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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
pamphleteer than an orator, deserves, on many accounts, a place in
such a disquisition. The length of my prolegomena and digressions
compels me to postpone this part of the subject to another occasion.
A Magazine is certainly a delightful invention for a very idle or a very
busy man. He is not compelled to complete his plan or to adhere to
his subject. He may ramble as far as lie is inclined, and stop as soon
as he is tired. No one takes the trouble to recollect his contradictory
opinions or his unredeemed pledges. He may be as superficial, as
inconsistent, and as careless as he chooses. Magazines resemble
those little angels, who, according to the pretty Rabbinical tradition,
are generated every morning by the brook which rolls over the
flowers of Paradise,—whose life is a song,—who warble till sunset,
and then sink back without regret into nothingness. Such spirits
have nothing to do with the detecting spear of Ithuriel or the
victorious sword of Michael. It is enough for them to please and be
forgotten.
 A PROPHETIC ACCOUNT OF A
GRAND NATIONAL EPIC POEM, TO
BE ENTITLED “THE
WELLINGTONIAD,” AND TO BE
PUBLISHED A.D. 2824.
(Knight’s Quarterly Magazine, November 1824.)

H ow I became a prophet it is not very important to the

reader to know. Nevertheless I feel all the anxiety which,
under similar circumstances, troubled the sensitive mind of
Sidrophel; and, like him, am eager to vindicate myself from the
suspicion of having practised forbidden arts, or held intercourse with
beings of another world. I solemnly declare, therefore, that I never
saw a ghost, like Lord Lyttleton; consulted a gypsy, like Josephine;
or heard my name pronounced by an absent person, like Dr.
Johnson. Though it is now almost as usual for gentlemen to appear
at the moment of their death to their friends as to call on them
during their life, none of my acquaintance have been so polite as to
pay me that customary attention. I have derived my knowledge
neither from the dead nor from the living; neither from the lines of a
hand, nor from the grounds of a tea-cup; neither from the stars of
the firmament, nor from the fiends of the abyss. I have never, like
the Wesley family, heard “that mighty leading angel,” who “drew
after him the third part of heaven’s sons,” scratching in my
cupboard. I have never been enticed to sign any of those delusive
bonds which have been the ruin of so many poor creatures; and,
having always been an indifferent horseman, I have been careful not
to venture myself on a broomstick.
 My insight into futurity, like that of George Fox the quaker, and
that of our great and philosophic poet, Lord Byron, is derived from
simple presentiment. This is a far less artificial process than those
which are employed by some others. Yet my predictions will, I
believe, be found more correct than their’s, or, at all events, as Sir
Benjamin Backbite says in the play, “more circumstantial.”
I prophecy, then, that, in the year 2824, according to our present
reckoning, a grand national Epic Poem, worthy to be compared with
the Iliad, the Æneid, or the Jerusalem, will be published in London.
Men naturally take an interest in the adventures of every eminent
writer. I will, therefore, gratify the laudable curiosity, which, on this
occasion, will doubtless be universal, by prefixing to my account of
the poem a concise memoir of the poet.
Richard Quongti will be born at Westminster on the 1st of July,
2786. He will be the younger son of the younger branch of one of
the most respectable families in England. He will be lineally
descended from Quongti, the famous Chinese liberal, who, after the
failure of the heroic attempt of his party to obtain a constitution
from the Emperor Fim Fam, will take refuge in England, in the
twenty-third century. Here his descendants will obtain considerable
note; and one branch of the family will be raised to the peerage.
Richard, however, though destined to exalt his family to distinction
far nobler than any which wealth or titles can bestow, will be born to
a very scanty fortune He will display in his early youth such striking
talents as will attract the notice of Viscount Quongti, his third cousin,
then secretary of state for the Steam Department. At the expense of
this eminent nobleman, he will be sent to prosecute his studies at
the university of Tombuctoo. To that illustrious seat of the muses all
the ingenuous youth of every country will then be attracted by the
high scientific character of Professor Quashaboo, and the eminent
literary attainments of Professor Kissey Kickey. In spite of this
formidable competition, however, Quongti will acquire the highest
honours in every department of knowledge, and will obtain the
esteem of his associates by his amiable and unaffected manners.
The guardians of the young Duke of Carrington, premier peer of
England, and the last remaining scion of the ancient and illustrious
house of Smith, will be desirous to secure so able an instructor for
their ward. With the Duke, Quongti will perform the grand tour, and
visit the polished courts of Sydney and Capetown. After prevailing on
his pupil, with great difficulty, to subdue a violent and imprudent
passion which he had conceived for a Hottentot lady, of great beauty
and accomplishments indeed, but of dubious character, he will travel
with him to the United States of America. But that tremendous war
which will be fatal to American liberty will at that time be raging
through the whole federation. At New York the travellers will hear of
the final defeat and death of the illustrious champion of freedom,
Jonathan Hioffinbottom, and of the elevation of Ebenezer Hogsflesh
to the perpetual Presidency. They will not choose to proceed in a
journey which would expose them to the insults of that brutal
soldiery, whose cruelty and rapacity will have devastated Mexico and
Colombia, and now, at length, enslaved their own country.
On their return to England, a.d. 2810, the death of the Duke will
compel his preceptor to seek for a subsistence by literary labours.
His fame will be raised by many small productions of considerable
merit; and he will at last obtain a permanent place in the highest
class of writers by his great epic poem.
This celebrated work will become, with unexampled rapidity, a
popular favourite. The sale will be so beneficial to the author that,
instead of going; about the dirty streets on his velocipede, he will be
enabled to set up his balloon.
The character of this noble poem will be so finely and justly given
in the Tombuctoo Review for April, 2825, that I cannot refrain from
translating the passage. The author will be our poet’s old preceptor,
Professor Kissey Kickey.
“In pathos, in splendour of language, in sweetness of versification,
Mr. Quongti has long been considered as unrivalled. In his exquisite
poem on the Omithorynchus Paradoxus all these qualities are
displayed in their greatest perfection. How exquisitely does that
work arrest and embody the undefined and vague shadows which flit
over an imaginative mind. The cold worldling may not comprehend
it; but it will find a response in the bosom of every youthful poet, of
every enthusiastic lover who has seen an Ornithorynchus Paradoxus
by moonlight. But we were yet to learn that he possessed the
comprehension, the judgment, and the fertility of mind indispensable
to the epic poet.
“It is difficult to conceive a plot more perfect than that of the
‘Wellingtoniad.’ It is most faithful to the manners of the age to which
it relates. It preserves exactly all the historical circumstances, and
interweaves them most artfully with all the speciosa miracula of
supernatural agency.”
Thus far the learned Professor of Humanity in the university of
Tombuctoo. I fear that the critics of our time will form an opinion
diametrically opposite as to these very points. Some will, I fear, be
disgusted by the machinery, which is derived from the mythology of
ancient Greece. I can only say that in the twenty-ninth century, that
machinery will be universally in use among poets; and that Quongti
will use it, partly in conformity with the general practice, and partly
from a veneration, perhaps excessive, for the great remains of
classical antiquity, which will then, as now, be assiduously read by
every man of education; though Tom Moore’s songs will be
forgotten, and only three copies of Lord Byron’s works will exist: one
in the possession of King George the Nineteenth, one in the Duke of
Carrington’s collection, and one in the library of the British Museum.
Finally, should any good people be concerned to hear that Pagan
fictions will so long retain their influence over literature, let them
reflect that, as the Bishop of St. David’s says, in his “Proofs of the
Inspiration of the Sibylline Verses,” read at the last meeting of the
Royal Society of Literature, “at all events, a Pagan is not a Papist.”
Some readers of the present day may think that Quongti is by no
means entitled to the compliments which his Negro critic pays him
on his adherence to the historical circumstances of the time in which
he has chosen his subject; that, where he introduces any trait of our
manners, it is in the wrong place, and that he confounds the
customs of our age with those of much more remote periods. I can
only say that the charge is infinitely more applicable to Homer, Virgil,
and Tasso. If, therefore, the reader should detect, in the following
abstract of the plot, any little deviation from strict historical accuracy,
let him reflect, for a moment, whether Agamemnon would not have
found as much to censure in the Iliad,—Dido in the Æneid,—or
Godfrey in the Jerusalem. Let him not suffer his opinions to depend
on circumstances which cannot possibly affect the truth or falsehood
of the representation. If it be impossible for a single man to kill
hundreds in battle, the impossibility is not diminished by distance of
time. If it be as certain that Rinaldo never disenchanted a forest in
Palestine as it is that the Duke of Wellington never disenchanted the
forest of Soignies, can we, as rational men, tolerate the one story
and ridicule the other? Of this, at least, I am certain, that whatever
excuse we have for admiring the plots of those famous poems our
children will have for extolling that of the “Wellingtoniad.”
I shall proceed to give a sketch of the narrative. The subject is
“The Reign of the Hundred Days.”

BOOK I.

T he poem commences, in form, with a solemn proposition of

the subject. Then the muse is invoked to give the poet
accurate information as to the causes of so terrible a commotion.
The answer to this question, being, it is to be supposed, the joint
production of the poet and the muse, ascribes the event to
circumstances which have hitherto eluded all the research of political
writers, namely, the influence of the god Mars, who, we are told had
some forty years before usurped the conjugal rights of old Carlo
Buonaparte, and given birth to Napoleon. By his incitement it was
that the emperor with his devoted companions was now on the sea,
returning to his ancient dominions. The gods were at present,
fortunately for the adventurer, feasting with the Ethiopians, whose
entertainments, according to the ancient custom described by
Homer, they annually attended, with the same sort of condescending
gluttony which now carries the cabinet to Guildhall on the 9th of
November. Neptune, was, in consequence, absent, and unable to
prevent the enemy of his favourite island from crossing his element.
Boreas, however, who had his abode on the banks of the Russian
ocean, and who, like Thetis in the Iliad, was not of sufficient quality
to have an invitation to Ethiopia, resolves to destroy the armament
which brings war and danger to his beloved Alexander. He
accordingly raises a storm which is most powerfully described.
Napoleon bewails the inglorious fate for which he seems to be
reserved. “Oh! thrice happy,” says he, “those who were frozen to
death at Krasnoi, or slaughtered at Leipzic. Oh, Kutusoff, bravest of
the Russians, wherefore was I not permitted to fall by thy victorious
sword?” He then offers a prayer to Æolus, and vows to him a
sacrifice of a black ram. In consequence, the god recalls his
turbulent subject; the sea is calmed; and the ship anchors in the
port of Frejus. Napoleon and Bertrand, who is always called the
faithful Bertrand, land to explore the country; Mars meets them
disguised as a lancer of the guard, wearing the cross of the legion of
honour. He advises them to apply for necessaries of all kinds to the
governor, shows them the way, and disappears with a strong smell
of gunpowder. Napoleon makes a pathetic speech, and enters the
governor’s house. Here he sees hanging up a fine print of the battle
of Austerlitz, himself in the foreground giving his orders. This puts
him in high spirits; he advances and salutes the governor, who
receives him most loyally, gives him an entertainment, and,
according to the usage of all epic hosts, insists after dinner on a full
narration of all that has happened to him since the battle of Leipzic.

BOOK II.
 N apoleon carries his narrative from the battle of Leipsic to
his abdication. But, as we shall have a great quantity of
fighting on our hands, I think it best to omit the details.

BOOK III.

N apoleon describes his sojourn at Elba, and his return; how

he was driven by stress of weather to Sardinia, and fought
with the harpies there; how he was then carried southward to Sicily,
where he generously took on board an English sailor, whom a man
of war had unhappily left there, and who was in imminent danger of
being devoured by the Cyclops; how he landed in the bay of Naples,
saw the Sibyl, and descended to Tartarus; how he held a long and
pathetic conversation with Poniatowski, whom he found wandering
unburied on the banks of Styx; how he swore to give him a splendid
funeral; how he had also an affectionate interview with Desaix; how
Moreau and Sir Ralph Abercrombie fled at the sight of him. He
relates that he then re-embarked, and met with nothing of
importance till the commencement of the storm with which the
poem opens.

BOOK IV.

T he scene changes to Paris. Fame, in the garb of an express,

brings intelligence of the landing of Napoleon. The king
performs a sacrifice: but the entrails are unfavourable; and the
victim is without a heart. He prepares to encounter the invader. A
young captain of the guard,—the son of Marie Antoinette by Apollo,
—in the shape of a fiddler, rushes in to tell him that Napoleon is
approaching with a vast army. The royal forces are drawn out for
battle. Full catalogues are given of the regiments on both sides: their
colonels, lieutenant-colonels, and uniform.
 BOOK V.

T he king comes forward and defies Napoleon to single

combat. Napoleon accepts it. Sacrifices are offered. The
ground is measured by Ney and Macdonald. The combatants
advance. Louis snaps his pistol in vain. The bullet of Napoleon, on
the contrary, cax-ries off the tip of the king’s ear. Napoleon then
rushes on him sword in hand. But Louis snatches up a stone, such
as ten men of those degenerate days will be unable to move, and
hurls it at his antagonist. Mars averts it. Napoleon then seizes Louis,
and is about to strike a fatal blow, when Bacchus intervenes, like
Venus in the third book of the Iliad, bears off the king in a thick
cloud, and seats him in an hotel at Lille, with a bottle of Maraschino
and a basin of soup before him. Both armies instantly proclaim
Napoleon emperor.

BOOK VI.

N eptune, returned from his Ethiopian revels, sees with rage

the events which have taken place in Europe. He flies to
the cave of Alecto, and drags out the fiend, commanding her to
excite universal hostility against Napoleon. The Fury repairs to Lord
Castlereagli; and, as, when she visited Tumus, she assumed the
form of an old woman, she here appears in the kindred shape of Mr.
Vansittart, and in an impassioned address exhorts his lordship to
war. His lordship, like Tumus, treats this unwonted monitor with
great disrespect, tells him that he is an old doting fool, and advises
him to look after the ways and means, and leave questions of peace
and war to his betters. The Fury then displays all her terrors. The
neat powdered hair bristles up into snakes; the black stockings
appear clotted with blood; and, brandishing a torch, she announces
her name and mission. Lord Castlereagh, seized with fury, flies
instantly to the Parliament, and recommends war with a torrent of
eloquent invective. All the members instantly clamour for vengeance,
seize their arms which are hanging round the walls of the house,
and rash forth to prepare for instant hostilities.

BOOK VII.

I n this book intelligence arrives at London of the flight of the

Duchess d’Angoulême from France. It is stated that this
heroine, armed from head to foot, defended Bordeaux against the
adherents of Napoleon, and that she fought hand to hand with
Clausel, and beat him down with an enormous stone. Deserted by
her followers, she at last, like Tumus, plunged, armed as she was,
into the Garonne, and swam to an English ship which lay off the
coast. This intelligence yet more inflames the English to war.
A yet holder flight than any which has been mentioned follows.
The Duke of Wellington goes to take leave of the duchess; and a
scene passes quite equal to the famous interview of Hector and
Andromache. Lord Douro is frightened at his father’s feather, but
begs for his epaulette.

BOOK VIII.

N eptune, trembling for the event of the war, implores Venus,

who, as the offspring of his element, naturally venerates
him, to procure from Vulcan a deadly sword and a pair of unerring
pistols for the duke. They are accordingly made, and superbly
decorated. The sheath of the sword, like the shield of Achilles, is
carved, in exquisitely fine miniature, with scenes from the common
life of the period; a dance at Almack’s, a boxing match at the Fives-
court, a lord mayor’s procession, and a man hanging. All these are
fully and elegantly described. The Duke thus armed hastens to
Brussels.
 BOOK IX.

T he Duke is received at Brussels by the King of the

Netherlands with great magnificence. He is informed of the
approach of the armies of all the confederate kings. The poet,
however, with a laudable zeal for the glory of his country, completely
passes over the exploits of the Austrians in Italy, and the discussions
of the congress. England and France, Wellington and Napoleon,
almost exclusively occupy his attention. Several days are spent at
Brussels in revelry. The English heroes astonish their allies by
exhibiting splendid games, similar to those which draw the flower of
the British aristocracy to Newmarket and Moulsey Hurst, and which
will be considered by our descendants with as much veneration as
the Olympian and Isthmian contests by classical students of the
present time. In the combat of the cestus, Shaw, the life-
guardsman, vanquishes the Prince of Orange, and obtains a bull as a
prize. In the horse-race, the Duke of Wellington and Lord Uxbridge
ride against each other; the Duke is victorious, and is rewarded with
twelve opera-girls. On the last day of the festivities, a splendid dance
takes place, at which all the heroes attend.

BOOK X.

M ars, seeing the English army thus inactive, hastens to

rouse Napoleon, who, conducted by Night and Silence,
unexpectedly attacks the Prussians. The slaughter is immense.
Napoleon kills many whose histories and families are happily
particularised. He slays Herman, the craniologist, who dwelt by the
linden-shadowed Elbe, and measured with his eye the skulls of all
who walked through the streets of Berlin. Alas! his own skull is now
cleft by the Corsican sword. Four pupils of the University of Jena
advance together to encounter the Emperor; at four blows he
destroys them all. Blucher rushes to arrest the devastation;
Napoleon strikes him to the ground, and is on the point of killing
him, but Gneisenau, Ziethen, Billow, and all the other heroes of the
Prussian army, gather round him, and bear the venerable chief to a
distance from the field. The slaughter is continued till night. In the
meantime Neptune has despatched Fame to bear the intelligence to
the Duke, who is dancing at Brussels. The whole army is put in
motion. The Duke of Brunswick’s horse speaks to admonish him of
his danger, but in vain.

BOOK XI.

P icton, the Duke of Brunswick, and the Prince of Orange,

engage Ney at Quatre Bras. Ney kills the Duke of Brunswick,
and strips him, sending his belt to Napoleon. The English fall back on
Waterloo. Jupiter calls a council of the gods, and commands that
none shall interfere on either side. Mars and Neptune make very
eloquent speeches. The battle of Waterloo commences. Napoleon
kills Picton and Delaney. Ney engages Ponsonby and kills him. The
Prince of Orange is wounded by Soult. Lord Uxbridge flies to check
the carnage. He is severely wounded by Napoleon, and only saved
by the assistance of Lord Hill. In the mean time the Duke makes a
tremendous carnage among the French. He encounters General
Duhesme and vanquishes him, but spares his life. He kills Toubert,
who kept the gaming-house in the Palais Royal, and Maronet, who
loved to spend whole nights in drinking champagne. Clerval, who
had been hooted from the stage, and had then become a captain in
the Imperial Guard, wished that he had still continued to face the
more harmless enmity of the Parisian pit. But Larrey, the son of
Esculapius, whom his father had instructed in all the secrets of his
art, and who was surgeon-general of the French army, embraced the
knees of the destroyer, and conjured him not to give death to one
whose office it was to give life. The Duke raised him, and bade him
live. But we must hasten to the close. Napoleon rushes to encounter
Wellington. Both armies stand in mute amaze. The heroes fire their
pistols; that of Napoleon misses, but that of Wellington, formed by
the hand of Vulcan, and primed by the Cyclops, wounds the Emperor
in the thigh. He flies, and takes refuge among his troops. The flight
becomes promiscuous. The arrival of the Prussians, from a motive of
patriotism, the poet completely passes over.

BOOK XII.

T hings are now hastening to the catastrophe. Napoleon flies

to London, and, seating himself on the hearth of the
Regent, embraces the household gods, and conjures him, by the
venerable age of George III., and by the opening perfections of the
Princess Charlotte, to spare him. The Prince is inclined to do so;
when, looking on his breast, he sees there the belt of the Duke of
Brunswick. He instantly draws his sword, and is about to stab the
destroyer of his kinsman. Piety and hospitality, however, restrain his
hand. He takes a middle course, and condemns Napoleon to be
exposed on a desert island. The King of France re-enters Paris; and
the poem concludes.
 ON MITFORD’S HISTORY OF
GREECE.
(Knight’s Quarterly Magazine, November 1824.)

T his is a book which enjoys a great and increasing popularity:

but, while it has attracted a considerable share of the public
attention, it has been little noticed by the critics. Mr. Mitford has
almost succeeded in mounting, unperceived by those whose office it
is to watch such aspirants, to a high place among historians. He has
taken a seat on the dais without being challenged by a single
seneschal. To oppose the progress of his fame is now almost a
hopeless enterprise. Had he been reviewed with candid severity,
when he had published only his first volume, his work would either
have deserved its reputation, or would never have obtained it.
“Then,” as Indra says of Kehama, “then was the time to strike.” The
time was neglected; and the consequence is that Mr. Mitford, like
Kehama, has laid his victorious hand on the literary Amreeta, and
seems about to taste the precious elixir of immortality. I shall
venture to emulate the courage of the honest Glendoveer—

“When now
He saw the Amreeta in Kehama’s hand,
An impulse that defied all self-command,
In that extremity,
Stung him, and he resolved to seize the cup,
And dare the Rajah’s force in Seeva’s sight.
Forward he sprung to tempt the unequal fray.”
 In plain words, I shall offer a few considerations, which may tend
to reduce an overpraised writer to his proper level.
The principal characteristic of this historian, the origin of his
excellencies and his defects, is a love of singularity. He has no notion
of going with a multitude to do either good or evil. An exploded
opinion, or an unpopular person, has an irresistible charm for him.
The same perverseness may be traced in his diction. His style would
never have been elegant; but it might at least have been manly and
perspicuous; and nothing but the most elaborate care could possibly
have made it so bad as it is. It is distinguished by harsh phrases,
strange collocations, occasional solecisms, frequent obscurity, and,
above all, by a peculiar oddity, which can no more be described than
it can be overlooked. Nor is this all. Mr. Mitford piques himself on
spelling better than any of his neighbours; and this not only in
ancient names, which he mangles in defiance both of custom and of
reason, but in the most ordinary words of the English language. It is,
in itself, a matter perfectly indifferent whether we call a foreigner by
the name which he bears in his own language, or by that which
corresponds to it in ours; whether we say Lorenzo de Medici, or
Lawrence de Medici, Jean Chauvin, or John Calvin. In such cases
established usage is considered as law by all writers except Mr.
Mitford. If he were always consistent with himself, he might be
excused for sometimes disagreeing with his neighbours; but he
proceeds on no principle but that of being unlike the rest of the
world. Every child has heard of Linnæus; therefore Mr. Mitford calls
him Linné: Rousseau is known all over Europe as Jean Jacques;
therefore Mr. Mitford bestows on him the strange appellation of John
James. Had Mr. Mitford undertaken a history of any other country
than Greece, this propensity would have rendered his work useless
and absurd. His occasional remarks on the affairs of ancient Rome
and of modern Europe are full of errors: but he writes of times with
respect to which almost every other writer has been in the wrong;
and, therefore, by resolutely deviating from his predecessors, he is
often in the right.
 Almost all the modern historians of Greece have shown the
grossest ignorance of the most obvious phenomena of human
nature. In their representations the generals and statesmen of
antiquity are absolutely divested of all individuality. They are
personifications; they are passions, talents, opinions, virtues, vices,
but not men. Inconsistency is a thing of which these writers have no
notion. That a man may have been liberal in his youth and avaricious
in his age, cruel to one enemy and merciful to another, is to them
utterly inconceivable. If the facts be undeniable, they suppose some,
strange and deep design, in order to explain what, as every one who
has observed his own mind knows, needs no explanation at all. This
is a mode of writing very acceptable to the multitude who have
always been accustomed to make gods and daemons out of men
very little better or worse than themselves; but it appears
contemptible to all who have watched the changes of human
character—to all who have observed the influence of time, of
circumstances, and of associates, on mankind—to all who have seen
a hero in the gout, a democrat in the church, a pedant in love, or a
philosopher in liquor. This practice of painting in nothing but black
and white is unpardonable even in the drama. It is the great fault of
Alfieri; and how much it injures the effect of his compositions will be
obvious to every one who will compare his Rosmunda with the Lady
Macbeth of Shakspeare. The one is a wicked woman; the other is a
fiend. Her only feeling is hatred; all her words are curses. We are at
once shocked and fatigued by the spectacle of such raving cruelty,
excited by no provocation, repeatedly changing its object, and
constant in nothing but in its inextinguishable thirst for blood.
In history this error is far more disgraceful. Indeed, there is no
fault which so completely ruins a narrative in the opinion of a
judicious reader. We know that the line of demarcation between
good and bad men is so faintly marked as often to elude the most
careful investigation of those who have the best opportunities for
judging. Public men, above all, are surrounded with so many
temptations and difficulties that some doubt must almost always
hang over their real dispositions and intentions. The lives of Pym,
Cromwell, Monk, Clarendon, Marlborough, Burnet, Walpole, are well
known to us. We are acquainted with their actions, their speeches,
their writings; we have abundance of letters and well-authenticated
anecdotes relating to them: yet what candid man will venture very
positively to say which of them were honest and which of them were
dishonest men. It appears easier to pronounce decidedly upon the
great characters of antiquity, not because we have greater means of
discovering truth, but simply because we have less means of
detecting error. The modern historians of Greece have forgotten this.
Their heroes and villains are as consistent in all their sayings and
doings as the cardinal virtues and the deadly sins in an allegory. We
should as soon expect a good action from giant Slaygood in Bunyan
as from Dionysius; and a crime of Epaminondas would seem as
incongruous as a faux-pas of the grave and comely damsel, called
Discretion, who answered the bell at the door of the house Beautiful.
This error was partly the cause and partly the effect of the high
estimation in which the later ancient writers have been held by
modern scholars. Those French and English authors who have
treated of the affairs of Greece have generally turned with contempt
from the simple and natural narrations of Thucydides and Xenophon
to the extravagant representations of Plutarch, Diodorus, Curtius,
and other romancers of the same class,—men who described
military operations without ever having handled a sword, and
applied to the seditions of little republics speculations formed by
observation on an empire which covered half the known world. Of
liberty they knew nothing. It was to them a great mystery,—a
superhuman enjoyment. They ranted about liberty and patriotism,
from the same cause which leads monks to talk more ardently than
other men about love and women. A wise man values political
liberty, because it secures the persons and the possessions of
citizens; because it tends to prevent the extravagance of rulers, and
the corruption of judges; because it gives birth to useful sciences
and elegant arts; because it excites the industry and increases the
comforts of all classes of society. These theorists imagined that it
possessed something eternally and intrinsically good, distinct from
the blessings which it generally produced. They considered it not as
a means but as an end; an end to be attained at any cost. Their
favourite heroes are those who have sacrificed, for the mere name
of freedom, the prosperity —the security—the justice—from which
freedom derives its value.
There is another remarkable characteristic of these writers, in
which their modern worshippers have carefully imitated them,—a
great fondness for good stories. The most established facts, dates,
and characters are never suffered to come into competition with a
splendid saying, or a romantic exploit. The early historians have left
us natural and simple descriptions of the great events which they
witnessed, and the great men with whom they associated. When we
read the account which Plutarch and Rollin have given of the same
period, we scarcely know our old acquaintance again; we are utterly
confounded by the melo-dra-matic effect of the narration, and the
sublime coxcombry of the characters. .
These are the principal errors into which the predecessors of Mr.
Mitford have fallen; and from most of these he is free. His faults are
of a completely different description. It is to be hoped that the
students of history may now be saved, like Dorax in Dryden’s play,
by swallowing two conflicting poisons, each of which may serve as
an antidote to the other.
The first and most important difference between Mr. Mitford and
those who have preceded him is in his narration. Here the advantage
lies, for the most part, on his side. His principle is to follow the
contemporary historians, to look with doubt on all statements which
are not in some degree confirmed by them, and absolutely to reject
all which are contradicted by them. While he retains the guidance of
some writer in whom he can place confidence, he goes on
excellently. When he loses it, he falls to the level, or perhaps below
the level, of the writers whom he so much despises: he is as absurd
as they, and very much duller. It is really amusing to observe how be
proceeds with his narration when he has no better authority than
poor Diodorus. He is compelled to relate something; yet he believes
nothing. He accompanies every fact with a long statement of
objections. His account of the administration of Dionysius is in no
sense a history. It ought to be entitled—“Historic doubts as to
certain events, alleged to have taken place in Sicily.”
This scepticism, however, like that of some great legal characters
almost as sceptical as himself, vanishes whenever his political
partialities interfere. He is a vehement admirer of tyranny and
oligarchy, and considers no evidence as feeble which can be brought
forward in favour of those forms of government. Democracy he
hates with a perfect hatred, a hatred which, in the first volume of his
history, appears only in his episodes and reflections, but which, in
those parts where he has less reverence for his guides, and can
venture to take his own way, completely distorts even his narration.
In taking up these opinions, I have no doubt that Mr. Mitford was
influenced by the same love of singularity which led him to spell
island without an s, and to place two dots over the last letter of idea.
In truth, preceding historians have erred so monstrously on the
other side that even the worst parts of Mr. Mitford’s book may be
useful as a corrective. For a young gentleman who talks much about
his country, tyrannicide, and Epaminondas, this work, diluted in a
sufficient quantity of Rollin and Barthelemi, maybe a very useful
remedy.
The errors of both parties arise from an ignorance or a neglect of
the fundamental principles of political science. The writers on one
side imagine popular government to be always a blessing; Mr.
Mitford omits no opportunity of assuring us that it is always a curse.
The fact is, that a good government, like a good coat, is that which
fits the body for which it is designed, A man who, upon abstract
principles, pronounces a constitution to be good, without an exact
knowledge of the people who are to be governed by it, judges as
absurdly as a tailor who should measime the Belvidere Apollo for the
clothes of all his customers. The demagogues who wished to see
Portugal a republic, and the wise critics who revile the Virginians for
not having instituted a peerage, appear equally ridiculous to all men
of sense and candour.
That is the best government which desires to make the people
happy, and knows how to make them happy. Neither the inclination
nor the knowledge will suffice alone; and it is difficult to find them
together!
Pure democracy, and pure democracy alone, satisfies the former
condition of this great problem. That the governors may be solicitous
only for the interests of the governed, it is necessary that the
interests of the governors and the governed should be the same.
This cannot be often the case where power is intrusted to one or to
a few. The privileged part of the community will doubtless derive a
certain degree of advantage from the general prosperity of the state;
but they will derive a greater from oppression and exaction. The
king will desire an useless war for his glory, or a parc-aux-cerfs for
his pleasure. The nobles will demand monopolies and lettres-de-
câchet. In proportion as the number of governors is increased the
evil is diminished. There are fewer to contribute, and more to
receive. The dividend which each can obtain of the public plunder
becomes less and less tempting. But the interests of the subjects
and the rulers never absolutely coincide till the subjects themselves
become the rulers, that is, till the government be either immediately
or mediately democratical.
But this is not enough. “Will without power,” said the sagacious
Casimir to Milor Beefington, “is like children playing at soldiers.” The
people will always be desirous to promote their own interests; but it
may be doubted, whether, in any community, they were ever
sufficiently educated to understand them. Even in this island, where
the multitude have long been better informed than in any other part
of Europe, the rights of the many have generally been asserted
against themselves by the patriotism of the few. Free trade, one of
the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people,
is in almost every country unpopular. It may be well doubted,
whether a liberal policy with regard to our commercial relations
would find any support from a parliament elected by universal
suffrage. The republicans on the other side of the Atlantic have
recently adopted regulations of which the consequences will, before
long, show us,

“How nations sink, by darling schemes oppressed,

When vengeance listens to the fool’s request.”

The people are to be governed for their own good; and, that they
may be governed for their own good, they must not be governed by
their own ignorance. There are countries in which it would be as
absurd to establish popular government as to abolish all the
restraints in a school, or to untie all the strait-waistcoats in a
madhouse.
Hence it may be concluded that the happiest state of society is
that in which supreme power resides in the whole body of a well-
informed people. This is an imaginary, perhaps an unattainable,
state of things. Yet, in some measure, we may approximate to it;
and he alone deserves the name of a great statesman, whose
principle it is to extend the power of the people in proportion to the
extent of their knowledge, and to give them every facility for
obtaining such a degree of knowledge as may render it safe to trust
them with absolute power. In the mean time, it is dangerous to
praise or condemn constitutions in the abstract; since, from the
despotism of St. Petersburg to the democracy of Washington, there
is scarcely a form of government which might not, at least in some
hypothetical case, be the best possible.
If, however, there be any form of government which in all ages
and all nations has always been, and must always be, pernicious, it
is certainly that which Mr. Mitford, on his usual principle of being
wiser than all the rest of the world, has taken under his especial
patronage—pure oligarchy. This is closely, and indeed inseparably,
connected with another of his eccentric tastes, a marked partiality
for Lacedæmon, and a dislike of Athens. Mr. Mitford’s book has, I
suspect, rendered these sentiments in some degree popular; and I
shall, therefore, examine them at some length.
The shades in the Athenian character strike the eye more rapidly
than those in the Lacedaemonian: not because they are darker, but
because they are on a brighter ground. The law of ostracism is an
instance of this. Nothing can be conceived more odious than the
practice of punishing a citizen, simply and professedly, for his
eminence;—and nothing in the institutions of Athens is more
frequently or more justly censured. Lacedaemon; was free from this.
And why? Lacedæmon did not need it. Oligarchy is an ostracism of
itself,—an ostracism not occasional, but permanent,—not dubious,
but certain. Her laws prevented the development of merit, instead of
attacking its maturity. They did not cut down the plant in its high
and palmy state, but cursed the soil with eternal sterility. In spite of
the law of ostracism, Athens produced, within a hundred and fifty
years, the greatest public men that ever existed. Whom had Sparta
to ostracise? She produced, at most, four eminent men, Brasidas,
Gylip-pus, Lysander, and Agesilaus. Of these, not one rose to
distinction within her jurisdiction. It was only when they escaped
from the region within which the influence of aristocracy withered
everything good and noble, it was only when they ceased to be
Lacedæmonians, that they became great men. Brasidas, among the
cities of Thrace, was strictly a democratical leader, the favourite
minister and general of the people. The same may be said of
Gylippus, at Syracuse. Lysander, in the Hellespont, and Agesilaus, in
Asia, were liberated for a time from the hateful restraints imposed by
the constitution of Lycurgus. Both acquired feme abroad; and both
returned to be watched and depressed at home. This is not peculiar
to Sparta. Oligarchy, wherever it has existed, has always stunted the
growth of genius. Thus it was at Rome, till about a century before
the Christian era: we read of abundance of consuls and dictators
who won battles, and enjoyed triumphs; but we look in vain for a
single man of the first order of intellect,—for a Pericles, a
Demosthenes, or a Hannibal. The Gracchi formed a strong
democratical party; Marius revived it; the foundations of the old
aristocracy were shaken; and two generations fertile in really great
men appeared. Venice is a still more remarkable instance: in her
history we see nothing but the state; aristocracy had destroyed
every seed of genius and virtue. Her dominion was like herself, lofty
and magnificent, but founded on filth and weeds. God forbid that
there should ever again exist a powerful and civilised state, which,
after existing through thirteen hundred eventful years, shall not
bequeath to mankind the memory of one great name or one
generous action.
Many writers, and Mr. Mitford among the number, have admired
the stability of the Spartan institutions; in fact, there is little to
admire, and less to approve. Oligarchy is the weakest and most
stable of governments; and it is stable because it is weak. It has a
sort of valetudinarian longevity; it lives in the balance of Sanctorius;
it takes no exercise; it exposes itself to no accident; it is seized with
an hypochondriac alarm at every new sensation; it trembles at every
breath; it lets blood for every inflammation: and thus, without ever
enjoying a day of health or pleasure, drags on its existence to a
doting and debilitated old age.
The Spartans purchased for their government a prolongation of its
existence by the sacrifice of happiness at home and dignity abroad.
They cringed to the powerful; they trampled on the weak; they
massacred their Helots; they betrayed their allies; they contrived to
be a day too late for the battle of Marathon; they attempted to avoid
the battle of Salamis; they suffered the Athenians, to whom they
owed then-lives and liberties, to be a second time driven from their
country by the Persians, that they might finish their own
fortifications on the Isthmus; they attempted to take advantage of
the distress to which exertions in their cause had reduced their
preservers, in order to make them their slaves; they strove to
prevent those who had abandoned their walls to defend them, from
rebuilding them to defend themselves; they commenced the
Peloponnesian war in violation of their engagements with Athens;
they abandoned it in violation of their engagements with their allies;
they gave up to the sword whole cities which had placed themselves
under their protection; they bartered, for advantages confined to
themselves, the interest, the freedom, and the lives of those who
had served them most faithfully; they took with equal complacency,
and equal infamy, the stripes of Elis and the bribes of Persia; they
never showed either resentment or gratitude; they abstained from
no injury; and they revenged none. Above all, they looked on a
citizen who served them well as their deadliest enemy. These are the
arts which protract the existence of governments.
Nor were the domestic institutions of Lacedæmon less hateful or
less contemptible than her foreign policy. A perpetual interference
with every part of the system of human life, a constant struggle
against nature and reason, characterised all her laws. To violate
even prejudices which have taken deep root in the minds of a people
is scarcely expedient; to think of extirpating natural appetites and
passions is frantic: the external symptoms may be occasionally
repressed; but the feeling still exists, and, debarred from its natural
objects, preys on the disordered mind and body of its victim. Thus it
is in convents—thus it is among ascetic sects—thus it was among
the Lacedæmonians.
Hence arose that madness, or violence approaching to madness,
which, in spite of every external restraint, often appeared among the
most distinguished citizens of Sparta. Cleomenes terminated his
career of raving cruelty by cutting himself to pieces. Pausanias
seems to have been absolutely insane: he formed a hopeless and
profligate scheme; he betrayed it by the ostentation of his behaviour,
and the imprudence of his measures; and he alienated, by his
insolence, all who might have served or protected him. Xenophon, a
warm admirer of Lacedaemon, furnishes us with the strongest
evidence to this effect. It is impossible not to observe the brutal and
senseless fury which characterises almost every Spartan with whom
he was connected. Clearchus nearly lost his life by his cruelty.
Chirisophus deprived his army of the services of a faithful guide by
his unreasonable and ferocious severity. But it is needless to multiply
instances. Lycurgus, Mr. Mitford’s favourite legislator, founded his
whole system on a mistaken principle. He never considered that
governments were made for men, and not men for governments.
Instead of adapting the constitution to the people, he distorted the
minds of the people to suit the constitution, a scheme worthy of the
Laputan Academy of Projectors. And this appears to Mr. Mitford to
constitute his peculiar title to admiration. Hear himself: “What to
modern eyes most strikingly sets that extraordinary man above all
other legislators is, that in so many circumstances, apparently out of
the reach of law, he controlled and formed to his own mind the wills
and habits of his people.” I should suppose that this gentleman had
the advantage of receiving his education under the ferula of Dr.
Pangloss; for his metaphysics are clearly those of the castle of
Thunder-ten-tronckh: “Remarquez bien epie les nez ont été faits
pour porter des lunettes, aussi avons nous des lunettes. Les jambes
sont visiblement instituées pour être chaussées, et nous avons des
chausses. Les cochons étant faits pour être mangés, nous mangeons
du porc toute l’année.”
At Athens the laws did not constantly interfere with the tastes of
the people. The children were not taken from their parents by that
universal step-mother, the state. They were not starved into thieves,
or tortured into bullies; there was no established table at which
every one must dine, no established style in which every one must
converse. An Athenian might eat whatever he could afford to buy,
and talk as long as he could find people to listen. The government
did not tell the people what opinions they were to hold, or what
songs they were to sing. Freedom produced excellence. Thus
philosophy took its origin. Thus were produced those models of
poetry, of oratory, and of the arts, which scarcely fall short of the
standard of ideal excellence. Nothing is more conducive to happiness
than the free exercise of the mind in pursuits congenial to it. This
happiness, assuredly, was enjoyed far more at Athens than at
Sparta. The Athenians are acknowledged even by their enemies to
have been distinguished, in private life, by their courteous and
amiable demeanour. Their levity, at least, was better then Spartan
sullenness, and their impertinence, than Spartan insolence. Even in
courage it may be questioned whether they were inferior to the
Lacedæmonians. The great Athenian historian has reported a
remarkable observation of the great Athenian minister. Pericles
maintained that his countrymen, without submitting to the hardships
of a Spartan education, rivalled all the achievements of Spartan
valour, and that therefore the pleasures and amusements which they
enjoyed were to be considered as so much clear gain. The infantry
of Athens was certainly not equal to that of Lacedæmon; but this
seems to have been caused merely by want of practice; the
attention of the Athenians was diverted from the discipline of the
phalanx to that of the trireme. The Lacedæinonians, in spite of all
their boasted valour, were, from the same cause, timid and
disorderly in naval action.
But we are told that crimes of great enormity were perpetrated by
the Athenian Government, and the democracies under its protection.
It is true that Athens too often acted up to the full extent of the laws
of war, in an age when those laws had not been mitigated by causes
which have operated in later times. This accusation is, in fact,
common to Athens, to Lacedæmon, to all the states of Greece, and
to all states similarly situated. Where communities are very large,
the heavier evils of war are felt but by few. The plough-boy sings,
the spinning-wheel turns round, the wedding-day is fixed, whether
the last battle were lost or won. In little states it cannot be thus;
every man feels in his own property and person the effect of a war.
Every man is a soldier, and a soldier fighting for his nearest interests.
His own trees have been cut down—his own corn has been burnt—
his own house has been pillaged—his own relations have been killed.
How can he entertain towards the enemies of his country the same
feelings with one who has suffered nothing; from them, except
perhaps the addition of a small sum to the taxes which he pays. Men
in such circumstances cannot be generous. They have too much at
stake. It is when they are, if I may so express myself, playing for
love, it is when war is a mere game at chess, it is when they are
contending for a remote colony, a frontier town, the honours of a
flag, a salute, or a title, that they can make fine speeches, and do
good offices to their enemies. The Black Prince waited behind the
chair of his captive; Villars interchanged repartees with Eugene:
George II. sent congratulations to Louis XV., during a war, upon
occasion of his escape from the attempt of Damien: and these things
are fine and generous, and very gratifying to the author of the Broad
Stone of Honour, and all the other wise men who think, like him,
that God made the world only for the use of gentlemen. But they
spring in general from utter heartlessness. No war ought ever to be
undertaken but under circumstances which render all interchange of
courtesy between the combatants impossible. It is a bad thing that
men should hate each other; but it is far worse that they should
contract the habit of cutting one another’s throats without hatred.
War is never lenient, but where it is wanton; when men are
compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge: this
may be bad; but it is human nature: it is the clay as it came from
the hand of the potter.
It is true that among the dependencies of Athens seditions
assumed a character more ferocious than even in France, during the
reign of terror—the accursed Saturnalia of an accursed bondage. It
is true that in Athens itself, where such convulsions were scarcely
known, the condition of the higher orders was dis agreeable; that
they were compelled to contribute large sums for the service or the
amusement of the public; and that they were sometimes harassed
by vexatious informers. Whenever such cases occur, Mr. Mitford’s
scepticism vanishes. The “if,” the “but,” the “it is said,” the “if we
may believe,” with which he qualifies every charge against a tyrant
or an aristocracy, are at once abandoned. The blacker the story, the
firmer is his belief; and he never fails to inveigh with hearty
bitterness against democracy as the source of every species of
crime.
 The Athenians, I believe, possessed more liberty than was good
for them. Yet I will venture to assert that, while the splendour, the
intelligence, and the energy of that great people were peculiar to
themselves, the crimes with which they are charged arose from
causes which were common to them with every other state which
then existed. The violence of faction in that age sprung from a cause
which has always been fertile in every political and moral evil,
domestic slavery.
The effect of slavery is completely to dissolve the connection
which naturally exists between the higher and lower classes of free
citizens. The rich spend their wealth in purchasing and maintaining
slaves. There is no demand for the labour of the poor; the fable of
Menenius ceases to be applicable; the belly communicates no
nutriment to the members; there is an atrophy in the body politic.
The two parties, therefore, proceed to extremities utterly unknown
in countries where they have mutually need of each other. In Rome
the oligarchy was too powerful to be subverted by force; and neither
the tribunes nor the popular assemblies, though constitutionally
omnipotent, could maintain a successful contest against men who
possessed the whole property of the state. Hence the necessity for
measures tending; to unsettle the whole frame of society, and to
take away every motive of industry; the abolition of debts, and the
agrarian laws—propositions absurdly condemned by men who do not
consider the circumstances from which they sprung. They were the
desperate remedies of a desperate disease. In Greece the
oligarchical interest was not in general so deeply rooted as at Rome.
The multitude, therefore, often redressed by force grievances which,
at Rome, were commonly attacked under the forais of the
constitution. They drove out or massacred the rich, and divided their
property. If the superior union or military skill of the rich rendered
them victorious, they took measures equally violent, disarmed all in
whom they could not confide, often slaughtered great numbers and
occasionally expelled the whole commonalty from the city, and
remained, with their slaves, the sole inhabitants.
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