Ancient author

“ Let me premise, however, in this prefatory chapter, that the object of an author, in the minute detail of local scenery and ancient customs, which he is sometimes compelled to give, and which are often objected to by the animals with long ears that browse on the borders of Parnassus, is not so much to show his own learning in antiquarian lore, as to imbue his reader with such thoughts and feelings as may enable him to comprehend the motives of the persons acting before his eyes, and the sensations, passions, and prejudices of ages passed away. ”

“ If then there were room to entertain a doubt of the authenticity of the body of ancient history—taken in the mass; or if the credibility of a single author comes to be questioned; or if a particular fact be opened to controversy, it is far from being the case that we are left to rely, alone, upon the validity of general arguments in proof of the apparent competency, veracity, and impartiality of the ancient historians; on the contrary, we may, in almost all cases, appeal to unquestioned facts, supporting the affirmative side of such questions. ”

“ When the discrepancies of manuscripts of an author are such as materially to affect the sense of a passage in itself important, so as to demand the exercise of discrimination on the part of the student of history, it becomes necessary to understand, and to bear in mind, what were probably the most common sources of such diversities. The following may be named as the most common causes of the various readings which are met with in comparing several copies of the same ancient author. ”

“ Knowing from experience, that Works upon Antiquities, described in language cold as the marbles they illustrate, are not of deep interest to the general reader, the Author has, therefore, avoided the usual frigid style, and has consequently placed around them such fervent, and glowing words, as their novel characters have authorized and demanded. ”

“ If therefore an historical work displays a healthy vigour of intellect—good sense—elevation of sentiment, and the specific talent for narration, these qualities may safely be held to afford a strong presumptive proof of the author’s veracity, even though there should be no direct means of ascertaining his moral dispositions, or his integrity. Those writers who occupy a first rank among ancient historians may therefore safely be held to possess this presumptive proof of their veracity ”

“ For it is certain that nothing less than a high degree, as well of technical correctness, as of professional integrity, on the part of those who practised this craft, could have conveyed the text of ancient authors through a period—in some instances—of two thousand years, with alterations so trivial as are those which, for the most part, are found actually to have taken place. ”

“ It is also quite as credible as many of the stories concerning the early history of the heroes of ancient history and fable, which are thought worth recording by every author who writes of Greece and Rome, and are read by every child with wonder. ”

“ Poetry struggled for expression and the romantic adventures of the real men and women of the time stimulated imagination to the production of tales and romances. For historical information and for literary models the writers looked to the great authors of a previous age, and attention was given to the copying of such remains of ancient literature as had survived the fall of the old civilization. Practically every manuscript that we have of the ancient authors is the salvage from some old library of a mediæval monastery. ”

“ There are moreover qualities of style which, though [Pg 106] they may not entitle an author to a place in the first rank of writers, must secure for him a high regard as an authentic historian. Indeed, in this department of literature, those less brilliant and less attractive qualities which give security as to an historian’s diligence, accuracy, and impartiality, may well be accepted in place of the brighter recommendations of genius, or eloquence, or powers of description. ”

“ With ourselves, the instantaneous diffusion of books through all ranks of the community, places a modern author too nearly in the presence of his contemporaries to allow him to think much of posterity. ”

“ He that believes the Ancient Greeks and Romans to have been the greatest Masters of the Art of Writing that have ever yet appeared, will read them as his Instructors, will copy after them, will strive to imitate their Beauties, and form his Stile after their Models, if he proposes to himself to be excellent in that Art himself: All which Things will be neglected, and he will content himself to read them in their Translations, to furnish his Mind with Topicks of Discourse, and to have a general Notion of what these Ancient Authors say, if he thinks he may be equally excellent a nearer Way. ”

“ A sixth Rule is, That as the Style ought to be natural, clear, and elegant, it should have some peculiar relish of the Ancient Fashion of Writing. Parables in those times were frequently us'd, as they are still by the Eastern Nations; Philosophical Questions, Ænigma's, &c. and of this we find Instances in the Sacred Writings, in Homer, Contemporary with King David, in Herodotus, in the Greek Tragedians; this piece of Antiquity is imitated by Virgil with great judgment and discretion: He has propos'd one Riddle which has never yet been solv'd by any of his Commentators. ”

“ So that whereas the ancients could acquire glory in a thousand ways, we can only attain it by one single avenue, after much more exertion than formerly.
"The books of the ancients alone survive this universal shipwreck of all later writings. Their fame is established and confirmed; they are diligently and repeatedly read, and are made the subject of careful study. And it is noteworthy that a modern book, if intrinsically equal to any of the ancient writings, would rarely, if ever, give its readers as much pleasure as the ancient work. ”

“ VIRGIL
Against some of the Reflexions of Monsieur Fontanelle.
S the Writings of greatest Antiquity are in Verse, so of all sorts of Poetry, Pastorals seem the most Ancient; being form'd upon the Model of the First Innocence, and Simplicity, which the Moderns, better to dispence themselves from imitating, have wisely thought fit to treat as Fabulous, and impracticable; and yet they, by obeying the unsophisticated Dictates of Nature, enjoy'd the most valuable Blessings of Life ”

“ but if it be well considered, the praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living. ”

“ A Man ought to be well assur'd of his own Abilities, before he attack an Author of establish'd Reputation. If Mr. F. had perus'd the fragments of the Phænician Antiquity, trac'd the progress of Learning thro' the Ancient Greek Writers, or so much as Consulted his Learned Country-Man Huetius, he would have found, (which falls out unluckily for him) that a Chaldæan Shepherd discover'd to the Ægyptians and Greeks the Creation of the World. And what Subject more fit for such a Pastoral, than that Great Affair which was first notified to the World by one of that Profession? ”

“ To these men the rediscovery of ancient literature came like a revelation, disclosing to their wondering eyes a splendid vision of the antique world, such as the cloistered student of the Middle Ages never dreamed of under the gloomy shadow of the minster and within the sound of its solemn bells. ”

“ While, in studying the great writers of antiquity, we are not only learning to understand the ancient mind, but laying in a stock of wise thought and observation, still valuable to ourselves; and at the same time making ourselves familiar with a number of the most perfect and finished literary compositions which the human mind has produced—compositions which, from the altered conditions of human life, are likely to be seldom paralleled, in their sustained excellence, by the times to come. ”

“ Notwithstanding that the period in which he flourished was remarkable for its number of men, who, by their genius and learning revived the golden ages of ancient literature, he was admitted by all to be without his equal, be it in erudition or intellect, power of writing or intimacy with Latin. ”

“ What is obvious in that ancient literature is the belief in a complete circle of correspondences between every root sound in the human voice and elements, forms and colours, and that the alphabet was sacred in character. Intuitions which modern psychologists regard as evidence of decadence are found present in the literature of antiquity. ”

“ And it yet fills me with wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best: whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once ”

“ But biography in our sense—the complete writing of a life year by year with dates and documents—was never practised at all in antiquity. Think of the Gospels, of the Acts, even of Tacitus's Life of Agricola. They are different one from another, but they are all unlike any modern biography in their resolute indifference to anything like completeness. Ancient "Lives" as a rule select a few great deeds, a few great sayings or discourses; they concentrate upon the last years of their subject and often especially upon his death. ”

“ Nothing is studied but the learning of the Ancients. The examination halls, with their ten thousand cells, witness only the writing of useless essays or impotent poems on some classic theme. Proficiency in the study of neither science, law, medicine, language, theology nor art is tested within their gloomy enclosures, but simply the ability to compose a stilted sentence in ancient style. ”

“ We figure the Ancient Country-men like our own, leading a painful Life in Poverty and Contempt, without Wit, or Courage, or Education: But Men had quite different Notions of these things, for the first four Thousand Years of the World ”

“ The symbol of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. ”

“ The discovery that the writings of the ancient world were filled with a genuine vitality and virility, and that the old authors had dealt with world problems in a profound and masterly fashion, and with far more vision than had ever been possible for the mediævalists, gave rise to an eager desire and enthusiasm for the classics that went beyond all bounds. ”

“ In order to appreciate the poetry of antiquity, it is necessary to take into consideration the religious ideas which lie at its root, which also in the course of their development have determined the character alike of ancient literature and art ”

“ Even those venerable works which bear the names of some of the greatest of ancient Greek and Roman writers, and which have been accepted by generation after generation, down to modern times, as stores of unquestionable truth, have been compelled by scientific criticism, after a long battle, to descend to the common level, and to confess to a large admixture of error. ”

“ But now the proof which establishes the general authenticity of ancient historians, and which demonstrates that their writings are, in the main, what they profess to be—that is—genuine narratives of events, composed and published in the age to which they are usually assigned, carries with it, by implication, a proof of the genuineness of other remains of ancient literature. ”

“ The facts referred to in the preceding chapters belong in common to ancient books of all classes, and they tend to prove that the works of the Greek and Roman writers—poets, dramatists, philosophers, critics, and historians—which issued from the press in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, may, by means of various and independent evidence, be infallibly traced up to the age in which they are commonly supposed to have been written. ”

“ If those works which we believe to be genuine are not so in fact, we may be said to hold all the blessings of social and intellectual advancement by a forged title. For on such a supposition the first stock, or the rudiment of our advantages has sprung from a mass of fabrications. No one entertains such a supposition; and yet it must be admitted if any general objections are to be allowed to disparage the mode in which ancient literature has been transmitted to modern times. ”

“ A full and exact communication of facts has come to be valued more highly than any mere beauties of style; at least, no beauties of style are allowed to atone for palpable deficiencies in matters of fact. The moderns must be taught—and pleased; but the ancients would be pleased, and taught. Ancient writers, and historians not less than others, seem to have formed their notions of prose composition very much upon the model of poetry, which, in most languages, was the earliest kind of literature. ”

“ Were this the only gain to be derived from a knowledge of the ancients, it would already place the study of them in a high rank among enlightening and liberalizing pursuits. It is of no use saying that we may know them through modern writings. We may know something of them in that way; which is much better than knowing nothing. But modern books do not teach us ancient thought; they teach us some modern writer s notion of ancient thought. ”

“ But reasons of still greater moment recommend the subject of the following pages to the attention of the reader; for it is certain that every one, whether or not [Pg 5] he is contented to admit, without inquiry, the authenticity of profane history, has the highest personal concern in the truth of that particular portion of ancient history with which the Christian religion is connected; and, therefore, every one should think himself bound to convince himself of the genuineness of the books in which its principles are contained. ”

“ But this impropriety, it is presumed, will disappear, when it is declared that these poems are presented to your Ladyship, not as labours of art, but as effusions of nature, showing the first efforts of ancient genius, and exhibiting the customs and [Pg 2] opinions of remote ages: of ages that had been almost lost to memory, had not the gallant deeds of your illustrious ancestors preserved them from oblivion.
No active or comprehensive mind can forbear some attention to the reliques of antiquity. ”