Lang Andrew
Letters to Dead Authors
IV.
To Herodotus
To Herodotus of Halicarnassus, greeting. – Concerning the matters set forth in your histories, and the tales you tell about both Greeks and Barbarians, whether they be true, or whether they be false, men dispute not little but a great deal. Wherefore I, being concerned to know the verity, did set forth to make search in every manner, and came in my quest even unto the ends of the earth. For there is an island of the Cimmerians beyond the Straits of Heracles, some three days’ voyage to a ship that hath a fair following wind in her sails; and there it is said that men know many things from of old: thither, then, I came in my inquiry. Now, the island is not small, but large, greater than the whole of Hellas; and they call it Britain. In that island the east wind blows for ten parts of the year, and the people know not how to cover themselves from the cold. But for the other two months of the year the sun shines fiercely, so that some of them die thereof, and others die of the frozen mixed drinks; for they have ice even in the summer, and this ice they put to their liquor. Through the whole of this island, from the west even to the east, there flows a river called Thames: a great river and a laborious, but not to be likened to the River of Egypt.
The mouth of this river, where I stepped out from my ship, is exceedingly foul and of an evil savour by reason of the city on the banks. Now this city is several hundred parasangs in circumference. Yet a man that needed not to breathe the air might go round it in one hour, in chariots that run under the earth; and these chariots are drawn by creatures that breathe smoke and sulphur, such as Orpheus mentions in his “Argonautica,” if it be by Orpheus. The people of the town, when I inquired of them concerning Herodotus of Halicarnassus, looked on me with amazement, and went straightway about their business – namely, to seek out whatsoever new thing is coming to pass all over the whole inhabited world, and as for things old, they take no keep of them.
Nevertheless, by diligence I learned that he who in this land knew most concerning Herodotus was a priest, and dwelt in the priests’ city on the river which is called the City of the Ford of the Ox. But whether Io, when she wore a cow’s shape, had passed by that way in her wanderings, and thence comes the name of that city, I could not (though I asked all men I met) learn aught with certainty. But to me, considering this, it seemed that Io must have come thither. And now farewell to Io.
To the City of the Priests there are two roads: one by land; and one by water, following the river. To a well-girdled man, the land journey is but one day’s travel; by the river it is longer but more pleasant. Now that river flows, as I said, from the west to the east. And there is in it a fish called chub, which they catch; but they do not eat it, for a certain sacred reason. Also there is a fish called trout, and this is the manner of his catching. They build for this purpose great dams of wood, which they call weirs. Having built the weir they sit upon it with rods in their hands, and a line on the rod, and at the end of the line a little fish. There then they “sit and spin in the sun,” as one of their poets says, not for a short time but for many days, having rods in their hands and eating and drinking. In this wise they angle for the fish called trout; but whether they ever catch him or not, not having seen it, I cannot say; for it is not pleasant to me to speak things concerning which I know not the truth.
Now, after sailing and rowing against the stream for certain days, I came to the City of the Ford of the Ox. Here the river changes his name, and is called Isis, after the name of the goddess of the Egyptians. But whether the Britons brought the name from Egypt or whether the Egyptians took it from the Britons, not knowing I prefer not to say. But to me it seems that the Britons are a colony of the Egyptians, or the Egyptians a colony of the Britons. Moreover, when I was in Egypt I saw certain soldiers in white helmets, who were certainly British. But what they did there (as Egypt neither belongs to Britain nor Britain to Egypt) I know not, neither could they tell me. But one of them replied to me in that line of Homer (if the Odyssey be Homer’s), “We have come to a sorry Cyprus, and a sad Egypt.” Others told me that they once marched against the Ethiopians, and having defeated them several times, then came back again, leaving their property to the Ethiopians. But as to the truth of this I leave it to every man to form his own opinion.
Having come into the City of the Priests, I went forth into the street, and found a priest of the baser sort, who for a piece of silver led me hither and thither among the temples, discoursing of many things.
Now it seemed to me a strange thing that the city was empty, and no man dwelling therein, save a few priests only, and their wives, and their children, who are drawn to and fro in little carriages dragged by women. But the priest told me that during half the year the city was desolate, for that there came somewhat called “The Long,” or “The Vac,” and drave out the young priests. And he said that these did no other thing but row boats, and throw balls from one to the other, and this they were made to do, he said, that the young priests might learn to be humble, for they are the proudest of men. But whether he spoke truth or not I know not, only I set down what he told me. But to anyone considering it, this appears rather to jump with his story – namely, that the young priests have houses on the river, painted of divers colours, all of them empty.
Then the priest, at my desire, brought me to one of the temples, that I might seek out all things concerning Herodotus the Halicarnassian, from one who knew. Now this temple is not the fairest in the city, but less fair and goodly than the old temples, yet goodlier and more fair than the new temples; and over the roof there is the image of an eagle made of stone – no small marvel, but a great one, how men came to fashion him; and that temple is called the House of Queens. Here they sacrifice a boar once every year; and concerning this they tell a certain sacred story which I know but will not utter.
Then I was brought to the priest who had a name for knowing most about Egypt, and the Egyptians, and the Assyrians, and the Cappadocians, and all the kingdoms of the Great King. He came out to me, being attired in a black robe, and wearing on his head a square cap. But why the priests have square caps I know, and he who has been initiated into the mysteries which they call “Matric” knows, but I prefer not to tell. Concerning the square cap, then, let this be sufficient. Now, the priest received me courteously, and when I asked him, concerning Herodotus, whether he were a true man or not, he smiled and answered “Abu Goosh,” which, in the tongue of the Arabians, means “The Father of Liars.” Then he went on to speak concerning Herodotus, and he said in his discourse that Herodotus not only told the thing which was not, but that he did so wilfully, as one knowing the truth but concealing it. For example, quoth he, “Solon never went to see Croesus, as Herodotus avers; nor did those about Xerxes ever dream dreams; but Herodotus, out of his abundant wickedness, invented these things.”
“Now behold,” he went on, “how the curse of the Gods falls upon Herodotus. For he pretends that he saw Cadmeian inscriptions at Thebes. Now I do not believe there were any Cadmeian inscriptions there: therefore Herodotus is most manifestly lying. Moreover, this Herodotus never speaks of Sophocles the Athenian, and why not? Because he, being a child at school, did not learn Sophocles by heart: for the tragedies of Sophocles could not have been learned at school before they were written, nor can any man quote a poet whom he never learned at school. Moreover, as all those about Herodotus knew Sophocles well, he could not appear to them to be learned by showing that he knew what they knew also.” Then I thought the priest was making game and sport, saying first that Herodotus could know no poet whom he had not learned at school, and then saying that all the men of his time well knew this poet, “about whom everyone was talking.” But the priest seemed not to know that Herodotus and Sophocles were friends, which is proved by this, that Sophocles wrote an ode in praise of Herodotus.
Then he went on, and though I were to write with a hundred hands (like Briareus, of whom Homer makes mention) I could not tell you all the things that the priest said against Herodotus, speaking truly, or not truly, or sometimes correctly and sometimes not, as often befalls mortal men. For Herodotus, he said, was chiefly concerned to steal the lore of those who came before him, such as Hecatæus, and then to escape notice as having stolen it. Also he said that, being himself cunning and deceitful, Herodotus was easily beguiled by the cunning of others, and believed in things manifestly false, such as the story of the Phoenix-bird.
Then I spoke, and said that Herodotus himself declared that he could not believe that story; but the priest regarded me not. And he said that Herodotus had never caught a crocodile with cold pig, nor did he ever visit Assyria, nor Babylon, nor Elephantine; but, saying that he had been in these lands, said that which was not true. He also declared that Herodotus, when he travelled, knew none of the Fat Ones of the Egyptians, but only those of the baser sort. And he called Herodotus a thief and a beguiler, and “the same with intent to deceive,” as one of their own poets writes. And, to be short, Herodotus, I could not tell you in one day all the charges which are now brought against you; but concerning the truth of these things, you know, not least, but most, as to yourself being guilty or innocent. Wherefore, if you have anything to show or set forth whereby you may be relieved from the burden of these accusations, now is the time. Be no longer silent; but, whether through the Oracle of the Dead, or the Oracle of Branchidæ, or that in Delphi, or Dodona, or of Amphiaraus at Oropus, speak to your friends and lovers (whereof I am one from of old) and let men know the very truth.
Now, concerning the priests in the City of the Ford of the Ox, it is to be said that of all men whom we know they receive strangers most gladly, feasting them all day. Moreover, they have many drinks, cunningly mixed, and of these the best is that they call Archdeacon, naming it from one of the priests’ offices. Truly, as Homer says (if the Odyssey be Homer’s), “when that draught is poured into the bowl then it is no pleasure to refrain.”
Drinking of this wine, or nectar, Herodotus, I pledge you, and pour forth some deal on the ground, to Herodotus of Halicarnassus, in the House of Hades.
And I wish you farewell, and good be with you. Whether the priest spoke truly, or not truly, even so may such good things betide you as befall dead men.
V.
Epistle to Mr. Alexander Pope
From mortal Gratitude, decide, my Pope,
Have Wits Immortal more to fear or hope?
Wits toil and travail round the Plant of Fame,
Their Works its Garden, and its Growth their Aim,
Then Commentators, in unwieldy Dance,
Break down the Barriers of the trim Pleasance,
Pursue the Poet, like Actæon’s Hounds,
Beyond the fences of his Garden Grounds,
Rend from the singing Robes each borrowed Gem,
Rend from the laurel’d Brows the Diadem,
And, if one Rag of Character they spare,
Comes the Biographer, and strips it bare!
Such, Pope, has been thy Fortune, such thy Doom.
Swift the Ghouls gathered at the Poet’s Tomb,
With Dust of Notes to clog each lordly Line,
Warburton, Warton, Croker, Bowles, combine!
Collecting Cackle, Johnson condescends
To interview the Drudges of your Friends.
Thus though your Courthope holds your merits high,
And still proclaims your Poems Poetry,
Biographers, un-Boswell-like, have sneered,
And Dunces edit him whom Dunces feared!
They say, “what say they?” Not in vain You ask;
To tell you what they say, behold my Task!
“Methinks already I your Tears survey”
As I repeat “the horrid Things they say.” 2
Comes El-n first: I fancy you’ll agree
Not frenzied Dennis smote so fell as he;
For El-n’s Introduction, crabbed and dry,
Like Churchill’s Cudgel’s 3 marked with Lie, and Lie!
“Too dull to know what his own System meant,
Pope yet was skilled new Treasons to invent;
A Snake that puffed himself and stung his Friends,
Few Lied so frequent, for such little Ends;
His mind, like Flesh inflamed, 4 was raw and sore,
And still, the more he writhed, he stung the more!
Oft in a Quarrel, never in the Right,
His Spirit sank when he was called to fight.
Pope, in the Darkness mining like a Mole,
Forged on Himself, as from Himself he stole,
And what for Caryll once he feigned to feel,
Transferred, in Letters never sent, to Steele!
Still he denied the Letters he had writ,
And still mistook Indecency for Wit.
His very Grammar, so De Quincey cries,
‘Detains the Reader, and at times defies!’”
Fierce El-n thus: no Line escapes his Rage,
And furious Foot-notes growl ’neath every Page:
See St-ph-n next take up the woful Tale,
Prolong the Preaching, and protract the Wail!
“Some forage Falsehoods from the North and South,
But Pope, poor D-l, lied from Hand to Mouth; 5
Affected, hypocritical, and vain,
A Book in Breeches, and a Fop in Grain;
A Fox that found not the high Clusters sour,
The Fanfaron of Vice beyond his power,
Pope yet possessed” – (the Praise will make you start) —
“Mean, morbid, vain, he yet possessed a Heart!
And still we marvel at the Man, and still
Admire his Finish, and applaud his Skill:
Though, as that fabled Barque, a phantom Form,
Eternal strains, nor rounds the Cape of Storm,
Even so Pope strove, nor ever crossed the Line
That from the Noble separates the Fine!”
The Learned thus, and who can quite reply,
Reverse the Judgment, and Retort the Lie?
You reap, in armèd Hates that haunt your Name,
Reap what you sowed, the Dragon’s Teeth of Fame:
You could not write, and from unenvious Time
Expect the Wreath that crowns the lofty Rhyme,
You still must fight, retreat, attack, defend,
And oft, to snatch a Laurel, lose a Friend!
The Pity of it! And the changing Taste
Of changing Time leaves half your Work a Waste!
My Childhood fled your Couplet’s clarion tone,
And sought for Homer in the Prose of Bohn.
Still through the Dust of that dim Prose appears
The Flight of Arrows and the Sheen of Spears;
Still we may trace what Hearts heroic feel,
And hear the Bronze that hurtles on the Steel!
But, ah, your Iliad seems a half-pretence,
Where Wits, not Heroes, prove their Skill in Fence,
And great Achilles’ Eloquence doth show
As if no Centaur trained him, but Boileau!
Again, your Verse is orderly, – and more, —
“The Waves behind impel the Waves before;”
Monotonously musical they glide,
Till Couplet unto Couplet hath replied.
But turn to Homer! How his Verses sweep!
Surge answers Surge and Deep doth call on Deep;
This Line in Foam and Thunder issues forth,
Spurred by the West or smitten by the North,
Sombre in all its sullen Deeps, and all
Clear at the Crest, and foaming to the Fall,
The next with silver Murmur dies away,
Like Tides that falter to Calypso’s Bay!
Thus Time, with sordid Alchemy and dread,
Turns half the Glory of your Gold to Lead;
Thus Time, – at Ronsard’s wreath that vainly bit, —
Has marred the Poet to preserve the Wit,
Who almost left on Addison a stain,
Whose Knife cut cleanest with a poisoned pain, —
Yet Thou (strange Fate that clings to all of Thine!)
When most a Wit dost most a Poet shine.
In Poetry thy Dunciad expires,
When Wit has shot “her momentary Fires.”
’Tis Tragedy that watches by the Bed
“Where tawdry Yellow strove with dirty Red,”
And Men, remembering all, can scarce deny
To lay the Laurel where thine Ashes lie!
VI.
To Lucian of Samosata
In what bower, oh Lucian, of your rediscovered Islands Fortunate are you now reclining; the delight of the fair, the learned, the witty, and the brave? In that clear and tranquil climate, whose air breathes of “violet and lily, myrtle, and the flower of the vine,”
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the Rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not,
among the music of all birds, and the wind-blown notes of flutes hanging on the trees, methinks that your laughter sounds most silvery sweet, and that Helen and fair Charmides are still of your company. Master of mirth, and Soul the best contented of all that have seen the world’s ways clearly, most clear-sighted of all that have made tranquillity their bride, what other laughers dwell with you, where the crystal and fragrant waters wander round the shining palaces and the temples of amethyst?
Heine surely is with you; if, indeed, it was not one Syrian soul that dwelt among alien men, Germans and Romans, in the bodily tabernacles of Heine and of Lucian. But he was fallen on evil times and evil tongues; while Lucian, as witty as he, as bitter in mockery, as happily dowered with the magic of words, lived long and happily and honoured, imprisoned in no “mattress-grave.” Without Rabelais, without Voltaire, without Heine, you would find, methinks, even the joys of your Happy Islands lacking in zest; and, unless Plato came by your way, none of the ancients could meet you in the lists of sportive dialogue.
There, among the vines that bear twelve times in the year, more excellent than all the vineyards of Touraine, while the song-birds bring you flowers from vales enchanted, and the shapes of the Blessed come and go, beautiful in wind-woven raiment of sunset hues; there, in a land that knows not age, nor winter, midnight, nor autumn, nor noon, where the silver twilight of summer-dawn is perennial, where youth does not wax spectre-pale and die; there, my Lucian, you are crowned the Prince of the Paradise of Mirth.
Who would bring you, if he had the power, from the banquet where Homer sings: Homer, who, in mockery of commentators, past and to come, German and Greek, informed you that he was by birth a Babylonian? Yet, if you, who first wrote Dialogues of the Dead, could hear the prayer of an epistle wafted to “lands indiscoverable in the unheard-of West,” you might visit once more a world so worthy of such a mocker, so like the world you knew so well of old.
Ah, Lucian, we have need of you, of your sense and of your mockery! Here, where faith is sick and superstition is waking afresh; where gods come rarely, and spectres appear at five shillings an interview; where science is popular, and philosophy cries aloud in the market-place, and clamour does duty for government, and Thais and Lais are names of power – here, Lucian, is room and scope for you. Can I not imagine a new “Auction of Philosophers,” and what wealth might be made by him who bought these popular sages and lecturers at his estimate, and vended them at their own?
Hermes: Whom shall we put first up to auction?
Zeus: That German in spectacles; he seems a highly respectable man.
Hermes: Ho, Pessimist, come down and let the public view you.
Zeus: Go on, put him up and have done with him.
Hermes: Who bids for the Life Miserable, for extreme, complete, perfect, unredeemable perdition? What offers for the universal extinction of the species, and the collapse of the Conscious?
A Purchaser: He does not look at all a bad lot. May one put him through his paces?
Hermes: Certainly; try your luck.
Purchaser: What is your name?
Pessimist: Hartmann.
Purchaser: What can you teach me?
Pessimist: That Life is not worth Living.
Purchaser: Wonderful! Most edifying! How much for this lot?
Hermes: Two hundred pounds.
Purchaser: I will write you a cheque for the money. Come home, Pessimist, and begin your lessons without more ado.
Hermes: Attention! Here is a magnificent article – the Positive Life, the Scientific Life, the Enthusiastic Life. Who bids for a possible place in the Calendar of the Future?
Purchaser: What does he call himself? he has a very French air.
Hermes: Put your own questions.
Purchaser: What’s your pedigree, my Philosopher, and previous performances?
Positivist: I am by Rousseau out of Catholicism, with a strain of the Evolution blood.
Purchaser: What do you believe in?
Positivist: In Man, with a large M.
Purchaser: Not in individual Man?
Positivist: By no means; not even always in Mr. Gladstone. All men, all Churches, all parties, all philosophies, and even the other sect of our own Church, are perpetually in the wrong. Buy me, and listen to me, and you will always be in the right.
Purchaser: And, after this life, what have you to offer me?
Positivist: A distinguished position in the Choir Invisible; but not, of course, conscious immortality.
Purchaser: Take him away, and put up another lot.
Then the Hegelian, with his Notion, and the Darwinian, with his notions, and the Lotzian, with his Broad Church mixture of Religion and Evolution, and the Spencerian, with that Absolute which is a sort of a something, might all be offered with their divers wares; and cheaply enough, Lucian, you would value them in this auction of Sects. “There is but one way to Corinth,” as of old; but which that way may be, oh master of Hermotimus, we know no more than he did of old; and still we find, of all philosophies, that the Stoic route is most to be recommended. But we have our Cyrenaics too, though they are no longer “clothed in purple, and crowned with flowers, and fond of drink and of female flute-players.” Ah, here too, you might laugh, and fail to see where the Pleasure lies, when the Cyrenaics are no “judges of cakes” (nor of ale, for that matter), and are strangers in the Courts of Princes. “To despise all things, to make use of all things, in all things to follow pleasure only:” that is not the manner of the new, if it were the secret of the older Hedonism.
Then, turning from the philosophers to the seekers after a sign, what change, Lucian, would you find in them and their ways? None; they are quite unaltered. Still our Peregrinus, and our Peregrina too, come to us from the East, or, if from the West, they take India on their way – India, that secular home of drivelling creeds, and of religion in its sacerdotage. Still they prattle of Brahmins and Buddhism; though, unlike Peregrinus, they do not publicly burn themselves on pyres, at Epsom Downs, after the Derby. We are not so fortunate in the demise of our Theosophists; and our police, less wise than the Hellenodicæ, would probably not permit the Immolation of the Quack. Like your Alexander, they deal in marvels and miracles, oracles and warnings. All such bogy stories as those of your “Philopseudes,” and the ghost of the lady who took to table-rapping because one of her best slippers had not been burned with her body, are gravely investigated by the Psychical Society.
Even your ignorant Bibliophile is still with us – the man without a tinge of letters, who buys up old manuscripts “because they are stained and gnawed, and who goes, for proof of valued antiquity, to the testimony of the book-worms.” And the rich Bibliophile now, as in your satire, clothes his volumes in purple morocco and gay dorures, while their contents are sealed to him.
As to the topics of satire and gay curiosity which occupy the lady known as “Gyp,” and M. Halévy in his “Les Petites Cardinal,” if you had not exhausted the matter in your “Dialogues of Hetairai,” you would be amused to find the same old traits surviving without a touch of change. One reads, in Halévy’s French, of Madame Cardinal, and, in your Greek, of the mother of Philinna, and marvels that eighteen hundred years have not in one single trifle altered the mould. Still the old shabby light-loves, the old greed, the old luxury and squalor. Still the unconquerable superstition that now seeks to tell fortunes by the cards, and, in your time, resorted to the sorceress with her magical “bull-roarer” or turndun. 6
Yes, Lucian, we are the same vain creatures of doubt and dread, of unbelief and credulity, of avarice and pretence, that you knew, and at whom you smiled. Nay, our very “social question” is not altered. Do you not write, in “The Runaways,” “The artisans will abandon their workshops, and leave their trades, when they see that, with all the labour that bows their bodies from dawn to dark, they make a petty and starveling pittance, while men that toil not nor spin are floating in Pactolus”?
They begin to see this again as of yore; but whether the end of their vision will be a laughing matter, you, fortunate Lucian, do not need to care. Hail to you, and farewell!
