The Sun.
London, England, 1854-01-23 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, JANUARY 23, 1854.

SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON'S

INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

(Front the Edinburgh Adrertb9er.)

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart., D.C.L., M.P.,
Honorary President of the Associated Societies of the
University, delivered his inaugural address on Wednesday
night, iu the Queen-street Hall. These Societies—the
Dialectic, Diagnostic, Scots Law, and Huntarian Medical
institutedjor the cultivation of oratory, literature, and
science aro of long standing, and include among their mem-
bers many of the most eminent Scotchmen of the day. As
Associated Societies they now for the first time recognise
a common president—Sir E. B. Lytton being the first to
occupy that distinguished position. The honourable
baronet was elected last year by the almost unanimous
voice of the society, Mr. Disraeli having, for par titular
reasons declined the honour, and the Duke of Argyll, who
was nominated in opposition to Sir E. B. Lytton, having
withdrawn in his favour.

The hall, on Wednesday evening, was tastefully de-
corated with emblems of Scotland's nationality. Over the
platform was hung a banner displaying the Scottish Lion,
which was also rampant in front of the gallery ; and the
rostrom bore the symbol of the Thistle, with the motto,
" NETCIO me impune lacossit." The hall was crowded to
overflowing. The societies had invited the elite of the
citizens to be present on the occasion : and certainly we
have seldom witnessed in the city of Edinburgh so dis-
tinguished a gathering of fair ladies and great men. Sir
Edward, on entering the hall, was greeted with loud and
prolonged cheering, the whole company standing. The
honourable baronet was conducted to the platform by the
chairman of his election committee and the secretary of the
Associated Societies ; and accompanied by the Earl of
Kintore, Lord Robertson, Lord Curriehill, Lord Deas, Sir
Archibald Alison, Bart., the Hon. the Lord Advocate, Mr.
Stirling, of Keir, M.P., Mr. Cowan, M.P. for the city, tho
Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, Bishop Terrot, the Rev.
Dr. Grant, the Rev. Dr. Guthrie, the Rev. R. W. Fraser,
Professors Pillans, Syme, Simpson, Gregory, Menzies, More,
Balfour, Bennett, R. Lee, M'Dougall, Blackey, Aytoun,
Kelland, and Swinton, Captain Blackwood, Mr. John
Blackwood, Mr. Robert Chambers, &c. Among the ladies
and gentlemen in the hall, we observed—Lady Anne and
Lady Caroline Charteris, Lady Emma Campbell, Lady
Camilla Sinclair, Sir Robert and Lady Arbuthnot, Sir W.
and Lady Trevelyan, Sir John and Lady Lady
Alison and Miss Alison, Sir J. D. Elphinstone, Bart., Sir
George Sinclair and the Misses Sinclair, the Rev. Dr.
Simpson, the Rev. Dr. Crawford, &c. Letters of apology
for absence had been received from the Marquis of Lothian,
the Lord Justice-Clerk, Lord Rutherfurd, Lord Murray,
Sir Wm. Hamilton, Bart., Sir David Brewster, Mr.
Macaulay, M.P., Colonel Mure of Caldwell, M.P., &c-
After silence had been restored,

The LORD ADVOCATE, who on rising was loudly cheered
said—The task which devolves upon me to-night, though a
very gratifying, is, I am happy to say, a very easy one. I
have been asked by the gentlemen to whom we owe this
meeting, as one of their number, to introduce to you Sir
Edward Bulwer Lytton—(cheers)—a most superfluous
duty, as I think his name would of itself be a sufficient
introduction to the admiration and respect of any audience
in the world where the English language is understood
(Cheers.) I am quite sure that you, whom his writings
have delighted and instructed, need no other ; and, there-
fore, I would rather assume the duty of saying one sen-
tence of welcome and of thanks—(cheers)—of welcome—
of hearty and honest welcome—of so distinguished a visi-
tor to our ancient town—(cheers)- of welcome to so great
a master of the spell of genius, under whose wand our
hearts have beat so often, and whose magic has cheered so
many a toil-worn spirit under its load, and thrown its
sunny rays over so many an hour of leisure—(cheers)—and
of thanks for the prompt and ready response which he has
given to the request which was made to him from the body
that I represent, and the kind and generous feeling that
has urged him, at this season of the year, to take so long a
journey to show his interest in the progress of literature
and science in the capital of Scotland, in our academical
studies, and in those who are most deeply engaged in them.
(Loud cheers.) I shall not do more, by way of preface, to
delay you from hearing the address which he will deliver
to you to-night. I can only say that we return him our
heartfelt thanks, and we shall be proud if, as I am sure
will be the case, our meeting tends to give a fresh impulse
to the ardour of youthful study, and to bind the students
of our University in a union still more close than any they
have hitherto enjoyed. (Cheers.)
Sir EDWARD BULWER LYTTON then came forward, and
was greeted with enthusiastic and prolonged applause. He
said—Gentlemen, I may well feel overcome by the kind-
ness with which you receive me, for I cannot disentangle
my earliest recollections from my sense of intellectual obli-
gations to the genius of Scotland. The first poets who
charmed me from play in the half-holidays of school were
Campbell and Scott—the first historians who clothed, for
me, with life, tie shadows of the past, were Robertson and
Hume—the first philosopher, who, by the grace of his
attractive style, lured me on to the analysis of the human
mind, was Dugald Stewart—and the first novel that I
bought with my own money and hid under my pillow, was
the "Roderick Random" of Smollett. (Applause.) So, when
later, in a long vacation from my studies at Cambridge, I
learned the love for active adventure, and contracted the
habit of self-reliance by solitary excursions on foot, my
staff in my hand and my knapsack on my shoulders, it was
towards Scotland that I instinctively bent my way, as if
to the nursery ground from which had been wafted to my
mind the first germs of those fertile and fair ideas, which,
after they have come to flower upon their native soil, re-
turn to seed, and are carried by the winds, we know not
whither, calling up endless diversities of the same plant,
according to the climate and the ground to which they are
borne by chance. (Applause.) Gentlemen, this day I
visited, with Professor Aytoun, the spot on which, a mere
lad, obscure, and alone, I remember to have stood one
starlight night in the streets of Edinburgh, gazing across
what was then a deep ravine, upon the picturesque out-
lines of the Old Town, all the associations which make
Scotland so dear to romance, and so sacred to learning,
rushing over me with tumultuous pleasure ; her stormy
history, her enchanting legends—wild tales of witchcraft
and fairyland—of headlong chivalry and tragic love—all
contrasting, yet all uniting, with the renown of schools
famous for patient erudition and tranquil science. I re-
member how I then wished that I could have found some
tie in parentage or blood to connect me with the great
people in whose capital I stood a stranger. (Applause.)
That tie which birth denied to me, my humble labours,
and your generous kindness, have at last bestowed ; and
the stranger in your streets stands to-day in this
crowded hall, proud to identify his own career with the
hopes and aspirations of the youth of Scotland. (Great
applause.) Gentlemen—when I turn to what the
analogous custom of other Universities renders my duty
upon this occasion, and offer some suggestions that may
serve as hints in your various studies, I feel literally over-
shadowed by the awe of the great names, all your own,
which rise high around me in ev, ry department of human
progress. It is not only the illustrious dead before whom
I have to bow—your wonted fir s do not live only in their
ashes. The men of to-day are worthy the men of yesterday.
(Applause.) A thousand rays of intellectual light are
I gathered and fused together in the varied learning of your
' distinguished Principal. (Applause.) The chivalry of
your glorious annals finds its new Tyrta3us in the vigorous
and rushing verse of Professor Aytoun. (Loud cheers.)
Your medical schools, in all their branches—pathology,
medical jurisprudence, surgery, anatomy, chemistry—
advance more and more to fresh honours under the presid-
ing names of Simpson—(loud applause)—Alison —(ap-
plause) Christison (applause)—G oodsir (applause)
Traill—(applause)—Syme—(applause) —and Gregory. (Ap-
plause. The general cause of education itself is identified
with the wide rei.ute of Professor Pillans. (Applause.)
Nature has added the name of Forbes to the list of those
who have not only examined her laws but discovered her
secrets—(loud cheers)—while the comprehensive science of
Sir William Hamilton—(applause)—still corrects and ex-
tends the sublime chart that defines the immaterial uni-
verse of ideas. And how can I forget the name of one
man whose character and works must have produced the
most healthful influence over the youth of Scotland—com-
bining, as they do, in the rarest union, all that is tender
and graceful with all that is hardy and masculine—the
exquisite poet, the vigorous critic, the eloquent discourser,
the joyous comrade—the minstrel of the Isle of Palms--
the Christopher North of Maga ? (Loud and prolonged
cheering.) How I wish that the plaudits with which you
receive this inadequate reference to one so loved and
honoured might be carried to his ears, and assure him that
like those statues of the great Roman fathers in the well-
known passage of Tacitus,—if he be absent from the pro-
cession he is still more remembered by the assembly.
(Loud cheering.) And since I see around me many
who, though not connected with your college, are
yet interested in the learned fame of your capital, per-
mit me on this neutral ground to suspend all differences
of party, and do homage to the great orator and author,
whose luminous genius, whose scholastic attainments, those
independence of spirit, whose integrity of life so worthily
represent not only the capital, but the character of the
people who claim their countryman by descent in Macau-
lay. (Great applause.) When I think of those names,
and of many more which I might cite, if time would allow
me to make the catalogue of your living title-deeds to
fame, I might well shrink from the task before me ; but a
every man assists to a general illumination by placing a
single light at his own window, so, perhaps, my individual
experience may contribute its humble ray to the atmos-
phere which genius and learning have kindled into familiar
splendour. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, I shall first offer some
remarks upon those fundamental requisites which, no
matter what be etir peculiar studies, are essential to ex'

cellence in all of there. Nature indicates to the infant the
two main elements of wisdom ; nature herself teaches the
infant to observe and to inquire. You will have noticed
how every new object catches the eye of a young child—
how intuitively he begins to question you upon all that he
surveys—what it is ? what is it for ? how it came there ?
how is it made ? who made it ? Gradually, as he becomes
older, his observation is less vigilant, his curiosity less
eager. In fact, both faculties are often troublesome and
puzzling to those about him. He is told to attend to his
lessons, and not ask questions to which he cannot yet
understand the replies. Thus, his restless vivacity is
drilled into mechanical forms, so that often when we leave
school we observe less and inquiL e less than when we stood
at the knees of our mother in the nursery. But our first ob-
ject on entering upon youth, and surveying the great world
that spreads before us, should be to regain the earliest at-
tributes of the child. What were the instincts of the in-
fant are the primary duties of the student. His ideas be-
come rich and various in proportion as he observes—
accurate and practical in proportion as he inquires. The
old story of Newton observing the fall of the apple, and so
arriving, by inquiry, at the laws of gravity, will
occur to you all. But this is the ordinary process
in every department of intelligence. A man observes
more attentively than others had done something
in itself very simple. He reflects, tests his ob-
servation by inquiry, and becomes the discoverer,
the inventor ; enriches a science, improves a manu-
facture, adds a new beauty to the arts, or if engaged
in professional active life, detects, as a physician, the
secret cause of disease—extracts truth, as a lawyer, from
contradictory evidenbe—or grapples, 'as a statesman, with
the complicated principles by which nations flourish or de-
cay. In short, take with you-into all your studies this
leading proposition, that, whether in active life or in let-
ters and research, a man will always be eminent according
to the vigilance with which he observes, and the acuteness
with which he inquires. But this is not enough—some-
thing more is wanted—it is that resolute effort of the will
which we call perseverance. I am no believer in genius
without labour; but I do believe that labour, judiciously
and continuously applied, becomes genius in itself. Success
in removing obstacles, as in conquering armies, depends on
this law of mechanics—the greatest amount of force at
your command concentrated on a given point. If your
constitutional force be less than another man's, you equal
him if you continue it longer and concentrate it more. The
old saying of the Spartan parent to the son who complained
that his sword was too short, is applicable to everything
in life—" If your weapon is too short, add a step to it."
Dr. Arnold, the famous Rugby schoolmaster, said the dif-
ference between one boy and another was not so much in
talent as in energy. It is with boys as with men ; and per.
severance is energy made habitual. But I forget that I am
talking to Scotchmen ; no need to preach energy and per-
severance to them. Those are their national characteris-
tics. (A laugh,) Is there a soil upon earth from which
the Scotchman cannot wring some harvest for fortune ; or
one field of honourable contest on which he has not left
some trophy of renown? (Cheers.) We must now talk a
little upon books. Gentlemen, the objects and utilities of
reading are so various, that to suggest any formal rules
whereby to dictate its subjects and confine its scope, would
be to resemble the man in a Greek anecdote, who, in order
to improve his honey, cut off the wings of .his bees, and
placed before them the flowers his own sense found the
sweetest. No doubt, the flowers were the best he could
find on Hymettus, but, somehow or other, when the bees
had lost their wings they made no honey at all. Still,
while the ordinary inducement to reading is towards
general delight and general instruction, it is well in
youth to acquire the habit of reading with conscien-
tious toil for a special purpose. Whatever costs us
labour, braces all the sinews of the mind in the effort ;
and whatever we study with a definite object fixes a
much more tenacious hold on the memory than do the
lessons of mere desultory reading. If, for instance, you
read the history of the latter half of the last century, sim-
ply because some works on the subject are thrown in your
way ; unless your memory be unusually good, you will re-
tain but a vague recollection, that rather serves to dimi-
nish ignorance than bestow knowledge. But suppose, in
a debating society, that the subject of debate be the cha-
racter of Charles Fox, or the administration of Mr. Pitt,
and some young man gets up the facts of the time for the
special purpose of making an ample and elaborate speech
on the principles and career of either of those statesmen,
the definite purpose for which he reads, and the animated
object to which it is to be applied, will, in all probability,
fix what he reads indelibly in his mind ; and to the dry
materials of knowledge will be added the virida vi.s of
argument and reasoning. You see now, then, how wisely
the first founders of learning established institutions for
youth on the collegiate principle ; fixing the vague desire
for knowledge into distinct bounds, by lectures on chosen
subjects, and placing before the ambition of the student
the practical object of honourable distinction—a distinc-
tion, indeed, that connects itself with our gentlest affec-
tions, and our most lasting interests ; for honours gained
in youth pay back to our parents, while they are yet living,
some part of what we owe to their anxiety and care. And
whatever renown a university can confer abridges the road
to subsequent success, interests our contemporaries in our
career, and raises up a crowd eager to cheer on our first
maturer efforts to make a name. The friendships we form
at College die away as life divides us, but the honours we
gain there remain and constitute a portion of ourselves.
Who, for instance, can separate the fame of a Brougham
or a Mackintosh from the reputation they established at
the University of Edinburgh ? (Loud cheers.) The variety
of knowledge embraced in the four divisions, which are
here called faculties, allows to every one an ample choice,
according to the bias of each several mind, or the profes-
sion for which the student is destined. But there is one
twofold branch of humane letters in which the universities
of Scotland are so renowned that I must refer to it speci-
ally, though the reference must be brief. I mean moral
and metaphysical philosophy, which, in Edinburgh espe-
cially, has been allied to the Graces by the silver style of
Dugald Stewart and taken the loveliness which Plato
ascribes to virtue from the beautiful intellect of Browne.
Now, it would be idle to ask the general student to
make himself a profound metaphysician. You might as
well ask him to make himself a great poet. Both the one
and the other are born for their calling ; not made by our
advice, but their own irresistible impulse. But a liberal
view of the principal theories as to the formation of the
human mind, and the latent motives of human conduct, is
of essential service to all about to enter upon busy practi-
cal life. Such studies quicken our perceptions of error
and virtue, enlarge our general knowledge of mankind, and
enable our later experience to apply with order and method
the facts it accumulates. I need not remind those who
boast the great name of Chalmers—(cheers)—or who heard
the lectures of your Principal two years ago, that Moral
Philosophy is the handmaid of Divinity. She is also the
sister of Jurisprudence, and the presiding genius of that
art in which you are so famous, and which, in order to
heal the body, must often prescribe alteratives to the
mind—more especially in these days, when half our dis-
eases come from the neglect of the body iu the overwork
of the brain. In this railway ago the wear and tear of
labour and intellect go on without pause or self-pity. We
live longer than our forefathers, but we suffer more from
a thousand artificial anxieties are cares. They fatigued
only the muscles; we exhaust the finer strength of the
nerves ; and when we send impatiently to the doctor, it is
ten to one but what he finds the acute complaint, which
is all that we perceive, connected with some chronic men-
tal irritation, or some unwholesome inveteracy of habit.
Here, then, the physician, accustomed to consider how
mind acts upon body, will exercise with discretion the
skill that moral philosophy has taught him. Every one
knows the difference between two medical attendants,
perhaps equally learned in pharmacy and the routine of
the schools ; the one writes in haste the prescription we
may as well "throw to the dogs;" the other, by his sooth-
ing admonitions, his agreeable converse, cheers up the
gloomy spirits, regulates the defective habits, and often,
unconsciously to oueselves, " ministers to the mind dis-
eased, and plucks from the memory ,a rooted sorrow." (Ap-
plause.) And the difference between them is, that one has
studied our moral anatomy, and the other has only looked on '
us as mere machines of matter, to be inspected by a peep at
the tongue, and regulated by a touch of the pulse. And
in order to prove my sense of the connection between
moral and metaphysical philosophy and practical pa-
thology, and to pay a joint compliment to the two
sciences for which your College is so pre-eminent, I here,
as a personal favour to myself, crave permission of
the heads and authorities of the University to offer the
prize of a gold medal, for the current year, for the best
essay by any student on seine special subject implying the
connection I speak of, which may be selected in concert
with the various professors of your medical schools and
the profeFsers of metaphysics and moral philosophy. (Loud
applause.) Gentlemen—Allow me to preface the topic to
which I now turn by congratulating you on the acquisition
your scholarship has recently made in the accomplished
translator of eEcbylus, Professor Blackie—(applause)—who
appears to have thrown so much light on the ancient lan-
guage of the Greeks by showing its substantial identity
with the modern. (Applause.) I now proceed to impress
on you the importance of classical studies. I shall endea-
vour to avoid the sot phrases of declamatory panegyric
which the subject too commonly provokes But if those
studies appear to you cold and tedious, the fault is in the
languor with which they are approached. Do you think
that the statue of ancient art is but a lifeless marble ?
Animate it with your own young breath, and instantly it
lives and glows. Greek literature, if it served you with
nothing else, should excite your curiosity as the picture of
a wondrous state of civilisation which, in its peculiar
phases, the world can never see again, and yet from which
every succeeding state of ciyilisatio4 has borrowed its

liveliest touches. If you take it first as a mere record of
events—if you examine only the contest between the Spar-
tans and the Athenians—the one as the representative of
duration and order, the other of change and progress both
pushed to the extreme—there instantly rise before you, in
the noblest forms—through the grandest illustrations of
history —through the collision of characters at once human
and heroic—there instantly, I say, rise before you lessons
which may instruct every age, and which may especially
guide the present. For co closely does Grecian history
bear on the more prominent disputes in our own day, that
it is not only full of wise saw::, but still more of modern
instances. I pass by this view of the political value
of Grecian literature, on which I could not well en-
large without, perhaps, provoking party differences,
to offer some remrirks, purely critical, and for which I
bespeak your indulgence if I draw too largely on your
time. Every professor who encourages the young to
the study of the classics, will tell them how those ancient
masterpieces have served modern Europe with models to
guide the taste and excite the emulation. But here let us
distinguish what we should mean when we speak of them
as models--we mean no check to originality—no cold and
sterile imitation, more especially of form and diction. The
pith and substance of a good English style—be it simple
and severe, be it copious and adorned—must still be found
in the nervous strength of our native tongue. (Applause.)
We need not borrow from Greek or Roman the art that
renders a noble thought transparent to the humblest under-
standing, or charms the fastidious ear with the varying
music of elaborate cadence. The classic authors are models
in a more comprehensive sense. They teach us less how to
handle words than how to view things ; and first, let us
recognise the main characteristic of the literature of Greece.
The genius of Greek letters is essentially social and hit-
mane. Far from presenting us with a frigid and austere
ideal, it deals with the most vivid passions, the largest
interests common to the mass of mankind. In this sense
of the word it is practical—that is, it connects itself with
the natural feelings, the practical life of men under all
forms of civilisation. That is the reason why it is so dur-
able—it fastens hold of sympathy and interest in every
nation and every age. Thus Homer is immeasurably the
most important poet the world ever knew. The Iliad ds
constructed from materials with which the natural human
heart has the most affinity. Our social instincts interest
us on both sides, whether in the war of the Greeks aven-
ging the desecration of the marriage hearth, or the doom of
the Trojans, which takes all its pathos from the moment
we see Hector parting from Andromache, and unbinding
his helmet that it may not terrify his child. Homer makes
no attempt at abstract subtle feelings with which few ca
sympathise. He takes terror and pity from the most po-
pular springs of emotion—valour, love, patriotism, domes-
tic affections— the struggle of Man with fate—the contrast,
as in Achilles, between glorious youth and early death—
between headlong daring and passionate sorrow; the con-
trast, as in Priam, between all that gives reverence to
the king and all that moves compassion for the man.
Homer knows no conventional dignity; his heroes weep—
his goddesses scold—(a laugh)—Hector himself knows
fear, and we do not respect him the less, though we
love him more, when his heart sinks and his feet fly before
Achilles. So essentially human is Homer, that it is said
that he first created the Greek gods—that is, he clothed
what before were vague phantoms with attributes familiar
to humanity, and gave them the power of divinities, with
the forms and hearts of men. (Applause.) Civilisa' ion
advances, but the Greek literature still preserves this spe-
cial character of humanity, and each succeeding critic still
incorporates his genius with the actual existence and warm
emotions of the crowd. £schylus strides forth from the
field of Marathon, to give voice to the grand practical
ideas that influenced his land and times. He represents
the apotheosis of freedom, and the (lawn of p`iilosophy
through the mists of fable. Thus, in the victory hymn
of the " The Persae," he (haunts the defeat of Xerxes ;
thus, in the " Seven before Thebes," he addresses an audi-
ence still hot from the memories of war, in words that
rekindle its passions and re-echo its clang ; thus again, in
the wondrous myth of the "Prometheus Bound," he piles
up the fragments of primeval legend with a Titan's hand,
storming the very throne of Zeus with assertions of the
liberty of intellectual force, as opposed to the authority of
force. In lEschylus, there is always the very form and
pressure of an age characterised by fierce emotions, and
the tumult of new ideas struggling for definite expression.
(Applause.) Sophocles no less commands an everlasting
audience by genial sympathy with the minds that thought,
and the hearts that beat, in his own day. The stormy
revolution of thought that succeeded the Persian war had
given way to a milder, but no less manly, period of serene
intelligence. The time had come in which what we call
"The Beautiful" developed its ripe propdrtious. A senti-
ment of order, of submission to the gods—a desire to em-
bellish the social existence secured by victorious war—
pervaded the manners and inspired the gentle emulation.
All this is reflected in the calm splendour of Sophocles•
It seems a type of the difference between the two that
.Eschylus—a bearded man—had fought at Marathon, and
Sophocles—in the bloom of youth—had tuned his harp to
the pecans that circled round the trophies of Salamis.
The Prometheus of Aschylus is a vindication of human
wisdom, made with the sublime arrogance of a Titan'a
pride. The tEdipus of Sophocles teaches its nothing
ness to Wisdom, and inflicts its blind punishment
upon Pride. But observe how both these great poets
inculcate the sentiment of Mercy as an element of tragic
grandeur, and how they both seek to connect that attri-
bute of humanity with the frame of their native land.
Thus it is to Athens that the Orestes of /Eschylus comes
to expiate his parricide—it is the tutelary goddess of the
Athenians that pleads in his cause, and reconciles the
Furies to the release of their hunted victim. But still
more impressively does Sophocles inculcate and adorn
this lesson of beautiful humanity. It is not only amidst
the very grove of the Furies that tEdipus finds the peace-
ful goal of his wanderings—but round that grove itself
the poet has lavished all the loveliest images of his fancy.
There, in the awful ground of the ghastly sisters, the
Nightingales sing under the ivy—there blooms the Nar-
cissus—there smiles the olive—there spring the fountains
that fed Cephisus. Thus terror itself he surrounds with
beauty, and the nameless grace of the outlawed
tEdipus becomes the guardian of the benignant
state, which gave the last refuge to his woes. (Ap-
plause.) A few years more and a new phase of civilisation
developes itself in Athens. To that sentiment for the
beautiful which in itself discovers the good, succeeds
the desire to moralise and speculate. The influence of
women on social life is more admitted—statesmen and
sages gather round Aspasia—love occupies a larger space
in the thoughts of men, and pity is derived from gentler,
perhaps from more effeminate, sources. This change
Euripedes-- no less practical than his predecessors in repre-
senting the popular temper of his age—this change, I say,
Euripedes comes to depict in sententious aphorisms, in
scholastic casuistry, accompanied, however, with the ten-
derest pathos, and enlisting that interest for which he is
ridiculed by Aristophanes—the interest derived from con-
jugal relations and household life—the domestic interest—
it is this which has made him of all the Greek dramatists
the most directly influential in the modern stage. And it
is Euripedes who has suggested to the classic tragedy of
Italy and France two-thirds of whatever it possesses of
genuine tenderness and passion. Ina word the Greek drama
is not that marble perfection of artistic symmetry which it
has toooften been represented to be, but a flesh and blood
creation,identifying itself with the emotions most prevalent
in the multitudes it addressed, and artificial rather by con-
ventions derived from its religious origin than by any very
deep study of other principles of art than those which sym-
pathy with human nature teaches instinctively to the
poet. The rules prescribed to the Greek dramatist, such
as the unities, were indeed few, and elementary, belonging
rather to the commencement of art than to its full deve
lopment. There are few critics now-a-days, for instance,
who will not recognise a higher degree of art in Shakspeare,
when he transports his willing audience over space and
time, and concentrates in Macbeth the whole career of
guilty ambition, from its first dire temptation to its
troubled rise and its bloody doom, than there can be in
any formal rule which would have sacrified for dry recital
the vivacity of action, and crowded into a day what Shak-
speare expands throughout a life. In fine, then, these
Greek poets became our models —not as authorities for pe-
dantic laws, not to chill our invention by unsubstantial
ideals or attempts to restore to life the mere mummies of
antiquity—but rather, on the contrary, to instruct us that
the writer who most faithfully represents the highest and
fairest attributes of his own age has the best chance of an
audience in posterity; and that whatever care we take as ,
to the grace or sublimity of diction, still the diction itself
can only be the instrument by which the true poet would
refine or exalt what ?—why, the feelings most common to
the greatest number of mankind. (Applause.) We have
heard too much about the calm and repose of classic art.
It is the distance from which we take our survey that does
not allow us to distinguish its force and its passion. Thus
the rivulet, when near, seems more disturbed than the
ocean beheld afar off. At the distance of two thousand
years, if we do not see all the play of the waves, it is be-
cause we do not stand on the beach. (Applause.) The
same practical identification with the intellectual attri-
butes of their age which distinguished the poetry, no less
animates the prose of the ancient Greeks. The narratives
of Herodotus, so simple yet so glo wing, were read to immense
multitudes—now exciting their wonder by tale and legend
—now gratifying their curiosity by accounts of barbarian
customs—now inflaming their patriotism by minute details
of the Persian myriads that exhausted rivers on their march,
and graphic anecdotes of the Grecian men, whom the
Medes at Marathon saw rushing into the midst of their
spears, or whom the scout of Xerxes found dressing their
hair for the festival of battle in the glorious pass of
Thermopyho, No loom does the gmer mind of 134c.i.