The World's Greatest Books - Volume 9 Part 27

In the spring of the year 1758 my father signified his permission that I should immediately return home. The whole term of my absence from England was four years ten months and fifteen days. The only person in England whom I was impatient to see was my Aunt Porten, the affectionate guardian of my tender years. It was not without some awe and apprehension that I approached my father; but he received me as a man and a friend. All constraint was banished at our first interview, and afterwards we continued on the same terms of easy and equal politeness.

Of the next two years, I pa.s.sed about nine months in London, and the rest in the country. My progress in the English world was in general left to my own efforts, and those efforts were languid and slow. But my love of knowledge was inflamed and gratified by the command of books, and from the slender beginning in my father's study I have gradually formed a numerous and select library, the foundation of my works, and the best comfort of my life both at home and abroad. In this place I may allow myself to observe that I have never bought a book from a motive of ostentation, and that every volume before it was deposited on the shelf was either read or sufficiently examined.

The design of my first work, the "Essay on the Study of Literature," was suggested by a refinement of vanity--the desire of justifying and praising the object of a favourite pursuit. I was ambitious of proving that all the faculties of the mind may be exercised and displayed by the study of ancient literature.

My father fondly believed that the proof of some literary talents might introduce me to public notice. The work was printed and published under the t.i.tle "Essai sur l'Etude de la Litterature." It is not surprising that a work of which the style and sentiments were so totally foreign should have been more successful abroad than at home. I was delighted by the warm commendations and flattering predictions of the journals of France and Holland. In England it was received with cold indifference, little read, and speedily forgotten. A small impression was slowly dispersed.

_IV.--Soldiering and Travel_

An active scene now follows which bears no affinity to any other period of my studious and social life. On June 12, 1759, my father and I received our commissions as major and captain in the Hampshire regiment of militia, and during two and a half years were condemned to a wandering life of military servitude. My princ.i.p.al obligation to the militia was the making me an Englishman and a soldier. In this peaceful service I imbibed the rudiments of the language and science of tactics, which opened a new field of study and observation. The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion; and the captain of the Hampshire Grenadiers--the reader may smile--has not been useless to the historian of the Roman Empire.

I was detained above four years by my rash engagement in the militia. I eagerly grasped the first moments of freedom; and such was my diligence that on my father consenting to a term of foreign travel, I reached Paris only thirty-six hours after the disbanding of the militia. Between my stay of three months and a half in Paris and a visit to Italy, I interposed some months of tranquil simplicity at Lausanne. My old friends of both s.e.xes hailed my voluntary return--the most genuine proof of my attachment. The public libraries of Lausanne and Geneva liberally supplied me with books, from which I armed myself for my Italian journey. On this tour I was agreeably employed for more than a year.

Turin, Milan, Genoa, Parma, Modena, and Florence were visited, and here I first acknowledged, at the feet of the Venus of Medici, that the chisel may dispute the preeminence with the pencil, a truth in the fine arts which cannot on this side of the Alps be felt or understood.

After leaving Florence, I pa.s.sed through Pisa, Leghorn, and Sienna to Rome. My temper is not very susceptible to enthusiasm; and the enthusiasm which I do not feel, I have ever scorned to affect. But, at the distance of twenty-five years, I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the Eternal City. After a sleepless night, I trod, with a lofty step, the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot, where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my eye; and several days of intoxication were lost, or enjoyed, before I could descend to a cool and minute observation.

It was in Rome, on October 15, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind. But my original plan was circ.u.mscribed to the decay of the city rather than the empire; and though my reading and reflections began to point towards that object, some years elapsed, and several avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the execution of that laborious work.

_V.--History and Politics_

The five years and a half between my return from my travels and my father's death are the portion of my life which I pa.s.sed with the least enjoyment, and which I remember with the least satisfaction. In the fifteen years between my "Essay on the Study of Literature" and the first volume of the "Decline and Fall," a criticism of Warburton on Virgil and some articles in "Memoires Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne"

were my sole publications. In November, 1770, my father sank into the grave in the sixty-fourth year of his age. As soon as I had paid the last solemn duties to my father, and obtained from time and reason a tolerable composure of mind, I began to form the plan of an independent life most adapted to my circ.u.mstances and inclination. I had now attained the first of earthly blessings--independence. I was absolute master of my hours and actions; and no sooner was I settled in my house and library than I undertook the composition of the first volume of my history. Many experiments were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declamation; three times did I compose the first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I was tolerably satisfied with their effect. In the remainder of the way I advanced with a more equal and easy pace.

By the friendship of Mr. (now Lord) Eliot, who had married my first cousin, I was returned member of parliament for the borough of Liskeard.

I took my seat at the beginning of the memorable contest between Great Britain and America, and supported, with many a sincere and silent vote, the rights, though not, perhaps, the interest, of the Mother Country.

After a fleeting, illusive hope, prudence condemned me to acquiesce in the humble station of a mute. But I listened to the attack and defence of eloquence and reason; I had a near prospect of the characters, views, and pa.s.sions of the first men of the age. The eight sessions that I sat in parliament were a school of civil prudence, the first and most essential virtue of an historian.

The first volume of my history, which had been somewhat delayed by the novelty and tumult of a first session, was now ready for the press.

During the awful interval of awaited publication, I was neither elated by the ambition of fame nor depressed by the apprehension of contempt.

My diligence and accuracy were attested by my own conscience. I likewise flattered myself that an age of light and liberty would receive without scandal an inquiry into the human causes of progress of Christianity.

I am at a loss how to describe the success of the work without betraying the vanity of the writer. The first impression was exhausted in a few days; a second and third edition were scarcely adequate to the demand.

My book was on every table; nor was the general voice disturbed by the barking of any profane critic. Let me frankly own that I was startled at the first discharge of ecclesiastical ordnance; but I soon discovered that this empty noise was mischievous only in intention, and every feeling of indignation has long since subsided.

Nearly two years elapsed between the publication of my first and the commencement of my second volume. The second and third volumes of the "Decline and Fall" insensibly rose in sale and reputation to a level with the first volume. So flexible is the t.i.tle of my history that the final era might be fixed at my own choice, and I long hesitated whether I should be content with the three volumes, the "Fall of the Western Empire." The tumult of London and attendance at parliament were now grown irksome, and when I had finished the fourth volume, excepting the last chapter, I sought a retreat on the banks of the Leman Lake.

_VI.--A Quiet Consummation_

My transmigration from London to Lausanne could not be effected without interrupting the course of my historical labours, and a full twelvemonth was lost before I could resume the thread of regular and daily industry.

In the fifth and sixth volumes the revolutions of the empire and the world are most rapid, various, and instructive. It was not till after many designs and many trials that I preferred the method of grouping my picture by nations; and the seeming neglect of chronological order is surely compensated by the superior merits of interest and perspicacity.

I was now straining for the goal, and in the last winter many evenings were borrowed from the social pleasures of Lausanne.

I have presumed to mark the moment of conception; I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the night of June 27, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.

The day of publication of my three last volumes coincided with the fifty-first anniversary of my own birthday. The conclusion of my work was generally read and variously judged. Upon the whole, the history of "The Decline and Fall" seems to have struck root both at home and abroad.

When I contemplate the common lot of mortality, I must acknowledge that I have drawn a high prize in the lottery of life. I am endowed with a cheerful temper. The love of study, a pa.s.sion which derives fresh vigour from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure; and I am not sensible of any decay of the mental faculties. I am disgusted with the affectation of men of letters who complain that they have renounced a substance for a shadow.

My own experience, at least, has taught me a very different lesson.

Twenty happy years have been animated by the labour of my history; and its success has given me a name, a rank, a character in the world to which I should not otherwise have been ent.i.tled.

The present is a fleeting moment, the past is no more; and our prospect of futurity is dark and doubtful I shall soon enter into the period which was selected by the judgment and experience of the sage Fontenelle as the most agreeable of his long life. I am far more inclined to embrace than to dispute this comfortable doctrine. I will not suppose any premature decay of the mind or body; but I must reluctantly observe that two causes, the abbreviation of time and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life.

GOETHE

Letters to Zelter

The correspondence of Goethe with his friends, especially his voluminous letters to his friend Zelter, will always be resorted to by readers who wish for intimate knowledge of the innermost processes of the great poet's mind. Zelter was himself an extraordinary man. By trade he was a stonemason, but he became a skilled musical amateur, and a most versatile and entertaining critic. To him fell the remarkable distinction of becoming the tutor of that musical genius, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, while he also acquired the glory of being "the restorer of Bach to the Germans." Like Eckermann, the other beloved friend of Goethe, he possessed the power of eliciting the great poet-philosopher's dicta on all imaginable topics. Zelter wrote to Goethe on anything and everything, trivial and otherwise, but his letters never failed to educe strains of the most illuminating comment. The "Letters to Zelter" were published in Berlin in 1833, and the following epitome is prepared from the German text.

_I.--Art Greater than the Beauty of Art_

Lauchstadt, _September_ 1, 1805. As we are convinced that he who studies the intellectual world, and perceives the beauty of the true intellect, can also realise the Father of them, who is supreme above all sense, let us therefore seek as best we may to achieve insight into the beauty of the mind and of the world, and to express it for ourselves.

Suppose, then, two blocks of stone, side by side, one rough and unshaped, the other artistically shaped into a statue. To you the stone worked into a beautiful figure appears lovely not because it is stone, but because of the form which art has given it. But the material had not such a form, for this was in the mind of the artist before it reached the stone. Of course, art is greater than that which it produces. Art is greater than the beauty of art. The motive power must be greater than the result. For as the form gains extension by advancing into the material, yet by that very process it becomes weaker than that which remains whole. For that which endures removal from itself steps aside from itself--strength from strength, warmth from warmth, force from force, so also beauty from beauty.

Should anyone disparage the arts because they imitate nature, let him note that nature also imitates much besides; and, further, that the arts do not precisely imitate what we see but go back to that rational element of which nature consists, and according to which she acts.

_Carlsbad, June 22_, 1808. It is an extraordinary fact that man in himself, so far as he avails himself of his sound mind, is the greatest and most precise physical apparatus that can be. And it is in fact the greatest evil of the newer physics that experiments are, as it were, separated from man himself, so that nature is recognised only in what is ascertained by artificial instruments. It is exactly so with calculation. Much is true which cannot be computed, just as much can never be experimentally demonstrated.

Man, however, stands so high that that which otherwise admits of no representation is represented in him. What, then, is a string and all its mechanical division compared with the ear of the musician? Indeed, it may be said what are the elementary phenomena of nature compared with man, who must first master and modify them all in order to a.s.similate them to himself?

_II.--Music and Musicians_

_Weimar, November_ 16, 1816. I send you a few words with reference to your proposal to write a cantata for the Reformation Jubilee. It might best be contrived after the method of Handel's "Messiah," into which you have so deeply penetrated.

As the main idea of Lutheranism rests on a very excellent foundation, it affords a fine opportunity both for poetical and also for musical treatment. Now, this basis rests on the decided contrast between the law and the Gospel, and secondly on the accommodation of these two extremes.

And now, if in order to attain a higher standpoint we subst.i.tute for those two words the terms "necessity" and "freedom," with their synonyms, their remoteness and proximity, you see clearly that everything interesting to mankind is contained in this circle.

And thus Luther perceives in the Old and New Testaments the symbol of the great and ever-recurring world-order. On the one hand, the law, striving after love; on the other, love, striving back towards the law, and fulfilling it, though not of its own power and strength, but through faith; and that, too, by exclusive faith in the all-powerful Messiah proclaimed to all.

Thus, briefly, are we convinced that Lutheranism can never be united with the Papacy, but that it does not contradict pure reason, so soon as reason decides to regard the Bible as the mirror of the world; which certainly should not be difficult. To express these ideas in a poem adapted to music, I should begin with the thunder on Mount Sinai, with the _Thou shalt_! and conclude with the resurrection of Christ, and the _Thou wilt_!

This may be the place to add a few words about Catholicism. Soon after its origin and promulgation, the Christian religion, through rational and irrational heresies, lost its original purity. But as it was called on to check barbarous nations, harsh methods were needed for the service, not doctrine. The one Mediator between G.o.d and man was not enough, as we all know. Thus arose a species of pagan Judaism, sustained even to this day. This had to be revolutionised entirely in the minds of men, therefore Lutheranism depends solely on the Bible. Luther's behaviour is no secret, and now that we are going to commemorate him, we cannot do so in the right sense unless we acknowledge his merit, and represent what he accomplished for his own age and for posterity. This celebration should be so arranged that every fair-minded Catholic should be able to partic.i.p.ate in it. The Weimar friends of art have already prepared their designs for the monument. We make no secret of the matter, and at all events hope to contribute our share.