Francis Storr

“ What in a higher rank is looked upon as a gross insult may in a lower rank be regarded as a mere pleasantry or a harmless joke. Among the lower orders offences against honour can hardly be said to exist; the learned professions have each its own tribunal to which its members are amenable; and the highest ranks of society, however imperfect their standard of morality may be, are perfectly competent to enforce that standard by means of social penalties without resorting either to trial by law or trial by battle. ”

“ Greek writers from Herodotus to Plutarch dwell with complacency on the magnanimity of a people who cared for nothing but honour and were content to struggle for a corruptible crown. But though the Greek games present in this respect a favourable contrast to the greed and gambling of the modern racecourse, yet to represent men like Milon and Damoxenus as actuated by pure love of glory is a pleasing fiction of the moralists. The successful athlete received in addition to the immediate honours very substantial rewards. ”

“ PHŒBUS APOLLO, the Sun-god, a hunter unmatched in the chase, had slain the awful Python with his shafts. To commemorate such a doughty deed, he instituted the Pythian Games wherein noble youths should strive for mastery. ”

“ Kings of France could condone a witticism even against themselves, a parvenu could not.”
On the whole the influence of the French Academy has been conservative rather than creative. It has done much by its example for style, but its attempts to impose its laws on language have, from the nature of the case, failed. For, however perfectly a dictionary or a grammar may represent the existing language of a nation, an original genius is certain to arise—a Victor Hugo or an Alfred de Musset—who will set at defiance all dictionaries and academic rules. ”

“ Suggestions have from time to time been made for the establishment of courts of honour, but the need of such tribunals is doubtful, while the objections to them are obvious. The present tendency of political philosophy is to contract rather than extend the province of law, and any interference with social life is justly resented. Real offences against reputation are sufficiently punished, and the rule of the lawyers, that mere scurrility or opprobrious words, which neither of themselves import nor are attended with any hurtful effects, are not punishable, seems on the whole a wise one. ”

“ Thus, at no cost to themselves, the Roman public were enabled to indulge at the same time their religious feelings and their love of amusement. Their taste for games naturally grew till it became a passion, and under the empire games were looked upon by the mob as one of the two necessaries of life. ”

“ It is no foe who follows you. Why should you flee as the trembling doe from the lion, the lamb from the hungry wolf, the dove from the pursuing falcon? It is a god who loves and follows. It is a god you flee from, a god who loves, and will not be denied. ”

“ Matthew Arnold’s plea for an English academy of letters to save his countrymen from the note of vulgarity and provinciality has met with no response. Academies have been supplanted, socially by the modern club, and intellectually by societies devoted to special branches of science. Those that survive from the past serve, like the Heralds’ College, to set an official stamp on literary and scientific merit. The principal academies of Europe, past and present, may be dealt with in various classes, according to the subjects to which they are devoted. ”

“ It is easy to explain the different feelings which the games of Greece and of Rome excite. The Greeks at their best were actors, the Romans from first to last were spectators. It is true that even in Greek games the professional element played a large and ever-increasing part. ”

“ As a hare doubles to elude the greyhound that is gaining on her, the flying maid turned back and sought thus to elude her pursuer. In vain she strove against a god. Terror winged her feet, but there is no escape from Love. ”

“ Under the frivolous and sanguinary reign of Henry III., “who was as eager for excitement as a woman,” the rage for duels spread till it became almost an epidemic. In 1602 the combined remonstrances of the church and the magistrates extorted from the king an edict condemning to death whoever should give or accept a challenge or act as second. But public opinion was revolted by such rigour, and the statue remained a dead letter. A duel forms a fit conclusion to the reign. ”

“ In the first draft of the new Institute, October 25, 1795, no class corresponded exactly to the old Academy of Inscriptions; but most of the members who survived found themselves re-elected either in the class of moral and political science, under which history and geography were included as sections, or more generally under the class of literature and fine arts, which embraced ancient languages, antiquities and monuments.
In 1816 the academy received again its old name. The Proceedings of the society embrace a vast field, and are of very various merits. ”

“ But what in Greece was a perversion and acknowledged to be such, the Romans not only practised but held up as their ideal. No Greek, however high in birth, was ashamed to compete in person for the Olympic crown. The Roman, though little inferior in gymnastic exercises, kept strictly to the privacy of the palaestra; and for a patrician to appear in public as a charioteer is stigmatized by the satirist as a mark of shameless effrontery.
Roman games are generally classified as fixed, extraordinary and votive ”

“ But here as elsewhere the severity of the penalty defeated its own object. The public conscience revolted against a Draconian code which made no distinction between wilful murder and a deadly combat wherein each party consented to his own death or submitted to the risk of it. No jury could be found to convict when conviction involved in the same penalty a Fox or a Pitt and a Turpin or a Brownrigg. Such, however, was the conservatism of English publicists that Bentham was the first to point out clearly this defect of the law, and propose a remedy. ”

“ All her days she spent in the woods among the wild creatures, or scoured the open plains with swift feet. All her love was given to the free life of the forest: she roamed in fearless pursuit of beasts of prey, her quiver at her side, her bow in hand, her lovely hair bound in many a fillet about her head. Her father often blamed her. ”

“ But though public games played as important a part in Roman as in Greek history, and must be studied by the Roman historian as an integral factor in social and political life, yet, regarded solely as exhibitions, they are comparatively devoid of interest, and we sympathize with Pliny, who asks his friend how any man of sense can go day after day to view the same dreary round of fights and races. ”

“ A society was formed in Dublin, similar to the Royal Society in London, as early as 1683; but the distracted state of the country proved unpropitious to the cultivation of philosophy and literature. The Royal Irish Academy grew from a society established in Dublin about 1782 by a number of gentlemen, most of whom belonged to the university. They held weekly meetings, and read, in turn, essays on various subjects. They professed to unite the advancement of science with the history of mankind and polite literature. ”

“ We are justified, then, in dating the commencement of duelling from the abolition of the wager of battle. The duel of honour.To pursue its history we must return to France, the country where it first arose, and the soil on which it has most flourished. The causes which made it indigenous to France are sufficiently explained by the condition of society and the national character. As Buckle has pointed out, duelling is a special development of chivalry, and chivalry is one of the phases of the protective spirit which was predominant in France up to the time of the Revolution. ”

“ Private Games.—These may be classified as outdoor and indoor games. There is naturally all the world over a much closer resemblance between the pursuits and amusements of children than of adults. Homer’s children built castles in the sand, and Greek and Roman children alike had their dolls, their hoops, their skipping-ropes, their hobby-horses, their kites, their knuckle-bones and played at hopscotch, the tug-of-war, pitch and toss, blind-man’s buff, hide and seek, and kiss in the ring or at closely analogous games. ”

“ The officers were, a president and a vice-president, named by the king from among the honorary members, and a secretary and treasurer chosen from the pensionaries, who held office for life. Fontenelle, a man of wit, and rather a popularizer of science than an original investigator, succeeded Duhamel as secretary. The constitution was purely aristocratical, differing in that respect from that of the French Academy, in which the principle of equality among the members was never violated. Science was not yet strong enough to dispense with the patronage of the great. ”

“ Dr Paulsen goes much further, and not only defends the duels of university students (Mensuren) as an encouragement of physical exercise, a proof of courage and a protest of worth against wealth, but maintains generally that the duel should be retained as an expedient in those exceptional cases when a man cannot bring himself to drag before a law court the outrage done to his personal honour. But in such cases Dr Paulsen would have the courts hold the injured person scathless, whether he be challenger or challenged, and visit the aggressor with condign punishment. ”

“ In the great battle between the Ancients and the Moderns which divided the learned world in the first half of the 18th century, the Academy of Inscriptions naturally espoused the cause of the Ancients, as the Academy of Sciences did that of the Moderns. During the earlier years of the French Revolution the academy continued its labours uninterruptedly ”