The Sun.
London, England, 1842-12-13 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

HISTORY of the MANNERS and -CUSTOMS of
ANCIENT GREECE. 3 Vols.
BentLy, London. 1843.
In a beautiful and affecting dedication to his
son, which it is impossible to peruse without.
emotion, Mr. St. John, to whom we are indebted
for these volumes, gives us to understand that
the subject of them has more or less occupied his
attention fur upwards of eighteen years; and,
notwithstanding the vast labour expended on it,
and the various and extensive research it has re-
quired, that it has been throughout a delightful
occupation, which he takes leave of with un-
feigned regret, as being associated with some of
the happiest hours of • his life. We can readily
believe that the work has been a labour of love;
indeed, the proofs of this are visible in every
page; and we know not which most to admire,
the profound learning of the au hor, and
the wine range of his inquiries, or the fine
classical enthusiasm that imparts interest
to his abstrusest speculations. Perhaps there is
no other scholar of the day, with the sole excep-
tion of Bishop Thirlwall, so every way qualified
to do justice to a work like the present, as Mr.
St. John. In addition to his familiar acquaint-
ance with the most glorious language in the
world, and his uncommon powers of patient and
continuous application, he has been a thoughtful
and observant traveller through every part of,
Greece ; he has mused on the plain of Marathon;
he has read the " Iliad"' on the site of ancient
Troy, and the " Odyssey," while wandering, like
its hero—" qui mores hominum multorum vidit,
et urbes "—among the islands of the Archipe-
lago; he has been a resident in the famed vale of
Tempe; hasdiligently explored the spot where the
oracular grove of Dodona once stood;' watched
many a summer and autumn sun set behind
Parnassus; and, passing into Egypt, with Hero-
dotus in his hand, has journeyed along the valley
of the Nile, investigated the gigantic ruins of
Thebes and emphis, and stood on the shores
of that singular sheet of water which the old
Greek historian has described with such minute-
ness. With his literary stores thus enriched,
enlarged, and pointed—if we may use such a
term—by personal acquaintance with the scenes
most celebrated in Greek tradition, history, and
mythological fable, Mr. St. John has, at a
mature age, when the intellectual faculties are
all in full vigour, embodied the results of his
extensive reading mid experience in the vo-
lumes before us, which—though they may not
circulate with the rapidity of the " last new no-
vel "—will most assuredly win the author a
foremost rank amongst the scholars of the age.
Mr. St. John commences his work by some
general reflections on the subject of the ancient
Greek character as modified by the institutions
Of the country, in the course of which, alluding
cursorily to Athens, he describes her as " the
wisest and noblest of Grecian States," and adds,
"she was the great preceptress of mankind. The
spirit of her laws, transmitted through those of
Rome, still pervades the whole civilized world.
Her wisdom and her arts form, in all polished
communities, a principal object of study, and to
comprehend and enjoy them, is to be a gentle-
man." This is justly and forcibly urged. The
study of Greek literature and Greek art is in-
deed one of the chief intellectual requisites of
the gentleman, for it is a pursuit which—more
than any other with which we are acquainted—
refines the taste, strengthens the judgment, en-
riches the fancy, purifies the feelings, and im-
parts an elevated tone to thought. The most
perfect specimens of almost every species of
excellence are to be found among the
orators, dramatists, poets, philosophers, so-
phists, and historians of ancient Greece; while,
as regards their sculpture and architecture, we
are content to follow in their footsteps at an hum-
ble d stance, frankly acknowledging our own
vast inferiority, and admitting them to be the
greatest masters of the arts of design that the
world has ever seen. This, however, is viewing
the question in an unworldly light. Regarding it.
in a more businesi4ike spirit—with an eye to
pounds, shillings, and pence—we should say that
the study of the arts and literature of Greece is
one that should never be taken up, except by
him who is perfectly independent in circumstan-
ces ; for it is, in a great degree, a thankless
and profitless pursuit—a mental luxury, not a
necessity—and, by the refinement of thought and
feeling that it tends to beget, incapacitates a man
for the rough wear and tear of life, and disables
him from coping, except at a manifest disadvan-
tage, with those hard, dry, matter-of-fact men of
business among whom his lot may chance to be
cast, and who have -no other notion of intellect
than that it is something by which to make
money, and who estimate it—as a tailor values
broad-cloth—solely according to its market-price.
In the earlier chapters of his work, Mr. St.
John discusses at considerable length the " Cha-
racter
of the Greeks"—their " Theory of Edu-
cation"—their " Nursery Tales"— their " Toys,
Sports, and Pastimes"—their " Elementary In-
struction"—and the " Exercises of their youth."
He' then proceeds to speak of their " Schools of
Philosophers and Sophists"—a masterly disqui-
sition, displaying infinite acuteness and cogency
of reasoning. The mode of teaching among
the Greeks," he truly observes, " differed very
materially from ours. It smrcely' seemed an
object with them to devour large quantities of
learning, but going leisurely again and again over
the same ground, they appeared to give the les-
sons they received time to -sink like gentle rain
into their minds." How different, and how far
inferior is the system of tuition at present in
vogue among us ! It is now the fashion to give
our youth a little of everything, and enough of
nothing. They bolt all languages and all sciences,
and digest none! They are taught a little botany
—a little mathematics—a little political economy
—a little classics—a little history—a little music
—and a little philosophy. They go—this is the
case in more than one school we could mention—
from the classical master direct to the singing
master, and from him to the mathematical mas-
ter, and the drawing-master; and all this within
the space of a few hours ! With heads full of
crotchets and quavers, they are set to solve a
problem in Euclid, or study the laws of Perspec-
tive ; and these lessons got through—God knows
howl—their attention is next directed to the best
mode of turning out their toes, and attitudiniz-
ing in the waltz or the gallopade ! The conse-
quence of all this is that their brain is a perfect
chaos; they become disqualified for habits of
sound, continuous study; and, haying got their
fill of " cheap knowledge," are sent forth into
the world Universal Geniuses—that is, pert,
presumptuous smatterers, fit only to contribute
to "
.Penny Gazettes" and " Cycloptedias."
We have no notion of a short cut to knowledge,
and have an utter contempt for the Hamiltonian
system, and the other educational systems of the
day. If a language or a science be worth know-
ing, it is worth knowing well :
" A little learning is a dangerous thing—
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."
In his chapter on " Hellemic Literature," which
is written throughout with uncommon care and
spirit, Mr. St. John evinces a critical perspicacity
which shows how thoroughly he appreciates the
peculiarities of the great writers of whom he
treats. Of Greek literature generally, he says,
" there is no excellence of thought or language
of which, even in its present fragmentary state,
it does not offer us some example. There is a
predominance, doubtless, of stern grandeur and
colossal elevation of thought; but, besides these,
we discover frequently modifications of light and
airy beauty, infantine purity of sentiment, ease,
grace, felicitous language, and a dreamy luxury
of speculation not to be outdone by the
most subtle and fanciful literature existing.
If there be a deficiency of anything, it is
of spirituality." Speaking of the Greek writers
as a body, we should be inclined to agree with
Mr. St. John that their genius is wanting in "spi-
rituality," by which, we presume, he means that
their thoughts, images, descriptions, &c., are
mostly of a material character, like the love-
songs of Sappho,* or the palpable, flesh-and-
blood portraits of Homer, where nothing is vague
or ideal, or left to . be shaped by the reader's
imagination. There is, however, a magnificent
exception to this rule in the " CEdipus Colo-
neus" of Sophocles, where, amid the solemn
depths of the consecrated grove, the awful voice
of Destiny is heard summonir, the old man to
his doom, from the presence of his bewildered
daughters. The imagination evinced in this sub-
lime passage is of the most spiritual character
possible, and the horrors of the scene just darkly
hinted at, instead of being shown in detail, are
left unassisted to work their legitimate effect on
the reader's fancy. We are glad to perceive that
our author strenuously insists on the unity of
Homer, in opposition to the ingenious but false

* We have always thought the famous frag-
ment of Sappho, (1121*-fat. p,ot XrivOc Mc OaOcriv,
greatly overrated as a love-song. It has no deli-
cacy—no depth of sentiment—nothing of ideal beauty
about it ; but is throughout grossly material in the
character of its genius ;—in fact, little more than a
minute catalogue of symptoms, such as a patient might
draw up for the guidance of a physician, whom she
wished to acquaint with the exact state of her case. We
have the throbbing of the bosom—the faltering of the
voice—the flutter of the pulse—the rush of strange
noises in the ear--the sleeplessness—and the sense of
sudden faintness ; but of the sentiment of the passion of
Love, we
.have not even a glimpse. How strikingly con-
trasted with this forcible but material ode, is Cole-
ridge's fine poem of " Genevieve," where the voluptuous
is blended with the spiritual in the nicest and most deli-
cate proportions

theories of those who maintain that he was not
one, but Legion. How any scholar could come
to such a conclusion, after attentively perusing
the " Iliad" and the " Odyssey," we cannot for
the life of us imagine ! The internal evidences
of unity in Milton are not stronger than those in
Homer, and we would just as readily believe
that a dozen poets clubbed their wits together to
build up " the lofty line" of " Paradise Lost,"
as that they combined to produce an Iliad. We
quote Mr. St. John's elegant and impassioned
criticisms on the genius of Homer and .Xschylus:
The object of poetry is to keep alive in the human
breast the love of whatever is noble and beautiful, to
dazzle the worldling from' the worship of gold by
showing him something more glorious than anything
that gold can purchase, to accomplish the apotheosis
of pure affection, of virtue, of disinterestedness, of
great passions, of patriotism,—and in Homer all this
is effected with a spontaneous energy, which like the
ocean appears equal to bear the whole weight of hu-
manity clothed with all its attributes upon its breast.
Greece has no poet worthy to be compared with our
Shakspeare and our Milton but Homer, who pos-
sesses some advantages over them both. Shakspeare,
buoyant and full of life as was his spirit, felt evidently
the waves of his imagination lapse at times from about
him and leave his mind stranded and bare on the
shores of the immeasurable universe. Melancholy
creeps over him, like a black vapour, concealing the
Titanian head wont to tower above the region of the
clouds. Even over Milton's soul, serene in its fiery
brightness as it usually is, I think I discover some-
thing which at times obscures his faith in himself and
human nature, and produces a flagging of the fancy.
Bia in Homer this never appears. Cheerfully and
joyously he pursues his course with eternal sunshine
on his brow, and a heart beating full and true, as if
the life of all the world were within him. There is
no end of his vitality. He seems as if he could never
grow old. His strength is inexhaustible. Equal to
whatever may happen, lie nowhere seems to be hur-
ried by his subject, or compelled to strain a nerve to
accomplish what he desires. In himself he appears
happy as a god, and only to sympathise in human suf-
fering from the boundlessness of his charity. He
comes forth as the sun in the morning, full of bright-
ness, showing all the tears that sprinkle the earth and
drying them too, but shedding none. We call him
old, though in reality he is all youthfulness and love.
Every function of life goes on harmoniously in his
frame. He enjoys whatever nature brings within the
circle of his experience. He drinks in with rapture
the freshness of dawn,—basks smilingly in the blaze
of noon,—welcomes the stillness of evening—the so-
lemn grandeur of night. Sleep, too, has for him in-
expressible charms, and on the pleasures we taste
among its bowers he has bestowed every grateful,
every endearing epithet. Milton is far more spiritual,
and careers in a course nearer the stars. Shakspeare,
in his metaphysical subtlety and yearning to pierce
beyond the grave, suggests stranger thoughts, and
calls up a wilder world of fancies. But Homer, as if
admitted behind the veil, never doubts for a moment.
Habitually, too, his thoughts are of action, of man as
he is, of the virtue of the citizen, of the soldier, of the
husband, of the father, of the son, of the wife. He
loved the world and all that it contains. His eye
could detect beauty where the atrabilious sceptic be-
holds nothing but deformity.

Hence the universal fame and admiration of his
writings. For, wherever a well-spring of delight
exists, the world will discover it and have recourse to
it for ever. The tragic poets who took up his mantle
differed widely from him both in temper and charac-
ter. The experiment of civilisation had been tried,
and been the cause of less happiness than at the outset
it seemed to promise. A spirit of dissatisfaction had
consequently grown up in society, which, shaken by
convulsions within and assaulted from without by
storms, appeared to be fast resolving into its original
elements. Upon the mind; of the tragic poets there
accordingly fell a gloomy shadow. They looked back-
wards and around them, and were saddened by the
view of terrible pictures which the dark pencil of Fate
was constantly filling up. The inexplicable influence
of events upon the inner organisation Of man had
caused them too, and their contemporaries equally, to
delight in gloom, in slaughter, in revenge, in exhibi-
tions of suffering, analogous in many cases to what
they beheld their countrymen inflict upon each other.
Observe the creations of Eschylus : in them, preg-
nant all with Miltonic haughtiness, energy, grandeur,
we already discover symptoms of profound discontent
with the character of actual existence, and an invin-
cible yearning towards the past. He seemed desirous
to haunt the imaginations of his contemporaries with
gigantic phantoms, quarried out of the wrecks of a
vanished ethical system, in which such greatness
found congeniality and sympathy. His ideas seemed
to clothe themselves spontaneously in language of
massive structure, like a Cyclopean wall, such as be-
fore or since no man ever used. He projected him- '
self by the force of meditation into the heroic spheres,
conversed there with mighty shades, acquired among
them stern principles of action, of thought, of belief,
of composition; and with these he sought to inspire
the men of his own time. His object seems less to
delight than to overawe, to persuade than to com-
mand. His ideas move along the highest arch of
imagination which spans the universe from pole to
pole, or rise out of a sea of darkness which they
illuminate for a moment like lightning flashes in their
passage.

The characters of Sophocles and Euripides are
drawn with equal animation ; but to Aristophan es
—whose inventive faculties were surely ofa high
ju
stice.
True, !—we hardly think our author does
True, he speaks highly of his genius, but we
cannot help fancying that his praises are wrung
from him, from a mere cold sense of duty. He
evidently cannot forgive the great comic dra-
matist his attack on Socrates. We have been
struck with the truth of this reflection, which
occurs incidentally in the criticism on Aris-
tophanes :—" There is a load of small malignity
and mischief in most mental constitutions, which,
if not expelled, might obstruct the healthful play
of the faculties. Mirth is the form it assumes in
its exit, and comedy is one of the means pro-
vided by nature for promoting its discharge."
Our author's estimate of Herodotus differs from
that entertained by most scholars ; but lie has
given reasons for the faith that is in him, and
these reasons are many of them cogent, if not
convincing. We cannot, however, coincide with
the remark that the Greek historian " narrates
like a prophet." To our thinking, he wants the
fervour, the earnestness, the austerity, and lofty
grandeur of the prophetic nature, and we agree
in opinion with Quinctilian, who des tribes him
as being an easy, flowing, frank, and plea-
surable writer. The criticism on Thucydides
is true to the letter ; and that on Xenophon is
scarcely less discriminating; of Isocrates—whom
Cicero so warmly admired—wehave but a glimpse,
in the shape of a brief, panegyrical sentence; but
Demosthenes is canvassed in detail, and his
claims to the possession of first-rate powers of
argument and eloquence insisted on with infinite
emphasis. "He is neither draped, nor painted,"
observes Mr. St.' John, "nor adorned; but a
naked colossus whose sublimity springs from the
greatness and perfection of its proportions. Other
orators persuade, Demosthenes enforces convic-
tion. They who listen to him, have no choice—
they must believe. The spirit of the old demo-
cratic constitution breathes through all his pe-
riods." With the criticism on this unrivalled
orator our author concludes bis chapter on " Hel-
lenic Literature ;" but we could have wished that
he had given Lucian a niche in his Gallery of
Worthies; for though he lived in the days of
Marcus Antoninus, when Greece had long since
sunk into insignificance, yet he was a perfect
Greek in his elastic animal spirits, though a Sy-
rian by birth; full of racy wit, or rather humour;
pungent and sarcastic when he pleased; fertile
in invention; and master of a neat, lucid, suc-
cinct style, that at times displays an elegance not
unworthy of the best days of Greece.
The chapters devoted to the consideration of
the domestic life and manners of the Greeks--
of the modes of farming in use among them—of
their trades and tradesmen—of their household
slaves—poor-law system—foreign commerce—
marriage and funeral ceremonies— theatrical
entertainments, &c.—furnish a world of curious
and interesting information; and still more en-
tertaining are those portions of the work which
relate to the social position and influence of mar-
ried and unmarried. women. Having thus briefly
glanced at some of the leading excellencies of
the volumes, we proceed, as in duty bound, to
point out what appears to us to be their defects.
In the first place, then, Mr. St. John lays far too
much stress on the authority of Mitford, who,
though a painstaking, was a prejudiced historian,
and wrote upon the Grecian democracies in the
spirit of an English Tory aristocrat. We do not
forget this gentleman's character of Demosthe-
nes, one of the most unfair and invidious ever
penned; and we think that our author's usual saga-
city is at fault when he styles hint " a very dis-
tinguished historian." In the next place, the
original terminations of os, instead of us, which
Mr. St. John invariably gives to his Greek sir•
names, wear somewhat of a pedantic appearance,
more especially when—as in the case of the word
" Phcebos"—he translates the first syllable, and
leaves the second Just as it stands in the ori-
ginal. We scarcely recognise our old familiar
friend, Telemachus, under his new cognomen of
" Telemachos;" and feel inclined to ask what
crime King Admetus has been guilty of, that he
should be disguised under the alias of " Admetos."
Thirdly, our author's style is occasionally some-
what florid, and his reasoning, in one or two
critical places, is encumbered, rather titan as-
sisted, by his exuberant metaphors. But these
are trivial blemishes—mere specks in the sun—,
regarded as a whole, the work is one of command-