Solent

“ Down in the valley, hid from us by a turn in the road, lies Beaulieu. But a little farther on we reach part of the old Abbey walls, broken here and there, clustered with ivy, and grass, and yellow mullein, and white yarrow, whilst vine-clad cottages stand against its sides. The village is situated on a bend of the Exe, where, spanned by a bridge, the stream falls over the weir, formerly turning the old mill-wheel of the monks, and then, broadening with the tide, winds through meadows and thick oak copses down to the Solent. ”

“ Solon, unwilling either to flatter or exasperate him more, replied, "The gods, O king, have given the Greeks all other gifts in moderate degree; and so our wisdom, too, is a cheerful and a homely, not a noble and kingly wisdom; and this, observing the numerous misfortunes that attend all conditions, forbids us to grow insolent upon our present enjoyments, or to admire any man's happiness that may yet, in course of time, suffer change. ”

“ Thereupon, one of the priests, who was of very great age, said: 'O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are but children, and there is never an old man who is an Hellene.' Solon, hearing this, said, 'What do you mean?' 'I mean to say,' he replied, 'that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient traditions, nor any science which is hoary with age. ”

“ That was a fine saying of Solon's," he mused, "an heroic reply to the news of his son's death, 'I knew that I had begotten a mortal being.' Or was it Anaxagoras, as some say, or Xenophon? But that is the pathos of the past; the truth of matters becomes obscured." ”

“ Legend tells us that Solon in his old age, when the tyranny had now come, piled his armour in front of his house door—probably near the Market-place of Pisistratus—and turned from politics to a serene enjoyment of the pleasures of ear and eye and intellect to which he had, indeed, never been a stranger. His life had always been consistent with his own epigram:—
“And still as I age, learning many a lesson.” ”

“ Indeed, it is these intellectual pursuits that for wise and well-nurtured men grow with years, so that it is to Solon's honor that he says, in the verse which I just now quoted, that as he advanced in age he learned something every day,—a pleasure of the mind than which there can be none greater. ”

“ In the evening as the wisest of men and the richest of men were dining together, the king said to his guest, “Tell me now, O Solon, who do you think is the happiest of all men?” He expected that Solon would say “Crœsus.”
The wise man was silent for a minute, and then he said, “I have in mind a poor man who once lived in Athens and whose name was Tellus. He, I doubt not, is the happiest of all men.” ”

“ As for those genealogies of yours which you have recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children; for, in the first place, you remember one deluge only, whereas there were many of them; and, in the next place, you do not know that there dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, of whom you and your whole city are but a seed or remnant. And this was unknown to you, because for many generations the survivors of that destruction died and made no sign. ”

“ Which thoughts may guess, but tongue must not profane;
A sweeter creature nature never made:
[Pg 332] Love never tainted Soliman till now.
Now, fair virgin, let me hear thee speak.
Perseda.
What can my tongue utter but grief and death?
Soliman.
The sound is honey, but the sense is gall:
Then, sweeting, bless me with a cheerful look.
Perseda.
How can mine eyes dart forth a pleasant look,
When they are stopp'd with floods of flowing tears?
Soliman.
If tongue with grief, and eyes with tears be fill'd,
Say, virgin, how doeth thy heart admit
The pure affection of great Soliman? ”

“ Thou appearest to me very rich, and king over many people; but the question thou askest I cannot resolve till I hear thou hast ended thy days happily: for he that hath much wealth is not happier than he that gets his bread from day to day, unless Providence continue those good things, and that he dieth well. Solon, after his discourse, not flattering Crœsus, was dismissed, and accounted unwise that he neglected the present good out of regard to the future. ”

“ With which the Muse of Solon in sweet strains
Adorn'd this theme profound, and render'd all
Its darkness, all its terrors, bright as noon,
Or gentle as the golden star of eve. 30
Who knows not Solon,—last, and wisest far,
Of those whom Greece, triumphant in the height
Of glory, styled her fathers,—him whose voice
Through Athens hush'd the storm of civil wrath;
Taught envious Want and cruel Wealth to join
In friendship; and, with sweet compulsion, tamed
Minerva's eager people to his laws,
Which their own goddess in his breast inspired? ”

“ All the people whom they saw spoke in praise of his wisdom.
When they told him their errand he was silent for a little while; then he said:—
"I have never thought of myself as a wise man, and therefore the prize is not for me. But I know of at least six men who are famous for their wisdom, and one of them must be the wisest of the wise."
"Who are they?" asked the messengers.
"Their names are Thales, Bias, Pittacus, Cleobulus, Periander, and
Chilon," answered Solon. ”

“ I believe that it will be my chiefest fame. From which it is manifest that he was a man of great reputation before he gave his laws. The several mocks that were put upon him for refusing the power, he records in these words,— Solon surely was a dreamer, and a man of simple mind; When the gods would give him fortune, he of his own will declined; When the net was full of fishes, over-heavy thinking it, He declined to haul it up, through want of heart and want of wit. Had but I that chance of riches and of kingship, for one day, I would give my skin for flaying, and my house to die away. ”

“ Crœsus could no longer conceal his rage, 'What then,' said he, 'do you not even place me among the number of happy people?'—'O king of the Lydians,' replied Solon, 'you possess great riches, and are master of a great multitudo of people; but life is liable to so many changes, that we cannot presume to decide on tho felicity of any man, until he has finished his mortal career.' ”

“ The name of this man was Solon, and he was the lawmaker of Athens in Greece. He was noted for his wisdom; and, centuries after his death, the highest praise that could be given to a learned man was to say, “He is as wise as Solon.”
Solon had heard of Crœsus, and so one day he visited him in his beautiful palace. Crœsus was now happier and prouder than ever before, for the wisest man in the world was his guest. He led Solon through his palace and showed him the grand rooms, the fine carpets, the soft couches, the rich furniture, the pictures, the books. ”

“ Astonished, he glanced round for an instant, and beheld Zonéla, with a world of love burning in her large lambent eyes, wreathing her round white arms about his humped shoulders. Then the poet knew the great sustaining power of love. Solon reared himself boldly.
"Sneer at my poor form," he cried, in strong vibrating tones, flinging out one long arm and one thin finger at the Wondersmith, as if he would have impaled him like a beetle. "Humiliate me, if you can. I care not. You are a wretch, and I am honest and pure. This girl is not your daughter. ”

“ Then they built up a great pile of dry sticks and timber taken from the ruins of his once beautiful palace. When this was finished, they tied the unhappy king in the midst of it, and one ran for a torch to set it on fire.
“Now we shall have a merry blaze,” said the savage fellows. “What good can all his wealth do him now?”
As poor Crœsus, bruised and bleeding, lay upon the pyre without a friend to soothe his misery, he thought of the words which Solon had spoken to him years before: “No man can say whether you are happy or not until you die,” and he moaned, “O Solon! O Solon! Solon!” ”

“ And that no person should be a guardian to those, whose estate descended to them at the orphan's decease. That no seal-graver should keep the seal of a ring that was sold: That, if any man put out the eye of him who had but one, he should lose both, his own: That, where a man never planted, it should be death to take away: That, it should be death for a magistrate to be taken in drink. Solon's letters at the end of his life, in Lærtius, give us a truer Idea of the man, than all he has written before, and are indeed very fine: Solon's to Cræsus are very genteel ”

“ We noticed recently in a periodical paper a Sonnet introduced by the following paragraph:
“We have an utter, relentless, unmitigated dislike, aversion, horror, for those fourteen-lined effusions, called Sonnets. They remind us of a child struggling to walk in swaddling clothes. They are puny ideas on stilts. They have a central thought, which, like the centre of gravity, is never seen. The poor thing flounders about like a man running tied up in a sack. It is a puzzle for children of a larger growth. Like a glass thread, one wonders how it is spun, or how the apple got into the dumplings!” ”

“ On his father's side he was descended from Codrus, last king of Athens; on his mother's, from Solon: you could get nothing higher in the way of family and descent. In himself, he was an accomplished athlete; a brilliant writer of light prose; a poet of high promise when the mood struck him— and he had ideas of doing the great thing in tragedy presently; trained unusually well in music, and in mathematics; deeply read; with a taste for the philosophies; a man, in short, of culture as deep and balanced as his social standing was high. ”

“ He must have forgotten that when Æsop said to Solon, "Either we must not come to princes, or we must seek to please and content them;" Solon answered, "Either we must not come to princes at all, or we must speak truly, and counsel them for the best." He must have forgotten his own doctrine, that books ought to have no patrons but truth and reason ”

“ By birth and reputation Solon was one of the foremost men of the day, but in wealth and position he was of the middle class, as is generally agreed, and is, indeed, established by his own evidence in these poems, where he exhorts the wealthy not to be grasping. ”

“ For you seem in my apprehension to call these coverings made of wood and mud houses, as if you should call the shell and not the living creature a snail. Therefore you laughed when Solon told you how, when he viewed Croesus's palace and found it richly and gloriously furnished, he yet could not yield he lived happily until he had tried the inward and invisible state of his mind; for a man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible favors and blessings of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind. ”

“ Solon however made ten periods of life, each of seven years; so that the first period, or infancy, should extend to the growth of the teeth, to chew its food, and utter articulate words so as to seem intelligible; boyhood again extends to the time of puberty and of carnal temptation; youth to the growth of the beard; adult age lasts until virtue has attained its perfection; the fifth is the age of manhood, fitted, during its whole course, for marriage; the sixth belongs also to manhood, in that it is adapted to the combat of prudence, and is strenuous in action ”

“ Here, no Solon, indulging imagination, has pictured the perfectibility of man; no Lycurgus, viewing him through the medium of human frailty alone, has left for his government an iron code, graven on eternal adamant; no Plato, dreaming in the luxurious gardens of the Academy, has fancied what he should be, and bequeathed a republic of love ”

“ When that was done, and the city in an uproar, Megacles, with all his family, at once fled; but Solon, though he was now very old, and had none to back him, yet came into the market-place and made a speech to the citizens, partly blaming their inadvertency and meanness of spirit, and in part urging and exhorting them not thus tamely to lose their liberty; and likewise then spoke that memorable saying, that, before, it was an easier task to stop the rising tyranny, but now the greater and more glorious action to destroy it, when it was begun already, and had gathered strength. ”

“ Astonished at the answer of Solon, Crœsus inquired of the Greek, whether he considered the prosperity which had fallen to his (Crœsus') lot to be nothing, that he did not even place him on a level with common men. Then Solon answered: You are asking a man about the fortune of men, one who knows well that the deity is envious and destructive. In a long life a man may see much that he would fain not see, and endure much. I put the limit of man's life at 70 years. ”

“ Solon could not rise to that in his polity, being but a citizen of the middle classes; yet he acted fully up to the height of his power, having nothing but the good-will and good opinion of his citizens to rely on; and that he offended the most part, who looked for another result, he declares in the words, Formerly they boasted of me vainly; with averted eyes Now they look askance upon me; friends no more, but enemies. And yet had any other man, he says, received the same power, He would not have forborne, nor let alone, But made the fattest of the milk his own. ”

“ You are a stranger no longer: all men know you, all men are your friends; this it is to possess the friendship of the venerable Solon. Conversing with him, you will forget Scythia and all that is in it. ”

“ They were both lonely and afflicted, with this difference, that she was beautiful, and he—was a hunchback."
"Why, Solon," cried Zonéla, "that's the very way you and I met!"
"It was then," continued Solon, with a faint smile, "that life seemed to have its music. A great harmony seemed to the poor cripple to fill the world. The carts that took the flour-barrels from the wharves to the store-houses seemed to emit joyous melodies from their wheels. The hum of the great business-streets sounded like grand symphonies of triumph. ”