CXL. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. HEN we are dull we run to music. I am sure you must be dull enough after so much of history and of politics. My Pericles can discover portents in Macedonia and Italy: Anaximander could see mountains in the moon. I desire to cast my eyes no farther than to Miletus. Take your harp. ODE TO MILETUS. Maiden1 there was whom Jove Illuded into love, Happy and pure was she; Glorious from her the shore became, And Helle lifted up her name To shine eternal o'er the river-sea. And many tears are shed Upon thy bridal-bed, Star2 of the swimmer in the lonely night! Who with unbraided hair Wipedst a breast so fair, Bounding with toil, more bounding with delight. [1 Europa.] [2 "Only do thou let some lamp upon thy tower shine out through the darkness, that seeing it, I, like love's mariner, may steer my way towards that star."-Museus, Hero and Leander, 210. "But at the door she silently embraced her panting lover, his hair yet dripping with the sea-foam's dew, and leading him within, she wiped his breast and anointed him with oil sweet scented with the rose, and put away the odour of the sea."-Ib., 260.] But they whose prow hath past thy straits Even from the altar raise their eyes, At last there swells the hymn of praise.. Hail then, Miletus ! hail beloved town But let not power alone be thy renown Nor visits of the Gods, unless They leave their thoughts below, Restless is Wealth; the nerves of Power Sink, as a lute's in rain: The Gods lend only for an hour All else than Wisdom; she alone, Remains as long as godlike men Nor Time nor War tread down again The traces of her feet. [Landor seems to have found some tradition that Byzan. tium was a colony from Miletus. It is usually stated to be a colony from Megara.] Always hast thou, Miletus, been the friend, Till Fame, despoil'd of voice and pinion, dies. With favoring shouts and flowers thrown fast behind, No wanderer he, alone and blind.. And Melesander1 was untorn by Thrace. There have been, but not here, Revere the aged and the wise, To trample on these things of scorn. . CXLI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. O-DAY there came to visit us a writer who is not yet an author: his name is Thucydides. We understand that he has been these several years engaged in preparation for a history. Pericles invited him to meet Herodotus, when that wonderful man had returned to our country, and was about to sail from Athens. Until then, it was believed by the intimate friends of Thucydides that he [1 "Melesander the Milesian wrote of the fight between the Lapitha and the Centaurs."-Aelian Var. Hist. xi. 2.] [2 1st ed., "was returning."] would devote his life to poetry, and such is his vigour both of thought and of expression, that he would have been the rival of Pindar. Even now he is fonder of talking on poetry than any other subject, and blushed when history was mentioned. By degrees however he warmed, and listened with deep interest to the discourse of Pericles on the duties of a historian. "May our first Athenian historian not be the greatest!" said he, "as the first of our dramatists has been, in the opinion of many. Eschylus was the creator of Tragedy, nor did she ever shine with such splendour, even move with such stateliness and magnificence, as at her first apparition on the horizon. The verses of Sophocles are more elaborate, the language purer, the sentences fuller and more harmonious, but in loftiness of soul, and in the awfulness with which he invests his characters, Eschylus remains unrivalled and unapproached. "We are growing too loquacious, both on the stage and off. We make disquisitions which render us only more and more dim-sighted, and excursions that only consume our stores. If some among us who have acquired celebrity by their compositions, calm, candid, contemplative men, were to undertake the history of Athens from the invasion of Xerxes, I should expect a fair and full criticism on the orations of Antiphon,1 and expe. rience no disappointment at their forgetting the [1 "Cæcilius says that the orator Antiphon taught the art of style to Thucydides the Historian."-Photius Bibliotheca Cod., 259.] battle of Salamis. History, when she has lost her Muse, will lose her dignity, her occupation, her character, her name. She will wander about the Agora; she will start, she will stop, she will look wild, she will look stupid, she will take languidly to her bosom doubts, queries, essays, dissertations, some of which ought to go before her, some to follow, and all to stand apart. The field of History should not merely be well tilled, but well peopled. None is delightful to me, or interesting, in which I find not as many illustrious names as have a right to enter it. We might as well in a drama place the actors behind the scenes, and listen to the dialogue there, as in a history push valiant men back, and protrude ourselves with husky disputations. Shew me rather how great projects were executed, great advantages gained, and great calamities averted. Shew me the generals and the statesmen who stood foremost, that I may bend to them in reverence; tell me their names, that I may repeat them to my children. Teach me whence laws were introdúced, upon what foundation laid, by what custody guarded, in what inner keep preserved. Let the books of the Treasury lie closed as religiously as the Sibyl's ; leave weights and measures in the market-place, Commerce in the harbour, the Arts in the light they love, Philosophy in the shade: place History on her rightful throne, and at the sides of her, Eloquence and War. "Aspasia ! try your influence over Thucydides: perhaps he would not refuse you the pleasure of hearing a few sentences of the work he has begun. |