after his death, but as to which it is impossible to
assign a date.
PINDAR. - Pindar, the Theban, broadened and extended the lyrical type.
Under him it preserved its power, its high spirits, its verse and, so to
say, its fine fury; but he introduced into the epic the narration of
ancient legends, the acts and gestures of the ancient heroes, and
effected this so admirably that the most lyrical of Grecian lyricists is
an historian. Capable of sustained elevation, of sublime thoughts and
expressions, of a fine disorder which has been overpraised, and which on
close expression is found to be very careful, he has been regarded as the
very type of dignified and poetic style, and more or less to be imitated
by all ambitious poets commencing with Ronsard. The wise, like Horace,
have contented themselves with praising him. From fragments left to us he
is infinitely impassioned to read.
GREEK TRAGEDY. - Greek tragedy, which is one of the miracles of the human
brain, began in the sixth century B.C. It was born of the dithyramb. The
dithyramb is a chant in chorus in honour of a god or a hero. From this
chorus emerged a single actor who sang the praises of the god, and to
which the choir replied. When, instead of one actor, there were two who
addressed one another in dialogue and were answered by the choir, the
dramatic poem was founded. When there were three - and there were hardly
ever any more - tragedy, as the Greeks understood it, existed.
THESPIS; AESCHYLUS; SOPHOCLES. - Thespis was the earliest known to us who
took rudimentary tragedies from town to town in Attica. Then came
Aeschylus, whose tragedy, already rigid and hieratical, was very
powerful, imbued with terrible majesty; then came Sophocles, a religious
philosopher, having a feeling for the old religion and the art of giving
it a moral character, great lyrical poet, master of dialogue, eloquent,
moving, knowing how to construct and carry on a dramatic poem with
infinite skill, to whom, in fact, can be denied no quality of dramatic
poetry and who attains a conception of perfection.
EURIPIDES. - Euripides, less religious as a philosopher, sometimes
suggesting the sophist and a little the rhetorician, but full of ideas,
eloquent, affecting, "the most tragic" (that is, the most pathetic) of
all the acting dramatists, as Aristotle observed, the most modern, too,
and the one we best understand, has been the true source whence have been
freely drawn the tragedies of modern times, more particularly of our own.
The greatest works of Aeschylus are _Seven Against Thebes_ and
_Prometheus Bound_; the greatest of Sophocles: _Antigone_, _Oedipus
the Tyrant_ and _Oedipus at Colonos_; the greatest of Euripides:
_Hippolytus_ and _Iphigenia_.
After Euripides tragedy was exhausted and only produced very second-rate
works.
COMEDY. - Comedy enjoyed a longer existence. Very obscure in origin, no
doubt proceeding from the opprobrious jests exchanged by the lower
classes in mirthful hours, it was at first freely fantastical, composed
in dialogue, oratorical, lyrical, satirical, even epical at times. Like
tragedy, it possessed a chorus for which the lyrical part was specially
reserved. It was personal - that is, it directly attacked known
contemporaries, often by name and often by bringing them on the stage.
The celebrated authors of this "ancient comedy" were Eupolis, Cratinos,
of whom we have only fragments, and Aristophanes, whose work has come
down to us.
ARISTOPHANES. - Aristophanes was a great poet, with incisive humour and
also incomparable lyrical power, with voluntary vulgarity which is often
shocking and an elevation of ideas and language which frequently raise
him to the heights of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Here was one of the
grandest poetic minds that the world has produced. His most considerable
achievements are _The Frogs_, the earliest known work of literary
criticism, in dramatic form too, wherein he sets up a parallel between
Aeschylus and Euripides and cruelly jeers at the latter; _The
Clouds_, in which he mocks the sophists; _The Wasps_, wherein he
ridicules the Athenian mania for judging, and magnificently praises the
old Athenians of the time of Marathon.
MENANDER. - To this "ancient comedy," immediately succeeded the "middle
comedy," in which it was forbidden to introduce personalities and of
which Aristophanes gave an example and a model in his _Plutus_.
Later, in the fourth century before Christ, with the refined, witty, and
discreet Menander, the "new comedy" was analogous to that of Plautus, of
Terence, and that of our own of the seventeenth century.
THUCYDIDES. - To return to the time of Pericles; Attic prose developed in
the hands of historians, sages, and philosophers. Thucydides founded true
history, scientific, drawn from the sources, supported and strengthened
by all the information and corroboration that the skilled historian can
gather, examine, and control. As a writer, Thucydides was terse, bare,
limpid, and possessed an agreeable sober elegance. He introduced into his
history imaginary discourses between great historical personages which
allowed him to show the general state of Greece or of particular portions
of Greece at certain important times. It is not known why these
discourses were written in a style differing from that of the rest of the
work, wise, even beautiful, but so extremely concise and elliptic as, in
consequence, to be extremely difficult to understand.
HIPPOCRATES. - Hippocrates created scientific medicine, the medicine of
observation, denying prodigies, seeking natural causes for diseases, and
already setting up rational therapeutics. There are seventy-two works
called "Hippocratical," which belong to his school; some may be by
himself.
SOPHISTS AND ORATORS. - The language grew flexible in the hands of the
learned, subtle, and ingenious sophists (Gorgias, Protagoras) who
attacked Socrates by borrowing his weapons, as it were, and making them
perfect.
A new type of literature was created: the oratorical. Antiphon was the
earliest in date alike of the Athenian orators and of the professors of
eloquence. In a crowd after him came Isocrates, Andocides, Lysias,
Aeschines, Hyperides, and the master of them all, that astonishing
logician, that impassioned and terrible orator, Demosthenes.
THE PHILOSOPHERS: PLATO. - Contemporaneously the philosophers, quite as
much as the sophists, even confining the matter to the literary aspect,
cast immortal glory on Attica. Imbued with the spirit of Socrates, even
when more or less unfaithful to him, Plato, psychologist, moralist,
metaphysician, sociologist, marvellous poet in prose, seductive and
fascinating mythologist, really created philosophy in such fashion that
even the most modern systems, if not judged by how much they agree or
differ from him, at least invariably recall him, whether they seem a
distant echo of him or whether they challenge and combat him.
ARISTOTLE; XENOPHON; THEOPHRASTUS. - Aristotle, pre-eminently learned,
admirably cultivated naturalist, acquainted also with everything known in
his day, more prudent metaphysician than Plato but without his depth, a
precise and sure logician and the founder of scientific logic, a clear
and dexterous moralist, an ingenious and pure literary theorist;
Xenophon, who commanded the retreat of the ten thousand, moralist and
Intelligent pedagogue displaying much attractiveness in his
_Cyropoedia_, the sensible, refined, and delightful master of
familiar and practical life in his _Economics_; Theophrastus,
botanist, very witty satirical moralist, highly caustic and
realistic - these three established Greek wisdom for centuries, and
probably for ever, erecting a solid and elegant temple wherein humanity
has almost continuously sought salutary truths, and where some at least
of our descendants, and those not the least illustrious, will always
perform their devotions.
The chief works of Plato are the _Socratic Dialogues_, the
_Gorgias_, the _Timoeus_, the _Phaedo_ (immortality of the
soul), the _Republic_, and the _Laws_. The principal books of
Aristotle are his _Natural History_, _Metaphysics_, _Logic_, _Rhetoric_,
_Poetica_. The most notable volumes of Xenophon are the _Cyropoedia_,
the _Economics_ and the _Memorabilia of Plato_. The only work of
Theophrastus we possess is his _Characters_, which was translated
and _continued_ by La Bruyere.
STOICS AND EPICUREANS. - In the fourth and even the third century,
philosophy spoke to mankind through two principal schools: those of the
Stoics and of the Epicureans. The chief representatives of the Stoics
were Zeno and Cleanthes. Chrysippus taught an austere morality which may
be summed up in these words: "Abstain and endure." The Epicureans, whose
chief representatives were Epicurus and Aristippus, taught, when all was
taken into account, the same morality but starting from a different
principle, which was that happiness must be sought, and in pursuance of
this principle they advised less austerity, even in their precepts.
Although these are schools of philosophy, yet they must be taken into
account here because each of them has exercised much influence over
writers, the first on Seneca and much later on Corneille; the second on
Lucretius and Horace; both sometimes on the same man, one example being
Montaigne.
After Alexander, intellectual Greece extended and enlarged itself so that
Instead of having one centre, Athens, it possessed five or six: Athens,
Alexandria, Antioch, Pergamos, Syracuse. This was an admirable literary
efflorescence; the geniuses were less stupendous but the talents were
innumerable.
In the cities named, and in others, history, rhetoric, geography,
philosophy, history of philosophy, philology, were taught with ardour and
learnt with enthusiasm; the literary soil was rich and it was assiduously
cultivated.
ALEXANDRINE LITERATURE. - From this soil rose a fresh literature - more
erudite, less spontaneous, less rich in popular vigour, yet very
interesting. This is the literature known as _Alexandrine_. With
this literature first appeared the _romance_, unknown to the
ancients. The historical romance began with Hecataeus of Abdera, the
philosophical romance with Evemerus of Messenia, who pretended to have
found an ancient inscription proving that the gods of ancient Greece were
old-time kings of the land deified after death, an ingenious invention
from which was to come a whole school of criticism of ancient mythology.
THE ELEGY AND IDYLL: THEOCRITUS. - True and, at the same time, great poets
belonged to this period. One was Philetas of Cos, founder of the Grecian
elegy, celebrated and affectionately saluted centuries later by Andre
Chenier. Of his works only a few terse fragments remain. Another was
Asclepiades of Samos, both elegiac and lyric, of whose _epigrams_,
(short elegies) those preserved to us are charming. Yet another was the
sad and charming Leonidas of Tarentum. The two leaders of this choir were
Theocritus and Callimachus. Theocritus, a Sicilian, passes as the founder
of the idyll which he did not invent, but to which he gave the importance
of a type by marking it with his imprint. The idyll of Theocritus was
always a picture of popular customs and even a little drama of popular
morals; but at times it had its scene set in the country, at others in a
town, or again by the sea, and consequently there are rustic idylls
(properly _bucolics_), maritime idylls, popular urban idylls. An
astonishing sense of reality united to a personal poetic gift and a
highly alert sensitiveness made his little poems alike beautiful for
their truth and also for a certain ideal of ardent and profound passion.
It is curious without being astonishing that the idyll of Theocritus
often suggests the poetry of the Bible.
PUPILS OF THEOCRITUS. - Moschus and Bion were the immediate pupils of
Theocritus. He had more illustrious ones, commencing with Virgil in his
_Eclogues_, continuing with the numerous idylls of the Renaissance
in France and Italy, as well as with Segrais in the seventeenth century,
and ending, if it be desired, with Andre Chenier, though others more
modern can be traced.
CALLIMACHUS. - Callimachus, more erudite, more scholastic, was what is
termed a neoclassic, which is that he desired to treat in a new way the
same subjects that had been dealt with by the great men of ancient
Greece, and so far as possible to conceive them in the same spirit.
Therefore he wrote tragedies, comedies, "satiric dramas" (a kind of farce
in which secondary deities were characterised), lyric and elegiac poems
after the manner of Alcaeus or Sappho, a familiar epopee, a romance in
verse, which was perhaps a novel type, but more probably imitated from
certain poems of ancient Greece which we no longer possess. To us his
poetry seems cold and calculated, although clever and dexterous. It was
held in high esteem not only in his own day but to the close of
antiquity.
DIDACTIC POETRY: ARATUS; APOLLONIUS. - Didactic poetry, of the cultivation
of which there had been no trace since Hesiod, was destined to be revived
in this clever period; and, in fact, at this time Aratus wrote his
_Phoenomena_, which is a course of astronomy and meteorology in
conformity with the science of his era. More ambitious, and desirous not
only of writing an epic fragment like Callimachus, but also of restoring
the old-time grand epic poem after the manner of Homer (Callimachus and
he had a violent quarrel on the subject), Apollonius of Rhodes in his
_Argonautics_ narrated the expedition of Jason. It was a fine epic
poem and especially an astonishing psychological poem. The study of
passion and of the progress and catastrophe of the infatuation of Medea
form a masterpiece. Assuredly Virgil in his _Dido_, and perhaps
Racine in his _Phedre_ remembered Apollonius.
LYCOPHRON. - Lycophron also belongs to this period. He left such an
admirable poem (_Alexandra_, that is Cassandra) that his
contemporaries themselves failed to understand it in spite of all their
efforts. He is the head and ancestor of that great school of inaccessible
or impenetrable poets who are most ardently admired. Maurice Sceve in the
sixteenth century is the illustrious example.
THE EPIGRAMMATISTS: MELEAGER. - To these numerous men of great talent must
be added the epigrammatists - that is, those who wrote very short, very
concise, very limpid poems wherein they sought absolute perfection. They
were almost innumerable. The most illustrious was Meleager, in whom we
can yet appreciate delicate genius and exquisite sensibility.
POLYBIUS. - Reduced to Roman provinces (successively greater Greece,
Greece proper, Egypt, Syria), the Grecian world none the less continued
to be an admirable intellectual haven. As early as the Punic wars, the
Greek Polybius revealed he was an excellent historian, military,
political, and philosophical, inquisitive about facts, inquisitive, too,
about probable causes, constitutions, and social institutions, the
morals, character, and the underlying temperament of races. His principal
work is the _Histories_ - that is, the history of the Graeco-Roman
world from the second Punic war until the capture of Corinth by the
Romans. He was an intellectual master; unfortunately he wrote very badly.
EPICTETUS; MARCUS AURELIUS. - It must, however, be recognised that in the
first century before Christ and in the first after, Greece - even
intellectually - was in a state of depression. But dating from the Emperor
Nerva - that is, from the commencement of the second century - there was a
remarkable Hellenic revival. Primarily, it was the most brilliant moment
since Plato in Grecian philosophy. Stoicism exerted complete sway over
the cultivated classes; Epictetus gave his _Enchiridion_ and
_Manual_, wherein are condensed the elevated and profound thoughts
most deeply realised of the doctrine of Zeno; later, the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, in his solitary meditations entitled _For Myself_, depicts
his own soul, admirable, chaste, pure, severe to himself, indulgent to
others, pathetically resigned to the universal order of things and
adhering to them with a renunciation and a faith that are truly
religious. Less severe, even playful and smiling, Dion Chrysostom (that
is, mouth of gold, nickname given to him because of his eloquence) is
penetrated with the same spirit a little mingled with Platonism, which
makes him, therefore, perhaps, penetrate more easily than the
over-austere pure Stoics.
PLUTARCH. - Plutarch, as historian discreetly romantic, as philosophical
moralist decidedly dexterous, gently obstinate in conciliation and
concord, in a large portion of his _Parallel Lives_ narrated those
of illustrious Romans and Greeks to show how excellent they were and how
highly they ought to esteem one another; elsewhere, in his moral works,
he sought to conciliate philosophy and paganism, no doubt believing in a
single God, as did Plato, but also believing in a crowd of intermediary
spirits between God and man, which allowed him to regard the deities of
paganism as misunderstood beings and even in a certain sense to admit
their authority. Emphatically a man who observed the golden mean, he