CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 ACS .C56 1891 
 
 Miscelaneous essays / by R W. Church 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 631 698 
 
The original ot tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029631698 
 
MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS 
 
MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 E. W. CHUECH 
 
 SOMETIME DEAU OF ST. VAXfl/S 
 
 Honoon 
 
 MACMILLAK AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1891 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
First Edition 1888 
 Reprinted 1891 
 
NOTICE 
 
 The present volumes contain a number of papers 
 which, have already appeared in periodicals, and 
 some of them also in a separate form. One on St. 
 Anselm was recast for Macmillan's Sunday Library 
 from twQ articles contributed to the British Critic in 
 1843. The Essay on Dante appeared in the Ckris- 
 ticm Semembrancer of January 1850, and was reprinted 
 in a volume of Essays and Eeviews (1854), and 
 afterwards separately. The papers on Brittany and 
 the Early Ottomans also appeared first in the 
 Christian Bemernbrcmcer, 1846 and 1855; that on 
 Montaigne in the Oxford Essays of 1857 ; those on 
 Cassiodorus and the Letters of Gregory the Great in 
 the Church Quarterly, 1880 and 1881. The notice on 
 Wordsworth was written for Mr. Humphry Ward's 
 English Poets (1880). The paper ou Sordello came out 
 in Macmillan's Magazine for February 1887. The 
 
VI NOTICE 
 
 essays on Bacon and Spenser were written for the 
 . Series of English Men of Letters, edited by Mr. John 
 Morley. 
 
 Distance from books and other reasons have 
 prevented me from attempting any changes. But I 
 do not forget how much has been written about St. 
 Anselm by Dean Hook, Mr. Freeman, and Mr. Eule ; 
 and how a whole literature has grown up about 
 Dante in Germany, Italy, and England, since I first 
 ventured to write about him in 1850. 
 
 R. W. 0. 
 
 COSTABBLLE, HyilRES, 
 
 Feb. 1888. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Essays of Montaigne. .... 1 
 
 Brittany ..... .87 
 
 Cassiodokits . . . . . .155 
 
 The Letters of Pope Geeqory I . . . 205 
 The Early Ottomans . . . . .281 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 [1837] 
 
 Montaigne is one of those writers who have first 
 surprised and shocked their age, and then become its 
 most popular author. He was the first to try a very 
 great, and a very simple, experiment. The essay, in 
 its informality and unceremoniousness, in its variety 
 of shape, from the carefully-organised whole to the 
 sketch, the fragment, the desultory playing about a 
 subject or tentative approach to it, in its readiness to 
 adapt itself to every purpose, is characteristic of the 
 literature that has grown up since the revival of 
 learning. And that most convenient form of writing, 
 in which so much has been said that could have been 
 said, or at least would have been said, in no other 
 way — so congenial especially to the elastic and pop- 
 ular spirit of the literature of England and France 
 — is due, in its historical beginning, to Montaigne. 
 In an age of stifihess, when nobody ventured to 
 publish without the airs and parade of a master by 
 profession, he bethought himself of writing down, 
 without any restriction as to subject or manner, the 
 results of his experience of life, and trying whether, 
 
 S, B 
 
2 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 amoBg readers of books, sympathy with the matter 
 would overweigh the effect of an unwonted and home- 
 spun form— of the startling neglect of all the rules of 
 art and all the show of system. To us it seems a 
 very obvious thought. But in those days it was a 
 new one ; and Montaigne was the first who had the 
 courage to condescend to it — to offer to the world 
 merely his "attempts," instead of successes and 
 finished works. The experiment first astonished 
 people, and then delighted them. And it was the 
 first step in a great revolution in the fashions and 
 liberties of writing. 
 
 The essay has become something very different 
 since. In its combination of perfect ease and unassum- 
 ing frankness with severity of plan and the most 
 artistic polish, it goes far beyond Montaigne's rude and 
 primitive model. But he is the legitimate ancestor 
 of all that mass of literature which bears the essay 
 stamp. And it was in the interest of all^historians, 
 philosophers, orators, as well as of writers less am- 
 bitious in their aims — that he set the example of 
 breaking through the ceremoniousness of literature, 
 and ventured to print, in the idiom of common life, 
 on grave themes and in a serious spirit. The writers 
 who, from this time forward, were emboldened to 
 follow the promptings of their taste and genius in the 
 choice of materials and the shaping of their expres- 
 sions, owe a great deal to their hardy pioneer, the old 
 Gascon gentleman who first vindicated for prose the 
 liberty of unscholastic writing, of unshackled arrange- 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 3 
 
 ment and popular language, — the earliest master, in 
 modern philosophy, of the unconstrained, the famihar, 
 the discursive. 
 
 In his own day Montaigne had special merits, 
 which may perhaps have thrown into the shade those 
 of a more enduring character, and which would cer- 
 tainly make a much deeper impression then than now. 
 In a learned age, and himself a scholar, he was one 
 of the first links between ancient learning and modem 
 thought and self-knowledge. Use and time have 
 made us familiar with the intimate interweaving of 
 classical literature with our own. Its instances and 
 sentiments have nothing antique or strange to us; 
 we recognise in it tastes and associations which are 
 all our own ; we understand the moral and political 
 experience of its writers from our own ; their words 
 sound to us as modem as if they were coined yester- 
 day. But the fusion had still to be made, in Mon- 
 taigne's day, between the ancient and modem world 
 of thought. Learning — the possession of the treasured 
 relics of the ancients — was exclusive, jealous, self- 
 sufficient, uncommunicative. Scholars felt that they 
 had a prize in their hands, and valued themselves on 
 their privilege ; but the best of them were at a loss 
 how to apply it to modem uses ; while to the herd it 
 was merely a means of rising in the world, or of 
 making themselves greater fools than they would 
 have done without it. The public looked on and 
 admired, but had hardly yet come to feel that those 
 classic names belonged to men of flesh and blood like 
 
4 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 themselves, or that those sonorous quotations for 
 which such credit was taken by orators and preachers, 
 were but the echo of an experience like their own. 
 Montaigne was one of the first who threw off the 
 donnishness of erudition. He did so by his merciless 
 mockery of the pedantry of his day ; and much more 
 so by bringing the thoughts of the ancients "home 
 to the business and bosoms " of modem men, and by 
 associating what had looked so dignified, distant, and 
 shadowy with the homely sense and well-known 
 realities of everyday life. He cited a saying of 
 Plutarch or Seneca to show how it tallied with what 
 everybody was thinking or saying still. He quoted 
 a passage of Lucretius not because it was Latin or 
 poetry, but because it touched with such exquisite 
 simplicity and truth some deep chord of feeling in 
 the heart of both ploughboys and courtiers. He 
 quoted a great deal too much, indeed, as he himself 
 admits,'' partly from fashion, partly for idle pastime ; 
 it may, perhaps, be added, because the sage of the 
 tower of Montaigne was not quite proof himself 
 against the vanity of displaying his reading. Yet 
 that reading was displayed, as it had not been before, 
 in close union with a keen study and knowledge of 
 living men, with the freshness and vigour of new 
 observation, with a peculiar and subtle fashion of 
 dissecting and describing self. He pointed out to 
 
 '' L. iii. 0. 12, p. 400. The references to pages are to the 
 edition of Victor Leclerc. Paris, 1844. 3 vols. The other 
 references are to book and c/iapter. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 6 
 
 scholars that they -would understand their own books 
 better if they conceived of their subjects in a broader 
 and more natural way, by the help of an imagination 
 enlivened and enlightened by the sympathies and 
 truths of actual life; if they thought of the great 
 men of old not as stiffly-moulded and conventional 
 examples of certain virtues or vices, but as endued 
 with the same individuality, the same variety and 
 fluctuation and obscure uncertainty of character, as 
 they saw around themselves; if they studied their 
 systems and institutions not as matters beyond 
 criticism, final and absolute in themselves, not with a 
 cramped and servilfe assiduity, which never dreams of 
 stirring beyond the letter of its text for illustration 
 or inquiry, and is content with the investigation of 
 words and the marshalling of authorities, — but as the 
 incomplete results of problems whose interest is still 
 as deeply felt as ever, to be pieced on or placed side 
 by side, by an intelligent and comprehensive estimate 
 of them, with our own solutions of the same ques- 
 tions. And to the unlearned readers of the vulgar 
 tongue he pointed out that that learning of which so 
 much was said, but which its air, profundity, and 
 perfection seemed to exclude from the possession of 
 the multitude, was but the record, in ages past, of 
 the very thoughts and weaknesses and common sense 
 with which the multitude are so familiar; that the 
 great people, over whose names and deeds the learned 
 pored and commented, were worth knowing about, 
 not because they were ancient, but because they were 
 
b THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 really remarkable men; that their words might be 
 cast in a nobler or more refined mould than those of 
 the day, but that the subjects of them were the same. 
 His philosophy was one which needed no learning to 
 understand ; yet he reminds his reader at every turn 
 that it is but the application, the expansion, the verifi- 
 cation of what he had read in his favourite ancients. 
 
 This identifying of classical with modem thought 
 and feeling would be no small recommendation in an 
 age when classical studies were so valued, and when 
 the attempt was new. But besides this, the age was 
 just ripe for some reaction from the tyrannical domina- 
 tion of the classical taste ; and Montaigne's writings 
 embodied that reaction. He opened people's eyes to 
 the fact that there was another and even a wider and 
 more fruitful field open for students than the languages 
 and remains of classical antiquity ; that even for the 
 highest capacity and most intense application, the 
 most excellent writings about man are not so worthy 
 an object as man himself. He was able to discern, 
 and to make others discern, how much of rich and 
 novel interest there was in a record of the ways, and 
 the real thoughts on small matters and great, of a 
 single average man, a man of the present time, taken 
 in his ordinary aspect—"^ son h touts les jours /'^ 
 what a curious study it was to discover the difference 
 and, at the same time, the likeness between him and 
 those who read about him— to compare the hues and 
 shades and folds of his character with theirs. Two 
 
 1 ii. c. 10, p. 566 ; c. 29, p. 422. 
 
THE ESSAYS 0¥ MONTAIGNE 7 
 
 modes of treating human nature had been in vogue 
 among those of his contemporaries who had written 
 books or made set speeches about it : the dignified, 
 and the satirical. Moralists and politicians had 
 looked -at it on its public side and general outlines, 
 and had discoursed, in a high-raised strain, of aspects 
 of it that were partial, abstract, and not always like 
 life. The satirist had looked at real life, but only in 
 its worst and vilest form, or with exaggerated and 
 coarse mockery. Montaigne took people into a 
 sphere of thought that they were not accustomed to, 
 at least in books. He took them into real life, but 
 without the set purpose of raising a laugh. He took 
 them into its minutest details and most common cir- 
 cumstances, not indeed without humour and irony, 
 but in the gravest earnest, as a subject more strange, 
 and awful, and full of all the sources of wonder and 
 curiosity, than that abstract human nature whose 
 qualities and virtues and springs of action moral 
 philosophers had tried so hard to number and define 
 and classify. In the character that seemed so com- 
 pletely of one piece, he led men to contemplate the 
 irregularities and exceptions, the various counter- 
 currents of feeling and principle ebbing and flowing 
 within its apparent uniformity. He contrasted the 
 life of special occasions and public show with the life 
 that works on in private, in the ordinary hours, when 
 the strain is taken off, and the springs of the character 
 are relaxed to their average force. From the state 
 and circumstance of those who make a figure in the 
 
8 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 great world, or in each of its included little worlds — 
 from the ceremony and glitter of the court, the 
 ermine and terrors of the magistrate, the authority of 
 the scholar— he elicited the men themselves, neces- 
 sarily in more than half their lives homely, fallible, 
 unstrung, undignified, often as full of commonplace 
 or of unreason as those uninitiated lookers-on whose 
 imaginations they so awed and imposed upon. He 
 took people into the real thoughts that pass through 
 a man's mind while he is writing his book or exer- 
 cising his pubUc function — very distinct thoughts 
 from those with which he meets and converses with 
 the world outside. The mine which he opened for 
 his contemporaries has been diligently worked ever 
 since, and is not yet worked out; and we know 
 enough of the intense interest which is created by 
 any new and successful attempt to pierce into the 
 truths of life, to be able to understand the effect 
 produced when Montaigne showed that what every- 
 body was noticing and talking about was also worth 
 writing about. 
 
 Two more circumstances may be noticed as having 
 told in favour of the Essais in the age when they 
 appeared. One is their singularly rich and vigorous 
 language. Montaigne was one of the discoverers of 
 the genius and powers of the French language. He 
 had feeling and sagacity to see that these were to be 
 found in the speech of common life, "the subsoil of 
 the language."^ "I refuse no phrase," he says, "of 
 ' iii. c. 5, p. 131 ; i. u. 25, p. 210. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 9 
 
 those which run in the French streets," — " puisse je 
 ne me servir que de mots qui servant aux halles k 
 Paris." And with admirable good sense he describes 
 the peculiar character and wants of the French of his 
 day, and , points out the way in which a language 
 ought to look for improvement and enrichment 
 through new force given by vigorous thought to 
 common words. 
 
 Le maniement et employte des beaux esprits donne 
 prix h, la langue ; aon pas I'innovant, tant, comme la 
 remplissant de plus vigoreux et divers services, I'estirant 
 et ployant ; lis n'y apportent point de mots, mais ils 
 enrichissent les leurs, appesantissent et enfoncent leur 
 signification et leur usage, luy apprennent des mouvements 
 inaccoiitumez, mais prudemment et ingenieusement. Et 
 combien peu cela soit donne k touts, il se veoid par tant 
 d'escrivains frangois de ce siecle; ils sont assez hardis et 
 desdaigneux, pour ne suyvre pas la route commune ; mais 
 faulte d'invention et de discretion les perd ; il ne s'y veoid 
 qu'une miserable afifectation d'estianget^, des desguisements 
 froids et absurdes, qui, au lieu d'eslever, abbattent la 
 matiere : pourveu qu'ils se gorgiasent en la nouvellet^, il 
 ne leur chault de I'efiScace : pour saisir un nouveau mot, 
 ils quittent I'ordinaire, souvent plus fort et plus nerveux. 
 
 En nostre langage ie treuve assez d'estoflfe, mais un 
 peu faulte de fagon : car il n'est rien qu'on ne feist du 
 iargon de nos chasses et de nostre guerre, qui est un 
 genereux terrain k emprunterj et les formes de parler, 
 comme les herbes, s'amendent et fortifient en les trans- 
 plantant. Je le treuve sufB.samment abondant, mais non 
 pas maniant et vigoreux suffisamment ; il succombe ordi- 
 nairement k une puissante conception : si vous allez 
 tendu, vons sentez souvent qu'il languit sous vous, et 
 flescbit ; et qu'i son default le latin se presente au secours, 
 et le grec k d'aultres. D'aulcuns de ces mots que je viens 
 
10 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 de trier, nous en appergevons plus malayseement I'energie, 
 d'autant que I'uaage et la frequence nous en ont aulcune- 
 ment avily et rendu vulgaire la grace ; comme en nostre 
 commun, il s'y rencontre des phrases exceUentes, et des 
 metaphores, desqueUes la beauts flestrit de vieillesse, et 
 la couleur s'est ternie par maniement trop ordinaire : 
 mais oela n'oste rien du goust k ceulx qui ont bon nez, ny 
 ne desroge k la gloire de ces anciens aucteurs qui, comme 
 U est vraysemblable, meirent premierement ces mots en 
 ce lustre i (iii. c. 5). 
 
 And after laughing at " fools, who will go a quarter 
 of a league out of their way to run after a fine word," 
 he lays down his own taste and aim in style : — 
 
 Aux rebours, c'est aux paroles k servir et k suyvre ; 
 et que le gascon y arrive, si le frangais n'y peut aller. Je 
 
 ^ The handling and utterance of fine wits is that which seta 
 off a language ; not so much by innovating it, as by putting it 
 to more vigorous and various service, by straining, bending, 
 and adapting ; they do not create words, but they enrich their 
 own, and give them weight and signification by the uses they 
 put them to, and teach them unwonted motions, but withal 
 ingeniously and discreetly. And how little this talent is given 
 to all, is manifest by the many French scribblers of this age ; 
 they are bold and proud enough not to follow the common road, 
 but they lose their way for want of invention and discretion. 
 There is nothing seen in their writings but a wretched affecta- 
 tion of a strange new style, with cold and absurd disguises, 
 which, instead of elevating, depresses the matter ; provided 
 they can but trick up their style with fine new words, they care 
 not what they signify ; and to bring in a new word by the head 
 and shoulders, they leave out the old one, very often more 
 sinewy and significant than the other. 
 
 There is stuff enough in our language, but there is a defect in 
 fashioning it ; for there is nothing that might not be made out 
 of our terms of hunting and war, which is a fniitful soil to 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 11 
 
 veux que les choses surmontent, et qu'elles remplissent 
 de fagon I'imagination de celuy qui escoute, qu'il n'aye 
 aulcune souvenance des mots. Le parler que j'ayme, c'est 
 un parler simple et naif, tel sur le papier que sur la 
 bouche ; un parler succulent et nerveux, court et serrd ; 
 non tant delicat et peign^, comme vehement et brusque : 
 
 Haec demum sapiet diotio quae feriet : 
 
 plustost difficile qu'ennuyeux ; esloignd d'affectation ; des- 
 regl6, descousu, et hardy ; chasque loppin y face son corps ; 
 non pedantesque, non fratesque, non plaideresque, mais 
 plustost soldatesque, comme Suetone appelle celuy de 
 Julius Cesar ; et si (he adds, with true Montaignesque 
 candour), et si, je ne sens pas hien pour quay il I'en appelle ^ 
 (i. c. 25). 
 
 borrow from : and the forma of speaking, lika herbs, improve 
 and grow stronger by being transplanted. I find it sufficiently 
 abounding, but not sufficiently pliable and vigorous ; it quails 
 under a powerful conception : if you would maintain the dignity 
 of your style, you will oft perceive it to flag and languish under 
 you, and there Latin steps in to its relief, as Greek does to 
 other languages. Of some of the words I have picked out for 
 my own use, we do not easily discern the energy, by reason 
 that the frequent use of them has in some sort debased theii 
 beauty, and rendered it common : as in our ordinary language, 
 there are several excellent phrases and metaphors to be met 
 with, of which the beauty is withered by age, and the colour is 
 sullied by too common handling ; but that takes nothing from 
 the relish to an understanding man : neither does it derogate 
 from the glory of those ancient authors who, 'tis likely, first 
 brought those words into that lustre.^ 
 
 1 'Tis for words to serve and to foUow us ; and let Gascon come 
 in play where French will not do. I would have things so 
 possess the imagination of him that hears that he should have 
 something else to do than to think of words. The way of speak- 
 
 2 This, and most of the following English extracts, are taken from 
 Hazlitt'a recast of the version of Charles Cotton, 1865. 
 
12 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 In eliciting the powers of his mother tongue, Mon- 
 taigne was to the sixteenth century what Pascal was 
 to the seventeenth. In Montaigne the clear, easy, 
 well-proportioned march of the language had not yet 
 come. He does not yet verify the adage, " Tout ce 
 qui n'est pas clair n'est pas Fran9ais." It was for 
 Pascal to bring to perfection that transparency of 
 phrase and harmonious simplicity of structure which 
 make good French prose so exquisitely graceful and 
 so admirable an instrument of expression. But 
 already in Montaigne the elements of its beauty and 
 strength were present, in new and luxuriant abund- 
 ance, though wanting severe pruning, and not yet 
 moving with smooth and unembarrassed play among 
 themselves. Periods are cumbrous and involved; 
 epithets are inartificially accumulated on one another ; 
 but single sentences are clear and sharp and bold, and 
 words are varied, precise, and choice, full of delicate 
 shades of meaning and association, called up vrith 
 happy skiU or happier carelessness from unexpected 
 quarters and transferred to new uses, all vsdtnessing 
 
 ing that I love is natural and plain, as well in ■writing as speak- 
 ing, and a sinewy and significant way of expressing one's self, 
 short and pithy, and not so elegant and artificial as prompt and 
 vehement : — 
 
 Hseo demum sapiet diotio, quae feriet. 
 "The language which strikes the mind will please it." 
 
 Kather hard than harsh, free from affectation ; irregular, incon- 
 tinuous, and hold, where every piece makes up an entire hody : 
 not like a pedant, a preacher, or a pleader, but rather a soldier- 
 like style, as Suetonius calls that of Julius Caesar ; and yet I see 
 no reason why he should call it so. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 13 
 
 to the living copiousness, the felicitous invention, 
 the mascuhne judgment of one of the master crafts- 
 men of language. Frenchmen were beginning to be 
 ambitious of achievements for their common tongue, 
 and jealous of its honour ; and they had never yet 
 seen it attempt so boldly and speak so well. 
 
 This was one thing; the other was the tone of 
 easy and indulgent gaiety which pervaded the Essais. 
 His way of being serious and yet sporting with his 
 seriousness, suited well his countrymen's temper; it 
 was familiar to them in conversation, but new to them 
 in books. And the times in which he wrote were 
 times when the novelty must have been welcome. It 
 must have been a relief in the days of the League to 
 meet with something which spoke of the present, yet 
 was neither a record of public miseries and crimes, 
 nor a book of fierce controversy, of insolent and false 
 statecraft, or of scurrilous and irritating satire. It 
 must have been refreshing to turn from the gloom 
 and despair of society, and the frantic wickedness 
 and pompous hypocrisy which ruled and brooded 
 over it, to the frank and natural discourse of a man 
 whose humour, buoyant and playful, was proof against 
 the melancholy and stifihess of the times ; who could 
 talk pregnantly on public interests and the great 
 themes of philosophy, and could also range widely 
 and pleasantly over homelier and lighter subjects ; 
 who was not above inditing chapters on "Coaches," 
 on "Thumbs," on "Smells;" who could enter with 
 zest and sedateness, with imperturbable equanimity 
 
14 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 and solemn irony, into his own mental and bodily 
 peculiarities, his household ethics, his domestic cus- 
 toms, his tastes, and sensations, and disorders ; who, 
 feeling deeply the greatness and solemnity of human 
 life, was also ever ready to amuse himself with its 
 littlenesses, its incongruities, its ludicrous aspects ; 
 who could laugh so heartily at pedants, and declaim 
 with such vehement sarcasm and half in earnest 
 against doctors. But unhappily it was not only the 
 quaint humour, the tranquil cheerfulness, the unre- 
 strained open-hearted gossip of Montaigne's writings, 
 which recommended them to that age. They had 
 other seasoning still more to its taste. They are 
 stained and deformed throughout by unabashed and 
 deliberate filthiness of language, which was but too 
 congenial to the deep corruption and profligacy of 
 the French society of the time. Montaigne is ever 
 ready with a foul illustration, or shameful fragment 
 of ancient indecency. Some of his most striking and 
 truthful strains of reflection are broken in upon and 
 spoilt by a gratuitous wandering after some impure 
 allusion. We read on with admiration and delight, 
 till some sentence stops us — utterly out of place, and 
 inserted as if for mockery — which turns every other 
 feeling into indignation and disgust. There is no 
 excuse to be made for Montaigne's grossness. He is 
 not hurried into it by anything in his subject. There 
 is not even the pretence of joke in it. It was not the 
 fault of a young man. Nor is it the mere broad 
 speaking of an umefined age. It is the habit and 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 15 
 
 predilection of his mind, when he was long past forty. 
 He admits that it goes beyond the ordinary licence of 
 the time ; he considers about it, and on consideration 
 maintains and defends it. And, as Mr. Hallam has 
 observed, it is worse in the essays of his last years 
 than in his earlier ones. It was indulged in because 
 such thoughts and language were to his liking ; and 
 doubtless they were also to the liking of his readers. 
 Among the many bitter and sarcastic things which 
 he says of his own generation, there is none worse 
 than the cynical sneer with which he appeals to their 
 conscience whether they will not read with as much 
 pleasure as he has written; and the sneer seems 
 justified when we recollect that the Esscds were meant 
 to be read by ladies, that several of them were 
 addressed to ladies, and that it was a lady, an 
 unmarried lady of good reputation, who was their 
 first editor and champion. ■ 
 
 If this had been all that could be said for Mon- 
 taigne, or against him, he would probably by this 
 time have been almost forgotten, like so many of his 
 day, whose influence, considerable at the moment, was 
 so mixed a one on literature; who contributed to 
 refine but also to corrupt it ; who helped to transfuse 
 into it the force, the grace, the simplicity, the free 
 march of the classic authors, but their licentiousness 
 as well. But Montaigne was something beyond this. 
 He was one of the few who carve out for themselves 
 a path for their thoughts through the common and 
 well-worn — often worn-out and confused — tracks of 
 
16 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 speech and opinion. What has given a permanent 
 interest to Montaigne's writings is the philosophy 
 interwoven vsdth them ; his views of man and of life, 
 and his way of expressing them ; and with them, the 
 description which he has left us of himself — so boldly 
 and resolutely planned, so curiously, and with such 
 humorous and unflattering minuteness, carried out. 
 
 A man who has written well, though it may be 
 partially, on the great commonplace and mystery of 
 human life, is not likely to be forgotten. The subject 
 is so great and so dear to us, and yet sunk so univers- 
 ally in triviality and untruth by faculties too unfaith- 
 ful or too feeble for its vastness, that the clear ring . 
 of words, which have once spoken keenly and true of 
 it, is hardly to be lost, even by distance of time and 
 the confusion of altering tastes and fashions. It is 
 too rare, and touches us too deeply, to be lightly 
 parted with. Montaigne has many faults — it would 
 be difficult, perhaps, to mention a writer of name who 
 has more, and some of them are heavy ones ; but he 
 has this excellence, that he is so wide and so real. 
 His views of life present ample matter for exception, 
 both as to what they contain and what they do not. ; 
 But he has ranged widely, and cast a large glance on 
 the world, in order to form them; and what came 
 under his eye, was seized and expressed with a daring 
 and intense reality of thought and word which belongs 
 only to minds of high temper and force. 
 
 "Les belles i,mes," he says, "ce sont les S,me3 
 universelles, ouvertes, prestesi, tout, sinon instruictes, 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 17 
 
 au moins instruisables.'"- He disclaims for himself all 
 right to be classed with them. But here was the idea 
 of excellence which his own mind longed after and 
 sought, and in part really exhibited. Elastic and 
 versatile, he had his sympathies and his interest every- 
 where ; and his insight pierced through the outward 
 husk of things — through all formal and conventional 
 representations of a subject — through all refinements 
 and ingenuities with which the intellect played and 
 amused itself on its surface, down to its root and core. 
 His mind was singularly an open one. His thoughts 
 were large, rather than deep ; yet he had a depth of 
 his own. There is the depth of the patient, balancing, 
 order-working mind : this he had not. But there is 
 also the depth of the seeing eye and hearing ear : this 
 he had, as poets and artists have it. His depth was 
 not that of tracing and verifying the hidden relations 
 which secretly bind together distant truths, but that 
 of discriminating the real marks and features of what 
 was open to the sight of all, though others had missed 
 them there, — of putting his finger exactly on the 
 feeling which was genuine and natural, and disentan- 
 gling it from others with which it had been confused ; 
 of recognising boldly and widely, though he could 
 not explain or reconcile, the opposite sides and un- 
 accountable changes, the inconsistencies and contrar 
 dictions, which mark both our manifold nature and 
 the laws of our condition. It was a depth not of the 
 analyst or the theoriser, but of the painter, whose 
 
 ' ii. c. 17, p. 351. 
 
 
 
18 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 eyes unravel and ascertain better than those of other 
 men, the appearances of things — whose depth lies in 
 the cunning penetration with which he seizes the 
 fleeting play of expression, or dives into the purple 
 shadows of the mountain, or fathoms and masters the 
 harmony of the lights of the sky; not the depth 
 which dissects the passions, or methodises the laws 
 of optics or geology. As the world passes in review 
 before him, either mirrored in the history of past 
 times, or unfolding itself in the events of the present, 
 Montaigne constructs no system out of it ; he troubles 
 himself with no hypothesis, scarcely with a creed to 
 explain it ; but he records its phenomena, he general- 
 ises his experience with a large and sympathetic, yet 
 discriminating boldness, he enters with all his heart 
 into whatever presents itself. Keenly sensitive to 
 impressions, and a keen questioner of them as well, 
 he is abundant and varied in what he relates, and 
 distinct and forcible in relating. His descriptions 
 are written from the life, unencumbered by any con- 
 fusion of irrelevant circumstances, unfettered by 
 trivial and second-hand ways of speaking. He is a 
 large and original contributor, not to a scientific know- 
 ledge, but to the natural history of man. And this, in- 
 deed, is his declared purpose. " Nous autres natural- 
 istes,"^ is his profession ; and he repeats more than once 
 his protestation — " Je n'enseigne point: je raconte." 
 
 Montaigne's peg for hanging his philosophy upon 
 was himself : — 
 
 1 iii. c. 12, p. 401 ; iii. c. 2, p. 26. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 19 
 
 Les aultres forment I'homme (he says)Je le recite; et 
 en represente tin partioulier, bien mal form^, et leqiiel si 
 j'avois k fagonner de nouveau, je ferois vrayement bien 
 aultre qu'il n'est : meshuy, c'est faiet. . . . Je propose 
 una vie basse et sans lustre ; c'est tout un ; on attache 
 aussi bien toute la philosophie morale k une vie populaire 
 et privee, qn'k une vie de plus riche estoffe ; chasque 
 homme porte la forme entiere de I'humaine condition. 
 Les aucteurs se communiquent au peuple par quelque 
 marque speciale et estrangiere ; moy, le premier, par men 
 estre universel ; comme Michel de Montaigne, non comme 
 grammairien, ou poete, ou jurisconsulte^ (iii. c. 2). 
 
 If we are to listen to him, and receive with a grave 
 face his repeated and earnest protestations, his book 
 has but a limited and narrow end. He has no 
 thoughts of teaching philosophy, except what can be 
 gained from the faithful portrait of his single self. 
 And his reasons for attempting this portrait are of 
 the most modest and private kind.^ He took to 
 writing for want of something to do, when he retired 
 to spend his few remaining years in peace and away 
 from the stir of men; and having nothing else to 
 write about, began to write about himself. His first 
 
 1 Others form man ; I only report him ; and represent a par- 
 ticular one ill-made enough ; and whom, if I had him to model 
 anew, I should certainly make something very different from 
 what he is ; but that's past recalling. ... I propose a life mean, 
 and without lustre, but 'tis aU one ; all moral philosophy is 
 applied as well to a private life as to one of the greatest employ- 
 ment. Every man carries the entire form of human condition. 
 Authors have hitherto communicated themselves to the people 
 by some particular and foreign mark ; I, the first of any, by my 
 universal being ; as Michael de Montaigne, not as a grammarian, 
 a poet, or a lawyer. " ii- o. 8 init. 
 
20 THE ESSAYS 0¥ MONTAIGNE 
 
 reason for writing, he declares, was to make his mind 
 ashamed of its own follies by keeping a record of 
 them ; he had hoped that by time and experience it 
 had become sufficiently solid and ripe to make good 
 use of the leisure which he designed for it ; but he 
 found, on the contrary, that it got idle, and gave 
 itself airs, and was as wild and uncontrollable as a 
 horse broke loose : — 
 
 Et m'enfante tant de chimeres et monstres fantasqties 
 les Tins sur les aultres, sans ordre et sans propos, que, 
 pov/r en contempler A mon ayse I'ineptie et VestrangeM, i'ay 
 commencd de les mettre en rooUe, esperant avecques le 
 temps luy en fawe honte A luy mesme ^ (i. c. 8). 
 
 Then, in time, he found himself engaged in a kind 
 of autobiography,^ a register of his life, not by actions, 
 for fortune had made them too inconsiderable, but 
 by what came into his head from time to time, and 
 he was not too lazy to write down, — an undertaking 
 in which there was no natural end, and in which he 
 might go on without stopping and without exertion, 
 as long as he had ink and paper, ^ — in which he did 
 not care what he put down, or how he contradicted 
 himself, seeing it was but the record of changing 
 humours and varying views — flying sketches seized 
 in passing, and recording alterations, not from year 
 
 1 And creates me so many chimaeras and fantastic monsters, 
 one upon another, without order or design, that, the better at 
 leisure to contemplate their strangeness and absurdity, I have 
 begun to commit them to writing, hoping in time to make them 
 ashamed of themselves. 
 
 ^ ii. c. 18, p. 369. s iii. c. 9, p. 234. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 21 
 
 to year, but from hour to hour and minute to minute ; 
 contradictory to themselves, it may be, but never to 
 the truth.-' Nothing can be more humble, nothing 
 more disparaging than his manner of qualifying his 
 performances ; they are a " rhapsody," ^ a piece of 
 " marqueterie," "fantasies without shape and con- 
 clusion," " a collection of monstrous grotesques such 
 as one sees round a picture or a page of print," a 
 " fagotage " of extravagancies of every variety, jotted 
 down in his moments of lazy leisure, — " une fricassee 
 que je barbouille :"— prove him ignorant, and that is 
 just what he says he is ; all he does is, " niaiser et 
 f antastiquer " about philosophy* — to try his hand as 
 children write themes, or hare-brained scholars stick 
 up their rash theses ; all he has to say for his attempts 
 is, that if they are nonsense, they are at least not 
 pompous nonsense. " Personne n'est exempt de dire 
 des fadaises, le malheur est de les dire curieusement."* 
 
 Why then write at all ? Why, to begin with, he 
 likes to talk to his paper ; it is a very good listener. 
 In the next place, if his grandchildren are like himself, 
 they will be glad to know what their ancestor was 
 like, and to have some memorials of him : — 
 
 I am not making a statue to be set up at the corner of 
 the streets or in. a church, or public place ; it is but for 
 
 1 iii. c. 2, p. 24 ; ii. c. 37, p. 600 ; i u. 25, p. 173. 
 
 2 L c. 13, p. 60 ; c. 56, p. 439 ; i. c. 27, p. 223 ; ii. e. 37, 
 p. 500. 
 
 s iii. c. 13, p. 434 ; ii. c. 10, p. 559 ; ii. c. 3, p. 479. 
 * iii. 0. 1, p. 1. " Ko one can help saying foolish things ; 
 the mischief is when people say them elaborately." 
 
22 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 tte corner of a book-shelf, and to amuse a neighbour, a 
 friend, a relative, wbo wiU find pleasure in renewing liis 
 acquaititance and familiarity witb me. Wiat would I 
 give to listen to some one wlio could tell me tbe ways, the 
 look, the bearing, the commonest words of my ancestors ? 
 (ii 0. 18). 
 
 He does not like a man wlio has no care for even 
 trifling mementos of them, their dress or their arms ; 
 he keeps religiously the book of Hours, the seal, the 
 sword they used, and has not turned out of his 
 library his father's long walking-sticks ;^ and so he 
 provides for the same tastes in his successors. But 
 why publish? Well then, he has some idea' that 
 there may be people in the world somewhat like- 
 minded with himself, who will be drawn towards 
 him, or tempted to make his acquaintance, when they 
 see his picture : and if they are, they will start at 
 advantage; "they wiU have learned in three days 
 from his book as much as they could have done in 
 many years of acquaintance."^ Then the attempt 
 itself is a novelty ; the book is the first of its kind ; 
 to be sure, the design is wild and extravagant, and 
 has nothing remarkable in it, except that it is a first 
 attempt, "the only book of its sort";' but it is one 
 that none of the ancients thought of hazarding, and 
 its difficulty gives it interest : — 
 
 O'est une espineuse entreprinse, et plus qu'il ne semble, 
 de suyvre une allure si vagabonde que celle de notre 
 esprit, de penetrer lea profondeurs opaques de ses replis 
 
 ' ii- c. 18. 2 iji g_ 9^ p 289. 
 
 8 ii. c. 8, p. 527. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 23 
 
 internes, de choisir et arrester tant de menus airs de ses 
 agitations : et est un amusement nouveau et extraordinaire, 
 qui nous retire des occupations communes du monde, ouy, 
 et des plus recommend^es. II n'y est description pareille 
 en difficult^ h, la description de soi-mesme, ni certes en 
 utility 1 (ii. c. 6). 
 
 If the -world complains that he talks too much 
 about himself, he complains in return that it talks 
 and thinks of everything but itself.^ And he offers a 
 specimen of a study of self, pursued for many years, 
 carried on with minute and unflinching observation ; 
 a subject of which he can promise that he who treats 
 it understood it better than any one else, and "on 
 which he is the most learned man alive ;"^ a subject 
 which, to be perfectly treated, requires only what he 
 can give — fideUty and plainness of speech. He would 
 gladly set men the example of attending less to the 
 affairs of the world, " which go on very weU without 
 us,"* and more to themselves ; and the humorist con- 
 cludes by giving us an ungracious warning, in which 
 he assuredly would not be pleased to be taken at his 
 word : — 
 
 ^ No one since has followed the track ; 'tis a ticklish subject, 
 and more nice than it seems, to follow a pace so extravagant 
 and uncertain as that of the soul : to penetrate the dark pro- 
 fundities of her intricate internal windings, to choose and lay- 
 hold of 30 many little nimble motions ; it is a new and extra- 
 ordinary undertaking, -which withdraws us from the common 
 and most recommended employments of the world. . . . There 
 is no description so difficult, nor doubtless of so great utility, as 
 that of one's self. 
 
 " iii. c. 10, p. 349. ' iii. c. 2, p. 25. 
 
 * iii. 0. 9, p. 244. 
 
24 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 C'est icy (is his preface) un livre de bonne foy, lecteur. 
 II t'advertit dez I'entree que ie ne m'y suis proposd aul- 
 cune fin, que domestique et priv^e ; ie n'y ay eu nuUe 
 consideration de ton service, ny de ma gloire. . . . Ainsi, 
 lecteur, ie suis moi-meme la matiere de mon livre. Ce 
 n'est pas raison que tu employes ton loisir en un subject 
 si frivole et si vain. Adieu, donc.i (Preface.) 
 
 He seems the original of Bishop Butler's picture 
 of the man "coming abroad in disorder, which he 
 ought to be dissatisfied to find himself in at home." 
 
 Every one has heard of Montaigne's egotism. It 
 is said to have suggested to the Port-royalists to coin 
 the word. It edged the sneers of Brantome against 
 the self-important and awkward man of the pen. It 
 roused the bile of Dupuy and the younger Scaliger, 
 at the writer who so carefully informed the world 
 what wine he liked — "Que diable a t'on h fake de 
 savoir ce qu'il aime." It called dovni the gentle raillery 
 of the Spectator.^ It provoked the impatient scorn of 
 Pascal at the cool and deliberate self-complacency of 
 his favourite author — " Ie sot projet que Montaigne a de 
 se peindre." He was judged rather harshly, by judges 
 who could not enter into the humour of his plan, and 
 who took for granted very absolutely the current 
 
 ' This, reader, is a hook without guile. It tells thee, at the 
 very outset, that I had no other end in putting it together but 
 what was domestic and private. I had no regard therein either 
 to thy service or my glory ; my powers are equal to no such 
 design. . . . Thus, reader, thou perceivest I am myself the 
 subject of my book ; 'tis not worth thy while to take up thy 
 time longer with such a frivolous matter ; so fare thee well. 
 = No. 562. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 25 
 
 axiom that a man must be foolish oi' vain who has 
 much to say of himself. At any rate, Montaigne 
 was no vulgar, self- deceived, shuffling egotist. He 
 makes no secret that he writes his book about himself. 
 He has a distinct and declared purpose in doing so, 
 and he offers his reasons for it to our criticism. And 
 no one can say that he spares himself, or wishes to 
 appear as anything above the average of mankind, in 
 the picture that he paints. But in the execution of 
 his design he undoubtedly gives ample illustration of 
 its difficulties. In speaking about himself, in defend- 
 ing his principle — that a man should not be afraid of 
 avowing a fair and impartial judgment of what he is, 
 fair and impartial to his excellencies as well as his 
 defects — he shows abundantly that he is deficient in 
 the great safeguard of speculators — a sense of the 
 ridiculous. He is certainly plain-spoken enough 
 about his faults ; and he argues from his honesty 
 about them that he cannot be tempted into conceit : — 
 
 Nulle particuliere quality n'enorgueillira celuy qui 
 mettra quand et quand en compte taut d'imparfaictes et 
 foibles qualitez aultres, qui Bont en luy, et au bout, le 
 nihility de I'humaine condition : qui Be cognoistra ainsi, 
 qu'il 66 domie hardiment k cognoistre par sa bouche ^ 
 (iL c. 6, ad fin.) 
 
 So shrewd a man ought to have known better than 
 
 ^ No particular quality can make any man proud, that will 
 at the same time put the so many weak and imperfect ones he 
 has in him in the other scale, and the nothingness of human 
 condition to balance the weight. . . . Whoever shall so know 
 himself, let him boldly speak out and make himself known. 
 
26 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 to have advanced such a silly sentiment. Certainly, 
 this knowledge did not prevent in him a large share 
 of self-complacency and vanity. There is a subtle 
 and exquisite relish in the sagacity and delicate skill 
 with which he has disentangled and exactly dis- 
 criminated in himself some defect of mental power, 
 or obliquity of disposition, which quite overpowers 
 his dissatisfaction at finding himself so foolish and so 
 faulty. The self-love and self-respect of the man 
 give way before the evident delight and pride of the 
 anatomist at his own keenness and success. He was 
 not blind to the fact, as there are few things within 
 his horizon to which he was bhnd ; but that did not 
 hinder his vanity from having its full enjoyment, as 
 each separate occasion presented itself. The air of 
 it pervades his book. And, further, it is to be feared 
 that the clear-eyed sage thought a good deal more 
 than was consistent with his philosophy of those out- 
 ward and conventional distinctions which had nothing 
 to do with his worth or his faculties. He is pitiless 
 in his humour on the pomp and grimace of office.^ 
 But the derider of circumstance and ceremony shows 
 himself quite alive to the pleasure of having an order 
 of knighthood, and is rather plaintive on the lowered 
 dignity of that of St. Michel.^ When he travelled, 
 the hotels where he took up his abode were left 
 garnished with the heraldic blazonries of the Gascon 
 gentleman. And there is something very amusing in 
 the affected confusion and contradiction of feeling, the 
 " iii. c. 10, p. 334. » ii. c. 12, p. 239 ; u. c. 7, p. 523. 
 
THE ESSAYS O? MONTAIGNE 27 
 
 confessed vanity and the running protest against its 
 folly, with which he records his Eoman citizenship, 
 and the pompous diploma conferring it, the copy of 
 which he was so anxious to see beforehand, for fear 
 it should not be quite flattering enough. -"^ 
 
 But with all this vanity, and worse than it, with 
 so much want of self-respect and manly modesty, it 
 is difficult to -wish, that Montaigne had written less 
 about himself. Half the originality and interest of 
 the Essais would be missed if they only exhibited 
 Montaigne's philosophy, instead of Montaigne philo- 
 sophising. There is really something to be said for 
 the prominence which he gives to his own personality. 
 It was part of his protest against the pedantry, the 
 cramped scope and artificial models of the book- 
 making which was in vogue — part of his plan for 
 breaking through the pompous formality of his age 
 in writing. When a man writes in the first person 
 he seems to waive the mysterious claim to attention 
 and deference with which publication and the printed 
 page invests him, and falls back on his private experi- 
 ence and opinion. He can speak more at his ease 
 and with greater plainness, because he has no dignity 
 to keep up, and offers himself for nothing more than 
 he is worth. This secret had not been found out in 
 serious writing by the revivers of learning till Mon- 
 taigne showed it. By discarding the general, and 
 pertinaciously keeping himself to the particular as the 
 foundation of his remarks; by declining to be the 
 J iii. 0. 9, p. 317. 
 
28 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 representative of the -wisdom of the public, or of any 
 one's but his own ; by insisting on keeping before his 
 readers' minds that it was no shadowy we that was 
 addressing them, but a plain Jin his private capacity, 
 with fancies and failings as many and as odd as those 
 of any of themselves, he brought down writing from 
 its stilts, and gave it a natural play, a range of power, 
 and a healthy freshness, which in his own country it 
 had never attained to, but never subsequently lost. 
 
 And, further, by coupling with his thoughts 
 glimpses more or less complete of his own character 
 and tastes, he gave, in an inferior degree indeed, yet 
 in a degree, the same colour of life and reality to his 
 philosophy, which we find in the Platonic dialogues. 
 It is not merely a discourser or a system-maker, but 
 a man who comes before us. We not merely hear 
 his reasonings, but see him in action. We have a 
 kind of guarantee and sensible proof of his being in 
 earnest in what he says, when we see his principles 
 fitted on to his own experience, when we see them 
 interwoven not merely with what is serious and de- 
 liberate, but running through his playful or fantastic 
 or irritated moods, and showing themselves when he 
 is most at home and most off his guard. 
 
 Take, for instance, the essay on conversational in- 
 tercourse — De I'Art de Gmfirer^ — the essay whose 
 excellence drew from Pascal the title of " incompar- 
 able" for its author, and which was the quickener- 
 and model of his own thoughts on the powers and 
 ^ iii. c. 8. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 29 
 
 use of language. No doubt all that Montaigne has 
 said there might have been condensed into the shape 
 of general and impersonal reflection, as Pascal has 
 done with a part of it that he quotes ; all that there 
 is in it of delicate observation, true insight, and 
 excellent precept, might have been preserved ; we 
 should have had an admirable treatise on the rhetoric 
 of social discourse ; but the life and dramatic interest 
 of Montaigne's essay would be gone. With him, it 
 is a most spirited and vigorous history of his personal 
 feelings and experience in that curious and character- 
 istic portion of every man's display of himself — his 
 way of behaving in conversation, or of conducting an 
 argument. We have not an abstract arguer. We 
 have Montaigne himself jousting before us in the 
 intellectual conflict, warming with his love of the 
 sport, exemplifying to us his rules and arts of fence, 
 and describing , the common order and incidents of 
 such meetings of wits. He avows to us how much 
 more to his taste is a collision with the living intellect 
 than the languid intercourse with books. He is 
 enthusiastic on the delights of a sturdy encounter — 
 the certaminis gaudia, and on the pleasure of feeling 
 the stress of an antagonist who tries his powers. 
 
 Si ie confere avecques une ame forte et un roide 
 iousteur, 11 me presse les flancs, me picque k gauche et k 
 dextre ; ses imaginations elancent les miennes ; la ialousie, 
 la gloire, la contention, me poulsent et rehauasent au- 
 dessus de moi-mesme ; et runisson est qualitd du tout 
 ennnyeuse en la conference.^ 
 
 1 If I converse with a man of mind, and no flinoher, who 
 
30 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 He likes a bold adventurous style of play, and 
 makes merry at the thin-skinned sensibility of people 
 who cannot bear rough usage in discussion : — 
 
 le aouffrirois estre rndement heiort^ par mes amis — 
 " Tu es un sot ; tu resves." Taiine entre les galants 
 homines, qu'on s'exprime couiageusement ; que les mots 
 aillent oH va lapens^e; 11 nous fault fortifier I'ouie, et la 
 durcir oontre cette tendreur du son ceremonieux des 
 paroles. I'aime une society et familiarity forte et virile ; 
 une amitie qui se flatte en I'aspret^ et vigueur de son com- 
 merce, comme I'amour aux morsures et esgratigneures 
 sanglantea ; elle n'est pas assez vigoureuse et genereuse, 
 si elle n'est querelleuse, si elle est oivilisee et artiste, si 
 elle craint le heurt, et a ses allures contrainctes.i 
 
 He confesses, with whimsical earnestness, his 
 intense impatience at a stupid answerer or opponent, 
 and the mischievous spite which is awakened in him 
 by a dispute which wanders from the point. 
 
 Tout un iour ie oontesteray paisiblement, si la con- 
 duicte du debat se suyt avecques ordre ; ... on respond 
 
 presses hard upon and digs at me right and left, his imagination 
 raises up mine ; jealousy, glory, and contention stimulate and 
 raise me up to something above myself; unison is a quality 
 altogether obnoxious in conversation. 
 
 1 I could suffer myself to be rudely handled by my friends : 
 "Thou art a fool; thou knowest not what thou art talking 
 about." I love stout expressions amongst gallant men, and to 
 have them speak as they think : we must fortify and harden 
 our hearing against this tenderness as to ceremonious sound of 
 words. I love a strong and manly familiarity and converse ; a 
 friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigour of its 
 communication, as love, in biting and scratching ; it is not 
 vigorous and generous enough if it be not quarrelsome, if civil- 
 ised and artificial, if it treads nicely and fears a shock. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 31 
 
 tousjours trop bien pour moy, si on respond k ce que ie 
 dis ; mais quand la dispute est trouble et desregl^e, ie 
 quitte la cbose, et m'attacte k la forme avecques despit et 
 indiscretion ; et me iecte k une iaqon de debattre, testue, 
 malicieuse, et imperiense, de quoy j'ay k rougir aprez. II 
 est impossible de traiter de bonne foy avee un sot.^ 
 
 And was there ever so happy a picture of the close 
 of one of these hot meUes of argument, and of the 
 appearance of the field after the battle, as the follow- 
 ing?— 
 
 Que sera ce enfin ? I'un va en orient, I'autre en Occident ; 
 ils perdent Ie principal, et I'escartent dans la presse des 
 incidents : au bout d'une heure de tempeste, ils ne savent 
 ce qu'ils cherchent ; I'un est bas, I'aultre hault, I'aultre 
 costier -.^ qui se prend k un mot et une similitude ; qui 
 ne sent plus ce qu'on luy oppose, tant il est engag^ en sa 
 course, et pense k se suyvre, non pas k vous ; qui se 
 
 ' I can peaceably argue a wbole day together, if the argiunent 
 be carried on with order : I do not so much require force and 
 subtlety as order ; the order which we every day observe in the 
 wrangling of shepherds and apprentices, but never amongst us. 
 If they start from their subject 'tis an incivility, and yet we do 
 it ; but their tumult and impatience never put them out of 
 their theme ;. their argument still continues its course ; if they 
 anticipate, and do not stay for one another, they at least under- 
 stand one another very well. Any one answers quite well 
 enough for me, if he answers to what I say ; but when the dis- 
 pute is irregular and perplexed, I leave the thing, and insist 
 upon the form with anger and indiscretion ; and fall into a 
 wilful, malicious, and imperious way of disputation, of which 1 
 am afterwards ashamed. 'Tis impossible to deal fairly with a 
 fool ; my judgment is not only corrupted under the hand of so 
 impetuous a master, but my conscience also. 
 2 A c6U. 
 
32 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 trouvant foible de reins, craint tout, refvise tout, mesle dez 
 I'entr^e et confond Is propos, ou, sur I'effort du debat, se 
 mutine k se taire tout plat, par une ignorance despite, 
 affectant un orgueilleux mespris, ou une sottement modeste 
 fuyte de contention : pourveu que cettuy cy frappe, il 
 ne luy chault combien il se decouvre ; I'aultre compte ses 
 mots, et les poise pour raisons ; celuy 1^ n'y employe que 
 I'advantage de sa voix et de ses poulmons ; — en voyla un 
 qui conclud centre soy mesme ; et cettuy cy qui vous 
 assourdit de prefaces et digressions inutiles ; cet aultre 
 s'arme de pures iniures, et cherche une querelle d'Alle- 
 maigne, pour se defaire de la. society et conference d'un 
 esprit qui presse le sien ; ce dernier ne veoid rien en la 
 raison, mais il vous tient assieg^ sur la closture dialectiques 
 de ses clauses, et sur les formules de son art.^ 
 
 ' What wiU it be in the end! One flies to the east, the 
 other to the west ; they lose the principal, and wander in the 
 crowd of incidents ; after an hour of tempest they know not 
 what they seek ; one is low, the other high, and a third wide ; 
 one catches at a word and a simile ; another is no longer sensible 
 of what is said in opposition to him, being entirely absorbed in 
 his own notions, engaged in following his own course, and not 
 thinking of answering you ; another, finding himself weak, 
 fears all, refuses all, and, at the very beginning, confounds the 
 subjects, or, in the very height of the dispute, stops short, and 
 grows silent ; by a peevish ignorance affecting a proud contempt, 
 or an unseasonable modest desire to shun debate ; one, provided 
 he strikes, cares not how much he lays himself open ; another 
 counts his words, and weighs them for reasons ; another only 
 brawls, and makes use of the advantage of his lungs ; here's one 
 that learnedly concludes against himself, and another that 
 deafens you with prefaces and senseless digressions ; another 
 falls into downright railing, and seeks a ridiculous quarrel to 
 disengage himself from further contest with wits that press too 
 hard upon his own ; and a last man sees nothing in the reason 
 of the thing, but draws a line of circumvallation about you of 
 dialectic clauses, and the formula of his art. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 33 
 
 He expatiates on the satisfaction of a fair fight, 
 even if it goes against himself : — 
 
 le me sens bien plus fler de la victoire que ie gaigne 
 sur moy, quand, eu I'ardeur mesme du combat, ie me fois 
 plier soubs la force de la raison de mon adversaire, que 
 ie ne me sens grd de la victoire que ie gaigne sur lay par 
 sa foiblesse ; je receois et advoue toute sorte d'attainctes 
 qui Bont de droict fil, pour foibles qu'elles soient . . . 
 je festoye et caresse la verity en quelque main que je la 
 trouve.i 
 
 And he recounts with malicious zest the stratagems 
 which he employs, when his interlocutor has said 
 something of which he does not himself know the 
 value and force, to find out how far his man has hold 
 of the truth which he has put forward and can de- 
 fend it, and what is the real length of his tether ; how 
 craftily he feigns to give way, to contradict, or to 
 feign a perverse obtuseness, "to try on all sides how 
 the truth is lodged in him;" with what mischievous 
 industry he probes and presses and urges his unwary 
 and unconscious answerer, to make him show his real 
 shallowness and poverty. He protests, with all his 
 heart and energy, against the weak mercy of giving 
 him any help if he flounders : — 
 
 I'oys journellement dire k des sots des mots non sots ; 
 
 1 I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, 
 when, even in the ardour of dispute, I make myself submit to 
 my adversary's force of reason, than I am pleased with the 
 victory I obtain over him through his weakness. In short, I 
 receive and admit all manner of hits that are direct, how weak 
 soever. . I embrace and caress truth in, what hand soever I 
 
 find it. 
 
34 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 ils disent une bonne chose ; sgaohona jusques oil ils la 
 cognoissent ; yeoyons par oh. ila la tiennent. Nous les 
 aydons k employer ce beau, mot et cette belle raison, qu'ils 
 ne possedent pas ; ils ne I'ont qu'en garde ; ila I'auront 
 produict k I'ad venture et k tastons ; nons la leur mettona 
 en credit et en prix. Vous leur prestez la main ; k quoy 
 faire ? lis ne vous en sgavent nul gr^ et en deviennent 
 plus ineptes ; ne les secondez pas, laissez les aller : ils 
 manieront cette matiere comme gents qui ont peur de 
 s'eschaulder ; ils n'oaent luy changer d'aasiette et de iour, 
 ny I'enfonoer : croulez la (remuez la) tant soit peu ; elle 
 leur ecbappe ; ils vous la quittent, toute forte et belle 
 qu'elle est : ce sont de belles armes ; mais elles sont mal 
 emmancbees. Combien de fois en ay ie veu I'experience ! 
 Or si vous venez k les esclaircir et confirmer, ils vous 
 saisissent et desrobbent incontinent cet advantage de votre 
 interpretation : " o'estait ce que ie voulois dire : vojlk 
 iustement ma conception ; si ie ne I'ay ainsin exprim^, ce 
 n'est que faulte de langue." Souffles. II fault employer 
 la 'malice mesme a corriger cette fiere bestise} 
 
 Instead of a mere treatise, we have an exquisite 
 study of character; we have as much vigorous common 
 sense, and rare shrewdness of remark as we can want ; 
 but besides them we have Montaigne himself in all 
 
 ^^ I every day hear fools say things that are by no means 
 foolish : they say a good thing ; let us examine how far they 
 understand it, whence they have it, and what they mean by it. 
 We help them to make use of this fine expression, and this fine 
 reason, which is none of theirs— they only have it in keeping ; 
 they have let it out at a venture ; we bring it for them into 
 credit and esteem. Yon lend them a hand : to what purpose « 
 They do not think themselves obliged to you for it, and become 
 more fools still. Never take their part, let them alone ; they 
 will handle the matter like people who are afraid of burning 
 their fingers ; they neither dare change its seat nor light, nor 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 35 
 
 his humorsome and quaint originality — conversing, 
 arguing, putting himself into a dogged rage with one 
 adversary, drawing out the stupidity of another, 
 exulting in the mettle and hard head of a third, laying 
 traps at one time and at another carrying on the 
 struggle with fresh and rude joy, turning savage with 
 his servants, not for their faults but for their densely 
 stupid excuses — "sur le poinct de la bestise et 
 opiniatret6 de leurs allegations, excuses et deffenses 
 asnieres et brutales — e'est pour desesperer;" dissect- 
 ing and mocking with the highest glee the solemnity 
 and silence of men who take refuge from argument in 
 their authority and greatness — "Est il Hen certain, 
 resolu, desdaigneux, contemplatif, grave, serieux, 
 comme I'asnef — priding himself on keeping his 
 temper, and " joyously lowering his ears " in the 
 repartee of light conversation, and amusing himself 
 with the infirmity of most of his fellows, "who 
 change voice and colour when their force fails them, 
 and by an unseasonable vexation, instead of taking 
 their revenge, betray at once their weakness and 
 their want of patience;" making himself unhappy 
 
 break into it ; shake it never so little, it slips through their 
 fingers ; they give tip their cause, he it never so strong or good 
 soever ; these are fine arms, but ill mounted. How many times 
 have I seen the experience of this ? Now, if you come to ex- 
 plain anything to them, and to confirm them, they presently 
 catch at it, and rob you of the advantage of your interpretation ; 
 " It was what I was about to say ; it was just my thought ; and 
 if I did not express it so, it was only for want of language." 
 Very pretty ! Malice itself must be employed to correct this 
 proud ignorance. 
 
36 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 that dulness has the privilege of being pleased with 
 itself to a higher degree than sense ever can be, and 
 frankly avowing his principle that against dulness all 
 measures are lawful and all mischief fair. Compare 
 the essay with Lord Bacon's terse, pregnant, but 
 short-spoken Essay on Discourse, and the latter will 
 seem like a chapter of Aristotle's Ethics, compared 
 with the free and abounding life and wit of a dialogue 
 of Plato. 
 
 And in spite of much that offends and much that 
 wearies us, of much that amply justifies the disparaging 
 names which he gives to his work, he succeeds in 
 throwing a real interest and often a singular charm 
 about the commonplace incidents and details of an 
 ordinary life and a character of very moderate propor- 
 tions. His inferiority of character even contributed 
 to the perfection of the impression which he has left 
 of it. A man of higher aims, of more concentrated 
 purpose — nay of a deeper and more serious love of 
 truth — could not have written of himself with the 
 grotesque and contemptuous impartiality with which 
 Montaigne has carefully preserved the minutest flaws 
 and failures of his mental organisation, hunted after 
 every trace of odd inconsistency, and detected with 
 such malicious and inexorable shrewdness the various 
 shiftings and shadings of his cameleon-like humour. 
 Montaigne was neither proud, nor modest, nor very 
 much in earnest ; and so he was better qualified than 
 most men, both to watch and to record with cold 
 fidelity the curious and perplexing phenomena of the 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 37 
 
 inward and secret motions of thought and will. Few 
 of the most conceited of mankind would venture on 
 such hardiness and enthusiasm in self-assertion as 
 Montaigne's energetic protestation — " Si je me sem- 
 blois hon et sage tout k fait, je I'entonnerois k 
 pleine t^te."-' Few of the most humble would think 
 it necessary to profess such Quixotism against being 
 too well-thought of as Montaigne's declaration — " Je 
 reviendrois volontiers de I'autre monde, pour dementir 
 celui qui me formeroit autre que j'6tois, fUt ce pour 
 m'honorer."^ His one fear is that he should yield to 
 the temptation of making his picture too uniform and 
 consistent, and not sufficiently bold in its contrasts 
 for the apparent inconsecutiveness and discords of 
 nature. 
 
 If I speak differently of myself (he says), it is that I 
 see myself dififerently ; all contrarieties show themselves 
 in me in their turn. I have nothing to assert of myself 
 absolutely, simply, and in the gross — nothing without 
 confusion and mixture ; nothing, m one word. — Distinguo 
 is the most universal member of my logic (ii. o. 1). ' 
 
 There is no order in his description of himself. 
 His disclosures drop out at random, as they might in 
 conversation ; with more reserve in his earlier essays, 
 which are comparatively stiff and show less of his 
 own material ; but becoming fuller as he goes on, till 
 in the later ones of the third book, he is almost his 
 only subject.^ He paints himself as a thick-set, square- 
 built, clumsy little man ; so undersized that he did 
 
 1 ii. 0. 6, p. 520. ' iii. u. 9, p. 293. ^ ii. i;. 6, p. 511. 
 
38 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 not like walking on foot, because the mud of the six- 
 teenth-century streets bespattered him to his middle, 
 and their rude crowds jostled and elbowed him ;^ so 
 insigniiicant in presence,^ that, in his own house, he 
 was always getting from strangers but the fag-end of 
 a bow which had been begun to his more important- 
 looking barber ; with eager step ; with a loud and 
 noisy voice, restless and fidgety,^ with quicksilver, 
 as he says, in his heels;* and eyes that could not be 
 kept from wandering by the most ceremonious pre- 
 sence ;^ awkward to the last degree with his hands,^ 
 writing a blotted scrawl "^ which afterwards he could 
 not read, and hopeless about the folding of a letter 
 or the cutting of a pen ; a poor performer in dancing 
 and wrestling, and never able to learn anything of 
 swimming, fencing, and vaulting; a country gentle- 
 man, born and bred among labouring people, yet 
 ignorant as a child of the most ordinary country 
 knowledge ;^ unable to saddle a horse or hold a hawk 
 or call to a dog ; unable to tell the value of a coin 
 when he saw it, or to cast up accounts with counters 
 or on paper ; not knowing the difference between his 
 oats and his barley, his cabbages and lettuces, or the 
 names of the commonest implements of husbandry ;® 
 and — as he may as well confess the whole truth — once 
 surprised in utter ignorance why leaven was put into 
 
 1 iii. c. 13, pp. 461, 462. ^ ii. c. 17, pp. 331-333. 
 
 ^ iii. u. 11, p. 358 ; iii. c. 13, pp. 448, 469. 
 
 * iii. 0. 13, p. 477. ' iii. c. 13, p. 476. « ii. o. 17, p. 335. 
 
 ' But see the note, i. 331. Ed. Lefevre, 1844. 
 
 8 ii. c. 13, p. 351. s iii. o. 9, p. 244. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 39 
 
 bread, and wine was left to ferment;^ bored, almost 
 beyond the power of expression, by the petty inter- 
 ruptions and worries of keeping up his property, of 
 which he had never taken the trouble to look at the 
 title-deeds ; by his steward, who is never satisfied 
 with the season;^ by his neighbours, who quarrel 
 among themselves, or encroach on him;^ by his farm- 
 buildings, which are always wanting to be looked 
 after, and are always going wrong ;* not quite happy, 
 it seems, in Madame de Montaigne's temper and 
 tastes ;^ continually distressed at the oppression and 
 misery of his tenants in those days of plague and war; 
 harassed by the insecurity of his own house from 
 insult and plunder, and indignant at the weakness of 
 the laws, yet making it his boast that it never had 
 more than an old porter for its guard, and that it had 
 passed through the troubles of the League unviolated. 
 Such are some of the traits which Montaigne has 
 preserved of his outward life; and he has, besides, 
 carefully told us, with the loquacity of an old man 
 more precise than delicate, of his habits of sleeping 
 and eating, his taste in fish and game and wine, his 
 pains and ailments, his austere customs, his hard and 
 unwarmed bed, his single silk stockings in winter, 
 and his resistance to spectacles. Among the incon- 
 veniences of war, he singles out the dust in which 
 you have to ride all day ; and he does not even forget 
 to record that scratching — scratching his ear — was to 
 
 1 ii. c. 17, p. 351. ' iii. c. 9, p. 246. 
 
 5 Ui. c. 9, p. 238. ^ Ibid. 241. » iii. i>. 9, pp. 239, 240. 
 
40 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 him one of Nature's sweetest gratifications.-' He lets 
 us some way into his family history. He has pre- 
 served with great distinctness the image of his father,^ 
 a relic of the fifteenth century, who lived to find him- 
 self a primitive and old-fashioned man, one of the old 
 school, in the sixteenth; light-hearted and simple, 
 full of pious ways and practices, and a miracle of 
 purity in word and life to the younger generation ; 
 illiterate, but an admirer of letters ; a great builder, 
 a popular magistrate, devoted to country business, 
 brisk and active in his hale old age, and to the last 
 always taking three steps at a time as he ran upstairs ; 
 full of quaint experiments for his son's education ; 
 sending him, as a child, to be brought up with poor 
 people, that he might learn to sympathise with them 
 afterwards ; teaching him Latin, as his mother tongue, 
 before French;^ and making him learn the Greek 
 declensions, as arithmetic and geometry were some- 
 times taught, by way of a game. But, with all his 
 fancies, he secured the ripest scholars within reach — 
 among them were Buchanan and Muretus — for the 
 boy's domestic tutors. There is something touching 
 in the veneration that Montaigne, a man of so different 
 a stamp, feels for his father, and the eagerness with 
 which he seizes an opportunity to show it. Equally 
 strong is the impression which he leaves, though the 
 image of the man is not so distinct, of his friendship 
 1 iii. 0. 13. 
 
 = ii. ^. 2, p. 473 ; ii. o. 12, p. 43 ; iii. c. 9, p. 243 ; u. 10, p. 
 325, 
 
 ' iii. c. 13, p. 467 ; i. u. 25, pp. 210-216 ; ii. u. 17, p. 330. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 41 
 
 with Etienne de la Boetie ; a friendship soon closed 
 by death, but which remained to Montaigne as one 
 of his most cherished and one of his noblest posses- 
 sions ; a friendship, the remembrance of which seems 
 to shoot like a thrill into his mind when we least 
 expect it, and which he never touches upon without 
 making us feel how perfect and how beautiful it must 
 have been. 
 
 In truth, if I compare all the rest of my life, although, 
 with the grace of God I have passed it sweetly, easily, 
 and, saving the loss of such a friend, exempt from heavy 
 affliction, full of tranquillity of spirit, having taken as my 
 full payment my natural and original advantages, without 
 seeking out for others — if I compare it all with the four 
 years in which it was given me to enjoy the sweet com- 
 panionship and society of this person, it is but smoke — it 
 is but a dark and cheerless night. Since the day that I 
 lost him — 
 
 Queni semper acerbum 
 Semper honoratum (sic Di Toluistis !) habebo — 
 
 I do but drag myself along without strength ; the very 
 pleasures which present themselves to me, in lieu of con- 
 soling me, but double my regret for his loss. Each of us 
 was half in everything; I feel to myself as if I were 
 robbing him of his share (i. c. 27). 
 
 And yet that death was itself a precious memory. 
 How noble are these words on the early death of the 
 hopeful and aspiring; words in which, though he 
 does not mention La Boetie's name, it is plain that 
 he was thinking of him. " There are brave and for- 
 tunate deaths. I have seen the thread and progress 
 of a marvellous rise, in the flower of its growth cut 
 
42 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 short by death, but with so proud an end, that, in 
 my opinion, the man's aspiring and high-hearted 
 purposes had nothing in them so exalted as was 
 their interruption ; he attained, without the journey, 
 to the mark he had set to himself, more grandly 
 and gloriously than was contained in his desire and 
 his hopes; and in his fall he shot beyond the 
 power and the renown which he aimed at in his 
 running." 
 
 And for the man himself, in his inward bent and 
 features, his singularities of manner, his fancies and 
 humours, we have him before us in every variety of 
 light; a brisk, elastic, cheerful, commimicative per- 
 sonage, not ill-satisfied with himself, in spite of the 
 flow of grave self-depreciating comment and amusing 
 confidences about his own incapacity with which he 
 overwhelms us ; full of gay banter and sly irony and 
 sharp sarcasm ; full of doubts and contradictions 
 where other people see things plain or take them for 
 granted ; careless and scornful of the show of wisdom, 
 and affecting for himself the plain native unqualified 
 reality, in thoughts and words ; a man abounding in 
 distrust and misgivings about pretences and outsides, 
 but also in hearty sympathy and admiration for what 
 is great and noble; thoroughly appreciating the 
 delicacy or strength or refined harmony of a high 
 character, thoroughly honouring the genuine learning 
 of a Justus Lipsius or an Adrian Turnebus,^ thoroughly 
 
 1 i. c. 25, p. 173 ; ii. o. 12, p. 241 ; i. c. 24, p. 161 ; ii. e. 
 17 pp. 327, 364. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 43 
 
 entering into the excellences of those " rich and great 
 natures" whom common report had made famous. 
 Shrewd, independent, obstinate, wayward, he trusts 
 no one but himself, and himself not much. The 
 right to be inconsistent he will defend to the death : 
 " Je me desavoue sans cesse." He turns away with 
 loathing from the absorbing care and labour, the 
 solemnity, the dull weary weight, the stiffness, which 
 hangs on the world ; a hater of ceremony, of sadness, 
 of constraint, of effort, of all obligation, assiduity, and 
 constancy; of all that he was tied and forced and 
 expected to do : a man who " loved and cultivated " 
 himself, and made it his pride that he belonged only 
 to himself ; not afraid of society, but only of its busi- 
 ness ; shrinking " not from the crowd of men, but of 
 affairs;" in all that he did, in his reading, in his talk, 
 in his way of writing, jealous of his absolute liberty, 
 jealous of his exemption from trouble ; indolent, yet 
 capable of a quick and sudden spring, "un esprit 
 primsauUier /'^ making a plunge at the knot of the 
 question, and into the thickest of the difficulty, but 
 without spirit and interest to persevere if the first 
 spring failed; keenly alive to the mysteries and 
 uncertainties of life, but with little care for their 
 solution, and little belief in its possibility ; a wanderer 
 over all fields of thought rather than a labourer, just 
 as he loved to wander in his travels without fixed 
 time or goal, and turning aside from his road, or 
 retracing his day's journey, for the sake of any 
 1 ii. c. 10, pp. 662, 568. 
 
44 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 unexplored object. Not for the renown of Sallust 
 would he bind himself to the task of writing the 
 history of his times, though his friends told him that, 
 from his wide observation and independent mind, he 
 was so capable of it. For no consideration would he 
 " break his head " for science, of however great value 
 it might be. We see him, in conversation, sociable, 
 yet nice in his choice — Mte de compagnie, mm de troupe^ 
 — cold and round and dry, when not at home with 
 his company — " car mon aller n'est pas naturel, si ce 
 riest h pleine voile;" absent and silent, where the talk 
 was small and commonplace ; giving the most stupid 
 and silly answers, and showing the most childish 
 ignorance of ordinary things, " out of which two 
 qualities," he says, "I have gained that five or six 
 stories might have been made of me, true ones, too, 
 as ridiculous as are told of any one, be he who he 
 may;" in his conversation with the great, breaking 
 through all etiquette with the eager frankness of his 
 address, going straight to the point, and presenting 
 himself "Jierement et maigrement" to those whom he 
 most honoured ; losing love, though " never did any 
 man do less to be hated," by the reserve of his 
 ordinary conversation ; spoiling the best story in 
 telling it ; unable to prepare a speech in his head, or 
 to keep in his mind the successive points of what had 
 been said to him ; put out and brought to a standstill 
 if interrupted; but bursting forth into the most 
 animated and continuous and vehement speech, 
 ' iii. 0. 3. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 45 
 
 becoming a loud and rapid and gesticulating Gascon, 
 when some sudden reason forced him or some con- 
 genial society and favourite argument drew him out, 
 when some worthy antagonist put him on his mettle, 
 or some stupid and unfair adversary provoked him.^ 
 We see him watching curiously the processes of his 
 mind, noticing the strange and sudden way in which 
 thoughts shoot into the mind, open out, and vanish ; 
 the effect on them, and on their force and meaning, 
 of chance circumstances, movements, sounds, tones, 
 accents ; the perversity with which some, which seem 
 our freshest and deepest and clearest, present them- 
 selves on the most inconvenient and incongruous 
 occasions, when we cannot arrest or pursue or record 
 them. He laments how a thought, which seemed 
 distinctly shaped and strongly impressed on us, slips 
 into cloudiness as soon as we take up the pen to 
 write, and baflB.es our attempts to recover it ; and how 
 there always " remains in the soul a certain troubled 
 image of our thought, which presents, as in a dream, 
 a better form than that which we have used, but 
 which we cannot get hold of and work out;" "a 
 view of the land beyond, but a confused and misty 
 one, which we cannot disentangle."^ He observes 
 the strange way in which he involuntarily imitated 
 the language of the book last read, the dialect of those 
 he talked with, the catch -words and oaths and ex- 
 clamations round him, even the tricks and grimaces 
 and ways of speaking, which displeased or amused 
 1 ii. u. 17. ^ ii. o. 17, pp. 324-326 ; i. c. 25, p. 170. 
 
46 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 him. He records minutely the various phases of 
 sensation, thought, and memory which he went 
 through, after an accident which, for the time, took 
 away his senses.^ He dwells feelingly on the strange 
 caprices and failures of memory ; if something comes 
 into his head, and he must cross his courtyard to 
 write it down in his library, he must give it to some 
 one to keep for him, lest it should evaporate on the 
 way ; if a thought occurs to him on horseback, when 
 he is not expecting it, — and it is then, he says, when 
 the necessity of the road stops talk, that his deepest 
 and most playful ones, and those that please him 
 most, are produced, — the chance is that his memory 
 will only give him back the cdow of the thought, gay 
 or sad or strange, like that of dreams, but the sub- 
 stance is gone irretrievably ; of his servants' names, 
 he can remember, perhaps, that they have three 
 syllables, that the sound is rough, that they begin or 
 end with a particular letter, and nothing more. And 
 memory is not to be forced ; the more he distrusts it, 
 the more it becomes confused ; he must solicit it as if 
 it were "by chance, and as if not caring ; if he presses 
 it, it bewilders itself, and, when once it has begun to 
 lose its footing, the more he sounds it, the more it 
 becomes entangled ; it will serve him at its own time 
 — not at his;" and he consoles himself, optimist that 
 he is, on the badness of his memory — so bad, that it 
 fails to recognise his own compositions — by reflecting 
 that it has cut him off from the ways of ambition, 
 1 ii. c. 17, p. 348. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 47 
 
 and prevented him from boring and deafening his 
 friends by the stream of his talk and, like some of 
 his acquaintances — sensible men, too — by the length 
 of his stories. 
 
 And again, with many curious incidental notices 
 of the feelings and political condition of his age, we 
 have most strongly marked, how dissonant to his 
 nature were the times in which he lived — dissonant 
 in their cruelty and falsehood to his kindly nature and 
 straightforward honesty ; dissonant in their stirring 
 greatness and eventful energy to his aversion to de- 
 cision, earnestness, and trouble. Not but that there 
 was much to interest him. He watched with the 
 liveliest wonder and almost with awe the New World 
 of the West, with its strange nations and, in those 
 days, its sad fortunes. He observed with anxiety, 
 and yet with admiration, the growth of the Ottomans,-' 
 and the singular organisation and discipline of their 
 armies. But at home and in Europe he found little 
 but what raised in him aversion and contempt. He 
 hated the Eeformation with the most entire hatred ; 
 his conservative instincts and his readiness to doubt 
 combined to make him look with fear on the opening 
 to the world at large of questions to which he shut 
 his eyes ; he charged it with being but an external 
 arbitrary reformation, which left the vices of its 
 votaries, their ambition, their pride, their avarice 
 unamended ; and cast a bitter sneer at the reformer, 
 apparently Beza, who "with one hand presented to 
 1 i. 0. 24, p. 168 ; iii. c. 12, p. 379 ; ii. c. 21, p. 385. 
 
48 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 the people verses pre-eminent both in beauty and 
 licentiousness, and with the other the sourest theo- 
 logical reformation that the world had broken its fast 
 upon for maiiy a day." In France he saw nothing 
 but "the spectacle of a public death."^ He found 
 himself in times "when every French gentleman saw 
 himself from hour to hour on the point of the utter 
 ruin of his fortune;" nay, when as a natural reason 
 for educating a boy to bear pain with fortitude, the 
 prospect presented itself of his some day or other, in 
 the mere course of things, incurring legal punishment, 
 and having to bear the prison and the rack.^ And 
 terrible as were the ferocity and the violence, the 
 undissembled contempt for good faith and truth was 
 more dreadful still. It raised Montaigne's cynical 
 humour to the highest pitch. He professes to admit, 
 with a coolness worthy of Machiavelli, that wicked- 
 ness plays a necessary and indispensable part in 
 cementing the public weal : " the public good requires 
 that there should be people to betray, to lie, to 
 massacre ; " he only bargains that he may be excused 
 in favour of others more obedient and more supple ; 
 but he is not so unfashionable as to set up the exclu- 
 sive claims of openness and fair dealing, except on 
 his own private account — " je ne veux pas priver la 
 tromperie de son rang ; ce seroit mal entendre le 
 monde ; je sais qu'elle a servi souvent profitablement, 
 et qu'elle maintient et nourrit la plus part des vacations 
 des hommes.'' His cool and shrewd sagacity shows 
 
 1 iii. c. 9, p. 302 ; c. 12, p. 385". '' i. c. 25, p. 181. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 49 
 
 him how tenacious of life are old states and constitu- 
 tions, even in their most hopeless disorder — " tout ce 
 qui bransle ne tombe pas ;" but amid the helplessness 
 of the laws, the downfall of the royal authority, the 
 anarchy of the feudal nobles and gentry, — " nos 
 tiercelets et quartelets des rois,' — the savage exaspera- 
 tion and relentless craft of every party, the misery 
 and hopelessness of the poor, the apparent vanity of 
 the hope that some one would try being just and true, 
 merely as a means to power — Montaigne seems to give 
 up his country as lost. " Let us thank fortune that 
 it has made us live in a time not soft, not feeble, not 
 idle — one that if it would not be famous for any other 
 reason, will at least be famous for its misfortunes."^ 
 
 He did not shrink from taking a side : the laws, 
 he says, had chosen it for him, and he served the 
 king. He seems to have been familiar with the court ; 
 and a thorough Frenchman, he was enthusiastic in his 
 love of Paris — " which he never ceased to love, how- 
 ever offended with France — that great city, by which 
 alone he was a Frenchman.'' But the zeal, the 
 earnestness, the thoroughness of a partisan he utterly 
 disclaims for the cause that he thought the best. His 
 tastes were not in the way of that fierce wild world 
 round him. " Je m'aime trop," he says. He professes, 
 with the most unqualified frankness, to prize far too 
 highly his leisure and his liberty, to sacrifice them for 
 those " high and commanding fortunes " which were 
 being fought for and won on all sides. He is not ill- 
 
 1 V. iii. c. 9, p. 257 ; ii. u. 17, p. 341 ; iii. c. 12, p. 385. 
 
 E 
 
50 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 pleased to remember that one side called him Guelf , and 
 the other Ghibelline. Doggedly realising his condition 
 and its perils, he refused to submit to the ordinary 
 precautions and restraints which it prescribed. In 
 Guyenne, the very focus of the civil war, in spite of 
 his known professions and equally known lukewarm- 
 ness, he refuses to fortify his house — he has " left it 
 to the stars to guard ;" he boasts with immense glee 
 that it has never been violated, and that in moments 
 of treachery and danger his undoubting trustfulness 
 and bold frankness have conjured away the mischief. 
 " Je doute,' is his confession, " si je peux assez 
 honnetement avouer a combien vil prix du repos et 
 tranquillity de ma vie, je I'ai plus de moiti6 pass6e en la 
 ruyne de mon pays."-' He liked to sharpen the con- 
 trasts between his absence of excitement, his cool way 
 of going through public duties, with the restlessness 
 and effort and display all round him. He is only too 
 happy that his mayoralty at Bordeaux should have 
 passed without anything remarkable. " lis disent 
 cette mienne vacation s'ltre pass6e sans marque et 
 sans trace. 11 est bon ! on accuse ma cessation en un 
 temps ofi qiiasi tout le monde doit convainm de trop 
 fake."'' 
 
 It is pleasant to see the picture which he shows us 
 by glimpses, of so much love and enjoyment of life 
 in spite of surrounding danger and trouble — of a 
 course so generally fortunate, and so happy to look 
 back to — of advantages for the most part allowed 
 1 iii. c. 12, p. 386. '' iii. c. 10, pp. 349, 350. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 51 
 
 their full play — of so much free and hearty swing of 
 a rich and vigorous nature; to read his cheerful 
 recognitions that his lot was such a congenial and 
 suitable one — his manly and honest avowals that he 
 was a man made for prosperous days, only good in 
 them, and his equally honest avowals that when pain 
 and trouble came he did not find them so bad as he 
 had imagined them. In measuring his self-indulgent 
 love of ease, his " faindantise," we must take account 
 of the strong irony which runs through his confessions 
 against himself — his keen sense and admiration of all 
 that is noble and generous — his shrewd and thorough 
 insight into the self-deceits and disguises which lurk 
 about the talk and professions of busy men. And it 
 is impossible not to be struck with the calm and real 
 way in which, cheerful and pleasure-loving man as he 
 is, he contemplates the look and the approaches of 
 death, eyes it with a strange and fearless interest, 
 traces with thankfulness the gentle ways in which 
 nature prepares us for it, "lends us her hand and 
 gives us courage," and makes the passage froin youth 
 and strength to old age — which would be so intoler- 
 able if abrupt — so gradual and so insensible, "that 
 we are tamed to it, and feel no shock when youth 
 dies in us, which is in reality a harder death than the 
 total death of a feeble life ;"— with the strong hold he 
 has of the truth, that life and death are of a piece— 
 " nous ne devenons pas autres pour mourir " — and the 
 wish that it might find him doing his ordinary work, 
 "planting his cabbages, with most of his garden 
 
52 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 unfinished." But on the other hand, a far less 
 pleasant view is forced on us. His deep and over- 
 whelming sense of the nothingness of man, of the 
 smallness of his greatest plans and the emptiness of 
 his greatest achievements, seems to be for ever crush- 
 ing down in him the idea of duty, the wish for good, 
 the thought of immortality. That cherished liberty 
 — that playful sturdiness in asserting his exemption 
 from care and effort — that open frankness, which 
 warns you against taking it all for earnest, when he 
 confesses his low standard and low aims, is, at bottom, 
 the inspiration and the preaching of a deep-rooted 
 selfishness. There is no hiding that dominant 
 feature of the Essais, under an affectation of honestly 
 avowing it for the purpose of disparaging it. With 
 his keen and thoroughgoing sagacity he saw into and 
 hated much in the current morality of his contem- 
 poraries, that they were not offended at — their false- 
 hood, their cruelty, their injustice, their intrigues and 
 restlessness. But he showed to the full, though in a 
 subtler and more refined form, their epicurean worldli- 
 ness; and he did not even disguise that he had 
 imbibed without scruple their gross sensuality. Mon- 
 taigne says many beautiful and noble things of 
 friendship—" there is nothing that he knows so well 
 to do, as to be a friend;" but he does not seem 
 able even to conceive that there can be anything so 
 excellent and refined as friendship, in marriage. 
 
 And if Montaigne wanted the moral tone, he also 
 wanted many of the powers which are requisite to make 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 53 
 
 a great thinker ; and he was far from using those rare 
 endowments which he had to their full advantage. 
 His philosophy is a poor and unworthy one, though 
 his mind was so large and his insight so keen. He 
 noted what came before him as chance rather than 
 design brought it under his inquisitive and penetrating 
 eye ; but he had not the patience, the wish, perhaps 
 not the capacity, to grasp together firmly and in their 
 relative bearings, a series of observations. He unfolds, 
 but does not gather up. He studies truth in succes- 
 sive portions, but never detains and embraces them in 
 one. . Its rays fall on his mind clear and strong, but 
 they pass through it parallel to one another, and 
 never converge ; he has no power of bringing them to 
 a focus. In the forcible representation which his 
 book gives of the variety, the mixture, the conflicting 
 appearances of the world, there is no care shown to 
 find the key, or to trace a predominant purpose or 
 tendency. But this very absence of concentration, 
 of balancing, of construction, contributes, perhaps, to 
 the liveliness of his separate conceptions. He has no 
 temptation to quaUfy, to eliminate, to soften down, 
 and pare away. When the opposite aspect, the limit- 
 ing or complementary truth, comes round in its turn, 
 he will deal with it equally boldly and without reserve ; 
 meanwhile, he is engrossed with the one immediately 
 present. At any rate, so it is, that though the eff'ect 
 of his meditations, as a whole, is confused and uncer- 
 tain, his sayings and trains of thought, one by one, 
 strike the mind and fasten on the memory with a 
 
54 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 force which witnesses to the sagacity and genius which 
 has produced them. 
 
 Books were comparatively few in Montaigne's day, 
 and the avenues to real knowledge were choked up 
 and uncertain. He himself was peculiarly alive to 
 their difficulties and imperfections. Yet there was 
 scarcely any subject of human interest to which his 
 attention had not been directed, and on which he had 
 not some shrewd opinion to express. The man of 
 universal knowledge was not an unheard-of character 
 in those days ; but the man of universal inquisitive- 
 ness, the man without knowledge, whose thoughts 
 were awakened and set astir by every fresh object, 
 however familiar or however strange, had not yet 
 become so common. Montaigne represents, imper- 
 fectly enough in some ways, but very perfectly in 
 others, the educated man of modern times — a man 
 whose powers have probably been developed and 
 strengthened by some special study or pursuit, but 
 who has been trained to perceive and feel a much 
 wider field of action, of character, of knowledge all 
 around him ; and whose interest and thoughtfulness 
 find subjects to fasten on, whenever the course of his 
 reading or the chances of his life carry him into it. 
 Such men may, indeed, be but superficial and meddling 
 trifiers, without patience or purpose. But if they are 
 men of practised mind, possessed of real force and 
 spring, they will show, even under the disadvantage 
 of approaching an unaccustomed subject, the play and 
 discipline of their intelligence; and the fresh and 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 55 
 
 bold handling of even an unskilled master-hand may 
 leave something behind for remembrance and admira- 
 tion. Montaigne's conception of nature and the 
 world was a wide and lofty one ; and whatever was 
 found within that vast circle, was to him a matter to 
 take note of, to inquire into, to look at in its genuine 
 and natural aspect. " Nous sommes touts (he says) 
 contraincts et amoncelez en nous, et avons la vue 
 raccourcie k la longueur de notre nez ;'' while without 
 us, infinite and unfathomable, spreads the immensity 
 and diversity of the universe, of that which is to be 
 known, and of that which now we never shall know. 
 
 Qui se presente comme dans un tableau oette grande 
 image de notre mere nature en son entiere maiestd ; qui 
 lit en son visage une si generale et constante variety ; qui 
 se remarqne 1^ dedans, et non soy, mais tout un royaume, 
 comme un traict d'une poincte tres-delicate, celuy Ik seul 
 estime les choses selon leur iuste grandeur ^ (i. c. 25). 
 
 To follow up, and to deepen in his mind the im- 
 pression of this multiplicity and changefulness of the 
 world, is an object which discloses itself all through 
 his writings. He dwells on the endlessly differing 
 shapes in which life and thought and feeling present 
 themselves. He summons up before his imagination 
 
 ' But whoever shall represent to his fancy, as in a picture, 
 that great image of our mother nature, portrayed in her full 
 majesty and lustre ; whoever in her face shall read so genei'al 
 and so constant a variety, whoever shall ohserve himself in that 
 figure, and not himself but a whole kingdom, no bigger than 
 the least touch of a pencU, in comparison of the whole, that 
 man alone is able to value things according to their true esti- 
 mate and grandeur. 
 
56 THE ESSAYS OE MONTAIGNE 
 
 the muster and account of all that has gone on in the 
 world, of human activity and of the events of nature, 
 and of all that is going on at this moment all round 
 us, absolutely lost to our knowledge, as if it had no 
 existence. The vast prospect subdues and humbles 
 him ; but it also stirs up and attracts a corresponding 
 variety of thoughts and interests. It sets him on 
 exercising and trying his powers whenever they come 
 in contact with the realities about him, however much 
 they may lie out of the common track and beat of 
 his thoughts. For we are in danger, he says, in the 
 use of our intellectual faculties, of turning round and 
 round in the same circle, instead of moving forwards. 
 And he would have the mind equipped and prepared 
 for whatever encounter the day's events may have in 
 store for it, regulating its efforts by the object before 
 it, but not unwilling to try its mettle on any. In 
 work, in reading, in company, he is afraid of becoming 
 riveted and narrowed down to what suits his taste or 
 his capacity. 
 
 le louerois tme ame k divers estages qui sgache et se 
 tendre et se demonter, qiji soit bien par tout oh sa fortune 
 la porte ; qui puisse deviser avecques son voisin, de son 
 bastiment, de sa chasse, et de sa querelle ; entretenir 
 avecques plaisir, un charpentier et un jardinier.^ 
 
 ^ The soul for me is a soul of many stages — a soul which 
 could ■wind itself up to a great effort, and then sink back into 
 slackness ; which is well wherever its fortune carries it ; which 
 can talk with a neighbour about his building, his hunting, and 
 his quarrel ; and find pleasure in conversing with a carpenter 
 or a gardener. 
 
THE ESSAYS OE MONTAIGNE 57 
 
 It is this "ame h divers estages," able to raise or 
 depress itself at pleasure, and suit itself to all occa- 
 sions, ■which fits a man for a becoming and profitable 
 intercourse with his fellowmen, — which appreciates 
 the homely strength of the lowest, as well as the 
 grace and richness of the highest. It was such a 
 mind in him, which, while lamenting its own stiffness 
 and uncommunicativeness in dealing with common 
 minds, could yet recognise that they are often as 
 much under regulation as the most refined ones ; and 
 which, with such true and delicate discrimination, 
 fixed on the one point which, in discourse with them, 
 educated people must never overlook: — "II faut se 
 demettre au train de ceulx avecques qui vous ^tes, et 
 parfois affecter I'ignorance : mettez k part la force et 
 la subtilit6| c'esf assez d'y reserver I'ordre." It was 
 such a mind, too, which could sketch so truly and 
 beautifully the free and open-hearted conversation of 
 men of high taste and cultivation. And it was such 
 a mind which could produce such a medley of noble 
 things and base, of deep things and shallow, of good 
 sense and nonsense, of humour and puerile folly, of 
 kindly simphcity and detestable cynicism, of genuine 
 truthfulness and patent afi'ectation, as the book of 
 Essays. 
 
 But Montaigne's profession of interest in all subjects 
 of human concern is unequally fulfilled. That pattern 
 of a mind open and alive to all wonders and lights 
 which meet it, is conceived more truly than it is 
 realised by him. In his day, there was some excuse 
 
58 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 for him. The great mass of human knowledge was 
 at that time still so confused and imperfect, that 
 there was little to attract a looker-on, not avowedly 
 devoted to some one of its branches, to plunge into 
 the labyrinth. Its leading aspect to him would be 
 its uncertainty and its want of reality. Montaigne 
 notices the sciences, not for their own sake, but 
 because they were cared for among men. His 
 curiosity is not excited by their subjects, for these 
 seemed buried and inaccessible under the iictions and 
 suppositions of people who could not get to the 
 bottom of them, and would not acknowledge that 
 they were at a loss; he dwells on them chiefly as 
 illustrating the tricks and contradictions and self- 
 deceptions of the human mind, the mischiefs and 
 follies into which it had been misled by its self- 
 confidence. Nature to him appeared veiled and 
 impenetrable ; — ■ 
 
 Ay-ie pas veu, en Platon, ce divin mot, " que nature 
 n'est qu'une poesie enigmatique 1" comme, peult-estre, qui 
 diroit une peincture voilee et tenebreuse, entreluisant d'une 
 inflnie variety de faux lours k exercer nos conieotures 1^ 
 (ii. c. 12). 
 
 And science he looked upon as playing the sophist 
 with fancies which belonged to poetry ; " she gives 
 us not what is, not what she believes, but what she 
 
 1 Have I not read in Plato this divine saying that "nature 
 is nothing bvit an enigmatic poesy ! " As if a man might per- 
 haps see a veiled and shady picture, breaking out here and there 
 with an infinite variety of false lights to puzzle our conjectures. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 59 
 
 can invent most plausible and most beautiful ;" where 
 she confesses that she cannot reach, she imagines 
 other substances and invests them with unreal forms 
 of her own invention, and bids us take her fictions 
 for granted, at the moment that she tells us they are 
 fictions. Astronomy imagines her epicycles. Moral 
 philosophy has imitated the mechanics of astronomy, 
 built up the little world of man, with aspects and 
 parts innumerable, has divided and arranged our 
 soul into ideal faculties and portions according to its 
 fancy, and yet has not been able to exhaust the 
 subject : — 
 
 Not merely in reality, but not even in their dreams 
 can they so order the soul, but that there will be some 
 cadence, some note, which escapes their plan of construc- 
 tion, all disproportioned as it is, and put together with a 
 thousand false and fanciful members. Nor have they any 
 excuse. For with painters, when they paint the sky, the 
 earth, the seas, the distant isles, we pardon theiii if they 
 only show us some faint trace, and as in matters beyond 
 our knowledge, we are satisfied with any sort of shadowing 
 forth and fancy ; but when they portray us after nature, 
 or any object which is familiar and well known to us, we 
 require from them a perfect and exact representation of 
 features and tints, and we hold them cheap if they fail. 
 - . . Should nature one day (he bursts out, as if divining 
 what was to come) he pleased to open to us her bosom, 
 and make us behold in very truth the means and the plan 
 of her movement, and prepare our eyes to see it, my 
 God, what cheats, what mistakes should we not find in 
 our poor science ! I am deceived, if in one single thing 
 she has hold of the reality as it is (ii. c. 12). 
 
 When we know what Descartes and Bacon report 
 
60 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 of the state of the sciences in those days, we need not 
 wonder at a man like Montaigne, a by-stander and 
 not an adept, but so keenly alive to pretence and so 
 obstinate in trying to reach what was real and solid, 
 distrusting and turning away from them. On what- 
 ever subject he was engaged, he liked to feel that his 
 thoughts had come in contact with its very substance ; 
 that they had broken through all images, and gener- 
 alities, and conventional representations, and had got 
 hold of the thing itself. The charm of his more serious 
 judgments and expressions of feeling consists in this 
 uncompromising attempt to get at the real features of 
 what he was looking at, and to say his real thoughts 
 about it. You feel that he is not trying to be original, 
 or fine, or eloquent, or complete and consistent ; but 
 that he is using his keen eyes, and trying to say 
 exactly what they have shown him ; trying to repro- 
 duce, in forcible and corresponding words, the exact 
 impressions which are on his mind, neither more nor 
 less ; not caring much for awkwardness, or violation 
 of custom, or apparent onesidedness, or the necessity 
 of confessing a doubt of his being right after all, so 
 that he clearly conveys his meaning. And so there 
 is a justness, a temperateness, a good sense, to be 
 found in his writings, — a real coming to the point, an 
 openness both to the more delicate and subtle class of 
 feelings, and to the real worth and dignity of common 
 ones, a felicitous escape from the cramped and com- 
 monplace and inflated ways which every age has in 
 readiness to catch and bind the ordinary run of its 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 61 
 
 writers, a self-possession and command over language, 
 which we do not expect in those early days of modern 
 literature. His style of remark on books and authors 
 is an instance of this. The books he used were all 
 well-known and famous ones, which everybody read 
 and admired and quoted ; their established and official 
 panegyrics were in every one's mouth; scholars re- 
 peated what scholars before them had said, and the 
 general world repeated by hearsay from the scholars. 
 It is not that Montaigne says anythmg very new about 
 them ; but he says it, not as if he had of course to 
 praise one whom everybody praised, but because 
 reading the book had left certain impressions about 
 it on his mind. His criticism lets us in, in pithy and 
 pertinent words, to his genuine taste and likings, and 
 to the particular quahties which really struck him in 
 each book. How excellently and how simply has he 
 said just the true thing about Lucretius in comparison 
 with Virgil : — 
 
 Ceulx des temps voisins k Virgile se plaignoient de 
 quoy aulcuns luy comparoient Lucrece ; je suis d'opinion 
 que c'est k la verity une comparaison ineguale ; mais fay 
 hien a faire a me rasseurer en cette creance quand je me 
 trouve attache d, quelque beau lieu de ceulx de Lucrece^ 
 (ii. c. 10). 
 
 How fresh and large the judgment which, filled 
 
 ^ Such as lived near Virgil's time were scandalised that some 
 should compare him with Lucretius. I am of opinion that the 
 comparison is, in truth, very unequal ; a belief that, neverthe- 
 less, I have much ado to assure myself in, when I meet with 
 some excellent passages in Lucretius. 
 
62 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 with admiration of the great classic poets, and further 
 so far bound to its own age as to think that nothing 
 greater could be achieved in French poetry than what 
 had been done by Eonsard and Du Bellay,i yet could 
 see beauty in the popular poetry of a province.^ And 
 . how true and well-trained the taste, which in that age 
 of poetical conceits could discern so clearly the differ- 
 ence between the genuine beauty of Virgil and 
 Catullus and the points and affectation of their 
 successors ; and could appreciate so fully and enthusi- 
 astically the force and marvellous genius which chose 
 and gave life to the words of the older poets : — 
 " Quand je veois ces braves formes de s'expliquer, si 
 vives, si profondes, je ne dis pas que c'est Bien dire, 
 je dis que c'est Bienpenser."^ 
 
 The same characteristic of straightforward good 
 sense, resolutely shaking itself loose from the follies, 
 the affectations, the prejudices which reigned among 
 the learned and the talkers of the day, shows itself in 
 his thoughts on education. He grasps firmly and 
 urges home the truth, often, it must be said, with 
 exaggeration and love of paradox, that education is 
 primarily the development and practice of faculties, 
 and only subordinately the furnishing of the memory 
 with knowledge. "J'aime mieux," he says, "forger 
 men ame, que la meubler."* His humour, his sarcasm, 
 his indignation, his thorough contempt of all outside 
 knowledge and technical acquirement, his keen powei 
 
 1 ii. c. 17, p. 364 ; i. u. 25, p. 207. ^ ; ^ 54 
 
 ' iii. c. 5, p. 127. * iii. 0. 3, p. 45. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 63 
 
 of getting at the plain truth and setting it forth, are 
 all directed, probably for the first time in those days, 
 and with zeal and energy never surpassed since, 
 against a training which only aimed at stuffing the 
 memory without exercising, or refining, or protecting 
 the mind. He may have been mistaken in some of 
 the processes which he undervalued, and in others 
 which he would have substituted ; but the true prin- 
 ciple of education — the true condition of real know- 
 ledge, — "il nefavipas attacher le s^voir a. I'dme, ilfaut 
 Vincorporer " ^ — he disentangled and held up to view 
 with admirable good sense. And the same good sense 
 which opened his eyes to some of those plain truths 
 to which, commonly, his contemporaries were blind — 
 such as the indefensibleness of torture — made him 
 protest earnestly against the unkindly and forbidding 
 drill, often the harshness and cruelty, which in those 
 days were thought the natural and necessary means 
 to break in children. I suppose he is the only writer 
 of his time who ever thought it worth while, as he 
 passed along the streets, to heed or take notice of the 
 brutality of poor parents to their little children. 
 
 And no man had, more than Montaigne, a quick 
 feeling and sympathy for all that was noble, or 
 touching, or elevating in human life. No one saw 
 sooner than he when and by what means the delicate 
 and deeply-hidden strings of the soul were reached 
 and moved. No one felt more exquisitely the 
 mingled inclination to smile and to be sad together, 
 1 i. c, 24, p. 162. 
 
64 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 at the strange blendings of fortune, the strange mix- 
 tures of character, the whimsical yet melancholy 
 issues and endings, which abound in human life. A 
 topic, for instance, on which he dwells very strongly 
 is the estrangement of children by the reserve and 
 distance which the fashion of the day prescribed to 
 parents. Here is one of his illustrations. With 
 what full sympathy is the picture drawn, both for the 
 ludicrous, and for the affecting side of it : — 
 
 I'en ai veu quelqu'un, duquel la ieunesse avait est^ 
 tresimperieuse ; quand c'est venu sur I'aage, quoyqu'il le 
 passe sainement ce qui se peult, il frappe, 11 mord, il jure, 
 le plus tempestatif maistre de Trance ; il se rouge de soing 
 et de vigilance. Tout cela n'est qu'un bastelage, auquel 
 la famille meame complotte : du grenier, du cellier, voire, 
 et de sa bource, d'aultres ont la meilleure part de I'usage, 
 Dependant qu'il en a les clefs en sa gibbeciere, plus cbere- 
 ment que ses yeulx. Oe pendant qu'il se contente de 
 I'espargne et cMcbet6 de sa table, tout est en debauche en 
 divers reduicts de sa maison, en jeu, et en despense, et en 
 I'entretien des contes de sa vaine cholere et pourvoyance. 
 Cbascun est en sentinelle centre luy. Si, par fortune, 
 quelque cbestif serviteur s'y addonne, soubdain il luy est 
 mis en souspegon, quality i laquelle la vieillesse mord si 
 volontiers de soy mesme. Quantes fois s'est il vant6 k 
 moy de la bride qu'U donnoit aux siens, et exacte obeis- 
 sance et reverence qu'il en recevoit ; combien il veoyait 
 clair en ses aifaires. 
 
 lUe solus nesoit omnia. 
 
 le ne sgaebe homme qui peust apporter plus de parties, 
 et naturelles, et acquises, propres k conserver la maistrise, 
 qu'il faict ; et si, en est desoheu comme un enfant ; 
 partant I'ay ie ohoisy, parmy plusieurs telles conditions 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 65 
 
 que ie cognois, comme plus exemplaire. Ce seroit matiere 
 k une question scholastique, "s'il est ainsi mieulx, ou 
 aultrement." En presence, toutes choses luy cedent ; et 
 laisse Ion ce vain cours k son auctorit^ qu'on ne luy resiste 
 iamais. On le croit, on le oraint, on le respecte, tout son 
 saoul. Donne il congd k un valet ? il plie son pacquet, 
 le \oylk party ; mais hors de devant luy seulement ; les 
 pas de la vieillesse sont si lents, les sens si troubles, qu'il 
 vivra et fera son office en mesme maison, un an, sans estre 
 appergeu. Et quand la saison en est, on faict venir des 
 lettres loingtaines, piteuses, suppliantes, pleines de pro- 
 messes de mieulx faire ; par oil on le remet en grace. 
 Monsieur faict il quelque march6 ou quelque despesche 
 qui desplaise ? On la supprime, forgeant tantost aprez 
 assez de causes pour eicuser la faulte d'execution ou de 
 response. Nulles lettres estrangieres ne luy estants pre- 
 mierement apportdes, il ne veoid que celles qui semblent 
 commodes k sa science. Si, par cas d'adventure, il les 
 saisit, ayant en coustume de se reposer sur certaine per- 
 sonne de les luy lire, on y treuve sur le champ ce qu'on 
 veult ; et faict on, k touts coups, que tel luy demande 
 pardon, qui I'injurie par sa lettre. II ne veoid enfin ses 
 affaires que par une image disposee et desseignee, et satis- 
 factoire le plus qu'on peult, pour n'esveiUer son chagrin 
 et son corroux i (ii. c. 8). 
 
 1 Such a one I have known, who, having been very imperious 
 in his youth, when he came to be old, though he might have 
 lived at his full ease and had his judgment as entire as ever, would 
 yet torment himself and others ; strike, rant, swear, and curse ; 
 the most tempestuous master in France ; fretting himself with 
 unnecessary suspicion and vigilance. And all this rumble and 
 clutter but makes his family cheat him the sooner and the more : 
 of his barn, his kitchen, cellar, nay, and his very purse too, 
 others have the greatest use and share, whilst he keeps his keys 
 in his bosom much more carefully than his eyes. Whilst he 
 hugs himself with the frugality of the pitiful pittance of a 
 wretched niggardly table, everything goes to wrack and ruin in 
 
 F 
 
66 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 Here is the other illustration : beautiful alike for 
 the simple and most touching description of the old 
 man's inconsolable self-reproach, and for the involun- 
 tary burst of thankfulness and consolation after it, 
 which the remembrance of Montaigne's own lost 
 friendship brought along with it to his own mind : — 
 
 Feu Monsieur le Mareschal de Montluc, ayant perdu 
 son fils, qui mourut en I'isle de Maderes, brave gentil- 
 homme, a la verity, et de grande esperance, me faisoit fort 
 valoir, entre ses aultres regrets, le desplaisir et crevecoeur 
 qu'il sentoit, de ne s'estre jamais communique k luy ; et 
 sur cette humeur d'une gravity et grimace paternelle, avoir 
 perdu la commodity de gouster et bien cognoistre son fils, 
 
 every corner of Ms house, in play, drink, all sorts of profusion, 
 making sports in their junkettings with his vain anger and 
 fruitless parsimony. Every one is a sentinel against him ; and 
 if by accident any wretched fellow that serves him is of another 
 humour, and will not join with the rest, he is presently rendered 
 suspected to him, a bait which old age very easily bites at of 
 itself. How often has this gentleman boasted to me in how 
 great awe he kept his family, and how exact an obedience and 
 reverence they paid him ! How clearly he saw into his own 
 affairs ! 
 
 Ille solus nescit omnia. 
 " He alone knows nothing of the matter." 
 
 I do not know any one that can muster more parts, both 
 natural and acquired, proper to maintain such a dominion, than 
 he ; yet he is fallen from it like a child. For this reason it is 
 that I have picked him out amongst several others that I know 
 of the same humour, for the greatest example. It were matter 
 for a question iu the schools, "Whether he is better thus or 
 otherwise ?" In his presence all submit to and bow before him 
 and give so much way to his vanity that nobody ever resists 
 him ; he has his belly-full of cringe, and all postures of fear, 
 submission, and respect. Does he turn away a servant? he 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 67 
 
 et aussi de lui declarer I'extreme amiti^ qu'il luy portoit, 
 et le, digne jugement qu'il faisoit de ea vertu. " Et ce 
 pauvre gargon, disoit-il, n'a rien veu de moy qu'une con- 
 tenance renftongnde et pleine de mespria ; et a emportd 
 cette creance, que ie n'ay sceu ny I'aimer ny I'estimer 
 selon son merite. A qtd g'ardois ie k descouvrir cette 
 singuliere affection, qui ie luy portois dans mon ame ? 
 estoit ce pas lui qui en debvoit avoir tout le plaisir et 
 toute I'obligation 1 Ie me suis contrainct et geheimd pour 
 maintenir ce vain masque ; et y ait perdu le plaisir de sa 
 conversation, et sa volenti quand et quand, qu'il ne me 
 peult avoir portde aultre que Men froide, n'ayant jamais 
 receu de moy que rudesse, ny senty qu'une fagon tyran- 
 nique." Ie treuve que cette plaincte estoit bien prinse et 
 raisonnable ; car, comme ie sgaia par une trop ceitaine 
 experience, il n'est aulcune si doulce consolation en la 
 
 packs up Ms bundle, and is gone, — but 'tis no further than just 
 out of his sight : the pace of old age is so slow, and the senses 
 so weak and troubled, that he will live and do his old office in 
 the same house a year together without being perceived. And 
 after a fit interval of time, letters are pretended to come from a 
 great way off, very pitiful, suppliant, and full of promises of 
 amendment, by virtue of which he is again received into favour. 
 Does monsieur make any bargain, or send away any despatch 
 that does not please ? 'Tis suppressed, and causes afterwards 
 forged to excuse the want of execution in the one or answer in 
 the other. No strange letters are first brought to him ; he never 
 sees any but those that seem fit for his knowledge. If by acci- 
 dent they fall first into his own hand, being used to trust some- 
 body to read them to him, he reads extempore what he thinks 
 fit, and very often makes such a one ask him pardon, who 
 abuses and rails at him in his letter. In short, he sees nothing 
 but by an image prepared and designed beforehand, and the 
 most satisfactory they can -invent, not to rouse and awake his 
 ill-humour and oholer. I have, under different forms, seen 
 enough of long and enduring management to just the same 
 effect. 
 
68 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 perte de nos amis, que celle que nous apporte la science 
 de n'avoir rien oublid k leur dire, et d'avoir en avecques 
 eulx une parfaicte et entiere communication. men 
 amy ! en vaulx ie mieux d'en avoir le goust ? ou si i'en 
 vaulx moins ? Ten vaulx, certes, bien mieulx ; son regret 
 me console et m'honore : est ce pas un pieux et plaisant 
 ofSce de ma vie, d'en faire a tout iamais les obseques ? 
 est il iouissance qui vaille cette privation ?i (ii. c. 8). 
 
 But Montaigne's strength and vreakness, his truth- 
 fulness and slipperiness, are most illustrated in his 
 treatment of the theme virhich has made his name 
 famous. It is a theme which few have ventured on, 
 without being made dizzy by it and tempted into the 
 "falsehood of extremes"; few who have ventured, 
 have been able to keep their head calm, their 
 thoughts steady, and their statements sober; yet 
 there is none which we feel to supply so sure a test 
 whether a man dares and is able to look widely and 
 deeply into the world about him. It is the theme of 
 
 ' The late Marshal de Montluo, having lost his son, who 
 died In the Island of Madeira, in truth a very brave gentleman, 
 and of great expectation, did to me, amongst his other regrets, 
 very much insist upon what a sorrow and heart-breaking it was 
 to him that he had never made himself familiarly acquainted 
 with him ; and by that humour of fatherly gravity and grimace 
 had lost the opportunity of having an insight into, and of well 
 knowing, his sou ; as also of letting him know the extreme 
 affection he had for him, and the worthy opinion he had of his 
 virtue. "The poor boy, " said he, ' ' never saw in me other than 
 a stern and disdainful countenance ; and is gone in a belief that 
 I neither knew how to love or esteem him according to his 
 desert. For whom did I reserve the discovery of that singular 
 affection I had for him in my soul ? Was it not he himself who 
 ought to have had all the pleasure of it, and all the obligation ? 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 69 
 
 the Book of Ecclesiastes : the real value of human 
 life and greatness; the comparison of man's doings 
 and aims with the immensities of the universe ; the 
 measure of his knowledge, of the depth and strength 
 of its foundations, and of his power to know. 
 
 Few men have had the courage to look so boldly 
 and to report so unflinchingly on these questions as 
 Montaigne. The subject of his longest and most 
 elaborate Essay is the uncertainty, the contradictions, 
 the fickleness, and the failures of the human intellect, 
 both in its ordinary exercise and in its most perfect 
 forms. And it is a chord on which he strikes strongly 
 and obstinately in all his writings. Nowhere do those 
 misgivings, as to the completeness and permanent 
 definitiveness of aill mortal judgments, which visit 
 even the clearest and surest mind in the very moment 
 of its triumph, find so full an echo. Nowhere are the 
 doubts so keenly expressed, which the endless varia- 
 
 I forced and wracked myself to put on and maintain this vain 
 disguise, and have by that means deprived myself of the pleasure 
 of his conversation, and, I doubt, in some measure, of his affec- 
 tion ; which could not but be very cold towards me, having 
 never other from me than austerity, nor felt other than a tyran- 
 nical manner of proceeding." I find this complaint to be 
 rational and rightly apprehended ; for as I myself know, by too 
 certain experience, there is not so sweet a consolation in the 
 loss of friends as the consciousness of having had no reserve with 
 them, to have had with them a perfect and entire communica- 
 tion. Oh, my friend ! am I the better for being sensible of 
 this ; or am I the worse ? I am doubtless much the better. I 
 am comforted and honoured in the sorrow for his death. Is it 
 not a pious, a pleasing office of my life to be always upon my 
 friend's obsequies ? Can there be any joy equal to this privation ? 
 
70 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 tions and divergences of human thought on the nearest 
 and most familiar of subjects inspire as to its capacity 
 for attaining truth. Nowhere are we made to feel so 
 forcibly, and often so uncomfortably, how little the 
 pure exercise of reason often has, or can have, to do 
 with the opinions which are most characteristic of us, 
 and which we think irrefragable ; and in how great a 
 measure unsuspected or unacknowledged influences 
 work insensibly, and tell in the long run, in the 
 formation of conclusions, for which a stately and 
 elaborate structure of reasons has been laboriously 
 buUt up. The uncertainty and vanity of human 
 knowledge was the master- thought of Montaigne's 
 mind. It was impressed on his writings. It was 
 inscribed in sentences, divine and human, from 
 Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, and St. Paul, from Lucretius, 
 Sextus Empiricus, and Pliny, on the rafters and 
 mouldings of his hbrary.^ It suggested the choice of 
 his device and interrogative motto, an even balance 
 with " Que sgais je ?" — not daring to assert even his 
 ignorance. 
 
 Much of what he says on this subject bears the 
 impress of deep and genuine feeling. Pascal himself, 
 whose mind on one side of it was greatly moulded 
 by Montaigne, and who owes many of his thoughts 
 to him,^ did not conceive more vividly and more 
 
 1 These are given in John Sterling's article in the West- 
 minster Review, and more completely in Doctor Payeu's Nou- 
 veaux Doawmens sii/r Montmgne, p. 56. 
 
 ^ See, besides the Pens6es themselves, St. Beuve's chapters 
 on Montaigne and Pascal. {Port Royal, ii. 1. 3, c. 1-3.) 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 71 
 
 solemnly of the littleness of man, in comparison with 
 the powers and activities incalculable all round him, 
 the everlasting roll of the world, and that awful, far- 
 off, ever-extending Infinity, " ces effroyables espaees," by 
 which he is on all sides touched and enclosed, and in 
 the depths of which he is sunk. Again, Montaigne's 
 picture of human power and character brings out 
 with a rare and bold distinctness how much there 
 always is of variety, of inconstancy, of swaying to 
 and fro, of unexplored alloy and mixture, in the 
 most uniform and the strongest ; and how widely in 
 true history and actual life inconsistencies which are 
 irreconcilable in words coexist, and results which 
 baffle anticipation and defy analysis issue forth from 
 causes which seemed so decisive and energetic. 
 "Certes c'est un subject merveilleusement vain, 
 divers et ondoyant que I'homme ; il est malays6 d'y 
 fonder jugement constant et uniforme,"^ is a reflection 
 which in substance will recur to many when they 
 meet with the peremptory and opposite verdicts 
 which are current in books and society. And when 
 Montaigne lays his finger with such nice and sure 
 exactness on that which causes the precariousness of 
 all but the outlines of even the most authentic history,^ 
 — when he follows up the vast and majestic stream 
 of law and justice to the inconsiderable cases, the 
 chance conveniences, the narrow customs, the arbitrary 
 rules, from which that mighty volume began to flow, 
 — ^when he sets forth the difficulties and deep obscurity 
 1 i. c. 1, p. 10. 2 i_ 0. 20, p. 114 ; ii. c. 10, p. 574. 
 
72 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 which surround the attempt to fathom the nature of 
 the human soul, and the so familiar yet so mysterious 
 co-operation of the spiritual with the material part of 
 man, he speaks the thoughts which come at times to 
 all reflecting men, and which are the upshot and con- 
 clusion of many a long meditation. He does not 
 arrest attention so much in the set positions which he 
 offers for proof, or in the structure of the proof itself, 
 as in the detached remarks, which he throws off as 
 he goes along. These — thoughts full of light and 
 sharpness of form and natural force, which spring to 
 life about his path, and which witness to his observant 
 and piercing eye — show that Montaigne wrote, because 
 he felt in very deed the wonders and perplexities of 
 this mortal condition. 
 
 But if, often, Montaigne's thoughts of our condition 
 and our knowledge chime in with what has been felt 
 and expressed by some of the strongest and deepest 
 minds, at other times they wear a very different look. 
 Such thoughts may lead in many directions. They 
 njay lead on to the solemn and composed conviction 
 of practical duty which is seen in Butler. They may 
 lead on to the bold philosophy of Pascal, which con- 
 trasts and combines them with the most exalted 
 thoughts of the destiny and powers of man, to form a 
 foundation for that religion which acknowledges and 
 harmonises both. They may lead on to the still 
 bolder attempt to base Faith on the entire discrediting 
 of Eeason. They may lead on to the attempt, begun 
 and continued in patient earnestness, to imravel and 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 73 
 
 untie the knots which usually are cut ; to bring to a 
 ]ust measure too wide assertions, both as to man's 
 power and his imbecility; to question and sift and 
 reconcile appearances which, taken by themselves, 
 tempt into opposite falsehoods; to limit with precision 
 where haste and impatience have led to absolute 
 denial, or absolute assertion ; to seek if the line cannot 
 be found which separates between the provinces where 
 man can and where he cannot know, where he has 
 the guidance of probabilities, and where his light is 
 faith. Or, on the contrary, these keen perceptions 
 of the strangeness of the commonest things ; of the 
 smallness of our ordinary views of the world ; of the 
 mystery of jBrst truths and principles ; of the force 
 with which our minds are kept in the groove of 
 common opinions ; of the power of custom ; of the 
 instability of principles, ideas, beliefs, in the unfolding 
 of a character and in the generations of mankind ; of 
 the endlessly varying and contradictory interpretations 
 to which the most important as well as the most trivial 
 subjects are exposed in the debates of reason ; of the 
 absence of any recognised criterion of certainty, — 
 these may lead on the persuasion that everything in 
 human life is floating, everything is the result of 
 random accident ; that there is no law, nor truth, nor 
 duty to claim allegiance. Or they may lead on to a 
 lazy, good-natured, contented scepticism, which takes 
 the world as it comes, and finds its amusement in the 
 tremendous riddles which the world presents. In 
 Montaigne's case they led to the last. Something, 
 
74 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 perhaps a great deal, is to be put down to the 
 iuflnence of those evil days in which he lived — days 
 in which, long before Louis XIV. or the Eegency, 
 the corruption and downward course of French 
 society began. It was a time of change and breaking 
 up in France as in other countries; but in France 
 alone did that time of change seem for a while to 
 have loosed every tie which bound men to men, or 
 man to God. In such a bewildering spectacle, when 
 men "formed and fashioned themselves to dissimula- 
 tion as to an exercise of honour," and denied in 
 every action, public and private, of their lives, the 
 religion for which they professed to convulse the 
 state and slaughter their countrymen, it is hardly 
 wonderful to find a man like Montaigne, who hated 
 the Reformation because of its troubles and inconsist- 
 encies, but had eagerly caught at and claimed for 
 himself its congenial liberty of thought, advising the 
 defenders of the old faith to employ, as their most 
 certain resource in controversy against the incon- 
 venient dogmatisers of the new, the weapon of 
 universal scepticism. But the evil influences of those 
 unhappy times acted on a character which was in 
 some respects too well adapted to feel their power. 
 Montaigne felt the attractions of truth, but none of 
 its obligations. Lofty and clear in his idea of it, 
 curious in his inquiries, fastidious in his tests, and 
 not easily put off with its counterfeits, he hated 
 responsibility, and would not submit to the trouble 
 of having a purpose. Uncertainty, so far from dis- 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 75 
 
 iurbing him, was a real pleasure ; he revelled in it. 
 He is whimsically pathetic in his description of the 
 torment he felt in having to make up his mind,^ or to 
 commit himself; anything that fixed and tied him 
 down, anything that required the effort and tension 
 of his mind, he revolted from with fear and disgust. 
 The idea of duty, with its attendant necessities of 
 decision and of labour, was his bugbear and scare- 
 crow. To hunt after truth as his pastime and sport 
 was quite according to his taste ; to hunt after it as 
 his duty was as completely the opposite. He was 
 the sworn enemy of all constraint, whether it were a 
 constraint that confined the range and variations of 
 his judgment, or a constraint that imposed on him 
 the obligation of attention and method. To such a 
 mind, which thoroughly enjoyed the liberty of taking 
 one view of a subject to-day, with the reserved right 
 and avowed anticipation of taking another to-morrow ; 
 which found the most delightful exercise of its natural 
 subtlety in hovering about contrarieties and exagger- 
 ating difficulties, and carefully avoided bringing them 
 to a point and issue ; which shrunk with the loathing 
 of an escaped galley-slave from all enforced trouble 
 and work, in great things and small, the care of his 
 property and the politics of the day, in his books, his 
 business, his manage, his writing; which steadily 
 declined and put away the thought that he was 
 bound in this world to anything, but to indulge the 
 bent of his genius, and study himself, his repose, and 
 1 V. ii. c. 17, pp. 338, 354. 
 
76 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 his diseases, — this keen scrutiny of the perplexities 
 and realities of life was no wholesome employment. 
 Montaigne's practical lesson is, that man was not 
 made for truth, and does not want it ; that he may 
 go through life very well without truth, and without 
 the pains of looking for it ; that if he is fool enough 
 to be anxious and in earnest about it, he will but 
 bring himself into endless diflSculties, merely at the 
 end to lose his labour; but that he will find it a 
 pleasant and healthful exercise to turn his inquiries 
 after it into an amusing toy, to be taken up and laid 
 down as a change from his other pleasures. 
 
 Of course he abundantly contradicts his own lesson. 
 No one could write with the just insight and truthful 
 force which he possessed, without perpetually witness- 
 ing to that idea of attainable truth which nature will 
 not part with, and which returns unawares, and even 
 in spite of their vigilance, to the most resolutely 
 sceptical. But his good sense and good feeling could 
 not prevent his indolence and his pampered acuteness, 
 which he was too self-indulgent to bring to the test of 
 an exact and painful trial of thought, from entangling 
 him in mistakes and follies as extravagant and as 
 degrading as those of the dogmatical philosophers 
 whose narrowness and positiveness he laughed at. 
 When he wants to prove the impossibility of scientiiic 
 truth, he heaps together an indiscriminate mass of 
 opposite opinions, with the name of some philosopher 
 attached to each ; he enumerates them in their bare, 
 isolated, dogmatic shape ; he passes in review before 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 77 
 
 you, the most inconceivable follies which the human 
 mind has been guilty of, mixed up in the same com- 
 pany with its keenest anticipations and deepest 
 thoughts ; he has made no attempt to understand or 
 weigh their several reasons or theory ; he gives them 
 all as of equal value, without any sifting, or dis- 
 tinguishing, or grouping; he does not ask whether 
 one has any more probability than another, whether 
 one is an idle guess, and another the result, inadequate 
 perhaps, of solid and careful thinking ; but he gives 
 an eloquent sketch of the collective strength and 
 accomplishments of their authors, and then, his 
 catalogue of contradictions, as the best that these great 
 minds could produce ; and chuckles over it all with 
 the reflection — "gwi fagotterait suffisamment vm, amas 
 des asneries de I'humaine sapience, il dwait merveilles." 
 No doubt he might ; but he might also show that he 
 was himself a trifler, mocking at what he had not the 
 patience nor the qualification to criticise, either in its 
 weakness or its strength. To establish the universal 
 failure of science, to prove the entire waste of the 
 time, and uselessness of the efforts, which the greatest 
 minds have spent in learning to know, is not less 
 foolish, as it is more disingenuous, than the vainest 
 panegyric on the triumphs of human wisdom. 
 Montaigne had no taste for what was severe and 
 methodical, rigidly confined as to subject and 
 technical in form ; and he had not the energy and 
 endurance for it, if he had had the taste. But he 
 had penetration enough to discern, if he had chosen. 
 
78 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 both the true meaning and the greatness of those con- 
 quests of human thought, which he preferred to laugh 
 at, as a mass of contradictions disguised by a stiff and 
 shallow pedantry. Montaigne gloats over the piti- 
 able and hopeless fatuity of poor human reason, and 
 announces his purpose of beating down and trampling 
 under foot every thought of its power and achieve- 
 ments. Pascal sympathises with his merciless 
 onslaught, and applauds it with almost ferocious 
 exultation. But both do it by virtue of that very 
 power which they are flouting; and neither the 
 originality and easy frankness of Montaigne, nor the 
 fervent earnestness and religious purpose of Pascal, 
 can disguise the deep and cruel untruth of their 
 declamations, or prevent us from feeling that such 
 insolent and intemperate scorn of that greatest of 
 gifts which they are themselves using, does not 
 become less unnatural and revolting even from the 
 lips of genius and faith. 
 
 The question has been variously answered, whether 
 Montaigne was a Christian believer? The answer, 
 whichever way given, must "be subject," to use his 
 phrase, " to a long interpretation." It does not follow 
 from his sceptical depreciation of human knowledge, 
 that he was not ; for Pascal adopts his line of thought, 
 and turns it into a foundation for religious conviction. 
 And it is certain that Montaigne professes, without 
 any appearance of bad faith, the language of a Chris- 
 tian ; indeed, his famous sceptical Essay, the Apology 
 fm- Baimond de Sebond, is a clumsy attempt, at least 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 79 
 
 ostensibly, to make out the same sort of argument for 
 religion, on which Pascal afterwards put forth his 
 power of clear and subtle statement ; and when 
 Montaigne expired in the act of adoration, at the 
 moment of the elevation of the holy Sacrament, it is 
 certain that he did nothing but what was consistent 
 with the tenor of his avowed belief. His contempor- 
 aries do not seem to have doubted about it ; and the 
 Essais, with some slight exceptions taken to his use 
 of the word Fortune, his ideas about education, his 
 quotations from heretical poets like Beza and Marot, 
 his apology for Julian and his denunciation of torture, 
 amusing exceptions, it must be owned, passed muster 
 in his lifetime at Eome.^ And it may be added that 
 he continually expresses the greatest dislike and fear 
 of the Eeformers, as men guilty of unsettling what 
 they can never again build up ; and strongly warns 
 his own party against paring away articles of their 
 own belief, in order to make their ground apparently 
 more easy to hold. If this tends to supply an affirma- 
 tive answer to the question, it may further be observed, 
 that Montaigne was not a man to profess to believe 
 what he knew he did not beUeve. I apprehend that 
 Montaigne did consider himself an honest Cathohc ; 
 and that he would have been very much surprised 
 and shocked if any one had called him an unbeliever. 
 But if the question be about the quality of his belief, 
 it might be more difficult to get the same answer. 
 
 ' They were afterwards, in the time of the disputes about 
 relaxed morality, put in the Index. 
 
80 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 His views botli of life and death are absolutely and 
 entirely unaffected by the fact of his professing to 
 believe the Gospel. He touches on a hundred sub- 
 jects, vrhere its principles or its disclosures make all 
 the difference to the question, and settle one wajy or 
 another what before was doubtful; but he steadily 
 ignores it all, and persists in knowing no more than 
 Plutarch and Seneca might have known. Confined 
 between birth and death is all that he will recognise 
 of the life, the hopes, the training, the morality, the 
 business of man. No one has spoken of death more 
 solemnly, more feelingly, more bravely, in that simple 
 relation to our life here, which is one of its aspects, 
 and one which our human nature compels us, whether 
 we will or no, to acknowledge, with awful apprehen- 
 sions, as a seeming end and dissolution ; but there is 
 another aspect of it, one which nature and reason 
 suggest, but which to a Christian thinker offers itself 
 at every turn ; and of this one, Montaigne writes as 
 if no such imagination had ever been brought before 
 his mind. It is only when he is disparaging the 
 natural arguments for immortality, that he makes as 
 it were the salvo, that immortality has been revealed 
 to faith. Never does a thought, an emotion, an 
 anticipation tinged with the reflection of Christian 
 light escape from him. And yet he is not altogether 
 silent about religion. But he has the power of sus- 
 pending absolutely his belief and the natural effect it 
 would have on a thoughtful mind busy with man's 
 nature and fortunes; he lodges it apart, and above 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 81 
 
 him, in dignity and honour, but where it has no more 
 influence on the temptations; the troubles, the issues 
 of the real world than the gods of the Epicurean 
 heaven. His philosophy is a downright, straightfor- 
 ward, honest heathenism, with no more light or fears 
 or scruples, than when G-reeks and Romans worshipped 
 a Pantheon which they did not believe. Yet I do 
 not think that Montaigne thought himself like them. 
 I beHeve that he thought his religion true, and the 
 gift of God, but that he looked on it as a sort of art 
 or mystery, with rules and grounds independent of 
 and unconnected with the ordinary works or thoughts 
 of life, as something to be applied or kept in reserve 
 according as it was wanted, like a knowledge of 
 geometry or astrology, but which was neither dis- 
 honoured nor betrayed, when taste or conscience or 
 the impulses and iactivity of the mind kept it in 
 abeyance, and for the time out of sight. As a layman, 
 he disclaims a knowledge of theology ; and along with 
 the science of religion, he seems to think it natural 
 that he should keep at arms-length religion itself, as 
 long as it suits him. He speaks and argues, as Pascal 
 says, on a supposition, but without binding himself 
 to it, and he leaves himself at liberty to drop it when 
 he likes. The phenomenon is not so rare at any 
 time ; but it is often strongly and curiously forced on 
 our thoughts in many of those who in Montaigne's 
 time meddled so busily with religion and the affairs 
 of the world. The exaggerated shape in which it 
 appears in him is due to that deeply-rooted indolence 
 
 G 
 
82 THK ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 and want of moral tone which betrays itseK through- 
 out. He did not care to bring in the ideas of religion, 
 because his mind was preoccupied with a philosophy 
 which, withmt religion, fitted in, he thought, to the 
 course of man's life. He did not dare to look into 
 religion and its claims lest he should find something 
 which would perplex and dislocate his philosophy, or 
 put him on the task of reconciling difficulties ; some- 
 thing which would either tempt him to give up his 
 religion, or else oblige him to accept it more in 
 earnest and submit to it more thoroughly. ^ 
 
 1 M. De St. Beuve, a very acute and subtle observer, and an 
 impartial judge, ascribes to Montaigne the same kind of 
 deliberate and crafty purpose, the "mithode perfide," which 
 directed the doubts and pointed the irony of Bayle and Gibbon. 
 " II y a toute une comedie qu'il joue, et dont il ne pretend faire 
 dupe que qui le veut bien." [Port Boyal, ii. 426.) The effect 
 is doubtless very much as if the design had been there : the 
 central thought once suggested, it is easy to see its application 
 everywhere, and it seems to give light and meaning to what is 
 incoherent and indefinite. Montaigne may be read under this 
 light, and no doubt often has been ; and we often come upon 
 passages which such a key fits exactly. But I cannot see in 
 Montaigne the distinct animus, the clear arriire pensSe of Bayle. 
 I cannot see the indications of a foreseen, conscious purpose. 
 It was hardly like Montaigne to have one. There are persons 
 who can avoid coming to an explanation with themselves ; who 
 like to play with doubts and live in one kind of atmosphere of 
 thought and feeling, without cutting themselves off from a 
 retreat into a very different one, if advisable. It seems most 
 accordant with the facts, to view Montaigne as one of these. 
 His activity and interest belonged to heathenism ; but he kept 
 religion in the background in reserve, though he had no use 
 for it at present. 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 83 
 
 In Montaigne we see that new intellectual liberty 
 of his day, not knowing how to use itself, or to take 
 care of itself ; puzzled by what it saw, and by what 
 it had to keep to ; boldly dwelling on discrepancies, 
 but too lazy and self-willed to try to penetrate them 
 and reconcile them. He felt the obligation, cast on 
 men by the times in which he lived, of learning to 
 think, instead of repeating other men's words ; but he 
 did not feel the greatness of the purpose for which 
 that obligation had been cast on them. He shows 
 himself wonderfully little impeded by the customary 
 prepossessions of his contemporaries, able with ease 
 to break through what we looking back seem to see 
 so clearly to have been the tangles and trammels of 
 mere habit in his day, — the habit which made good 
 men think torture a necessary and natural engine of 
 law, and wise men take for granted that a cold dis- 
 tance and a savage drill was the only rational way of 
 breeding up their children. But besides the keenness 
 and good sense shown, Montaigne's thinking came to 
 little. He broke up the ground which others after 
 him sowed with many kinds of seed. He was a kind 
 of imperfect Socrates, the cross-examiner of his genera- 
 tion, — bold, inquisitive, and shrewd, taking nothing 
 on trust, and hating pretence, — -homely, unconven- 
 tional, untechnical, — with his idea right, but too 
 careless, too selfish, and it must be added, not pure 
 enough, not thorough enough, to give it effect ; 
 below Socrates in elevation and noble purpose, fifteen 
 hundred yea,rs after an event which ought to have 
 
84 THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 
 
 made him wiser and more serious than Socrates. On 
 one side, we are told that in him are to be found all 
 the germs of that flippant and corrupt French philo- 
 sophy which from Bayle to Voltaire confused and 
 darkened the mind and heart of Europe.^ On the 
 other, we have a genuine and rich picture of human 
 experience, thoughts, and utterances, fresh from the 
 heart and sense, and full of a large and various and 
 subtle wisdom, reminding us of the universality and 
 strength of Bacon and Shakespeare. A wide and deep 
 experience — and yet it is but a partial and limited 
 one, for it knows nothing of Christian faith and 
 Christian love. In Montaigne it is a wilful and self- 
 chosen limiting. He admits the existence of some- 
 thing beyond the bounds of nature, but beyond those 
 bounds he will not himself look. We read in him 
 the history of the natural man, with his noble ideas 
 and base instincts; his high and glorious standard, 
 and his miserable fallings short ; his aspirations after 
 truth, and his endless wanderings into error; his 
 feeling sure of the greatest things, and his uncertainty 
 about the grounds of the smallest; his fluctuations 
 and inconsistencies, his goodness, kindness, tender- 
 ness, bravery, self-devotion, sympathy; his wayward 
 and fractious childishness, his bestial love of impurity, 
 his want of purpose and self-government, his wanton 
 sporting with what is wrong and dangerous and for- 
 bidden ; his lofty vision of happiness and capacity for 
 it, and his eternal disappointment. 
 
 ' Vide his "Convoi," in St. Beiive. Port Royal, ii, 444, 
 
THE ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE 85 
 
 Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how poor a thing is man. 
 
 So first cried out the brave old stoic Koman ; so 
 answered with better reason the English poet in his 
 Christian language. But to Montaigne it is only the 
 mocking cry of an idle hope.^ "It is making the 
 handful greater than the hand can hold, and the 
 armful larger than the arms can embrace, and the 
 stride wider than the legs can stretch ; man can but 
 see with his eyes, and hold with his grasp." He 
 remembers, indeed, that what is impossible with man 
 is possible with God, and has been promised by Him ; 
 but are his words, true and noble as they sound, the 
 real recantation of his despondency, or a decorous 
 homage to a professed faith, at whose threshold his 
 thoughts stop short 1 The Essais leave no doubt that 
 the condemnation of the aspiration in Seneca is more 
 genuine than the admission of its fulfilment in the 
 Gospel. 
 
 1 Vide eni of fhe Apology for Saimond de Seicmd. "Voild 
 vm bou mot et un utile desir, et pareillement absurde ; car de 
 faire la poign^e plus grande que le poing, la brassee plus grande 
 que le bras, et d'esperer enjamber plus que de I'estendue de nos 
 Jambes, cela est impossible et monstrueux : ny que I'homme se 
 monte audessus de soy et de I'humanite : car il ne peult veoir 
 que de ses yeux, ny saisir que de ses prises. II s'eslevera, si 
 Dieu luy preste extraordinairement la main : il s'eslevera, 
 abandonnant et renoneant k ses propres moyens, et se laissant 
 hausser et soublever par les moyens purement celestes. C'est 
 k nostre foy chrestienne, non k sa vertu stoicque, de pretendre 
 k cette divine et miraculeuse metamorphose." 
 
BRITTANY 1 
 
 [Janfaey 1846 ] 
 
 Steam has done wonders, and promises more, for 
 those who desire to see with their own eyes what is 
 far off, and who delight in the contrast of juxta- 
 position between what is familiar and what is remote 
 and strange. What it cannot bring to our door, it 
 takes us most comfortably and without loss of time 
 to see. It is making a raree-show of the world; 
 exhibiting all that the present affords of wonderful, 
 and magnificent, and curious, before those who are 
 never out of the soimd of their mother tongue, and 
 are travellers only in the multiplicity of their port- 
 manteaus. Before we have time to forget the express 
 train and the railway-porters in velveteen, and South- 
 ampton Water and Netley Abbey and the Cowes 
 
 ^ 1. Voyage dans la Fimistire, par Cambet : nmi/velle Sdition, 
 par M. Le Chev. db Fb:6minvillk. Brest : 1.836. 
 
 2. A Summer in Brittany : J?/ T. A. Teollopb, Esq. , B.A. 
 
 2 Vols. London : 1840. 
 
 3. Les Derniers Bretons : par Emilb Sotjvbstee : nouvelle 
 
 edition. Paris : 1843. 
 
 4. La Bretagne, Aneienne et Moderns : par Pitrb-Cheva- 
 
 MEE. Paris : 1844. 
 
88 BRITTANY 
 
 yachts, we are brought face to face with the bounds 
 of the old world, the pillars of Hercules, and look 
 upon distant Atlas; another flight, and we are on 
 the river of Egypt, in the land of Pharaoh and 
 Cleopatra, of St. Athanasius and St. Antony ■ among 
 the pyramids, amid turbans and the languages of the 
 East. We have passed through the wilderness, and 
 the waves of the Eed Sea are breaking on the shore 
 at our feet ; and in a space of time no longer measured 
 by months and weeks, but by days, and soon by 
 hours and their fractions, we are in India. The first 
 of the month saw us riding in an omnibus in Holborn, 
 the last sees us in the land of elephants and pagodas. 
 Steam wiU deny us nothing ; in the circle round us, 
 we have but to mark out our goal, and the genius 
 straight transports us. 
 
 It puts us into communication with all the present ; 
 but not even steam can bring us to the past. In its 
 way, indeed, it toils ; it slaves for the antiquarian 
 and the draughtsman; in letter-press, in form, in 
 colour, it strives most assiduously to bring up the 
 image of the past ; it multiplies and disperses abroad. 
 But the living past is not in books or engravings, 
 and cannot be brought to us, nor we to it. 
 
 Only here and there, left to itself in some neglected 
 comer of the world, the living past survives, project- 
 ing itself into the uncongenial and almost unconscious 
 present. A couple of days off from Paris or South- 
 ampton, we may reach a race of men more diflScult 
 to piece on to modern society than those who live 
 
BEITTANY 89 
 
 by the Nile or the Ganges, or sell one another beneath 
 the Line. Shooting out from the dim middle ages 
 into the glare and bustle of the civilised "present 
 day," in the midst of English manufactories, and 
 French revolutions, and wars of the Empire — stretch- 
 ing forth its granite base into a sea ploughed by 
 steam -ships, and itself planted all over with tri- 
 coloured flags, dark old Brittany goes on unmoved, 
 unsympathising, — believing and working as it and its 
 fellow-nations did five hundred years ago. Surrounded 
 by excitement and change, — sparkling Frenchmen 
 vapouring about glory; drudging Englishmen, deep 
 in railways ; quarrelsome Yankee Locof ocos, in a white 
 heat about Oregon, — while all eyes are straining into 
 the future, and all hearts are beating high with 
 expectation, — the old-fashioned Breton eyes with the 
 utmost unconcern these " heirs of all the ages, foremost 
 in the files of time," — combs his long black hair, and 
 walks about unashamed in his hragovrbras, — turns his 
 back on the future, and looks only on the past^on 
 his dead ancestors and the cross; and profoundly 
 distrusts all improvement in this world. A grand, 
 sublime, miraculous Past, is contrasted in his mind 
 with a poor uninteresting Present, its mere appendix, 
 and a Future without form or hope till the Last Day ; 
 the past is to him the great reality of the world — 
 the reality, not of dilettantism, of forced reverence, 
 of partial or factitious interest, but of lifelong faith. 
 Fixed, tmdeniable, stands the solid past, and he 
 reflects and rehearses it as he can; the work of 
 
90 BRITTANY 
 
 present men is but vanity, their promised future a 
 shadow. The progress of the ages, roughly as it has 
 sometimes gone, has left him much as it found him, 
 some considerable time before the Council of Trent. 
 
 "Le pays le plus a/rriiri de la Fra/nce !" says the 
 commis-voyagewr from civilised Orleans or Eouen, to 
 his neighbours in the barbarian diligence : and such 
 is it likely to remain for some time longer, in spite of 
 tri-color and steam-engine ; in spite of the sneers and 
 wares of commis-voyagews, and interesting poetical 
 accounts of the country by "Bretons frandsis;" in 
 spite of walking and reading parties from Oxford ; in 
 spite of departemental roads, and improving inns, and 
 agricultural societies. The onslaught of civilisation 
 is determined and full of hope— nay, it is progressive ; 
 statistics measure the encroachments of the French 
 language upon the Breton, as we measure those of 
 the sea, by leagues ; but civilisation has a tough and 
 intractable pupil, and does not get on fast with its 
 work. It tells, to be sure, on the enlightened 
 bourgeois ; but the enlightened lowrgeois cannot print 
 their mark on the country or the population, or force 
 themselves into notice. The peasantry represent 
 Brittany as the middle classes represent England ; 
 they are the people of most will and character — a 
 hard, silent, obstinate, impassive race, living in their 
 own old world, and, in the lofty feeling of its antiquity, 
 taking no reflection from that upstart one which 
 mixes with them — almost ignoring it. Modem France 
 has been struggling hard to pull them up to a respect- 
 
BRITTANY 91 
 
 able level in society ; they shake their heads, and 
 resist in silence. First the guillotine was tried — 
 "Quel torrent revohdwrmaire qm cette Loire /"'^ wrote 
 Carrier- — Carrier of the noyades ; "enraptured," adds 
 the historian, "with the poetry of his crime:" but 
 it would not do : — 
 
 It was a war between the guillotine and belief ; a 
 murderous war, in which the guillotine used its knife, 
 and was beaten. This contest did not, as in La Vendue, 
 degenerate into a civil war ; with some exceptions, Lower 
 Brittany remained immovable ; but remained on her 
 knees, with clasped hands, in spite of all that could be 
 done to hinder her. Nothing could impair the freshness 
 of her primitive faith She yielded neither to anger nor 
 to fear. The bonnet rouge might be forced on her head, 
 but not on her ideas. 
 
 " I will have your church-tower knocked down," said 
 Jean Bon-Saint-Andr6 to the Maire of a village, " that you 
 may have no object to recall to you your old superstitions." — 
 " Anyhow you will have to leave us the stars," repUed the 
 peasant, "and those we can see further off than our 
 church-tower." — Souvestre, pp. 206, 207. 
 
 In the quieter times of the Directory, busy, fussy, 
 sentimental citizen Cambry, " commissioned to detail 
 the state, political, moral, and statistical, of the 
 department of Finistfere," plunged fearlessly into its 
 bogs and thick darkness, philosophised, pitied, col- 
 lected stories; found citizen-Maires in sabots, polite 
 and attentive; had many interviews with ignorant 
 but promising municipalities, suggested improvements, 
 reported on capabilities, — hopeful, ardent, citizen 
 '' Michelet, vol. i. 
 
92' BRITTANY 
 
 Cambry, filled with lofty compassion, devoted to the 
 conversion of " notre pauvre vieille Bretagne " to civism 
 and cleanliness : but, alas, citizen Cambry is dead 
 of apoplexy, and civil Makes and municipalities have 
 not realised the promises they gave ; they still believe 
 in their priests. The great imperial mind, which 
 new-modelled France, tried his hand on Brittany, — 
 tried to give it a centre; called Pontivy, after his 
 own name, Napol6onville ; began a new, broad, straight 
 street among its crooked alleys ; but the new street 
 is unfinished, and Napol^onville has gone back to 
 Pontivy.^ Even the conscription did little : even 
 captains in the imperial armies, when they got back 
 to Basse Bretagne, resumed their sabots and baggy 
 breeches, their bragou-bras. "We shall stay as we 
 are," says a modern Breton writer, "till the rail- 
 road drives through our villages of granite ;"^ — and, 
 we cannot help thinking, for some time longer. 
 The railway, and the navigators, its pioneers, will 
 most assuredly produce some strange and strong 
 impressions on the Breton peasants, and they will 
 open their eyes and make the sign of the cross ; it 
 will enable, perhaps, navy officers from Brest, and 
 merchants from St. Malo, to see more of their friends 
 in Paris : but it will pass by the milages, the foci of 
 Breton character and feeling. It will be a long time 
 before the influence, which the railway brings with 
 it, works upon them. 
 
 StUl, the struggle is going on, and it is a curious 
 ^ TroUope, vol. i. p. 371. ^ pitre-Chevalier. 
 
BRITTANY 93 
 
 spectacle to see the new intruding into the old, setting 
 itself up by its side, fastening itself on to it, and 
 slowly and cunningly — for the old is strong — edging 
 it out. The new has now become discreet and 
 cautious; the old looks on, dubious, unintelligent, 
 mistrustful, but by no means in an imitative humour, 
 doggedly keeping its old fashions. Paris has mapped 
 out the old province into departments and communes, 
 and jprifeiures and sousprdfetures ; the system is exter- 
 nally the same as in the rest of uniform new-fangled 
 France ; but the old ignored divisions are those which 
 are felt. Parishes will maintain their isolation and 
 singularities ; L6on and Cornouaille still keep their 
 ancient names, and continue distinct and hostile, 
 though clamped together to make up Finistfere. The 
 contrast is grotesque : for instance, when the modern 
 government machinery for improvement is at work 
 amid the old Breton customs. The feast of the 
 patron saint comes round ; the people naturally 
 collect, as they have done for centuries, to a wake, — 
 as they call it, a pa/rdon, — to gain an indulgence, to 
 worship, to make merry. They collect from various 
 parishes, and in various costumes nowhere else seen 
 in the world, — men as well as women, long-haired, 
 dark-vested, wild-looking men, talking gravely their 
 old Celtic dialect, and a little bad French, and sound- 
 ing their bagpipes. French civilisation meets them ; 
 M. le Maire and M. le Souspr6fet issue their pro- 
 grammes ; there shall be a " FMe patronale," a " FUe 
 agricole." Grovernment and agricultural societies are 
 
94 BEITTANY 
 
 full of encouragement ; there are horse-races, matches 
 between ploughs of the country and ploughs "per- 
 fedioTwides," — cattle shows for the improvement "des 
 races chevalines, bonnes, mines, et gallinacies;" prizes 
 are given, purses of francs, model ploughs, Bodin's 
 EUmens d' Agricultwre. — Fortunati si bona ndrint, — 
 if instead of telling old-world stories, they could seize 
 the opportunity and study "Bodin." Meanwhile, in 
 the midst of enlightened civic authorities with tight 
 pantaloons and peaked beards, they herd together, a 
 wild crowd of Celts, thinking a good deal more of 
 the pardon, and the dancing and wrestling, and the 
 grand opportunity of getting drunk, than of improv- 
 ing themselves in agriculture. The same contrast 
 meets you on the face of the country. You are 
 tempted to turn aside from the road to look at an old 
 parish church : there it is, open, and empty, and silent, 
 except the invariable ticking of the clock ; there is its 
 charnel-house, and shelves of skulls, each with a name, 
 and in a box by itself; its granite "Oalvaire," with 
 its hard Egyptian-looking figures ; there is the votive 
 lock of hair, or the holy spring ; or the picture of a 
 miracle of the last few years in the neighbourhood ; 
 or the rude weather-beaten image of the village saint, 
 carved from the tree as it grew in the churchyard, 
 about whom the peasant boys will tell you stories if 
 you can understand them. You cross the ridge, full of 
 the thoughts of old Brittany, and you come upon 
 modem industry and enterprise at work, — smuggling 
 merchants of some unheard-of little port, building 
 
BRITTANY 95 
 
 unaccountably extravagant basins and jetties ; the 
 engineer hanging his light and beautiful suspension 
 bridge, high over the large blue oily eddies of one of 
 the tide rivers which tear the jagged coast-line, 
 pushing his communications over the obstacles which 
 annoyed Csesar — "pedestria itinera concisa (Bstuariis." 
 Or you come to a chosen stage of innovation and 
 modern fashion, — the modern race-course, — the " Hip- 
 podrome," which is the pride of Landerneau and the 
 envy of Quimper ; here are all the appliances of the 
 French turf, the course marked out, the seats for the 
 Pr6fet, and the seats for the musicians; and in the 
 midst, a gaunt, weather-stained, stone cross, to which 
 the peasant, as he passes it, pulls off his hat. 
 
 Nevertheless, whatever lodgment civilisation may 
 have made, people curious in these matters are yet 
 in time to see a very fair specimen of a middle-age 
 population, — a peasantry, that is, — for, as we have 
 said, the towns-people except in the more remote 
 parts, or in the lowest rank, are simply French of a 
 mongrel sort. The look, indeed, of some of the towns 
 carries us back some centuries: the old burgher 
 houses, for instance, at Lannion and Morlaix; or 
 Dinan, with its walled town on the hill, and its 
 suburb straggling up the hill side, with a street as 
 steep and narrow and feudal-looking as in the days 
 of Du Guesclin ; but all this may easily be matched 
 in other parts of the continent. Old Brittany is 
 outside the towns. 
 
 " Poor rough Brittany," writes Michelet, " the element 
 
96 BEITTANY 
 
 of resistance in France, extends her fields of quartz and 
 schist, from the slate-quarries of ChSteaulin, near Brest, to 
 the slate-quarries of Angers. This is her extent, geologi- 
 cally speaking. However, from Angers to Rennes, the 
 country is a debateable land, a border liie that between 
 England and Scotland, which early escaped from Brittany. 
 The Breton tongue does not even begin at Rennes, but 
 about Elven, Pontivy, Loud&,c, and Chtelaudren. Thence, 
 as far as the extremity of Finistfere, it is true Brittany — 
 Bretagne bretonnante, a country which has become alien to 
 our own, exactly because it has remained too faithful to 
 our original condition j so Gaulish, that it is scarcely 
 French, — a country which would have slipped from us 
 more than once, had we not held it fast, clenched and 
 gripped as in a vice, between four French cities, rough 
 and stout Nantes and St. Male, Rennes and Brest." i 
 
 It is to this part of Brittany, where the old 
 language is still preserved, that our remarks are 
 meant to apply. Even in this part, there are many 
 differences, between the four old Bishoprics of L6on, 
 Tr6guier, Cornouaille, and Vannes, — certainly of 
 dialect; it is said, also, of character. Still, though 
 each parish has its peculiarities and costume, and 
 Tr^guier may be more ribald, and Cornouaille dirtier 
 and more light-hearted, than sombre L6on, there is 
 a sufficient uniformity about them to allow of our 
 speaking of them together. 
 
 One feature is common to them all — their religion. 
 In these times of unbelief, or of a faith which, perhaps, 
 for self-protection, is sparing of outward show and 
 sign, it is a solemn and awful sight to see a whole 
 
 ' Michslet, Eist. de Frwnce. (Engl. tr. ) 
 
BRITTANY 97 
 
 population, visibly, and by habit, religious ; believing 
 in God, and instinctively showing their belief all day 
 long, and in all possible circumstances. Their faith 
 may, or may not, restrain and purify them — it need 
 not necessarily ; but in Brittany, there it is, not a 
 formula, but a spirit penetrating every corner and 
 cranny of their character and life, free, unaffected, 
 undisguised, not shrinking from the homeliest contacts 
 and most startling conclusions, matching itself without 
 stint or fear with every other reality. The sight, 
 we repeat, is very subduing to those who have lived 
 where nothing but the present world is assumed and 
 referred to, in the forms and language of ordinary 
 intercourse ; where society is ever silent about God, 
 and nothing that men do or say in their usual business, 
 implies His existence. To such persons, this perpetual 
 recognition of His name and power, so uniformly, 
 and often so unexpectedly, is like an evidence to the 
 senses — a result and warning of the nearness of His 
 presence. 
 
 Brittany is a religious country, if ever the term 
 could be applied to a country. The Church has set 
 her seal on land and people. How she gained over 
 these tough, stubborn, dark-thoughted people is not 
 the least wonderful question in her history. Her 
 conquest is best explained by the countless legends 
 of self-sacrifice and gospel labour, which the Breton 
 calendar has of its own. But once gained, they pay 
 no divided allegiance; and if the outlines of their 
 faith are coarse, they seem indelible. The feeling that 
 
 H 
 
98 BRITTANY 
 
 they are Christians is ever present to them ; they 
 delight in the title. Their most popular songs are 
 religious. Even their tragedies begin in the Most 
 Holy name. The cross is everywhere : the beggar 
 traces it on his morsel before he touches it ; on all 
 things, animate or inanimate, which are turned to 
 the use of man, its mark is placed ; it is set up in 
 granite at the cross-road, on the moor, on the shifting 
 sands, where, as long as it is in sight above the waves, 
 the passenger need not fear the tide — "puisgue," says 
 his guide, " la croix nous voit." 
 
 Even the brute creation is brought within the 
 hallowed circle — they have to fast with men on 
 Christmas Eve, and they receive a blessing of their 
 own from the Church : the very dogs, when they are 
 sick, have a patron saint. The people may smile or 
 joke themselves; but they do not the less believe. 
 The speculator from civilised France, who comes to 
 improve in Brittany, finds, to his cost, that nothing 
 can shake this faith. Say, he has to finish a sea-wall 
 before the next spring-tide; there remains but one 
 day:— 
 
 The evening before, as the workmen were going from 
 their work, a carter came to tell me that he could not 
 bring his team to-morrow, because it was the fSte of St. 
 Eloi, and he must take his horses to hear Mass at Lander- 
 neau ; another came soon after with the same tidings ; 
 then a third, then a fourth, at last all. I was alarmed : 
 I explained to them the danger of waiting ; I entreated ; 
 I got into a rage ; I offered to double, to treble the wages 
 of their work : but it was no use. They listened atten- 
 
BRITTANY 99 
 
 tively, entered into all my reasons, approved them, and 
 ended by repeating that they coiild not come because their 
 horses would die if they did not hear the Mass of St. 
 Eloi. I had to resign myself. Next day the spring-tide 
 rose, covered the unfinished works, ilooded the whole bay, 
 and swept away the dyke, as it ebbed. This Mass cost 
 me 30,000 francs. — Souvestre, p. 433. 
 
 They have not yet learnt the powers which God's 
 wisdom has, in these last days, placed in the hands of 
 man. In Brittany still, as in those Middle Ages which 
 it reflects, men feel that God only is strong, and that 
 they are weak — helpless in a world of dangers — 
 among irresistible and unknown powers, where God 
 only can help them. " My God, succour me : my 
 bark is so little, and Thy sea is so great;" so prays 
 the Breton sailor as he passes the terrible cape, the 
 Bee du Raz — and he speaks the universal feeling. 
 He sees nothing between himself and the hand of 
 God. He is still in the days of the Bible : he realises 
 the invisible world without effort, he is deeply inter- 
 ested in it, he has his scruples, his fears, his axioms 
 about it, as his civilised contemporaries have about 
 the order of their world. They take for granted their 
 own power, and trouble themselves about no other. 
 He delivers himself up in his weakness, almost pas- 
 sively, into the hands of God. His submission, his 
 intense eonviction of the sorrows of this world, would 
 almost amount to fatalism, were it not for his faith in 
 the power of prayer. 
 
 " It is only within a few years,'' says M. Souvestre, 
 and we believe he does not over-colour the case — " that 
 
100 BKITTANY 
 
 physicians have been employed in the country districts ; 
 even now confidence in them is far from being general. 
 Some traditional medicines, prayers, masses at the parish 
 church, vows to the best-known saints, are the remedies 
 mostly used. Every Sunday at service time, you may 
 see women with eyes red with weeping, going up to the 
 altar of the Virgin, with tapers, which they light and 
 place there ; they are sisters or wives who come to beg 
 some dear life, of her in heaven, who, like themselves, 
 has known the cost of tears shed over a bier. You can 
 tell by counting these tapers, which burn with a pale 
 light upon the altar, how many souls there are in the 
 parish ready to quit the earth." — Sov/oestre, pp. 9, 10. 
 
 The stern resignation to which this faith leads, 
 this steady acquiescence in suffering as the order of 
 Providence, puts out the political economist sadly. 
 The Breton peasant or workman, strange to say, 
 unlike his brethren in England or France, does not 
 care to mend his condition. He is firmly persuaded 
 that it is all one where he is, in this world, — a broad 
 heroic view of things, though a partial and wrong 
 one; but very maddening to speculators on "capa- 
 bilities " and " resources." There the peasant sits in 
 his hovel by his fireside, silent and grave, moaning 
 and dreaming about things invisible and days gone 
 by, chanting his monotonous mournful poetry, making 
 his coarse cloth, which no one wants to buy of him. 
 It is no use telling him that his manufacture is too 
 rude, that his market is gone — his father made cloth 
 before him, and, whether it sells or not, he cannot 
 give over making it. " Dans notre famille nous avons 
 toujours iUfdbricants de toUes." Arguments are beaten 
 
BRITTANY 101 
 
 back by the recollection of past days — " Bans notre 
 famille nous avons iU riches autrefois;" and when he 
 can no longer resist the assertion that times are 
 changed, he sighs and says — " G'est le hon Dieu gut 
 conduit le pauvre monde." — "After that, press him no 
 more ; you have reached the end of his arguments, 
 you have driven him back on Providence; to any 
 further objections he will make no answer."^ Yet 
 at this very moment he has not given up the hope 
 that the old days wiU come back; he can see no 
 reason why they should not. He dreams of his new 
 coat of brown cloth that he will "purchase, and of 
 the silver dishes that he will substitute for his wooden 
 spoons — these silver dishes are the utmost stretch of 
 the Breton workman's ambitious visions. This point 
 reached, he goes to sleep in his rapture; and the 
 next morning, cold and hunger awaken him as usual 
 at sunrise, and he resumes the toils and bitter reahties 
 of his daily life."^ 
 
 But there are times when this heavy, narrow- 
 minded, melancholy, lethargic drudge, who drones and 
 pines while others work, rises and iills out into a 
 breadth and grandeur of character, when all other 
 men are helpless and despicable with terror. The 
 cholera, when it was in the province, drew forth to 
 the full the Breton peasant, his nobleness and his 
 folly, — his faith and uncomplaining resignation ; his 
 obstinate distrust of all that comes through man,— 
 and both in exaggerated proportions. We quote 
 1 Souveatre, p. 368. « Ibid. p. 369. 
 
] 02 BEITTANY 
 
 from M. Souvestre : after speaking of the cry of the 
 Paris mob, that the government had poisoned the 
 provisions, he goes on : — 
 
 In Brittany, where the government, its form and name, 
 are almost unknown, and parties are political only because 
 they are religious, it was naturally otherwise. Any one 
 who had told our peasants that government was poisoning 
 them, would scarcely have been understood. For them, 
 there are but two powers, God and the devil, — they looked 
 not to criminal conspiracies for the cause of the evil which 
 smote them. "The finger of God has touched us;" "God 
 has delivered lis to the devil;" this was their energetic 
 language. And forthwith the report was spread in the 
 country, of supernatural apparitions, — red women had 
 been seen near Brest, breathing the pestilence over the 
 valleys. A beggar woman maintained before the magis- 
 trates, " that she had seen them — had spoken with them." 
 Menacing signs gave warning that God was about to cast 
 His " evil adr " over the country ; — the churches were 
 opened, and the people awaited, without taking any precau- 
 tions, the fearful guest, whose approach was announced to 
 them. I asked the priest of one of the parishes in the 
 L^onais, what precautions he had taken. As we were 
 leaving the church, he silently pointed with his hand, and 
 showed me twelve pits ready opened. 
 
 The cholera soon came, and came with fury : — 
 
 But the peasant of Ldon, accustomed to hard trials, 
 bowed his head beneath the scourge. Once only the 
 murmur of grief and discontent was heard in our country 
 districts ; it was when, for fear of contagion, it was pro- 
 posed to bury those who died of cholera in the cemeteries 
 of remote chapels. The relations and friends of the dead 
 collected roimd the coffin, and opposed its removal from 
 the parish churchyard, which already contained the bones 
 
BRITTANY 103 
 
 of Itose whom lie loved. Indeed, in some places, it was 
 not without danger that the new orders were carried into 
 effect : these men who disdain to wrangle ahout their 
 place in life, disputed with eagerness for their place in 
 the churchyard. You should have heard their words in 
 this strange, long dispute, to know the depth of those 
 hearts. " The remains of our fathers are here," they re- 
 peated ; " why separate him who is just dead 1 Banished 
 down there to the hurying-ground of the chapel, he will 
 hear neither the chants of the service nor the prayers 
 which ransom the departed. Here is his place. We can 
 see his grave from our windows ; we can send our smallest 
 children every evening to pray here ; this earth is the 
 property of the dead, no power can take it from them, 
 or exchange it for another." In vain people spoke of the 
 danger of the accumulation of corpses in the parish 
 churchyard, always in the middle of the village, and sur- 
 rounded with houses. They shook their large heads sadly, 
 and their flowing hair. " Corpses do not kill those who 
 are alive," they answered ; " death does not come except 
 hy the will of God." At last it became necessary to apply 
 to the priests to overcome their resistance ; and all the 
 authority of the priests themselves was scarcely enough to 
 make them yield to the change. I shall never forget 
 having heard the rector at Taul6 talking long to them 
 about it, and assuring them, in the name of God, whom 
 he represented, that the dead had not the feelings of the 
 living, and did not suffer by this separation from the 
 graves of their forefathers. These explanations, which 
 would have made one smile under other circumstances, 
 took so strange a character of seriousness, from the air of 
 conviction in the priests, and the intense attention of the 
 crowd, that they left no feeling but that of extreme 
 amazement and involuntary awe. — Sowvestre, pp. 14-17. 
 
 These views of life are not the views of a soft and 
 tender-hearted people. The Breton who suffers un- 
 
104 BRITTANY 
 
 moved, looks unmoved on suffering in others. He 
 may help or not, as it may be; he will not waste 
 many words or much compassion. But the Church, 
 which has not made him feel for suffering as such, 
 has impressed, like an instinct on his soul, that deep 
 reverence for earthly humiliation, which since the 
 Sermon on the Mount she has never forgotten. The 
 roughest and hardest Breton wrecker never turned 
 away from the beggar — " Mte du Ion Dim,," who visits 
 his hovel, or who sits praying and begging by the 
 wayside or the church door. He sees in him one 
 touched by the "finger of God" — this moves him, 
 though physical suffering does not. And that touch- 
 ing faith of early times is still strong among them 
 which reverenced the idiot; which believed him to 
 be in grace, and sought his intercession because he 
 could do no sin ; which, because of the extremity of 
 his degradation, felt sure that the All-merciful was 
 with him, and would visit one who was so humbled 
 in the eyes of men. The most famous church in 
 Brittany was raised to consecrate the memory of one 
 of them. Every one who travels there, hears wher- 
 ever he goes of the renown of the Folg'dat — the work 
 of the glorious days of Brittany, now scathed and 
 battered by the Revolution : where, instead of the 
 princely convent, a few Saws de la Providence educate 
 poor children — "lesfilles des misdrables." And though 
 English taste may think it over-rated, it is a noble 
 church, — with its two towers and spires of pierced 
 granite, and its line of five altars, along the eastern 
 
BRITTANY 105 
 
 wall, carved with the most exquisite beauty, of the 
 sharp, dark, gray Kersanton. The legend which led to 
 the building of this church, shall be given as it was 
 read in the church itself.^ We shall not be surprised 
 at our readers smiling, or, if it is worth while, con- 
 demning J but we think they will be touched, at least, 
 by the manner in which it is told. 
 
 On the Sunday before All Saints, 1370, deceased the 
 blessed Salaun, or Solomon, vulgarly called the Fool, 
 because he was taken for one naturally dull, and wanting 
 reason, having never been able to learn anything save 
 only these two words, " Ave Maria" which he would say 
 and repeat without ceasing. This poor innocent had 
 made for himself a wretched dwelling beneath a great 
 tree, whereof the branches were very low, and were to 
 him for a roof and walls. There he lived by himself, 
 lying on the bare ground ; and when he was hungry, 
 going through the town of Lesneven, he asked for bread, 
 saying, in his Breton language, " Ave Maria, Salaun a de 
 pre hara," — that is, " Solomon would fain eat Iread ;" and 
 then he would return to his abode, where he dipped his 
 bread in the water of a fountain hard by ; and no one all 
 his life long could make him eat or drink anything else, 
 or sleep elsewhere. And when in winter time he was 
 cold, he climbed up into his tree, and hung on to the 
 branches, swinging backwards and forwards, to warm 
 himself by the motion of his body, and singing the while 
 with a loud voice, " O-o-o-o-o-o Maria." So that, from his 
 simpleness of hfe, they called him only " the fool" At 
 last, he having deceased, the neighbours, who were poor 
 country-folk, simple and ignorant, supposing from his 
 innocence that as he had hved without use of reason, or 
 
 ^ The legend is hung up on a board, in old French, on one 
 of the piers. 
 
106 BRITTANY 
 
 knowledge of God or religion, as far as it appeared to them, 
 so lie liad not died like a Christian, not having been 
 assisted by the Churoh-folk, nor having asked for any of 
 the Sacraments ; and thinking also that those frequent 
 words which he had in his mouth, " Ave Maria," meant 
 nothing religious, but rather that they were a custom, 
 without his knowing their meaning ; and also setting 
 down his great austerity of life to a brutish disposition by 
 nature, which never could have tasted good or evil ; — 
 therefore they thought him not worthy to be buried in 
 holy ground. And, moreover, his body being disowned 
 of his friends, and despised by others, the trouble and 
 charges of carrying it to be buried in the parish burying- 
 ground, which was about one league distant, were an 
 excuse to each one of them to flatter himself in this lack 
 of charity and kindness. So it was that he was buried 
 by the peasants, like a beast, at the foot of his tree, 
 without priests, or the accustomed ceremonies of the 
 Church. But the good and all-merciful God, to whom 
 only it appertains to judge of the end, whether blessed or 
 miserable, of all men, caused it to be seen then, for the 
 consolation of the poor and simple in heart, that Paradise 
 is not only for those whom the world calls wise and 
 understanding ; and, above all, that the invocation of the 
 name of His Holy Mother, is verily a mark of predestina- 
 tion and salvation. For the night following, there sprung 
 and grew up marvellously, out of the grave of this innocent, 
 a lUy all covered with flowers, though the season was 
 adverse, and near to winter ; and upon these flowers, and 
 also upon the leaves of the tree, were read these words, 
 imprinted, " Ma/ria," and " Ave Ma/ria," just as if they 
 had been naturally traced and graven ; and they continued, 
 until, the winter drawing on, the leaves fell off from the 
 flowers and from the tree. At the noise and fame of this 
 so admirable an event, there came together from all parts, 
 an infinite number of folk, as well of the clergy as of the 
 nobility and others, who proposed to build a church in 
 
BRITTANY 107 
 
 honour of the glorious Virgin, ia this place, sanctified by 
 so evident a roiraole, and where the invocation of her holy 
 name had appeared so effectual. 
 
 A people who build churches in honour of fools, 
 must be expected to do many other strange things, 
 grotesque, puzzling, revolting, to the shrinking taste 
 and the cautious, unventuresome imagination of the 
 civilised traveller, who suddenly throws himself into 
 this mediaeval race. Modern faith shrinks from details, 
 declines the doubtful, cannot tolerate juxtaposition 
 of the heterogeneous ; it is not imaginative or wide. 
 Not so the hardy, daring faith that still survives in 
 Brittany. There the world of faith is the counterpart 
 of the world of sight ; a world which addresses itself 
 not merely to the devotional or contemplative feelings, 
 but to the whole man ; as full of detail and variety as 
 the visible creation ; with its heights and depths, with 
 its unaccountable phenomena, its strange conjunc- 
 tions; which opens up, not by a formless, featureless 
 expanse of light, but by visions insulated, imfinished, 
 yet distinct, to the Everlasting Throne — which sinks 
 down, through all loathsomeness, absurdity, terror, 
 to the depths of the bottomless pit; and in this 
 middle world presents a mixture astounding, yet to 
 its own denizens most natural, of the heavenly, the 
 human, and the infernal. 
 
 There is one prominent feature in this, which 
 excites very strange feelings in the serious English- 
 man. He has probably been accustomed to think 
 only with solemn fear of that evil being who is to 
 
108 BEITTANY 
 
 him almost the unnameable : not with hatred, not with 
 contempt, not with anything approaching to levity. 
 He goes to Brittany, and he finds, as in the Middle 
 Ages, that the prevailing feeling is one of heartfelt 
 derision, implying, but almost too strong to show, 
 real human hatred — the feeling of redeemed man, 
 triumphing over and laughing to scorn his outwitted 
 enemy. The Evil one is brought in to make sport, 
 in the Breton play, or the Breton tale : the Breton 
 hero must always, to keep up his character, "jouer 
 guelque mawvais tour au diaUe." "Le diable," says 
 M. Souvestre, "est la victime obligee, c'est I'Orgon 
 du fabliau Bas-Breton ; dans le genre plaisant, comme 
 dans le genre terrible, sa figure est celle qui domine." 
 " C'est une assez curieuse 6tude,'' adds our philosophic 
 BretOTirfrancisi, "que celle de cette vieille haine, qui 
 prend tour k tour la forme de la malediction, ou de 
 la raillerie."^ 
 
 -The popular stories are all of his baffled power 
 and cunning, — not of tremendous conflicts, souls 
 staked and lost, or hardly saved, but of his ridiculous 
 failures, or precipitate and foolish bargains with men. 
 There is a grotesque belief — sprung, perhaps, from 
 the same feeling which gave birth to Eastern Dualism, 
 — that the wild animals, and the coarse and ugly 
 species of the same type, are the result of his abortive 
 efforts at creation ; the ass in his copy of the horse, 
 the fox of the dog. In his contests with man, he is 
 defeated not by sanctity, but by superior cunning. 
 ' Souvestre, p. 83. 
 
BRITTANY 109 
 
 He tries his sharpness against the long-headed, shrewd 
 peasant, or the light-hearted, quick-witted Troadec, 
 the great mythic hero of these encounters ; and he is 
 disgracefully taken in, laughed at, and duly tortured. 
 Nothing so completely recalls the grotesque side of 
 the Middle Ages, as these strange tales, so profane to 
 our ears, which the traveller may still hear in the 
 inn-kitchen, or in the petite voiture. 
 
 Another, and a different feature of mediaeval times, 
 are the pilgrimages and "pardons," — assemblages, 
 by hundreds and thousands, to seek the blessing 
 attached to a particular spot. There is the same 
 undoubting and ardent devotion — there are also, in 
 many cases, the same excesses. The smaller meetings, 
 it is said, are free from these scandals : certainly, 
 nothing can be more striking and solemn than some 
 of them, from first to last,^ — unless there happens to 
 be present a rude Englishman, or, what is still worse, 
 a mocking Frenchman. But at the larger ones, part 
 of the business of the day is to get drunk, to the 
 annual vexation of the priests and the annual enter- 
 tainment of the neighbouring bourgeois. M. Souvestre's 
 account of one of the most famous pilgrimages is 
 revolting in the extreme. Mr. TroUope gives a 
 description of another, which probably is a fairer 
 specimen, — the pilgrimage to St. Jean du Doigt, near 
 Morlaix. 
 
 We left Morlaix by the picturesque faubourg of 
 Troudousten, which lines the side of the valley with its 
 irregular collection of buildings ; and then traversed the 
 
110 BKITTANY 
 
 shady woods of Tr^feuntenioii, and the deep valley of the 
 Dourdu. . . .Farther on, we crossed the little stream of 
 the Mesqueau, and soon after arrived at the object of our 
 pilgrimage. 
 
 All this time we had been journeying amid a crowd of 
 all ages and sexes, who were bound to the same point, and 
 which became denser as we approached the village. We 
 made directly for the church, as the grand centre of 
 interest ; and, having reached the churchyard, found our- 
 selves in the midst of a scene, which it is almost as diffi- 
 cult adequately to describe as it is impossible ever to 
 forget. 
 
 The church is a large building, with a handsome tower, 
 standing in the midst of an area, which is but Kttle 
 encumbered with gravestones. This was thickly crowded 
 with a collection of men, women, and children, more 
 motley in appearance than can readily be conceived by 
 any one who has not seen the never-ending variety of 
 Breton costume. The churchyard was bounded on part 
 of one side by a long straggling building, which had been 
 turned into a cabaret for the occasion. The door and 
 front of this house were on the side looking away from 
 the church ; but a window opening into the churchyard 
 had been converted into a temporary door, for the more 
 ready passage of the pUgrims from one to the other of the 
 two occupations, drinking and devotion, which on a 
 pilgrimage, as for the most part elsewhere, form the prin- 
 cipal amusements of a Breton's life. 
 
 In the parts of the inclosure farthest from the church, 
 were erected a quantity of booths, beneath which were 
 exposed for sale innumerable specimens of all the various 
 trumpery which forms the machinery of Eomish devotion. 
 Pictures and figures of saints, especially of St. John the 
 Baptist, of every possible size, form, and sort ; chapleta 
 of various materials ; bottles of water from holy fountains ; 
 crucifixes, crosses, and calvaries, etc., were the principal 
 articles. Amid these, other stalls were devoted to the 
 
BRITTANY HI 
 
 more mundane luxuries of nuts, roUs, figs, sausages, 
 prunes, biscuits, apples, crepe, etc. By the side of the 
 pathway leading to the principal door of the church the 
 dealers in waxand tallow candles had stationed themselves. 
 The consumption of these, and the supply provided for 
 it, were enormous. 
 
 The thing that most struck me after the first glance 
 at the various heterogeneous parts of this strange scene, 
 was an equable and constant motion of that part of the 
 crowd who were nearest to the church, around the walls 
 of the building ; and, on pressing forwards, I found an 
 unceasing stream of pilgrims walking round the church, 
 saying prayers, and telling their beads. Many performed 
 this part of the ceremony on their bare knees. 
 
 Just outside the moving circle thus formed, and con- 
 stituting a sort of division between it and the rest of the 
 crowd, were a row of mendicants, whose united appearance 
 was something far more horrible than I have any hope of 
 conveying an idea of to the reader. . . . 
 
 Each horrible object continued all the day in the 
 position he had taken up, and in many instances in 
 attitudes which it appeared scarcely possible to retain so 
 long. One man lay on his back on the ground, while 
 both his bare legs were raised high in air, and sustained 
 in that position by crutches. Of course each studiously 
 placed himself so as most to expose that particular affliction 
 which qualified him to take his place among the sickening 
 crew. All vociferated their appeals to the charity of the 
 crowd incessantly, and most of them appeared to receive 
 a great many ahns from the pilgrims. Some gave a smaU 
 coin to every one of the revolting circle. In many 
 infitances we observed change demanded by the giver, and 
 produced readily by the miserable object of his charity. 
 Many gave part of the provisions which they had brought 
 with them in their wallets from their distant homes. . . . 
 The novelty and strangeness of the scene around the 
 church detained us long from entering it. Fresh pilgrims 
 
112 BRITTANY 
 
 continued to arrive every instant, and joined themselves 
 to the never-ceasing procession around the building, who 
 came, as was evident from their costume, from various 
 distant parts of the country. Grave, decorous peasants, 
 in black, from the neighbourhood of Morlaix and St. 
 Th%onec, were mixed with wild-looking, travel-stained 
 figures from the hiUs. Here a group might be seen, 
 whose white flannel jackets and violet-coloured breeches 
 showed them to be from the neighbourhood of St. Pol de 
 Ldon ; and there a blue cloak with its short, faUing cape, 
 declared its wearer to have come from the western ex- 
 tremity of the northern coast. Roscovites were there, 
 with their close, green jackets, white trousers, and red 
 sashes ; and inhabitants of the distant shores opposite to 
 Brest, distinguishable by their glaring costume of red coats 
 and breeches, and white waistcoats, adorned with crimson 
 buttons. . . . 
 
 Each freshly-arrived party, as they entered the church- 
 yard, fell into the ranks, and muttering as they went, 
 commenced the tour of the church ; and having performed 
 that, some more, some fewer times, proceeded next into 
 the interior, and struggled onwards through the crowd 
 towards the altar. This was no easy matter to accomplish. 
 We followed into the church a recently-arrived party of 
 very poor-looking pilgrims from the hills, whose liberal 
 alms-giving we had been observing with surprise and 
 interest, and endeavoured to make our way towards the 
 altar in their wake. 
 
 The church was large ; but it was crowded to such a 
 degree, that it was absolutely difficult to find room to 
 stand within the doors. By degrees, however, and by 
 dint of long perseverance and much striving, we at length 
 got near the principal altar. A narrow passage along 
 the front of the rails of this had been partitioned off, 
 into one end of which the crowd struggled, and issued 
 from the other. 
 
 Within the rails was a priest, carrying the Finger, in 
 
BEITTANY 113 
 
 its little case, and applying it to the eyes of the people, 
 one after another as fast as he possibly could. Running 
 the whole length along the top of the rails of the altar was 
 a sort of box, about four inches broad, by six deep. The 
 top consisted of a sort of grating, formed of a succession of 
 wooden bars, with interstices between them, about a third 
 of an inch in breadth. Into this each devotee dropped 
 one or more pieces of money as soon as the miraculous 
 relic had touched his eyes. 
 
 I have been assured that the sum of money received 
 annually at St. Jean du Doigt on this day is very con- 
 siderable indeed. And I can easily conceive it to be so ; 
 for the confluence of people was immense, and of course 
 no one there failed to come to the altar, nor could I perceive 
 that any one left it without having deposited an offering 
 in the box. 
 
 The crowding, pushing, struggUug, and jostling, at 
 the entrance to the passage in front of the altar, was 
 tremendous. Here, high above the heads of the un- 
 dulating crowd, mounted on a level with the top of the 
 altar-rails, was a beadle, with a good stout cane in his 
 hand, with which he was laying about him vigorously ; 
 whacking the most violent and impatient of the crowds 
 over their heads and shoulders ; much in the same 
 manner that a Smithfield drover regulates the motions of 
 an irritated and over-driven herd of bullocks. 
 
 We remained near the altar for some time. But there 
 was nothing more to see than we had seen. The same 
 thing continued without the slightest variation. Fresh 
 comers continually thronged to the door of the passage, 
 and supplied the places of those who kept streaming from 
 the other end, as fast as the priest could touch both their 
 eyes with the sacred relic. And this continued nearly 
 the whole day. 
 
 I could not perceive that anybody watched to see if 
 the people dropped their money. The priest certainly 
 paid no attention to it, being fully engaged in performing 
 
 T 
 
114 BRITTANY 
 
 his own task, now stepping back a Kttle, and now forward, 
 and now stretching out his arm to some one behind, 
 whom the throng prevented from getting close to the 
 altar-rails. It appeared, indeed, that the honesty or 
 fanaticism of the pilgrims rendered any care on this 
 point unnecessary. For I observed many, who had had 
 the finger applied to their eyes across others, and were 
 consequently separated from the box on the rails, and 
 were being carried away by the motion of the crowd, 
 struggling hard to reach the box with their hand, to 
 deposit therein their offering. . . . This continued without 
 stopping tiU about six o'clock, at which hour the pro- 
 cession was to take place. 
 
 Mr. TroUope proceeds to describe a custom which 
 has struck all who have seen it — the fires of St. John's 
 Day. 
 
 There are few villages or hamlets in Brittany that 
 have not their bonfire on the eve of St. John ; but of 
 course, in the village under his peculiar patronage, and 
 in the presence of hundreds of pilgrims, assembled for his 
 express honour, the rite is solemnised with especial pomp 
 and circumstance, and the blaze is a glorious one. . . . 
 
 To this spot the solemn train proceeded. A hollow 
 way led up the side of the hUl, and in some degree com- 
 pelled, by its narrowness, the immense crowd to keep 
 behind the procession. We however climbed up the 
 steep side of this ravine, and thus, high above the heads 
 of the crowd, looked down upon the assembled multitude. 
 The coup d'mil was certainly a very striking one. The 
 processional pomp, examined in detail, was of course 
 mean and ridiculous. But the general aspect of the 
 prodigious multitude, assembled from so many distant 
 homes, their deep seriousness and evident devotion, as 
 with bare heads, and long locks streaming in the wind, 
 they raised the burthen of their solemn chant, could not 
 fail to afiect powerfully the imagination. . . . 
 
BRITTANY 115 
 
 At length the living mass reached the top of the hUl, 
 and arranged itself in a vast circle around the huge stack 
 of dry broom and furze, which was destined to the flames. 
 Some fireworks were to be let off first ; and when this 
 had been done, the firing of a cannon gave the signal that 
 the bonfire was about to be lighted. This, however, was 
 to be accomplished in no ordinary way, but by fire from 
 heaven, or by a contrivance intended to resemble it in 
 effect as nearly as might be. A long rope was attached 
 to the top of the church tower, the other end of which 
 communicated with the fuel. Along this a feu d'artiflce, 
 in the form of a dove, was to be launched, which was to 
 run along the line and ignite the dry brushwood. 
 
 Great is the importance attached to this feat of in- 
 genuity, and long is the sight looked forward to by the 
 admiring peasants. Down shot the fiery dove at the 
 sound of the cannon, and briskly she flew along the rope, 
 amid the murmured raptures of the crowd, till she had 
 travelled about half the distance. But, there, alas ! she 
 stopped dead, nor could any expedient of shaking the 
 rope, etc., induce her to advance another inch. 
 
 The fact was, that the rope was not stretched tightly 
 enough to produce an uninterrupted line in an inclined 
 plane. Its own weight caused it to form a considerable 
 curve, and the dove decidedly refused to advance an inch 
 up hill. Thus -foiled in their scenic effect, the masters 
 of the ceremonies were fain to light their bonfire in an 
 ordinary and less ambitious way. 
 
 This was soon done. The dry brushwood blazed up 
 in an instant, and the already wide circle round the fire 
 was soon enlarged by the heat, which drove back the 
 thick ranks by its rapidly increasing power. . . 
 
 Soon after the pile was lighted, the clergy, with the 
 banners, the relics, and the principal part of the procession, 
 left the bonfire, and returned down the hill to the village. 
 This appeared to be the signal that aU semblance of a 
 religious ceremony might now be dropped. The re- 
 
116 BEITTANT 
 
 mainder of the evening was given up to unrestrained 
 merry-making and carousing. The dance round the fire 
 which, when formerly it was lighted at the same period 
 of the year, in honour of the Sun, was intended to typify 
 the motion of the stars, and has been preserved, though 
 meaningless since the Christianisation of the festival, was 
 duly performed. Cattle were brought, and made to leap 
 over the burning embers to preserve them from disease, 
 and from the malice of the fairies. Boys and girls rushed 
 in, and snatched from the glowing mass a half-consumed 
 morsel, to be carefully preserved till next St John's Eve 
 for good-luck — shouts and cries rose on all sides from the 
 excited multitude ; and the whole scene, over which a 
 solemn and religious spirit had so recently presided, 
 became one of frolic and confusion. 
 
 One after another the surrounding hiUs were lighted 
 up each with its crowning bonfire, and the reflections of 
 many others still more distant were seen in the sky, 
 imparting to the heavens in every direction the ruddy 
 glow of a golden sunset. Then groups of girls, in their 
 holyday trim, might be seen stealing off and mounting 
 the various points of the hills, to try if they could see 
 nine fires at once. For, if they can do this, they are 
 sure of being married in the course of the year. . . . 
 
 We did not return by the road we had come, but by 
 Lanmeur. The whole country through which we passed 
 was illumined by a succession of fires. And on many of 
 the hills a shadowy circle of ghostlike figures might be 
 seen, moving around the distant flames. We found no 
 less than three bonfires blazing in different places in the 
 very middle of the road, over which two or three diligences 
 would have to pass in the course of a few hours. 
 
 It is not necessary, we think, to have recourse to 
 a Celtic rite for tlie explanation of the iires on St. 
 John's Eve. But there are more questionable usages 
 
BKITTANY 117 
 
 among these wild people. Paganism has scarcely yet 
 been quite rubbed out from among them — the religion 
 of the wells, and woods, and heaths, and shores. The 
 tall ghostlike stone on the moor still fills the peasant 
 with supernatural awe, though the cross has been set 
 upon it. It is startling to be told by M. de Fr^min- 
 ville, a writer who professes accuracy, and is not a 
 free-thinker, that on the western coast, and in the Isle 
 of Ushant, idolatry was practised as late as the seven- 
 teenth century.-' Idolatry is now gone; but wild 
 fearful ideas about the invisible world still linger, and 
 belief in the mystic powers of nature, mixed up with 
 Christian legends. It is on the western coast that 
 these superstitions, solemn everywhere in Brittany, 
 are most dreary and terrible ; that coast which looks 
 out on the desolate ocean — " laproue de I'ancien monde " 
 - — and shares its gloom and storm. Even on the 
 stillest day there is a sullen, savage look about the 
 scene, about the gaunt dark rocks, the long, low, sandy 
 islands in the hazy distance, the heavy sleepy balanc- 
 ing of the endless waters in their bed, immensi tremor 
 Oceam. "Who has ever passed along this funereal 
 coast without exclaiming or feeling, ' Tristis usque ad 
 mortem V " ^ Every cape and island has its associa- 
 tions of terror or death ; fit place for the NeKuta of 
 the Odyssey; the refuge of the spirits of darkness 
 whom the Gospel had scared from Greece and the 
 East, — the abode of the weird virgins, who ruled the 
 
 1 TroUope, vol. ii. pp. 299, 386, 389. Oambry, p. 64. 
 2 Miehelet. 
 
118 BEITTANY 
 
 tempests; the birthplace of Merlin; the haunt of 
 mermaids and sea -monsters, and, in later times, of 
 wreckers. 
 
 The local legends are equally gloomy, — legends 
 of sin and judgment, of the great city of Ys, and 
 the cry of its wickedness coming up to heaven like 
 Sodom, till its measure was full. Then King Grad- 
 lon's wicked and beautiful daughter Dahut stole the 
 golden key, which kept out the sea, and opened the 
 floodgates, and let in the waters. But St. G-wenolen 
 was sent to the king to save him : — "Ah ! sire, sire, 
 let us depart quickly hence, for the wrath of God 
 will destroy this place ! Thou knowest the sin of 
 this people, the measure is full; let us haste to 
 depart, lest we be overtaken in the same calamity.'' 
 The king mounted his horse, with his daughter 
 behind him, and fled out of the city ; but the raging 
 waves followed him, and were about to devour him. 
 "King Gradlon," cried then a terrible voice, "if 
 thou wilt not perish, separate thyself from that evil 
 one thou carriest behind thee." The king knew the 
 voice of Gwenolen, — the voice of God; he cast off 
 his daughter to the sea, and the sea was satisfied 
 with its prey, and stood still. But the city was 
 swallowed up, with all that were in it, and its ruins 
 are still pointed out under the Bay of Douarnenez.^ 
 There, when the storm is rising, the fishermen hear 
 in the whistling, moaning gale, the crierien, the voices 
 of the shipwrecked, shrieking for burial; and tell 
 1 Pitre-Chevalier, p. 88. 
 
BKITTANY 119 
 
 that on Allsouls' Day, lejov/r des maris, you may see 
 the pale spirits rising on the crests of the waves, and 
 scudding like the spray before the wind, in the Baie 
 des Tripassis : it is the annual gathering of those who 
 once lived on these shores, the drowned and the 
 buried, and they seek each other among the waves. 
 There also they believe that the demons which wait 
 for the lost soul, show themselves in visible form 
 about his door during his agony ; they tell of fishers' 
 boats deeply laden with their invisible freight of 
 spirits, gliding off to the ocean. There, at mysterious 
 Carnac, the tombs are opened at midnight, the church 
 is lighted up, and Death, clad in the vestments of a 
 priest, preaches from the pulpit to thousands of 
 kneeling skeletons : the peasants say that they have 
 seen the lights, and heard the voice of the preacher. 
 There also, near Auray, is the battlefield of Pluvigner, 
 where the souls of the unshriven slain are condemned 
 to wander till the Great Day, each in a straight line 
 across the plain ; and woe to the traveller who crosses 
 the path of a spirit ! 
 
 "While I was at Auray," says Souvestre, "I was 
 enabled to judge Low deeply the belief is rooted in the 
 minds of the country people. A young country girl came 
 to the house where I was staying, crying bitterly, and 
 unable to speak. We interrogated her in alarm, and the 
 poor girl told us, through her sobs, that her father was 
 dying. He had gone yesterday to the Fair of Pluvigner, 
 and had returned alone and late by the fatal field. He 
 had been met by a spirit — (while she said these words, her 
 whole body trembled) ; he had been thrown down, and 
 
120 BRITTAKY 
 
 it was only in tlie morning that he had been found and 
 brought home ; a doctor was no good, it was a priest that 
 he wanted ; his hours were numbered. 
 
 " We went to the dying man. He was already in the 
 agony ; but he told us his story, in words interrupted by 
 the horrible hiccough of the deathrattle. He told us, 
 that ' he had felt himself struck by the spirit,' and, in 
 spite of his efforts, he had been hurled from his horse. 
 The physician arrived, and declared that he had been 
 seized with apoplexy." — Souvestre, pp. 115, 116. 
 
 Nowhere do the ideas of death crowd in so thickly 
 and drearily. But it is on the coast that they are 
 most gloomy and terrible. In the interior, they are 
 of a more Christian and fireside character. On the 
 coast, men think of the dead as exposed to the sea 
 and storm ; inland, they still think of them, but as 
 lingering about their old homes and families. In 
 L6on especially, as we have already seen, in one 
 instance, they keep up very strongly these household 
 feelings about the dead. On AUsouI's Day, the day on 
 which the fishermen of the coast see the vexed spirits 
 in the tossing waves of the Bale des Tr6pass6s, 
 
 The whole population of the Ltenais rises serious and 
 in mourning. It is the family anniversary, the time of 
 commemorations ; and nearly the whole day is spent in 
 devotion. About midnight, after a meal taken in common, 
 all retire ; but the dishes are left on the table ; for the 
 Bretons think that, at that hour, those whom they have 
 lost rise from their graveyards, and come to take their 
 annual repast under the roof where they were bom. — 
 Souvestre, p. 10. 
 
 The Breton shrinks from the thought of laying his 
 
BRITTANY 121 
 
 bones out of the consecrated land of Brittany — 
 " what -woiild his poor soul feel, if it found itself at 
 night among so many strange souls ?" — and he shrinks 
 equally from disturbing his fathers, by burying 
 strangers in their honoured fellowship.^ In the midst 
 of rejoicing, the dead are not forgotten. On St. 
 John's night, seats are set for them by the fires, that 
 they may come and look on at the dancers. Even at 
 the wedding, amid its grotesque ceremonies, they are 
 thought of ; the banvalan, or village tailor, who con- 
 ducts the negotiations, after inviting all the living 
 relatives to go with him to church, excuses himself from 
 inviting the dead, because to pronounce their names 
 would be too painful; "but let every one uncover 
 himself, as I do, and beg for them the blessing of the 
 Church, and rest for their souls ;"— and he aloud, and 
 the rest in an under-tone, repeat the " Be profundis.'' 
 These feelings are stamped on the face of the 
 country. Even in the course of a summer visit, when 
 the long sunny days, and the bright warm looks of 
 sea and earth and sky, continuing week after week, 
 make the mind less attentive and less open to opposite 
 impressions — again and again will they force them- 
 selves upon it. What is elsewhere put out of sight, 
 is here as much as possible kept before the face of 
 the living. The wayside cross, with the inscription, 
 "Id trespassa N.," meets you perpetually. The 
 parish churches in the country, especially if of any 
 antiquity, have a strange character of hardness and 
 1 Souvestre, pp. 363, 428. 
 
122 BEITTANY 
 
 dreariness, distinct from mere rudeness, and quite 
 their own. The well-known forms of church archi- 
 tecture reappear, but with altered proportions and 
 a peculiar grotesque sternness, — granite without, 
 instead of the chequered flint and warm, rich free- 
 stone of France and England; within, whitewash, 
 with perhaps a broad border of black; wide, open, 
 paved spaces ; and the church ending, not in a 
 chancel, but in a cross transept. Even when empty, 
 there is generally one sound heard in them — the loud 
 ticking of a clock. At the east end, are the heavy, 
 brightly-painted images ; in other parts of the church, 
 and in the porch, set up on shelves, each in a small 
 black box, pierced, and surmounted by the cross, 
 the skulls of those who have worshipped there, taken 
 out of their graves when their flesh has perished, and 
 placed on high with their names — " Oy est le chef 
 de N.," in the sight of their children when they come 
 to pray. They are churches of the dead as well as 
 of the living. 
 
 In keeping with this character of the country, is 
 the "sacred city" of old Armorica — the chief see of 
 Brittany, now decayed and brought low — St. Pol de 
 L6on. It still shows the beauty — the grace mingled 
 with sternness — which the Church impressed upon it. 
 For a couple of hours before he reaches the city, the 
 traveller looks at its group of spires, which spring 
 upwards, on a rising ground, from the vague outline 
 of trees and houses ; they are imprinted on his eye, 
 and occupy and prepossess his imagination while he 
 
BRITTANY 123 
 
 is approaching, and they grow in interest as he 
 comes near. There are the two cathedral spires, and, 
 like them, but leaving them far behind, the Oreisker ; 
 a pierced spire of granite, of strange and singular 
 beauty, boldly deviating from the most graceful 
 western types — not springing from its base with a 
 continuously tapering outline, but rising long with 
 solemn evenness from the ground, and then, after 
 pausing at a deep and heavy cornice, shooting up 
 amid a crowd of pinnacles, with inexpressible light- 
 ness and freedom into the sky. But the city beneath 
 these beautiful structures is deserted and desolate. 
 There is nothing but dull unbroken streets of granite, 
 with a few people sitting at their doors, or, it may 
 be, squatted outside, like savages, round a fire. 
 "The general air of the place," says Mr. TroUope, 
 "might impress a traveller with the notion that all 
 the inhabitants were asleep. A deep and slumbering 
 tranquillity seems to be the presiding genius of the 
 town. The cathedral is small, low, and gloomy. No 
 service was going on there when we entered. Two 
 or three silent figures were kneeling motionless in 
 diiferent parts of the nave, and not a sound but the 
 echo of our own footsteps disturbed the deathlike 
 stillness of the sombre place. But the quiet was 
 hardly more profound than that of the city without ; 
 and the deep silence, the dingy walls, and the undis- 
 turbed dust on them, seemed attributes fitting a place 
 of worship for this scarcely living city."i 
 1 TroUope, vol. ii. pp. 277, 278. 
 
124 BRITTANY 
 
 Even the Creisker seems, to some minds, to har- 
 monise with the melancholy of the city. It was the 
 remark of an intelligent Breton, that it was "the 
 only Gothic church that gave him the idea of repose, 
 like the Grecian temples." And any one who has 
 wandered from the cold silent streets to the great 
 cirmtike outside, late on a summer's evening, when 
 the full moon was rising, and hanging low and red 
 over the misty bay behind ; and has walked in this 
 uncertain twilight along its straight avenues, bordered 
 by ossuaries and " stations," till he stood in front of 
 the great "Calvary," to which all the paths converge — 
 in a broad, open space paved with gravestones, — with 
 dimly-seen groups, as large as life, of the Passion and 
 the Burial, before and around him, and in the back- 
 ground the long, low, shapeless outline of the chapel 
 of the cemetery — must remember well the solemn 
 dreariness of the place — 
 
 " Reliquiae mortis Mo inhaljitant." 
 
 But Breton religion, with its mixture of wildness 
 and thoughtfulness, its tenderness and sad resignation, 
 has other sides. Faith, as of old, works in many 
 ways. It is a fearful thing, yet nothing new, that it 
 can co-exist, strong and all-pervading, with monstrous 
 evil ; it is compatible with violence, and hatred, and 
 impurity. Faith is no restraint by itself, — is no test 
 of the virtue of the multitude. An age of faith will 
 be fruitful in good : but the evil that grows along 
 with it may rival in horrible excess the most porten- 
 
BRITTANY 125 
 
 tous births of atheism. The French Pantheist sees 
 God in himself : " mtme dans ses passions et ses d^lires.'' 
 The Breton savage reverses this : firmly believing in 
 the One above him, he sees his own wild passions on 
 the Throne of Power — ^he sees sympathy there with 
 his feuds and hatreds. At no distant time, we are 
 told, he made pilgrimages to obtain " des bons nau- 
 frages;"'^ and stranger things still are reported of 
 
 1 Souvestre asserts that there is a chapel near Treguier, 
 dedicated to N. D. de la Saine. ' ' Une chapelle dedi^e k 
 N. D. de la Haine existe toujours pr&s de Treguier, et le peuple 
 n'a pas cess6 de croire k la puissance des prieres qui y sent faites. 
 Parfois encore, vers le soir, on voie des ombres honteuses, se 
 glisser furtivement vers ce triste Edifice plac^ an haut d'un 
 cSteau sans verdure. Ce sont de jeunes pupilles lassfe de la 
 surveillance de leurs tuteurs ; des viellards jaloux de la pros- 
 p&it^ d'un voisin ; des femmes trop rudement froissees par le 
 despotisme d'un mari, qui viennent IJi prier pour la mort'de 
 I'objet de leur haine. Trois Am, d^votement r^p4t^s, amtaent 
 irrevocahlement cette mort dans I'annfe." This statement, on 
 which some remarks were founded in the pages of the Eeview 
 in which this paper first appeared, was contradicted by the 
 Bishop of St. Brieue, in whose diocese Treguier is situated, 
 and by the clergyman at the head of the "Petit Seminaire " at 
 Trdguier, I'Abh^ TJrvoy, in letters, which were printed in the 
 Christian Remembrancer, July 1846, p. 295. M. Urvoy, after 
 warmly denying the truth of Souvestre's statement, offers the 
 following explanation of the possible origin of the story. " Mais 
 quel objet a pu lui donner le thfeme de sa burlesque histoire ? 
 Le Toici probablement. II y a sur la rive opposee au quai de 
 Treguier un oratoire, sous le titre de S. Yves de ViriU. L'amour 
 de la justice dont etait pen^tre la saint et savant magistrat, le 
 zele et le divouement aveo lesquels il defendait les opprimfe, 
 sont demeur^s tellement grav& dans les esprits, que, dans des 
 cas d'injuste oppression ou de procfes iniqiie, on I'a inVoque 
 spccialement dans ce lieu pour obtenir de Dieu par son entremise 
 
126 BEITTANY 
 
 him. The fanaticism of this stern faith, when it 
 blazes out, is of the same terrible character. Take 
 the following scene, which Souvestre states that he 
 witnessed in 1839. A. pardon is going on; all are 
 dancing under the light clear sky. 
 
 When suddenly there was a movement in the crowd ; the 
 bagpipe was silent, the dance stopped, and I heard, passing 
 round me, a name which struck me, Joan de Guiklan. I 
 had heard his name the day before, and had been told that 
 he had gone out of his mind after a retreat at St. Pol de 
 L^on, where the sermons, the soKtude, and his naturally ex- 
 citable temper had worked him up into a wild fanaticism ; 
 and that he went about everywhere, preaching repentance, 
 and throwing himself across the joys of life like a messenger 
 of death. It was added, that he had lived for many 
 
 que la v&ite fut connue, et I'injustice condamn^e. Voilk un 
 culte et un oratoire qui sont connus id. Mais pour la chapelle 
 de N. D. de la Maine, et sa bizarre superstition, eUes sont de 
 la creation de M. E. Souvestre, et rfeUement sorties de son 
 imagination fantasque. Car ici on ne trouve rien du pareil, ni 
 dans le passe, ni dans le pr&ent." The contradiction is, of 
 course, of the highest authority, as to the existence of such a 
 chapel as Souvestre speaks of. But the very culte which M. 
 -Urvoy admits might very easily, in a rude people, pass into 
 something much stronger than his description of it, and lurk 
 among them in a shape, not so far removed from the detestable 
 and shameful superstition which Souvestre alleges to exist. 
 We must add that these letters rather injure the effect of their 
 explanations, by insisting that "Brittany is one of the least 
 superstitious parts of France;" and by the wholesale way in 
 which they ascribe to Souvestre the intention of discrediting 
 the clergy, and depreciate his knowledge of the people he 
 describes. He may be an exaggerated writer ; but there is 
 every appearance' that he writes, from continual and familiar 
 intercourse with the peasantry. 
 
BRITTANY 127 
 
 years without house, or friends, or family. He taught 
 the word of God in the country towns, slept at the foot 
 of the stone crosses by the roadside, or on the thresholds 
 of solitary chapels ; he took in alms only what was 
 necessary to satisfy his hunger, and refused, with disgust, 
 the offer of money. Never, since his madness, had his 
 hand been stretched out to ask for, or to clasp, another 
 hand ; never a word, save of holy counsel or prophetic 
 threatening, had fallen from his lips. In the darkest 
 and coldest winter nights, when the frost or snow had 
 surprised him in some lonely track, and prevented him 
 from sleeping on his bed of stone, he remained aU night 
 standing with his rosary in his hand, chanting hymns in 
 Breton. The people of the neighbourhood said, that a 
 supernatural foreknowledge had been granted him, and 
 that at the hour when death was knocking at the door of 
 a house, the madman always preceded it, crying Repent- 
 ance, Repentance ! . . We soon perceived him standing 
 on the blackened walls of a house which had been burnt 
 some years before. He was a tall man, pale and thin. 
 His hair feU over his shoulders, and he roUed his haggard 
 eyes over the crowd which surrounded him. His gestures 
 were frequent, and in jerks. He often shook his head 
 like a wild beast, and then his black shaggy hair, half 
 veiling his face, gave a terrible character to his look. 
 His piercing voice had that marked tone common to the 
 Breton accent. 
 
 His sermon, which turned upon the dangers of dancing, 
 and the necessity of flying from the pleasures of the 
 world, was in itseK a very commonplace repetition of 
 what I had heard twenty times in country churches; 
 but, by degrees, the fit came upon him, and then his 
 language assumed an energy by which I confess to have 
 been myself overcome. Vivid images, stirring appeals, 
 sarcasm, pointed, coarse', and driven home to the heart, 
 and leaving its mark like a hot iron — this was its character. 
 He pointed out to the crowd of dancers the rising tide, 
 
128 BRITTANY 
 
 wMcli would soon wash away tie foot-tracks which they 
 had left on the sand ; he compared the sea, which roared 
 round their mirth as if in menace, to eternity, incessantly 
 murmuring round their life a terrible warning ; then, by 
 an abrupt and familiar transition, he addressed his words 
 to a young man who stood before him — 
 
 "Good morrow, Pierre ; good morrow to thee ; dance 
 and laugh, my son ; here thou art, where, two years ago, 
 they found the body of thy brother who was drowned." 
 
 He continued- in the same strain, calling every one 
 by his name, stirring each heart by the bitterest recollec- 
 tions, and detailing them with ferocious exactness. This 
 lasted long, and yet his cutting bantering was not softened. 
 One felt, by turns, touched and indignant at hearing these 
 sarcasms, sharp as daggers, which searched about in each 
 man's history, to find out some old wound to open. At 
 last J6an quitted these personal addresses, to speak of the 
 pains reserved for the sinner, and, attributing to God a 
 horrible irony, he proclaimed to those who, on earth, had 
 loved the intoxication of the, dance and the revel, an 
 eternal dance in the midst of the flames of hell. He 
 described this circle of the damned, whirled about for 
 millions of ages in a perpetual round of sufferings ever 
 renewed, to the sound of wailing, and sobbing, and 
 gnashing of teeth. In my life I had never heard anything 
 so agitating as this grotesque sermon, mingled with bursts 
 of maniac laughter, with imprecations, and prayers : — 
 the crowd breathed hard. 
 
 Then he contrasted, with this frightful description, a 
 picture of the blessedness of the elect ; but his expressions 
 were feeble and tame. He was not carried away, except 
 when he spoke of the necessity of self-mortification, and 
 of offering our sufferings to God. Then he gave the 
 history of his life with so majestic a simplicity, that one 
 might have fancied that one was hearing a page of 
 Scripture. He told how he had lost his fortune, Ms 
 children, his wife ; and, at the recital of each loss, he 
 
BFlITTANY 129 
 
 exclaimed, — " It is well, my God : blessed be Tby holy 
 name !" The women burst into tears. He added advice 
 and exhortations to repentance ; and finally, warming 
 more and more, he told how his losses had appeared to 
 him too little to expiate his sins. Jesus Christ had 
 appeared to him in a dream, and had said to him, " J6an, 
 give Me thy left hand — to Me, who gave My life for thy 
 salvation." — ■" Lord, it is Thine," he had answered. " And 
 I have fulfilled my promise," he cried, raising above his 
 head his left arm, which till now we had not noticed. 
 
 There was a stump, wrapped round with bloody rags. 
 A murmur of amazement and horror burst out all round. 
 
 " Who is afraid ? — who is afraid ?" rejoined the maniac, 
 whose vehemence seemed only to increase. " I have 
 restored to God that which He gave me. Woe be to you 
 if the deed done at the command of Christ has made your 
 hearts sick ! Behold ! behold ! It is Christ who has 
 willed it. See what I have done for the love of Christ." 
 
 And the miserable man tore off, in a frantic transport, 
 the bandages of his wound, and, shaking his bare stump 
 over the crowd, made the blood spurt in a half circle on 
 all their heads. 
 
 A long cry of horror rose ; part of the spectators fled 
 terrified ; some men threw themselves on the wall where 
 he stood, and bore him to a neighbouring cottage, almost 
 insensible. — Souvestre, pp. 2.5-28. 
 
 Yet this Breton peasant^-this outlandish mediaeval 
 being — with his stoical, unhoping apathy, his low 
 views of life and vivid thoughts of death ; with his 
 wild, dangerous faith, and dogged attachment to the 
 past; so lofty and awful, and narrow-minded, and 
 quaint, — is, after all, still a man ; the chances are, a 
 thoughtful, well-judging, honest man, without pretence 
 or sham, — understanding and trusting himself vrith 
 
 K 
 
130 BRITTANY 
 
 fairness ; a man for unromantic self-sacrifices. Home 
 and family feelings are as strong in Brittany as they 
 are in England. Not that he is the least romantic in 
 his domestic aifections ; home and family, however 
 indispensable, are simply what tame prose makes 
 them, scenes of work, trials of temper. Never does 
 the Breton cheat himself by gay illusions, not even 
 on his wedding-day. Though he is poetical then, 
 and sings, his poetry comes in, not to dwell on visions 
 of bliss, but on the troubles of the cottage nursery ; 
 to chant not an Epithalamium, but a Threnode. A 
 strange "Song of the Bride," is that which Mr. 
 Trollope has translated from Souvestre; and the 
 Bridegroom's is like it : — 
 
 In other days — ^in the days of my youth — how warm 
 a heart I had ! Adieu, my compamon!5, adieu for 
 ever ! 
 
 I had a heart so ardent ! Neither for gold, nor for 
 silver, would I have given my poor heart ! Adieu, my 
 companions, adieu for ever ! 
 
 Alas ! I have given it for nothing ! Alas ! I have 
 placed it where joys and pleasures are no more. Adieu, 
 my companions, adieu for ever ! 
 
 Pains and toil await me. Three cradles in the corner 
 of the fire ! A boy and a girl in each of them ! Adieu, 
 my companions, adieu for ever ! 
 
 Three others in the middle of the house ! Boys and 
 girls are there together ! Adieu, my companions, adieu 
 for ever ! 
 
 Go, maidens ! haste to fairs and to pardons ! but for 
 me I must do so no longer ! Adieu, my companions, 
 adieu for ever ! 
 
 For me, see you not, that I must remain here! 
 
BRITTANY 131 
 
 Henceforward I am but a servant, girls ; for I am married. 
 Adieu, my companions, adieu for ever ! 
 
 There is little gaiety, or gossip, or comfort in a 
 Breton cottage, but nothing could make up to its 
 tenant for the loss of its dull monotony. Just as it 
 is, it exactly suits him ; his surly affectionateness is 
 satisfied with its dingy walls and silent company. 
 We have drawn the wild side of his character; we 
 will now extract a story from Souvestre, which shows 
 him in his family — a curious picture of simplicity and 
 reserve, of feeling and composure. 
 
 The writer goes to explore a Breton farm, one of 
 the numberless little " homes " which parcel out the 
 country, and which, with their surrounding fields, he 
 out of view of the great thoroughfares, hidden by their 
 sheltering elms, or betrayed only by their thin column 
 of smote. 
 
 The home of Jean MaugueroUjlike all others in Brittany, 
 consisted exclusively of a ground-floor room. The floor 
 was of earth beaten hard, and the ceiling was formed of 
 hazel bushes, with their dry leaves still on them, made 
 into bundles, and supported on cross poles. On two sides 
 of the house were four " lits elos " (beds like berths on 
 shipboard), the woodwork blackened by time, and with 
 the monogram H surmounted by the cross — the usual 
 decoration of Christian altars — carved in open work on 
 their sUding panels. Below these beds were seen chests 
 of oak, with their delicate mouldings and slender shafts, 
 spoils, no doubt, of some neighbouring manor-house in 
 the bad days, and carried off from the bower of some lady 
 of the chateau to the peasant's cottage. A high-backed 
 arm chair, coarsely carved, was pushed into a comer of the 
 
132 BEITTANY 
 
 huge chimney; and on the table opposite the casement, 
 was the loaf of rye-bread wrapped up in a fringed napkin, 
 under a white wicker cover. ... As to the circumstances 
 of the inhabitants, the large dung-heap which I had 
 observed near the pond, and the sides of bacon hung over 
 the hearth, showed plainly that Maugueron might be 
 reckoned among the rich farmers of the country. 
 
 Just at this moment he appeared. He was a man of 
 about five and thirty, stern and plain, but stoutly built. 
 While he was talking with my friend, his wife was putting 
 out milk, butter, and brown bread. She asked us to sit 
 down, which we did, while Mauguerou lit his pipe at the 
 fire. 
 
 As I took up the boxwood spoon which had been set 
 for me, I noticed that it was less rude in its make than 
 the others, and that the name " Etienne " was carved 
 along the handle, between two vine-leaves, rather grace- 
 fully cut. 
 
 " Who is called Etienne in this house?" I asked. The 
 farmer's wife blushed, but answered without hesitation, 
 " It is a young man who is now a soldier." 
 
 "Don't you expect him soon?" asked my friend. 
 
 " He wrote that he should be here for August." 
 
 " That will be two good arms more to help you." 
 
 " And a good heart," said the woman, almost to herself. 
 
 The husband, enveloped in his cloud of smoke, listened 
 unmoved. 
 
 " Who is this Etienne ? " I said to my friend, in 
 French. 
 
 " He is Yvonne's lover," said he, pointing to the 
 woman. 
 
 " And is he coming to stay here i" 
 
 " Yes, in a few days." 
 
 " And is her husband satisfied ?" 
 
 " Her husband knows all." 
 
 I stared. 
 
 "What sort of man is he, then?" I asked. 
 
BEITTANY 133 
 
 " He is a worthy man, who has confidence, and with 
 good reason ; Etienne has been tried, he has nothing to 
 fear from him." 
 
 Etienne and Yvonne had known each other, and 
 been in love with each other from children. In course 
 of time, Etienne became farm -servant to Yvonne's 
 father ; and the two lovers plighted their troth, and 
 made up their minds that they were to be man and 
 wife. But Yvonne's father had been ill for a long 
 time ; the farm had been neglected, and had got out 
 of order. Things became worse and worse ; the 
 bailiffs began to threaten. Etienne was a mere boy, 
 and knew nothing of farming; he could not help. 
 At this pinch, Mauguerou, another of the farm- 
 servants, who had hitherto been in the background, 
 came forward and took the command. Under his 
 management things improved, and at length righted. 
 Before dawn, and after nightfall, he was at work. 
 His cheek sank, and his hair turned, his back became 
 bowed, his limbs stiffened ; still he toiled on, silently 
 and unostentatiously, with stem calmness, and the 
 family was saved. 
 
 But Yvonne's father was dying. He called his children 
 about his bed, and there, with the prayers for the dying 
 already sounding in his ears, and with the funeral tapers 
 already lighted at his bed's head as at the head of a coffin, 
 he spoke those sacred and solemn words, which the 
 departing utter when their soul is in view of heaven. He 
 bade Yvonne come near, and laying his icy hand on her 
 brow, he reminded her that she was now the mother of 
 her young brothers and sisters. Then calling Mauguerou 
 
134 BEITTANY 
 
 to her side—" Here is the man. who has raised our house," 
 he said to her, " and has saved you from -vvandering ahout 
 the roads with the beggar's wallet on your shoulder. You 
 want him, Yvonne, for a stay to these children ; he must 
 he your husband and master." 
 
 He saw that the young girl shuddered. 
 
 " I know," he added, " that thy heart is elsewhere j 
 but he whom thou lovest cannot carry on the farm. 
 Submit to what God wills ; Christians receive baptism to 
 suffer ; thy duty is better than thy joy. 
 
 "And you, Mauguerou, be gentle to your wife, and 
 allow her to weep sometimes." 
 
 Mauguerou, in silence, laid his hand on his heart, and 
 bowed himself. 
 
 "It is well," said the dying man. "Now, Yvonne, 
 will you do what I have asked of you ? Will you be this 
 man's wife after I am dead?" 
 
 The young girl did not answer ; she had fallen on 
 her knees by the bed, sobbing, and in agony she cried, 
 "My father, my father !" But her tears prevented her 
 from saying more, and she shrank instinctively from the 
 promise. 
 
 " Promise to obey your father, who is dying," said a 
 voice behind her, full of lofty despair. Yvonne turned 
 round ; her eyes met Etienne's ; it was a farewell to happi- 
 ness for both. Yvonne gave the promise, and her father 
 died. 
 
 A month afterwards she had married Mauguerou. The 
 day after the marriage, Etienne, who had been away for 
 a week, came into the farm house. He went up to 
 Mauguerou, who was sitting by the fire, took off his hat, 
 and said, vri.th a faint voice, 
 
 " Master, I am going away : yesterday I became the 
 king's soldier." 
 
 Mauguerou looked at him with surprise. 
 
 "Why are you leaving us !" he asked. 
 
 " My heart is sick ; I must go elsewhere." 
 
BRITTANY 135 
 
 " You could have found a cure here among ua." 
 
 The young man shook his head, without answering. 
 
 "Listen to me, Etienne," said Mauguerou, with sim- 
 plicity ; " remain here ; everybody wishes you well ; 
 you have your stool by the flre and your porringer in the 
 dish-rack ; your going will make a void among us." 
 
 "It is better so, master — let me go. There are bad 
 spirits round me in this house. I wiU come back when 
 I have forgotten what is gone, when — when you have 
 children." 1 
 
 Mauguerou made a sign of distressed consent ; Etienne 
 twisted his hat for a moment in embarrassment, and there 
 was a pause. 
 
 " Good-bye, Mauguerou," he said, at last, with a 
 choked voice. 
 
 The peasant seized his hand with both his own, and 
 pressed it for some minutes without saying anything ; 
 then he caUed out — 
 
 " Yvonne, Etienne is going ; come and speak to him !" 
 And he left the house. 
 
 After a long and bitter farewell, the two lovers 
 separated, and Etienne joined his regiment. — Souvestre, 
 pp. 442-450. 
 
 Jean Mauguerou is a true Breton peasant ; a re- 
 served, silent, not unobservant, not unintelligent man ; 
 though " progress " has no charms for him : if you 
 are a stranger and an Englishman — a Saxon — he will 
 bear you no particular love, but he will probably treat 
 you with a kind of just courtesy, and be a man of his 
 
 ^ " L'adultk-e est extrSment rare ehez les paysans de la basse 
 Bretagne ; le titre de mfere est une sauvegarde pour une femme, 
 et floigne d'eUe toute idee de seduction. C'est avant le mariago 
 seulement, que les lois de la' cliastet4 sent viol&s." — Souvester, 
 p. 449. 
 
136 BRITTANY 
 
 word ; his curiosity, or his local interest, may even 
 make him talkative, and, if you can make out his 
 French, he may startle you with some naive disclosure 
 of Chouan feeling, or popular superstition. Nor does 
 he want for shrewdness, though he lives so much out 
 of the world ; in some districts especially, for every 
 parish almost has its own character, he is a match for 
 most opponents. The people of EoscoiT, the green- 
 grocers of the province, who travel riding and singing 
 in their light carts almost to the gates of Paris, are 
 dangerous traders : a purchaser must take care how 
 he deals with them. Souvestre describes almost feel- 
 ingly their skill in handling a customer ; their bully- 
 ing, or their caressing, according to circumstances; 
 " how, if he finds you firm, he will call you son cher 
 pauvre ChrMien, and lavish on you the most endearing 
 expressions of the Breton vocabulary, till he has 
 insinuated his merchandise into your basket, and 
 concluded his bargain, before you have offered a 
 price." But this is an exception ; the grand resource 
 of the Breton in making a bargain is resolute ignor- 
 ance of any language but his own. 
 
 The natural enemies of the Breton farmers are the 
 cunning, subtile, Norman horse-dealers, who have long 
 " worked " the province to great advantage. The Bretons 
 know this, and are in a state of perpetual distrust of the 
 horse-dealers, which increases their natural taciturnity. 
 They often sham drunkenness, to make the horse-dealers 
 think that it wiU be easy to surprise them ; but generally, 
 they entrench themselves in an apparent stupidity, of 
 which nothing can express the grotesque truth. On that 
 
BEITTANY 137 
 
 day not a single peasant knows French. ; and the inexperi- 
 enced purchaser lets fall expressions which guide the seller 
 in his bargaining : but the older dealers are up to the 
 farce, and retort by affecting an entire ignorance of the 
 Celtic language. Then it is a scene worth looking at, this 
 struggle between Breton and Norman trickery ; the 
 peasant, listening immovably, with a stupid attention, to 
 the horse-dealer's remarks, who, with an air of indiffer- 
 ence, looks at the horse as if he cared not a straw about 
 it, remarks fifty faults, loud enough for the seller to hear, 
 and ends by proposing half the real value, — the result of 
 this "fourberie lahorieuse" naturally being that, if the 
 bargainers are equally matched, the fair price is hit upon. 
 — Souvestre, p. 395. 
 
 But bargain-making of any -kind is not the line of 
 the Breton ; his defensive position shows that he is 
 not at home in it. He adheres to the old notion of 
 riches; he makes money, if he can, but by close 
 parsimony, not by speculation; he hoards, but does 
 not invest. The mere process of buying and selling 
 has no attractions for him ; his enjoyments are of a 
 different kind. The nation is still too poetical for the 
 joys of business. 
 
 As in many other things, so in this, Brittany is 
 a specimen of the old world : it is still in its poetical 
 phase; it has scarcely yet reached to prose; all is 
 rhythm, all is traditional, everything is chanted or 
 sung. "When the cholera was in the province," 
 says Souvestre, "it was in vain that the prdfet and 
 the doctors sent forth proclamations, directions, warn- 
 ings ; no peasant would look at them, for they were 
 mere official prose. The only way was to make a 
 
138 BKITTANY 
 
 chanson swr le choUra, and set it to a national air ; and 
 then the beggars were soon chanting in all parts of 
 the country, ' what Christians were to do to escape 
 the cholera.' " Poetry is there in its earliest state, 
 before it has become a literature, or a luxury, or the 
 voice of individual feeling or genius; the natural, 
 free, careless outpouring of feeling in rude and warm- 
 hearted masses. Poetry is with them not an inspira- 
 tion, but a habit of mind, a sense or faculty ; a natural 
 part of a character impressible and thoughtful, intent 
 on few objects, and those absorbiag ones. Without 
 any great events, or great names, their poetry floats 
 and circulates from village to village, from generation 
 to generation, homely, and real, and touching; per- 
 petually oozing out, fresh and exuberant, from the 
 undistinguished crowd — hymns, and ballads, and 
 elegies, and Theocritean idyls, and love laments, 
 and satires, and tragedies ; quaint combinations, in 
 every conceivable degree, of clumsiness and delicacy, 
 the genuine work of the people; of village tailors 
 and schoolmasters, strolling beggars and young 
 seminarists. The individual author may put his 
 name, but it is forgotten; his work is known only 
 by its subject; it is passed from mouth to mouth, 
 altered and interpolated at will, to make it a more 
 perfect expression of the feeling which it embodies. 
 After a time it may be printed ; but its home is in 
 the voices and memories of the peasants. The blind 
 beggar goes from pwrdon to pardon, like the old 
 p'a\f/(i)Sos, and stands by the church reciting his poem 
 
BRITTANY 139 
 
 on the birth of Jesus Christ, which it takes him a 
 whole day to get through. And as it is hving poetry, 
 it has its music, and is sung; and poems and airs 
 alike are endless. 
 
 The character of these " songs of the people " — 
 the genuine expression of feelings, which elsewhere 
 the sympathy of art prides itself on copying — is well 
 given in the following, the " famous complaint of the 
 labourer." Even diluted through French prose into 
 English, it calls up some notion of what the original 
 must be, when it is heard in its own rude force, and 
 monotonous rhythm, in the smoky cottages, or on 
 the half-cultivated " landes " of Brittany. 
 
 THE -COMPLAINI OF THE LABOUEEE 
 
 My daughter, wlien the silver ring is put on thy finger, 
 beware who gives it thee : 
 
 My daughter, when thou makest room for two in thy 
 cottage-bed, see that thou hast a soft pillow. 
 
 My daughter, when thou choosest a husband, take not 
 a soldier, for Ms life is the king's : take not a sailor, for 
 his life is the sea's ; but, before all, take not a labourer, 
 for his life belongs to toil and misfortune. 
 
 Th'e labourer rises before the little birds are awake 
 in the, woods, and he toils until evening. He fights with 
 the earth without peace or respite, till his limbs are 
 stiff, and he leaves drops of sweat on every blade of grass. 
 
 Bain or snow, hail or sunshine, the little birds are 
 happy, for the good God gives a leaf to each of them for 
 shelter; but the labourer, he has no hiding-place: his 
 bare head is his roof-tree ; his flesh is his home. 
 
 Every year he must pay his rent to the landlord ; and 
 if he is behind, the master sends his bailiff. Bent ! — 
 the labourer shows his fields parched up, and his mangers 
 
140 BRITTANY 
 
 empty. Rent ! Eent ! — the labourer shows his children's 
 coffins at the door, covered with the white cloth. Eent ! 
 Eent ! Eent ! — the labourer bows his head, and they 
 lead him to prison. 
 
 Very miserable, too, is it to be the labourer's wife : all 
 night long the children cry, and she rocks them ; all day, 
 at her husband's side, she is turning the ground : she 
 has no time to comfort herself — no time to pray, to 
 soothe her heart. Her body is like the wheel of the 
 parish mill ; ever must it be going, to grind for her little 
 ones. 
 
 And when her sons are grown great, and their arms 
 are grown strong to relieve their parents, then the king 
 says to the labourer and his wife : " You are old, and 
 too weak to train up your children ; see how strong they 
 are, I will take them from you for my war." 
 
 And the labourer and his wife begin afresh to sweat 
 and to suffer, for they are once more alone. The labourer 
 and his wife are like the swallows which build their nest 
 under the windows in the town ; every day they are swept 
 away, every day they must begin again. 
 
 O labourers ! ye lead a sore life in the world. Ye 
 are poor, and ye make others rich ; despised, and ye 
 pay honour ; persecuted, and ye submit yourselves ; ye 
 are cold, and ye are hungry. O labourers ! ye endure 
 much in this life ; labourers, ye are blessed. 
 
 God hath said, that the great gates of His Paradise 
 shall be open for those who have wept upon earth. When 
 ye shall come to heaven, the saints will know you for 
 their brethren by your wounds. 
 
 The saints will say : " Brothers, it is not good to live ; 
 brothers, life is sorrowful, and it is a happy thing to be 
 dead ;" and they will receive you into glory, and into 
 joy. — Souvestre, p. 450. 
 
 But the Paris newspaper is on its way, and doubt- 
 less this natural poetry is gradually failing, hemmed 
 
BRITTAJSY 14] 
 
 in by French prose. The marriage negotiations, 
 which used to be a trial of extempore poetical talent 
 between the young lady's friends and the village 
 tailor who was the mediator, are now generally 
 carried on in set couplets, — even the hazvalan, the 
 humpbacked, squinting tailor, with his one stocking 
 white and the other blue, is become a formula. And 
 other things in time will follow him. But they are 
 not gone yet. The story, and song, and tragedy are 
 still the great delight of the Breton peasantry, which 
 they enjoy with the utmost gravity and seriousness, 
 as they enjoy their not less solemn dances, or wrest- 
 ling matches, and, at fitting times, the pleasure of 
 getting drunk. 
 
 Nothing brings out the mingled clumsiness and 
 feeling of the Breton character, its originality of idea 
 and want of resources, so much as their tragedies. 
 The Breton tragedy is a remarkable thing in its way ; 
 a serious anid important affair, both in the eyes of 
 actors and spectators, by no means to be confounded 
 with what, at first sight, it most resembles, the 
 trumpery of an English fair, or the exhibition of 
 strolling players ; nay, not even with the refined and 
 magnificent opera. There is a rude, quaint dignity 
 and self-respect about it : it is not a money-making 
 show, presented by paid and professional actors, but 
 an entertainment given to equals by their equals, who 
 find an ample recompense in the pleasure of their 
 own acting and the attention of their audience. The 
 tragedy itself has lofty pretensions, and professes a 
 
142 BRITTANY 
 
 higher mission than merely to amuse. Supremely 
 despising all effect, all artiiicial arrangement, or 
 strokes of passion, it marshals, with solemn, clumsy 
 exactness, the instructive moralities of some notable 
 life before the audience, "in chapters, rather than 
 scenes." It begins with unaffected gravity, in the 
 most Holy Name ; then comes the Prologue, giving 
 good advice, and the key of the drama, to the 
 " Christian and honourable " assembly which has 
 collected to hear it, while at every four verses the 
 actor who is reciting makes the circuit of the theatre, 
 followed by all the company, during which "march," 
 say the stage directions, " the rebecks and bagpipes 
 must sound :" and then, in perfect keeping with 
 this grotesque beginning, follows the interminable 
 length of the play itself, divided into a number of 
 "jownAes,'' and often actually extending over more 
 than one day. But however long it may be, it never 
 tires out the grave patience of a Breton audience. 
 
 The external appliances and machinery of the 
 theatre show the same high-minded contempt for 
 scenic illusion. Tragedy in Brittany still preserves, 
 in its theatre, its antique simplicity. While it has 
 elsewhere retired under cover, strutting by gaslight 
 before the rich in a gorgeous playhouse, or ranting 
 in a barn before the poor by dim rush-light iUuminar 
 tion, it here comes forward vmder the open sky, and 
 its stage is still mounted upon waggons. Mr. TroUope 
 thus describes what he saw of the tragedy of St 
 Helena. 
 
BEITTANT 143 
 
 The ground, though all covered with turf, was consider- 
 ably broken and uneven, so as to afford peculiar facilities 
 to a laige concourse of people, all anxious to have a perfect 
 view of the same object. On the highest point of the 
 ground, with its back against the gable end of a house 
 adjoining the common, was the stage. Nine large carts 
 had been arranged in close order, in three rows of three 
 each, and on these a rude scaffolding of planks was 
 supported. At the back of this were hung, on a rope 
 sustained by poles on either side, several sheets, so as to 
 partition off a portion at the back of the stage, to serve as 
 a green-room for the performers to retire to. This white 
 background was ornamented with a few boughs of laurel 
 and bunches of wild flowers, and somewhat less appropri- 
 ately, perhaps, with two or three coloured prints, from 
 the cottages of the neighbours, of Bonaparte and the 
 Virgin. 
 
 Of the performers — though it was now past two o'clock, 
 despite the promised punctuality of our friend the tailor 
 — there was yet no appearance. The crowd, however, 
 seemed to be waiting with great patience, and everybody 
 appeared to be in high good-humour. All were busily 
 engaged in securing the most advantageous places. One 
 long row, chiefly composed of women, occupied the top 
 of the churchyard wall — a most desirable position, inas- 
 much as, though seated at their ease, they were sufficiently 
 raised to see over the heads of those who stood at the 
 bottom of the wall. Some preferred seats on a bank 
 which commanded a perfect view of the stage, but which 
 must have been rather too far to hear well, to a nearer 
 place, where it would have been necessary to stand. The 
 greater part of the men stood in the immediate front of 
 the scaffolding, gazing on the unoccupied stage, and wait- 
 ing with imperturbable patience the appearance of the 
 performers. 
 
 At length, the shrill tones of the national instrument — 
 the bagpipe — were heard approaching from a lane, which 
 
144 BRITTANY 
 
 opened upon the common, and all eyes were immediately 
 turned in that direction. We were, prohably, the only 
 persons on the ground who were not aware that this 
 betokened the arrival of the players. But we were not 
 long left in our ignorance. For presently the bagpiper 
 himself, followed by men bearing the banners belonging 
 to the church, made their appearance upon the common. 
 Behind these, in grave and solemn procession, and full 
 theatrical costume, came the tragedians. The crowd 
 immediately formed a lane for them to pass, and thus, 
 with great dignity and decorum, they reached the scaffold- 
 ing, and, one after another, mounted by a ladder to the 
 stage. When they were all up, they marched thrice 
 round the boards in the same order as before, with the 
 bagpipe still playing at their head ; then gravely bowed 
 to the audience, who lifted their hats in return, and 
 retired behind the sheets to their green-room. 
 
 The appearance of the corps dramatique was more pre- 
 posterously absurd and strange than can well be conceived 
 by those who have not seen them with the accompanying 
 circumstances of air, manner, and expression, and all the 
 surrounding objects, which gave such novelty and striking 
 character to the scene. 
 
 There was the pope with his triple crown, very ingeni- 
 ously constructed of coloured paper, a black petticoat for 
 a cassock, a shirt for a surplice, and a splendid cope, made 
 of paper-hangings, and with the twofold cross in his hand. 
 There were two kings with paper crowns, adorned with 
 little waxen figures of saints, and arrayed in printed cotton 
 robes, carrying in one hand a sword and in the other a 
 cross. Three or four wore the uniform of the national 
 guard, and the remainder made any additions they could 
 to their usual costume which they thought would most 
 contribute to the general effect. The female characters 
 were all sustained by men, dressed as much like the usual 
 costume of ladies as their knowledge and resources would 
 permit. A very fine young man, six feet high by two 
 
BEITTANY 145 
 
 and a lialf at least broad, was selected to personate St. 
 Helen, who was dressed entirely in white, with a large 
 tablecloth for a veU. 
 
 There was one exception only to the general air of 
 deep gravity and perfect seriousness which prevailed 
 throughout. This was a buffoon, who was dressed in 
 shreds, with a cap and bells, and a long pig-tail, with a 
 huge horn in his hand, which he blew from time to time. 
 His part was to fill up the time between the acts with 
 buffoonery and jests. He was regarded by the crowd as 
 he walked in the procession, making faces and affecting to 
 ridicule the tragedians, with a passing smUe ; but, for the 
 most part, they were as grave as the performers. 
 
 The performance commenced by a single actor coming 
 from behind the curtain of sheets, and making a very 
 long speech. It was in rhyme, and was delivered in a 
 very distinct manner, with much, but very unvaried 
 action, and an extremely loud voice, that strongly marked 
 the rhythm and cadences of the verse. • He began at one 
 corner of the front of the stage, and spoke a certain 
 number of lines, then moved to the middle and repeated 
 a similar quantity, did the same at the other comer, and 
 then returned to his original position, and so on. In this 
 manner he must have delivered, I should think, nearly 
 two hundred verses. 
 
 He then retired, and out came the buffoon. His fun 
 consisted, of course, chiefly in absurd attitudes ; in blowing 
 his horn, in ribaldry, and sundry standing jests, which 
 succeeded in producing shouts of laughter. The most 
 successful joke of aU, which was repeated every time he 
 came upon the stage, consisted in his assuming an air of 
 the greatest terror, and effecting his escape in the most 
 precipitate maimer, when the graver actors returned upon 
 the scene. 
 
 The same remarks will apply to the delivery of all 
 the other actors as to that of the first. They generally 
 continued walking up and down the stage while speaking, 
 
 li 
 
146 BRITTANY 
 
 and marched round it in procession at the conclusion of 
 every scene. 
 
 And yet this scene, with all its ineffable grotesque- 
 ness, — spiritless, childish, wearisome, — of all coarse 
 and helpless attempts after the sublime, the most 
 ludicrous, — is not vulgar; you cannot despise it, 
 while you laugh at it. In spite of the matchless 
 clumsiness of the whole proceeding, there is a serious- 
 ness about it, a composure, a genuine appreciation of 
 the high and great ; and its glaring freedom from all 
 efforts after effect, the simple, undisguised monotony 
 of the whole scene, raises it out of the class of ordinary 
 stage shows. It aims in earnest at reviving the past, 
 • — the heroic, or the saintly, the strange changes of 
 character, the visible providences, that were then. 
 The popular interest is still set high, and that, of its 
 own accord ; for these tragedies come from the people, 
 — their authors are scarcely known. The exhibition 
 is not that of a low-minded or low-bred people ; even 
 about the manner of giving it there is a dignity and 
 mutual self-respect, an iXevOepioTrj^, a sort of gentle- 
 manliness ; actors and spectators meet as equals ; the 
 spectators come, not to pay hirelings to amuse them, 
 but to assist at an entertainment given by their 
 fellows and friends. All goes on as between equals, 
 — equals of high Iweeding, — with solemn etiquette, 
 and all the ceremoniousness of old-fashioned aristo- 
 cratic courtesy. 
 
 Indeed this self-respect is one of the most striking 
 characteristics of the Breton peasant. The eldest 
 
BEITTANY 147 
 
 born of tlie races of France, he has a strong feeling 
 of the honours of years and ancient blood : he is the 
 old noblesse among the French peasantry. There was 
 no prouder noble in the French peerage than the 
 Breton Eohan — "Boije ne suis, prince nedmgne, Rohan 
 je suis," — but before the proudest of the Eohans""his 
 own tenants would have drawn themselves up, and 
 said in their solemn manner, " Me zo deuza/r Armoriq 
 — I too am a Breton."^ Yet with them the pride of 
 the Celt is deeply hidden ; it does not show itself in 
 any thing petty, — in any small peevishness, or uneasy 
 watchfulness after small slights. It is dignified, 
 almost unconscious, — it pervades the man ; and, when 
 it appears, it explodes. Their blood is as good as 
 the gentleman's, and so is their faith ; and while the 
 gentleman is just, the peasant is content with his 
 lower place in the world : but the gentleman must 
 not interfere with what God has appointed, or with 
 what the peasant thinks his due. No one can, on 
 occasion, hate the gentleman with deeper, bloodier 
 hatred, than the old-fashioned royalist peasant. He 
 is at once aristocratic and republican ; too proud not 
 to recognise gentle blood and superiority in others ; 
 too proud, also, to do so slavishly. He will not 
 refuse to work for the messieurs, but it is a traditional 
 point of honour with him that the "labour of the 
 gentleman" should not display an excess of zeal.^ 
 Nor will he defile himself with the low toil and base 
 gains of the artisan. His thoughts and his works 
 ' Michelet. " Souvestre, p. 459. 
 
148 BKITTANT 
 
 are about that where man's art stops short, and the 
 mysterious unseen Hand only works, without labour 
 or stint ; with the old, sacred, benignant earth, which 
 rewards but does not traffic ; with his own peculiar 
 plot of ground, and the masterless sea ; the pasture 
 and the cornfield, and the seaweed on the beach. 
 Careless about the works of his own hands, and 
 rugged in his skill, he rejoices in the gifts which 
 come perfect and immediate from God, and by which 
 his life is nourished. He ploughs, he reaps, he 
 threshes the grain, in the spirit and gladness of 
 patriarchal faith ; as it is his labour, so is it his 
 chief joy in life. 
 
 The Breton threshing-floor is well described by 
 Souvestre. The sound of the flail is one of the most 
 familiar summer sounds in Brittany. Every one who 
 has travelled there will remember it — borne from a 
 distance on the wind, as his road passed the opening 
 of some valley — and the lines of dancing, bounding 
 figures among the corn. 
 
 When the sheaves were carefully spread out on the 
 floor, the old peasant who had led the reapers, took his 
 place, and made the sign of the cross, by striking with 
 his flail several times ; this was, as it were, the taking 
 possession of the floor. The other labourers then ranged 
 themselves in a circle. The flails flrst rose slowly, and 
 without order, whirling round, and poising themselves 
 like waltzers ready to start and getting into the step,— 
 then, on a sudden, at a shout of the leader, they fell all 
 together, and rose again and descended in cadence. The 
 stroke, at first light and moderate, soon took a more lively 
 movement : it fell heavier, it grew animated, then hurried 
 
BRITTANY 149 
 
 and furious. The reapers, carried away by a sort of 
 nervous intoxication, danced up and down among the 
 resounding sheaves, on which their blows fell fast and 
 thick as a summer hail-storm. The dust of the chafl 
 raised by the flail rose round them in light eddying 
 clouds, and a line of sweat marked each muscle beneath 
 their tight-fitting dress. At intervals they seemed to 
 yield to this toil, and the regular beat became weaker 
 by degrees, as if it was lost in the distance ; but then, 
 the leader gave a peculiar cry, a mixture of encourage- 
 ment, rebuke, and command, and in a moment thirty 
 shouts responded and the soimd of the threshing became 
 louder and louder, like an approaching peal of thunder, — 
 it rallied, it spread, more rapid, more wUd, more furious. 
 — iSouvestre, p. 463. 
 
 Out of this wild country, and its stem, poetical- 
 minded people, French enterprise is trying to make 
 something more adapted to the standard of Paris and 
 NapoUonesque ideas. French enterprise is not the 
 most promising engine to produce great changes in 
 commerce and industry. It talks very cleverly^ but 
 it talks too much ; it wants the spirit of plodding, 
 it wants capital. But it is at work. A manufactory 
 of steam engines was set up at Landerneau,^ great 
 trouble was taken, great patience shown by the 
 engineer; the Breton peasants were drilled out of 
 their clumsiness and poetry, and learnt to believe 
 that the steam-engine was a machine, and that they 
 could make one. But capital failed. We have before 
 alluded to the attempts to introduce a more modern 
 style of farming, — an uphill work, in which the 
 
 ' Souvestre, p. 485. 
 
150 BRITTANY 
 
 disinterestedness of the improvers is suspected, and 
 every failure is looked upon by the peasantry as a 
 judgment against them. Interference with the earth, 
 their ancient ally and friend, is peculiarly repugnant 
 to Breton feeling, and deemed almost profane. 
 
 The following passage will show in what spirit 
 the improvements of the French farmer are met. It 
 is a dialogue between an old Breton peasant, the 
 patriarch of the neighbourhood, and an "improving" 
 French gentleman-farmer, who had reclaimed a large 
 tract from the sea by shutting it out with a dyke. 
 The dyke did not please his old-fashioned neighbour. 
 A report got about of a compact with evil spirits, 
 and it was called le Mole du Liable. The farmer, for 
 his own protection, and to prevent its being injured by 
 them, had all the new works " baptized " by the parish 
 priest — the dyke, and the drained land, and his own 
 new house. To the surprise of the peasants, the 
 improvements stood the holy water without moving ; 
 but the people were not a bit the more reconciled 
 to them. 
 
 " You were one of those " (he says to the old peasant) 
 " who maintained that I should never succeed in enclosing 
 the bay." 
 
 " It is true, sir." 
 
 " Eh bien, pire, you see that you are out. The sea 
 herself has furnished me with rocks and sand to wage 
 war with her ; and she has produced a child stronger 
 than herself ; and now the dyke laughs at her." 
 
 " Men say that it is a sin for children to make a mock 
 at their parents," answered Carfor. 
 
BRITTANY 151 
 
 " However, you see I have done what I said." 
 
 The old man shrugged his shoulders, as if to express 
 his doubts ; he was silent for a moment ; then stretching 
 out his hand to the shoulder of the farmer, with a gesture 
 at once respectful and familiar, 
 
 " You are strong, sir," he said ; " but le bon Dim is 
 stronger than you ; le bon Dim had said to the sea to go 
 as far as there ;" and he pointed to the hillocks. " Some 
 day He will find out that the sea is no longer obeying 
 Him, and then your dyke will have to give way to the 
 wiU of God." 
 
 " And how do you know, father, whether le bon Dieu 
 has not Himself given me this bay ? " 
 
 The peasant shook his head. 
 
 " Monsieur, le bon Dieu ne vend pas son bien," said he 
 gravely ; " this is land stolen from the sea, and stolen 
 goods bring no luck." 
 
 The farmer is a little nettled; and talks of the 
 money he has put into circulation, and the various 
 benefits to the neighbourhood which would result 
 from his improvements; "mats ces homines ne com- 
 prennent rien." 
 
 " We understand," answered Carfor, " that when the 
 rocks begin to move, the grains of sand are crushed. 
 Eich men like you are always awkward neighbours for 
 the small folk. The country was made for the country- 
 folk, and towns for the gentlefolk ; and if these come 
 into the country, there wiU soon be no place for us. 
 Before, when this bay belonged to the sea, the sea lent 
 it to us for eight hours in the day ; we could bring our 
 carts over it, to go to the beach to pile up our seaweed. 
 Down in the comer there, was some coarse grass, on 
 which our sheep browsed ; now you have made a ditch 
 all round it, and said to the sea, and to us, who were 
 its kinsmen and friends. You shall not come here any 
 
152 BRITTANY 
 
 more ; tMs belongs to me. And you wonder that we are 
 not satisfied. "We poor people do not like ttese changes, 
 because there is never a change without taking from us 
 a bit of our little place under the sun. If we used to 
 Uke better to see the water there than the corn, it is 
 because the sea was always a better neighbour than the 
 hourgeois." — Souvestre, p. 435. 
 
 The old quarrel, so hard to adjust, but so certain 
 in its issue, between the improver and the poor man 
 of his day : to whom it is small comfort to be told, 
 what is perfectly true, that returns will come to 
 some one, and to him, */ he can but wait. The story 
 goes on to relate that the sea did prove stronger than 
 Monsieur, and in the course of an equinoctial night 
 washed away his dyke, and destroyed everything. 
 When he comes down to view his losses, there is the 
 old Breton standing on the ruined dyke, looking out 
 on the sea, " comme pour la compUmenter de sa vidoire." 
 The cause of improvement had not much to hope for 
 in the neighbourhood after this. 
 
 But this might happen anywhere ; habit, and 
 - distrust of improvements, and suspicion of the disin- 
 terestedness of improvers, are not confined to Brittany. 
 There is something deeper at work beneath. Brittany 
 is really not France, any more than the outlandish 
 names on its map, its Plouha, and Poullaouen, and 
 Locmariaker, and G-uipava, and Lannilis, are French. 
 It is little more to France than a nursery for some 
 thousands of good soldiers and sailors, and a cause- 
 way for the road to Brest. Opposite in character to 
 the people, and uncongenial in feeling, the Frenchman 
 
BKITTANY 153 
 
 is not at home in Brittany ; he feels as a stranger, 
 and is felt as such. They hate England there, it is 
 true. Englishmen, besides being strangers and 
 enemies, are Saxon heretics; Souvestre talks of the 
 little village girls dancing with triumphant glee over 
 the unconsecrated graves of a shipwrecked " Saxon " 
 crew : but they have not forgotten that they once 
 had wars with France. When the Due de Nemours 
 visited them, two years ago, the names of Breton 
 victories over the French were not forgotten on the 
 triumphal arches under which he passed. Brittany 
 hangs on to France, because it cannot well do other- 
 wise ; but like a mass of extraneous matter, which 
 wiU not assimilate, dead and heavy and unsympathis- 
 ing. As a part of France, she is not doing her work. 
 A national character that ought to tell on the whole 
 country, resolute, steady, serious, and though slow, 
 apprehensive, — full of quiet, deep fortitude, — seems 
 thrown away. The field of European civilisation is 
 not, of course, the only or the highest field for these 
 qualities ; but if the advance of human society is to 
 be considered as a providential dispensation, it is one 
 field ; and they are missed, they have not found their 
 place, when they are not there. Brittany is like a 
 nation which has failed in its object, and been beaten. 
 While her neighbours are in the heyday of success, 
 hopeful and busy, she keeps apart, contented with her 
 own isolation, stagnant, almost in decay ; and looks on 
 with melancholy Hstlessness amid the stirring of the 
 world. Her time may be yet to come. But now. 
 
154 BEITTANY 
 
 with SO much that is striking in individual character, 
 amid genuine and deeply-felt influences of the Churchj 
 she languishes as a country, aimless, without any 
 part to play; a study for the summer tourist, — a 
 curious contrast to that he has left behind. Yet she 
 may remind him also, if he be wise, of times when 
 the present, if it had as much of man's heart, had 
 less of his feelings and his reason ; a witness, like 
 those times, of that perplexing truth, the seeming 
 vanity to each individual man of the wonderful and 
 magnificent order of things in which he lives — of the 
 very short and passing interest he appears to have 
 personally, in that which, for society, and as a system, 
 has such high-wrought perfection and value. 
 
CASSIODORUS^ 
 
 [July 1880] 
 
 The great revolutions of the fifth and sixth centuries 
 which broke up the Roman Empire were very various 
 in their violence and forms of change. Our know- 
 ledge of the Northern races or nations who conquered 
 and settled, and who to the Roman world were all 
 alike barbarians, is at best imperfect and vague ; but 
 we know enough to perceive that the differences 
 between them were as great then as those which 
 mark the several nations which now occupy their old 
 seats in the north of Europe. The German Franks, 
 who broke into Gaul, or the German Vandals, who 
 conquered Africa, were fiercer, coarser, more uncom- 
 promising races than the Goths, who won for a 
 moment the great prize of Italy itself, and seemed 
 likely at one time to make of it a new and great 
 
 ' 1. Patrologia Zatina. Edente Migne, torn. LXIX. — LXX. 
 Cassiodori Opera. (Paris : 1865.) 
 
 2. Dictionary of Greek and, Roman Biography and Mytho- 
 
 logy. Art. Oasdodorus. By Professor Kamsat. 
 (London: 1865.) 
 
 3. Dictionary of Christian Biography. Art. Cassiodorus. 
 
 By Rot. E. M. Youns. (London : 1877.) 
 
156 CASSIODOEUS 
 
 kingdom. In the neighbourhood of Byzantium, the 
 new Eome, in frequent intercourse with it, and often 
 in its service, the Goths had come to know something 
 of its strength and weakness, and had learned some- 
 thing of its statecraft and its religion. Theodoric's 
 conquest of Italy was something very different from 
 the contemporaneous Frank conquest of Gaul. Olovis 
 and his North Germans, after they had spoiled and . 
 ruined, only thought of living as they had been 
 accustomed to live, but in greater and freer abundance 
 of all that makes barbarian enjoyment ; and after they 
 had conquered and partitioned the Catholic Provincials, 
 they were only too glad to find in the propagation 
 of the Catholic faith a pretext for indulging their 
 insatiate love of fighting at the expense of the Arian 
 Goths of Southern Gaul. But Theodoric aimed at 
 founding a state, in which all that the great Romans 
 had invented and used to strengthen and order it 
 should be preserved and made available for the 
 benefit and the improvement of the new masters of 
 Italy. It was necessarily a military state, which 
 means under all disguises a ruling and a subject 
 population ; but it was his definite purpose and object 
 that the signs of this should be visible as little as 
 possible on the surface of things, and should in the 
 course of time actually disappear in the gradual fusion 
 and union of the two races, Gothic and Italian ; and 
 this purpose might perhaps, if he had left a line of suc- 
 cessors like himself, have been more than a dream. 
 As it was, events were hopelessly against him. 
 
OASSIODORUS 157 
 
 The daughter and grandson whom he left were swept 
 away and perished by their own weakness and folly, 
 and the Gothic chiefs who took his place were no 
 match for the power of Justinian and the genius of 
 Belisarius. What Theodoric had built up with so 
 much care and intelligence, and invested with such 
 promise of order and stability, vanished utterly; 
 nothing remained of it but the palace and tomb of its 
 founder at Eavenna, and the echoes of the renown of 
 the Teutonic hero of Verona, " Dietrich of Bern," in 
 the legends of distant Germany. But in its short time 
 of hfe his reign seemed like a great and successful 
 experiment, by which the new was to be welded with 
 the old. It seemed as if the barbarian intruders, who 
 had caused so much mischief and even greater terror, 
 had voluntarily and spontaneously shown a desire for 
 improvement, and a disposition to submit to the 
 taming and widening discipline of Italian civil order. ^ 
 The general character and policy of Theodoric's 
 
 ' The important period of the barbarian settlements in Italy 
 has been studied with their usual care by the Germans — Yon 
 Savigny, GescMchte des Bomischen Eechts ; Waitz, Deutsche Ver- 
 fassv/ngsgeschichte ; Dahn, Die Konige der Germcmen; Hegel, 
 Geschichte der Stadteverfassung von Italien, Dahn has exhibited 
 his conceptions of the state of things which led to the overthrow 
 of Theodoric's great attempt in a historical novel, Ein Kampf 
 um Horn, which is spoiled by unfair prejudice against the Italians. 
 English readers may look forward to a special history of this 
 time from Mr. Thomas Hodgkin, whose first two volumes, Italy 
 and her Iiwaders, coming down to Odoacer, which have recently 
 appeared, promise a very interesting treatment of the Gothic 
 and Lombard periods. 
 
158 CASSIODOEUS 
 
 kingdom, which, as Montesquieu^ observed, was 
 entirely different from the plan of all the other bar- 
 barian kingdoms, is sufficiently known from the 
 account which Jordanes has abridged from the great 
 historical work of Cassiodorus, from the notices of 
 the shrewd and well-informed Greek observer. Pro-" 
 copius, and from the collection of legal and adminis- 
 trative rules, which goes by the name of Theodoric's 
 Edict, and which embodies the principles and spirit 
 of his policy. But in the case of this remarkable 
 attempt of political sagacity in one of the. new race 
 of conquerors we have something more than a general 
 character. We have a great mass of State papers 
 which exhibit in detail the working out of the scheme 
 of government conceived by the Gothic king,^ the 
 Varice, or "Miscellaneous Letters," of Cassiodorus. 
 These letters are not, indeed, as interesting as they 
 would have been if they had been written or dictated 
 by Theodoric himself; if any part of the collection 
 
 ' Esprit des Lois, xxx. c. 12. 
 
 ^ Cf. Dahn, Konige der Germaiien, iii., appendix 1, p. 14. 
 After saying that Theodoric's Edict proceeded from that which 
 pervaded his whole government, his care for cimlitas, the re- 
 pression of violence either from Goths against Eomans or of 
 great men against the weaker free population, Dahn ohserves : 
 "Die Vari^nsmnmlung ist uberhaupt der SchlOssel zum Edict; 
 sie ist ein umfassender Spiegel der Zeit ; sie zeigt uns jene 
 Verhaltnisse in lebendiger Bewegung, deren Ordnung das Gesetz 
 bezweckt ; dieses reiche Material aus gleichzeitiger Praxis 
 gewahrt die wichtigste Erganzung und die richtigste Erklarung 
 des diirftigen, und wenn isolirt betrachtet, unverstandlichen 
 Edict." 
 
CASSIODOKUS 159 
 
 had been preserved in his own familiar mother speech, 
 the noble Gothic tongue, which, except in the precious 
 remains of Ulfilas's version of the Scriptures and a 
 few unimportant fragments picked up by chance, has 
 perished from the earth alike in Italy and Spain, 
 where it was once the language of rulers ; or even if 
 his orders had been expressed in the rude army Latin, 
 the dialect of the camp, which was probably the only 
 Latin or Italian which Theodoric could speak. The 
 letters are not of his own composition : these orders, 
 despatches, instructions, are the work of his Italian 
 secretary; and if anything is certain, it is that 
 assuredly Theodoric would not himself have written 
 as the zealous and accomplished gentleman and 
 rhetorician wrote, to whom he gave his commands, 
 and who transmitted them in his own form to the 
 oflB.cials for whom they were meant. The contrast 
 must have been remarkable in the intercourse of 
 business or amusement, one cannot but suppose, 
 between the great German king, who could not write 
 his name, and had not much respect for mere literary 
 education, but was full of large and bold ideas on the 
 subject of governing Italy, and his ready and useful 
 secretary, Gathohc and Eoman to the core, yet loyal 
 to the service which he had embraced, brimful of 
 curious and rather idle erudition, and inexhaustible in 
 florid combinations of verbiage which the fashion of 
 the time took for eloquence. If three-fourths of what 
 we have vraitten by Cassiodorus in the twelve books 
 of his FaricB were blotted out, we should still have all, 
 
160 OASSIODORUS 
 
 or probably more than all, which really shows the 
 workmg of the administration of which he was the 
 mouthpiece and organ. But in those dim days we 
 must not complain of the form in which information 
 otherwise unattainable, and more than we could have 
 hoped for, is preserved for our use. 
 
 Cassiodorus was a remarkable person. We must 
 take all men with what they have of their times; 
 the fashions which their times impose on them, the 
 dwarfing, the distortion, the limitations, the shaping 
 and moulding, which the general circumstances of 
 their times cause in all who are born to grow up and 
 live among them. He was born in an age when 
 civilisation had run to seed, when it had been broken 
 into by barbarian force, when great disasters and 
 great moral corruption had eaten out vitality and 
 strength from the still prized forms of public service 
 and individual thought. He was all over a man in 
 bondage to the limitations and false standards and 
 measures of the sixth century ; but he was a man of 
 Italian activity, perseverance, and resource of mind. 
 He had gone through a great deal of reading, and 
 had practised diligently the application of what he 
 had stored up of knowledge or hearsay information. 
 He was a man, in an infinitely lower degree of course, 
 with the encyclopaedic culture of Cicero or the elder 
 Pliny; a state official or a public servant first, but 
 then also a man of letters, a logician, a natural philo- 
 sopher, a moralist, a divine, a student and lover of 
 art and nature. Without any of that genius which 
 
CASSIODORUS 161 
 
 sometimes, even under disadvantageous conditions 
 and in rude and imperfect forms, breaks through the 
 monotony of a degenerate and barren age, he was 
 a man eminently useful to his generation and to 
 those which succeeded it. He did his best for his 
 time, and in the way and measure in which only it 
 could derive advantage from his activity. He began 
 with being an industrious and, as far as appears, 
 public-spirited and upright administrator. Then in 
 his days of leisure he compiled and digested the 
 learning and wisdom of better times for the use of 
 his poorly-educated contemporaries. He was a great 
 collector of books, and earnestly encouraged their 
 transcription and multiplication. He popularised 
 grammar and the " liberal " sciences, as far as they 
 survived in the schools of the day. He wrote a 
 popular introduction to the study of Scripture. He 
 compiled a popular ecclesiastical history of the great 
 dogmatic struggles of the fourth and fifth centuries, 
 the Historia Tripartita, from Socrates, Sozomen, and 
 Theodoret, which became the historical text-book of 
 the Middle Ages. And he put together, mainly from 
 St. Augustine, an elaborate commentary on the Book 
 of Psalms, which conveyed the ideas and the manner 
 of the great teacher to many who might not find it 
 easy to get access to or to use the original works, 
 from which Cassiodorus extracted and selected. Nor 
 was his industry confined to theology. Besides the 
 collection of his State papers, of which more will be 
 said, he was the author of a work which, if it had 
 
 M 
 
162 CASSIODORUS 
 
 survived, would have been counted next in interest to 
 the Germania of Tacitus — a history of the Goths in 
 twelve books. We know it only from the abridgment 
 of it by Jomandes, or, as he is now called, Jordanes. 
 But though we know enough of Cassiodorus to know 
 that his work would be diffuse and uncritical, yet 
 Theodoric's secretary and familiar friend must have 
 had opportunities, and the disposition to use them, of 
 learning the legends and traditions of the Groths such 
 as no other Eoman of the time could have had ; and 
 we cannot doubt that even in the very uncongenial 
 and unsuitable dress of Latin rhetoric, enough of their 
 outlines and features would have appeared to show 
 us something of the distant and dim past of that re- 
 markable race of which the language of Ulfilas's 
 Gospels is now almost the only thing to tell what 
 manner of men they were. 
 
 Cassiodorus was born just when the line of the 
 Western Emperors was coming to a close in the boy 
 who was named in derision Romulus Augustulus (476), 
 and who was so insignificant as to be spared by the 
 barbarian conqueror for a life of luxury on the shores of 
 Campania. The glory of Western Eome was quenched 
 for many a long year, and Italy had finally come down 
 to be the appointed prey and heritage of the stranger. 
 This was the Italy into which Cassiodorus was born,^ 
 and in such an Italy his long life was spent. He saw 
 ' Clinton gives 480 as the year of Ms birth. The Benedictine 
 editor places it nine or ten years earlier, in 469, or 470. The 
 earlier date is probably the true one ; but there is some con- 
 fusion between the different Oassiodori. 
 
CASSIODORUS 163 
 
 in his youth the Gothic kingdom begin under the 
 great Theodoric (493), whose servant he early became, 
 and whom he served to the end ; he saw it over- 
 thrown, not by Italians, but by other strangers, the 
 Moorish, Isaurian, and Hunnish bands, whom bar- 
 barian generals, Belisarius, and Narses, led to victory 
 in the service of the Greek Empire ; and he probably 
 lived to see the next change, the coming in of the 
 new masters, the Lombards (568). In his ninety- 
 third year, as he himself has recorded, he was writing 
 a treatise on orthography for the use of the monks of 
 the monastery near SquiUace, in which he passed his 
 later years, and which he made a place of study, 
 manuscript copying, and even of physical experiments. 
 The date given by Clinton for his death — 575 — is prob- 
 ably too late, but cannot be far wrong. His father and 
 his grandfather before him had filled public offices ; ^ 
 and his father had been one of those Italians who, in 
 the confusion of the time, with all the old authority of 
 the Imperial government overthrown, with the ancient 
 military system of Eome utterly shattered and its spirit 
 departed, with nothing to represent the traditions of 
 the great commonwealth but the pretensions and con- 
 spiracies of feeble upstarts and mock emperors who 
 were the nominees of the Barbarians, thought it the 
 wisest thing, as well as the safest, to offer their ex- 
 perience and their skill to the service of those among 
 the German chiefs who seemed most likely to be 
 masters in Italy. The elder Cassiodorus had served 
 1 V". Clinton, Fasti Rom. a. 493. 
 
164 OASSIODOEUS 
 
 Odoacer in an administrative capacity, and is said 
 to have served him loyally and well. Then, when 
 Odoacer fell before the power of Theodoric, he con- 
 tinued, with the same faithfulness and from the same 
 motives, to serve Theodoric. He brought his son into 
 the same service. The son was an apt pupil and learned 
 his lesson well. At a critical moment he deserved the 
 gratitude of the new ruler by securing to his allegiance 
 Sicily and the southern provinces of Italy, Apulia, and 
 Bruttium.i He rose through the grades of the oflBcial 
 hierarchy to the consulship and to be Praetorian Prefect 
 at Eome. But his public life was one of much more 
 than mere routine. The Gothic king, with his political 
 ideas and aims, was yet as little at home in his Italian 
 kingdom as the first Englishmen were in India. He 
 could crush and punish ; but he knew that he lived 
 among one set of thoughts and interests and the 
 Italians in another, and what was necessary for his 
 policy was not fear only, but confidence, goodwill, 
 attachment Accordingly he attempted to use Italians 
 in order to conciliate, to manage, to protect, to govern 
 Italians. He thus employed Boethius and Sym- 
 machus. Apparently with still greater confidence he 
 thus employed the younger Cassiodorus. Cassiodorus 
 was his secretary, from whom he sought information 
 and counsel, and by whom his orders and instructions 
 
 1 Far. i. 3, 4. Clinton refers this to the father (F. B. 493) ; 
 but the matter is not clear. It depends on the question whether 
 the son was ever " Patrician." See the Preface to his Collection. 
 In this, he certainly does not mention the Patriciat In the list 
 of his own dignities. 
 
CASSIODOEUS 165 
 
 were interpreted and transmitted to the Italian civil 
 authorities and sometimes to Gothic ones. The 
 position of Cassiodorus was very much like that of 
 an Italian minister in the service of a benevolent 
 Austrian viceroy or governor of Lombardy ; he was 
 such a man, both in his usefulness and in his obse- 
 quiousness, as the Lombard nobles, Beccaria, and 
 Cristiani, and PaUavicini, and Verri, who served Maria 
 Theresa and Joseph II. at Milan. 
 
 In his days of leisure, when he had retired to his 
 monastery in Bruttium, after escaping the storms 
 which swept away his and his master's work in Italy, 
 and in which Boethius perished and the Gothic 
 kingdom was wrecked, the energetic old man, among 
 his ■ other literary employments, collected, at the 
 request of his friends, he says, as many as he could 
 find of his despatches and State papers, and arranged 
 them in twelve books. It had been a way with 
 Romans, ever since Cicero set the fashion, to collect 
 and publish their letters, if they had been engaged in 
 affairs, or if they thought they could write well ; and 
 the habit continued through the early and middle 
 ages to later days. The examples of Pliny, of Cyprian, 
 of Augustine, of Jerome, were followed in this age by 
 Sidonius, the elder Symmachus, and Ennodius; the 
 widespread business of the Popes and the growing im- 
 portance of their letters made a regular " Regestum," 
 and an establishment of clerks and transcribers, a 
 matter of course. at Eome; and the great collection 
 of the letters of Gregory the Great attested its industry 
 
166 CASSIODOEUS 
 
 and its business-like method. With such precedents, 
 almost every man in a prominent place made it his 
 duty to preserve his own letters. They were not 
 always worth keeping for the reasons for which they 
 were kept. But this is a department of literature in 
 which the self-complacency of authorship has inci- 
 dentally done great service ta knowledge. Letters 
 are the great checks on professed and studied narra- 
 tives. They give the aspect of transactions as they 
 appeared at the moment and on the spot, either to 
 the actors or to bystanders looking on. And they 
 preserve and exhibit often in full work institutions 
 and arrangements of which otherwise no record is 
 kept, because they are known to every one, and are 
 part of every one's daily life. The Collection of 
 Cassiodorus, the most extensive yet made in the later 
 times of Rome, is the only thing which gives us any^ 
 thing like a detailed and real picture of the beginnings 
 of that long servitude of Italy to the "barbarian," 
 which, once begun, continued almost to the present 
 day. We may pardon a good deal — and there is a 
 good deal to pardon — in so authentic and so indis- 
 pensable an informant. 
 
 The characteristic weaknesses of Cassiodorus come 
 out in the account which he gives of the origin of 
 this collection. He was exceedingly vain of his 
 learning, his rhetorical abundance and richness, and 
 his skill and tact in affairs. But he followed the 
 fashion of ostentatious self-depreciation, and he pre- 
 sents this monument of his labours in the public 
 
CASSIODOEUS 167 
 
 service with a transparent and amusing air of mock 
 modesty. His accomplished friends, he says in the 
 Preface to his letters, pressed him to collect into one 
 work all that he had from time to time in his 
 numerous and important offices put forth for the 
 purpose of throwing light on public business or ex- 
 pediting it; posterity, they said, ought to know all 
 the toil and trouble he had gone through in the public 
 service, and would be glad of such knowledge. He 
 doubts. Posterity, he thinks', is more likely to think 
 differently from his too partial friends, and to find 
 his papers very dry and uninteresting ; and, besides, 
 they are so hurriedly and rudely written. His friends 
 ought to remember the circumstances under which 
 they were composed; the impatience of applicants 
 waiting attention; the answers which had to be 
 written on the spur of the moment and could not be 
 recalled or amended. The great masters of style bid 
 you keep your compositions till the ninth year, and 
 he had not an hour to think of the proprieties of 
 composition ; as soon as he began to write, the noise 
 and hurry round him made it impossible to write 
 with care. 
 
 " One man," he says, " overwhelms me with a stream 
 of captious questions ; another worries me with the burden 
 of his distresses ; others compass me about with furious 
 and mutinous demands. And then you ask for fine 
 writing and style ! Why, I have hardly time to find the 
 plainest words for my meaning. All my nights are 
 haunted by endless anxieties lest food should fail in the 
 towns, where people care a great deal more for what satis- 
 
168 CASSIODOEUS 
 
 fies tlieir 13611163 than what pleases their ears ; further, we 
 have to move about the provinces and see how our orders 
 are obeyed, for it will not do with military people to issue 
 commands unless there are civil authorities to see them 
 carried out. Please do not love me so unkindly as to press 
 me to publish." 
 
 And then come all the answers — they are his own 
 reasons for the publication ; the high stations he had 
 filled, up to that of Prsetorian Prefect ; the concentra- 
 tion in one hand of all public business (the pay of the 
 army, the sustenance of the population, the adminis- 
 tration of justice) ; his whole time devoted, without 
 interruption, to the public good ; his high character 
 for stainless integrity and hereditary virtue ; the 
 confidence and familiarity of great princes ; the power, 
 so rare a possession, of producing, amid such occupa- 
 tions, anything that was valuable for readers ; the 
 great use to others of his State papers, as precedents 
 and models ; finally, the opportunity of doing due 
 honour to the distinguished personages to whom his 
 letters were addressed, or of whom they made mention. 
 " You restrain vice by your authority," he supposes 
 his friends to say to him ; " you crush the audacity 
 of the transgressor ; you restore its terrors to the law ; 
 and yet you doubt about publishing what must con- 
 duce to such great ends. You hide, so to speak, the 
 mirror which reflects your mind from the view of 
 posterity." 
 
 He yielded, he tells us, to the representations of 
 his friends, and collected his letters for public feading. 
 
CASSIODORUS 169 
 
 But it is amusing, when we come to the letters, to find 
 the form into which he has cast these State papers 
 and despatches. He deprecates criticism for the 
 agrestis sermo into which hurry and pressure of 
 business forced him ; he had no time to choose words 
 and discriminate meanings. He apologises for hasty 
 and unpolished phrases ; he also has had to adapt his 
 style to occasions, and the fastidious may even find 
 fault with what is to his credit, that in addressing 
 inferior persons he has suited his speech to their 
 capacity or their importance. But how shall the real 
 style of the letters be described ? There used to be, 
 and probably still is, in Italy, a class of persons found 
 there only, called improvisaiori. Give these persons 
 a subject of whatever kind, and forthwith they start 
 off without hesitation or pause into a poetical com- 
 position about it, pouring forth an uninterrupted flow 
 of words, allusions, figures, usually of a very common- 
 place kind, but with an affluence which is amazing and 
 seems inexhaustible. Except that Cassiodorus writes 
 prose and not verse, this is the kind of impression 
 which his letters produce. They are State papers 
 put into the hand of an i/m/provisatore to throw into 
 form, and composed with his luxuriant verbiage, and 
 also with his coarse taste. The shortest instructions 
 begin with an aphorism or an epigraro. If they are 
 more important or lengthy, they sparkle and flash 
 with conceits and antitheses, and every scrap of 
 learning, every bit of science or natural history, every 
 far-fetched coincidence which may start up in the 
 
170 CASSIODOKUS 
 
 writer's memory, however remote in its bearing on 
 the subject, is dragged in to exalt or illustrate it, 
 though the subject itself may be of the plainest and 
 most matter-of-fact kind. You read through a number 
 of- elaborate sentences, often tumid and pompous, 
 sometimes felicitous and pointed, but all of the most 
 general and abstract sort ; and, nestling in the thick 
 of them, towards the end of the letter or paper, you 
 come upon the order, or instruction, or notification, 
 for which the letter or paper is written, almost 
 smothered and lost in the abundance of ornament 
 round it. They show what the Latin schools had 
 come to towards the close of the Empire. It is exactly 
 analogous to the flabby degeneration which came on 
 the Italian language on the final extinction of Italian 
 liberties under the foreign masters, Spanish and 
 German, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. 
 But though the form be so bad, the substance 
 deserves a different judgment. They are the letters 
 of a man who was doing his best to uphold justice, to 
 protect the oppressed, to curb the lawless, and to 
 secure as much quiet and happiness to his country 
 and his people as under the hard conditions of the 
 time could be assured to them. It was not a time 
 when an Italian could speak of liberty and greatness 
 in the old tones. It was not a time when, if he was 
 wise, he would dream of striking a blow for independ- 
 ence, or of attempting to call forth the temper and 
 strength of ancient Rome in generations which had 
 such a history of irretrievable and fixed decay. 
 
OASSIODOEUS 171 
 
 Vengeance had come to the uttermost on the guilty 
 "Lady of Kingdoms." "She that was great among 
 the nations and princess among the provinces — she 
 was become tributary ; " and Italy lay, an fexhausted 
 and paralysed body, incapable of raising an arm in 
 her own cause, condemned to see whatever victories 
 were won on her own soil used, not for herself, but 
 for the profit of the strangers who fought for her 
 possession, Greek or German. She was condemned 
 for her monstrous sins, and this was her hour of 
 punishment. None of her sons could hope to deliver 
 her out of the hand of the nations round her, to whom 
 the strength of the world -had passed. She had not 
 in her population the materials for a national army to 
 assert her independence against the East and North, 
 against the discipline and resources of Byzantium, 
 against the manliness and massive strength and 
 enthusiasm for war of the German tribes. She had 
 lost the traditions of soldiership ; there was no bond 
 of union and reciprocal trust ; it was idle to bope 
 that her conquerors would give time to raise and 
 organise an Italian force for Italian purposes. Any- 
 how, there was no one to do it. Her noblest children 
 only thought how they might mitigate the tyranny 
 and relieve the sufferings which they could not prevent. 
 Boethius, when he recollects what he had suffered in 
 his love for Italy, has no visions of freedom, no words 
 about breaking the yoke off her neck.^ He only 
 recounts what he had done in the cause of justice and 
 ^ Boet. Phil. Consol, i. 4. 
 
172 CASSIODORUS 
 
 mercy, as the minister and magistrate of her Gothic 
 master. He had brought on himself the enmity of 
 the bad, and had offended the powerful by standing 
 up for right. He had withstood Conigast in his 
 assaults on the fortunes of the weak ; he had resisted 
 the barbaric avarice of the king's chamberlain, Trigg- 
 villa ; he had rescued Paulinus from the jaws of the 
 "dogs of the palace," who were thirsting for his 
 blood and his possessions. He had maintained the 
 claims and honour of the Senate. But Boethius, in 
 opening his heart to Philosophy, the Consoler, breathes 
 not a word to show that he had ever thought, as an 
 Italian patriot, of delivering Italy from her conquerors. 
 Indeed, he disclaims it. He makes a merit of loyal 
 service to the Goths, not of efforts and hopes for the 
 enfranchisement of Italy. 
 
 The first letter in the collection of Cassiodorus 
 shows the character which, between them, Theodoric 
 and his Italian secretary desired to give to the 
 German conquest of Italy. It is a letter addressed 
 to the • Greek Emperor, Anastasius, sent with an 
 embassy commissioned to arrange some differences 
 which threatened peace. It assumes that the Eoman 
 Empire is intact, and that the Roman Emperor is 
 unique in his greatness and dignity among the rulers 
 of the earth; and, without for a moment or by a 
 single word compromising his own independence, 
 Theodoric is made by his secretary to claim a Eoman 
 dignity for his crown, and to feel it his highest honour 
 to govern Eomans in concert and harmony with the 
 
CASSIODORUS 173 
 
 Empire and after the emperors' example. It was a 
 position like that adopted by the great bishops of 
 Africa or Alexandria towards the Eoman See ; any 
 amount of honour for it, but not a jot of their own 
 independence conceded in the acknowledgment. 
 
 You are the fairest beauty of all kingdoms, you are 
 the shield and safeguard of the world which other rulers 
 acknowledge, because they recognise in you something 
 peerless, and we especially, who, by God's help, have 
 learned in your commonwealth how to rule over Romans 
 with equity. Our rule is modelled on yours, the transcript 
 of a good design, the copy of an empire which has no 
 fellow. Just in proportion as we follow you we are before 
 all other nations. You urge me to cherish the Senate, to 
 embrace with favour the imperial laws, to bind together 
 all the interests of Italy. How can you exclude from 
 your august peace him whom you would not wish to see 
 alienated from your ways ? And there is besides the tie 
 of reverence which binds you to the city of Eome, which 
 they cannot break who have joined themselves in the 
 unity of that name. . . . We cannot think that you will 
 allow that between the two states (respwiMcoe), which, as it 
 is clear, under the former princes always formed one body, 
 any discord can be permanent. They ought not only to 
 be connected by a barren amity, but to be mutually 
 assisted by each other's power. In the Boman kingdom 
 let there be but one will, but one sentiment. Whatever 
 we can do shall be at the service of your commands.^ 
 
 The collection of letters and State papers com- 
 posed by Cassiodorus in the name of Theodoric supply 
 in numberless and varied forms the commentary on 
 this : that is, they exhibit the effort to continue under 
 
 ^ "Romani regni unum velle, una semper opinio sit." — i. 1. 
 
174 CASSIODOEUS 
 
 the new and foreign rule the customary and tradi- 
 tional administration of Eoman experience and of 
 Roman civilised government. Forms and machinery 
 are preserved. All the framework of the official 
 hierarchy is kept, and exhibited in the Formvlce or 
 commissions composed by Cassiodorus. Consulars and 
 Patricians and Prsetorian Prsefects and Quaestors — 
 very different from their republican namesakes — 
 Counts of the first order and the second, all are as 
 carefully distinguished as in the Notitia itself, or in 
 the order of a modern court and administration ; and, 
 further, the arrangements and regulations of the 
 Eoman finance and revenue system are all continued. 
 There is, of course, the plain fact which no fictions or 
 accommodations could get rid of or disguise, that 
 Italy, with its lands and populations, had changed 
 masters ; and that its masters, in the last resort, 
 whether they are moderate and reasonable masters, 
 or cruel and greedy ones, were Goths and conquerors. 
 But there is also visible the serious desire that this 
 condition of things should be made as easy as possible 
 for the dethroned and partially dispossessed race; 
 that they should be taught to consider and feel them- 
 selves one with the new comers, possessed of an equal 
 interest in the land and committed to the same 
 fortunes ; that they should be persuaded of the 
 sincerity of the king's care for their welfare and 
 purpose to protect and benefit them. Theodoric 
 wished that they should be convinced that the famous 
 Eoman virtue of justice, with the methods for carrying 
 
CASSIODOEUS 175 
 
 it out, of which Eomans were so proud, was of equal 
 value in the eyes of Goths; and that Goths, while 
 fairly proud on their side of their prowess and 
 achievements, were not ashamed to own themselves 
 inferior in historical renown, and in the arts of peace 
 to those whom they wished to call their Roman fellow- 
 citizens, and could even honestly afford, in comparison 
 with elder brethren who had had such a splendid 
 history, to confess themselves "barbarians." These 
 objects of Theodoric's policy are of course expressed 
 the more emphatically by passing through the mind 
 and by being illusti-ated by the rhetoric of an Italian 
 penman. But Cassiodorus never could have given 
 the orders which he did, or drawn up the Formulm ^ 
 in which he describes the business and duties of the 
 various officers of the State, from the Consul, Patrician, 
 and Praetorian Praefect, the Vicar of Eome, the Duke 
 of the Rhsetias, and the Counts of the Goths, down to 
 the chiefs of police at Eome and Eavenna, the heads 
 of the medical staff, the superintendents of the lime- 
 kilns and the armouries, the masters of the mint and . 
 the notaries, tax-coUectors, and police, unless he was 
 pretty clear about what his master meant him to say. 
 He was too intimate and familiar with Theodoric to 
 mistake him, and Theodoric was too formidable a 
 person to deceive or misinterpret. 
 
 The leading and prominent subject of the papers 
 is undoubtedly the enforcement and mamtenance of 
 right and justice. There were two classes of questions 
 
 ' Varice, books vi. and vii. 
 
176 CASSIODOEUS 
 
 which under the circumstances of the time were con- 
 tinually requiring the interference of a just ruler. 
 There were questions about the collection of the 
 revenue, and questions arising from the changes in 
 property consequent on the barbarian settlements in 
 Italy. In both these matters the orders which 
 Cassiodorus was commissioned to put into shape and 
 to transmit show watchfulness, humanity, and the 
 desire to uphold equity and right against the encroach- 
 ments of power or the privilege of race. Thus, it is 
 one of the commonplaces of history that one of the 
 causes of the downfall of the Empire was the in- 
 equahty and oppression of the fiscal administration. It 
 was not only, or so much, that the assessment of 
 revenue demanded for the State was excessive, though 
 this at times was the case ; it was that the collection 
 was partial and unjust. The revenue consisted mainly 
 of two great portions, customary poll taxes and ground 
 rents, or land tax, and a varying taxation professedly 
 revised and assessed anew every fifteen years; and 
 ,each province and curia, or municipality, had its 
 portion assigned of the general sum, which it \vas 
 bound to make up in a lump to the treasury. But 
 in the repartition of these imposts on the estates of a 
 province or the individuals of the curia there was 
 room for all kinds of unfairness. Powerful men set 
 at nought their obligations ; crafty men, on one 
 pretence or another, sometimes by entering into the 
 service of the Church, wriggled out of them. Corrupt 
 or lazy collectors lined their pockets or saved them- 
 
CASSIODOEUS 177 
 
 selves trouble by making those who were in their 
 power pay for those who evaded or defied them. All 
 the tricks and villanies of uncontrolled tax-farming 
 and tax -gathering were practised, and drove the 
 wretched tax-payers to despair. Men ran away from 
 their property, or were sold up for hopeless debts. 
 The collection of Cassiodorus shows how. sensible 
 Theodoric was to evils which were destroying the 
 resources of the kingdom and the peace and happiness 
 of its inhabitants. The senators at Eome, the great 
 landed proprietors throughout Italy, were the great 
 offenders.! Theodoric appeals to their honour and 
 their pride. They had inherited their great place, he 
 tells them, that they might set a public example of 
 justice and sense of duty; but it had appeared from 
 the oflGicial reports of his judges and inspectors for the 
 provinces that the great senatorial houses had paid 
 little or nothing of their quota to the revenue. The 
 consequence was that the collectors had turned upon 
 the poorer proprietors on the spot, and had increased 
 their burdens to make up the full sum of the assess- 
 ment, to the great damage of the provinces. The 
 king proceeds to require the Conscript Fathers, who 
 are equally bound with him to exert themselves for 
 the common weal, to pay their assessment for the 
 year in the usual three instalments ; and he informs 
 them that he intends to make this order public in the 
 provinces, that any person who has been aggrieved 
 may know that justice is to be had. And accordingly 
 
 1 ii. 24. 
 
 N 
 
178 CASSIODORUS 
 
 he sends a circular to the provinces, setting forth these 
 abuses in the collection of the revenue, declaring his 
 intention to stop them, and inviting all proprietors or 
 members of municipalities {possessores sive curiales), 
 who have been unjustly surcharged on account of the 
 default of others, to make their complaints. He is as 
 peremptory with the Gothic defaulters of Adria,^ who 
 probably did not see why such valiant soldiers as 
 themselves should be taxed like provincials, and who, 
 if they had been allowed, would have left their quota 
 of the taxes to be added to that of their Italian 
 neighbours and to be paid by them. His language is 
 a remarkable testimony to the silent resignation with 
 which the provincials endured the oppression of the 
 fiscal officials, and which Theodoric invites them to 
 break. ^ 
 
 The voice of suffering is ordinarily loud. People, 
 when they are aggrieved, do not usually restrain them- 
 selves, and the mind of the injured feeds itself with out- 
 cries. Still language will flow forth more freely if it is 
 set at liberty by our authority. Now we hate that the 
 wretched should be oppressed. We are distressed at the 
 wrongs of men who make no complaint. The sufferings 
 which the victims hide reach us all the more swiftly. 
 
 This regard for equity appears in another form in 
 the care taken that a grant to one person of exemption 
 from a fiscal burden should not increase those of his 
 neighbours. In a letter to the proprietors and muni- 
 
 ^ i. 19 ; cf. Hegel, Geschichte der Sladteverfasswng von 
 Ttalien, i. p. 107. 
 2 ii. 25. 
 
CASSIODORUS 179 
 
 cipal authorities of Trent, Theodoric informs them that 
 he has granted a property free of taxes to Butilianus 
 the priest.^ But he says that he does not choose that 
 his hberality should be hurtful to others ; and so he 
 deducts from the sum total of their assessment the 
 portion of it chargeable on the land of Butilianus, 
 and remitted to him, which otherwise would have 
 been thrown on the other tax-payers. " We will not 
 have that contributed by others which we have ex- 
 cused in an individual case ; lest — what Grod forbid 
 — a deserving man's reward should be an innocent 
 man's loss." After a time of distress he suspends the 
 excise on wine, com, and oil, levied, according to 
 ancient custom, at markets and harbours ; ^ the pro- 
 vinces needed rest after hard times, and ships must 
 not be frightened away from the ports by the collectors, 
 who often inflicted more damage on them than the 
 sea itself. The march of armies,^ even friendly 
 ones, was usually a terrible scourge to the provinces. 
 Theodoric takes off the yearly contribution from the 
 provincials of the Cottian Alps, the dwellers in the 
 Valley of Susa, because the passage of the Gothic 
 troops had unavoidably damaged those for whom 
 they fought. 
 
 But this anxiety to be just, and to improve the 
 methods of collecting the revenue, is combined with 
 keen vigilance for the revenue itself. "That it is 
 
 ^ ii. 17 ; of. Savigny, OeschicMe des Bomischen Rechts, i. 334, 
 who wrongly infers from this the Goths were as such exempt from 
 municipal taxes. ^ ir. 19. ' iv. 36. 
 
180 OASSIODOEUS 
 
 our wish to oppress no one," he says, "is no reason 
 why we should lose what is our due." ^ Officials are 
 warned not to let the taxes which are due on three 
 terms in the year fall into arrear ; it is in the interest 
 of the tax-payer that his debt should not grow through 
 the collector's easy carelessness. "In a certain way 
 kindness becomes the mother of harshness, when you 
 first neglect to give a man notice of what is due from 
 him, and afterwards are compelled to exact it from 
 him." ^ Not unnaturally, the conquering race did not . 
 always see why they should have to pay rent and 
 taxes like the Eomans ; the Gothic settlers in Tuscany 
 and Picenum were refractory and fell into arrears, 
 and a strict commission was issued to bring them to 
 reason.^ It was necessary, the king says, to stop 
 "this kind of extravagance in the beginning, or it 
 would spread ; " and accordingly the houses of those 
 who would not pay were to be seized for the treasury, 
 and the ungrateful military settlers, who, besides their 
 " donative " as soldiers, had received their lands from 
 the king's bounty, as they would not pay the little 
 that was due from them, were to lose much. 
 
 One of the great difficulties of the state of things 
 with which Theodoric had to deal, in carrying out 
 his policy of conciliation and fusion, must, of course, 
 have been the relations between the two races. He 
 claimed that they had become one ; he wished that 
 they should appear so to themselves and to the world ; 
 he saw that the strength of his kingdom depended on 
 
 ' i- 19- '•' iii. 8. ■' iv. 14. 
 
CASSIODOEUS 181 
 
 the two nations working willingly together. But, 
 whatever he might wish, they could not forget what 
 each was to the other, any more than at the hest of 
 times English and Irish, Austrians and Lombards, 
 have been able to forget it. Yet, as far as it appears, 
 he did his best to avoid the faults so easily and so 
 commonly committed under like circumstances. He 
 kept a strong check on the claims of the conquering 
 race. He showed the most frank and willing readi- 
 ness to do full justice to those of the conquered race. 
 The following are the terms of a commission of a pro- 
 vincial " Count of the Goths," addressed to the people 
 over whom he was placed : — ^ 
 
 Seeing that, by God's help, we know that there are 
 Goths dwelling and mingled among you, we have thought 
 it necessary, lest among neighbours there should arise, as 
 is wont, any want of order, to send to you \_So-cmd-so], a 
 right honourable person, well approved to us by his good 
 behaviour, as count. It will be his business, according 
 to our edicts, if any matter arise between Goth and Goth, 
 to decide it ; if a controversy should arise between a Goth 
 and a Eoman, he shall call in a prudent Eoman as assessor, 
 and shall settle the dispute according to right. But between 
 two Romans, Romans are to hear the case — that is, the 
 judges whom we appoint throughout the provinces.^ Thus 
 every one's rights will be maintained, and under a diversity 
 of judges one and the same rule of justice will embrace all. 
 Thus joined in a bond of common peace, both nations, by 
 God's favour, may enjoy a happy tranquillity. But know 
 ye, that we have equally a love towards all ; he, however, 
 wiU best recommend himself to our regard who restrains 
 his will and is well affected to the laws. We love not 
 
 1 vii. 3. ^ Cf. iii. 13. 
 
182 CASSIODOEUS 
 
 aught unbecoming the life of a citizen (aliquid incivile) ; 
 we detest the wickedness of insolence with all who are 
 guilty of it. Violence is hateful to our love of mercy. 
 In matters of judgment let the laws prevail, not the strong 
 arm. You, who all form one kingdom, shape your objects 
 of life in common. Let each people hear what we value. 
 Let the Eomans be your neighbours in love as they are in 
 possessions ; and you, Eomans, ought heartily to love the 
 Goths, who increase the numbers of your population in 
 peace, and who in war are the defenders of the whole 
 commonwealth. 
 
 Goths and Eomans could not but be distinct in 
 feelings and ways of life, and it is assumed every- 
 where that the calling of the Goths was war, and that 
 of the Bomans peace. ^ But, as far as Theodoric 
 could do it, their equal rights were maintained.^ The 
 Eoman machinery of civil life was sedulously and 
 universally kept up; any invasion of Eoman civil 
 rights called forth rebuke and repression. A question 
 of disputed possession between a Eoman and a " bar- 
 barian " ^ is settled on this principle : if the " bar- 
 barian " took possession since the day when Theodoric 
 won his victory on the Isonzo (489), the victory 
 which gave him Italy, the claimant must produce 
 his written title ; if it was before that date, Theodoric 
 refuses to be responsible for anything that took place 
 
 1 See viii. 3 ; xii. 5 : " Dum belligerat Gothorum exeroitus, 
 sit in pace Eomanus ; " iii. 38 : " Vivat noster exercitus civiliter 
 cum Romanis." 
 
 ^ Cf. i. 27: "&\ exlerarv/m ge'niium\i.e. the "barbarians"] 
 mores sub lege moderamu/r ; si juri Romano servit quidquid 
 sociatur Itali(B. ..." And iii. 86 : " Cum mens nostri sit ad 
 leges cuncta referre." ^ i. 18. 
 
CASSIODOEUS 183 
 
 before he was king, or to open any controversy 
 about it. 
 
 Theodoric's anxiety to introduce habits of law and 
 order among his barbarian subjects is illustrated by 
 two letters 1 relating to the population which had 
 taken the place of the Goths in their old seats by the 
 Danube and the Drave, that part of the old Pannonia 
 of which Sirmium, not far from the modern Belgrade, 
 was the capital. They were probably a mixture of 
 races — Herules, Gepids, and Suabes — who had followed 
 in the track of the Goths as the Goths moved westward; 
 but they formed part of what Theodoric claimed as 
 his kingdom. He sends a governor to keep them in 
 order, and to accustom them to the rule of impartial 
 law and justice. He is a person with the singular 
 name of Colossseus. • The proper names which occur 
 in Cassiodorus are often curious, and suggest questions 
 as to the intermixture and dispersion of races which 
 are how perhaps beyond our reach to answer. To 
 this Colossseus Theodoric gives his commission, and 
 further commends him to the people whom he is to 
 govern — "Universis Barbaris et Eomanis per Pan- 
 noniam constitutis, Theodoricus Eex." There are 
 two points which are worth noticing in these letters. 
 One is that the particular "barbarous " custom which 
 Theodoric wants to put down is that of the duel, or 
 judicial combat. 
 
 This further we wish to say to you, is the king's 
 address to the population, that you should seek to direct 
 
 1 iii. 23, 24. 
 
184 CASSIODORUS 
 
 your courage, not against yourselves, but against tte 
 enemy. Let not trifles urge you to extremities. Be con- 
 tent with justice, in wMch. tlie world rejoices. Why 
 should you have recourse to a duel when you have a judge 
 who cannot he bribed ? Lay aside your swords, as you 
 have no foe. It is an evil thing to lift your arm against 
 your kinsmen, for whom you ought with glory to die. 
 What is the use of the tongue to man if it is his armed 
 hand which pleads his cause t or how can it be believed 
 that there is peace if under civilised order (sub civilitate) 
 men still fight ? 
 
 "Make them contend," says the commission to 
 Colossseus, "with words rather than weapons. Let 
 them not count it a reproach to lose their cause." 
 
 The other point is the amusing self-complacency 
 with which the example of the Goths, and their pro- 
 gress in the ways of order and .civilisation, are held 
 up for the imitation of their less advanced barbarian 
 kinsfolk. "Favour justice," the king writes to Colos- 
 sseus ; " protect with courage innocence of heart ; so 
 that, in contrast to the evil customs of the Nations, 
 you may hold up the justice of the Goths, who have 
 ever so kept the mean of excellence, that they had 
 both the wisdom of the Romans and the prowess of 
 the Nations." "Imitate our Goths," he writes to his 
 Pannonian subjects, " who know how to fight when 
 abroad and to be self-controlled at home. We desire 
 you so to live as by God's help you see that our kins- 
 folk have flourished." 
 
 It is this strong desire for justice, for conciliation, 
 for a good understanding between his various subjects, 
 
CASSIODOEUS 185 
 
 for their protection, for their welfare, for the improve- 
 ment and advancement of their conditions of life, and 
 the visible care and forethought for these objects 
 appearing throughout this miscellaneous collection of 
 public papers, which impart strength and substance 
 to the idea of Theodoric's rule which they present. 
 But for this it might easily seem that the interest 
 shown by him in the results and adjuncts of Roman 
 civilisation was merely a thin veneer over the still 
 untamed coarseness of barbarian habits and character. 
 That the natural fierceness of the barbarian chief was 
 not yet tamed in the King of Italy appeared but too 
 clearly in the outbreak of savage cruelty towards the 
 end of his reign, in which Boethius perished. But it 
 is impossible to read these curious documents without 
 seeing through the rhetoric of the Latin secretary how 
 thoroughly in earnest his great German master was 
 in his vrish to govern justly, wisely, temperately. 
 We know too little to be able to say how his instruc- 
 tions were carried out. Self-will was powerful; 
 distances were great between the King and the 
 Prsefect, and between the Praefect and the provincial 
 Count. Every order, too, which we read in Cas- 
 siodorus may not have been of Theodoric's dictation ; 
 something, perhaps much, may have been left to the 
 secretary's own responsibility and judgment. But 
 the general outline of the purpose of government is 
 too strongly drawn to be mistaken. A Eoman with 
 Christian ideas of right, with the ideas of these State 
 papers about the reconciliation of conqueror and con- 
 
186 CASSIODORUS 
 
 quered, could not have continued so long to be the 
 confidential and actively employed minister of the 
 Gothic king, if the Gothic king, with all his short- 
 comings, had not had the instincts, the wisdom, the 
 high ambition, which were afterwards to be seen on 
 a grander scale in the great Frank emperor. 
 
 But a collection of Parliamentary blue-books could 
 not contain a more miscellaneous assortment of 
 subjects than the Farice of Cassiodorus. The first 
 letter in the collection is a grand assertion of the 
 unity of the Eoman Empire, and of Eomans and 
 barbarians in government and interest. The second 
 is a wonderful objurgation of a negligent provincial 
 oflScer, whose business it was to provide purple dye 
 for the silk and woollen of the king's robes. The 
 dye was produced at Hydruntum or Otranto, frcm a 
 shell-fish, the miuirex,, the collection of which, and the 
 preparation from it of the dye, employed a great 
 number of persons, and appears to have been super- 
 intended by a State official. Cassiodorus is not 
 content with scolding this officer as if he had been 
 guilty of something as bad as treason, but he takes 
 the opportunity of showing how he can describe in 
 grand language the very disgusting process by which 
 the coveted purple was produced from heaps of the 
 rotting and stinking shell-fish. But the tone in which 
 the superintendent of the manufacture is taken to 
 task for his delays is curious. 
 
 We have learned from the report of Count Stephen 
 [it is Theodoric who is supposed to speak] that the work 
 
CASSIODOEUS 187 
 
 of the Sacred robes, which we wish to be completed with 
 the necessary speed, is suspended, and the making of them 
 interrupted ; and it is clear that you are the person who, 
 by withholding a usual supply, have produced this 
 abominable delay ; for we are convinced that some negli- 
 gence must have occurred to cause that the milky tresses 
 of silk, twice or thrice dipped, have yet blushed less than 
 they ought with that most beautiful intoxication, or that 
 the wool has not drunk the choicest quality of the adorable 
 purple. So that if the inspector of the sea at Otranto 
 had collected the shell-fish which give the dye, in the 
 usual way, and at the right time, that Neptunian heap, 
 the parent of the ever-blooming purple, the adomer of 
 the throne, dissolved with abundance of rains, would 
 have set free the courtly shower with its flame-coloured 
 liquid. That colour, in the overpowering charm of its 
 freshness, that blushing darkness, that crimson blackness, 
 distinguishes the ruler, points out the lord, and is the 
 warrant to the human race that it cannot be mistaken in 
 its prince's countenance. 
 
 Then, after enlarging on the very disagreeable 
 process of preparing the dye from the fish — they were 
 left for six months to rot, " till even to the most 
 sagacious of nostrils they ceased to be noisome " — he 
 proceeds with his invective against the unlucky 
 defaulter. 
 
 If no part of the usual process of preparation was 
 left out, we wonder that you did not recollect your own 
 dangers, considering that it is the guilt of sacrilege to 
 ofifend in respect of such robes. What are they about, all 
 these workmen, all these crews of sailors, all these families 
 of labourers ? You, too, with the dignity of a count, 
 give orders to such numbers, you fence yourself round 
 with the prestige of so great a name, that you are thought 
 
188 OASSIODOEUS 
 
 almost to act the king, you seem in many things to be 
 despotic over your fellow-citizens. Your negligence is a 
 blow to this position, which had both given you a high 
 place in the province and was the occasion of your appear- 
 ing with honour in the presence of your prince. So that, 
 if regard for your own interest does not forsake you, ii 
 you have any feeling for your own safety, within such 
 and such a day after the bearer of this reaches you hasten 
 to come with the dye, which you have been accustomed 
 to provide every year for our wardrobe ; for we shall send 
 you not a commissioner, but an avenger, if you imagine 
 that you may trifle with any further delays." 
 
 The fidgety letter about purple dyes is a curious 
 survival of the Oriental ideas of pomp which had 
 gradually, under the Csesars, worked their way into 
 the Latin world; the occasion, the temper, the eti- 
 quette of phrases, as about the "Sacred robes,'' the 
 rhetoric and taste are what might be looked for in a 
 Persian or Syrian court rather than in that of Theo- 
 doric. But it was part of Theodoric's policy to enter 
 into the fashions and humours of his Latin subjects, 
 as well as to care for their substantial prosperity. 
 As at Eome it was the mode to take a side with one 
 or other of the colours in the circus, the Green or the 
 Blue, Theodoric, probably at the suggestion of Cassi- 
 odorus,'^ confers his patronage on the Greens ; and as 
 party feeling ran high, and resulted in rioting and 
 some high-handed proceedings on the part of powerful 
 Blues, the great Gothic king and his minister have to 
 send letter after letter to the authorities at Eome 
 instructing them to take care that the Green party, 
 ^ 1. 20, 21, 27, 31-33. 
 
CASSIODOEUS 189 
 
 and especially the favourers of Helladius,-' the panto- 
 mime dancer, have their fair chance, and that if the 
 jealousy of the opposite party leads to foul play, the 
 culprits, however high their rank, are to be made an 
 example of. But these letters are adverted to only 
 to illustrate the multifarious character of the collection, 
 and to show how the administration under the great 
 barbarian king descended into minute details which 
 might have been thought entirely alien from his 
 habits and interests. The bulk of the papers refer 
 to much more serious matters, though everywhere 
 the letters abound with curious and often instructive 
 particulars. The care of the king appears in them for 
 the repair, the adornment, the defence, of his cities, 
 for the reclaiming of waste lands and the draining of 
 those marshes which were then, as they are now, the 
 plague of Italy, for keeping the aqueducts and 
 sewers in good order, for the provisioning of the 
 provinces, for the encouragement of such trade and 
 commerce as existed — and in spite of wars and in- 
 vasions there was a good deal — for the protection of 
 harbours, the regulation of the postal service established 
 under the Empire, as well as for the due administra- 
 tion of justice, and the alleviation of the burdens 
 which war and marching armies brought upon the 
 sorely stricken provinces. And alternating with 
 these subjects we have instructions to ' individual 
 officers on service, decisions, which usually seem 
 equitable ones, on individual cases of hardship or 
 
190 CASSIODOEUS 
 
 distress brought to the king's knowledge, and all that 
 interference of the supreme power in the cause of the 
 poor and helpless which, though it belongs to a rude 
 and imperfect stage of government, is yet, till govern- 
 ment has attained its higher stages of improved 
 responsibility, the only real remedy against the in- 
 evitable abuses of power in the hands of subordinate 
 agents. As all these letters were called for by special 
 cases — by reports, complaints, appeals, petitions for 
 grants — ^they throw such a light on the actual working 
 of the machine of government as no general account 
 of the time, even if such existed, could supply. They 
 show very close attention to the current business and 
 wants of the kingdom ; they show the kind of diffi- 
 culties and questions which arose where the old and 
 the new were daily meeting, and the ambitious and 
 sanguine German was trying to infuse new life into 
 the exhausted and damaged frame of Italian civilisa- 
 tion, both in its rural and its civic forms. And 
 though they only show us part of what was going on 
 under the Gothic rule, and show it as through the 
 eyes of an Italian who was the devoted servant of the 
 barbarian king, they leave the impression of remark- 
 able industry, good sense, and honesty in administer- 
 ing the State, and of a sincere attempt to repair the 
 ruins which war and misgovemment had made in 
 Italy. "Nos, quibus cordi est in melius cuncta 
 mutare,"^ was no idle boast, whether applied to what 
 Cassiodorus calls the " tellus naufraga " of the stagnant 
 ' ii. 21 ; of. iii. 31. 
 
CASSIODOEUS 191 
 
 and useless marshes of Spoleto, or to the still more 
 truly " shipwrecked land " which once had been the 
 seat of the empire of the world. 
 
 Two features are very characteristic of these curious 
 letters. One is, as has been already noticed, the style. 
 They belong, as every one knows, to a declining time 
 of Latin literature ; but yet it was a time when the 
 great models of Latin writing were still admired. 
 It was not so long ago since St. Augustine was writing 
 with wonderful force and command of the language, 
 and contemporaries of Cassiodorus, like Boethius, 
 though a long way from the classical writers in style 
 and vocabulary, were still writing clearly and un- 
 affectedly. But the first thing that strikes the reader 
 of Cassiodorus is his grandiloquence. He is a master 
 of what, we believe, is now called "high faluting." 
 The simplest orders must be given in strained and 
 pompous language : and as the words which he 
 chooses are frequently used with a turn and colour 
 not familiar in classical Latin, his instructions are 
 sometimes obscure and hard to construe. But it is 
 not the language only. His idea of an official docu- 
 ment, an appointment, an ordinary command, a set 
 of instructions, is the oddest conceivable. He always, 
 or almost always, begins with a general maxim, frOm 
 the truth and importance of which he deduces the 
 particular , order which he has to convey; and he 
 usually clenches the order with another generahty 
 Thus;!— 
 
 1 ii. 23. 
 
192 CASSIODOEDS 
 
 To Ampelius, Despotius, and Th-eodulus, senators, 
 King Theodoric. 
 
 It becomes tlie disoipliae of our time that tliey who 
 give themselves to what is useful to the public should not 
 be hindered with unnecessary burdens. Nor is it fitting 
 that any one's ill-will should prejudice our customary 
 arrangements. Wherefore apply your industry strenu- 
 ously to the potteries granted you by royal authority ; 
 and fear not that you can be transferred to other employ- 
 ments, considering that we hardly believe that you can 
 accomplish what is at present enjoined on you. There 
 shall be an end, then, once for all, to the wicked inter- 
 ference of bad men, and our authority shall bring to 
 nought the success of obscure intrigues. For he hates 
 in vain, against whom the clemency of the prince presents 
 its shield. 
 
 This is a type of numberless letters. Never was 
 an official in his public correspondence so " full of -wise 
 saws and modern instances," brought from every 
 department of nature, history, and literature. The 
 king gives leave to the sons of Ecdicius,^ who want 
 to attend their father's funeral, to be absent from 
 Rome : for Theodoric was very strict in not allowing 
 Romans of rank to leave Rome without reason or for 
 an indefinite time, it being a great point with him 
 to keep up the population and the attractions of the 
 capital. 2 But his secretary is not content with simply 
 giving the permission ; he gives in antithetic sentences 
 the reasons for paying the last honours to the dead. 
 
 Mourning is inconsolable when we may not be present 
 at the burial of our dead ; for a man never can forgive 
 
 '■ ii. 22. 2 e.g. iv. 48. 
 
CASSIODOETTS 193 
 
 himself who has not paid due honour to their ashes. 
 With what a ransom did not Priam redeem Hector 1 He 
 besought AchiUes in the height of his wrath : he knelt 
 before him armed as he was ; he preferred to risk his 
 own life to defrauding the corpse of its due. 
 
 Again, he orders the execution of some slaves who 
 had killed their master and left him unburied. He 
 enlarges on the atrocity of their crime, and he pro- 
 ceeds to compare human beings with vultures, very 
 much to the disadvantage of the former. 
 
 Alas ! alas ! kindness is found in ■ birds of the air 
 which is forgotten by mankind. The vulture itself, 
 which lives on the corpses of the dead, this huge creature 
 is known not to molest the smaller birds, but when the 
 hawk attacks the life of the feathered race the vulture 
 smites it with its wings, tears it with its beak, and with 
 all its force tries to help those in danger. And these 
 men cannot spare one whom they know to be their fellow- 
 man ! The vulture will not kill in order that it may 
 feed ; these servants chose to kill him who in his lifetime 
 had been wont to feed them. Let him, then, become the 
 repast of the pious vulture who had the heart so cruelly 
 to wish for the death of the shepherd. It is well that 
 he should be allotted such a sepulchre, who caused his 
 master to be without burial.i 
 
 But he has a still more curious habit. He is 
 always ready to turn a purely business letter on the 
 most matter-of-fact subject into a regular dissertation 
 on physics, mechanics, philosophy, or history. Thus 
 he has to write in the king's name to Boethius, in- 
 forming him that the chiefs of the bodyguard have 
 1 ii. 19. 
 
194 OASSIODOEUS 
 
 sent in a joint complaint to the king that their pay 
 was given them in coin which was under weight, and 
 commanding Boethius to see that so serious and so 
 dangerous a malpractice was set right. ^ But then 
 the secretary makes the king go off into a long series 
 of reflections on the properties and value of the art 
 of arithmetic — "Jmc quce appellatur arithmetica, inter 
 amMgita miindi certissima ratione consistit " — and from 
 this, into considerations on the importance of true 
 weights and measures. These sentences and maxims 
 are often vigorous and striking enough, hut they 
 have obviously nothing to do with the real business 
 of the. letter; they are grotesque when imagined in 
 the mouth of the Gothic king, and it is too plain 
 that they are simply put in to show off the secretary's 
 varied knowledge and power of fine writing. Another 
 letter of the same kind, also to Boethius, tells him 
 that Gundibald, King of the Burgundians, had asked 
 Theodoric to send him a water-clock ; and Boethius 
 is requested to apply his renowned mechanical skill 
 to its construction.^ All this is spun out into a long 
 epistle. The policy of Theodoric suggests that the 
 neighbouring kings should be kept in good humour 
 by compliance with their requests for presents — toys 
 and mechanical inventions — which in Italy every one 
 is familiar with, but which abroad among Burgundians 
 and such hke are miraculous.^ Then Boethius's 
 
 ' i- 10. 2 i. 45, 46. 
 
 ^ " Spernenda non sunt quse a vieinis regibus prEesumptionis 
 gratia postulantur ; dum plerumijue res parvae plus prevalent 
 
CASSIODOEUS 195 
 
 learning and scientific attainments are set forth, and 
 the marvels which physical science has achieved are 
 enumerated with as much enthusiasm as they might 
 be by a modern lecturer, in a catalogue' which, though 
 indistinct from the poetical terms employed, contains 
 some curious details of the application of chemical 
 and mechanical arts. And then after some rather 
 fine bursts about the victories of science over nature 
 ^"o artis insestimabilis virtus, quae dum se dicit 
 ludere, naturae prsevalet secreta vulgare;" or again, 
 
 praestare quam magnae possunt obtinere divitise. Frequenter 
 enim quod arma explere nequeunt, obleotamenta suavitatis 
 imponunt. Sit ergo pro republica et cum ludere Tideainur. 
 Nam ideo voluptiiosa quaerimus, ut per ipsa seria compleamus. 
 Bnrgundionum itaque Dominus a nobis magnopere postnlavit 
 ut horologium . . . ei transmittere deberemus . . . Quod nobis 
 est quotidianum, lllis videtur esse miraculum." The two 
 letters are curious. Tbeir tone about the Burgundians is that 
 of a civilised European talking of a king and people of Siam 
 or Ashantee : " Agnoscant per te exterae gentes, tales nos habere 
 nobiles, quales leguntur auctores. Quoties non sunt credituri 
 quod viderint ; quoties banc veritatem Insoria somnia putabunt ? 
 et quando fuerint a stupore conversi, non audebunt se aeqnales 
 nobis dioere, apud quos sciunt sapientes talia cogitasse." The 
 tone to the Burgundian king is that of a patronising invitation 
 to appreciate the inventions of Gothic and Eoman civilisation : 
 "Habetotein vestra patria, quod aliquandovidistis [e.gi. in 473, 
 when Gundibald named Glyoerius emperor] in civitate Romana. 
 . . . Discat sub vobis Burgundia res subtilissimas inspicere, 
 et antiquorum inventa laudare, per quos propositum gentile 
 deponit." And then the advantages to Burgundy of having 
 a. Horologiii/m are set forth: "Distinguat spatia diei, actibus 
 suis horarum aptissime momenta constituat. Ordo vitae con- 
 fusus agitur, si talis diacretio sub veritate noseitur. Belluarum 
 quippe ritns est ex ventris esurie boras sentire." 
 
196 CASSIODOEUS 
 
 " mechanicus, si fas est dicere, pene socius est natwrce, 
 occulta reserans, manifesta convertens, miraculis 
 ludens " — sentences whicli have a Baconian ring about 
 them — Boethius is instructed to make the clock. 
 
 The other feature to be noticed is equally charac- 
 teristic of the time and of the man. Several of these 
 letters are about Cassiodorus himself, or addressed 
 to him by the king.^ If these letters were merely 
 instructions oflScially directed to him about the busi- 
 ness of his department, such as two letters from one 
 of Theodoric's successors, Theodahad,^ about the 
 regulations of the market and trades, there would 
 be nothing extraordinary in ■ the minister himself 
 drawing up the orders on which he was to act. But 
 the letters referred to are much more than this. They 
 are letters written in the king's name by Cassiodorus 
 himself, about himself, and to himself — letters of 
 highest commendation, full of unstinted praise of his 
 qualities and services, and supplying us with a full and 
 eulogistic account of his career and employments. The 
 fashion of a man puffing himself is an old one, and is 
 not likely in any age to become obsolete. We have 
 heard of distinguished authors reviewing their own 
 books, and of a popular divine announcing himself, 
 in a communication traced to his own pen, as "the 
 
 1 ix. 24, 25 ; i. 3, 4 ; iii. 28. It is possible that the letters 
 in book i. and iii., addressed to Cassiodorus " the Fatricmn," 
 may have been, as Clinton thinks, addressed to his father. He 
 never enumerates the Patrioiat among his own dignities. But 
 those in book ix. are certainly addressed to himself. 
 
 2 ix. 27, 28. 
 
CASSIODOEUS 197 
 
 great and good " ; but this was veiled under a modest 
 reserve. There is no concealment about Cassiodorus. 
 With the utmost simplicity and frankness he intro- 
 duces these specimens of laboured eloquence and 
 historical panegyric on himself, composed by himself, 
 into the collection which he himself publishes. It is, 
 no doubt, a trait of the man's natural vanity, which 
 comes out with equal distinctness in the display which 
 he everywhere makes of his literary accomplishments. 
 But the unsuspicious openness of the self-glorification 
 of Cassiodorus seems to belong to the time. He 
 obviously thought there was nothing to be shy about 
 or to be ashamed of. The habit of panegyrics, culti- 
 vated in the Eoman schools and practised in the 
 Eoman assemblies, the taste for it, and the prevalent 
 idea that this was the great use of artificial eloquence, 
 had deadened men's sense of the becoming. Men 
 who were vying with one another in strained and 
 extravagant praises of others, naturally came to think 
 that this was the natural mode of expressing their 
 fair sense of their own claims and merits. It was 
 the way, at which his age at least would not be 
 shocked, of putting on record services which really 
 were valuable and unwearied, the opinion which 
 Theodoric had of him, and the free and confidential 
 relations between the Gothic king and his Italian 
 minister. But one would like to know what were 
 Theodoric's thoughts, and perhaps comments, when 
 Cassiodorus read over to him the letters about Cas- 
 siodorus which were to go out in thegreat "Barbarian's" 
 
198 CASSIODOEUS 
 
 name. Probably most of their eloquence was lost 
 upon him. 
 
 Gibbon, of course, sHeers at Cassiodorus. He 
 might, perhaps, have had an instinct that the palpable 
 faults of Cassiodorus were, in exaggeration and cari- 
 cature, just the faults with which his own manner 
 of writing was reproached. But with all these faults 
 the collection is invaluable. It is one of the most 
 varied and lifelike pictures of the daily march of a 
 real administration in a very dim and distant time 
 which we possess. What would we give if Augustus 
 or Trajan had had a Cassiodorus, a secretary who 
 preserved his despatches and records on passing 
 emergencies as well as on large questions of policy. 
 The interest of some of Pliny's letters shows what the 
 value of such records would be. And the collection 
 of Cassiodorus refers to a very critical and important 
 period in the history of Italy and Christendom. It 
 was the meeting point of two great tendencies, and 
 Theodoric's great attempt was to reconcile and 
 harmonise them. He was not going to give up his 
 German sympathies, his German habits of thought, 
 the conviction that the Germans were the stronger, 
 nobler, greater race, the national consciousness that 
 led him. to take the position of the elder brother 
 among his wilder and less instructed and ruder 
 brethren, the kings of the Franks, and Visigoths, and 
 Burgundians, and Vandals, and Herules. But he saw 
 and valued what they knew nothing about except to 
 despise it : all that Eome had done and had won for 
 
CASSIODORTJS 199 
 
 the good order, the peace, the growing welfare, of 
 human life. Without giving up or imperilling the 
 interests of his own great race, he wanted to pre- 
 serve this. He did more; he wanted to make it, 
 as far as it was useful, the possession and heritage 
 of his people. He wanted to educate his Goths, not 
 in Latin customs and elegancies and softnesses, but 
 in the Latin value for law and justice, for settled 
 life, for husbandry, for building ; and ultimately he 
 hoped, by protecting the weaker but subtler Latins 
 without allowing them any dangerous superiority, to 
 fuse the two races into a new nation with the old 
 name of Eoman. This was his aim and line of work, 
 not the same, but in part coincident with that of 
 those Italians who are represented by Cassiodorus, 
 and of whom there were certainly not a few ^ — men 
 who thought it best for Italy frankly and in good 
 faith to co-operate with Theodoric in his evident 
 efforts after conciliation, justice, and general improve- 
 ment. But to them their great interest was in what 
 had come down from the great times of the Empire. 
 Their aim and hope was still to keep Italy Italian, 
 and to make the Goths, as Theodoric professed, 
 Romans. They naturally put their experience to 
 account in carrying out Theodoric's policy, and sought 
 
 1 See the striking account of Liberius, first under Odoacer, 
 then under Theodoric, ii. 16 : "Flexo jam pene domino [Odo- 
 acer], nuUis est terroribus inclinatus ; sustinuit immobilis 
 ruinam principis sui ; neo noTitas Olum turbare potuit, quam 
 etiam ferocitas gentilis expavit. Probavimus hominis fidem : 
 tristis ad jura nostra traiisivit." 
 
200 OASSIODOETTS 
 
 to help him, in their own interest as much as in his. 
 And in such a monument as the Varies of Cassiodorus 
 we see the desperate efforts of Italian nationality to save 
 what could be saved in the wreck and confusion of the 
 "naufraga tellus.'' We see in the literary colour, as 
 well as in the political earnestness of Theodoric's 
 minister, the agonised and convulsive grasp at the 
 fragments of departing culture and organisation amid 
 the destructive and unknown forces of the revolution 
 which was running its course. Theodoric hoped to 
 have directed and shaped it, to have controlled its 
 fierceness, to have averted its dangers. He had 
 the idea of a new, a revived, a united Italy. And 
 it might have been, if what he began had been 
 carried on. But it was not to be. He died and left 
 anarchy in the young and unripe kingdom. Then 
 came Belisarius and Narses. After them came the 
 Lombards. After the Lombards came the Franks. 
 And then the destiny of Italy during the Middle 
 Ages was decided. There was to be no such Italy as 
 Theodoric imagined yet. 
 
 The letters of Cassiodorus, besides the light which 
 they throw on the public history of his time, are a 
 storehouse of curious and authentic information on 
 the condition of Italy and its social state ; the ways 
 of everyday life, the productions, the industries, the 
 tastes and fashions of its people. These glimpses 
 of real life come from Cassiodorus's very unbusiness- 
 like and very absurd way of writing ; he never can 
 resist the temptation to tack on a description, more 
 
CASSIODOEUS 201 
 
 or less elaborate, to a despatch or an order. Thus he 
 has to protect the inhabitants of Como, a town which 
 lay at the junction of many roads, from the excessive 
 burdens required of them in the service of the posts ; 
 and to this we owe a very interesting picture of the 
 town and lake as they appeared to him.^ He orders 
 a sum of money to be paid for the supply of paper to 
 the public ofB.ces; and on this he takes the oppor- 
 tunity to write at large about the use and the manu- 
 facture of paper at his time.^ It was part of his 
 business to stock the royal cellar, and to cater for 
 the royal buttery and cheese-room; he has to send 
 orders to the landed gentry of Verona to provide 
 certain wines to be purchased for the royal table, ^ 
 to the Chancellor of Lucania to forward with all 
 speed a supply of Brutian wine and cheese from the 
 Calabrian Sila, of the quality which, when put before 
 the king from his secretary's own cellars, had greatly 
 pleased the taste of the Rerum Dominus ; and on this 
 we get an interesting though very irrelevant little 
 lecture on the character of the wines then in fashion, 
 and on the qualities which then made good cheese — ■ 
 its oiliness, its sweetness, its smell of aromatic herbs.* 
 He writes to exempt the territory of Ehegium from 
 the obligation of supplying so much wheat and lard ; 
 the exception is grounded on the nature of its soil, 
 suited not to corn and pasture, but to vineyards and 
 spade husbandry; and then we have an account of 
 its market gardens and its choice fish. In his char- 
 1 xi. 14. ^ xi. 38. ^ xii. 4. • xii. 12. 
 
202 CASSIODOEUS 
 
 acter as Praetorian Praefect he writes to order the 
 chancellor of the province to put an end to some 
 oppressive exactions in the shape of purveyance and 
 judicial fees, of which the people of Scyllacium — 
 Squillace — complained ; ■'^ and this gives him the 
 opportunity of describing the beauty and the fine 
 climate of the district, a region where his own patri- 
 mony was situated, and where he afterwards founded 
 the monastic and literary retreat in which he ended 
 his days.^ Another letter describes the repairs neces- 
 sary for the Flaminian Way ^ in an order to get the 
 road ready for the passage of the army; another 
 gives directions for the construction of a wooden 
 bridge over the Tiber for the king's entry into Eome ; ^ 
 another, in an order to send wine and oil by sea from 
 Istria, puts before us the barge navigation of the 
 north of Italy,^ by craft that were at once, like some 
 of our London barges, canal boats and sea-going 
 vessels. The correspondents of Cassiodorus must, 
 
 1 xii. 15. 
 
 ^ The double monastery, Vivariense and Castelliense, one 
 for ccenobites, the other for hermits, of which he has left a 
 description [Div. Litt. c. 29), and where he intended that learn- 
 ing, both classical and theological, should find a. refuge. He 
 had attempted to found schools like those of Alexandria at Eome 
 in conjunction with Pope Agapetus (635-536), but the wars 
 wrecked his plans {Div. Litt. Praf.) Why do the articles in 
 Dr. Smith's Dictionaries of Biography speak of the " Monaster- 
 ium Tivariense" as " Vimers," as if it was in France, and not 
 in Italy ? The name answers to that of an English training 
 college, "Fish-ponds," near Bristol. 
 
 ' xii. 18. ^ xii. 19. ^ xii. 24. 
 
CASSIODOEUS 203 
 
 we should suppose, have thought him the most tire- 
 some of bores; but for us he preserves sketches of 
 the goings on of his time, full of colour and life, 
 which we might look for in vain elsewhere. 
 
 Cassiodorus continued in ofi&ce after the death of 
 his great master (526), and served his successors, 
 Amalasuntha and her son, the boy-king Athalaric, 
 her base murderer, Theodahad, and her avenger, 
 Vitiges. Letters written in the name of Vitiges 
 (536-540), and written apparently early in his short 
 reign, are the last State papers which he has inserted 
 in his collection. He probably retired about this 
 time to his monastery near Squillace, to spend his 
 last days in devotion and literary pursuits, in the 
 study of Scripture, in the composition of elementary 
 treatises, meant to be useful to the ill-educated people 
 round him, in the multiplication of copies of books 
 and the formation of an instructive library. He saw 
 the overthrow of the Goths; he probably heard of 
 the advent of the Lombards. With all his faults, he 
 was a man who redeemed his age from the imputation 
 of want of public spirit, of stupid and inert selfishness, 
 of coarse ignorance. So important a collection as 
 that of his "various" letters deserves a better and 
 more helpful edition than we yet possess of it. If 
 our Universities are too busy for such tasks, we 
 must hope that the distinguished German scholars 
 who are at work on the Monumenta Historica Ger- 
 manice, who have given us such admirable specimens 
 of their work in Waltz's Scriptores Rerum Langobardi- 
 
204 CASSIODOEUS 
 
 carum, in the editions of Salviwn, Victor Fttensis, 
 Eugippius, and others, and who are preparing an 
 edition of Jordanes, and are said to be contemplat- 
 ing one of the letters of Gregory the Great, will in 
 due time take in hand the important and not very 
 easy work of editing, as they ought to be edited, both 
 as to text and elucidations, the letters of the Italian 
 secretary of the greatest of early Italian kings. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGOEY I^ 
 
 [Apeil 1881] 
 
 We have called attention to the light thrown by the 
 letters and despatches of Cassiodorus on the political 
 and social life of Italy, in its details and daily course, 
 when the German invaders first appeared there as 
 masters and settlers, and the struggle began, in 
 numberless and varied points all over the peninsula, 
 between their customs and spirit and the strong but 
 damaged fabric of Roman civilisation. The collection 
 of Cassiodorus shows this, under the wise and gene- 
 rally benignant policy of Theodoric, and when the 
 forces and habits which had for centuries governed 
 life under the Empire, though for the moment sur- 
 prised and shaken, had in no way lost their sway 
 on the imagination and faith of the population. The 
 campaigns of Belisarius and Narses seemed to show 
 what power was still left in the Roman Empire. 
 These great captains, with armies recruited from the 
 steppes of Scythia and the Isaurian highlands, tore 
 
 1 Gregory the Great. By the Rev. J. Bakmbt, B.D., Vicar 
 of Pittington, late Principal of Bishop Hatfield Hall, Durham, 
 and formerly Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. (London : 
 1879.) 
 
206 THE LETTEES OF POPE GEEGORY I 
 
 the great prize of the Italian cities and provinces out 
 of the obstinate grip of the Germans, and for a few 
 years held it fast. But there was nothing solid in 
 the deliverance. It was not to restore the dominion 
 of the world to Rome and Italy, but to recover a lost 
 jewel for the crown worn by Greeks at Constantinople. 
 Belisarius won back the great prefecture of Italy, as 
 he had won back the great prefecture opposite — of 
 Africa ; both of them territories necessary to a power 
 which, like that of Constantinople, meant to command 
 the Mediterranean. But all this was transient. That 
 which was to be the long fate of Italy had begun. 
 The condition of things mirrored in the letters of 
 Cassiodorus was continued and fixed in a permanent 
 and aggravated form under the dominion of the 
 Lombards. Never more for centuries was she to 
 shake off her northern masters — 
 
 Per servir aempre, o vincitrice, o vinta. 
 
 But besides the State papers of Cassiodorus there 
 is another series, really public ones even when 
 addressed to individuals, which is of the highest 
 importance to the knowledge of those critical times, 
 when the old world was slowly passing into the 
 modern world. These are the letters of the Popes. 
 These letters, in their genuine and in their forged 
 form, are the foundation of the Canon Law ; and to 
 the end of the fifth century, those genuine ones 
 which have come down to us are almost exclusively 
 of theological or ecclesiastical interest. But from the 
 
THE LETTERS OE POPE GEEGOEY I 207 
 
 time of Pope Gelasius (492-496), that is, from the 
 time of the first establishment of the northern 
 foreigners in Italy, these letters assume a business- 
 like character as well. They began, as a matter of 
 course, whether or not the writer was personally a 
 remarkable man, to be copied, as public records, into 
 registers in the Roman Chancery {scrinmm), and 
 preserved in the archives of the Lateran.'' They 
 have been frequently made into collections with 
 varying objects and varying completeness; they have 
 been recently calendared with admirable care by 
 Jaff6, Pothast, and P. Ewald ; but they have yet to 
 be fully gathered together, arranged and critically 
 edited with due knowledge and skill. When this is 
 done they will present a picture of the daily goings 
 on, the daily purposes and conflicts, the daily troubles 
 and diflBculties of Italian life, as important though, 
 perhaps, not so varied as the papers of Cassiodorus. 
 Among these documents stands out pre-eminently 
 the Registrum, or letter -book, of Gregory the Great 
 (590-604). 
 
 A glance at this collection is sufficient to show 
 that it was something new, in its magnitude and its 
 variety of subjects. If any one will compare with it, 
 in Jaffa's book, the abstracts of the letters of Leo, of 
 Gelasius, of Vigilius, of the first and second Pelagius, 
 some of the busiest among Gregory's predecessors, 
 the difiference will be seen. The letters are much 
 
 i Ewald in Neues ArcUv, vol. v. p. 609. {Uher Diumus, 
 ed. De Rozlfere, pp. ix., xxv.) 
 
208 THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGOEY I 
 
 fewer ; and they relate mainly to the internal concerns 
 of the Church, as a religious society. This is especi- 
 ally the case with the largest and most important 
 collection, that of the letters of Pope Leo. But when 
 we come to Gregory's Begistrum, the theological 
 element, though not absent, contracts itself into a 
 much smaller space. Matters of Church government 
 and discipline, of social morality and order, are 
 prominent. But secular questions in great variety, 
 such as might engage the attention of a conscientious 
 and just landlord, a vigilant and beneficent head of a 
 civil department, or a public-spirited and large- 
 hearted minister, occupy even more space in it, and 
 show how large a part the Pope was beginning to 
 take in the political and temporal business of Italy. 
 It is this preponderance of administrative activity 
 which gives a character to the letters of Gregory the 
 Great, and makes them so important in illustrating 
 the history of his age and country. But the collection 
 has a further interest. The history of forsaken and 
 helpless Italy, abandoned by the Empire to which it 
 had given birth, and, after having been for ages the 
 flower and glory of the world, the chosen and privi- 
 leged home of luxury and power, delivered over 
 defenceless to the barbarians, to be dealt with at 
 their insolent pleasure, is perhaps the most pathetic 
 spectacle to be found in history of a fallen nation ; 
 and the piercing and expressive sense of this degrada- 
 tion thrills through every line of Gregory's letters.^ 
 ' " We," writes Gregory in his earliest letters, "who ahroad 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 209 
 
 We see in them the evidence of one of those times 
 of apparent chaos, when the power and hope of 
 remedy, of repair, of resource, seem exhausted among 
 men. But those times of chaos are only apparent ; 
 there is always something forming, organising itself, 
 growing under them. And the special interest of 
 Gregory's letters is that, amid the desolations of Italy 
 and these wails of despair, in this record of lamenta- 
 tion and mourning and woe, they exhibit in the 
 clearest and most instructive way the nascent Papacy 
 of the Middle Ages : the early steps by which the 
 Primacy of St. Leo, the head of the hierarchy of the 
 early times, Primus inter pares among the great 
 Patriarchs of the undivided Church, developed into 
 the administrative all-controlling monarchy of Gregory 
 VII., Innocent III., and Boniface VIII. And they 
 show not only the steps by which it took shape and 
 became established; they show it was a necessary 
 and inevitable consequence of the conditions of the 
 time. 
 
 The events of the sixth century had, on the whole, 
 consolidated the Empire in the East. But in the 
 West these events had broken up society, and left it 
 to re-form itself round new centres of authority. 
 
 meet everywhere the stab of the foeman's sword, at home have 
 to face the mutiny of our defenders;" "you," contrasting the 
 position of his brother Patriarch at Constantinople, "who stand 
 afar off from the confusion of tribulation, which we suffer in 
 this land." — Ep. i. 3, 4. See in his Homilies on Ezekiel, ii. 6. 
 22-24, on the ruin of the "Lady of the World," " Mundi 
 Domina." 
 
 P 
 
210 THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGOET I 
 
 And they had left Italy, especially, the most dis- 
 organised province of the Empire. Nobody knew to 
 whom it belonged. In Gaul, in Spain, in Africa, in 
 Britain, there had been ruin and change ; but no one 
 doubted who was master. Not so in Italy. There 
 had been a Teutonic kingdom in Italy, taking the 
 place of the Latin rule. But it had passed away, and 
 at the end of the century the " times of the Goths " ^ 
 were only talked of with other things of the past. 
 And now, who ruled Italy? The great Csesar far 
 away never ceased, of course, to claim its allegiance ; 
 but his interest in it was like the interest of the 
 present Ottomans in Arabia and Egypt, and his hold 
 on it was of the same kind. He had garrisons in 
 Eavenna, in Rome, in Naples ; certain formal points 
 of etiquette towards him were exacted or kept up by 
 custom, more or less regularly; when he could, he 
 levied money ; but the country, as a whole, was left 
 to itself. The Lombards — so we call them for con- 
 venience, though the name was yet unknown, and 
 the Langobardi and Lombards were as different from 
 one another as the Franks and the French — had come 
 down in strength, and shown their purpose to remain. 
 They had seized a number of important cities, and 
 went on, as opportunity offered, to threaten and 
 attempt others. But they were balancing between a 
 centralised kingship and their primitive arrangement 
 of independent " dukedoms " ; and they had not yet 
 made up their minds to exchange the roving and 
 1 Greg. Dialogues, passim ; Ep. iv. 19. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGGEY I 211 
 
 buccaneering habits of a predatory horde for the 
 settled life and ease to which their conquests invited 
 them, but which also involved the restraints which 
 necessarily fall on dwellers in cities. At Pavia and 
 Monza they were beginning to build churches and 
 palaces ; meanwhile, their bands were stiU wandering 
 over Italy, wasting farms, surprising towns, cutting 
 off heads, or driving their captives in leash, "like 
 dogs," under the walls of Eome.-' The Exarch and 
 his master were not strong enough to check or punish 
 them ; the Lombards were not strong enough to 
 chase the Exarch from Ravenna, or the Latin garrison 
 from Rome. They fixed themselves in centres of 
 devastation at Spoleto or Benevento; not masters 
 themselves, but allowing no one else to be master. 
 The municipalities of Italy had long been sinking 
 under the weight of the taxes, and now they knew 
 that there was no government to care for them or 
 protect them. Where they were not ruined they 
 yielded more and more to that tendency to isolation, 
 which has ever since been so marked a feature in 
 Italian civil life. There was nothing to bind them 
 to a common country, where the representatives of 
 the central authority came only to fleece and oppress 
 them. Crowds of proprietors and town councillors 
 pressed into the clergy or into the monasteries, not 
 from love of a religious life, but to escape the re- 
 
 1 See Ep. ii. 46 (a. 592); Ep. v. 40 (595): "Ita ut oculis 
 meis cernerem Eomanos more canum in collis funibus ligatos, 
 qui ad Franciam ducebantur venales." 
 
212 THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 
 
 spoBsibilities of citizens; and order after order had 
 to be issued by the authorities, both of the Church 
 and of the State, that such candidates were to be 
 rigorously excluded, unless it was quite clear that 
 their impoverished and burdened fellow-citizens had 
 no claim on them, either in respect of the obligations 
 of office, or their share of the public taxes. Rome 
 itself was as much perplexed as the rest of Italy as to 
 whom it belonged : whether the feeble and often 
 mutinous garrison which the Emperor kept there 
 meant that he cared little about maintaining it in its 
 old dignity; whether the presence of an imperial 
 officer, and the infrequent and chiefly complimentary 
 communications which passed between the old and 
 new Eome, signified anything more than the unwill- 
 ingness of a court to give up nominal claims ; whether 
 the withdrawal of all substantial honours and sub- 
 stantial assistance did not leave Rome free to think 
 exclusively of its own interests ; whether it was worth 
 while, or whether the Emperor had any right, to 
 keep up any tie at all between Rome and a distant 
 and alien government, a government in the hands of 
 despised and detested Greeks. Rome, with its 
 immense pretensions and wonderful memories, could 
 neither yield to the Lombard, nor keep him at bay, 
 nor render any cheerful and honest allegiance to 
 Caesars who had despoiled her of that by which alone 
 the Caesars had become great. 
 
 Constantine's policy has been extolled for its 
 wisdom in transplanting the seat of empire from the 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 213 
 
 Tiber to the Bosporus. Byzantium, in such an empire 
 as that of the Csesars had become, was more central 
 than Eome ; and for commerce, for defence, for the 
 beauty and magnificence of a capital, it was as much 
 above the old seat of the Republic, as it was more 
 convenient for the transaction of business, for ad- 
 ministration, government, and conquest. Eome was 
 an accidental site ; no one would have chosen it as a 
 capital for its own sake among the cities of Italy. 
 Constantinople was one deliberately selected by a 
 far-sighted wisdom, out of all that the Empire had 
 to offer. But Constantine made one oversight; at 
 least he made one mistake, and it was to the objects 
 of his policy and the unity of the Empire a fatal one. 
 He forgot, when he transferred the throne of Augustus 
 to Byzantium, that he left behind him at Eome, con- 
 secrated and justified by the matchless history of a 
 thousand years, jealousies which were unappeasable, 
 and hatreds that nothing could wear out. When he 
 erected a new capital he ought to have destroyed the 
 old one, and passed the ploughshare over it, as Totila 
 the Goth meant to do. In those days it would not 
 have been impossible if he had had the courage. 
 " Like Thebes, or Babylon, or Carthage," writes 
 Gibbon, " the name of Eome might have been erased 
 from the earth, if the city had not been animated by 
 a vital principle, which again restored her to honour 
 and dominion." But the sanctity of Christian Eome 
 was not greater than that of Jerusalem, and Con- 
 stantinople had been made to take precedence of 
 
214 THE LETTEES OF POPE GREGOKY I 
 
 Jerusalem ; and Constantine, if he were to perfect his 
 work, should have given to the population of Eome, 
 to its nobility, to its clergy, new homes and new 
 interests, and left its ruins to the advancing fevers of 
 the Campagna. At the beginning of the fourth 
 century, even the Bishop of Eome would hardly have 
 been an insuperable obstacle to the completeness of 
 the change. "Whether the world would have been a 
 gainer by such a unity of empire is another question, 
 and one on which it is idle to speculate. But it is as 
 certain as anything can be, that by leaving Eome 
 standing, in its decayed majesty and unabated pre- 
 tensions, Constantine made inevitable one great 
 calamity of European history, the disruption and the 
 antipathies of East and West ; and by leaving on the 
 spot, as the sole representative of those Imperial ideas 
 and claims which never died at Rome, one who could 
 invest them with a new and diviner sanctity, he also 
 made inevitable the position, the pretensions, and the 
 theocratic monarchy, of the Popes. 
 
 For in the misery and confusion to which Italy 
 had been abandoned, the one survival of purpose and 
 governing capacity was in the Roman Church. Great 
 by the necessities of the case; great by religious 
 tradition; great by political position; great by the 
 divisions of the Church, which needed an arbiter, 
 and sought the most highly placed ; great by increas- 
 ing pretensions readily made and readily or lightly 
 allowed ; great equally in the name of the Apostles 
 and of the Csesars, the Roman Church, amid all the 
 
THE LETTEES OF POPE GREGOKY I 215 
 
 accumulations of misfortune which fell on the city, 
 only grew stronger and greater by the destruction of 
 every rival authority within it. In this way the dis- 
 crownment of the "Lady of Kingdoms," in favour of 
 her eastern rival, had saved the Eoman Church. In 
 this way the ravages of Alaric and Genseric had 
 rendered more conspicuous the strength of that in- 
 stitution which ruled with undiminished loftiness 
 amid the tremendous ruin which they had made. 
 The temper, the obstinacy, the "high stomach" of 
 the old senate had passed into the clergy who sur- 
 rounded the Roman Patriarch at the Lateran, or 
 before the tombs of the Apostles. With the exception 
 of St. Leo, the early Popes have not much distinctness 
 of personal character ; but they were the heads, the 
 representatives, the organs of a body which had in- 
 herited and sedulously cherished all that was left of 
 Eoman firmness, of Roman sense of dignity, and of 
 Roman traditions of policy and action. They kept it 
 all, undismayed and unflinching, till the evil day came 
 when, except among them, Roman strength, Roman 
 organisation, Roman tenacity had perished. Then, 
 among these ecclesiastics and their chiefs, and these 
 only, were to be found an intelligent estimate of the 
 difficulties of the time, a clear perception and steady 
 pursuit of objects and aims, the unshaken faith in a 
 great cause, courage, counsel, sympathy, public spirit ; 
 allegiance, always professed, and often really paid, 
 through all disappointments, to justice and purity; 
 the conviction that in the end, though perhaps not 
 
216 THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGOEY I 
 
 here, right must triumph, and wrong meet its reward. 
 In a blind and fainting world, given over to violence, 
 and cut loose from all order and law, immensa mortal- 
 itatis vastitas,^ we can hardly imagine now what it 
 must have been to have had such a stay to lean 
 upon, such a refuge to fly to for comfort, protection, 
 guidance. It is not wonderful that the claims of the 
 Roman Church to govern men were magnified. It 
 is not wonderful that they were allowed. For who 
 was there to do it better 1 
 
 And when all this came to be represented, not by 
 average men, but by one in whom all its characteristic 
 features were embodied in a high degree, the effect, 
 not merely at the moment, but permanently, was 
 greatly increased. And this was what happened 
 when Gregory became Pope. In the public history 
 of the time, as a man in high place, he stands in the 
 sharpest contrast to every one round him. And he 
 stands in almost as sharp a contrast to almost all his 
 predecessors. We know a great deal more about him 
 than about most of them ; but the reason probably is 
 that he did more, and there was more to preserve 
 about him. 
 
 Of this remarkable person we do not pretend in 
 this paper to give an account. Besides being a Pope 
 and a public man, he was a theologian and a Church 
 reformer, to whose influence and to whose ideas the 
 public worship of the West owes in a great degree 
 its forms, its language, and its music. He leads the 
 1 Ep. xiii. 42. 
 
THE LETTERS OE POPE GEEGOEY I 217 
 
 van of the writers and doctors of the Middle Age. 
 There is a great gulf between him and St. Augustine ; 
 but he was next to St. Augustine as its teacher. His 
 works, the Dialogues, the Moralia on Job, the Sondlies 
 on EzeUel, the Bule of the Pastoral Care, stand second in 
 mediaeval libraries only to the works of St. Augustine. 
 But of all this we shall say nothing. In truth, an 
 adequate book on Gregory the Great, to whom 
 England and the English race owe so much, would 
 fiU an obvious void in our literature. Mr. Barmby, 
 in his little volume recently published by the Society 
 for Promoting Christian Knowledge, tells the story 
 with care and feeling. The chapter about him in 
 Dean Milman's Latin Christianity is picturesque and 
 comprehensive. There is a more elaborate work in 
 German by Lau.-^ But the whole subject, in its various 
 relations, is still an open one. The edition of Gregory's 
 Begistrum, promised by the editors of the new series 
 of the Monvmenta Germaniw,^ may, when it appears, 
 tempt some scholar to undertake the task. 
 
 Gregory, above all things, was a Eoman of the 
 Romans. His family was noble and rich, and counted 
 a Pope among its members two or three generations 
 back. He had grown up with the belief that the 
 world had never produced any race of men equal to 
 Eomans ; that, in spite of all their crimes and all their 
 degradation, they still remained the first and noblest 
 
 ^ Gfregor. I. der Orosse. G. 3. T. Lau ; Leips. 1845. See 
 also Hegel, Stddtemrfassung von Italien, I. ii. 1. 
 
 " Scriptores Berum Langobardicarum. Hannover. 1878, p. 524 
 
218 THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGOEY I 
 
 people on the earth ; they were the deposed lords of 
 mankind, justly abiding their punishment, but none 
 the less high above the instruments of their chastise- 
 ment, the barbarians and slaves who had risen in 
 rebellion against them, in their sense of what was 
 worthy of men, and in their capacity to rule men. 
 Churchman as he is, the first and greatest of his order, 
 yet the old proud word of Eome, which even in the 
 style of this time had survived imperialism, Bespublica, 
 name and thing, the sum of secular interests, with aU 
 their associations and all their duties, is as often in 
 his mouth as it was in the mouth of Cicero ; as it 
 might have been in the mouth of a statesman, if there 
 had been one in the West equal to the emergency. 
 The Greeks he hated and scorned. He disdained to 
 learn their language, though it must have been as 
 common in Eome as French is in London, and though 
 the greatest and most venerable portion of Christian 
 literature was Greek. He acquitted himself with 
 becoming dignity and self-respect, when he had to be 
 civil to the great authorities of the Empire, who were 
 Greek ; but national antipathy edged his dislike and 
 his sarcasm when he found himself in controversy 
 with a Patriarch of Constantinople, or protesting 
 against an Imperial edict. As for the German " long- 
 bearded " barbarians, the Lombards (as we call them 
 by anticipation, for Gregory knew not the softened 
 name), the faithless ruflSans who lorded it over a 
 superior race, he felt nothing but indignant loathing. 
 It was a popular belief, alluded to in Popes' letters 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GEBGOEY I 219 
 
 long after Gregory, that the Lombards were physically 
 unclean and offensive ; they certainly were so to all 
 his moral instincts ; they stank in his nostrils. Yet 
 the barbarians, in their own land and at a distance, 
 excited his interest, his compassion, his desire to be 
 their benefactor, lawgiver, and apostle. Gregory is 
 the one Pope of that time who shows the old Eoman 
 yearning for new realms to subject to the rule and 
 order of Eome. It was good for the world that the 
 limit of barbarism should be narrowed, and glorious 
 for the Master whom he served ; and he sent forth 
 Augustine and Mellitus to Britain, 'as the Caesars sent 
 forth Suetonius and Agricola. There is no one who 
 can with such justice be said to have been Ultimus 
 Eomanorum. He was one of the old stock by blood, 
 by character, by his faults and his greatness ; and no 
 one of the same type and combination of qualities 
 appears after him. 
 
 He was a man of his time. His sincere and fervent 
 religion was deeply affected by the superstitions of 
 his age. He was easily credulous of miracles, and 
 encouraged credulity round him. He believed that 
 there was virtue in filings from the Apostles' chains, 
 and bits of rag which had been passed over their 
 tombs ; and he sent such things as presents to dis- 
 tinguished ofiicers and barbarian kings.^ It is to be 
 feared that he was not always scrupulous in the 
 means which he took to make others believe what he 
 himself believed, and held to be most important and 
 1 Paul. Diac, Vit. Greg. c. 24 ; Ep. i. 30 ; iii. 33. 
 
220 THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 
 
 sacred. If the stories told by his biographers are 
 true/ he must sometimes have stooped to a conjurer's 
 trick to convince a gainsayer. He was, as was to be 
 expected, peremptory and stern in discipUne ; he was 
 sometimes severe and harsh. He was certainly severe 
 and unsparing to himself. During the whole of his 
 active life, he was never free from bodily suffering, 
 brought on probably by his austerities ; unable from 
 pain to stand or to sit, he transacted business, dictated 
 his letters, composed his religious treatises, and gave 
 his instructions in music, condemned by his infirmities 
 to the confinement of his couch. ^ Years after his 
 death they still showed in the Lateran palace the bed 
 on which he used to lie while giving his lessons in 
 chanting to his choir school, and the whip (Jlagellum) 
 with which " he used to threaten his boys '' during 
 the practice.' The example of St. Benedict, the great 
 reformer of religious life in Italy in the sixth century, 
 had profoundly impressed him. In contrast with the 
 contemplative asceticism of the East, and beyond mere 
 passive privations of appetite, Benedict of Nursia had 
 introduced into his model of Christian perfection, as 
 a primary and indispensable obligation, the character- 
 istic idea of severe manual labour, chiefly in connection 
 with the soil. It was a familiar idea to one belonging 
 to the labouring population of central Italy, the 
 
 ■■ Paul. Diac. u. 23. 
 
 ^ Paul. Diac. c. 15 ; and his letters, passim. 
 
 ^ Joaii. Diao. ii. 6 (882). " Sein Wille war stark genug, eine 
 ganze Welt vom Erankenbette aus zu regiereu." — Hegel, i. 164: ; 
 vide Ep. ix. 123. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGOET I 221 
 
 descendants of the toil-hardened Sabine and Marsian 
 farmers. It gave a thoroughly Latin colour and 
 direction to monasticism, and long determined its 
 course in the West ; and to Gregory, as to many of 
 his contemporaries, it made the monastic profession a 
 new reality, both in its form of self-denial, and inits 
 habits of practical utility and indefatigable labdur. 
 
 He was a Eoman in his sternness and determina- 
 tion, but he was an Italian in his tenderness, and he 
 was also an Italian in his humour. His letters break 
 out continually into a burst of grave playfulness, as 
 of a man who, suffering himself, and with much 
 suffering round him, could not help being amused by 
 what was grotesque and odd among the serious things 
 with which he had to deal. His famous string of 
 puns, about the English slaves, one following another 
 as they do in a punster's happy moment, is connected 
 with one of his most eventful resolutions, the mission 
 to England. He mingled his very southern exuberance 
 of complaint, in moments of distress and anxiety, and 
 the Scriptural phrases in which, after the fashion of 
 the time, he expressed it, with rough jokes against 
 himself. " Behold," he writes to the Emperor's sister, 
 lamenting his change of life and occupations when he 
 was made Pope, " behold, the Most Serene Lord, the 
 Emperor, has bidden a monkey to become a lion. He 
 may order the monkey to be called a lion, but even 
 his orders cannot make him one."^ So he writes to 
 a friend on the same occasion : " It is all very well 
 1 Ep. i. 5. 
 
222 THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGOEY I 
 
 to make the name the likeness of the thing, and to 
 turn neat sentences and pretty speeches in your letters, 
 and to call a monkey a lion ; but it is just the same 
 thing as we do when we call mangy puppies pards or 
 tigers."! The vein of pleasantry, generally in the 
 form of objurgation, which comes out in his letters, 
 is something of the same kind as the humour of Pio 
 Nono, and, like his, is sometimes savage. His 
 favourite, Peter the sub-deacon, his agent in Sicily 
 and the manager of the great Church estates, trusted 
 as he was, does not come off without an occasional 
 touch of his master's sarcasm.^ "I am very much 
 obliged to your solicitude about the order which I 
 gave you to retransmit my brother's money, and 
 which you have as entirely committed to oblivion as 
 if it had been something said about the meanest of 
 your own slaves. Now, at any rate, will — I cannot 
 say your Experience, but — your Negligence be good 
 enough to fulfil it." In another long letter of separate 
 directions, Peter is reminded, partly in jest and a good 
 deal in earnest, of his duties : — 
 
 I liear from Abbot Marinianns that the building in 
 the Prsetorian Monastery is not yet half done ; what shall 
 I say to this, but extol the ardour of your Experience ? 
 I hear, too, that you are quite aware that certain property 
 and several farms really belong to other people, but that 
 through the representations or the fear of some one or 
 other you are afraid to restore them. If you were really 
 a Christian, you would fear God's judgment more than 
 men's tattle. Now, mind what I say, for I am always 
 
 1 Ep. i. 6. 2 Ep. i. 44. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 223 
 
 telling you about tliis. . . . Further, you liave sent me a 
 wretched Lack, and five good donkeys. The hack I cannot 
 ride, he is such a brute ; and the animals that are good I 
 cannot mount, because they are donkeys. So if you wish 
 to make me content, be so good as to send me something 
 more suitable.^ 
 
 His humour and his way of rallying his friends 
 when not quite satisfied with them pass sometimes 
 into half-conscious irony, and deepen into sarcasm 
 when he was vexed or irritated. There was an easy- 
 going bishop of Salona, JSTatalis, towards whom Gregory 
 felt kindly, though he disapproved of his ways and 
 had rebuked him.^ The bishop excused himself. 
 He was charged with being too fond of conviviality ; 
 but had not Abraham made a feast and received 
 angels, and had not Isaac enjoyed his venison before 
 he blessed his son? Feasts promoted kindness and 
 charity, and St. Paul had said, " Let not him that eateth 
 not, judge him that eateth." It was true he was not 
 a reader, but his "tribulations" left him no time. 
 Gregory's grave letter in answer is inimitable. He 
 accepts the argument as all serious, and solemnly 
 points out that if Natalis had received angels, there 
 was nothing more to be said ; that as to Isaac's 
 venison, it had an allegorical meaning, and that if the 
 good things which Natalis enjoyed were, according to 
 this meaning, the study of the Divine Scriptures, then 
 Gregory could not blame his love of good cheer. So 
 feasts promoted charity, if people did not backbite 
 and laugh at their absent neighbours in them, and 
 ' Ep. ii. 32. ^ Ep. ii. 52. 
 
224 THK LETTEES OF POPE GKEGOEY I 
 
 gossip about worldly trifles : "if this is your way in 
 your feasts, I own that you are masters for those who 
 fast." And in the same strain he goes on at length, 
 "answering the fool according to his folly." But 
 there are occasions when his irony becomes fierce. 
 This was especially provoked by his great brother at 
 Constantinople, John the Faster. " Did he carry his 
 abstinence so far," he asks in one of these letters, "as 
 to feel bound to abstain even from telling the truth 1" ^ 
 It is curious to read in the mouth of a Eoman Pontiff, 
 himself a monk .and an ascetic, sarcasms against the 
 
 1 " Gregory to John, Bishop of Constantinople. — The subject 
 itself is a reason for writing, but charity moves me besides ; for 
 I have written once and again to my most holy brother. Lord 
 John, and have not had his answer. Some secular person or 
 other addressed me in his name ; but if they were his letters, I 
 was not awake, for what I found in them was something very 
 different from what I believed of him. For I had written about 
 the most reverend John the Priest, and about the question of the 
 Isaurian monks, one of whom, himself a priest, had been beaten 
 with rods in your Church ; and the answer came back, in the 
 name of your most holy Fraternity, that you knew not what I 
 was writing about. I was amazed and puzzled at this answer, 
 for I thought to myself, if he speaks the truth, what can be 
 worse than that such things should be done, and that he who 
 is on the spot should not know of them ? What can be the 
 shepherd's excuse if the wolf eats the sheep and the shepherd 
 not know it ? But if your holiness knew of it, and why I wrote, 
 and answered, ' I do not know,' what shall I reply on my part, 
 seeing the Scripture saith, ' the mouth which lieth, slayeth the 
 soul ' ? I beseech you, most holy brother, has that abstinence 
 of yours, which is so great, come to this point, that you would 
 deny and hide to your brother what you know to be the case ? 
 Would it not have been better that fiesh should have entered 
 into that mouth to be eaten, than that out of it should have 
 
THE LETTEES OF POPE GREGORY I 225 
 
 alleged show of asceticism, as bitter and truculent as 
 those with which we are familiar in the Puritan 
 controversialists. ^ 
 
 Gregory, in truth, was an old-fashioned Roman in 
 his deep dislike of anything Greek. He felt towards 
 all Greeks and aU that belonged to them as Juvenal 
 did j as Englishmen of the last century felt towards 
 everything French. The brutality of the barbarians 
 shocked and alarmed as well as disgusted him, but he 
 had the feeling of superior strength in the mingled 
 contempt and loathing which he felt for the " impos- 
 tures " of the Greeks. " Nothing in any of the Pope's 
 family," says his biographer, " from the least to the 
 greatest, showed barbarian ways, either in speech or 
 dress ; but the genuine Latin spirit, in toga or tralea 
 
 come the untrue word to deceive a neighbour. . . . But God 
 forbid that I should think anything of the sort of your most 
 holy heart. The letter had your name prefixed, but I do not 
 think it was yours. I wrote to the most blessed man, Lord 
 John, but I believe the answer came from some young fellow of 
 your household, who has learned nothing yet of God, who knows 
 nothing of the bowels of love, who is accused on all hands of 
 shameful crimes and of forging wills, who fears not God, nor 
 regards man." — Ep. iii. 53. 
 
 > For instance, in a letter to the Emperor—" Dum nos (the 
 clergy) competentia nobis relinquimus, et nobis incompetentia 
 cogitamus, peccata nostra barbaricis viribus sociamus, et culpa 
 nostra hostium gladios exacuit, quse R. P. vires gravat. Quid 
 autem dioturi sumus ... qui quod per linguam prsedicamus, 
 per exempla destruimus ? Ossa jejuniis atteriintur, et mente 
 turgemus. Corpus despectis vestibus tegitur, et elatione cordis 
 purpuram superamus. Jacemus in einere, et excelsa despicimus. 
 Doctores humilium, duces superbise, ovina facie lupines dentes 
 abscondimus. " — Ep. v. 20. 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGOEY I 
 
 (the dress of consuls or knights), after the old Roman 
 fashion, occupied its own Latium in the very Latial 
 palace." But he goes on to add, after saying how- 
 philosophy and wisdom abounded in the palace, that 
 " the only thing wanting was the interpreter's know- 
 ledge of two languages, the Cecropian maiden having 
 of late given herself to the task of defending juggling 
 frauds. "1 His letters curiously bear out the state- 
 ment. He seems rather to pride himself on his ignor- 
 ance of Greek; he does not want to know it."^ 
 He never heard of so famous a heretic as Eudoxius, 
 because he could not find him in Philastrius and 
 Augustine, and the Latin translation of Epiphanius.^ 
 He knew nothing of the Greek Church historians, and 
 would have nothing to do with them ; and learnt at 
 last to his surprise from the Bishop of Alexandria who 
 Eudoxius was, against whom the mighty Basil and 
 Gregory of Nazianzus had written, "against whom 
 our heroes have cast so many darts."* He accuses 
 Greek monks of forging false relics.^ He would not 
 answer a lady's letter "because, being a Latin, she 
 had written to him in Greek." ^ He questions Greek 
 references to the council of Ephesus, and will not trust 
 their copies.' " The Roman editions (codices) are much 
 more faithful than the Greek ones ; for '' (he is writing 
 to a Greek friend), " we have not your wit, but neither 
 
 ^ Jo. Diac. ii. 13, 14. He had no one at C. P. to translate 
 from Latin into Greek. — Ep. vi. 30. 
 
 " Ep. vii. 32. '' Ep. vii. 4, 34. * Ep. vui. 30. 
 
 ^ Ep. iv. 30. « Ep. iv. 32. ' Ep. vi. 14. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 227 
 
 have we your cheating tricks (impostums).'' It is clear 
 how great was the Latin ignorance about the questions 
 debated in the East ; how limited was the Latin power 
 to master them; and how great the confusion, the 
 jealous animosities, and the misunderstandings caused 
 by this loss of hold on Greek language and thought. 
 
 Gregory was a man of the time, as we all are ; but 
 what is more distinctive, is that he was also eminently 
 a man above his time. In days of lawless violence, 
 his governing and inspiring idea was the idea of 
 justice. Like St. Ambrose, he had been a Eoman 
 magistrate ; ^ and he carried the point of honour set 
 by the best class of Roman magistrates, as to integrity 
 and justice, into his office of Christian bishop. In his 
 government of the Church, his leading purpose was to 
 put down corruption, to take care that all its officers 
 did their duty, to maintain serious discipline both in 
 life and function, to keep before men's minds the 
 reasons why they were religious. In the special 
 colour and character of his policy, he was far above 
 the temptation to splendour and show, so often felt 
 in high places, and nowhere more than in his. With 
 a full sense of the greatness of his place and duty, he 
 hated ostentation in others, and shrajik from it him- 
 self. The points on which he insisted and set his 
 heart were points of practical usefulness : keeping 
 churches and buildings in repair instead of erecting 
 pew and grand ones ; ^ regulating and estabhshing the 
 
 1 He had been Prcetor whtmus. — Ep. iv. 2. 
 
 2 "Qui omni vitae suse tempore siout novas basilicas minime 
 
228 THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 
 
 service, the order, the music of the public worship of 
 the Church; setting on foot a difficult and serious 
 mission, like Augustine's to England. Further, he 
 was the one patriot in Italy : the one man, in a con- 
 spicuous position, who took a true measure of the 
 calamities and dishonour of his native land, and whose 
 heart was pierced by them; the one man who was 
 continually divided between pity and indignation 
 towards men and lowly resignation beneath the 
 scourge of God, at the thought that Italy should no 
 longer belong to the Italians ; the one man who, in 
 the utter absence of any human hope, tried to make 
 the best of a condition which he felt to be miserable, 
 and who, as God had denied deliverance, sought with 
 all his might, for the sake of his suffering countrymen, 
 to win over the barbarian oppressors to counsels and 
 habits of peace. His Begistrum furnishes a store of 
 curious and interesting illustrations of these points. 
 We propose to give some specimens. 
 
 The Eoman Church, when Gregory became Pope, 
 had become the proprietor of a great "Patrimony." 
 Its head was the landlord of vast estates on the 
 mainland, in Gaul, and especially in fertile, and for 
 the present well-guarded, Sicily; and the revenues 
 of these estates, particularly of the corn-growing farms 
 of Sicily, fed a large portion of the population of 
 impoverished Rome.-' The property was managed by 
 fabricarat, ita nimirum fabrioatarum veterum sarta tecta cum 
 summo studio annualiter reparabat." — Joan. Diao. iv. 68 ; of. 
 ii. 1, and Paul. Diac. c. 16. 
 
 ^ Vide Hegel, Stadteverfassung von Italien, i. 162, 163. 
 
THE LETTEES OF POPE GEEGOEY I 229 
 
 local agents, and by semi-ecclesiastical officers, suh- 
 deacons sent from Eome; and the massce or farms, 
 with the tenants and labourers attached to them, 
 were leased to farmers (condudores), who were re- 
 sponsible for the rents in money or kind. In a 
 disorganised time like the sixth century, it may be 
 imagined how fraud and wrong had it their own way 
 among the poor tenants of a distant absentee landlord; 
 and how in this case fraud and wrong were veiled 
 under the pretence of the interests of the Church. 
 Gregory's Koman love of justice, and Christian sym- 
 pathy for the poor, rose up together against these 
 abuses. He at once set to work to check and correct 
 them. Among his first orders were peremptory in- 
 structions to the manager of the Sicilian estates, Peter 
 the sub-deacon, to look into the whole subject, to give 
 up all unjust claims and profits on behalf of the 
 Church, and to insist on justice everywhere.^ 
 
 The letter of instructions which I sent you. when you 
 were proceeding to Sicily is to be repeatedly consulted 
 by you, so that the greatest care may be taken that the 
 Bishops do not interfere in secular matters, except so 
 far as they are obliged to do so in. order to protect the 
 poor. But, as to the instructions in the letter about 
 monks and clerics, I think that for the present things 
 had best be let alone ; only in attending to this, your 
 Experience will remember to carry out as much as can 
 be fulfilled of what you know to be my wish. Further, 
 it has come to my knowledge, that for the ten years, from 
 the time of Antoninus the Defensor up to now, many 
 persons have suifered wrong from the Eoman Church, so 
 
 » Ep. i. 36. 
 
230 THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 
 
 that people publicly complain that their boundaries hare 
 been invaded by violence,! their slaves carried oflf, even 
 their movable goods seized by mere force without any 
 judicial process. All this requires the earnest watchful- 
 ness of your Experience. Whatever you may find to 
 have been during this ten years taken away by violence, or 
 in the name of the Church unjustly withheld, this is, by 
 the authority of my present order, to be restored to the 
 person to whom you may ascertain that it belongs ; so 
 that the injured person may not be compelled to come 
 to me, and to undertake the labour of so long a journey ; 
 while besides, I here have no means of sifting the truth 
 of his statement. Placing, therefore, before your mind 
 the majesty of the coming Judgment, restore everything 
 that has been sinfully taken away, and be sure that you 
 are winning for me great gain, if you gather for me a 
 reward rather than a rich income. Many persons also, I 
 know, complain of the loss of their slaves. They say, that 
 if any one's slave has run away from his master and declared 
 himself to belong to the Church, the rulers of the Church 
 at once have kept him as belonging to the Church, with- 
 out reference to the law-courts, but maintaining by force 
 the slave's allegation. This is as displeasing to me as it 
 is abhorrent to the judgment of truth. I therefore will 
 that your Experience, without allowing any delay, set 
 right whatever you find to have thus happened ; and 
 any such slaves, who are now held as the property of the 
 Church, as they have been taken without legal process, 
 so are to be restored before any legal process ; so that if 
 Holy Church has any legal rights in them, those who hold 
 them in possession may be ousted by a regular proceeding 
 of law. All these matters set right without flinching; 
 you will then be a true soldier of St. Peter, if in his 
 causes you keep firm hold of the truth, without any 
 favour to him. Further, if you see that anything may 
 justly be held to belong to the Church, take care that 
 
 ' See particular instances, Ep. i. 9, 55, 65, 73 ; iii. 44. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 231 
 
 you never assert your claim by force, especially because 
 I have established an order, under paiu of anathema,^ 
 that summary seizure is never to be made by our Church 
 of any town or country estate ; but whatever by reason 
 belongs to the poor, by reason is to be claimed; lest 
 while a good thing is done in a way which is not good, 
 that which God justly demands of us be charged with 
 injustice. As to the laity of rank and the governor, I 
 beg that you will make them love you for your humility, 
 rather than fear you for your haughtiness. But yet if 
 you know that they are guilty of any injustice against 
 any of the poor, you will at once change your humility 
 into firmness, so that as long as they act well you may 
 help them, and when they do wrong you may be their 
 opponent. But so act that your humility may never be 
 grovelling, nor your authority overbearing ; but let 
 rectitude give a flavour to your humility, and humility 
 make rectitude itself courteous. 
 
 But in a subsequent letter^ these general directions 
 are expanded into most curious details. He sends 
 to his agent, Peter the sub-deacon, a regular Land 
 Law for the management of the Church estates in 
 Sicily. It is a picture full of life and reality, of the 
 conditions under which land was held and tilled at 
 the time, the obligations of the tenant, the arbitrary 
 
 ^ Compare the Acts of the Boman Council, 595 ; in St. Greg. 
 0pp., vol. ii. 1289., 
 
 * Ep. i. 44. In Ep. ii. 32 is another business-like set of 
 directions to his agent, Peter the sub-deacon. He is to restore 
 some land ; to favour Jewish dwellers on the farms who wish 
 to become Christian ; to get rid of useless cattle ; to diminish 
 the stock of mares {qiuts valde inutiliter Mberrms), keeping only 
 a few for the benefit of the farmers, and to sell the rest ; to 
 set the herdsmen, who have cost more than they brought in, 
 on agriiultural work, etc. 
 
232 THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGOEY I 
 
 exactions and the burdensome and unjust customs 
 which were continually creeping into permanent use, 
 the claims of farmers and their families to fixity of 
 tenure, their liabilities and their right to protection 
 from their landlord. The document is much too 
 long to quote, and would require, besides, a legal 
 commentary. But a few specimens may be inserted 
 to show how the great landlord at Eome went into 
 the minuticB of the business of his Sicilian estate with 
 his agent, and with what determined and earnest 
 justice he set himself to guard his tenants from the 
 unfairness and oppression of his ofBcers, and their 
 constant tendency towards fees and pickings for 
 themselves. Thus, the rent of the Church estates 
 in Sicily, like that of the land generally in the island, 
 consisted partly in cargoes of com, furnished by the 
 tenants, the rustici eccleske, to the agent, and shipped 
 by him to Eome at the peril of the tenants ; partly, 
 in equivalent money payments. But the tenants, 
 Gregory writes, had been hardly dealt with and 
 burdened in the assessment of these rents. Accord- 
 ingly, he peremptorily orders that the assessment is 
 henceforth to depend on the public market price of 
 wheat. He further orders that, in case of shipwreck, 
 the loss, if reasonable care had been taken, shall not 
 fall on the tenant, or oblige him to furnish another 
 shipload ; that the tenants should not be compelled, 
 as they had been unfairly and unrighteously, to 
 deliver the corn in a larger bushel than was used 
 to measure it in the warehouses of the Church, or 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 233 
 
 to reckon a larger number of parts {sextarii) to the 
 bushel than the legal and nominal number ; and he 
 fixes definitely the measure of the bushel to be used. 
 The gains and perquisites of agents and middlemen 
 were thus cut off. The tenants, further, of some of 
 the Church farms were vexed and worried by various 
 kinds of small customary surcharges and additions 
 to their legal payments, doubtless for the benefit of 
 some collector or official. Fixed charges had a 
 customary percentage added to them; the pound 
 weight was reckoned to be the pound and something 
 more ; the customary market dues gradually kept on 
 swelling. Doubtless it was the regular course of 
 things in a disordered state of society ; and Sicily, 
 from the days of Verres, had been fertile in abuses of 
 this kind. But they moved Gregory's indignation. 
 These surcharges, he writes, are most unjust; all 
 the more if they have been customary for many 
 years.. "We utterly detest the whole thing, and we 
 desire that it may be put an end to in our patrimony." 
 He bids his agent make a fair estimate of what the 
 rustici ought to pay, and to consolidate it into one 
 payment. 
 
 "And lest after my death," he adds, "the surchargea 
 which we have put an end to, and have included in the 
 total amount of payment, should be again imposed, and 
 both the main payment be increased, and also the tenant 
 compelled to pay extra charges, we desire that you draw 
 up certificates of security respecting these payments, 
 according as you impose them, saying how much each 
 man is to pay, cutting off market dues and extra charges 
 
234 THE LETTEES OF POPE GEEGOEY I 
 
 and com fees ; and the profit from these petty payments, 
 which used to come to the governor's profit, we desire 
 henceforth to be a deduction, to he applied to your use, 
 from the whole sum which you have to remit to us." 
 
 Another frequent cause of oppression under all 
 loose governments is noticed and redressed as follows. 
 Speaking of some form of land tax (bwrdatio), paid in 
 three instalments in the year, he says •} — 
 
 We have learned that the first instalment presses very 
 hard on our tenants (rv^icos) ; for before they are able 
 to sell their produce, they have to discharge the tax ; 
 and as they have no means of their own, they are forced 
 to borrow from money-lenders, and have to pay heavy 
 interest on the loan : by which they are involved in 
 ruinous expense. Therefore we order that what they 
 would have to borrow for this purpose from outsiders 
 may be openly advanced to them by you, and be received 
 back from the tenants by degrees as they realise their 
 produce ; so that they may not be driven hard for time, 
 and be forced to sell at a lower price what would have 
 been quite sufi&cient at its proper price for their con- 
 tributions. 
 
 He makes stringent regulations against unjust 
 weights and measures in receiving the tenants' pay- 
 ments. " Break them, wherever you find them," he 
 writes ; for Peter's predecessor had thought that he 
 was not at liberty to destroy them. He forbids any- 
 thing to be exacted from the tenant except according 
 to just weight. He forbids his officers to receive 
 anything except cheap and trifling gifts of food. He 
 forbids excessive fees for marriages, and limits the 
 
 1 Cf. Ep. V. 8 ; and see Hegel, i. 198, and Ducange. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGOEY I 235 
 
 amount ; and they are to go to the farmer and not to 
 the Church. He forbids the practice of claiming a 
 Church farm hack for the Church on the death of the 
 farmer : his relations are to be allowed to succeed with- 
 out loss ; and if his children are under age, trustees are 
 to be appointed for their benefit. Fees of all kinds are 
 to be discouraged ; where there is a fair reason for 
 them, they are at any rate not to come into the accounts 
 of the Church : "for we will not that the purse of the 
 Church be defiled by discreditable gains." If a 
 farmer (conductor) has taken something unjustly from 
 a tenant {colonus), and been compelled to give up his 
 unjust gain, this is to be restored to the tenant, and 
 not to go to the Church : " it is not to be turned to 
 our use, lest we ourselves be abettors of violence." 
 And his agent is to take great care that premiums are 
 not to be taken from farmers for letting farms, lest 
 the temptation be given to a frequent change of 
 farmers, in order to get fresh premiums : " the result 
 of which change will be that the Church farms will 
 never be cultivated." The expenses of leases are to 
 be checked. The agent is to receive from the Church 
 farms no more than is customary for his own grange 
 and cellar; and any purchases which he may have 
 to make are to be made from outsiders, not from the 
 Church tenants. 
 
 This is but a small part of the document, which 
 proceeds to go into special cases of hardship or diffi- 
 culty, dealing with all in the same spirit of modera- 
 tion, equity and good sense, and with the same earnest 
 
236 THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGOKY 1 
 
 wish to protect the weak, and to make fair allowance 
 for all claims. And he thus concludes : — 
 
 All these directions you are carefully to read over 
 and over again : put aside aU that easy-going slackness 
 which is ia your character. The instructions which I 
 have sent to the tenants {rusticos) are to he carefully read 
 out through all the farms, that they may know in what 
 points they are to defend themselves against wrong hy 
 our authority ; and let the originals or copies he given 
 them. Take care that you keep every point unimpaired ; 
 for in giving these directions for upholding justice I free 
 myself from responsihility, and you, if you neglect them, 
 incur it. Think of the terrible Judge who is coming, and 
 let your conscience tremble at His advent, lest it fear in 
 vain then, when before Him heaven and earth shaU 
 tremble. You have heard what I wish. See to what 
 you do. 
 
 These instructions were among the early acts of his 
 pontificate ; they were sent almost immediately on 
 his coming into his office. They were not a mere 
 burst of hasty zeal, which cooled with time. Almost 
 at the end of his reign, we have the following letter 
 to his agent ^ at Syracuse : — 
 
 Your Experience remembers what and what sort of 
 an oath you took at the sacred body of the blessed Apostle 
 Peter. Eelying on it, we have committed to you the 
 matter in dispute to be inquired into in his patrimony at 
 Syracuse. You must therefor^ have always before your 
 eyes your promise, and the fear of St. Peter, and so act, 
 that neither by men in this Ufe, nor by Almighty God in 
 the last judgment, you may be rebuked. 
 
 By the information of Salerius, our secretary, we 
 
 1 Ep. xiii. 34 (a. 603). 
 
THE LETTBES OE POPE GEEGOEY I 237 
 
 learn tliat you have found the bushel by which the Church 
 tenants were obliged to furnish corn was one of 25 s&ctarii} 
 This we felt at once to be detestable ; and we are sorry 
 that you should have waited to make it a matter of dis- 
 cussion. As, however, you say that you destroyed this 
 bushel, and made a just one, we are glad. But the 
 secretary took pains to point out to us the amount which, 
 by the frauds of the farmers, has been collected in the 
 hands of your Experience. Satisfied, therefore, as we are 
 at your careful destruction of the unjust measure, because 
 we look forward to the future, we must also think about 
 the evil doings which are past, lest, if what the farmers 
 have fraudulently taken from the tenants reach us, the 
 sins of which they are guilty be also laid to our account. 
 We desire therefore that with all good faith and honesty, 
 remembering the fear of Almighty God, and the bond laid 
 on you by the blessed Apostle Peter, you make a list in 
 each farm of the poor and needy ; then, that out of the 
 moneys found to be fraudiilently taken, you buy cows, 
 sheep, and pigs, and distribute them to each of the poor 
 labourers. This we desire you do in concert with Bishop 
 John and Hadrian, our secretary and oflBicial ; and if it be 
 necessary, you may call into counsel Julian, so that no 
 one else know it ; but let the business be secret. You 
 three arrange among yourselves whether the same allow- 
 ance shall be given to these same poor peasants in money 
 or in goods. ... I, in the words of the Master of the 
 nations, "have all and abound;" I seek not riches, but 
 reward. Give, therefore, to all, that out of the oppor- 
 tunity of reward entrusted to you, you may in the day of 
 judgment show me the profit you have made ; which if 
 you do, honestly, faithfully, heartily, you wiU here receive 
 it in your children, and afterwards you will have full 
 recompense when the Eternal Judge comes to try us. 
 
 ^ The old normal number was 16. It had been increased by 
 usage. Gregory (Ep. i. 44) had limited it to 18. 
 
238 THE LETTERS OF POPE GBEGOEY I 
 
 The cruelties and frauds of the fiscal system which 
 had been grinding down the labouring population of 
 the Empire for more than two centuries are familiar 
 to readers of history. It is plain from Gregory's 
 letters that the condition of the Church tenants was 
 often nearly as bad. They suffered under the usual 
 iniquities of middlemen and contractors, and the 
 selfishness and greediness of agents, responsible only 
 to a distant and perhaps indifferent master. They 
 were cheated in assessment and in measure. They 
 were subjected to all kinds of vexatious fees, and 
 dues and extra charges. With no capital or ready 
 money, they had to struggle with usurious debts and 
 mortgages. They were liable to be called upon to 
 pay twice or thrice over what had been already 
 received by a peculating official. It was their ordin- 
 ary lot, and the best they could -hope for was to be 
 fleeced as mercifully as might be. Gregory had the 
 originality and independence of mind to see that all 
 this, customary as it had become, was unjust, wicked, 
 abominable in the sight of the Eternal Judge, and he 
 acted on his conviction with resolution and persistence. 
 It is something in those times to see a man avow his 
 belief in justice, and to make a systematic effort to 
 carry real justice into the details of business, and, if 
 necessary, against interests that were otherwise dear 
 to him ; for the produce of the Sicilian estates was 
 the revenue of the Churchj and the food of the poor 
 of Eome. 
 
 And at Rome his justice and his liberality were not 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGOEY I 239 
 
 without their detractors.-' They murmured at him 
 as " a spendthrift and a squanderer of the manifold 
 treasure of the patriarchate." A curious story gained 
 currency. It was said that a terrible famine fell on 
 the city in the year of his death ; his enemies raised 
 the cry of his waste and dilapidations of the Church 
 patrimony, and the mob were with difficulty prevented 
 from venting their rage against him by burning his 
 books. Some of them perished, and the rest were 
 saved by the courage of his friend, Peter the Deacon, 
 the same who was the interlocutor in his Dicdogues. 
 Peter represented that it was useless to try and exter- 
 minate books which had circulated all over the world, 
 and it was, further, a monstrous sacrilege. For, the 
 strange legend went on to say, Peter declared on oath 
 that the Holy Spirit had often in the shape of a dove 
 rested on his master's head while he was composing ; 
 and he offered this warrant of his truth, that the sign 
 of his veracity should be his own immediate death, 
 and that if he survived he would himself bum the 
 books. Accordingly, with the Gospel in his hand, 
 he ascended the pulpit ; he gave his witness to 
 Gregory's sanctity, and then he expired. 
 
 The enforcement of justice. and care for the poor 
 and helpless in the large and increasing patrimony of 
 the Roman Church was in itself a task of some 
 magnitude. But in a time of the abeyance of all 
 the ordinary functions of Government in Italy, the 
 business which fell to the share of a willing protector 
 ' Joan. Diao. iv. 69. 
 
240 THE LETTERS OF POPE GEBGOEY I 
 
 of the oppressed, and an enthusiast in the cause of 
 right like Gregory, was much more than this. With 
 no one else to turn to for advice or help, men naturally 
 turned to so conspicuous a person, one who would 
 not shrink from the burdens of his position. The 
 bulk of the large collection of the letters of his thirteen 
 years of rule consists of directions or advice on cases 
 submitted to him, and calling for his interference. 
 They are, of course, largely ecclesiastical; but they 
 are also very numerous in the sphere of what he still 
 calls the RespuUica, the civil and social interests of 
 the population of the Western Empire, especially 
 Italy. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that he 
 was the volunteer and unofficial Secretary of State for 
 the Government at Constantinople in those western 
 parts, now so loosely and precariously connected with 
 it. All central control was lost, and official greed 
 and wrong had their fling, and were as merciless and 
 desolating as the barbarians. He classes together, as 
 the two great evils of his time, the sword of the 
 Lombards and the oppression of the provincials by 
 the " perversity,'' the " iniquity,'' of the State officers, 
 judges, and collectors of taxes.-' These persons paid 
 for their offices, and excused their exactions by the 
 necessity of recouping themselves. Sardinia, Corsica, 
 and Sicily were driven to despair by the cruelty of 
 the imperial officers ; the landed proprietors of Corsica 
 fled to the Lombards (nefandissima gens), or sold their 
 children, under the tyranny. There was no one who 
 1 Ep. V. 39, 42 ; viii. 2. 
 
-THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 241 
 
 cared to interfere ; no one but tlie great Churchman 
 at Eome, whose heart bled at the miseries of the time, 
 and whose blood boiled at its injustice.^ The great 
 Bishop of ancient Eome, the inheritor of the Church 
 and of the traditions of the Apostles, St. Peter and St. 
 Paul, spoke with an authority which no one else had, 
 when he reproved a negligent or oppressive provincial 
 governor, or commended a good one, or when he 
 counselled resistance to the Lombards, or peace with 
 them, as well as when he called on the dilatory flock 
 of an Episcopal see to fill up their vacant bishopric, 
 or restrained an over-zealous bishop from worrying 
 the Jews, or inflicted the sharp lashes of his indigna- 
 tion or irony on a negligent or a self-indulgent or an 
 impertinent one. The bishops in the Italian cities 
 and islands had so commonly occupied the places of 
 responsibility left vacant by the civil authorities that 
 this interference on Gregory's part was the more 
 natural. He writes to bishops, as well as to civil 
 officers, to urge vigilance against the barbarians, and 
 the careful organisation of the night watches on the 
 walls of the cities.^ His deep interest in the condition 
 
 ' Ep. T. 42, a report of Gregory to the Empress ; and Ep. 
 xi. 5, quoted by Hegel, i. 173, 174. 
 
 ^ Ep. viii. 18 ; ix. 4, 73. Thus he writes to the Bishop of 
 Terraoina : "As we have learned that many excuse themselves 
 from the watehes on the walls, your Fraternity will take care that 
 you allow no one, either in our name or in the name of the 
 Church, to exempt himself from the duty of the watches, but 
 that all be indiscriminately obliged to take their turn ; so that 
 by all joining in the work of watching the guard of the city 
 may be by God's help secured." ""We yet possess," says Sir 
 
 R 
 
242 THE LETTEES OF POPE GREGORY I 
 
 of Italy and the Empire, his keen sympathy with all 
 who suffered either from the disasters of the times, 
 or from the selfishness and injustice of their brethren, 
 his fearlessness of responsibility, and unshrinking 
 readiness for work, attracted to him all the difficulties, 
 all the complaints, all the troubles of the time ; and 
 he threw himself into cases of individual hardship or 
 distress with the same resolute earnestness with which 
 he organised general measures on a large scale for the 
 discipline of the Church, or the improvement of its 
 public service, or the conduct of a great foreign mission. 
 The way in which in Gregory the ancient Eoman 
 magnanimity and proud love of fairness were united 
 with Christian charity is seen in his treatment of the 
 Jews. The feeling of the Empire and of the Church 
 was against them, and he shared it. He reproves the 
 
 Francis Palgrave, "the solemn ohaunt by which the sentinel of 
 Modena during the Hungarian invasion in the ninth centuiy, 
 pacing along the rampart, cheered his companions, and beguiled 
 the weary watches of the night : — 
 
 " ' tu qui servas armis ista mcenia, 
 
 Koli dormire, moneo, sed vigila. 
 
 Dum Hector vigil extitit in Troja 
 
 Non earn cepit fraudulenta Grsecia. 
 
 .1 
 " ' Fortis juventus, virtus audax bellica, 
 
 Vestra per muros audiantur carmiaa : 
 
 Et sit in armis alterna vigilia, 
 
 Ne fraus hostilis hsec invadat mcenia. 
 
 Resultet Echo comes : eja, vigila ! 
 
 Per muros, eja, dicat Echo, vigila 1 ' " 
 
 It was first published by Muratori, See Palgrave, Norirw/ndy, 
 i. 415 and 719, 
 
THE LETTEES OF POPE GREPOEY I 243 
 
 Bishop of Luna for not enforcing the prohibition which 
 forbad the Jews to hold Christian slaves.^ He orders 
 the Bishop of Naples to prevent the sale by the Jews 
 of Christian captives from Gaul,^ and to interfere with 
 the ingenious arrangement by which the sons of Basil 
 the Jew had become Christians in order that the 
 family might hold Christian slaves. He is very 
 angry when some Church officials, in want of money, 
 sell Church plate to a Jew, and orders the Jew to be 
 prosecuted.^ He urges preaching and argument for 
 their conversion, and he is in no way disposed to 
 grant them favours ; but he sternly discourages the 
 ready inclination of the time to convert them by force 
 or annoyance, or to deny them their rights.* He 
 listens to the complaint made by the Jews of Provence 
 of the violence employed to bring them to baptism, 
 and enjoins the Bishops of Aries and Marseilles to 
 abstain from such unchristian and such useless ways 
 of bringing them into the Church. He insists on the 
 prohibition against building new synagogues.* But 
 when the Jews of Cagliari appealed to him to restrain 
 the zeal of a Jewish convert, who, with a convert's 
 fervour against his old faith, had raised a mob and 
 turned the Jewish synagogue into a church, Gregory 
 at once wrote strongly to the Bishop of Cagliari to 
 condemn the injustice and insolence of the act, and to 
 insist that their synagogue should be restored to the 
 
 1 Ep. iv. 21 ; L 10 ; viii. 21 ; iii. 38. 
 
 2 Ep. ix. 36. ' Ep. i. 68. 
 « Ep. i. 47. ° Ep. ix. 6. 
 
244 THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGOKY I 
 
 Jews.^ So he rebukes an over -zealous Bishop of 
 Palermo, on the complaint of the Jews of Eome on 
 behalf of their brethren in Sicily : — " The Jews ought " 
 to assume no liberty in their synagogues beyond what 
 the law allows them ; but, on the other hand, in what 
 is allowed them they ought to suffer no prejudice.'' 
 He has to insist very strongly to protect the Jews of 
 Terracina in their right of meeting against neighbours 
 who complained that they disturbed the congregation 
 in the church;^ and he peremptorily orders one of 
 his officers to restore the bond of a Jewish debtor, 
 which the officer had refused to give back after the 
 debt had been paid.^ Such straightforward justice 
 seems easy and natural to us. It has never been 
 very common anywhere, and certainly was not common 
 in Gregory's days. 
 
 But it must not be supposed that Gregory was 
 what would now be called a tolerant ruler ; with no 
 one, in those days, was toleration more than the rare 
 exception to the general rule of persecution. His 
 forbearance depended on circumstances. With the 
 Jews, he saw that violence would only exasperate a 
 race, outwardly submissive, but of proverbial tenacity 
 of character, and with great and sacred traditions. 
 He wished to win them ; he was not above putting 
 secular inducemejits before them to make conversion 
 easier: "If the parents only feigned conversion, he 
 would gain the children ; " * but he knew it was no use 
 
 • Ep. viii. 25. 2 Ep. i. 10, 35. 
 
 « Ep. ix. 56. ■> Ep. V. 8. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGOEY I 245 
 
 to force them. But with barbarians and heretics, and 
 the pagan populations which still lingered in the ruder 
 districts of Italy, he had no such scruples. In Africa 
 the Donatists were still formidable rivals to the 
 Catholic Church. He was willing to let the heresy 
 die out,^ and even to let the existing Donatist bishops 
 retain their position.^ But against any favour shown 
 to the sect, or any attempt to prolong their succession, 
 he firmly protested.^ He without scruple invoked 
 the aid of the civil power.* He would allow no 
 Manichseans on the Church estates in Sicily ; his 
 agent was to " persecute " them, and " reclaim them 
 to the Catholic faith." ^ He severely reprimands a 
 Sardinian bishop for allowing any one on the Church 
 estates to remain a pagan : if any tenant is obstinate, 
 his rent is to be increased till he is "compelled to 
 hasten to the right way;" and he adds, "If I find 
 any pagan peasant belong to any bishop in Sardinia, 
 I will take a sharp revenge on that bishop." If the 
 pagan labourers refuse to be converted they are to be 
 punished, "etiam cum verberibus." ^ He orders the 
 severe corporal punishment of a Jew who had tempted 
 Christians to some strange rites, and had purchased 
 Christian slaves. He orders a bishop of Terracina to 
 punish in the severest manner, " so that God may be 
 
 1 Ep. i. 77. ^ Ep. ii. 48 ; v. 5. ' Ep. iv. 34, 35. 
 
 « Ep. V. 8. ^ Ep. iv. 26. 
 
 * iii. 38; ix. 65. Joan. Diac. iii. 1: "Jam Barbarioinos 
 Sardos" ("La Barbagia di Sardegna," Dante, Par. xxiii. 95), 
 " et Campanise rustioos, tam prsedicationibus quam verberibus 
 emendates, a paganizandi vanitate removerat." 
 
246 THE LETTERS OE POPE GEEGORY I 
 
 appeased and others take warning by the example," 
 some people, "who worshipped trees, and did other 
 things contrary to the Christian faith." ^ It sounds 
 as if he had ordered the punishment of death. 
 
 It was, of course, his great ecclesiastical position 
 which gave him all this authority in civil or social 
 affairs. But, in his view, the enforcement of justice 
 and mercy, the maintenance of order and peace, the 
 right and obligation to keep civil ofiEcers in mind of 
 their functions and duty, was part of his business, as 
 holding the first place in the government of God's 
 Church. Upon him had devolved the office, not only 
 of the Priest in respect of religious service, but also 
 of the Prophets, as teachers and witnesses of all 
 righteousness to great and small, which he found 
 described in the Bible. Still, the primary and direct 
 concern of his life was the administration and disci- 
 pline of the great institution over which he believed 
 that he had been called to preside with the authority 
 of St. Peter. 
 
 The ecclesiastical claims of the Eoman See had 
 come, at the time when Gregory became Pope, to be 
 in general terms little short — though they still'were 
 short — of what they were in later times. They had 
 not only been tenaciously kept up at Eome, but they 
 were readily admitted and appealed to wherever need 
 was felt of a refuge, or an ally, in the theological 
 conflicts of the time; and where there had been 
 ecclesiastical resistance to them, the party of resistance 
 > Ep. viii. 18. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGORY I 247 
 
 had either placed itself hopelessly in the wrong, or 
 had been left by surrounding jealousies or indifference 
 to maintain an unequal contest with an antagonist so 
 powerful as the Patriarch of the West. But though 
 the ecclesiastical recognition of these claims was great, 
 they were not either unlimited or uncontradicted, and 
 their public acceptance, as a fact, was not yet assured. 
 The Patriarch of the new capital— for though it was 
 new it was the capital of the renewed Empire— the 
 Patriarch of Constantinople, standing at the head of 
 the great Patriarchates of the Church of the East, was 
 a formidable rival. The bishops of Eome had not yet 
 shaken themselves free from the hold of strong and 
 suspicious governments. They had submitted, in 
 several instances, to be the nominees of the Arian and 
 Gothic kings. They had submitted to be nominees 
 of the Byzantine Court. The "most Christian" 
 Emperor claimed the right of approving their election, 
 when the election was not anticipated by a nomination. 
 Gregory himself recognised the Emperor's power to 
 forbid his appointment, and was "consecrated by order 
 of the Emperor." ^ The Eastern Government, when 
 alarmed or offended, stUl, and after Gregory's time, 
 compelled their attendance on the Bosporus, and did 
 not always respect^ their persons. And the Popes 
 themselves had at times severely shaken the authority 
 of their great judgment seat. The vacillations and 
 dogmatic prevarications of Vigilius, who had allowed 
 
 1 Ep. i. 5 ; Greg. Turon. Hist. Fr. x. 1 ; lAb. Dmm. 
 Kozifere, p. xix. 
 
248 THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 
 
 himself to be made the tool and accomplice of the 
 intrigues of Justinian's Court, were a serious counter- 
 balance to the influence won by men like St. Leo and 
 St. Gelasius.^ His weakness and double-dealing had 
 caused the greatest confusion and perplexity, even in 
 Italy. They had occasioned a dangerous schism in 
 Istria, the province of which Aquileia was the metro- 
 polis. The Istrian bishops challenged the authority 
 and the orthodoxy even of Gregory, refused him as a 
 judge because he was a party in the dispute, threatened 
 an alliance against him with the bishops of Gaul, and 
 appealed from his violence to the Emperor ; and the 
 Emperor received their appeal, and enjoined peace. 
 Gregory had to be very cautious on the perilous 
 subject of the "Three Chapters," even with the 
 catholic-minded Theudolinda.^ Much as there was 
 to support and consolidate the Roman claims, they 
 were not yet, humanly speaking, safe and beyond the 
 reach of great and permanent injury. A strong and 
 fortunate ruler at Constantinople might even now 
 have, if not shattered them, yet greatly impaired and 
 abridged them : he might even yet have shifted the 
 centre of gravity in the Church from the West to the 
 East. 
 
 ' Ep. i. 5 ; Greg. Turon. Hist. Fr. x. 1 ; Lib. Diurii. RoziJre, 
 p. xix. 
 
 ^ See the memorial of the Istrian bishops, Troya, Ood. Dipt. 
 Longob, i. 154. Also Greg. Ep. iv. 2-4, on which De Rubeis 
 writes — "Sanctissimi Pontificis prudenti oeoonomiS, factum, ut 
 Capitulorum- negoflo dissimulate, ecclesiae unitatem Eegina 
 servaret." — Troya, i. 168. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 249 
 
 To prevent this was one of the great objects of 
 Gregory's policy ; and more than anything else, his 
 pontificate decisively made it impossible. For he 
 showed how great and how useful to Christianity 
 Eome could be without the Empire. What may be 
 called his home administration, the ecclesiastical 
 government of Italy, the islands, the Adriatic pro- 
 vinces, and, less directly, Gaul, the portion of the 
 Church territory which caine immediately under his 
 influence, was vigilant, resolute, and stern. He orders 
 his bishops as if they were oflBcers at their posts, and 
 his tone is high and peremptory. He allows no 
 negligence, no shrinking from duty, no pursuit in- 
 consistent with their office. He puts up with no 
 resistance, no affectation of dignity, or show of inde- 
 pendence. Any opposition of this kind brings down 
 on the offender the scourge of his rebuke and keen 
 sarcasm. A free-living and jovial bishop of Salona, — 
 a refractory bishop of Eavenna, who in the residence 
 of the Emperor's lieutenant thinks that he may assert 
 his position,^ — a bishop of Vienne, who teaches 
 grammar and the Latin poets instead of attending 
 to his proper work,^ — a rough Sardinian bishop of 
 Cagliari, who had taken an extravagant burial fee, 
 and who, to spite a neighbour, had on Sunday morning 
 before mass ploughed up his standing wheat, and after 
 mass removed his landmarks,^ — an idle bishop of 
 Naples,* who neglected the poor and the oppressed, 
 
 1 Ep. ii. 52 ; iii. 66 ; v. 15. ' ^ Ep. xi. 64. 
 
 ' Ep. ix. 1, 2, 3. ■* Ep. xiii. 36. 
 
250 THE LETTEES OF POPE GEEGOEY I 
 
 and spent his time and his money in ship-building, 
 are treated with scant ceremony and very plain 
 speaking. But masterful and imperious as his orders 
 are, they are given, as far as it is possible to judge, in 
 the interests of a vigorous discipline, and to keep up 
 and enforce a high standard of life and work in the 
 great ecclesiastical army — bishops, clergy, and monks, 
 with their large number of dependents — over which 
 he presided, and who, as might be expected in such 
 times, needed a clear purpose and a strong hand to 
 keep them from every form of selfishness and dis- 
 order. He holds up before the bishops, throughout 
 his letters, and in many different forms, that the first 
 and most urgent duty of a bishop, even beyond that 
 of study and prayer, is to watch over the poor and 
 the oppressed, to assist and feed them, and to protect 
 them at any hazard against injustice and violence.^ 
 His deep sense of responsibility, his love of right and 
 goodness, his ready sympathy for the weak and the 
 suffering, his warm affections, shine visibly through 
 the severity of his reproofs and the strictness of his 
 commands ; nay, even the genuine personal humility 
 of the man, his reluctant submission to a heavy task, 
 and his modest estimate of his power to fulfil it, are 
 not concealed by his very determined purpose to let 
 nothing stand in his way in carrying his task through 
 to the uttermost. His judgments were not always 
 discriminating, he sometimes accepted from his agents 
 one-sided statements, his rebukes were sometimes 
 1 See Ep. X. 36. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGORY I 251 
 
 hasty ; these are his own frank admissions ; — it may 
 also be that the objects of his sympathy were not 
 always as worthy as he thought them — such possi- 
 bilities occur to a reader of his letters ; not unfrequent 
 at any time, they become likely in a rough and dis- 
 ordered one. But of the general aim and spirit of 
 his administration, of his sincere and disinterested 
 wish to do his own duty, and to make every one else 
 do theirs; of his lifelong war against corruption, 
 selfishness, sloth, and oppression in the Church, no 
 reader of his letters can doubt. 
 
 In a state of social disorganisation like that of the 
 sixth century, corruption was sure to be deep and 
 widespread. The form in which Gregory had specially 
 to deal with it was simony. We do not gather from 
 his letters that the higher clergy, at least, were other 
 than regular and respectable in their way of living. 
 He finds fault with neglect, with ignorance, with 
 temper, even with fondness for jovial society, but 
 very seldom, in the case of bishops, with license. 
 But what he is afraid of, especially in the semi-bar- 
 barous churches, like that of the Franks, is the 
 growth of corrupt bargaining in obtaining posts, which 
 had now become places of dignity and influence ; and 
 he denounces and condemns it with a vehemence 
 and in terms which later times found inconvenient. 
 " Simony '' — this was his constant phrase — " was the 
 first and the worst of heresies." This was not mere 
 rhetorical strength of phrase. He meant distinctly 
 to Bay that simony was a crime against the faith 
 
252 THE LETTEES OF POPE GREGORY I 
 
 as mucli as Arianism, though in a different way. 
 His zeal against it does him the highest honour. He 
 was so fearful of the slightest step towards it, or the 
 faintest pretext for it, that he systematically refused 
 all presents offered to himself.-' But his language was 
 a curious example of the dangers of a tempting argu- 
 ment and an incautiously large premiss. It was a 
 telling thing to say that simony was a heresy and the 
 worst of heresies ; that the grace of G-od could not be 
 purchased for money, and that therefore, what Simon 
 could not receive, he could not give. It answered 
 Gregory's purpose; but in later times the position 
 was seen to have formidable consequences. It became 
 necessary, as time went on, and the idea of infallibility 
 came in, to maintain that no Pope, however bad in 
 life, could be a heretic in faith; and further, the 
 validity of half the ordinations in Christendom 
 depended on their being absolutely unaffected by the 
 unworthiness of the ordainers. But as it was quite 
 certain that Popes had been guilty of simony, it became 
 necessary to revise the definition of heresy, even 
 though given deliberately by a Pope, and to take 
 simony out of it ; it was equally necessary to do so, 
 to save the orders of the whole Church. The diffi- 
 culty was easily perceived ; the trouble which it gave, 
 and the shifts to which recourse was necessary, to get 
 rid of the ruinous inferences, inevitable from Gregory's 
 sweeping propositions, in which he was further sup- 
 ported by St. Leo and St. Ambrose, may be seen in 
 1 Ep. iL 23 ; i. 66 ; ix. 2. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGORY I 253 
 
 Grratian's harmonised collection of canonical niles.^ 
 But if Gregory, in his honest hatred of corruption, 
 used dangerous weapons against it, and gave embar- 
 rassment to his less scrupulous successors, he was 
 illogical in the best of causes. He is not the first or 
 the last reasoner who has defended truth and right 
 by bad arguments. Heresy was the word which 
 frightened his age, and certainly over hastily he 
 caught at it. But indeed he was right in thinking 
 that this kind of corruption, by which even good men 
 came to think that they might buy themselves into 
 Church ofBces and work, would as surely demoralise 
 and poison the Church as heresy itself. It was worth 
 a mistake and mis-statement, which only affected 
 the equally great over-statements of men afterwards, 
 in order to impress in strong and alarming language 
 on the rough people round him, the danger of de- 
 grading by discreditable bargains the one office which 
 commanded moral respect in an age of violence. 
 
 He thus kept up the authority of his See, and 
 presented it to the troubled and violent world around 
 him as a public benefit. He required power to con- 
 tend with anarchy, and he used it freely with the 
 willing consent of the West. But he had one anxiety 
 — the greatness and the claims of the Patriarch of 
 Constantinople. The rivalry between the two was 
 inevitable. The Eastern Patriarch, chief of the 
 ancient Greek-speaking and Syrian Churches, could 
 appeal to traditions quite as venerable as those of 
 1 Gratian, Decretvm,, p. ii. c. i. qu. 1. 
 
254 THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGOEY I 
 
 Eome ; he ruled over a clergy more cultivated and 
 more learned,^ and quite as much versed in the dog- 
 matic and practical Church questions of the time; 
 and though he was not, hke the Eoman bishop, alone 
 in his ipiperial city, and was overshadowed by the 
 presence of the Emperor and the Court, it was difficult 
 to say whether this detracted from, or added to, his 
 dignity and his importance. Gregory shows no 
 jealousy of the Emperor and the Grovernment. He 
 treats the orders of the Court, the wluntas palatii, 
 with the greatest deference, even when they seem to 
 trench on the ecclesiastical province,^ or threaten 
 interference with his own orders.^ His language is 
 even obsequious, to those whom he looks upon, not 
 only as " Lords of the Universe " by the gift of God, 
 but as " guardians " by the same authority, " of the 
 peace of the Church." * But on the pretensions and 
 actions of his brother Patriarch he keeps a watchful 
 and severe eye. John the Faster was a man of as 
 great reputation for sanctity at Constantinople as 
 
 1 Tlie difference of culture at Rome and Constantinople may 
 be seen by comparing the style of the Greek reports and histories 
 of Prisons, Procopitis, and Menander, with anything written at 
 the same time in Latin. The Byzantines still write good literary 
 Greek, well worded and well composed, fit for a clear statement 
 or well -told story. The Latin has already sunk down to 
 mediaeval degeneration, often strong in natural and unexpected 
 phrases, but with no sense of the value and proportion of words, 
 and rude and clumsy in structure. It soon quitted the control 
 of grammar. 
 
 ' Vide Ep. ix. 41, and v. 21, about Maximus of Salona. 
 
 » Vide Ep. iii. 65 ; iv. 20, 47 ; v. 40. * Ep. v. 21 ; vii. 6. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGORY I 255 
 
 Gregory at Eome. There had been some ill-feeling 
 between him and Gregory's predecessor Pelagius,i 
 who had claimed to annul the proceedings of a synod 
 at Constantinople, on the ground that John had used 
 the title of (Ecumenical or Universal Bishop. The 
 title was really no novelty ; it was given by Justinian 
 to the Patriarch of Constantinople, and is enshrined 
 in his laws.^ But the assumption was no doubt a 
 threatening one to the Primacy of Eome ; and we 
 can see signs in the early letters of Gregory's pontifi- 
 cate that it had made a strong impression upon him.' 
 At length, in the fifth year of his pontificate (January 
 595), Gregory thought it time to make a stand against 
 a title which by continued usage was becoming for- 
 midable ; and he began the series of famous letters,^ 
 of which such ample use has been made against his 
 successors, condemning, in the most unsparing terms, 
 the title of Universal Bishop. The condemnation is, 
 indeed, as absolute as definite reasons and violent 
 language can make it ; but the popular controversial 
 use of it, as a condemnation by Gregory of the pre- 
 tensions of the Eoman See, must be considered as an 
 instance of theological boldness or innocence. For it 
 is assumed that Gregory, in condemning the word, 
 absolutely condemned the thing ; whereas the truth 
 is that he only condemned the word and title, and 
 
 1 Ep. T. 18. 
 2 Gieseler, § 117, n. 29 ; § 94, n. 72 ; § 93, n. 20. 
 3 Fide iii. 53 (593). 
 ^ Ep. V. 18-21 ; vii. 27, 31, 33 ; ix. 68. 
 
256 THE LETTERS OF POPE GEBGORY I 
 
 that because it had been assumed by his rival at Con- 
 stantinople, and symbolised his pretensions. Gregory 
 in his objections shows the exaggerations and the 
 inconsistencies of temper; if there is a "Universal 
 Bishop," he says, then there are no other bishops ; a 
 " Universal Bishop " absorbs or subjects to himself all 
 the members of the Universal Church;-' none of the 
 saints, not even Peter, used the word. Further, it is 
 " corrupting " the faith of the Universal Church, for 
 if one bishop be universal, the whole Church, if he 
 falls, falls with him ;2 and many patriarchs of Con- 
 stantinople have been heretics. He seems absolutely 
 unconscious that the same objections might be made 
 to aU. that he took for granted in his own position 
 and duty. But to be all that the title of Universal 
 Bishop practically and really signified Gregory cer- 
 tainly made no hesitating claim. He spurned, indeed, 
 the pompous name, as unbecoming a Christian, and 
 as invented by that ostentation and pride of office 
 which he very sincerely despised and hated. And 
 his protest undoubtedly does further exclude that 
 later development of the Papal office which annulled 
 the independence of bishops, and placed its own dele- 
 gated authority on their thrones. But that every 
 bishop in Christendom, including him of Constanti- 
 nople himself, owed to the Patriarch of Rome and the 
 successor of St. Peter an account of his faith and con 
 
 1 T. 18 ; vii. 33. 
 
 ^ vii. 27. So V. 19: "In isto scelesto vooahulo si consen- 
 timus nihil est aliud quam fidem perdere." 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 257 
 
 duct, and was liable to his iudgment, -was certainly 
 Gregory's belief, and he systematically acted upon it.^ 
 The vehement and extravagant language ^ in which 
 he condemned the use of the invidious title by John 
 the Faster was called forth by the anxious care with 
 which he guarded the prerogative of Old Eome from 
 the encroachments of the New. The famous Servus 
 Servorum Dei doubtless expressed what he wished to 
 consider himself. But the servant of the servants of 
 God would assuredly have, in their interests as he 
 thought, confronted pride and stiffened himself against 
 resistance and punished insubordination in his bishops, 
 with as much determination as if he had been invested 
 with all the titles which could be devised by the 
 Chanceries of the two capitals.^ 
 
 ^ Ep. ix. 59 : "Si qua culpa in Episcopis invenitwr, nescio 
 quis sedi Apostoliae JEpiscopus suhjectits non sit. Cum vero 
 culpa non exigit, omnes secundum rationem humilitatis sequales 
 , sunt. ix. 12 : Nam de Constantinopolitana ecclesia quod dicunt, 
 quis mm dttbitet sedi Apostolicce esse subjectam, quod et piissimus 
 dominus Imperator, et pater noster Episcopus (i.e. Cyriacus), 
 assidue profitentur ?" See also iii. 57. 
 
 2 The violence of his language is inexhaustible : " Superbum 
 vocabnlum, scelestv/m, pompaticum, perversum, pestiferum, pro- 
 fanum, stultum, superstitiosum ; imperialia verba, ' nmnen 
 blasphemice,' nefandum nomen." " Quosdam suporhe humiles 
 et ficte blandos." It amused the Greeks {vide vii. 33). 
 
 ^ Compare Ep. iv. 47: "Ego . . . paratior sum mori, quam 
 beati Petri ecclesiam meis diebus degenerare. Mores autem 
 meos bene cognitos habes, quia diu porto : sed si semel deli- 
 beravero non portare, contra omnia pericula Isetus vado." Ep. 
 V. 20 : " Qui contra omnipotentem Dominum per inanis gloriae 
 tumorem cervicem suam erigit, in omnipotent! Domino confido, 
 quia meam sibi nee cum gladiis ilectit." 
 
 S 
 
258 THE LETTEES OF POPE GEEGOEY I 
 
 From his point of view Gregory was right. Im- 
 perialism ^ still filled the air, in the Church as well as 
 the State, and was held to be a condition of the con- 
 tinued unity of the Church ; the one unity that seemed 
 left to mankind. A double government at Eome and 
 Constantinople seemed, while every one was quarrel- 
 ling, to be a standing menace to that unity, and his 
 Roman instinct, as well as his ecclesiastical traditions, 
 prompted Gregory to his formal and vehement protest 
 against the pretensions of his Eastern rival. We 
 have not the answer of John the Faster to Gregory's 
 eager remonstrances. They made no impression on 
 him or on the Emperor Maurice. The Emperor only 
 observed that it was a pity to quarrel and cause 
 scandal about such a "frivolous" trifle. Gregory 
 answered that there were trifles and trifles, and that 
 when Antichrist should call himself God he will be 
 but using an empty title of two syllables, though the 
 act will be one of portentous blasphemy ; and he goes 
 on to add that the pride which claims to be called 
 the one sole priest is a sign and herald of that of 
 Antichrist. Boniface III. afterwards obtained from 
 Maurice's murderer, the hateful usurper Phocas, a 
 prohibition of the use of the title, which Gregory had 
 in vain asked of Maurice. But it was revived under 
 his successor Heraclius ;^ and the Patriarch of Con- 
 stantinople has never dropped the title of QScumenical 
 
 ^ "Vestra pietas, quam omnipotens Deus cum serenissimo 
 Domino, universo mundo proeesse constituit." — {To the Empress, 
 Ep. V. 21.) = Gieseler, § 117, n. 29-34. 
 
THE LETTERS OE POPE GEEGOEY I 259 
 
 Patriarch. But in the West, and at Eome, the trans- 
 action was accepted, and was rememhered, as a decisive 
 and final blow to any claim, even to equality, on the 
 part of the Bishop of the new capital. Gregory was 
 inconsistent in his arguments and language. He 
 may have been actually himself that which he was 
 denouncing in his Greek brother. He may have 
 inveighed against a word, while he was doing all that 
 the word meant. He certainly availed himself, for 
 his immediate purpose, of reasons, and committed 
 himself to positions, which would be very inconvenient 
 to his successors if they cared much about such objec- 
 tions. But though Rome and its Bishop still con- 
 tinued for some time longer subject to the civil rule 
 of Constantinople, its ecclesiastical position with 
 respect to the Patriarch was defined so clearly that it 
 was accepted as the fixed understanding and tradition 
 of Western Christendom. 
 
 There is one deep blot on Gregory's great name, 
 and it is probably connected with his jealous resist- 
 ance to the assertion of equality on the part of the 
 Eastern Patriarch. The Emperor Maurice, as has 
 been said, took part with the Patriarch. He ridiculed 
 as " frivolous " Gregory's vehement opposition to the 
 obnoxious style and title ; he refused to give way to 
 it. There were other reasons why, though there was 
 no break of official friendship and respect, Gregory 
 thought he had cause to complain of Maurice. The 
 Eastern Government had given him scant help against 
 the Lombard enemies of the "Eespublica," and had 
 
260 THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 
 
 trifled with the honour and the sufferings of Italy. 
 The Emperor had more than once seemed to counten- 
 ance troublesome or unworthy bishops. He had 
 thrown difficulties in the way of soldiers embracing 
 the monastic life; and further, Maurice, who was 
 careful in spending the public money, was also strict 
 in exacting it, and to Gregory, whose sympathies 
 were all with the over-burdened and frequently cheated 
 taxpayers, the ruler who had to provide funds for the 
 necessities of the Empire appeared as the harsh and 
 grasping oppressor of the poor. All these grounds 
 of offence and dislike were naturally strengthened by 
 the Emperor's somewhat contemptuous support of the 
 pretensions of his own Patriarch.^ But, certainly, 
 when Maurice's tragic fate came, Gregory felt no 
 pity for him. He probably thought that it was the 
 deserved punishment of a bad ruler. But if this had 
 been all, however unjust the judgment, it would 
 only have been an instance of the cruelty with which 
 the best men on all sides have often felt towards 
 their opponents. Unhappily this was not the worst. 
 Whatever Maurice might have seemed to Gregory, 
 Gregory knew that he had perished by the hand of 
 a traitor, a murderer, and an usurper. Doubtless he 
 did not know all that Phocas really was ; but he 
 
 1 Vide Ep. V. 19 : " Postquam defendi ab inimicorum gladiis 
 nuUo modo possumus ; postqnam pro amore R. P. argentum, 
 aurutn, mancipia, vestes perdidimus ; nimis ignominiosum est 
 ut per eos [the Court] etiam Mem perdatnus. In isto enim 
 scelesto vocabulo consentire, quid est alind quam fidem 
 perdere ? " 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 261 
 
 knew that he was all this. Yet, without pausing, 
 without hesitation, without a word of reserve, Gregory 
 salutes him as the saviour and deliverer of the Empire, 
 and breaks forth into rapture at the " glad tidings of 
 great joy " in words which no one can read without 
 pain and shame. Fulsome adulation was, indeed, too 
 common ; but such adulation on such an occasion, 
 from so good and great a man, is something more 
 than ordinary flattery. 
 
 Glory to Qod in the highest, who, as it is written, chaiiges 
 times and transfers kingdoms ; for, in Almighty God's 
 incomprehensible government, the alternate vicissitudes 
 of mortal life succeed one another. When the sins of 
 many are to be punished, one man is set up by whose 
 hard rule the necks of his subjects are bowed beneath the 
 yoke of tribulation ; which is what we in our affliction 
 have too long made proof of. But, again, the merciful 
 God purposes to comfort the mourning hearts of the 
 many : and then he raises up one man to the height of 
 power, and by the bowels of His mercy pours into the 
 hearts of all the grace of His rejoicing. And we trust 
 to be early comforted by the abundance of this rejoicing, 
 who are glad that your benignity and piety are come to 
 the Imperial throne. Let the heavens rejoice and let the 
 earth he glad, and let the whole people of the Common- 
 wealth, hitherto so heavily afflicted, be made cheerful 
 with your gracious acts. May the proud minds of the 
 enemy be restrained by the yoke of your rule. May the 
 broken and humbled spirit of your subjects be lifted up 
 by your mercy.^ 
 
 And he goes on to pray that in the new Emperor's 
 " most happy times " the Commonwealth may have 
 
 > Ep. xiii. 31 (603) ; of. xiii. 39. 
 
262 THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGOKY I 
 
 peace, that fraud and violence may cease, and personal 
 liberty be restored under the sway of a pious empire. 
 " For this is the difference between the Kings of the 
 Nations and the Emperors of the 'Republic,' that 
 the Kings of the Nations are the masters of slaves, 
 and the Emperors of the Republic are the lords of 
 free men." 
 
 There is nothing to be said in excuse for this, 
 either in substance or in manner. Gregory, who 
 has no scruple in applying the sacred Gloria in Excelsis 
 to the accession of a cruel murderer, was deeply 
 offended when, at the installation of a Patriarch of 
 Constantinople, the clergy sang the verse of the 
 Psalm, " This is the day which the Lord hath made." 
 It was, he said, a profane misapplication to the 
 creature of words used of the creature's Lord.-' 
 Never, certainly, did true and unselfish religion de- 
 scend lower in flattering the prosperous wickedness 
 which might serve its objects; and what Gregory 
 hoped from Phocas was a support, which he had not 
 been able to get from Maurice, against the pretensions 
 of the Patriarch of Constantinople, and against the 
 growing power of the Lombards. 
 
 In Church and State alike the idea of the Empire 
 was still powerful, which long afterwards found ex- 
 pression in the De Monarchia of Dante. It was the 
 hope and safeguard of the "Christian republic," of 
 the civilisation and the lawful order of Society. In 
 common with his contemporaries, Gregory, whatever 
 1 Ep. vii. 7. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 263 
 
 he might think of the person who bore the office, 
 had for the office itself the deepest reverence. And 
 living all his life face to face with an advancing and 
 formidable barbarism, which Italians could neither 
 understand nor cope with, he was thrown all the 
 more on what remained in Constantinople of the old 
 strength and the old traditions of Eome. Maurice 
 had left Italy to its fate ; perhaps Phocas might take 
 up again the policy of Justinian. It was only in the 
 armies of the Imperial G-overnment that he could 
 find any counterpoise to the growing power of the 
 barbarian Lombards; and though, at the moment, a 
 precarious peace was supposed to exist, Gregory puts 
 his case before the new Emperor in pathetic terms : — 
 
 Your Serenity will learn from the mouth, of my deacon, 
 how great has been qui affliction. I pray that you will 
 incline your pious ears to him, and the sooner pity us. 
 For how we are crushed beneath the daily swords of the 
 Langobards, and by their endless ravages, behold, for the 
 length of five and thirty years, no words can adequately 
 tell. But we trust in the Almighty' Lord, that the 
 blessings of His consolation, which He has begun towards 
 us, He will fulfil, and that He who has raised up in the 
 Commonwealth pious lords will also destroy our cruel 
 enemies. 1 
 
 When Gregory became Pope (a.d. 590) the Lom- 
 bards had been in Italy two and twenty years, and had 
 not yet settled into the consistence of an organised 
 state. The legend tells, indeed, how the "long-haired " 
 Autharit had marched through Italy to its extremity, 
 1 Ep. xiii. 38. 
 
264 THE LETTERS OF POPE GEBGOEY I 
 
 Rhegium, and there had touched with his spear a 
 pillar which stood in the sea, saying, " Thus far shall 
 be the bounds of the Langobards." On the crown 
 of Agilulf, Autharit's successor, was said to be in- 
 scribed the title, "Rex totius Italise."-^ But these 
 were anticipations. The Langobards were on the 
 way to conquest, but they had not achieved it. They 
 were masters in upper Italy, they had seized cities 
 in the south ; the Roman Exarcli was supposed to be 
 continually at war with the invaders, but the warfare 
 was a desultory and ineffectual one ; and the Lombard 
 bands, though they found Rome and Naples too strong, 
 wandered about Italy with little hindrance, except 
 from the walls of the fortified cities. They were still 
 in the first stage of the barbarian conquests, the stage 
 of raids and forays, the destructive, exploratory, 
 predatory stage.^ Their devastations, their cruelties, 
 their Arianism, and something specially coarse and 
 repulsive in their character, excited the deepest 
 antipathy among the Italians. Gregory's epithets 
 are of the strongest : " nefandissimus Autharit ;" "nee 
 dicendus Ariulphus ;" " nefandissima gens Langobar- 
 dorum.'' The epithets are like those sometimes 
 applied to the Turks ; they were the current ones of 
 the time, and they continued in the mouths of Italians 
 after Gregory's days, and when the Lombards were 
 established in Italy. The Lombard spoilers, the Lom- 
 
 1 Muratori, Script. Rer. Hal. ii. 304. Troya, i. 184. 
 ^ See the description of this in an earlier time (JusttHian) in 
 Procop. Bell. Goth. iii. 33, 34. 
 
THE LETTEES OF POPE GREGORY I 265 
 
 bard brutalities, the Lombard cunning and treachery, 
 were the heavy and immediate miseries which afflicted 
 Gregory's countrymen. The Empire, which had 
 destroyed the kingdom of the Goths, would not, the 
 Italians hoped, endure the ruffian Lombards. But 
 Belisarius and Narses were gone ; and it was Narses 
 who in his treasonable revenge had called in the 
 Lombards. The Empire was hardly pressed in the 
 East by Persians and Avars. Its efforts on behalf of 
 Italy were slack, feeble, and fruitless. The Exarch 
 at Eavenna kept up the form of war with the 
 invaders, but his chief business seemed to be to pre- 
 vent any one making peace with them. The most 
 serious attempt to get rid of them was made, shortly 
 before Gregory became Pope, by the Emperor Maurice, 
 but it was not by the armies of the Empire.^ He 
 sent, says the historian of the Lombards, his ambas- 
 sadors to Childebert, King of the Franks, with a very 
 large subsidy, in order that he should attack the 
 Lombards and drive them out of Italy. Childebert, 
 with a vast army, at once entered Italy ; but the 
 Lombards shut themselves up in the cities, and by 
 negotiations and presents made peace with Childe- 
 bert, who went back to France. When the Emperor 
 heard of this he demanded back the money which he 
 had given to Childebert to hurt the Lombards ; but 
 Childebert, relying on his strength, did not even give 
 him an answer about it. The Italians would not 
 have had much to thank the Emperor for if he had 
 ^ Paul. Diac. iii. 17, and comp. Troya, i. 84-313. 
 
266 THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGOKY I 
 
 brought the Franks into Italy ; and he tried no other 
 method of arresting the scourge which embittered 
 Gregory's life.^ 
 
 The " swords of the Lombards," the betrayal and 
 fall of cities, the inactivity and helplessness of the 
 Exarch's ill-paid and iU-commanded troops : these are 
 the burden of Gregory's letters. At first Gregory 
 had thrown his weight and influence on the side of the 
 Exarch.^ He had looked on the Lombards as public 
 enemies. He had corresponded with the imperial 
 commanders, and given them information and advice 
 about the movements of the enemy. But he soon 
 found that he was leaning on a broken reed ; and 
 when Ariulf, the Lombard "Duke," of Spoleto, sat 
 down under the walls of Eome,^ slaying and maiming, 
 and exacting ransom, and when the Duke of Bene- 
 vento was threatening Naples without any hindrance 
 from the Exarch, Gregory, how reluctantly we can 
 clearly see, resolved to make the best terms he could 
 with the spoilers. There is a curious passage in a 
 letter of 594, in which he speaks of measures against 
 the Lombards, in which he refused to take part.* It 
 seems to imply some sort of plot like St. Brice's Day, 
 or the Sicilian Vespers. "If," he says, '' I had chosen 
 to mix myself up with the death of the Lombards, at 
 this moment the nation of the Lombards would 
 neither have king, nor dukes, nor counts, and would 
 be broken up in the greatest confusion. But because 
 
 ^ Vide end of his exposition of Ezekiel. ^ Vide ii. 29, 30. 
 3 Ep. ii. 46 (592). ■> Ep. iv. 47. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 267 
 
 I fear God, I dare not mix myself up with the death 
 of any man." 
 
 His efforts were henceforth directed to bring about, 
 if possible, a general peace ; but if the Exarch, safe 
 behind the marshes of Eavenna, and caring nothing 
 for the miseries of the Italian provincials, preferred to 
 keep the quarrel open, then to make a separate peace 
 for the Eoman Church and its possessions. These 
 attempts gave great offence, not only to the Exarch 
 Eomanus, a personal enemy, but to the Emperor. 
 The soldiers reported to Constantinople that the 
 priests were meddling in State affairs, were being 
 taken in by the crafty barbarians, and were sending 
 false reports. Gregory's letter to the Emperor is 
 curious : — 
 
 In sending me their Most Serene commands, the 
 Piety of our Lords, in their reprimands, while wishing 
 to spare me, has not quite done so ; for in gently calluig 
 me " simple," they call me a fool (fatuus) for being de- 
 ceived by the craft of Ariulph. Well ; I confess it is so. 
 If your Piety had not said so, the facts proclaim it. For 
 if I had not been a fool I never should have come to suffer 
 what I do here, among the swords of the Lombards. But 
 as to what I reported, that Aiiulph was ready in good 
 earnest to come over to the State (Eempublicam), not only 
 am I not believed, but I am rebuked for having lied. . . . 
 And if the captivity of my country were not every day 
 and moment increasing, I would gladly hold my peace 
 about any sUght or ridicule thrown on myself. But what 
 afflicts me is this, that the same thing which causes me to 
 endure the charge of falsehood is that which daily brings 
 Italy captive under the yoke of the Lombarda For while 
 no credence is given to my information, the power of the 
 
268 THE LETTERS OF POPE GKEGOEY I 
 
 enemy is enormously increasing. But I submit this to my 
 most religious Lord : let Mm think all the ill that may be 
 about me ; but as to the welfare of the State (Reipuhliece), a,ni 
 the question of the loss of Italy, do not let him easily listen 
 to everybody. Let him believe facts rather than words. ^ 
 
 It was not easy to make any peace, for the Lom- 
 bards had many heads, and had not laid aside the 
 uncontrollable habits of barbarian invaders; and 
 Gregory, even when on good terms with their chiefs, 
 continued to the end of his life to complain of the 
 sufferings caused by the Lombard sword, and of their 
 unscrupulous faithlessness. But he also took advan- 
 tage of a change among the Lombards themselves to 
 attempt a policy more in accordance with his own 
 higher objects. Agilulf, from being " Duke " of Turin, 
 had become King of the Lombards (590) ; and further, 
 he had married the Bavarian Theudolinda, the 
 Catholic widow of the Arian Autharit. The consoli- 
 dation of power had begun in Agilulfs strong and 
 able hands. He was a leader with whom Gregory 
 could treat more hopefully than with separate chiefs ; 
 and Theudolinda's influence, which viras considerable, 
 was, like that of the Burgundian Clotildis over Clevis, 
 and of the Frank Bertha over ^thelbert, exerted on 
 the side of which Gregory was the representative, the 
 side of the more civilised and more authoritative 
 religion of the Eoman Empire. Gregory opened com- 
 munication with Theudolinda. He dealt very respect- 
 fully with her prejudices on the burning question of 
 the day, the condemnation by the Fifth Council of 
 1 Ep. v. 40. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 269 
 
 the alleged Nestorian " Three Chapters," supposed to 
 be sanctioned by the Fourth. H e sent her presents, 
 and invited her help, both in furthering peace and 
 in bringing the Arian Lombards to the Church ; 
 and though the Lombards were too near their bar- 
 barian state to cease to be troublesome and insulting,^ 
 and Agilulf himself was a questionable convert,^ the 
 beginnings of a new state of things were made. The 
 child of Agilulf and Theudolinda was baptized and 
 grew up a Catholic. The example of the Court had 
 its effect on the chiefs and the people. Hopeless of 
 getting rid of the Lombards, or subduing them, Gre- 
 gory rightly thought that the next best thing was to 
 unite them, at least in religion, with the Italians with 
 whom they were to live. They long continued to be 
 a military and ruhng race ; but they were entirely 
 absorbed at last, and the foundations were laid by 
 Gregory's policy of a fusion and union of races which 
 produced, when it was completed, the strongest and 
 most energetic among the populations of the peninsula. 
 The Teutonic people, with their Teutonic speech, their 
 national organisation and customs, which were long 
 guarded by the legislation of their kings, vainly 
 struggled to maintain a separate nationality against 
 the subtler and more powerful influences of the Latin 
 atmosphere in which they lived. Of the language 
 which they spoke, though an ample list of words re- 
 
 ^ See Ms account of the sack of Crotona on tlie Adriatic in 
 596, when Agilulf had been six years in power. — Ep. vii. 26 (697). 
 2 Hegel, i. 171. 
 
270 THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 
 
 mains, not a single connected sentence is any more to 
 be read on parchment or monument ; the name of the 
 Langobards disappeared ; but out of it was softened the 
 famous and more familiar name of the Lombards ; and 
 Lombardy became for a time the name for Italy itself.^ 
 When Gregory became Pope, it may be said that, 
 in human judgment, the future of the Papacy was still 
 uncertain. In the fire centuries which had almost run 
 out since the days of the Apostles, it had undoubtedly 
 won a great position in the hierarchy of the Church. 
 The Councils were the supreme authority in the 
 Church ; and to that supreme authority the Roman 
 bishop, like all others, professed allegiance and sub- 
 mission. But his primacy was undoubted ; what that 
 primacy involved was a different question, and was by 
 no means a clear one. But, generally, it seems plain 
 that the custom had grown more and more at Rome 
 of claiming in a vague way for the See the continued 
 authority of the Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul ; not 
 of St. Peter only, but of both the great pair who were 
 believed to have founded the Church at Rome, and 
 whose sacred bodies stiU lay there. Inference was 
 often rapid in those days, and did not trouble itself 
 much about intermediate steps between a premiss and 
 a conclusion; and the exceptional character of the 
 Roman Bishop seemed to flow obviously from that of 
 those whose functions he exercised where they had 
 lived and died. Practically the first result of this 
 
 ^ Bluhme, GeTis Langohardorv/m, pts. 1 and 2, 1868 and 
 1874. Meyer, SpracM der Langoi. , 1877. Zeiiss, p. 476. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 271 
 
 position was to make him the natural judge of appeals. 
 Invested with the majesty of such traditions, and in 
 the centre and capital of the Empire, he was the 
 natural person to turn to, as arbiter and judge, when 
 his brethren could not settle their disputes among 
 themselves ; and from the convenience and fitness of 
 such an arbiter there soon followed on his part the 
 claim of exclusive right to hear and decide appeals. 
 The second point was his relation to the councils of 
 the Church. This relation, faint and overshadowed 
 by much greater influences at Mcsea, had become 
 more defined and more prominent at Chalcedon ; and 
 since the days of St. Leo a right of confirmation and 
 sanction different from that of the other patriarchs 
 had come to be assumed as a matter of course among 
 the traditions of Rome, though by no means accepted 
 as a matter of course, and, under all circumstances, 
 in the Eastern Church. But undoubtedly the ecclesi- 
 astical claims of the Roman Patriarch had been rising 
 with the progress of the centuries, and with the cease- 
 less controversies of the Church, which emperors, even 
 more than Popes, tried to direct and appease, and tried 
 in vain. The right of admonishing their brethren, 
 common to all bishops of the Church, was used by 
 the Eoman Bishop with a claim to special authority,^ 
 and in virtue of the interest in all parts of the Church 
 which appeals to him from all parts had given him. 
 By the time that Gregory became Pope there could 
 
 ' " Sanctissima ilia sedes, quEe universali Ecclesise jura sua 
 transmittit. " — John of Ravenna to Greg. Ep. iii. 57. 
 
272 THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 
 
 be no question of the prerogative acknowledged in the 
 Roman See, and the rights which this gave of direct 
 superintendence over a large part of the Church, and 
 of authoritative remonstrance everywhere. 
 
 But great as the position was, it had much vague- 
 ness about it, and it was not yet assured. The East 
 was becoming Jealous, and formidable as a rival. It 
 had learning ; it had discipline and cohesion ; it had 
 living examples of ascetic saintliness; it had on its 
 side the civil powers of the State ; and it deeply 
 resented the imperious dictation and the supercilious 
 haughtiness of the ruder Western Romans. Signs 
 were not wanting of a disposition to resist the growing 
 pretensions to interfere and to reprimand which were 
 founded on the long-acknowledged primacy of Rome, 
 and to assert the independence and real equality of 
 the great Eastern thrones. Favouring circumstances, 
 and the mistakes of Popes might have wrecked the 
 fortunes of the Papacy. The condition of Italy and 
 of Rome was very precarious. It was not impossible 
 that the Lombards might repeat the policy of the 
 Vandals, and that the fate of Carthage might become 
 that of her rival. A city surrounded by a rising flood 
 of barbarism, not a half-tamed and friendly one like 
 that of the Goths, but coarse and intolerant like that 
 of the Vandals — a population unable to defend itself 
 except behind its walls, and dependent on the sea for 
 all its food — might (it is no extravagant supposition) 
 have perished to make way for some Lombard capital. 
 The Papacy felt itself in extreme danger 200 years 
 
THE LETTERS OE POPE GEEGORY I 273 
 
 later from the Lombards, -when ttey were Catholics 
 and had become half Italians ; and it called in the aid 
 of the Franks to crush them. It cannot be thought 
 to have been safe now, when they were still heathens 
 or Arians, in the flush of their fierce and cruel con- 
 quest. An interruption now of the Papal history, just 
 as the barbarians were settling in their new countries, 
 in Gaul, in Britain, in Spain, might have seriously 
 altered the course of events ; and even if, after such 
 an interruption and eclipse, it had been resumed, 
 other powers might have established themselves in 
 the interval, both in the East and West, not easy, 
 when once settled, to be dispossessed. 
 
 If it is not idle to attempt to trace influences and 
 results in the tangled threads of history, Gregory's 
 reign prevented this. Suppose that at this critical 
 moment of jealousy, depression, and danger, there had 
 been a succession of weak, or unfortunate, or wrong- 
 headed, or corrupt Popes, the East and the Lombards 
 between them might have irretrievably ruined the 
 growing power of the Eoman See. But, instead of 
 this, the See was held for thirteen years by a man 
 who impressed his character on the Church with a 
 power unknown since St. Augustine, and even more 
 widely than he, for in the East St. Augustine's name 
 hardly counted for much, and Gregory's did. Instead 
 of pompous feebleness and unenterprising routine, there 
 was not only energy, purpose, unwearied industry in 
 business, but there was a passion for justice, vigilant, 
 fearless, impartial to small and great, a pervading 
 
 T 
 
274 THE LETTEES OF POPE GKEGOKY I 
 
 conviction that righteous dealing and conscience in 
 duty was above all zeal for the interests of a cause, 
 a readiness for trouble and for change where reform 
 and improvement called for them, a large and states- 
 manlike look abroad over the world to see where new 
 eiforts might be made to strengthen or to extend 
 the Kingdom of the Eedeemer.^ And this was the 
 spectacle presented at Eome to a despairing world, 
 when all other powers of order or of renovation 
 seemed spent or paralysed. Thsre sat a ruler who, if 
 he was severe and peremptory, was serious and public- 
 spirited in approbation and in judgment, in making 
 not only bishops and clergy, but governors and magis- 
 trates, attend to their business and protect their 
 people. What right he had to call upon exarchs at 
 Ravenna, or the Emperor's captains at Naples to do 
 their duty, people did not curiously inquire, so long 
 as in this neglected land there was some great person 
 whom all reverenced, and who was not afraid to call 
 any one to account. There, at Eome, sat a representa- 
 tive of the love and compassion of the Apostles, whose 
 ear was open to every suppliant, who felt every day 
 that he arose from his own bed of pain for the infinite 
 sufferings of the poor and miserable in the wild scene 
 around him, who was ever ready to minister to their 
 distress, whether it was brought to him in the cry of 
 
 ■^ "Gregorius per procuratores ecclesiasticorum patrimoni- 
 orum, mlut Argus luminosissimus, per totius mundi latitudinem 
 suse pastoralis soUicitudinis oculos circumtulit," is the phrase 
 of his biographer. — Joan. Diac. ii. 55. Cf. De Roziere's Introd. 
 to lAb. Dium. p. xxviii. 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GEEGOKT I 275 
 
 a multitude, or in the ■wrecked fortunes or pressing 
 needs of a debtor, or of starving orphans. There sat 
 a great landlord, who was not above entering into 
 the petty details of long-accustomed fraud or exaction, 
 which made the lives of his distant tenants, whom he 
 would never see, hopeless and wretched ; one who 
 raged against the unjust weight and the fraudulent 
 bushel, and who thundered the anathemas of a council 
 against those who removed landmarks and usurped 
 fields on behalf of the patrimony of the ChurcL The 
 Emperor was far off; what did Italians care that he 
 was defending the Eastern borders against Persians 
 or Avars 'i they only saw his useless soldiers and 
 his burdensome and oppressive tax-gatherers. The 
 Lombards were on the spot, in possession, or at the 
 doors : was it to be war with them or peace 1 and 
 neither Emperor nor Exarch could make up their 
 mind, and they went on trifling with the dangerous 
 intruders. It was no proper business of the Bishop 
 of Rome to take on him to decide a public question 
 of war or peace ; and Gregory was Eoman enough 
 to wish for good vigorous war. But when there was 
 no one to resolve or act, the Bishop of Rome accepted 
 the responsibility. As he could not drive out the 
 foreigners, he would have frank peace with them ; he 
 would make a separate truce; he would appeal to 
 them as a Christian teacher; he would touch their 
 sense of religion; he would attract, convert, reclaim 
 them. Doubtless he was interfering with the concerns 
 of the Empire, with affairs of State, with a province 
 
276 THE LETTEES OF POPE GREGORY I 
 
 which was riot his; but he was doing the best he 
 could to remedy the evils which made his countrymen 
 and his flock miserable, and he was the only man who 
 cared enough for them to make the attempt. He did 
 what there was no one else to do amid — 
 
 The oppression of the tumult — wrath and scorn — 
 The tribulation, and the gleaming blades — 
 
 the only one to try for that great crown, of being 
 "the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to 
 dwell in." 
 
 We cannot be surprised that the Papacy came out 
 of Gregory's administration of it both firmer and 
 stronger than before; that his letters were eagerly 
 searched in subsequent emergencies, and by the com- 
 pilers of the Canon Law, for rules of law and claims 
 of right ; that the precedents which he had set were 
 appealed to and used in confirmation of a power 
 which the circumstances of these troubled ages were 
 continually inviting to extend itself. That power 
 which afterwards advanced such enormous preten- 
 sions ; that power which afterwards humbled emperors 
 and kings, and interfered with the domestic concerns 
 of the meanest peasant; that power which, after 
 claiming to be supreme over law, ended by claiming 
 to be supreme over faith and conscience and reason ; 
 that power, certainly Gregory did not create, and did 
 not know. He did not even lay the foundations of 
 it, for he found them laid. But he certainly secured 
 those foundations when they were in danger. He so 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE aREGORT I 277 
 
 administered the vast undefined powers supposed to 
 be inherent in his See, that they appeared to be in- 
 dispensable to the order, the good government and 
 the hopes, not of the Church only, but of society. 
 Great as were the strictly ecclesiastical prerogatives 
 and duties of his place, great as he himself thought 
 them, and jealous as he was of their undiminished 
 integrity, he went out of his way to be more than a 
 great Church governor ; he passed beyond the sphere 
 of purely religious and spiritual interests to give a 
 splendid example of justice and righteousness in the 
 civil and political government of men. To such a 
 place power flowed and gathered itself by natural 
 consequence. Take away that power, so widely and 
 so fearlessly exercised, and what, indeed, was there 
 in those days to awe the seething tumult of violence 
 and passion? Disinterested and just, it was the only 
 power which none but the bad need fear, the only 
 power which men could wish to grow and increase. 
 In Gregory's hands it grew, not because he was 
 ambitious, but because he was just and good; not 
 because he aimed at increasing it, but because from 
 his way of using it, it could not help increasing. All 
 who suffered, all who smarted under fiscal oppression 
 and fraud, all who trembled at the unjust judge or 
 the barbarian's sword, all who believed in right, all 
 who longed to eat their daily bread in peace and to 
 die in their quiet homes — that is, all the long-suffering 
 multitudes who did not live by war, but were ruined 
 by it — could not but wish to see that power more 
 
278 THE LETTERS OE POPE GREGORY I 
 
 and more respected, more and more active, more and 
 more able to daunt the mighty ones of the earth. 
 These multitudes looked up with confidence and 
 sympathy to the great Bishop of Eome, who taught 
 emperors their duty, and held up before exarchs the 
 terrors of the day of judgment ; whose eye surveyed 
 the whole barbarian world, and who assumed his right 
 to give counsel, or warning, or praise, to the distant 
 kings of the nations — to Brunechild in Gaul, to 
 -iEthelbert in Kent, to Eecared in Spain. No one 
 was afraid of increasing and enlarging the claims of 
 the Bishop of Eome : why should they ? the con- 
 querors, after all, trusted in their swords, and to the 
 conquered he was their best protection from those 
 swords. The virtues of the man, and the disorder of 
 the times, when the old powers of the world were 
 failing, and the new had not yet come, made such an 
 authority as his, if it was to be had, like a heaven- 
 sent compensation for all that had perished in the 
 wreck of the Empire. Why should we doubt that it 
 was a heavenly-sent compensation ; that it was ordered 
 by God's Providence, in mercy to men, in times of 
 confusion and change ? The power which Gregory 
 had and left grew naturally out of the necessities of 
 the times. But when power has been grandly and 
 beneficently used, men are apt to think that it has 
 established a title to continuance. And so it passed, 
 in time, strengthened by his example, and increasing 
 its demands as it was worse used, to the nominees of 
 the Counts of Tusculum, and to the Popes of Avignon 
 
THE LETTERS OF POPE GREGORY I 279 
 
 and the Great Schism. It was held to warrant the 
 victory of Canossa, the humiliation of John of England, 
 the Bulls of Indulgences. It grew up, as it is the 
 way of institutions to grow up ; it served its time, as 
 we see in the case of other institutions. The use 
 which Gregory made of it, and the conditions of his 
 time more than justified all that it was then. His 
 own use of it, his own example, and the changed con- 
 ditions of later centuries, to say nothing of its inter- 
 vening history, are amply sufficient to justify us in 
 believing that its use has passed away. 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS^ 
 
 [Dbcembek 1854] 
 
 The Ottomans were the last of those conquering races 
 who, during the Middle Ages, broke into Europe, and 
 fixed the present arrangement of its map; and the 
 Ottoman State may be said to be, with one partial 
 exception, the last great territorial conquest made in 
 Europe. Never assimilating to those whom they had 
 conquered, and but imperfectly able to incorporate 
 their subjects with themselves, divided by what seems 
 an eternal bar from the fellowship of other European 
 nations, the Ottomans, in the period of their pro- 
 sperity and strength, afflicted Europe with incessant 
 and singularly terrible warfare ; and long after they 
 had learned not to be ambitious, insulted it with their 
 domestic ferocity and untamed barbarian pride. The 
 curse which they had brought with them clings to 
 their presence still, in the hour of their deep decay. 
 By the very decline of their power, jealousies have 
 
 ^ Sistoire de V Empire Ottoman, depwis son origine jusqu' 4 
 nos jours. Far J. . be Hammer. Traduit de Vallemand sur 
 les notes et sous la direction de Vauteur. Pa/r J. J. Hbllbet. 
 18 vols. 8to. Paris : 1835-1843. 
 
282 THE EAKLT OTTOMANS 
 
 been awakened which could not be appeased, and 
 questions raised which could not be solved, without 
 plunging Europe into a war, of which no one can 
 forecast the issues. At a moment like the present,-' 
 when, while verging to their fall, they have once 
 more become the occasion of calamity to Christendom, 
 it may not be without interest to recall briefly the 
 steps by which they arose from the most insignificant 
 beginnings to their eventful eminence. 
 
 The history of the early Ottomans has been most 
 imperfectly told, and much still remains dark and 
 uncertain in the features which distinguish in its 
 origin that strange and mighty race from its kindred 
 tribes. It is a history, in the main, of wasteful and 
 unscrupulous conquest, like that of other successful 
 barbarians of Europe and Asia. But we seem to dis- 
 cern, even from the beginning, some points of special 
 interest. We seem to perceive in it the remarkable 
 history of a single family, gradually gathering round 
 itself the materials of a vast ambition, and shaping a 
 people and a nation to support it, out of heterogeneous 
 elements, by the informing power and spirit of one 
 household and line. It is an advance of which the 
 earlier steps were as slow and gradual as its subse- 
 quent strides suddenly became gigantic. It is a story 
 of great patience and resolution; of an ambition 
 which, unlike that of most barbarians, was not in a 
 hurry, but could keep its object in view, and devise 
 the means for its achievement, without restlessness 
 * The following pages were in type, December 1854. 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 283 
 
 and without weariness. It was content to work by 
 degrees, and, without losing sight of the highest 
 prizes, was satisfied with smaller ones, while they 
 were proportionate to its strength. And among the 
 institutions of which the foundations were early laid, 
 as the permanent supports of the greatness which it 
 meditated, one was at once the most original, the 
 most terrible, and, for the time, the most efiective 
 that is to be found recorded among the inventions of 
 deep craft and heartless love of power, of which his- 
 tory is full. The Ottomans found the art of borrow- 
 ing their strength systematically, and from the very 
 first, from the races they were subduing ; of forcing 
 into their own service, and moulding to their own 
 purpose, the promise and energy which was their 
 natural antagonist. Their history is one at first of 
 few disasters, so cautious and so steadily provident, 
 even while they were most enterprising, were these 
 builders of a new empire. A reverse did come at 
 length, unexpected and crushing. It retarded for 
 some score of years their ambition; but it neither 
 broke up their institutions, nor dismayed their spirit, 
 nor turned aside their purposes, nor in the end 
 crippled their power. It is a painful, but it is an 
 instructive lesson, to compare their stout and perse- 
 vering course, so wisely compliant to circumstances, 
 but so inflexible in its ultimate direction, their im- 
 perious and exacting urgency in the opportunities of 
 success, their self-restraint when it was the time to wait 
 or pause, with the short-sightedness, the despair, the 
 
284 THE EAELT OTTOMANS 
 
 ■VTorn-out and spiritless imbecility, the random efforts, 
 of those whom they were menacing. Thus, at length, 
 Christianity was beaten down, the remains of ancient 
 civilisation swept away, and the seed and promise of 
 that to come destroyed, not by a passing burst of 
 barbarian ravage, but by a polity new and uncongenial 
 to Europe, which had early attained its maturity and 
 secured its permanence ; religious in its groundwork 
 of ideas and laws, with a religion bitterly hostile to 
 all that is sacred in Europe ; purely and fixedly mili- 
 tary in its organisation and aims, as well as its spirit 
 and habits. No glimmering of political life or 
 thought, no dim image of civil rights or duties, ever 
 gave hope, while the Ottomans were rising to great- 
 ness, that they would gradually open from the tastes 
 and tempers of their ancestral deserts to the gentler 
 manners, the wider thoughts, the nobler pursuits, the 
 wiser and more equal laws, by which alone nations 
 can be preserved from corruption and decay. There 
 was no germ of improvement in their institutions, 
 yet they succeeded in raising on those institutions a 
 great and mighty monarchy, which, with all its in- 
 herent seeds of ruin, has already stood the wear of 
 four centuries. 
 
 In the following pages we shall confine ourselves 
 to that period of their history during which they 
 were preparing for their future greatness, — the period 
 from their first appearance on the outskirts of the 
 Greek Empire, till they felt themselves ready to take 
 the great step for which they had so steadily been 
 
THE BAELY OTTOMANS 285 
 
 preparing, and claim the imperial city, round whose 
 walls they, had been closing for more than a century. 
 Our chief guide, as he probably must be of most who 
 study Ottoman history for some time to come, will 
 be Von Hammer. His diffuse and ponderous, yet 
 noble work, is the production of a scholar, a diplomat- 
 ist, and a traveller, who for thirty years prepared 
 himself for his task by an unwearied study, both of 
 the people whose history he meant to write, and of 
 the original monuments of that history. No one 
 else has yet examined, systematically and critically, 
 the Ottoman records. He ransacked the libraries of 
 Europe from Naples to Oxford; he was able to 
 command the use of the archives of those powers 
 which had most connection with the Porte, at Vienna 
 and Venice ; his agents searched for manuscripts in 
 Cairo and Bagdad, Aleppo and Damascus. Of his 
 absolute success, few probably in the West can be 
 competent to judge ; and few are likely to qualify 
 themselves for testing his accuracy, by invading once 
 more that strange mass of semi-barbarous literature, 
 Turkish, Persian, Arabic, only existing in manuscript, 
 and dispersed in distant libraries, from which he 
 drew his materials. We must take on trust his 
 reports of Turkish authorities. In the early part of 
 the history, though they are not absolutely wanting, 
 they furnish, even according to his estimate of them, 
 but scanty and uncertain Hght : but it is all we have, 
 to check the evidence, perhaps even less to be relied 
 on, of the Greeks. But it is necessary, in accepting 
 
286 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 the testimony of Ottoman historians,^ to remember 
 the criticism of Seaddedin, one of the most famous 
 of their number, on his predecessor, Idris, whose 
 Eight Paradises he eulogises and copies, but of 
 whom he remarks, " that he is too sparing in enumer- 
 ating the virtues of the Ottomans, and does not set 
 forth, with the copiousness and particularity which 
 they deserve, the praises of the Sultans.'' Yet the 
 historian, whose almost only fault is said to be the 
 niggardness of his eulogy, opens his work with claim- 
 
 ' The earliest sources of Ottoman history to which Von 
 Hammer could get access in the originals, and which he used, 
 are as follows : — 
 
 1. The History of Aaschik-Faschazade. The writer was a 
 witness to Amurath II. 's Hungarian war in 1438 (Von Hammer 
 1. 346), and wrote under Bajazet II. , the son of Mahomet, the 
 Conqueror (1481-1512). He "drew materials from the Book 
 of Soheikh Yachshi, the Imam of Sultan Orchan (1325-1359), 
 who was one of the seven present at Othman's death-bed, and 
 who relates the earliest events of Ottoman history from the 
 mouth of his father." It was a forgotten book to the Ottomans 
 in the seventeenth century. Von Hammer searched for it in 
 vain at Constantinople ; but found it, and made extracts from 
 it, in the Vatican. 
 
 2. An old chronicle, by Ali Osman, reaching down to 1470. 
 It had been brought to Europe by Veranzius, and used by 
 Leunclavius. 
 
 3. View of the World, by Neschri, a contemporary of Aashik- 
 Pascha-sade under Bajazet II. "Written in rough Turkish, 
 simply and without art." Also used by Leunclavius. 
 
 4. The JEight Paradises of Idris of Bitlis, who died 1523, 
 and who, at the instance of Bajazet II., wrote, in Persian, the 
 first Ottoman history with attention to elegance of style. 
 Seaddedin regrets in him his extreme luxuriance of diction. 
 What that must have been may be imagined from the soberer 
 critic's language, who describes the work as " veiled in musk " ; 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 287 
 
 ing it as his merit, that all that is not to the credit 
 of his race, he is most careful to pass over in silence, 
 and that he will only admit posterity to the knowledge 
 of the noble deeds of the house of Othman. It is a 
 partial compensation that his standard of the blame- 
 worthy and the honourable is an eastern one ; and 
 he records without a remark, and of course without 
 a shadow of censure, the murder of an aged uncle, 
 who was pleading against an aggressive war with the 
 Christians, by the first founder of the race. 
 
 We have prefixed to this article the French 
 translation of Von Hammer's, to have the opportunity 
 of giving the caution, that it is not to be trusted. 
 
 as "a resplendent beauty among all the brides of the library,"' 
 whose "musk-perfumed hair, that is, the interlacing lines of 
 its letters, is like the locks of the Houris," and "whose face is 
 painted with vermilion, that is, it is plentifully interspersed 
 with the texts of the Koran written in red ink. " Von Hammer 
 procured it with difficulty. 
 
 5. History of Lutfi-PascJia, down to 1553. He had been 
 Grand Vizier. 
 
 6. History of Bjemali, down to 1550. Brought to Vienna 
 in 1551, and translated by Leunclavius. " The first trustworthy 
 foundation of Ottoman history in Europe." 
 
 7. TJie Crown of Histories, of Seaddedin, the first oificial 
 historiographer of the Ottoman sultans, under Amurath III. 
 (1574-1595). Seaddedin was tutor to the princes, judge of the 
 army, and at last Mufti. Translated, but carelessly, by Bratutti. 
 
 8. History of Aali, to 1597, "uncritical, but painstaking 
 and impartial, and not written in an official spirit." 
 
 These were all examined in the original languages by Von 
 Hammer. After all, though the inspection of the originals 
 has given him a vast advantage over all his predecessors, 
 Gibbon's remark about Cantemir involuntarily recurs, that 
 "he gives a miserable idea of his Turkish guides." 
 
288 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 It is to be regretted that this handsome and complete 
 book, ■vrhich contains at full length all Von Hammer's 
 illustrative extracts and documents, and a useful 
 atlas of maps and plans, should have been prepared, 
 as far as the translator's work is concerned, with such 
 inexcusable ignorance or negligence. The continual 
 and stupid mistakes which recur in this neat and 
 flowery French version of Von Hammer's ungainly 
 but vigorous German, negative, to our mind, the 
 assertion in the title-page, that it was translated 
 "under the direction of the author.'' We cannot 
 doubt that Von Hammer understood French. We 
 are certain that the French which is put in his 
 mouth by his translator, working, as he says, " under 
 his direction," makes him perpetually say the exact 
 opposite of what he says himself, in German.-' 
 
 The traveller in Asia Minor comes from time to 
 time upon encampments of Turkomans, such as have 
 for the last one thousand years roamed with their horses 
 and their flocks over the provinces of the East. These 
 wandering shepherds still adhere to the life which 
 their fathers led, in the steppes and highlands of 
 Central Asia. They pitch their black tents in the 
 plains and near the cities during the winter ; as the 
 summer draws on, they retire to the coolness and 
 fresh springs of the mountain pastures. They can 
 live contented with this vagrant liberty ; but they are 
 ever ready to mount and ride, at a moment's warning, 
 
 ^ In our references to Von Hammer, we cite, unless the con- 
 trary is expressed, from the second German edition. (Pesth : 
 1834.) 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 289 
 
 to any call to pillage and war. Such a tribe, danger- 
 ous or harmless, or merely troublesome, according to 
 the character of its chiefs, was roaming, towards the 
 middle of the thirteenth century, in the north-western 
 corner of Asia Minor, by the banks of the Sangarius 
 and among the oak forests of the Bithynian Olympus ; 
 one, and an inconsiderable one, among the many 
 tribes of the same race, who had fixed their tents, 
 and some of them their thrones, in that fair but 
 wasted land. This encampment of shepherds and 
 freebooters was the germ of the Ottoman Empire. 
 
 It was but the fragment of a small Turkoman 
 horde, which towards the beginning of the century, 
 — among the many migrations and changes caused 
 among the wandering races of Asia by the devastations 
 of Genghis Khan, left its seats in Khorasan, which lay 
 in the track of the Mongol invasions, to seek safer 
 and remoter pasture grounds by the sources of the 
 Euphrates. They seem to have wandered down the 
 course of the river, to the neighbourhood of Aleppo, 
 till, on the death of Genghis Khan, they again turned 
 their faces eastward, towards their old abodes ; but 
 as the tribe was crossing the Euphrates, the horse of 
 their leader, Suleiman Schah, stumbled from the steep 
 bank, and his rider was drowned in the stream, at a 
 spot which still keeps the name of the " Turk's Grave." 
 This broke up the camp. Suleiman left four sons. 
 Two of them continued their course eastward, and 
 with the majority of the tribe, their posterity have 
 been lost among the nomad hordes into which they 
 
 V 
 
290 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 melted. The other two, Ertoghrul and his brother 
 Dundar, with but 400 families, turned once more to 
 the west, to become the founders of the mighty and 
 terrible house of Othman. 
 
 At that time, the nominal masters of Asia Minor 
 were the Turkoman Sultans of the family of Seljouk, 
 who ruled at Iconium. Their protection was sought 
 by their humbler kinsmen under Ertoghrul. The 
 story goes, that in the journeyings of Ertoghrul and 
 his tribe, they came upon a battlefield, where a fight 
 was going on between two unequally matched armies. 
 Ertoghrul could not resist the temptation to join in 
 the fray ; and, as he was a lover of justice and equity, 
 resolved while yet at a distance, and not knowing 
 who were the combatants, to assist the weaker side. 
 He found, after his horsemen had decided the battle, 
 that he had helped the Sultan of Iconium, the great 
 Alaeddin, against an overpowering force of Mongols. 
 But with his ready hand, and love of fair play, 
 Ertoghrul's ambition and desire was only for the 
 retirement and peace of an unmolested pastoral life. 
 He asked for no reward from the Sultan, but to be 
 allowed to feed his flocks in some safe and secluded 
 district ; and Alaeddin assigned him the Black Moun- 
 tain near Angora. Such was the account which the 
 servants of the house of Othman delivered to its 
 chroniclers, and which they had heard from the elders 
 of the tribe, respecting the first occasion of the close 
 alliance between their chiefs and the Seljoukian 
 sultans. But the retired pasture grounds of the 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 291 
 
 Black Mountain were in time exchanged for a more 
 public scene of life, which tempted and favoured more 
 aspiring desires, and more stirring adventure. 
 
 In the decline of the Eastern Empire, its Asiatic 
 border had gradually shrunk back before the Persians, 
 the Arabs, and the Seljouks, from the Euphrates, to 
 the south-eastern horizon of Constantinople, the 
 Bithynian hills. The river Sangarius, with its chain 
 of forts, and the passes of Olympus behind it, which 
 covered the frontier, and fenced in the green and 
 wooded plain which was spread round the walls of 
 Nicomedia and Nicsea, had more than once been forced 
 by the invaders, and Bithynia with its royal cities 
 lost and regained, in the vicissitudes of border war. 
 Bithynia was now a province of the Byzantine Empire, 
 the last that remained to it on the other side of the 
 Bosporus; and the outlying fringe of plain that 
 extends beyond its mountain border, from the eastern 
 slopes of Olympus to the banks of the Sangarius and 
 the Thymbres was a debatable ground, occupied and 
 fought over both by G-reeks and Seljouks. Here 
 Alaeddin settled Ertoghrul and his horde, as an 
 advanced camp, to guard the outskirts of his dominions, 
 and annoy those of his Christian neighbours. He 
 could not have chosen a more efficient garrison. In 
 the wasted and depopulated plain, and the extensive 
 river banks, and in the cool summits and uplands of 
 the neighbouring hills, the flocks of the tribe found 
 ample and congenial range for their winter and 
 summer wanderings ; and its rapid and active horse- 
 
292 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 men were not more ready to defend their new pasture 
 grounds, than they were to challenge the risks and 
 excitement of border frays and plunder. They were 
 skilfully and resolutely led; and a great trial of 
 strength and cunning with the G-reek borderers and 
 their hired Tartar allies, established Ertoghrul's name, 
 and his claim to the confidence of Alaeddin. In the 
 front of the battle rode a crowd of light-armed skir- 
 mishers, whose name, the Akindji, became in later 
 times but too familiar to the Christians of Hungary 
 and Germany, as the name of the irregular bands, 
 who preceded the march of the Ottoman hosts, and 
 whose furious onset was the signal of battle. Behind 
 their cover came the main array, the 444 companions 
 of Ertoghrul (Turkish tradition, which delights in 
 combinations of the number four, has preserved the 
 exact number), which helped Alaeddin when he was 
 overpowered by the Mongols. For three days and 
 three nights the battle lasted ; it began in the defiles 
 of Olympus, crossed the mountain, and descended 
 into the plain of Brusa; but in the end Ertoghrul 
 broke and trampled down his enemies, and chased 
 them through the plain, to the edge of the sea. 
 Alaeddin waited anxiously for the news, and in 
 memory of the victory, and of the fiery horsemen of 
 the vanguard, he called the name of the district which 
 he had given to Ertoghrul, Sultan (Eni, the SuUcm's 
 Fore-front. Sultcm (Eni — which still keeps the name, 
 as a Sandjak or fief of the Ottoman Empire — was the 
 first land which the founders of that empire could 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 293 
 
 call their own — the first foothold, from which they 
 advanced, step by step, to the conquest of half the 
 Roman dominion. In the narrow canton of Sultan 
 (Eni are found the first local names of Ottoman 
 history, made to the nation venerable by their associar 
 tions with the abodes, the fortunes, the graves of its 
 patriarchs, heroes, martyrs. Here are found the 
 scenes of their birth, their combats, their loves, their 
 councils. Here is still seen the village where the 
 Cilician wife of Othman, long wooed and hardly won, 
 spent her maiden years, with her aged father, the 
 venerable Scheikh Edebali. And here by the road- 
 side, the ancient domed tomb among the cypresses on 
 the hill, of the Turkoman leader, whose children have 
 arrogated to themselves a place above all other earthly 
 thrones, is visited by Mahometan pilgrims with pride 
 and devotion, near the hamlet where he ruled.^ 
 
 There was nothing in the achievements of Ertoghrul 
 and his camp to portend the greatness which his 
 children were to reach. A remarkable contrast to 
 the rise of most Asiatic empires, which often, like 
 those of Genghis and Timour, grew to their colossal 
 and terrific power in the life of one generation, the 
 Ottomans advanced steadily, but at first almost im- 
 perceptibly. The Ottoman legends relate the dream 
 of Ertoghrul, who had sought hospitality in the house 
 of a holy dervish ; and after he had stood all night 
 long reading the Koran fell asleep, and in the dreams 
 
 ^ The village of Shughut, or Sogiid, near the Sangarius. 
 Leake : Asia Mi#or, p. 15. 
 
294 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 of morning, the time when dreams are divine, received 
 the promise, that as he had honoured the Eternal 
 Word that night by his devout watching, his children 
 should be had to honour throughout all generations. 
 But all that had been granted to Ertoghrul, at the 
 end of a life of nearly a century, was but a wasted 
 and narrow border tract, with its ruined villages and 
 lonely hills ; and Othman, his greater and more rest- 
 less son, though he turned the thoughts of his tribe 
 towards wider conquests, and though from him a 
 nation and its name, new in history, had its beginning, 
 yet had barely, at the end of his threescore years and 
 ten, made himself master of half a small and feebly 
 defended province. 
 
 The accounts of Othman's life pass insensibly from 
 legends to history.^ They begin with the patriarchal 
 simplicity and romantic adventures of a chieftain of 
 the desert ; they end with the first rude outlines of 
 the founder of a dynasty, and the territorial prince. 
 But even the legendary part of his history — the stories 
 of his marriage, his friendships, and the marriage of 
 his son — exhibit, as it were in rudiment and figure, 
 some of the most characteristic features of what was 
 
 ' The names of Othman, Bajazet, Amurath, Mahomet, are so 
 naturalised in our language, that incorrect, and needlessly in- 
 correct as they are, it is hardly worth while, at least in a paper 
 like the present, and speaking of certain well-known historical 
 persons, to replace them with Osman, Bayazid, Murad, Mo- 
 hammed or Mahmoud. It is too late to change, in general use, 
 the familiar Ottomams for the more accurate Osmams or Omianii; 
 just as it would be to introduce the native forms of the names 
 of Lyons, Leghorn, Naples, Florence. 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 295 
 
 afterwards the policy of his race. Othman wooed and 
 won a foreign wife to be the mother of his children. 
 Besides his Tartar brethren and comrades, the " Alps," 
 whose names are joined with his in the story of his 
 wars, he sought beyond the camp the friendship of 
 two sorts of men. The counsellors whom he venerated, 
 whose sanction he sought for in all his plans, whose 
 abodes he visited with reverent humility, and for 
 whom lands and houses were largely and solemnly 
 set apart in all his conquests, were the scheikhs and 
 dervishes, the learned and holy men of Islam. For 
 his most daring and trustiest captain, he had won 
 over from his race and his faith, a Christian apostate. 
 And as he had himself married out of his own race, 
 so the legends tell us, how he laid in wait for and 
 carried off into captivity a Christian damsel, to be 
 the wife of his young son. We see already a fore- 
 shadowing of the domestic and administrative usages 
 of the Ottoman house — its mixture of foreign blood, 
 its slave marriages, its array of viziers and generals, 
 torn away or allured from the choicest youth of sur- 
 rounding Christendom; and a fierce military spirit 
 and institutions adapted only for war, intimately 
 allying themselves with a religious element, and 
 owning their only control in its ministers. 
 
 Othman had long to wait, and much to endure, 
 before he could win the wife whom he had chosen, 
 Malchatoun, the daughter of Edebali, a holy man, 
 who had wandered from his birthplace in Cilicia 
 among many cities of Islam, and had at last chosen 
 
296 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 for the resting-place of his old age a village in 
 Bithynia. Othman's love was passionate and strong. 
 He visited with assiduous and humble reverence the 
 threshold of the venerable Scheikh. But diflSculties 
 and dangers met and sorely tried him. Edebali refused 
 to give his only daughter. Othman had a rival in the 
 Greek chief of Dorylseum, who assembled his friends, 
 and laid wait for Othman's life. Othman, indeed, 
 slew his treacherous enemy, and gained in the affray 
 a faithful friend, Michael "of the pointed beard," one 
 of the companions of the Greek captain, who, after 
 having been vanquished and disarmed by Othman, 
 was so struck with admiration of his conqueror that 
 he devoted himself to his service, and at last forsook 
 for his sake creed and country, and became the ever- 
 ready assailant of his own people ; the first of that 
 long line of Christian renegades who have been in 
 every age the fiercest and the most terrible servants 
 of the Ottoman power. But Malchatoun had yet to 
 be won ; and it required a dream sent from heaven 
 to overcome the scruples or fears of Edebali. Othman, 
 in spite of the old man's discouraging words, waited, 
 resigned and patient, under his roof, still reverently 
 listening to his wisdom, still hoping in his own perse- 
 verance and fortune. One night he had a dream, 
 such as is accustomed to be related of the founders 
 of Oriental empires. He saw the full moon rise from 
 the bosom of Edebali, and descend into his own ; and 
 from thence he saw a stately tree arise, which grew 
 taller and more spreading, till it overshadowed the 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 297 
 
 world. Beneath it arose four of the great mountains 
 of the earth, Caucasus and Atlas, Taurus and Hssmus. 
 From its roots issued four mighty rirers, the Danube, 
 the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Nile. Beautiful 
 gardens and stately palaces were spread under its 
 branches, with minarets, from whence the call to 
 prayer blended with songs of nightingales and the 
 prattle of many-coloured parrots. At length a strong 
 wind bent the branches, the leaves lengthened out 
 into the form of pointed sabres, which turned to the 
 chief cities of the world, and at last to Constantinople. 
 Constantinople, between two continents and two seas, 
 seemed Kke a diamond set between two sapphires and 
 two emeralds — the jewel of a royal ring. Othman 
 was about to put it on his finger when he awoke. A 
 century and a half were to elapse before the promise 
 of the dream was fulfilled. But it won Othman his 
 wife, the predestined mother of a line of mighty kings, 
 the last and the longest of the royal races of Islam. 
 
 For his son Orchan also he sought a wife of fairer 
 beauty and higher blood than could be found in the 
 black tents of his wandering brethren. The early 
 legends tell of alliances as well as feuds between the 
 camp of the Turkomans and the Greeks of the towns. 
 Ertoghrul and Othman had formed an alliance with 
 the captain of the castle of Belecoma — an alliance 
 marked by a curious mixture of confidence and mis- 
 trust. When the Turkomans drove their flocks to 
 the hUls in summer, they left the more cumbrous 
 portion of their possessions in charge of the captain 
 
298 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 of Belecoma ; but the compact was, that the Turko- 
 man treasures were to be brought into the Greek 
 town by none but the women and children of the 
 tribe. For many years the agreement was faithfully 
 kept. The Turkomans missed nothing at the hands 
 of the Greek captains ; and Othman, when he came 
 down to the plains in winter, brought presents of 
 cheese and honey, of horse-trappings and carpets of 
 goats' hair — the labours of the summer months on 
 Olympus — for his Christian ally. But at last, say 
 the Turkish chroniclers, the Greeks grew jealous of 
 Othman's power, and leagued against him. Othman 
 was invited to the marriage-feast of the captain of 
 Belecoma, where the Greeks were prepared to seize 
 him. Michael "of the pointed beard," whom the 
 Greeks had in vain endeavoured to gain over to the 
 conspiracy, warned Othman of his danger. Then he 
 resolved on swift and signal revenge. He said he 
 would be present at the nuptials. But as summer 
 was at hand, and he was going up into the hills, he 
 requested the bridegroom, the captain of Belecoma, 
 to take charge as usual of the treasures of the tribe 
 for the summer months, and to admit the women who 
 bore them into the town. The gates were opened 
 without suspicion ; but this time under the long veils 
 and mantles came forty stout warriors, Othman and 
 thirty-nine companions. The captain, with his retinue, 
 was absent, preparing for his wedding on the follow- 
 ing day with the beautiful daughter of the chief of a 
 neighbouring Greek town. Othman seized Belecoma, 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 299 
 
 and then went off to waylay its master and the bridal 
 procession as they passed through a gorge in the hills 
 on their road homeward. The surprise was success- 
 ful. The bridegroom was slain, and his Greek bride, 
 the "Lotus-flower" of Brusa, was swept off by the 
 Turkoman robbers to their lair, to become the spouse 
 of their leader's son, Orchan. 
 
 But as the power of Othman grew, notices precise 
 and circumstantial, with dates and names, appear by 
 the side of these tales of desert life and border adven- 
 ture. The year is recorded, and the place, in which 
 Othman was raised from the head of a wandering 
 camp into a recognised emir, or vassal of the Seljouk 
 Empire ; and again, the date when, after the Seljouk 
 Empire had fallen to pieces, Othman could call him- 
 self an independent prince, and began his struggle for 
 conquest and pre-eminence with the other Turkish 
 chiefs, most of them more powerful than himself, who 
 had shared among themselves the heritage of Alp- 
 Arslan in Asia Minor.^ In 1289 Othman had seized 
 a Greek town at the edge of that plain of Dorylseum 
 where he had long kept guard for the Seljouk frontier. 
 The sultan of the expiring dynasty of Iconium re- 
 
 ^ Tte Ten States, mostly named after their first chiefs, were, 
 on the jEgean, Karasi, in Mysia, Saruchan, in the Valley of 
 the Hermus, Aidin, at Smyrna on the Maeander, Mentesche, in 
 Caria, TeJckeh, in Lycia ; the Midland States, Kermicm and 
 Hamid, in Phrygia and Pisidia ; on the north coast, Kastemuni, 
 at Sinope and in Paphlagonia ; in the south-east, the most 
 powerful of all, inheriting the Seljouk capital, Iconium, and 
 holding the approaches from Persia and Syria, the Karamans; 
 lastly, the Ottomans in Bithynia. 
 
300 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 warded the exploit of the rising border chief with the 
 dignity of an emir or prince ; and the " Black Castle " 
 {Karadja Hissar) on the Thymbres deserves remem- 
 brance in history, as the place where the ancestors of 
 Mahomet the Conqueror and Soliman the Magnificent 
 ceased to be private men, and exchanged their rude 
 pre-eminence for an acknowledged place among the 
 lords of their people. The flag, the kettledrum, and 
 the horsetail, the insignia of his new rank, were 
 solemnly, delivered to Othman by the messenger of 
 his feudal superior, the Iconian sultan. Othman 
 received them, amid the clanging salute of barbaric 
 music, with his arms reverently crossed on his bosom. 
 And long afterwards, in remembrance of the investi- 
 ture of the Emir of Karadja Hissar, his proud suc- 
 cessors stood in the same attitude when the trumpets 
 and cymbals of the host sounded forth at the hour of 
 prayer, till Mahomet the Conqueror thought it time to 
 abolish the memento of his forefather's dependence and 
 rise to greatness, with the observation that forms of rev- 
 erence which have lasted 200 years have lasted too long. 
 At Karadja Hissar, the seat of his new government, 
 Othman established a weekly market, according to a 
 custom still characteristic of the Turkomans,^ -with. 
 its overseers, and a tribunal, which became famous 
 through the neighbourhood for its justice and impar- 
 tiality. He turned the church into a mosque ; and 
 
 1 Burnes's Travels, ii. 225 ; iii. 7. Probably a fairly 
 correct idea may be formed of Othman's tribe, from Burnes's 
 account of the Turkomans of Sburukhs. Vol. iii. cc. xii.-xv. 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 301 
 
 to the mosque he appointed the ministers of pubhc 
 prayer and preaching, and the judicial expounder of 
 the religious and civil law. But he did not do this 
 before he had first consulted the Elders of his camp, 
 and the holy Scheikh Edebali, by whose words he was 
 guided, and till, by their advice, he had sought and 
 obtained the sanction of his liege lord. But the 
 Seljouk power was fast hastening to its ruin. For 
 ten years only after the Sultan of Iconium had in- 
 vested Othman with the rank of a vassal emir, was 
 the name of the last Alaeddin named, as his sovereign 
 and liege lord, in the public prayer of Othman's town.^ 
 In the last year but one of the thirteenth century, 
 Alaeddin's name was changed in the prayer which 
 was said in the Mosque of Karadja Hissar, for that of 
 Othman. And from this era, the opening of the 
 fourteenth century, so famous in the religion and the 
 poetry of the West, no other name but that of their 
 own princes has been heard in the Friday worship 
 within the Ottoman dominions. The Mahometan 
 historians remark that the opening of each of the 
 centuries of their era, which at that epoch nearly 
 corresponded with the division of those of our own,^ 
 
 ^ A Mahometan ruler is known as an independent sovereign 
 by two tokens : — 1. When he coins money in his own name ; 
 2. When the solemn Friday prayer is said in his name. 
 
 " It need perhaps hardly be observed, that the Mahometan 
 years consist of lunar months ; so that the years of their 
 centuries gain on the years of ours. The beginning of the 
 eighth century from the Hegira, thus nearly coincided with the 
 beginning of the fourteenth century of our era. The remark if 
 less accurate than characteristic. 
 
302 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 had been marked, up to the time of Othman, by the 
 appearance of some renowned and mighty prince. 
 The Prophet himself, the founder of the Ommiades, 
 the great Caliph Al-Mamun, the first of the Fatimites 
 in Egypt, the last of the great Abhasides, and lastly, 
 the devastator of the world, Genghis Khan, " stand 
 like colossal figures, in the portal, each of his century." 
 At the threshold of the eighth, stands a name, after 
 the Prophet, the mightiest of all, that of the founder 
 of the Ottomans. 
 
 Othman had extended the limits of his father 
 Ertoghrul's narrow domain; and villages on the 
 western side of Olympus, at no great distance from 
 the gates of Mceea and Mcomedia, called him their 
 master. But a traveller could easily traverse in a 
 day the dominions over which Othman first exercised 
 independent sway. He was now, however, a sovereign 
 prince, and he distributed the towns and hamlets of 
 his principality among his companions and counsellors. 
 His father-in-law, the Scheikh Edebali, received as his 
 portion the town of the Greek captain who, in former 
 days, used to guard during the summer the valuables 
 of the Turkoman camp. His young son Orchan was 
 entrusted with the care of the Black Castle, on the 
 southern frontier of Othman's land ; and he himself, 
 from the summits of Olympus, cast his eyes westward 
 to the rich plains and fenced cities of Bithynia. The 
 storm was not long in coming. A solemn council 
 was held to deliberate whether Othman and his 
 companions should try to add to their conquests. 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 303 
 
 Dundar, his uncle, a patriarch of ninety years, 
 who had come with Ertoghrul from the banks of 
 the Euphrates, counselled peace. Othman's answer was 
 an arrow in the heart of his father's brother ; and thus, 
 his resolution, sealed with the blood of a kinsman, 
 was taken and confirmed to go forth and conquer. 
 
 The invaders found little to resist them, except 
 the stoue walls of the great cities. There was a time 
 when the Greek emperors had found no difficulty in 
 beating back the inroads of freebooters of the same 
 race and hardihood as Othman's horsemen, who since 
 the days of Alp Arslan, had harassed the Bithynian 
 frontier. Besides the regular armies, who waged war 
 with varying success, the passes of Olympus and the 
 villages of Bithynia, had been given in charge to a 
 stout and warlike race of borderers, who enjoyed 
 great privileges, were proprietors of the land which 
 they cultivated, and were exempt from the oppressive 
 taxes of the Empire, on condition of being responsible 
 for the safety of its limits. These free mountaineers 
 " formed a bold and active militia, which garrisoned 
 a line of forts that commanded all the roads, bridges, 
 and mountain passes ; " and for a long time the bow- 
 men of Nicsea were the most renowned soldiers of the 
 Greek armies.^ But about the time that Othman was 
 botn, the last and worst' of the Greek dynasties 
 mounted the throne. Michael, the usurper of an 
 Empire, which the Latins and the barbarians had left 
 shattered and prostrate, yet stronger than any of its 
 
 1 Finlay, ii. 411, 418. 
 
304 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 neighbours, had neither the virtue nor the genius to 
 restore it ; and a Greek courtier of the time declares, 
 " that he systematically weakened the Greek popula- 
 tion from his fear of rebellion." Among his measures 
 was the destruction of the spirited and wealthy race 
 who had so long and so effectually garrisoned the 
 Bithynian frontier. By war and by confiscation, 
 "the resources of this flourishing province,'' says Mr. 
 Finlay, "were ruined, and its population was so 
 diminished, that when the Ottoman Turks attacked 
 the Empire, the renowned archers of Bithynia, and 
 the mountain militia had ceased to exist." ^ Some of 
 these, like Michael " of the pointed beard," the captain 
 of one of the strongholds on Olympus, had carried 
 their valour and their local knowledge over to the 
 camp of the invaders. The Turks of Othman, like 
 the bands of their countrymen on every coast of the 
 Empire, rode and ravaged at will. Near Nicomedia, 
 the mercenaries, who formed the Emperor's body- 
 guard, met Othman in the open field ; but they left 
 the victory and the ripening harvest to the spoilers. 
 Othman now knew his strength; and the plains of 
 Bithynia had no longer any rest from the hoofs of his 
 cavalry, nor its towns and fortified posts any security 
 from the daring of his warriors. They were masters 
 of the open country between Olympus and the sea ; 
 they rode unchallenged by the banks of the Bosporus 
 and on the shores of the Euxine ; and they riveted 
 their hold on a land which they were too few to 
 1 See Gibbon, viii. 56 ; Finlay, ii. 445 ; "Von Hammer, i. 79. 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 305 
 
 occupy, by getting into their hands, one by one, 
 a network of strongholds or considerable villages, 
 which were distributed by a kind of feudal tenure 
 among the companions of Othman. But there still 
 remained the large cities, whose massive walls and 
 guarded gates, the Turkish horsemen had not skill to 
 approach, nor artillery to batter ; and probably their 
 numbers were too small to risk the losses of a storm. ^ 
 But if Othman had no engineers or battering rams, he 
 had that resolute patience which has so often marked 
 his race. He had waited patiently when he wooed 
 his wife ; he had time before him, and could wait 
 patiently for conquest. In front of Nicaea he occu- 
 pied two small forts, from whence he resolved to keep 
 guard on the harassed city, till weariness or chance 
 gave the besiegers their prey. At Brusa he did the 
 same. The posts in the neighbourhood were succes- 
 sively mastered by force or treachery ; the Turks 
 closed in on all sides till they had entrenched them- 
 
 1 "These Toorkmuns had made their descent near Meshid 
 four days previously, about ten in the morning, and rode' up to 
 the very walls of the city, driving men and animals before them. 
 Not a soul appeared to resist their progress. . . . While we admire 
 the courage of these men, what shall we think of the Persians, 
 who are encamped within two days' journey of Meshid, under 
 the heir-apparent of the throne, and numbering an army of 
 20,000 men ? . . . One wonders that human beings would con- 
 sent to live in such a spot. The circle of villages round Meshid 
 gets more circumscribed yearly, and in the one which we first 
 entered, every field had its tower, built by the cultivator, as a 
 defence to which he might fiy on seeing the approach of a 
 Toorkmun." — Burnes, iii. 54-64. 
 
 But the Turks of Othman ravaged with a purpose. 
 
 X 
 
306 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 selves within view of the outlets of the city ; and for 
 ten years they watched patiently, and apparently 
 without giving or receiving disturbance, at the very 
 gates of Brusa. At last the constraint became intoler- 
 able ; when all hopes of relief were vain, the inhabit- 
 ants, through the mediation of the renegade Michael, 
 bought off their lives and a safe departure, at the 
 price of their city, and the sum of 30,000 ducats ; a 
 sum which became in after times, — it is said from the 
 precedent of the ransom of this their first captured 
 city, — the regular amount of the annual tribute, 
 exacted from neighbouring Christian states as the 
 price of peace, by the Ottoman sultans. The Greek 
 captain of Brusa, like Michael " of the pointed beard," 
 threw in his lot with the conquerors and adopted their 
 faith, and under the name of Evrenos, became in after 
 times one of the most renowned of the chiefs who led 
 the Ottoman hosts into Europe. 
 
 Thus a capital was won for Othman, more worthy 
 of the founder of a dynasty, than the petty villages 
 in which he had hitherto held his residence ; and the 
 beautiful city at the foot of Olympus became from 
 henceforth, to the house of Othman, their chosen 
 abode in life and resting-place in death, till in time 
 it was exchanged for a still more magnificent and 
 imperial site for their palaces and their tombs. It 
 was won before Othman's death, but his eyes were 
 not to see it. Othman was on his death-bed when 
 the news was brought that what he had so long 
 waited for was attained, and that Brusa had yielded 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 307 
 
 itself to his son Orchan. It was his consolation in 
 the gloom of closing life, when old ties were broken, 
 and his course was ending. Four months before, the 
 father of his wife, the friend and counsellor of his own 
 manhood, the holy Scheikh Edebah, had been buried 
 after a life of 120 years ; a month after, his daughter, 
 the chosen wife of Othman, had been buried by his 
 side ; and Othman was now following them. In the 
 hamlet where he lay, his chief companions, the first 
 men who had helped him in counsel and deed, men 
 of the sword and men of prayer, were gathered round 
 his bed — they were six, and Orchan the seventh. He 
 charged them to carry his bones to Brusa ; he would 
 take possession of it at least in death. There his 
 tomb, beneath the " silver vault " of the old Cathedral 
 of the castle, was shown till the beginning of this 
 century, when a fire devastated Brusa; but the resting- 
 place of his body is also claimed by one of those 
 humble Bithynian villages'' which profess to preserve 
 so many of the monuments of the Ottoman fathers. 
 "Rule mercifully and justly, and uphold the law of 
 Islam," were his last words to his successor Orchan. 
 So died "Black Osman, the Longhanded." He had 
 lived simply, like the early warriors of his religion. 
 He left neither silver nor gold ; a salt-cellar, a spoon, 
 an embroidered robe, and a new turban, were all the 
 household treasures of him, whose descendants were 
 the most gorgeous of barbarian kings : but he left 
 some choice seeds; and the beautiful flocks of the 
 ^ Leake, p. 16. 
 
308 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 Sultan, which still pasture in the meadows of Brusa, 
 are of the pure breed of those of Othman. The 
 banner by which he was invested with his first 
 dignity, and his scimitar, with waving blade and 
 double point, are said to be still treasured as sacred 
 relics in the armoury at Constantinople. 
 
 Orchan was comforted, as Othman had been, for 
 the loss of a father, by the possession of a new 
 conquest, and the birth of an eldest son. The same 
 system of indefatigable attacks, waged with a steady 
 and patient purpose, against the Greeks, was carried 
 on by him, and the companions of his father's wars. 
 Masters of the plain between Brusa and Nicssa, they 
 had begun to encroach on the last remaining district 
 of Bithynia, the country which forms one bank of the 
 Bosporus and faces Constantinople. Walls which they 
 could neither batter nor scale did not discourage them. 
 They prowled about the enclosures of Semendra, till 
 one day a gate was opened to carry forth the governor's 
 son to burial ; the Ottoman riders swooped on the 
 funeral procession, and the mourners and their town 
 became their prey. The ramparts of Aidos withstood 
 the power of Konuralp and Abdurahman; but the 
 heart of the governor's daughter was not proof against 
 the manly beauty of Abdurahman, whom she had seen 
 from the walls; wrapping a letter to him about a 
 stone, she threw it among the beleaguering armies, 
 and concerted a plan by which in the night they 
 gained admittance into the town. Such are the 
 stories told of the gradual advance of the Ottomans. 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 309 
 
 They are stories, not of fiery valour, but of wily and 
 persevering watchfulness for opportunities. The great 
 city of Nicomedia was taken, or perhaps retaken ; and 
 a new Ottoman province, called after the white-bearded 
 warrior who had subdued it, Kodscha-Ili, the "Old 
 Man's Land," was formed out of the farther peninsula 
 of Bithynia, and added to Orchan's paternal inherit- 
 ance of Sultan-CEni. 
 
 The supineness of the Greek Emperor now became 
 alarmed. Perhaps he had looked on the exploits of 
 the Ottomans, as the Scottish king at Stirling or 
 Edinburgh might look on the forays of the Moss- 
 troopers, or on a Highland raid. He resolved, at 
 length, to show himself in person to the troublesome 
 and insolent freebooters. When for once they had 
 departed from their custom of slaughtering the 
 conquered garrisons, and offered him the governor of 
 Aides if he would ransom his officer, he had returned 
 the answer worthy of bolder times but only in place 
 then, " the Csesar neither sells men, nor buys them." 
 He passed the Bosporus with an army. The last 
 and stoutest bulwark of the Empire in Asia, Nicsea, 
 whose defence had rivalled in obstinacy the dogged- 
 ness of its blockaders, now stood in pressing need of 
 relief. The Greek imperial soldiers had beaten back 
 the Seljouk Turks in many a field, and Orchan and 
 his horsemen, formidable to the degenerate militia 
 of the Bithynian towns, were not yet prepared to 
 encounter him. But, according to the accounts of the 
 Greek eye-witnesses, the Emperor seems to have had 
 
310 THE BAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 no other idea than a short and pompous military 
 parade on the coasts of the Propontis, without object 
 or plan. When he had consumed two days in marching 
 a few miles along the shore, while Orchan cautiously 
 observed him from the heights, his counsellors pro- 
 posed to him to offer battle, and if the Ottoman would 
 not come down and accept it, to return as a conqueror 
 to Constantinople. This was done next day. The 
 confused and obviously mendacious account of Oanta- 
 cuzene claims, in the first instance, a complete and 
 sanguinary victory over a detachment of Turks, only 
 300, sent down to skirmish in the plain. But, after 
 giving in full the speeches made by himself and by 
 the Emperor, to animate the assailants, or to praise 
 the victors, the same writer relates, that when the 
 Greeks had victoriously driven their enemies to the 
 hills, the Ottomans broke down upon the Greek host, 
 " disordered," says Cantacuzene, " with the excitement 
 of a fresh attack, which the chiefs were unable to 
 restrain"; and the result of the encounter was a 
 hurried and disastrous retreat of the Emperor and his 
 army. In the affray he was himself wounded, and 
 exposed to danger. Till the transports, which the 
 Emperor urgently sent for, should arrive, the soldiery 
 were dismissed in separate detachments to find refuge 
 in the nearest forts. At Philocrene, while the throng 
 of fugitives was pressing for admission, the key of the 
 gate was mislaid, and the Ottoman horsemen were at 
 once upon the rear of the crowd hewing down the 
 hindmost. The next day the fight, or the retreat, 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 311 
 
 was reneivoJ, and the great Hetseriarch, the Captain 
 of the Greek bodyguard, was slain. The Greek camp 
 was taken, and with it the Emperor's tent and 200 
 of his horses with purple saddles. The imbecile 
 vanity of the Byzantines has led them to give import- 
 ance to this single and miserable attempt to arrest 
 the Ottomans in Bithynia. But the inconsiderable 
 numbers, given by Cantacuzene, both of the fighters and 
 of the victims on both sides, show its real insignificance; 
 and the Turkish historians, though it was the first en- 
 counter of their countrymen with the Greek Emperor 
 in person, and a successful one, do not think the 
 fight of Pelekanon worthy so much as of mention. 
 
 But it gave Mcsea into their hands. Wearied out 
 with a long and unaided resistance, and thinned by 
 famine and a plague, the inhabitants capitulated. 
 They bargained for a free retreat with their property ; 
 but few of them took advantage of the condition. 
 The majority chose rather to remain under the yoke 
 of the unbeliever than to cross over to Europe and 
 experience once more the justice and care of the 
 Christian dynasty, which had first ruined them, and 
 then left them a prey to the barbarians. Orchan did 
 not molest them. He withheld his soldiers from the 
 spoil of the city ; but the widows and orphan daughters 
 of those who had died from the sword or sickness during 
 the siege, he distributed as wives to his followers. The 
 Tartar blood of the whole tribe, as well as that of the 
 chief and his companions, was early and largely mixed 
 with that of their more highly civilised subjects. 
 
312 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 Orchan at once turned Nicaea into a Moslem city, 
 as his father had done with the Black Castle, on the 
 Thymhres. In Nicaea was still seen, and still used 
 for Christian worship, the memorable church, in 
 which the 318 bishops had met to settle the faith 
 of Christendom for the ages to come. The Church 
 of the Council was turned by Orchan into a mosque ; 
 for the mosaic images on its walls was substituted 
 the symbol of Islam; and amid the rubbish which 
 now marks its site, Orchan's name appears sculptured 
 over the doorway, " like a phantom light among ruins." 
 Here, attached to this mosque, was the jfirst Ottoman 
 college founded, with its first publicly endowed teacher, 
 the learned David of Csesarea. " In the place," says 
 Von Hammer, " where the two bishops, Eusebius of 
 Nicomedia and his namesake of Csesarea, had been 
 compelled, on pain of deposition and exile, to renounce 
 their heresy and subscribe the Mcene formvda. Chris- 
 tian children, destined to recruit the ranks of the 
 Janissaries, were now forced to forswear their faith ; 
 and here did MoUah David of Caesarea comment and 
 split hairs on the incomprehensible subtleties of the 
 renowned mystical work, The Seal Bing of Philosophies." 
 Here also Orchan established the first Imaret, or 
 kitchen for the poor, a kind of foundation which 
 became a favourite one among his successors and 
 their servants ; a devout disciple of the old Scheikh 
 Edebali was set over it; and here Orchan himself, 
 with Moslem piety, served the poor in person, dis- 
 tributed to them their dole of pottage with his own 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 313 
 
 hands, and with his own hands lit the lamps at 
 evening. 
 
 But Nicsea retained its importance under the Otto- 
 mans only for a short time. The seat of government 
 of the district of Kodscha-Ili was soon transferred 
 from it to Nicomedia; and Nicomedia itself was 
 shortly eclipsed by the fair city of Brusa, which 
 became first the capital of a third canton, in addition 
 to those of Sultan-CEni and Kodscha-Ili, and then of 
 the rapidly increasing kingdom itself. A manufacture 
 of pottery was all that sustained the fame of Mcsea ; 
 that too has disappeared ; and now Nicsea has to be 
 sought for, within the vast circuit of its own solid and 
 uninjured walls, which seem the enclosure of a wild and 
 forsaken chase, where Moslem pilgrims search for the 
 tombs of some of the heroes of their early history, or 
 the visitor from the West, with still greater difficulty, 
 endeavours to trace the faint memorials, or to call up 
 to his mind the image of the famous Christian city.^ 
 
 Orchan was now undisputed lord of Bithynia. 
 But though his immediate neighbourhood to Con- 
 stantinople made his position a troublesome one to 
 the Greek Emperor, he was still in appearance the 
 least considerable, and the least to be feared, of the 
 Turkish potentates of Asia Minor. The emirs of the 
 coa;st, from the Troad to the passes of Issus, were 
 more powerful, and, seemingly, more enterprising. 
 Their friendship was disputed, and their hostility 
 deprecated or used against one another, by the 
 ' Leake, Ada Minor, pp. 10, 11. 
 
314 THE EAELY OTTOMAKS 
 
 military traders from the rival Italian Eepublics, 
 who fought for a footing on the JEgean coasts, as 
 French and English fought in later days in India ; 
 but even at the end of his long reign, the Venetians 
 had not yet learnt to know, or did not yet deign to 
 acknowledge, the name or authority of the Turkoman 
 chief of Brusa.^ It is remarkable ~ that after the 
 conquest of Mcsea and Nicomedia, and the final sub- 
 jugation of Bithynia, a pause, almost uninterrupted, 
 and apparently deliberately self-imposed, of nearly a 
 quarter of a century, took place in the Ottoman 
 conquests. The single interruption (which occurred 
 at the beginning of this period), was the seizure by 
 Orchan of the neighbouring Turkish principality of 
 Karasi, the ancient Mysia. It had been a more power- 
 ful state than his own. Two rival brothers called him 
 in to settle their quarrels : but where the Ottomans 
 once gained admittance, they remained ; and Karasi 
 was the first to give way before their fortune, of those 
 nine Turkish states which, together with them, had 
 started to independence from the ruins of the house 
 of Seljouk, to be one by one crushed, and again 
 reunited, under the mightier empire of the house 
 of Othman. But after the conquest of Mysia, a 
 deep sUence reigns over the annals of Ottoman con- 
 quest for twenty years. Orchan sat still at Brusa, 
 and scarcely appears on the scene, except as, at length, 
 reconciled to the Greek Emperor, then, as his ally — 
 his son-in-law — and his haughty and questionable 
 1 Von Hammer, i. 130 (1353). 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 315 
 
 protector. The Greek Empire was falling to pieces 
 before his eyes, torn by the quarrels of kindred and 
 rival emperors, and the ravages of the eastern and 
 western barbarians, whom they called in to take part 
 in their civil wars. It was wasted and ruined by 
 Servians and Bulgarians from the Danube; by the 
 insolent and encroaching merchants of Grenoa, Pisa, 
 and Venice ; by the merciless and irresistible footmen 
 of the Catalan Grand Company ; spring after spring, 
 its shores saw the returning Turkish galleys, and its 
 plains the returning Turkish horsemen. But though 
 among them, at times, went Orchan's Ottomans, 
 they were mixed and confounded with the greater 
 crowds from the maritime states. Orchan looked on 
 at the scene of decay and ruin, so near him and so 
 inviting to his ambition; he was admitted to see 
 with his own eyes the riches and the weakness, the 
 confusion and the cowardice, of the Byzantine Court ; 
 he beheld his restless and adventurous rivals, the 
 emirs of Aidin and Saroukhan, eagerly pushing for 
 the destined prey. Yet for twenty years he held his 
 hand, and his border remained the same. No fresh 
 cities were taken or watched over. The old genera- 
 tion of Ottoman heroes, the conquerors of Brusa and 
 Nicaea, passed away, and no new names are recorded 
 in their place. When the Ottomans from time to 
 time passed into Europe, with their brethren from 
 the coast, it was merely for a summer's foray. The 
 chief who had guided their early conquests was no 
 longer riding at their head, and even professed to be 
 
316 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 the friend, as he had married with great pomp the 
 daughter, of the Christian emperor. Orchan seemed 
 to have become the most peaceful, or else the most 
 inactive, of all the Turkish emirs ; and among the 
 various Turkish assailants of the Greek Empire, no 
 one at the time would have singled out him and 
 his house, as its most terrible foe, and its destined 
 destroyer, — no one, at least, who had not observed 
 and understood the policy of their sagacious and 
 persevering valour. The difference between them 
 and the other Turks, who, contemporaneously with 
 them, and at the moment even more fiercely than 
 they, were breaking in upon Eastern Europe, was the 
 presence in the Ottoman house of a settled purpose. 
 All the steps they made, though not hurried, were 
 connected; and they never made one from which 
 they drew back. The enterprises of the other chiefs, 
 more alarming at the moment, were but the random 
 and isolated adventures of robbers lusting after 
 destruction and booty ; important only as they pre- 
 pared the way, by weakening the Greek Empire, for 
 the loftier plans of their brethren. 
 
 For twenty years Orchan abstained from conquest, 
 but he was not idle. While the Christian Empire 
 beyond the Straits was perishing, he was busy build- 
 ing up a power which was to be ready to take its place, 
 and fit to grasp its heritage. The pastoral horde was 
 becoming a state ; the leader of the vagrant camp was 
 taking delight in adorning the temporary capital of his 
 house with the mosques and colleges, the hospitals and 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 317 
 
 caravansaries, the fountains and tombs, which the 
 piety and magnificence of Moslem princes are wont 
 to rear in their royal cities. Brusa was well worth 
 his care. From the last slopes of Olympus it looks 
 over a green plain of woods and meadows ; the famous 
 and beautiful mountain, with its forests and its cliffs, 
 overhangs it behind; and its abundant and ever- 
 flovnng waters, — the warm, medicinal springs which 
 well out beneath the baths of the city, and the cold, 
 sparkling sources streaming down from above, among 
 its rocks and plane-trees, — have made BrUsa famous 
 among Eastern cities. Not less famous is it for the 
 choice excellence of its trees and fruits, its grapes 
 and apricots, its chestnuts, each of forty drachms 
 weight, and its forty kinds of pears. The sheep in 
 its pastures produced the finest wool, its mulberry- 
 trees the finest silk, and drew to it craftsmen, who 
 made the work of their looms, their scarfs and em- 
 broidered stuffs, their lawn and their samit, renowned 
 almost to our own day. Before the Ottomans ap- 
 peared. Christian monasteries had gleamed among 
 the woods of Olympus, or nestled in its folds ; the 
 hermit's cell had been hung on its precipices, or 
 perched upon its crests, or hid within its caverns. 
 Their place was taken by the dervishes and the 
 santons, on whom Orchan bestowed his largesses with 
 liberal hand ;^ and Olympus became a holy mountain, 
 
 ^ Solitaries and devotees, some of them idiots, others fierce 
 fanatics, others mystics, others extravagant ascetics, played a 
 considerable part in early Ottoman history and its legends. 
 AM-al-Kwmral prophesied the greatness, and led the soldiers 
 
318 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 sanctified by their retreats while living, and by their 
 
 sepulchres in death. Among them, also, were the 
 
 earlier poets and theologians of the Ottomans, who 
 
 loved the stillness and the shade of the murmuring 
 
 pines. There they could lie and look down on the 
 
 glittering city and sunny plain below. The city of 
 
 Orchan's choice had all that could make it dear to 
 
 Moslems and Orientals ; it was a worthy home for 
 
 the last conquerors of Islam to depart from, and 
 
 return to, in their wars, and to rest in during the 
 
 days of peace. Here the first six sultans kept their 
 
 of Othman. Doghli-Baba, the "Father of pots," who took his 
 name from the pots in which he kept the sour milk on which 
 he lived ; Geikli-Bdba, the "Father of stags," who, at Orchan's 
 invitation, came riding on a goat from the woods, with a 
 scimitar of prodigious weight, to head the besiegers of Brusa, 
 and bearing on his shoulder a sacred plane-tree, which long 
 flourished in the sultan's palace there ; Abd-al-Murad, who 
 wrought prodigies of valour with a wooden sabre of enormous 
 length ; Abd-al-Musa, who took up burning coals wrapped in 
 cotton — were among the saintly friends of Orchan, for whom he 
 built cells on Olympus. His son Amurath built a cell for a 
 venerated dervish, Postinpusch, a religious idiot, who clothed 
 himself in skins. In ecLually high reverence was held the bleat- 
 ing dervish of Amasia, Kojun-Baba, the "Father of sheep," who 
 never spoke, but at the five hours of prayer bleated like a sheep, 
 and at whose tomb Bajazet II. built ' ' the fairest and richest 
 convent of the Ottoman empire." These were all abdals, or 
 solitaries. The numbers and orders of dervishes multiplied with 
 rapidity under the Ottoman rule, in spite of the discouragement 
 given in the Koran to the monastic life, and exercised at first even 
 more influence than in later times was possessed by the power- 
 ful spiritual associations of the Ulema, the men learned in the 
 law of the Koran. — Von Hammer, i. Ill, 161, 192, 137-141. 
 See a curious woodcut of a " Father of stags " in Nicolai's Travels 
 (Antwerp, 1577), p. 207. 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 319 
 
 court, and here they lie buried in stately tombs, 
 near the mosques which they founded. Eound them 
 are the sepulchres of their children and brothers; 
 and these are encompassed on all sides by the resting- 
 places and memorials of the great men of the rising 
 state, its first viziers and lieutenants; and further, 
 " about the mausoleums of the early sultans and saints 
 of the Empire are grouped some five hundred tombs 
 of famous men — pashas, scheikhs, professors, orators, 
 physicians, poets, musicians." Thus gifted and 
 adorned by nature, and consecrated by so many 
 recollections and such venerable monuments, Brusa 
 rivals Adrianople in dignity and Bagdad in holiness, 
 and stm, when the sultan's style and title is pro- 
 claimed, it is named as the third city of his empire."' 
 But while the buildings of a new capital of Islam 
 were rising under Orchan's hand, institutions were 
 growing up, during this interval of peace, of far 
 greater significance and importance than the domes 
 and walls of mosques and palaces. It was during 
 Orchan's reign that the rudiments of what was lasting 
 and characteristic, in the internal policy and organisa- 
 tion of the Ottomans, were laid down by men who 
 saw far and reached high. Orchan's brother, Alaeddin, 
 had refused, at their father's death, to receive from 
 Orchan's hand the moiety of their father's flocks and 
 herds, which was his inheritance. " As you will not 
 take your portion of sheep and cattle," said Orchan, 
 "you shall come and help me to feed my people." 
 ^ See the style, in Ubicini, Lett/res sur la Twrquie, p. 531. 
 
320 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 Alaeddin then became his brother's chief minister, 
 and is called the first Vizier, i.e. "Bearer of Burdens," 
 of the Ottoman house. To him is ascribed the 
 beginning of the first peculiar orders and regulations 
 which were added, in the Ottoman Statute-book, to 
 the fundamental legislation of all Mahometan states 
 — the Koran, the traditionary Sunna, and the deci- 
 cisions of the Four Imams. The three principal 
 objects of his attention, we are told, were — the coin- 
 age, which was now for the first time struck in the 
 name of Orchan, instead of that of the Iconian sultans ; 
 the distinctive costume, especially the head-dress, of 
 the people; and the organisation of the army. 
 Alaeddin's purpose, in regulating the dress, was, that 
 while the Turkoman freebooters were growing up, 
 under the influence of successful conquest, into the 
 feelings of a distinct and ambitious nation, their pride 
 in the name of Osmanlis might be kept up by a visible 
 badge, which should mark them off, in their own eyes 
 and that of others, from the mingled races round 
 them. In contrast to the embroidered caps of the 
 Greeks, and the red felt skull-cap with a turban of 
 bright colours worn by the other Turks, the Ottoman 
 warrior was commanded to wear a plain cap of white 
 felt, of an egg-shaped form, round which only on days 
 of ceremony a white linen cloth was folded. 
 
 But the work which has made Alaeddin's name 
 memorable in the aimals of his race, was the laying 
 the foundations, and establishing the model, which, 
 in expanded proportions, continued without change 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 321 
 
 for three centuries, of the Ottoman army. Alaeddin 
 and Orchan were clear-sighted enough to discern that 
 their indefatigable, but untrained horsemen, though 
 they had overrun Bithynia, and worried its cities into 
 surrender, were not strong enough to win and hold 
 for good the realms of the Eastern Csesars. Even 
 before the degenerate guards of the Greek Emperor 
 at Pelekanon, as long as they kept their array un- 
 broken, Orchan's Turkomans had held back, in vigilant 
 but cautious suspense, And there had lately been 
 seen, on either side of the Hellespont, — specimens of 
 those victorious Spanish battalions, who were changing 
 the face of war in Europe, — a body of disciplined and 
 well-appointed infantry, for whose steady and com- 
 bined valour no warriors of the East, Servian or 
 Bulgarian, Turk or Greek, had ever been found a 
 match, and who from their stronghold at Gallipoli 
 had imposed terms on Constantinople, and filled the 
 countries round with the terror of their prowess and 
 their ferocity — the Grand Company of the Catalans. 
 No foreign enemy had vanquished these terrible 
 Spanish footmen ; it had needed their own swords, 
 turned against one another, to tear in pieces and dis- 
 perse the Grand Company. Such soldiers — bound 
 together by a like training and devotion to one 
 another, and to the game of war, but by a stronger 
 obedience and more enduring enthusiasm — the Otto- 
 man chiefs foresaw that they would need, for the 
 enterprise which the other Turkish emirs probably 
 meditated in common with them, but for which they 
 
 Y 
 
322 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 alone patiently and carefully prepared To the bands 
 of wild riders, who fought as the Turkoman warriors 
 of Bochara and Orgunje fight still, in the deserts of 
 the Oxus, or when they harry the villages of Khorassan, 
 Alaeddin added the rudiments, small indeed, but 
 distinctly marked, of a regular and permanent army. 
 A thousand footmen were enrolled, and retained for 
 continual and united service, by privileges, by discip- 
 line, by a frame-work of ranks and divisions, and by 
 an ainple pay. This nucleus of the Ottoman infantry 
 shortly gave place, under Orchan himself, to an 
 institution of far more remarkable ch3,racter. But 
 the organisation of the cavalry, and the names of its 
 divisions, recalled, even in the great musters of 
 Soleiman and Selim, the primitive appointments of 
 Alaeddin. There were the Akindji, the forerunners 
 of the army, an unpaid and uncontrolled gathering 
 of skirmishers and plunderers ; all who could procure 
 a horse to mount and a sabre to wield, when the call 
 came to piUage and adventure — men who fought after 
 the old desultory fashion of the freebooters of Othman's 
 camp ; who, as the Ottoman power grew, swelled into 
 terrible and destructive swarms, and, led by their 
 hereditary captain, one of the descendants of Michael 
 the Greek renegade, used to waste the borders of 
 Hungary and Germany, and even at last dared to 
 penetrate past Vienna, to the sources of the Danube. 
 Then, forming the main strength of the host itself, 
 came the horsemen, who had received grants in the 
 conquered districts on condition of military service ; 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 323 
 
 the fevdatonj SpaM, among whom, as the Ottoman 
 conquests extended, the revenues of the lands were 
 parcelled out, in holdings of various size and dignity, 
 from the Sandjah Bey, whose banner, the single horse- 
 tail, gathered round it and led the cavalry of a 
 province, to the tenants of the Timars and the Ziamets, 
 the smaller and larger fiefs, who with their squadron 
 or their handful of retainers, or perhaps their single 
 horse and scimitar, swelled the levies of the Pasha 
 who ruled over what, perhaps, had been once a 
 kingdom. And, lastly, as a guard to the person and 
 standard of the prince, Alaeddin appointed a body of 
 paid cavalry, divided, according to the favourite 
 Turkish number, into four squadrons; a division 
 which, with its names of the Silihdars and the paid 
 Spahis, and the " Foreigners " and " Stipendiaries" of 
 the right and left wings, remained unchanged in the 
 regular Ottoman cavalry, whose increased pay and 
 privileges and numbers made them, in after times, 
 formidable yet unequal rivals, in turbulence and 
 audacity, to the redoubtable f ootguards of the empire, 
 — the Janissaries. 
 
 This great military corporation, the most remark- 
 able that the world has ever seen grow up within the 
 laws and policy of a state, traced its origin, according 
 to the chief Ottoman annalists, to the counsellors of 
 Orchan. Alaeddin's first experiment of a body of 
 foot-soldiers, raised probably from the Turks of 
 Bithynia and the neighbouring countries, was a 
 failure. Pay and privileges could not reconcile them 
 
324 THE BAKLY OTTOMANS 
 
 to the yoke of discipline ; and the materials were not 
 to be looked for, among these untanieable freebooters, 
 of a soldiery which should be trained to rival the 
 steady valour of the Catalans. But the grim and 
 patient sagacity of Ottoman enthusiasm and Ottoman 
 policy was not long at fault. Allied by marriage to 
 the old Scheikh Edebali, Black Halil Tchendereli had 
 been one of the trusted seven who stood round the 
 death-bed of Othman, and gathered up his last words ; 
 and when Alaeddin and Orchan's son Soleiman were 
 dead, Black Halil became Orchan's Grand Vizier, and 
 left his high dignity to his children of the third 
 generation, for nearly a hundred years, till his great- 
 grandson was cut off in the very year in which he 
 had seen his master take possession of the palace and 
 cathedral of the Csesars. Black Halil was now " Judge 
 of the Host;" and he showed to Orchan and his 
 counsellors, that though grown-up Turkomans could 
 not be brought under discipline, children could 
 be schooled to anything. The children of the con- 
 quered, he said, like all that belongs to them, are 
 given to the conquerors, by the Prophet's law ;• and 
 that law, besides, declares, that every child, of whom- 
 soever born, brings with him into the world the 
 disposition to embrace Islam. A school of Christian 
 children, cut off from home and country, and trained 
 with rigid discipline to the faith of the Prophet and 
 the practice of arms, will grow up into an obedient 
 and yet zealous and devoted soldiery. They will not 
 much remember, in the pride of soldiership and the 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 325 
 
 excitement of conquest, their old faith and friends ; 
 but their Christian and subject kinsmen will often 
 look with wistful and envious eyes, to the honours 
 and privileges of the children who were ravished from 
 them. They will not wish to go back to Christendom 
 and bondage; but many Christians will be tempted 
 to come and share their religion and fortunes. Islam 
 will be served and strengthened by the best blood of 
 Christendom, and the numbers of its martyrs swelled 
 by those who must have otherwise perished in their 
 ignorance. 
 
 Other barbarous tribes, weak in numbers, but 
 ambitious in purpose, have, before the Ottomans, 
 recruited themselves from their subjects or their 
 slaves.^ But none ever employed this resource with 
 such ruthless and deliberate system. The tendency 
 to this policy is discernible under Othman, in his 
 foreign marriages, and in the story of the Greek 
 renegade, Michael ; but its establishment in a syste- 
 matic shape was the deep and far-seeing invention of 
 Black HaliL His counsel led to the formation of the 
 Janissaries from Christian captive boys, and, later 
 on,^ to the establishment of a fixed tribute of young 
 children, from the Christian population, to feed their 
 
 ^ Of the Lomtards, a tribe not unworthy to be compared 
 with the Ottomans, Tacitus had said, "Langobardos paucitas 
 nobUitat. Plurimis ao valentissimis nationibus oincti, non per 
 obsequium, sed prseliis et periclitando tuti sunt ; " and Gibbon 
 adds, that ' ' the smallness of their numbers was recruited by the 
 adoption of their bravest slaves." Chap. xlii. 
 
 ^ Apparently under Amurath I. 
 
326 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 schools, — a tribute which in the flourishing times of 
 the Ottomans was continually exacted, though, pro- 
 bably, with Turkish irregularity and caprice, chiefly 
 from the frontier provinces, and which lasted till the 
 seventeenth century. ^ But his suggestion also ex- 
 pressed what has been in every age one of the chief 
 secrets of Ottoman success. The Ottomans have 
 conquered and ruled by conduct and enterprise, by 
 blood and sinew, which were Christian once. " From 
 the seminaries of the Janissaries, and the Sultan's 
 pages," says Von Hammer, " issued the greatest men 
 of the Ottoman Empire. As long as the yearly levy 
 of Christian children continued, and the expeditions 
 of the Ottomans yielded their yearly booty of slaves, 
 their most famous statesmen and generals were, for 
 the most part, born Greeks, Albanians, and Bosniacs, 
 and seldom native Turks. Thus the strength of 
 Turkish despotism repaired itself in the heart-blood 
 of Christendom ; and by means of this cunning engine 
 of statescraft, Greece was compelled to tear herself to 
 pieces by the hands of her own children."^ The 
 remark was made before him by a Venetian diplo- 
 matist at the court of Selim II. — " It is in the highest 
 degree remarkable," he exclaims, "that the wealth, 
 
 1 The last levy of children from the Danube, Bosnia, Albania, 
 and Greece, is said to have been under Amurath IV. in 1638 : 
 Von Hammer, iii. 177 ; of. Finlay, ii. 697 ; and a fuUer and 
 interesting account in Eanke's Ottoman Empire (translated 
 by Kelly. London, 1843.) from Busbequius, the Austrian envoy, 
 and Venetian Selazioni, from 1553-1637. 
 
 2 Vol. i. p. 193. 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 327 
 
 tte administration, the force, — in short, the whole 
 body politic of the Ottoman Empire, reposes upon, 
 and is entrusted to men, born in the Christian faith, 
 converted into slaves, and reared up as Mahometans. "^ 
 A long time must have elapsed before Black Halil's 
 plan could have borne its fruit, and Christian children 
 have been moulded into Moslem ■warriors. There is 
 an interval of half a century before we hear of the 
 name of the Janissaries in the Ottoman wars. Their 
 first recorded field was the fight of Iconium (1386), — 
 the first foes against whom their valour was pointed 
 were the kindred and rival Turks of Karaman., But 
 from this time, in every great battle, and in every 
 political crisis, their name is prominent. They were 
 essentially and in their idea a body of picked and 
 trained slaves — the household and family of their 
 master ; and it is in strange contrast with the fierce 
 doings of this terrible soldiery, that in their titles of 
 military rank, their internal sub-divisions, their char- 
 acteristic usages, we find only the homely names and 
 menial associations of domestic life. They were 
 numbered according to their odas or " chambers " : in 
 each of their ninety-nine "chambers,"^ they were 
 officered by a " head soup-maker," a " head cook," a 
 " head water-carrier," and a " manciple," or " caterer "; 
 and after that Mahomet the Conqueror had incor- 
 
 ^ Barbaro, Belazione (1573), in Ranke, p. 8. 
 
 '' This is exclusive of the 100 companies of the armed pioneers 
 and footmen, Piade and Yaya, who were originally a feudatory- 
 corps of infantry, but were afterwards incorporated with the 
 Janissaries. — Von Hammer, i. 98, 727. 
 
328 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 porated with the original sixty-six "chambers" the 
 thirty-three companies of the servants of his kennels 
 (Seghans), the four high officers who came next in 
 rank to the Aga, and to his lieutenant, the Kiaia, or 
 "minister of the slaves," kept their servile names, 
 which denoted that they were respectively charged 
 with the care of the hounds, the mastiifs, the blood- 
 hounds, and the cranes of the sultan's hunting estab- 
 lishment. Their military badge was the wooden spoon, 
 worn in their cap, with which they ate their soup. 
 What the Caroccio was to the militia of the Italian 
 cities, what their eagles were to the legions of Rome 
 and France, the great iron soup-kettle of the mess 
 was to the Janissaries; they gathered round it for 
 deliberation, as well as to share together the daily 
 allowance from their master's bounty ; and a vizier's 
 head was about to fall, or even a sultan's, and uproar 
 and bloodshed soon to fill the streets of Constantinople 
 and the courts of the palace, when the slaves sat in 
 grim and gloomy silence round the hallowed symbol 
 of their union, and refused to touch their master's 
 meat. 
 
 But these armed slaves were also the most remark- 
 able and most lasting of military brotherhoods. The 
 world has seen some singular instances of men bound 
 to one another, for the sole purposes of war, by 
 principles or obligations deeper and stronger than 
 those, which hold together for a time the fleeting 
 assemblage of a common army — the soldier citizens 
 of Sparta, the Roman legions of the Empire, the 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 329 
 
 monks of the Temple and the Hospital, the troopers 
 of Cromwell's "new model." But all the conditions 
 and all the feelings which concentrated and which 
 inspired the valour of Spartan citizens and Eoman 
 legionaries, of the brethren of the military orders, 
 and the troopers of Naseby and Dunbar, were com- 
 bined in the institute of the Janissaries. The ties of 
 home and family which had been burst for ever when 
 the boy began his training, were never allowed to 
 reunite, even in a strange land and a different faith, 
 as long as the soldier could do his work. The hunger 
 and thirst, the watchings and the labours, which 
 annealed to their due temp'er the spirit and frame of 
 the Spartan boy, were not greater than those which 
 exercised the young postulant of the Janissaries, when 
 he was sent to Anatolia or the schools of the capital, to 
 learn his new language, to imbibe his new fanaticism, 
 and to practise the arms which he was to handle till 
 his death. The mind of the Spartan boy, when he 
 grew to be a man, was not more thoroughly warped 
 from all the influences and interests of civil and social 
 life, to think of war as the only end for which it was 
 worthy to live, and to long for it, as his holiday and 
 refreshment after the austerities of peace, than that of 
 the new recruit who entered one of those dormitories 
 filled with the fiercest of the Moslem soldiery, all of 
 whom had been once, like himself, baptized in infancy 
 into the faith of Christ. Nor did the training, at 
 once so crushing and so inflaming, so narrow and so 
 intense, relax there. In these " convent-like barracks " 
 
330 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 all was silence and subjection. The younger humbly 
 served and waited on the elder. Within the walls, 
 and among the brotherhood itself, the word of the 
 superior was the only law, the instinct of the inferior 
 submissive obedience; without the walls the lowest 
 knew no master, except their sultan. They were men 
 who recognised no old kindred ; they were not allowed 
 to seek a new one in marriage.^ Such is the picture 
 which Venetian residents and Austrian nuncios have 
 preserved of this wonderful association in its early 
 days.^ The only comparisons by which they could 
 convey an adequate idea of their order, their rigid 
 discipline, their simple afid sparing fare, their coarse 
 garb, their silence, their grave self-command, the still- 
 ness which reigned in their barracks and in their 
 immovable lines, their blind and absolute obedience, 
 were drawn from the austerities and self-abnegation 
 of monastic life. They were soldiers, but soldiers 
 whose demeanour and appearance was that of 
 monks. 
 
 Nor was the comparison far wrong. The animat- 
 ing principle of that fiery valour, which, in the early 
 Ottoman wars, boasted — and enemies confirmed the 
 boast^ — that the Janissaries had never fled in battle, 
 was a religious one. The bond of their companion- 
 ship was an affiliation to a religious order. The well- 
 known formula of the consecration of their institute, 
 when Orchan or Amurath led the New Soldiers to 
 receive their name and their benediction from the 
 
 1 Rauke, p. 19. ^ ^j^^, pp 7^ g 3 jrjj'j^. p, 7. 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 331 
 
 Scheikh Hadji Bektash, need not be repeated here.-' 
 The Janissaries called themselves the children and 
 family of this great saint of Islam. They wore to the 
 last the badge of their spiritual relationship ; the strip 
 of coarse cloth, which hung down behind from their 
 white felt caps, represented the sleeve of the dervish's 
 mantle, with which he covered the head of the first 
 Janissary when he named and blessed him. Hadji 
 Bektash was also the founder of an order of dervishes; 
 and between these two families — the brethren of 
 prayer and the brethren of the sword — the strictest 
 fellowship was kept up. The Janissaries were incor- 
 porated with the order of the Bektash dervishes. 
 The Scheikh of the Bektashes was, in virtue of his 
 religious office, the chief of the 99th Oda of the 
 Janissaries; in their barracks eight of the Bektash 
 dervishes prayed day and night for the welfare of 
 the realm and a blessing on the scimitars of their 
 brothers. When those famous soldiers were destroyed, 
 the Bektash dervishes were proscribed with them, 
 
 ^ ' ' Standing in front of their ranks, he stretched the sleeve 
 of his gown over the head of the foremost soldier, and hia 
 blessing was delivered in these words : — ' Let them be called 
 Janissaries ( Yengi cheri, or new soldiers) ; may their counten- 
 ances be ever bright ! their hand victorious ! their sword keen ! 
 May their spear always hang over the head of their enemies ! 
 and wheresoever they go, may they return with a white face.' " 
 — Gibbon, chap. Ixiv., who assigns the institution and the con- 
 secration to the time of Amurath, the son of Orchan. Von 
 Hammer, who gives it to Orchan, ijuotes as his authorities two 
 of his earliest Turkish annalists, Neschri and Aali. — See 
 Nicolai's woodcut of a Janissary, 1554. 
 
332 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 and shared their fate ; and even now, in the extreme 
 corners of the empire, travellers meet with a survivor 
 of the condemned order, asking, with trembling, 
 whether the men who slew the Janissaries, and chased 
 away their brothers, are still in power.-' 
 
 Thus the religious enthusiasm which had carried 
 the first Arabs through their career of conquest, was 
 revived and concentrated in these household slaves. 
 It consecrated and gave dignity to their servitude, 
 and raised them to be the most privileged body among 
 their fellows. The sultan was their comrade as well 
 as their master, and inscribed himself by his simple 
 name, as the first common soldier,^ on their muster 
 rolls. If the idea of a rehgious soldiery was suggested 
 to the Ottomans by the knights of the Christian 
 orders,^ it found in Islam a still more congenial home. 
 Christian Europe, which welcomed to its bosom 
 monastic devotion, refused a lasting place in its 
 system to a monastic soldiery. The ambition and 
 power of the Temple, like its brilliant but troubled 
 glory, soon passed away, struck down by the jealousy 
 of the western kings. The knights of St. John had 
 a longer and nobler history. Bravely, but in vain, 
 on the bastions of Rhodes, bravely, and not in vain, 
 on the rocks of Valetta, they stood at bay, when the 
 armadas of the Ottomans awed the Mediterranean, 
 when Turkish corsairs swept the shores of Italy and 
 Provence, and the name of Barbarossa or Draghut 
 
 1 Macintosh's Tours m Turkey, ii. 40. 
 2 Ubicini, p. 443. 3 Von Hammer, i. 140. 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 333 
 
 fluttered the cardinals within the walls of Eome. 
 But relegated to their distant outposts, — keeping 
 garrison in their island-strongholds, or afloat on their 
 galleys in the eastern seas, — the knights exercised no 
 influence on Christendom, except by the tales which 
 came home of their heroic valour. When the Turk 
 had ceased to menace, their work was done, and they 
 languidly expired. But the company of the Janissaries 
 at once made and marred the fortunes of the state 
 within whose precincts it grew up : they were the 
 nerve of its conquering armies, and the masters of 
 its princes; they grew from the most exclusive of 
 soldieries to a great social guild,^ and ramified from 
 the barracks of the capital to the bazaars and caravan- 
 serais of the remotest towns ; ^ and when they were 
 
 1 The steps of their decline are traced by Eanke, pp. 19, 20. 
 — " 1. Under Soldmwn I. (1520-1566), the Janissaries took them- 
 selves miles. [2. Under Selim II. (1566-1574), they had their sons 
 enrolled among them. 3. Under Amuraih III. (1574-1595), they 
 were forced to admit among them native Turks, of a totally 
 different descent, who had not undergone their training. 4. 
 Under Ahmed I. (1595-1617), the privates, then stationed in 
 the country and on the frontiers, began to ply trades, to engage 
 in commerce, and, satisfied with the advantages of home, to 
 think little of arms." 
 
 2 "The prosperity and trade of Trebizond are perpetually 
 disturbed by the factious quarrels of two odas of Janissaries, in 
 one of which 30,000 Zazi are commonly enrolled." — Gibbon 
 (from De Tott[1784], iil. 261), chap. Ixviii. "The Turks of 
 Macedonia who bear arms are Spahis, Yuruks, and Janissaries. 
 The Spahis are the cavalry formed by the holders of the ziamets 
 and timars, when called on by the government. The Yuruks 
 cultivate their own lands, chiefly in the mountainous districts. 
 The Janissaries are the garrisons of the fortified places, among 
 
334 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 rooted up to save the state, it is doubtful whether the 
 core and life of the state were not rooted up with them. 
 Orchan could well afford to stay his hand from 
 conquest for twenty years, when those years were 
 the first years of growth to the company of the 
 Janissaries, — the years in which its strange and for- 
 midable character was clearly determined and strongly 
 impressed on it, and the spirit breathed into its silently 
 forming elements, which was to be the gage of con- 
 tinual victory and wide dominion, and which centuries 
 were not to extinguish. But though the Ottoman 
 frontier was not advanced, Orchan was by no means 
 an unconcerned spectator of the scene of ruin and 
 dissolution which the Greek Empire beyond the 
 Straits presented. Since the Ottomans had defeated 
 the Byzantine Emperor at Pelekanon, the pedant 
 courtier, his master's trusted favourite, who lost, and 
 who has left us the story of that disgraceful day, had 
 become by his intrigues the usurping partner, and then 
 the open rival, of his master's infant son. Cantacuzene 
 warred with a Palseologus for the Empire, as the 
 Palseologi had been in the habit of fighting for it 
 among themselves. They were not content to burn 
 and destroy, by the hands of their own soldiers, what 
 was left to the Empire of its towns and cultivated 
 districts ; they invited to their aid the Turkish hordes 
 
 whom are generally enrolled the greater part of the heads of 
 families engaged in trade or manufactures, or who have landed 
 property in the neighbouring plains."— Leake (in 1806), Northern 
 Greece, iii. 249. 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 335 
 
 from Bithynia, the Turkish pirates from Smyrna and 
 the coasts of Caria and the Troad ; and in return for 
 such uncertain and precarious assistance as they were 
 wilUng to render, the competing Christian emperors 
 gave them free license to pillage and enslave through- 
 out their provinces, and formally consented to the 
 demand that the robbers should have a market for 
 their Christian slaves in the capital of Eastern 
 Christendom.^ Cantacuzene is not ashamed to dwell 
 with self-complacent conceit — for in such a man it 
 can hardly be called pride — on the close intimacy 
 which continued till death between himself and a 
 Turkish chief of freebooters ; and celebrates what he 
 calls the good faith and constant honour of his 
 Mahometan friend, who was a useful counterpoise to 
 Cantacuzene's enemies, but whose barbarian swarms 
 wasted Cantacuzene's land, and swept off his subjects 
 as ruthlessly as other Turks. Cantacuzene found a 
 romantic friend in the Emir of Smyrna ; ^ but in the 
 Emir of Brusa, as we learn from his own unblushing 
 narrative, the heir of Augustus and Constantino was 
 glad to find a son-in-law, Orchan demanded, as the 
 price of allowing his horsemen to ride and ravage in 
 the name of Cantacuzene, rather than of Palseologus, 
 that Cantacuzene should give him his daughter 
 Theodora.^ Cantacuzene took counsel with his friend, 
 
 1 Finlay, pp. 562, 553, 572 ; Gibbon, viii. 63. " Ibid. p. 60. 
 
 ' Finlay, p. 572. — " His throne was only supported by bis close 
 alliance with his son-in-law, Orkhan, whose troops were allowed 
 to use the Greek territories as a hunting-ground, to supply their 
 slave-markets. " 
 
336 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 the Emir of Smyrna, and followed his urgent advice 
 to enlist, by any means, so important an auxiliary on 
 his side. When in after years, a deposed emperor, 
 and a monk in one of the convents of Athos, he 
 looked back on his schemes and deeds of ambition, 
 and wrote their story, he had the heart to perpetuate 
 the minute and pompous ceremonial with which his 
 royal daughter, the daughter of the Emperor of the 
 East, was delivered over to her Turkoman and infidel 
 husband. Pompous and minute as the ceremonial 
 was, one thing was left out — there was wanting even 
 the form of Christian marriage.^ So low had the 
 purple of the Caesars fallen ; so rapidly had the 
 fortunes mounted of the son of the shepherd " free- 
 booter of the Bithynian hills." The bride of Orchan's 
 youth was the Greek chief's wife, whom his father's 
 riders had carried off in a border fray. Fifty years 
 had passed; and now the bride of his old age was 
 another Christian damsel, the noblest of her country, 
 given to him publicly in the face of the imperial city, 
 with all the magnificence and formality of the most 
 ceremonious court in Christendom.^ And yet this 
 loathsome and infamous sacrifice was not enough to 
 purchase even a respite. Two years after his marriage, 
 Orchan paid a solemn visit to the Byzantine court, 
 
 1 Gibbon, viii. 63. 
 
 ^ Von Hammer, i. 128. — "Between his first and his last 
 marriage a half century had passed of conquest ; and in the 
 interval, the Grecian wife was changed from the ravished 
 Castellan's bride into the emperor's daughter, freely bestowed, 
 and delivered to him with the pomp of a state ceremonial." 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 337 
 
 and nothing was spared to do him honour. But the 
 visit was scarcely over, when picked bands of Ottomans 
 were across the Hellespont, wasting the Thracian 
 cities, sweeping off booty and slaves from the very 
 gates of Constantinople, and encountering in battle 
 the Emperor Cantacuzene himself. When the traders 
 of Genoa, from their fortified factory of Galata, 
 bearded and assailed the Emperor in his own harbour 
 and palace, Orchan without scruple listened to their 
 request for assistance, and, though in a state of pro- 
 found peace with Cantacuzene, lent his Ottomans, to 
 help them to insult his ally and his kinsman. At 
 last the hollow friendship, which was Cantacuzene's 
 main support on the throne, ceased even to be pro- 
 fessed ; Orchan negotiated alike with both the rival 
 emperors, and seeing his own interest in keeping alive 
 their quarrel, favoured each by turns, to weaken and 
 destroy the other's power. 
 
 At length, at the very close of Orchan's life, the 
 march of Ottoman conquest, which had been suspended 
 for the work of consolidation, took up what had been 
 left off at the fall of Nicomedia and the annexation of 
 Mysia, and resumed its course. The Ottomans, like 
 the other Turks, had long been too well known on 
 European ground; but with the sea between them 
 and their homes in Asia, they had not yet dared to 
 settle there. At last they made the stride which 
 separates ravage from conquest. Othman lived to see 
 Brusa won ; Orchan, the conqueror of Brusa for his 
 dying father, reigned till the Hellespont was crossed 
 
 z 
 
338 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 and Gallipoli occupied by his son Soleiman. Each 
 saw the first step made in the enterprise which filled 
 the thoughts of his life; but the conquest of a province, 
 which had been the ambition of the father, had swelled 
 into that of an empire, in the plans and meditations 
 of the son. 
 
 This great and decisive step, which, to the Greeks 
 of the time, seemed but an ordinary incident in the 
 harassing and insulting warfare to which they had 
 become familiarised and resigned, is felt in its full 
 importance by the Turkish historians; and if the 
 details of their narrative are doubtful and untrust- 
 worthy, the Ottomans showed their sense of the event 
 itself, by the legendary, if not fabulous, halo with 
 which they invest it. It is the first occasion on which 
 they think it worth while to record the passage of 
 their countrymen into Europe. Soleiman, the son of 
 Orchan, say the Turkish chroniclers, was spending 
 the night — a fine moonlight night — among the ruins 
 of what had been Cyzicus. His fancy was moved and 
 his spirit awed by the sight of abandoned grandeur, 
 of which the history was unknown to him; as he 
 gazed on broken columns, and marble pavements over 
 which the waves rippled, and triumphal arches re- 
 flected on the waters, he thought he saw one of the 
 ancient cities which the genii had built for Solomon, 
 with Persepolis and Tadmor; he believed himself 
 among the palaces of Balkis, the Queen of the South, 
 and the wonderful magnificence of the days of old, 
 when the true believers were helped by the hand of 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 339 
 
 Heaven. Again he looked and the radiance of the 
 moon upon the sea seemed to stretch away to the 
 Thracian hills, and to be like a silver band joining his 
 lands to the lands of the infidel — Asia to Europe. 
 He remembered the dream of Othman, and how there 
 the full moon was the presage and opening of his 
 ancestor's vision of empire. Again the moon was 
 shining, and he seemed to hear in the murmur of the 
 waves a call to follow where the radiant path across 
 the waters pointed. Then, says the legend, his 
 resolution was taken to bind the two continents 
 together by the might of the Ottomans ; and it was 
 confirmed by the old warriors, whom his father had 
 given him as counsellors in the government of his 
 province. That same night two of them — Adsch6-beg 
 and Ghazi Fazil — rowed across the strait in a shallop, 
 and brought back with them a Greek prisoner, who 
 told them that the fort of Tzympe, a short distance 
 from Gallipoli, was left without a garrison. Soleiman 
 cut ox-hides into strips, and with them bound together 
 trunks of trees into two rafts ; thirty-nine of his 
 bravest companions, and himself the fortieth — the 
 legend keeps the favourite number, like the forty 
 companions of Othman, and the forty robbers of the 
 Arabian tale — trusted themselves on the rafts, and 
 on the following night were ferried across the Helles- 
 pont. Among them were the great Ottoman heroes 
 of the time, with the renegade Greek chief of Brusa, 
 Evrenos, the future conqueror of Greece and Mace- 
 donia, who was to grow gray as the most renowned 
 
340 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 among the captains of Amurath and Bajazet. The 
 defenders of Tzympe were abroad in the fields, gather- 
 ing in their harvest beneath the moonlight ; a dung 
 heap had been left, raised against the rampart, and 
 over it the Ottomans mounted. They were followed 
 next day by a large body in barks, and before three 
 days were over 3000 Turks had crossed to Tzympe, 
 and held it fast. This crossing of the Hellespont is ' 
 fixed by the Ottoman historians in the year 1356. 
 
 Cantacuzene was at the very moment asking the 
 help of Orchan against the rival Greek Emperor. 
 Orchan sent Soleiman himself; he beat back the 
 Servian and Bulgarian allies of Palseologus, and then 
 swept the valley of the Hebrus on his own account. 
 But within a few months, a fearful catastrophe of 
 nature threw open still wider to the Ottomans the 
 gates of the Greek Empire. While Cantacuzene and 
 Orchan were negotiating about the restitution of 
 Tzympe, an earthquake laid in ruins the cities of the 
 Chersonese, and shattered their ramparts. It was 
 winter ; torrents of rain were followed by snow and 
 piercing frosts; and in the midst of desolation and 
 death from the fury and bitterness of the elements, 
 the Ottoman robbers, " like evening wolves," came 
 rushing in through the riven walls, to plunder, and 
 now to occupy the ruined cities. In this way they 
 seized Gallipoli, while their chiefs were treating about 
 the ransom of Tzympe. 
 
 It would have been surprising, if anything but 
 force could have wrung back from the wily Ottoman 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 341 
 
 a prize of which he knew so well the value. But his 
 answer to the remonstrances of his father-in-law and 
 ally Oantacuzene, is characteristic of the grave and 
 ironical perfidy which soon becomes one of the dis- 
 tinguishing marks of his family and race. Oantacuzene, 
 he said, had no right to demand back G-allipoli, and 
 the neighbouring towns of the Chersonese, "for it 
 was not the force of arms which had given them to 
 the Ottomans, but the earthquake.'' Oantacuzene, 
 according to some historians, was unable to pay the 
 ransom which the Turk demanded. But it is plain 
 that no ransom would have paid the price of that 
 secure lodgment in Europe, which the opportunity of 
 the moment had given him, and which was obviously 
 the next step, whenever it could be taken, . in the 
 manifest policy of Orchan's house. 
 
 The operations of modern war have but lately 
 reminded us of the importance of Gallipoli as a 
 military position, where the safety of Constantinople 
 is at stake. Its importance in the times of Orchan 
 might have been less, if the maritime superiority of 
 the Greeks, which at this period seems clear over the 
 light Turkish barks, had been turned to account by 
 resolute and able leaders. But in the hands that ruled 
 Byzantium, it was useless. Fifty years before, the 
 Catalan Grand Company had seized on Gallipoli, and 
 -irom this commanding stronghold, joined to the land 
 only by a narrow isthmus, and open to the sea, had 
 sallied forth at will, to ravage the Greek provinces, to 
 help or to overthrow an emperor, and to insult the 
 
342 THE EARLY OTTOMAlfS 
 
 Imperial City at its gates. The system and the 
 success of the Catalans, in this as in other instances, 
 were obviously not lost on the Ottomans, who 
 possessed their valour and their internal discipline, 
 with far more of settled and formidable purpose. At 
 Gallipoli they held a post impregnable to the Greeks, 
 which at once secured the ferry between Europe and 
 Asia, and gave them the mastery of the approaches 
 to the harbour of Constantinople. The same system 
 of waiting and watching at the gates, which had given 
 Brusa, Nicsea, and Nicomedia into their hands, was 
 now applied on a larger scale to the reduction of the 
 capital of the Empire. 
 
 In Gallipoli Soleiman settled a colony of Asiatics, 
 — Turks and Arabs, — and divided the lands of the 
 Chersonese among the warriors who had been, accord- 
 ing to the Turkish legend, the companions of his 
 nocturnal voyage across the Hellespont. Many of 
 them left their names to the places where they resided, 
 and the tombs of some of these heroes of Islam make 
 Gallipoli a venerable spot. But it is still more sacred 
 in the eyes of Ottomans, as possessing the tomb of 
 Soleiman himself. He died, shortly after leading his 
 people into Europe, not in the battle-field, or from 
 disease, but because his horse stumbled, while he was 
 flying his hawks in a field near Bulair. He was 
 buried where he fell, by a mosque which he had built, 
 within view of the sea. His grave marks the northern 
 entrance of the Hellespont, as that of Protesilaus does 
 the southern. " For a hundred years," says -Von 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 343 
 
 Hammer, " he was the only Ottoman prince who lay 
 buried in European earth ; and his tomb continually 
 invited the races of Asia to perform their pilgrimage 
 to it with the sword of conquest. Of all the hero- 
 tombs which have been hitherto mentioned in con- 
 nection with Ottoman history, there is none more 
 renowned, or more visited, than that of the second 
 Vizier of the empire, the fortunate Grosser of the 
 Hellespont, who laid the foundation of the Ottoman 
 power in Europe." The atmosphere of legend still 
 environed his memory in death. Ottoman story-tellers 
 related to enthusiastic hearers, and Ottoman historians 
 gravely repeat the tale, how when a mighty Christian 
 armament landed near the holy tomb at Bulair, the 
 hero Soleiman reappeared, leading a host of heavenly 
 warriors, radiant with light and mounted on white 
 horses, to the aid of his hard-pressed countrymen, and 
 utterly destroyed the invaders. But the learned and 
 impartial German, who has collected the Ottoman 
 records, is at the pains to inform us, that the arma- 
 ment, the battle, and the victory, are irreconcilable 
 with the more authentic facts of history. 
 
 Orchan survived his son Soleiman scarcely a year ; 
 he died in the year 1359. With Orchan and Soleiman, 
 the lawgiver and the champion, seems to end the age 
 of the heroes in the Ottoman annals ; with the con- 
 quests of Amurath, these annals enter into the domain 
 of European history. 
 
 Then it was known why Orchan had held back so 
 long. When his son Amurath took up his father's 
 
344 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 work, it was seen at once, in terrible clearness, what 
 a change had come over the Ottoman invaders. In 
 that significant and eventful pause in their advance, 
 the rude freebooters, who prowled in conscious and 
 patient helplessness round the impregnable ramparts 
 of Nice and Brusa, content if, after ten years of untired 
 watching at their gates, they might surprise or weary 
 out their prey, had become transformed into self- 
 reliant and ready soldiers, able for all the works of 
 victorious warfare; for swift and continued and 
 enduring conquest. With Amurath begins, rapid 
 and sudden, the irresistible outburst of Turkish power. 
 Their roving bands, indeed, had long well known the 
 routes in neighbouring Europe ; they were familiar 
 with the towns and cities of Thrace and Macedonia, 
 under whose walls they had often swept in insulting 
 security. They had watered their horses in the 
 Strymon and the Axius, in the Morava and the 
 Danube ; but they had come and gone. But when, 
 in the first year of Amurath, their squadrons issued 
 from the fastness of the Chersonese, along the narrow 
 isthmus of Bulair, and through the towns which 
 Soleiman had already occupied at its outlets and 
 approaches, they entered to remain ; they were come 
 this time to divide and take possession. All the 
 harassing forays of their predecessors are forgotten, 
 compared with this great and determined advance, 
 which in less than thirty years, for the second time 
 in history, established an Asiatic power in Europe ; 
 and which made the Greek Emperor a vassal to a 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 345 
 
 Mahometan chieftain, for all that was left to him 
 of his renowned empire, the city and outskirts of 
 Constantinople. 
 
 The intrigues of the rival Turks of Karaman de- 
 tained Amurath for a moment in Asia ; but the rebels 
 of Galatia were soon put down, and the great fortified 
 city of Angora, reputed by Ottoman writers one of 
 the strongest in the line of Turkish fortresses from 
 Buda to Van, was secured as a bulwark to the eastern 
 limits of the Ottomans. Then he at once crossed 
 into Thrace, where his brother's grave seemed the call 
 to conquest and to be its pledge. There was no delay 
 in seizing the towns that remained untaken, in the 
 vicinity and on the approaches of the Chersonese. 
 From them he marched boldly into the heart of what 
 had been the Greek Empire. Amurath threw himself 
 on the great military road which joins Constantinople 
 to the Upper Danube, and so to the countries of the 
 west : the towns upon its line were successively and 
 swiftly occupied j while another body, under the 
 veteran renegade Evrenos, and another of Orchan's 
 old captains, pushed up the valley of the Hebrus. 
 Didymotichon, the modern Demotica, the future 
 prison of Charles XII., was taken; and Amurath, 
 pleased with its position, and with the capture of a 
 favourite residence of some of the Byzantine emperors, 
 thought it worthy of being selected for the site of his 
 first European palace. But a grander capital than 
 Demotica was within his grasp. The Ottoman powers 
 by the Hebrus, and the great north road, were con- 
 
346 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 verging on Adrianople. Hadji Ilbeki, the conqueror 
 of Demotica, had ridden that year up to the walls of 
 that great city, and boldly maintained the possibility 
 of its capture. The thought of the greatness of the 
 prize seems to have made even Amurath hesitate ; 
 but the council of war was held, and it was resolved 
 to venture. The Greek governor of Adrianople risked 
 and lost a battle outside the gates of the city, the 
 first and last which the Greeks dared with Amurath. 
 The Greeks fled, and Adrianople surrendered. In 
 Tbnurath's first campaign in Europe, before he had 
 been two years on the throne, the rival capital to 
 Constantinople, lying opposite its very gates, and 
 barring the approaches from western Christendom, 
 came without resistance into his hands. 
 
 From this time, till Amurath's last field, no check 
 stopped him in his steady progress in the occupation 
 of what has since his time been European Turkey. 
 Along the great north-western road, the flame leapt 
 from point to point, along its stations and towns, 
 from Adrianople to Philippopolis, from thence over the 
 passes of Hsemus to Sofia, from Sofia to Naissus, on 
 the edge of the Servian kingdom, and within a few 
 marches of Belgrade. Westward, along the old 
 Egnatian way, Evrenos pushed onwards, and pre- 
 pared the way to Greece ; he halted only after he 
 had crossed the Axius, at the Macedonian town of 
 Vardar; the castles and strongholds, which had not 
 yielded to him on his first passage, were one by one 
 mastered afterwards, and a line of posts in the 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 347 
 
 mountain passes and on the coast secured j Serres, 
 and the fruitful valley of the Upper Strymon, on one 
 side, and the great city of Thessalonica on the other, 
 at last, after several years, completed the Turkish 
 conquests over the southern shore of Thrace. Nor 
 were the Turkish invaders come this time merely to 
 conquer. At the farthest points of their progress, 
 they at once began to build and to endow, as the 
 permanent occupants of the soil, not only for them- 
 selves, but for their posterity. At Vardar, Evrenos 
 was the founder of richly - endowed caravanserais 
 and public kitchens for the poor; at Philippopolis, 
 Lalashahin left his memorial, in a noble bridge of 
 stone two bow-shots in length, and wide enough for 
 the passage of two carriages abreast; and gave a 
 large number of slaves, for whose sustenance he pro- 
 vided, to keep it in repair. The towns on each side 
 of the great Adrianople road were captured ; and thus 
 the circle of Turkish occupation round Constantinople 
 was completed and drawn closer, and the emperors 
 were isolated, at least by land, from their ancient 
 realm. In due time, Hadji Ilbeki pushed up the valley 
 of the Tundscha, which comes down from the Balkan 
 to join the Hebrus at Adrianople. The towns on the 
 pleasant southern slopes of the mountains, lamboli 
 and Aidos, and Sizeboli on the sea, were taken. 
 Then the great dividing range was crossed. The 
 Ottomans threaded from the south the defiles which 
 lead to the plains of Bulgaria and the banks of the 
 Danube. Then first, names are heard of which have 
 
348 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 been heard so often, and with so much interest, since ; 
 then first we hear of the mountain-nest of Schumla, 
 which has so often sheltered the Ottoman armies j 
 and at the end of Amurath's reign, we hear of the 
 Ottomans round the towns of the Lower Danube, 
 from Nicopolis to Eustschuk and Hirsova, and of the 
 first siege, recorded by history, of Silistria. 
 
 It was not with Greeks that the Ottomans disputed 
 for the Greek Empire. They struck no blow — princes 
 or people — for their land and homes : the invasion 
 roused indignation and resistance, but not in them. 
 Amurath found antagonists; but they were com- 
 petitors for the inheritance of the empire, and the 
 prize of Eastern Europe, jealous that he should fore- 
 stall them. His battles on Greek soil were fought 
 with other foreigners, who wrangled with him for 
 the helpless carcase of the Byzantine dominions. It 
 was the Sclavonic nations from the Danube and the 
 Drave, Servians, Wallachians, and Bulgarians, who 
 met him in his first field, and his last, and who 
 struggled for supremacy in the plains of Thrace, with 
 the Turkomans from the Oxus and the Caspian. 
 
 In the weakness of the Greek Empire, a rival 
 Christian state had insensibly risen on its western 
 border, as the Ottomans had grown up on the east. 
 Stephen Dushan, a politician, a legislator, and a 
 warrior, had laid the foundation of a powerful kingdom 
 amid the wooded mountains of Servia: he had 
 established his authority and his influence over the 
 multitude of local hereditary nobles, by whom his 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 349 
 
 race, like the rest of the Sclavonians, were ruled ; he 
 was received as a deliverer by the Bosnian chiefs, as 
 a protector by the republic of Eagusa ; his standard 
 was followed by the warlike tribes from Albania ; he 
 was obeyed in Arta and Belgrade, in Macedonia and 
 Bulgaria ; and he assumed the name and the ensigns 
 of a Eoman Csesar, the tiara, and the globe and 
 cross. Stephen Dushan left behind him a great 
 national name ; but an unfinished work. He lighted 
 up a high ambition in the aspiring race whom he had 
 ruled; but he died too soon, and the nation itself 
 was too immature, for the consolidation of the loose 
 and refractory elements of Servian power. Servia 
 had led the Sclavonians in challenging the advance 
 of the Ottomans, but with no fortunate issue. From 
 the first, the superiority of the Ottomans declared 
 itself; and the votive Styrian chapel of Mariazell, 
 the most sacred place of pilgrimage in Austria, pre- 
 served the memory of the escape of Louis of Hungary, 
 when he fled on the banks of the Hebrus from the 
 Turkish scimitar, in the first encounter of the con- 
 federate Sclavonians with the lieutenants of Amurath, 
 though the Styrian legends of the sanctuary itself 
 have changed the defeat into a victory. Thus early, 
 though unsuccessfully, began the fierce, long struggle, 
 between the Ottomans and the nations which found 
 their rallying point in the house of Austria. But the 
 part and position of the Greek Emperor was a very 
 different one. John Palseologus, after the first burst 
 of Turkish conquest, begged for and obtained peace 
 
350 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 at Constantinople, while Amurath overran the rest 
 of his dominions; a peace which the Greek only 
 on one occasion attempted to interrupt; when he 
 went to Italy to oifer the submission of the Eastern 
 Church as the price of a new crusade. In this he 
 failed; an ignominious arrest at Venice for debt, 
 which was paid by the sale or pawn of the church 
 plate at Constantinople, detained him a while ; and 
 then he returned, to offer his services against the 
 enemies of the Ottomans, and to spend the remainder 
 of his reign as the humble and resigned dependent on 
 the good pleasure of Amurath. His degraded and 
 pitiable vassalage, as well as a terrible earnest of that 
 merciless cruelty which ran in the blood of the Ottoman 
 house, are shown in the story of the conspiracy against 
 their fathers, of his son Andronicus with Saudchi, the 
 eldest son of Amurath. Amurath, when he heard of 
 it, summoned the Emperor to prove his own innocence 
 at the Sultan's court ; and when John had, without 
 difficulty, convinced his master that he could not have 
 been a party to such perilous designs, Amurath called 
 on him to join him in arms against their insurgent 
 sons, and in a compact to blind them if they were 
 captured. The rebels were overthrown; Amurath, 
 say the chroniclers, approached their camp at night, 
 and called aloud to their Ottoman soldiers to leave 
 them. The soldiers heard once more the voice which 
 had been wont to lead them in battle, and could not 
 resist its fascination. The rebellious sons were taken. 
 Amurath redeemed his pledge in full measure ; he first 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 351 
 
 put out his son's eyes — then, when he had discharged 
 his promise, he slew him. Andronicus was also 
 blinded; but it was done imperfectly, and Amurath 
 reproached his dependent for his weak compassion for 
 his son. He himself was guilty of no such mercy for 
 the Greek associates of Andronicus. From the banks 
 of the Hebrus, he looked on calmly and unmoved, while 
 the captive nobles were thrown, tied in pairs, into 
 the river, from the battlements of Demotica. His 
 composure was only disturbed by a laugh of scorn, 
 when a hare, the emblem to the Ottomans of the 
 Greek race, crossed his view, pursued by dogs, and 
 he saw in the circumstance a coincidence, which moved 
 his mirth, with the bloody scene which his war hounds 
 were enacting before him. Yet Amurath was proud 
 enough to be magnanimous. Manuel, the emperor's 
 second son, who had tried to raise the standard of 
 resistance to the Turks in Macedonia, when he found 
 every place of refuge, even his father's palace, closed 
 against him by the terror of the Sultan's name, boldly 
 threw himself on the chance of his mercy, and appeared 
 before him at Brusa. Amurath spared him. He 
 pardoned his past misconduct, thus is their interview 
 described, and warned him, that on his mended 
 behaviour would depend the mending of his fortunes 
 in Europe ; and then he sent him to his father, and 
 gave the Emperor leave to open the gates of his capital 
 to his son, on condition that he would guard him 
 carefully. It is the historians of the Greek Empire 
 who are our authority for these features of its decline. 
 
352 THE BAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 Amurath inherited the organising spirit of his 
 father Orchan. The countries he occupied were carved 
 out into military tenures, the smaller Timars, and the 
 larger Siamefs, for the horsemen who had come across 
 ■with him from Asia, and the bases laid of that great 
 feudal system, which so long and so inexhaustibly fed 
 the Ottoman armies, and riveted their power over the 
 subject races, while it prevented the conquerors from 
 identifying themselves with the soil, or feeling them- 
 selves more than, as it were, its lessees and tenants. 
 The privileges and the service of this feudal militia, 
 were defined and regulated ; and in the place of the 
 old Moslem colours under which the warriors of Islam 
 had been wont to fight — the yellow of the Prophet 
 himself, the green the Fatimites, the white of the 
 Ommiades, the black of the Abbassides, — the Spahis 
 of the house of Othman reared that blood-red banner, 
 so well known and so long feared in Christendom. 
 In the service of the camp, a carriage train was 
 organised of Christian followers, who, in consideration 
 of the menial and burdensome duties to which they 
 were bound, were exempt from tribute. The old law 
 of the Koran was remembered and revived, which 
 enacted a fifth of all the spoil, and a fifth of the price 
 of every slave, for the use of the prince. A peace of 
 six years was interposed in Amurath's conquests, and 
 gave leisure, not only for the erection of mosques and 
 palaces and baths in Adrianople, his new European 
 capital, but for perfecting the military system, to which 
 everything else was subordinate. The wily old man, 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS ' 353 
 
 Black Halil, who had suggested to Orchan the institu- 
 tion of the Janissaries, was in high power and 
 confidence for twenty-seven of the thirty years of 
 Amurath's reign ; and the office of Grand Vizier, which 
 he bore for eighteen years, under the title of Haireddin 
 Pasha, never went out of his family till after the fall 
 of Constantinople. Even the Greek historians were 
 impressed with his keen and far-sighted character, and 
 record how carefully he was wont to impress upon 
 Amurath, the necessity of preparing and proportioning 
 his means and instruments for the high aim which he 
 had before him. With such a counsellor, Amurath 
 developed and matured the' outlines of policy which 
 Orchan had left him ; and the men whose names are 
 chiefly associated with his conquests, were mostly aged 
 warriors, but energetic and able in their old age, who 
 had passed their manhood as the servants of Orchan. 
 But it was not in Europe only, that the Ottoman 
 power was advancing with such vast strides. In Asia 
 Minor, it rapidly absorbed two more of the smaller 
 states, which had risen from the ruins of the Seljouks. 
 The Emir of Kermian, the ancient Phrygia, had to 
 surrender his province as a marriage gift with his 
 daughter to Amurath's son Bajazet; the Emir of 
 Hamid, the old Pisidia, had to part with his by a 
 forced sale. There was only one among these princi- 
 palities which could pretend to measure itself with 
 the Ottomans. The princes of Karaman occupied 
 the plains of Iconium, the rugged masses of Taurus, 
 and the shores of the OiUcian sea. They had before 
 
 2 A 
 
354* THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 shown jealousy of their rivals of the north-west. 
 Amurath was provoked by their intrigues ; and their 
 submission was not timely enough to stop the march 
 of an army which he had collected for their chastise- 
 ment, from his European dominions and allies, as well 
 as from Asia. In 1386, on the field of Iconium, the 
 Ottomans first tried their strength in a pitched battle 
 against their Turkish brethren. The array of the 
 Ottoman host on that decisive day is recorded, as the 
 precedent, which was ever after followed in their 
 many future battles. The feudal cavalry from Asia, 
 as the fight was on their own ground, occupied the 
 post of honour, the right wing — the troops from 
 Europe the left — an order which was reversed when 
 European ground was the scene of battle. In the 
 first line of the centre, — covered by a cloud of irregu- 
 lar skirmishers on foot, the Amis, — stood, for the first 
 time that history records, the "new soldiers'' raised 
 from the Christian children in Black Halil's schools, 
 the trained infantry of the Janissaries. Behind them 
 was the post of the Sultan and Grand Vizier, sur- 
 rounded by the squadrons of the regular cavalry of 
 the guard, the paid Spahis and Silihdars. The Beg- 
 lerbegs of Eoumelia and Anatolia, the supreme mili- 
 tary chiefs of the forces of Europe and Asia, com- 
 manded each on his own wing ; but on this occasion, 
 the Sultan's two sons, Bajazet and Yacoub, were joined 
 with them in command. The Karamanians were 
 utterly routed ; and on the field, the title of Vizier, 
 and the distinguishing banner of the three horse tails, 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 355 
 
 were first conferred as a dignity of military honour, 
 on Timurtash, the Beglerbeg of Eoumelia, and the 
 hero of the fight of Iconium. Amurath humbled, but 
 was prevailed on to spare, the emir and the state of 
 Karaman; but a storm was gathering behind him, 
 and he had again to summon all his powers, both in 
 Europe and Asia, to meet the danger which was once 
 more threatening from the banks of the Danube. 
 
 The Servians and their allies had been subdued, 
 and Amurath had compelled Servian auxiliaries to 
 help him against the Turks of Karaman; but. the 
 decisive trial of strength had not yet come, and the 
 absence and occupation of Amurath in Asia, and 
 perhaps the smart of Ottoman superiority, tempted 
 and provoked them to measure themselves again, and 
 for the last time, against their terrible competitor. 
 Lazar, King of Servia, the son of Stephen, gathered 
 together the armies of the confederate Sclavonians 
 from the gulf of Arta and the Croatian highlands, to 
 the plains of the Theyss, and the mouths of the 
 Danube. Seven tongues were spoken in his camp. 
 There were Wallachians from beyond the Danube — 
 Poles and Hungarians from beyond the Carpathians. 
 The Tartars of the Dobruscha had been induced to 
 revolt from the Ottomans ; and the tribes which now 
 furnish the fiercest soldiers wherever the Turkish 
 power requires the most daring and unscrupulous 
 ferocity, the Albanian and Bosnian mountaineers, were 
 then banded together with the kindred nations of 
 Bulgaria and Servia, which have not, like them, 
 
356 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 accepted the faith with the yoke of their conquerors. 
 The confederates hung on the edges of the Ottoman 
 conquest, and defeated the Ottoman armies; yet 
 Amurath seemed hardly to heed them. He was husy 
 with the affairs of his newly-acquired Asiatic pro- 
 vinces. There he was occupied in celebrating at 
 Brusa, with pompous ceremony, the circumcision of 
 three of his grandchildren, and his own marriage, and 
 that of his two sons, with Byzantine princesses. At 
 last he moved. The forces of Asia Minor were once 
 more poured across the Hellespont. With one wing 
 of the army, his Grand Vizier, the son of Black Halil, 
 crossed the Balkan, smote Bulgaria, and made it from 
 that day a Turkish province. Then, through the 
 rugged water -courses and intricate passes, in the 
 heart and centre of the Sclavonic peninsula, where 
 the mountain chains of Thrace and Macedonia are 
 knotted together with the prolongations of the Dacian 
 and Illyrian hills, Amurath pushed forward to seek 
 the Servians. Old Evrenos, the apostate chief of 
 Brusa, came back from a pilgrimage to Mecca, which 
 he had just performed at the close of life, in testi- 
 mony of his zeal for his second faith, to lend the 
 Ottomans once more the renown of his formidable 
 name, and to lead their vanguard. At Kossova, 
 the "Ousel's Field," where the borders of all the 
 great Sclavonic provinces meet, and where all their 
 races were represented in the field, the armies joined. 
 Of that stoutly-contested battle, the issue was not 
 doubtful, though a great price was paid for it by the 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 357 
 
 conqueror. The life of the first invader of Europe 
 was exacted, as the sacrifice due from the Ottomans 
 for their first great European victory — but in that 
 victory, the liberty of the Sclavonic tribes was struck 
 down for centuries, and an omen given, of but too 
 faithful presage, of the way in which Christian and 
 Moslem were to meet afterwards in many a bloody 
 field. 
 
 The histories and legends of both nations dwell 
 upon, and perhaps exaggerate or overcolour, the 
 remembrances of this eventful fight. On the eve of 
 the battle, say the Turkish chroniclers, the mind of 
 the stout-hearted Amurath for a while misgave him. 
 The banded Christian host, now that he had found 
 it, barred his way with numbers greatly superior to 
 his own. His army had marched, far, and through 
 rough and difficult ways ; and, now that the die was 
 to be cast, the only chance left him was victory, — 
 for behind him were the defiles of Ehodope and 
 Haemus, and all around an unfriendly country. The 
 Ottoman chiefs were divided in their counsels as to 
 the method of attack, and night found them still 
 disagreed. With the night came a violent wind, 
 which drove the dust across the plain in stifling 
 clouds into the faces of the Ottomans. Meanwhile, 
 in the Christian camp, the proposal to take their 
 enemies at disadvantage during the night was rejected, 
 for fear, it was urged, lest under the cover of dark- 
 ness any of them should escape. All the night long 
 Amurath spent in prayer, that, if he might not con- 
 
358 THE EAKLY OTTOMANS 
 
 quer, he might at least have the privilege of dying 
 a martyr for Islam. With the morning came a 
 change : the clouds of dust which had swept over 
 the field gave place to a soft rain ; the view was 
 cleared, and the Ottomans could see their opponents. 
 Drawn up in the same order as at Iconium, they 
 closed on the Christian army. The fight was obsti- 
 nate and bloody : the iron mace of Prince Bajazet 
 smote fierce and fast, and, where he led, the yielding 
 Ottomans rallied, and the Christians were scattered 
 before the tempest of his attack ; but the fortune of 
 the day was long doubtful and threatening to Amurath, 
 before their overthrow was completed and irretriev- 
 able. It had been almost accomplished when, from 
 the heaps of the slain, a Servian soldier started forth, 
 and crying out that he had a secret message for 
 Amurath, burst through the guards and orderlies to 
 his person. Amurath suffered him to approach ; the 
 Servian bowed to kiss his foot, and, as he raised 
 himself, stabbed Amurath mortally. A man of pro- 
 digious strength and speed, the murderer sprang forth 
 again through the circle of guards ; three times his 
 pursuers came up with him, and three times he shook 
 them off; the fourth time, faint with his wounds, he 
 was overpowered, and died under their swords. But 
 Amurath had still strength to direct what remained 
 to be accomplished of his victory. It was achieved 
 while he yet lived. Lazar, the Servian king, was 
 brought in prisoner to his tent ; and, while he was 
 dying himself, Amurath ordered him to be slain, and 
 
THE EAKLY OTTOMANS 359 
 
 looked on while he was put to death. Conqueroi' 
 and conquered, each gazed with fierce triumph on 
 the last moments of the other, and carried with 
 them the certainty of his rival's fate. 
 
 Such are the Ottoman accounts of the fight of 
 Kossova and the death of Amurath. The Servian 
 legends and Greek historians — who attribute the loss 
 of the battle to the panic and flight of the Bosnians, 
 after they had successfully met and beaten back the 
 first shock of the Ottomans — give a different version 
 of the deed of Milosch Kobilovitsch, the soldier who 
 avenged his nation's liberty on the conqueror who 
 had struck it down. Milosch and Wuk Brancowich, 
 say the Servian legends, had married the two daughters 
 of King Lazar, and the sisters had quarrelled about 
 the merit of their respective husbands. Brancowich, 
 provoked by his own jealousy and the complaints of 
 his wife, accused Milosch of treasonable correspond- 
 ence with the Turks. On the eve of the battle. King 
 Lazar was pledging his nobles to the morrow's good 
 fortune in the Stravitza, the silver goblet which he 
 used ; when he came to Milosch he passed him the 
 goblet, but reminded him that his good name was 
 not untainted by suspicion. "Thanks, King, for 
 the Skavitza," said Milosch ; " to-morrow shall prove 
 my truth." In the morning, before the battle began, 
 Milosch rode into the camp of the Ottomans as a 
 deserter ; and when he was brought into Amurath's 
 tent, to kiss his foot, Milosch overturned his seat and 
 dealt him his death -wound. He rushed forth and 
 
360 THE EAKLY OTTOMANS 
 
 reached the swift horse which was waiting to carry 
 him back to the Christian camp, but he had not time 
 to mount before the sabres of the Janissaries hewed 
 him down. The Turks then began the attack. But 
 it was not till the evening, when King Lazar was 
 brought in to die in the tent of his expiring enemy, 
 that he learnt how Milosch Kobilovitsch had redeemed 
 his pledge. With the Servians he is a patriot and 
 an avenging hero ; with the Ottomans an assassin, 
 whose crime was afterwards made the pretext of the 
 insulting ceremonial which obliged the ambassadors 
 of Christian powers to approach the Sultan with their 
 arms held by attendant chamberlains. Yet even the 
 Turks seem to have felt a kind of involuntary and 
 admiring interest in the daring and strength which 
 was so fatal to their great leader. On the plain of 
 Kossova, where a chapel marks the place where 
 Amurath died, the Turks have set up three great 
 stones, at intervals of fifty ells, to point out the spots 
 where Milosch thrice sprang through the crowds of 
 his pursuers ; and in the old armoury at Constanti- 
 nople are still shown the arms and the trappings of 
 the Servian champion and his war-horse. 
 
 Such was the first stage of that military empire 
 which Orchan had planned for his house and race, 
 and for which he had so patiently prepared. From 
 the time when Amurath " the Victorious " burst upon 
 the Byzantine realm, it was clear that no power in 
 the east of Europe was a match in battle for the 
 fierceness and the long-practised discipline which was 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 361 
 
 found alone among the Ottomans, — as there was no 
 dynasty or state which aimed so high in its policy, 
 and was filled with such confident and resolute en- 
 thusiasm of conquest. But the mounting fortunes 
 and the strength of the new state were disclosed with 
 more formidable certainty amid the splendours, and 
 still more, amid the vicissitudes of the reign of his 
 successor Bajazet. Bajazet met at Nicopolis, not 
 Asiatics, or Greeks, or Sclavonians, but the choicest 
 and proudest chivalry of the West ; and he trampled 
 them down with an overthrow more humiliating and 
 more cruel than that of Kossova. Till his last fatal 
 field no check suspended the proud and prosperous 
 sweep of his victorious armies, from Widdin to the 
 Morea, from Smyrna and Sinope to the Euphrates. 
 Yet the victory of Nicopolis, and the ancient empire 
 of the east in Europe and Asia once again united 
 beneath his feet, are less striking proofs of the vigour 
 of the Ottoman state than the. disasters of Angora. 
 Few eastern dynasties, few nations anywhere in the 
 outset of their career could have so endured the shock 
 and strain of that memorable casting down of human 
 pride. Bajazet himself became one of the household 
 instances in all men's mouths of the instability of the 
 loftiest fortune. His power seemed to break in pieces 
 and dissolve, its instruments and its seats were swept 
 away under the hoofs of the Tartar horses. And 
 when the tempest which had carried him along with 
 it had passed over, Ottoman was ranged against 
 Ottoman, Janissary against Spahi, while his sons 
 
862 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 tore among themselves what remained of the Ottoman 
 dominions, and fought with one another for its ruins. 
 Yet out of this wreck of public calamity and domestic 
 war the institutions of Orchan emerged unimpaired 
 in form and unaltered in spirit; the tenacious and 
 elastic strength of his race rapidly recovered and col- 
 lected itself; and from the confusion and disasters 
 of that house, which seemed not only beaten down 
 but divided against itself, arose in terrible energy 
 and relentless purpose the awful form of Mahomet 
 the Conqueror. 
 
 A primitive and severe simplicity of habits had 
 hitherto marked the Ottoman sovereigns. Unscrupu- 
 lous in policy, reckless of blood, and fierce in their 
 scorn of those whom they had destined for their 
 slaves, they were yet largely imbued with what 
 religious tempers the Koran can infuse ; it speaks 
 much of kindness and mercy to the needy, and of 
 rigorous justice even to the stranger ; and they had 
 gained renown even among their enemies for both. 
 Nor, while displaying magnificence in their public 
 constructions and foundations, had they yet been 
 tempted to leave their ancestral homeliness, and copy 
 the barbaric gorgeousness of Oriental state. Once 
 only a whim of Amurath prompted him to add a 
 slight ornament to the severe plainness of his attire. 
 At the plunder of a town he discovered and exposed 
 the device of one of his soldiers, to secrete a golden 
 cup, by placing it on his head, and covering it with 
 his head-dress ; Amurath chose to be amused at the 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 363 
 
 trick, and in his merriment to imitate the soldier, 
 and set the fashion of wearing a gold embroidered 
 cap beneath the white linen of his turban. And his 
 illiterate rudeness, ostentatiously affected, if it was 
 not real, is still commemorated in the Tughra or sign 
 manual of his more polished successors — the Arabic 
 letters of their name and style are interwoven into a 
 rude "outline of the impression of a human hand, in 
 remembrance of the way in which Amurath, like the 
 shepherd kings of Tartary, the Mongol conquerors, 
 and Tim our, ratified his treaties, by dipping his palm 
 in the ink, and leaving the print of it on the instru- 
 ment. But under Bajazet, the effect was seen of un- 
 broken and marvellous success, of increasing wealth 
 and strength, on natures still steeped in the ignorance, 
 and instinct with the savage and untamed wildness, 
 of the steppes of Central Asia. The pride and the 
 dazzling pomp, the cold deliberate ferocity, the 
 monstrous lust of blood, the deep insolent perfidy, 
 the foul and unnameable sensuality, thinly disguised 
 under a veil of grave and manly courtesy, which have 
 marked almost every Ottoman sovereign, and certainly 
 every period of Ottoman power, appear already in 
 their hateful combination, if not yet in their full 
 proportions, in the court of Bajazet. 
 
 "The reign of Bajazet Ilderim, ' the' Thunder- 
 bolt,'" says Von Hammer, "begins, like the history of 
 the world, with fratricide. Scarcely had his father 
 breathed forth his spirit, than Bajazet ordered his 
 brother to be put to death " — the brother who had 
 
364 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 shared with him, the day before, the perils and the 
 toil of the hard-fought field of Kossova. " He did 
 this," says the official historiographer of the Ottoman 
 Empire, Seaddedin, who proclaims it his duty only to 
 record the facts which set forth the honour of the 
 noble house of Othman — he did this " in consideration 
 of the text of the Koran, ' Disturbance is worse than 
 putting to death:' — in consideration of the evil 
 example given by his brother Saudschi of conspiracy 
 and rebellion, that such an example might not find 
 an imitator : — and in consideration of the example 
 which ought to be followed, of God, who is alone 
 and without a rival ; wherefore also the shadow of 
 God upon earth, the Ruler of the Faithful, ought like 
 God, to govern, without companionship and without 
 rivalry, on his throne." " The reasons which influ- 
 enced Bajazet," continues Von Hammer, "were found 
 so weighty by the succeeding sultans, that his example 
 was followed as a rule ; and afterwards, in the legisla- 
 tion of Mahommed the Conqueror, the murder of the 
 brethren of the Sultan *was publicly proclaimed to be 
 the law of the kingdom." 
 
 The vassalage of the Servians, and other Sclavonian 
 tribes, which followed on the battle of Kossova, gave 
 Bajazet an undisputed pre-eminence in the East ; but 
 the rout and massacre of Nicopolis at once spread his 
 name and terror throughout Europe. In the most 
 disastrous days of the Crusades the pride of the 
 nobles of the West had not been taught so terrible a 
 lesson by the Infidels of Asia. A momentary pause 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 365 
 
 in the confusions of the Great Schism, and the civil 
 wars of France, had left them free to seek the 
 excitement of an Eastern adventure. At Pentecost 
 in 1396, a gay and princely company met at Vienna, 
 whom Sigismund of Hungary, the future emperor of 
 Germany, had invited to accompany him to chastise 
 the hordes which were riding along the Danube, and 
 to sweep them out of Christendom. In it were heard 
 some of the most famous names and noblest titles of 
 France, Burgundy, and Flanders : D'Eu, de la Marche 
 and Bar, belonged to the blood royal of France ; St. 
 Pol, De la Tr6moaille, Sampi, and De Couci, to its 
 most high-born lordly houses ; John de Vienne, the 
 Admiral, John Boucicaut, the Marshal of France, were 
 captains renowned in the wars and councils of the 
 West; the men-at-arms and squires whom they 
 brought with them were picked men of the tried and 
 fiery knighthood of their gallant land ; at their head 
 was a grandson of France and heir of Burgundy, 
 known then as the Count of Nevers, but afterwards 
 as Jean sans Pew} reserved to be the father of 
 mighty princes, — to be the troubler and scourge of 
 his country, — to be able to daunt a council of the 
 Church from condemning the doctrine of tyrannicide, 
 and ruin the greatest theologian of his age, John 
 
 1 When the Count de Nevers was brought before Bajazet, 
 after the Battle of Nicopolis, "disoit-on communement, qu'il y 
 eut un Sarrasin, nomme Nigromancien, devin, ou sorcier, qui 
 dist qu'on le sauvast, et qu'il estoit taill^ de faire mourir plus 
 de Chrestiens que le Basac (Bajazet), ny tous ceux de leur loy 
 ne scauraient faire. "—Juvenal des Ursins, 1396. 
 
366 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 Gerson, for denouncing it, — and to end and expiate 
 his guilty and blood-stained life, by being himself 
 its victim on the bridge of Montereau. Nor were 
 the noble names of Germany absent. A Hohen- 
 Zollern led knights from the Rhine ; the Count 
 Palatine, from Bavaria j Herman of Gilli, from Styria; 
 and with them was the Grand Master of Rhodes, and 
 a numerous company of the Knights of St. John. On 
 St. Michael's eve they met the foes they had come 
 to seek on the Danube. Headstrong and insolent, 
 "despising their enemies and their allies," scorning 
 the caution prompted by Sigismund's dearly-bought 
 experience of Turkish war, confident in their mail of 
 proof and their western spears, they rose up from their 
 wine and debauchery, and the perfidious slaughter of 
 their captives, to look for and ride down the Infidel 
 rabble rout^ who had terrified the East. 
 
 They encountered a well-ordered and well-prepared 
 army, whose warlike and brilliant show equalled their 
 own. A swarm of light^horsemen covered the Otto- 
 man lines, and concealed what they were doing. As 
 the French advanced, the light-horsemen swept ofi' 
 right and left like a dispersing cloud, and disclosed, 
 behind a fence of thickly-planted stakes, which had 
 been fixed under the cover of their skirmishing, a 
 long line of infantry, from whom a storm of arrows 
 poured into the faces of the French cavalry. But 
 through the deadly arrow-flights, through the barrier 
 of sharp and slanting stakes, among which men and 
 
 ' "Cette chiennaillo." Mem. do Boucicaut, chap. xxv. 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 367 
 
 horses were maimed, they pushed on in spite of great 
 loss ; then, before their thundering onset and levelled 
 spears, even the Janissaries, who never fled, were 
 broken and overthrown. The first line of their 
 enemies was destroyed, and the horsemen, who had 
 taken refuge behind it, scattered j but the French- 
 men could not yet halt, and a second line of stout 
 and fierce infantry awaited them. As riders and 
 horses, in disorder and out of breath, mounted the 
 crest of a rising ground, they came upon Bajazet, 
 and with him, not on the wreck and remains, but 
 on the masses, fresh and untouched, of the main 
 body of his host. At once, a "forest of lances" 
 closed round the loose array and exhausted strength 
 of that troop of knights. They fought fiercely and 
 terribly in their despair, but they could charge no 
 longer ; they were hemmed in, entangled, jammed 
 together, stifled, by the surging throng and press of 
 the storming Turkish squadrons. They were crushed 
 and broken down, says the report of one who saw 
 the scene, "like the iron on the anvil.''^ The 
 Hungarians far behind, and panic-struck, when they 
 saw the French cavalry struggling in the toils, — 
 led also, it is said, by faithless generals, broke and 
 fled. But Sigismund's guards, with the soldiers 
 from Bavaria and Styria, yet formed a strong and 
 formidable body, and advanced to extricate and 
 relieve their comrades. They, too, were at first 
 successful, till a fierce onset on their flank overthrew 
 ^ M^m. de Boucicaut. 
 
368 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 them. Sigismund, when his royal banner was struck 
 down, escaped, with a few companions, by means of 
 a small boat, on the Danube. But the Christian 
 host was no more ; and those of the French and 
 German nobles who were not lying on the field, 
 were prisoners in the hands of Bajazet. On the 
 morrow came a more dreadful scene. Bajazet was 
 furious at the massacre of the Turkish captives by 
 the French nobles, and at his losses on the field. 
 Sitting at his tent door, he ordered the whole body 
 of prisoners to be collected from every part of the 
 camp before him. Two of those who were present 
 and escaped, have left behind their remembrances of 
 that day of humiliation and blood.^ The noble 
 "youths of the Fleur-de-Lys," honoured and high- 
 spirited children of the lineage and royal blood of 
 France, were tied tightly with cords by the "ugly 
 and horrible Saracens," who held them with " hard 
 and rough grasp before the tyrant as he sat." He 
 granted their lives to the Count de Nevers, and 
 twenty-four of his noblest companions, and bade 
 them sit on the ground at his feet. Then he ordered 
 the whole number of the remaining prisoners to be 
 slain before him. They were brought up one by 
 one, or stood in lines, as they were tied ; and the 
 club, or the sharp heavy yataghan,^ passed along 
 
 ^ Schildberger and Boucicaiit ; supposing that the writer of 
 Boucicaut's Memoirs had the account from himself, which is 
 probable. Cf. Notice sur Boucicaut (^Collection Michaud et 
 Poujoulat), ii 212. 
 
 ^ "Grands cousteaux." — Boucicaut. 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 369 
 
 from head to head. The number of the victims 
 varies, in different accounts, from three hundred to 
 ten thousand ; but one of our informants, an eye- 
 witness, the German Schildberger, who was saved 
 by the son of Bajazet for his extreme youth, and 
 returned an old man, to Nuremberg, to write the 
 story of that horrible morning, says, that at sunrise 
 the work of death began, and that when it was stopped, 
 at the entreaties of the Turkish chiefs, wearied and 
 sickened of its horrors, it was already four hours 
 after noon. As Boucicaut, the Marshal of France, 
 approached in the sad procession, and his turn was 
 rapidly drawing near, his eyes met those of the 
 Count de Never s.^ The Count cast a piteous look 
 at Bajazet, and joined the fingers of his hands, to 
 signify that Boucicaut was as a brother to him. 
 Bajazet understood the sign, and Boucicaut was 
 spared to share the count's captivity, and, at last, 
 after losing once more his liberty in a more famous 
 battle than even Nicopolis, to die a prisoner in 
 England.^ Such was the end of that gallant company. 
 At Pentecost they had met at Vienna. On Christ- 
 mas night, while the gay court of the King of France, 
 was holding a brilliant festival at Paris, a horseman, 
 booted and spurred, rode into the Hotel St. Pol, and 
 kneeling before the king, delivered the message, that 
 
 1 " Dieu feit, que le Comte de N evers sur le point que on 
 Touloit ferir sur luy, le va regarder moult piteusement, et lo 
 mareschal luy." — Boucicaut. 
 
 2 Gibbon kills bim at Agincourt ; but it is a mistake. Cf. 
 Notice sivr Boucicaut, p. 212. 
 
 2b 
 
370 THS EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 the corpses of the French host were lying unburied 
 on the banks of the Danube,^ and that the few sur- 
 vivors, and among them five princes of his own race, 
 were waiting for their ransom in the prisons of 
 Brusa. France and Flanders were thrown into 
 mourning. And the first of those degrading tributes 
 of money and presents with which the great kings of 
 the "West used, from time to time, to deprecate the 
 hostility and feed the insolence of the Turks, was 
 offered at the Porte of Bajazet by the most ancient 
 royal house in Christendom, to redeem the captives 
 of Nicopolis. 
 
 For twelve years nothing interrupted the uniform 
 course of Bajazet's conquests. In Asia he finished 
 what his predecessors had begun, the reunion under 
 one sway of all the fragments of the old Seljouk 
 kingdom. The principalities of the coast were finally 
 extinguished. Karaman was conquered, and its chief 
 put to death, and from the shores of Cilicia, Bajazet 
 turned to those of the Euxine, to punish and dis- 
 possess the Isfendiars of Kastemuni, the lords of old 
 Paphlagonia, for having harboured the fugitive princes 
 of the ^gean coasts. The shelterers were driven 
 from Sinope and Amasia, as the sheltered had been 
 driven from Smyrna and Ephesus, to seek and raise 
 up an avenger in the midst of that dark tempest of 
 desolating conquest which was raging in the depth 
 of Asia, and in which a mightier than Bajazet was 
 drawing near, amid the ruins of the kingdoms of the 
 
 ^ Juvenal des Ursins. 1396. 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 371 
 
 East. Nothing daunted by the portentous renown 
 of Timour, Bajazet advanced eastwards, till the 
 northern Euphrates became his border. In Europe, 
 Servia and Wallachia were his tributaries. His 
 fortified posts on the Danube were pushed upwards 
 to Widdin, and the Turkish marauders began to feel 
 their way into the unexplored lands of Hungary and 
 Styria. Southwards, he plunged into Thessaly and 
 Greece, ofiended with the Greek Emperor,^ or in 
 search of new hunting-grounds j the instigator and 
 guide of his march was a Greek and a churchman, 
 the traitor Bishop of Phoeis. This time there was 
 no one to defend Thermopylae, and Bajazet received 
 the homage of the Greek and Prankish chiefs who 
 ruled in Phoeis and Boeotia; while the unwearied 
 Evrenos, that implacable old man against his former 
 race and faith, who, under Amurath, had firmly fixed 
 the Ottoman horsetails on the banks of the Mace- 
 donian Axius, now carried them forward over the 
 unguarded Isthmus, to the citadel of Argos and the 
 waters of the Gulf of Coron. In this visitation — for 
 it was not yet a conquest — Athens was not spared : 
 and though the Ottomans for the present retired, 
 they swept off with them a booty of 30,000 slaves, 
 whom they fixed as a colony in Asia, in the same 
 way as they had planted Asiatic colonies at the gates 
 of Constantinople, and in the plains of Thrace. 
 
 If Bajazet judged of the nations of the West from 
 his past experience of the spirit and wisdom of his 
 ^ Finlay ; Von Hammer. 
 
372 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 Christian foes, it is easy to understand the words of 
 scorn and menace, with which he is said to have 
 dismissed his prisoners.^ For in the East, he had 
 not only conquered the Christians, — he had forced 
 them to fight his battles against their fellow-Christians, 
 not in the ranks of the Janissaries merely, but under 
 their own banner of the Cross. The charge which 
 finally crushed the Christian host at Mcopolis, was 
 made by Christian troops led by the Christian chief 
 of Servia, the son of him who had been slaughtered 
 in Amurath's tent at Kossova, the grandson of Stephen 
 Dushan, but now the brother-in-law and sworn liege 
 man of Bajazet. For the Palseologi at Constanti- 
 nople a lower depth of infamy was reserved. It 
 was not only that Bajazet made and unmade Csesars 
 at his pleasure, — deposed, imprisoned, and then 
 caused the occupant of the throne and the dungeon 
 to change places again ; it was not only that he 
 compelled them to receive a Mahomedan kadi, and 
 to allow a Mahomedan mosque to be built within 
 the imperial city, — it was not only that when the 
 emperors had pulled down three famous churches 
 to fill up a gap in the ruined city walls, they sub- 
 missively obeyed his prohibition to add any new 
 fortifications to Constantinople, and razed to the 
 ground, at his order, what they had just built ; it 
 was not only that the smallest disobedience was at 
 once punished by a strict and prolonged blockade — 
 the ignominy of the Greek emperors yet wanted 
 ' Cf. Gibbon, chap. Ixir. p. 72. 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 373 
 
 something to complete it. A single Greek city, 
 which had stood the brunt of more than one fierce 
 storm, still raised itself above the ruins of the 
 empire. Alascher, the ancient Philadelphia, was a 
 great staple of trade, and in the very heart of the 
 Turkish conquests, was still a free town. Bajazet 
 wanted lands and houses, to form the endowment of 
 his new mosque at Adrianople, and he led his army 
 against Philadelphia. The Greek vassal Emperors, 
 with their troops, were with him. It was Manuel, 
 the Greek Emperor, who summoned Philadelphia 
 to receive the Turkish yoke. When Philadelphia 
 resolved to defend its freedom, it was the Greek 
 emperors and Greek soldiers who were appointed, 
 and who undertook, to conduct the siege. Lastly — 
 what would be beyond belief, if a Greek chronicler ^ 
 had not related it — "it was John and Manuel, the 
 Greek emperors, who led the assault against their own 
 city, to deliver it into the hands of the barbarians."^ 
 
 The shadows of ancient greatness still lingered 
 and flitted in its decaying palaces, or wandered, 
 unhonoured suppliants, with their piteous tale of 
 woe and shame, among the courts of the West, 
 or in ludicrous mockery of their fallen state, emu- 
 lously multiplied themselves in the still shrinking 
 limits of their narrow corner in Thrace ; and contend- 
 ing Caesars reigned, not only at Constantinople, but 
 a score of miles off, at Selymbria. But the substance 
 of power in what was wont to be considered the 
 
 ^ Chalcooondylas. ' Von Hammer, i. 185. 
 
374 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 Eastern world, was in Bajazet's court, the Sultan's 
 Gate, at Brusa. Bajazet had traversed the countries 
 from Germany to Armenia, from the Carpathians to 
 Persia and the Syrian desert, and had not yet found 
 a rival ; and now he stood, careless of the wild storm 
 which was bursting over Asia, only waiting to arise 
 and be the scourge of the sins and divisions, the 
 scandals and confusions, of Western Christendom. 
 And under him was now seen at Brusa, not only the 
 substance but the show of a power, which served 
 itself of the wealth and strength of many races of 
 men. The Ottomans had long been rapacious, had 
 long been overbearing, had long been insolent : they 
 now exhibited, in rapid and premature development, 
 the display and the corruption of secure prosperity. 
 The profuse and pompous magnificence, and the 
 greediness after money at the expense of public 
 interest and private honour, which are such pro- 
 minent features in almost all the great men of the 
 Ottomans, began to show themselves in the reign of 
 Bajazet. The son of the great Black Halil, Bajazet's 
 chief minister and friend, was not above receiving a 
 bribe from the Greek Emperor, to give a respite to 
 Constantinople. Bajazet's glory and show in the 
 hunting-field were the wonder of his French captives, 
 the kinsmen of the gayest and of the wealthiest of 
 European princes ; but the fiery Bajazet, whose joy 
 seemed the battle, and who owed his fame and his 
 power to his army, left his soldiers without pay at 
 the very crisis of his fortune, and grudged his 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 375 
 
 treasures to them, even in the moment of peril, with 
 the close-handed and shortsighted thrift of a miserly- 
 usurer. We still hear, indeed, of Ottoman justice ; 
 but Bajazet's, if we are to judge from the well-known 
 stories ^ which illustrate it, was but the blind ferocity 
 of a provoked barbarian. What is more certain than 
 Bajazet's justice is the licentiousness, of which he 
 gave the example and became the precedent. Bajazet, 
 the first of the Ottoman princes, gave the rein to 
 his wild nature, in pleasure as well as in ambition or 
 revenge. A Moslem prince, he learnt from one of 
 his Christian ^v^ives, and added to the sensuality of 
 Asia, the drunken orgies of the West. But this was 
 the least. It was in Bajazet's court that the seeds 
 were sown, which took root so early and grew with 
 the growth of the Ottoman State, of that unnameable 
 system of public and unexampled profligacy, — which 
 remains to this day its burning and characteristic 
 shame, and its incurable curse, — that system of official 
 promotion, which made the infamy of youth the 
 ordinary path to the honours of manhood, and to 
 the first places of the State. It was one of the 
 immediate fruits of the policy which led the Otto- 
 mans to recruit their strength in the families of the 
 Christians they had conquered. The tribute of 
 Christian children not only filled the chambers of 
 the Janissaries with recruits, but the Sultan's halls 
 with pages. It is reported that the heinous taint 
 which spread from the Court involved all the orders 
 ' See Gibbon, chap. Ixiv. ; viii. 68. 
 
376 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 and classes, by whom the Ottoman State was sup- 
 ported and guided ; and that foremost among the 
 corrupt and the corrupting were not merely all- 
 powerful viziers and lawless soldiers, but the grave 
 and solemn teachers and ministers of the Mahomedan 
 law.^ 
 
 "Bajazet sat at Brusa," says one of the Greek 
 chroniclers, in his flowery style, " and the lofty tree 
 of his prosperity was laden with fruit. Nothing of 
 all the things which can give most exquisite enjoy- 
 ment was wanting to him. Wild beasts of strange 
 shapes, precious metals, and all that God has created 
 most rare for the delight of the eyes, were found 
 in his treasure houses. Choicest slaves, men and 
 women, of fair form and beautiful countenance, stood 
 round him — they were Greeks, Servians, Wallachians, 
 Albanians, Hungarians, Saxons, Bulgarians, Latins — 
 who all sang and made music, each in their own 
 language, however little heart they might have for it. 
 But he sat in the midst of them, and gave himself up 
 without interruption to the enjoyment of soft volup- 
 tuousness."^ 
 
 One thing only impeached the perfect splendour 
 of his prosperity. At his very gates, enclosed and 
 straitened by his ample conquests, the ruins and 
 spoils of its worn-out empire, a great and venerable 
 name still claimed the honours of twenty centuries, 
 and maintained its precedence among Eastern princes, 
 by the possession of a royal city which seemed the 
 1 Von Hammer, i. 192. ^ Xiucas, in Von Hammer, i. 209. 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 377 
 
 symbol and pledge of Eastern dominion. True, 
 Bajazet had held its keys ; he had changed its rulers ; 
 he had put it to tribute ; he had led forth its Csesars 
 among his other vassals, against their own less com- 
 pliant towns. But it was not less true, that the lord 
 still sat at Brusa, and the vassal in the imperial 
 palaces of Constantinople ; it was not less true, that 
 the owner of Constantinople was, in the view, not 
 only of Western princes and Western merchants, but 
 of Bajazet's own subjects, the rightful Emperor of 
 the East. And under Bajazet's own eyes that 
 single but splendid relic of greatness, itself more than 
 half the empire, had been transferred without his 
 leave from one to another, by the helpless pretenders 
 to the name of Csesar ; and when one of them could 
 no longer hold it, he devolved his right, and united 
 the rival diadems of Selymbria and Constantinople, 
 on the head of a blind and feeble pensioner of the 
 Ottoman conqueror. The "sick man's heritage," 
 according to the memorable phrase of modern days, 
 invited the hand of his successor. Orchan and 
 Amurath had each successively added a nobler capital 
 to their dominions. It seemed reserved for Bajazet 
 to outshine their exploits and accomplish their work, 
 by raising up the " Gate " and throne of the Turco- 
 man lords of the " Black Castle," within the precincts 
 of the palace of the Csesars, and by having the weekly 
 prayer of the Moslems recited in their own name, and 
 to the honour of the Arabian Prophet, in the oldest 
 Cathedral in Christendom. 
 
378 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 It seemed the triumph reserved for Bajazet ; and 
 in the first year of the fifteenth century he prepared 
 to claim it. The blind John of Selymbria reigned in 
 Constantinople, while his cousin and rival Manuel 
 was vainly imploring help among the courts of Europe. 
 Bajazet sent to John : " Not for thy sake, but for 
 my own," he said, "have I cast out thy predecessor. 
 Art thou our friend? — then remove from the city, 
 and choose thee a province where thou wilt, and I 
 will bestow it on thee to govern. But if not, I swear 
 by God and our Prophet, that I will spare no one. 
 All shall utterly perish." 
 
 As at the last, when the last did arrive, so now, 
 when it seemed come, — a burst of brave resolution 
 flashed up in the moment of utmost peril, amid the 
 decay and ignominy of the Greek race. Constanti- 
 nople sent back an answer worthy of her history and 
 name, to the summons of the barbarian : " Go tell 
 your master," said its people, "that we are indeed 
 without help. We have no defender, to whose might 
 we can look for protection, except God — God who 
 upholds the helpless, and overthrows the strong. 
 Now-do thy pleasure." And they and their proud 
 enemy prepared for the encounter. 
 
 But the encounter was not to be. That genera- 
 tion was to be sleeping in its graves before the 
 change, which seemed at the very doors, should come ; 
 they were to be spared the shame, or denied the 
 triumph, of seeing a new dynasty enthroned on the 
 Golden Horn. The crash of a tremendous revolution 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 379 
 
 was indeed to startle the world; but it was the 
 downfall of its most rising power, not the extinction 
 of one that was doomed to ruin. 
 
 Bajazet was called away from Constantinople to 
 meet the challenge of a rival conqueror, of his own 
 faith and stock, but one before whose terrible ambi- 
 tion and greatness Bajazet is dwarfed arid overshad- 
 owed, and his broad Ottoman realm dwindles down 
 into the dimensions of a province. Timour was the 
 last and the most remarkable of those Tartar wan- 
 derers, in whom the boundless and lawless liberty of 
 the Steppes awakened the dream of the mastery of 
 the world ; who, driven onwards by a frenzied and 
 devouring enthusiasm that could not stop, and burst- 
 ing by their grim energy through all that barred their 
 way, were able for a time to bind the civilisation of 
 Asia to the throne of the Northern wilderness : and 
 who, even after that throne had crumbled, left in- 
 delible traces of their character, their deeds and 
 thoughts, on the memory, the history, and the legis- 
 lation of the polished races of the South. Timour 
 held the conquerors' spell over his savage brethren. 
 Lured by that spell from their bleak, endless plains, 
 and forbidding wastes, their roaming camps were 
 once more gathered together for battle, under a chief 
 who was able to break them to his discipline, and 
 bend them as one man to the single aim of his vast 
 ambition. Once more, and for the last time, the 
 Mongol war-cry of "fffrwards " ^ passed from land to 
 1 "SurUn^" Von Hammer, i. 223, 249. 
 
380 THE BAKLY OTTOMANS 
 
 land, across the Oxus, across the Volga, across the 
 Euphrates, across the Indus, and at last across the 
 Halys. About the time that Amurath the Victorious 
 led the Ottomans into Europe, Timour began to 
 conquer. "While they had been advancing from the 
 Hellespont to the Danube and the Euphrates, Timour 
 had dashed to pieces power after power, from the 
 deserts of Tartary to those of Arabia, from the shores 
 of the Caspian to the fountains of the Ganges ; he 
 went onward, where Alexander and Genghis had 
 turned back : the historic lands of Asia, the seats of 
 her proudest kingdoms, the cradles and homes of her 
 highest civilisation — Persia and OhaldEea, Armenia 
 and Hindostan — were joined in a common wreck with 
 the barbarian thrones of Turkistan and Russia, to 
 form a Tartar empire ; over their impregnable for- 
 tresses, their fairest and greatest cities, Ispahan, 
 Bagdad, Delhi, Damascus, his sword had passed, like 
 the lightning or the pestilence, and left them without 
 man or beast, marked by their reeking walls and 
 pyramids of human skulls ; — spoiled, that by their arts 
 and industry Samarcand might be adorned ; ruined, 
 that Samarcand might be left standing alone, the one 
 great city of the Tartar reign ; while during the forty 
 years that his armies traversed to and fro, and his 
 horse-hoofs marked the soil, the lands of civilised 
 man, — of those who are nourished by the wheatsheaf, 
 the vine, and the olive, — tilth and garden, orchard 
 and watered meadow, seemed yielding to the en- 
 croachments of his native steppe, to furnish hunting- 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 381 
 
 grounds for Ms game, or unpeopled pastures for the 
 Horses and flocks, whose flesh and milk was the food 
 of his race. The perfect and favourite number of 
 the Tartars, nine, had been all but fulfilled and 
 multiplied in the dynasties he had annihilated, and 
 the crowns he had united on his head ; almost nine 
 princely houses, thrice nine separate lands, were 
 reckoned when he told the sum of his conquests, — 
 one more great family was wanting to complete the 
 tale when he marched against Bajazet ; and the 
 dynasty of the Ottomans made the ninth. 
 
 Such was the fierce destroyer of men whom Bajazet 
 had now to meet; a grimly, earnest, lame old man, 
 with long white hair, hair which had been white from 
 Ms infancy, flowing from his massy head and open 
 brow,'' — a man who hated jests and lies, — grave and 
 weighty in his sayings, finding Ms solace in compli- 
 cated games of chess, or in discussing with his scheiks 
 abstruse and thorny questions of theology or casuistry ; 
 a man who never forgot, never desisted, never regretted 
 the past or repented of what he had done : a man 
 before whom the gems and gold of Asia had been 
 showered, and who had all its glories and delights 
 at Ms command ; yet after nearly half a century of 
 war and victory — war almost without a break, and 
 victory without a reverse — was neither enervated or 
 wearied; who was to go on tiU Ms last breath, 
 conquering, planning, and buUding up with restless 
 and sagacious energy — whose organising mind had 
 1 Von Hammer, i. 212. 
 
382 THE EAELT OTTOMANS 
 
 covered Asia with a network of rapid communications 
 and watchful intelligencers, and had introduced 
 obedience, subordination, a rule of array and equip- 
 ment, and a method of systematic and well imagined 
 tactics, among his swarming hordes ; who spent his 
 life in wasting Asia, yet was fuU of wise thoughts of 
 statesmanship, and is named as one of the founders 
 and sources of Asiatic law: — a man, merciless as 
 death, to whose horrible butcheries of his Moslem 
 brethren, the bloody morrow of Nicopolis seems but 
 an excusable catastrophe of war ; yet who professed 
 the stem piety and benevolence of the Koran, who 
 deigned to disclaim the character of a man of blood, 
 and to throw the burden of what he had shed on his 
 enemies ; and who, in the height of his pride, took 
 pleasure in contrasting the magnificence of his fortune 
 with his crippled body, and in ostentatiously confess- 
 ing that in all that he had achieved or won, he felt 
 himself but the fraU and feeble instrument of the 
 hand of God. 
 
 Nearly forty years before, Ottomans and Mongols 
 had each gone on their way to conquer ; at the end 
 of that time they met. It was but natural that the 
 conqueror, who had spared no Mahometan house or 
 kingdom, and who had been driven by the frenzy of 
 universal dominion to the plains of India and the 
 wastes of Russia, should refuse to turn back from 
 any boundary that his horses could overleap or swim. 
 Yet Timour does appear to have been indisposed to 
 break in on the territories of the Ottomans ; he came, 
 
THE EAKLY OTTOMANS 383 
 
 and marked his coming by the destruction of a great 
 city, and then turned away ; and Bajazet seems to 
 have ■wantonly tempted and drawn aside the tempest 
 from its path. At any rate, if the shock must have 
 come, and his last and proudest crown had still to 
 be won by Timour, either by voluntary homage or 
 war, he was not suffered to want a pretext by the 
 insolence of Bajazet. Irritating messages and words 
 of scorn were exchanged by both ; but the pride of 
 Timour was dignified and self-possessed, compared 
 with the furious and frantic defiance of the most 
 sacred laws of Eastern right and courtesy, which 
 Bajazet displayed to the ambassadors and the personal 
 honour of Timour. " The son of Murad is mad," he 
 said, when the last insult that an Oriental can offer or 
 endure was cast in his face ; and he gave the decisive 
 ■ order to go forward against Anatolia. Bajazet, who 
 had the city of the Caesars in his grasp, who had been 
 dreaming of planting his horsetails even in their 
 Western seat, could only be brought to look upon 
 Timour as an adventurous and lucky freebooter of 
 the desert. His soldiers were murmuring for their 
 pay, and he refused to open his treasures. His chiefs 
 warned him of the numbers of the invading cavalrjr, 
 and urged him to avoid the plains and occupy the 
 passes and the hills ; but his only care was to find 
 and exterminate them in open battle. He hastened 
 to the frontier. They too were hastening on ; they 
 swept forward, and passed him far on his flank ; and 
 when he had lost their trace, and was waiting for 
 
384 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 them to appear, he heard of them many marches 
 behind him. They were between him and his capital, 
 assailing the great fortress of Angora which defends 
 the road. He had to seek them once more in the 
 very heart of his dominions. This time they did not 
 disappoint him. He found the Tartar host well 
 posted, entrenched and ready. In the infatuation of 
 his pride, to exhibit before their eyes his scorn of 
 their power, he exhausted his already wearied soldiers 
 with the vainglorious spectacle of an Oriental hunting- 
 party. The Tartars, meanwhile, were busy in cutting 
 off or spoiling the water-springs by which the Otto- 
 mans were supplied. Then came the day of battle. 
 It would be a perilous attempt to estimate the 
 numbers on an eastern battle-field, described by 
 eastern chroniclers. But there can be no doubt. that 
 many years had passed since a muster and a shock, 
 like that of the Mongol and Ottoman powers on the 
 plains of Angora, had been witnessed in the East. 
 There, in Bajazet's line of battle, were arrayed — 
 Christians and Moslems once more together — the con- 
 querors of Nicopolis ; on the left, Stephen, with his 
 black Servian cuirassiers, who had broken the last 
 reserves of the Hungarian army ; and in the centre 
 the compact and stubborn lines of the Janissaries. 
 But on Bajazet's right were masses of the unsteady 
 and discontented troops of Asia, whose hereditary 
 princes were in the camp of Timour, and Tartar 
 colonists from Thrace, won over by Timour's emis- 
 saries to the side of their former kinsmen. A stately 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 385 
 
 array of elephants is said to have formed the van of 
 Timour's army ; but his real strength was the broad 
 and open plain. There his overwhelming numbers 
 found space and play for the unrelaxing impetuosity 
 of their successive charges. They overlapped, they 
 tore asunder the Ottoman line ; they surrounded, 
 they burst, in repeated assaults, on its divided frag- 
 ments. Large bodies of the Asiatic troops, with the 
 Tartar auxiliaries, went over to Timour. The Servian 
 horsemen fought hard and dangerously, but they were 
 wedged together by swarming throngs, as the French 
 knights had been at Mcopolis, and perished as they 
 did. Stephen, on his barded war-horse, broke through 
 the press, and made his way to where Bajazet had 
 retired to a rising ground, and with the impenetrable 
 and unshaken Janissaries maintained the conflict, 
 when it had ceased everywhere else. Stephen urged 
 Bajazet to escape, but he refused. Despair or hope 
 still bound him to that fated field, where his bravest 
 and his dearest dared not abide with their master 
 and father. All fled before the inevitable ruin — chiefs 
 like Stephen and Evrenos, officers like the Grand 
 Vizier, the Aga of the Janissaries, the Captain of the 
 Horse-guards — his surviving sons, each as chance 
 opened a way through the Tartars, one westward to 
 Europe, another eastward to the Pontic mountains, 
 another southward to the crags of Taurus. But all 
 day long, from morning to nightfall, under the blazing 
 July sun,i the Janissaries, faint with thirst, and falling 
 1 20th July 1402. 
 
 20 
 
386 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 fast under the Tartar onslaughts, held on without 
 flinching for the last chance of retrieving their master's 
 fortune; and he held on with them. But that fortune, 
 so dazzling and so unchequered, had that day run 
 out its term. Night came down on his thinned and 
 sinking footmen, and he saw that on the field there 
 was nothing more to be done. He was persuaded 
 to mount and fly. But beyond the spears of the 
 Janissaries, the Tartar horsemen were masters of the 
 plain. His horse stumbled or stopped to drink ; and 
 he was taken. The titular head of the royal tribe 
 of the Mongols, the lineal heir of Genghis, now a 
 vassal chief in the Tartar host, led the Sultan of the 
 Ottomans to the tent of his conqueror. 
 
 It is credible, and quite consonant with Eastern 
 feelings, and with Timour's character, that he was 
 received with proud and grave courtesy. When 
 Timour's fury had spent itself, he was the man to 
 eye curiously and moralise with irony on the monu- 
 ment before him of the strange mixtures and alterna- 
 tions in man's lot. He made Bajazet, it is related, 
 seat himself on the carpet next himself, and conversed 
 with him on the incidents of the fight. Then he 
 allowed his thoughts to flow on that mighty share of 
 power which he had that day confirmed, and which 
 Bajazet had the same day forfeited. " Thou and I," 
 he said, " owe great and special thanks to God the 
 Lord for the dominion which He has granted to us." 
 — "Why so?" said the prisoner. — "Because He has 
 divided it between two such people as we — a lame 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 387 
 
 man like me and a gouty one like you : to the lame 
 man He has given all from India to Sivas, and to the 
 gouty one all from Sivas to Hungary. Surely this 
 leaves no doubt what the dominion of the world is 
 worth in the eyes of God. If it had not been less 
 than nothing he would have shared it between men 
 sound of body and whole of limb, not between a pair 
 of cripples like you and me. But because thou hast 
 been unthankful to God, and not acknowledged His 
 benefits, He has sent this chastisement by my hand, 
 the rod of His anger. Yet take it not to heart, 
 brother Bajazet. If a man keeps but safe and sound, 
 he soon comes back to fortune and blessing." But 
 the words of the conqueror, jesting in the moment of 
 triumph with his own prosperity, are no real proof 
 of the clemency or generosity of the man. Modern 
 criticism has indeed changed the iron cage into a 
 closed and latticed litter, and traced the origin of a 
 world-wide story to a confusion between two like- 
 sounding words. But Bajazet was impatient of cap- 
 tivity, and Timour was resolved to display his captive 
 in the streets of Samarcand. The harshness of the 
 imprisonment no doubt increased as the prisoner tried 
 to break from it. And the natural scorn of the strong 
 and unrelenting barbarian for what he had overthrown 
 and ruined, for the helplessness which was before his 
 eyes every day, soon broke out and overrode all 
 temporary sentiment about the vanity of human 
 greatness. Bajazet had been a passionate and famous 
 hunter : Timour sent him a present of hounds and 
 
388 THE BAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 hawks, to mock Mm with the remembrances of his 
 days of freedom. And more than this, the women 
 of Bajazet's harem, and even one of his legitimate 
 wives, were dragged forth in public at the Tartar's 
 banquet, and forced to serve wine to his guests. 
 Bajazet was carried about in Timour's train, as he 
 slowly turned back to Samarcand. But he died in 
 Asia Minor before the year of his captivity was out. 
 " God's we are," said Timour, " and to God we return," 
 when he was told of Bajazet's death ; and four days 
 after he received, with the same words, the announce- 
 ment of the death of his favourite grandson. He 
 gave Bajazet's remains to his son Musa ; and his 
 tomb was raised, like those of his fathers, by the 
 mosque which he had built, amid the groves and 
 rushing waters of Brusa. Yet one more humiliation, 
 the last that man, and the bitterest that Moslem can 
 go through, was reserved to complete the reversal of 
 his fortune. Alone of all the Ottoman kings, the 
 proud and brilliant Bajazet was not allowed his last 
 rest amid the great dead of his line and race. In 
 the confusion which followed his death a chief of 
 Karaman, of that family which Bajazet had crushed 
 and disinherited, was able to take vengeance for the 
 misfortunes of his house in the city and at the grave 
 of their destroyer; and in Brusa, Bajazet's chosen seat 
 of glory and delight, his tomb was violated and over- 
 thrown, his corpse torn up, burnt, and its ashes scattered, 
 that it might never again be restored to its resting- 
 place, to give a savage triumph to a spiteful rebel. 
 
THE EAKLY OTTOMAlfS 389 
 
 Athens after Syracuse, Eome after Cannae, France 
 after Waterloo, were not so shattered and laid low- 
 as the Ottoman state was after the rout of Angora. 
 Just a hundred years before it had begun to be. In 
 the first years of the fourteenth century Othman 
 became an independent chief in an obscure castle on 
 the borders of Bithynia. In the first years of the 
 fifteenth his descendants were crushed under the 
 iron might of Timour. In the interval they had 
 achieved an empire. And now it seemed as if the 
 course of their empire were run, like that of so many 
 fortunate and short-lived Asiatic dynasties ; that the 
 time was come for it to fall in pieces, and give place 
 to another, or be frittered away in the hands of a 
 number of quarrelsome and impotent local chiefs. 
 For half a century the event seemed to hang in the 
 balance. Desperate efforts, perilous struggles, com- 
 pliances, submissions, and yieldings to the time, which 
 would have provoked the indignation of Orchan and 
 the first Amurath, marked the period ; one hard and 
 anxious trial of strength came at its close ; and then 
 the Ottoman power emerged, compact, invincible, and 
 more terrible than before, to resume its career and 
 accompUsh its strange destiny, and long confront, 
 with threatening and with scorn, the greatest and 
 strongest polities of the rising civilisation of Western 
 Christendom. 
 
 The Tartar hordes pushed westwards till they 
 were stopped by the broad Hellespont and the iEgean. 
 They spoiled Brusa and its treasures, and burnt its 
 
390 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 mosques and schools ; a storm and a massacre left 
 Smyrna in ruins and blood ; and then the devastating 
 wave swept backwards, from the provinces over 
 which it had broken, to roll to the other extremity 
 of Asia and menace China. But before Timour had 
 departed, all humbled themselves before him, and 
 acknowledged his supremacy. Soleiman, the son of 
 Bajazet, safe behind the sea in his palace at Adrianople, 
 yet asked and received the investiture of the lordship 
 of the Ottomans and of the kingdom of Eoum, in a 
 charter impressed with the print of the red hand of 
 the Mongol.^ Timour, it is said, had graciously 
 received the prayer of Bajazet, that he would not 
 root out his posterity, nor utterly destroy a race 
 which was the bulwark and hope of the Moslems. 
 From the Caesar of Constantinople he received, 
 before he departed, the tribute of the conquered — 
 from the Sultan of Egypt, the submission of a 
 vassal ; and in the mosques and mints of Cairo 
 prayer was said, and coin struck, in the imperial 
 name of Timour. The consolidating work of the 
 Ottoman conquerors in Asia Minor was broken up 
 and thrown back for many years. The Turkish 
 principalities, which had been fused together under 
 their sway, were again divided under their restored 
 dynasties; and Timour left the Ottomans of Brusa 
 once more, what they had been under their first 
 
 ^ Instead of a signature or a seal Timour, according to the 
 Mongol usage, dipped Ms palm in red ink, and stamped it on 
 tlie paper ; see p. 363. 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 391 
 
 emir, but one among the fragments of the Seljouk 
 kingdom. 
 
 All had to be begun again in the Ottoman State ; 
 and it did begin again with a fierce war of succession, 
 among the sons of Bajazet, whom the overthrow of 
 Angora had hurled apart, to different parts of his 
 ruined dominions. There still survived the emblem 
 and the refuge of the unity of the State, in the court 
 and capital of Adrianople. There the "Gate" of 
 the house of Othman was secure from the assaults 
 of the Tartars, and had not much to fear from 
 the neighbouring dynasty of Constantinople. There 
 were collected also the great officers and chiefs who 
 had served it so zealously, who had witnessed its 
 greatness and hoped in its fortune, who were 
 imbued with its spirit, and knew its traditions — the 
 Grand Vizier, Black Halil's son ; — Evrenos, the great 
 chief of Eoumelia, an old man of wellnigh a hundred 
 years, yet unabated in energy and keenness, who had, 
 as a Christian, defended Brusa against Orchan, and 
 had lived to accompany Bajazet, as a Moslem, to his 
 ruin at Angora ; Michal-Ogli, the descendant of the 
 first renegade companion of Othman; the Aga of 
 the Janissaries, the captain of the horseguards, and 
 the heads of the law : there, also, were the remains 
 or the reserves of the Janissaries, and their schools ; 
 and to the prince who ruled at Adrianople, the 
 Turkish feudatories of Europe looked up as to their 
 master and liege-lord. There was the nucleus of the 
 Empire, and there, in fact, it was saved. But who 
 
392 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 the prince should be who was to rule at Adrianople, 
 was long uncertain. Strength and success are better 
 tests than priority of birth, among the Ottomans, of 
 the right of inheritance; and twice the veteran 
 servants of the Empire at Adrianople transferred 
 their allegiance to a pretender, who gave the best 
 promise of upholding the fortunes which they had 
 founded with Orchan and Amurath. They deserted 
 Soleiman, an indolent debauchee, for the more ener- 
 getic Musa ; in less than three years after, Evrenos 
 and his companions called in, against the ferocity 
 and oppression of Musa, the tried valour and wise 
 humanity of the prince, who had reconquered a great 
 part of his patrimony in Asia, Mahomet " the G-entle- 
 man."i Mahomet, says a Turkish historian, was the 
 " Noah who saved the ark of the State amid the deluge 
 of the Tartars."^ But Mahomet himself had to main- 
 tain his right against another pretended, or perhaps 
 real brother ; and to the end of his life he was at 
 war with the spirit of rebellion, which the great break- 
 up of the Empire had evoked among its vassals, a spirit 
 which he had to leave still unsubdued, to embarrass 
 and keep back the ambition of his successor. 
 
 When Manuel Palseologus returned from the 
 West to his capital, which he must have left with 
 scarcely a hope of seeing it again, he found his position 
 strangely altered, towards his dreaded neighbours. 
 They, whom he had left thundering at his gates, had 
 
 1 " Tchelebi," Mahomet's title, is thus translated by Von 
 Hammer. 2 Von Hammer, i. 281. 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 393 
 
 been humbled so low by their reverses, as to beg the 
 help, and make sacrifices for the favour, of a Greek 
 emperor. Soleiman had given a son and daughter of 
 Bajazet as hostages for peace, and offered to restore 
 to Manuel the Turkish conquests on the ^gean and 
 the Euxine, from the Strymon to Varna. In the 
 wars of the succession, Manuel was able to throw in 
 a considerable balance on the side he chose. To 
 Manuel, Mahomet was indebted, at least, for the 
 transport of his army to Europe ; and when his 
 victory over his brother Musa was secure, he con- 
 firmed the agreement of Soleiman, and yielded up to 
 the Emperor the fortresses of Thessaly and of the 
 two seas. "TeU my father," was the astonishing 
 message of the grandson of Amurath, and the son of 
 Bajazet, — the more astonishing as it was sent in 
 good faith, — " TeU my father, the Greek Emperor, 
 that with his help I have won my paternal kingdom, that 
 I owe him thanks for this, that henceforth I shall be 
 bound to him as a son to his father, and joyfully do 
 him service." That a prince of the blood of Othman 
 should have professed to reverence the Csesar of 
 Constantinople as his father was strange enough ; it 
 was strange that he should have condescended to 
 pay an annual pension to Manuel for keeping in 
 close custody a pretender to the Ottoman throne ; 
 but it was still more strange, that, dying, he should 
 have wished to shield his younger children from the 
 jealousy of his successor, and their brother, by 
 solemnly committing them to the guardianship of 
 
394 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 the old enemy, the despised vassal, and long destined 
 victim of his house. 
 
 And yet in these days of weakness and peril, when 
 it was wise to adjourn their ambition, and amid the 
 confusion of family quarrels and unceasing intestine 
 war, it is most remarkable to observe in the Ottomans 
 the traits of undamped energy and returning power. 
 Their old dominion gradually stole again over the 
 iEgean coasts, and then, with the exception of the 
 Karamanian princes, over the rest of Asia Minor. 
 Musa, during his short reign, was able to recover the 
 boundaries which the Ottomans had possessed before 
 Bajazet's fall, beyond the Morava, the Strymon, and 
 the Balkan ; and Mahomet, though disinclined to 
 war in Europe, in order that he might secure the 
 reduction of Asia, yet when he was forced into it, 
 compelled the submission and tribute of Wallachia, 
 and built the fortress of Giurgevo beyond the 
 Danube, to overawe it. Venice thought it worth 
 while to negotiate, for the first time, and even after 
 Loredano's great victory at Gallipoli, to renew, an 
 equal treaty with the Ottomans, during this period 
 of their crippled power. The adorning of their 
 capitals still went on. Soleiman began and Mahomet 
 finished a magnificent mosque at Adrianople ; at 
 Brusa Mahomet finished another, equally famous for 
 its grandeur, which had been begun by Amurath ; 
 while his own " Green Mosque," with its walls in- 
 crusted with variegated marbles, and its domes and 
 minarets covered with green porcelain, — together 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 395 
 
 with its adjoining school and almonry, and his own 
 tomb in a garden, similarly faced with tablets of 
 porcelain, — is spoken of as one of the rarest examples 
 .of Ottoman taste. It is less surprising, perhaps, 
 that in those troubled days should be found the 
 earliest gleams, though they seem but faint ones, of 
 Ottoman literature, — of their poetry, their history, 
 and their law. 
 
 It is melancholy and humiliating to contrast with 
 the unshaken purpose and steady recovery of the 
 Ottomans, in the most trying crisis of their history, 
 the aimless, low-minded, hopeless policy, without prin- 
 ciple, without forethought, without honesty, without 
 coiurage, of the Christians around them. What were 
 they doing, — those Greeks who had all but seen 
 Bajazet change St. Sophia into a mosque, — those 
 Sclavonian races who were threatened with a bond- 
 age which was to rob them of their children, and 
 turn those children into their taskmasters, — those 
 great powers of the West, whose faith and peace were 
 menaced by a power, in whom the ancient fanaticism 
 of the Saracens had revived in double strength, and 
 whose life was war — what were they doing during 
 that unhoped for and fleeting half century of respite 
 and opportunity ? All the world knew why the 
 Ottomans were encamped at Adrianople, on the 
 great road from the Bosporus to the valley of the 
 Danube, looking at once eastward and westward, to 
 Constantinople, and to Venice and Vienna. All the 
 world knew why the Janissaries were instituted; 
 
396 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 and why the bands of Turkish spoilers beat all the 
 countries, from the Euxine to the Adriatic, for the 
 flower of their children, to feed the schools and 
 recruit the ranks of that hateful company. And. 
 what were the Christians doing? They did not 
 even stand by, to let their? enemies struggle out of 
 their reverses as they might. They were making 
 leagues with them, with those who remained of them 
 still on the sacred soil of Europe ; they were calling 
 them in to their own internal quarrels, or taking 
 sides in theirs ; they were fighting their battles for 
 them, and aiding the stronger among them to put 
 down the weaker ; they were helping them to quell 
 their own discords, and heal their own wounds, and 
 build up once more the strength and unity of their 
 State. But for the Csssar Manuel, Mahomet could 
 not have found shipping for his army, when he was 
 uniting once more the divided courts of Adrianople 
 and Brusa. But for the Genoese Adorno, Amurath 
 II. could not have been ferried across into Europe to 
 overcome the pretender Mustafa. Stephen of Servia 
 took up the cause and retrieved the fortune of the 
 fiercest and most dangerous against the most indolent 
 of the sons of Bajazet, when no Moslem power would 
 back him ; and Servians and Wallachs joined battle 
 with Greeks under the very walls of Constantinople, 
 to determine whether Musa or Soleiman should be 
 the legitimate heir of Othman. Loredano conquered 
 at Gallipoli, only to gain a commercial treaty. In 
 the West, the Popes went on bargaining for a hollow 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 397 
 
 union, extorted from the fears, but retracted again 
 by the indignation of the Greeks : from time to time 
 they faintly repeated the call of more earnest days for 
 a holy war ; but no one, in that shrewd and deeply- 
 corrupted age, was moved by what all knew to be 
 the mere cry of feeble selfishness, to dissolve an 
 alliance, or stave ofi' a threatening council. Sigismund 
 of Hungary, the old antagonist of the Ottomans, kept 
 up a border war, and achieved some partial successes, 
 which did not wipe out the memory or repair the 
 disaster of Nicopolis ; but he was soon involved in 
 the intrigues of the great schism, the home dangers 
 of the Hussite war, and the anxious issues of the 
 Councils of Constance and Basle. Neither the races 
 whom the Ottomans enslaved, nor Christian Europe 
 which was dishonoured by their presence within her 
 limits, had any right to complain of the shame and 
 the bondage. The final victory of the Ottomans 
 was the fair victory, which resolution, patience, and 
 foresight, will gain in any cause over indolent or 
 cowardly apathy, which will neither dare, nor endure, 
 nor look forward. 
 
 Mahomet the Eestorer died before his work was 
 half done. He died suddenly at Adrianople, when 
 Amurath his eldest son was at the utmost verge of 
 Asia Minor. Once more the succession of Othman's 
 house, that delicate thread on which the life of the 
 Ottoman state — vigorous and tenacious as it was — 
 depended, was in danger. Amurath was summoned 
 with the utmost speed ; but the utmost speed could 
 
398 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 not bring him for many weeks. Mahomet's viziers 
 concealed their master's death. For forty-one days 
 the perilous secret was kept. The soldiers murmured 
 and disbelieved. They insisted on seeing their Sultan. 
 They would listen to no remonstrances of the 
 physicians, and at fearful risk, they were successfully 
 cheated. In a closed and darkened kiosk — ^for the 
 Sultan, it was said, could not bear the air — the corpse 
 of Mahomet was presented to them, seated on his 
 throne, behind a glass door ; pages concealed beneath 
 his vestments moved his arms ; the soldiers defiling 
 before the door, saluted what seemed the living form 
 of their chief, and their misgivings were satisfied. 
 But Amurath the Second had hardly been girded 
 with the scimitar of Othman, before his right was 
 challenged. Manuel, the Greek Emperor, had a pre- 
 tender in his keeping, who claimed to be the son 
 of Bajazet. Amurath, in spite of his father's will, 
 refused to give up his father's children, the blood 
 of Othman, to the guardianship of a Greek Ceesar ; 
 and Manuel let loose the pretender Mustafa. The 
 Ottomans were at once again divided. Mustafa was 
 able to rally to him the sons of Evrenos and the 
 feudal chiefs of Thrace. Beneath the walls of 
 Adrianople, he boldly called on the Janissaries to 
 yield him their allegiance, and his voice and presence 
 were enough to win them over to his side ; he was 
 strong enough to insult the Greek Emperor, who had 
 been both his gaoler and his ally, and to cross into 
 Asia and threaten Brusa. There the tide turned 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 399 
 
 against him : as his voice Lad lured the Janissaries 
 of Adrianople to his side, so the call of their old- 
 chieftain Michalogli was known and obeyed in the 
 camp of Mustafa's light horsemen. He was deserted, 
 and escaped to Europe. But Amurath had no ships 
 to follow him. He applied for aid to Manuel; 
 Manuel refused his ships, except in return for the 
 children of Mahomet. Mustafa might have reigned 
 at Adrianople, and Amurath at Brusa, hut for the 
 traders of the factories of Genoa. Adorno, the son 
 of a doge of Genoa, proffered his galleys and his 
 soldiers. All was done — as between the heartiest 
 and trustiest allies — by the Moslem Sultan and the 
 Christian Podest^. The Italian's service was frank 
 and faithful. The Ottoman's acknowledgments were 
 large and princely. Amurath was accompanied by 
 Adorno, with his archers and his black bands of 
 Italian infantry, in his victorious march to Adrianople. 
 Adorno gained for the trade of Genoa a new station 
 on the Ionian coast, and the free working of the 
 alum mines of Phocaea ; and enjoyed, unmolested, 
 during his lifetime, the tolls and profits of its custom- 
 house. 
 
 The spirit of revolt was not quelled by the de- 
 struction of Mustafa. The long reign of the second 
 Amurath was troubled to the end, and his vigorous 
 and able enterprises continually checked, by the rest- 
 lessness and impatience which the defeat of Angora 
 had awakened in the Turcoman chieftains of Asia 
 Minor. The old families to whom Timour had once 
 
400 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 more opened a chance of independence, were very 
 loath to surrender it again to their powerful yet now 
 frequently divided conquerors. And the Ottomans, 
 though strong enough to chastise and weigh them 
 down, were a long time before they could, by succes- 
 sive efforts, extinguish, as they had done before, their 
 revived power. They were often obliged, for the 
 time, to be forbearing, even in victory. Three times 
 did the restored chiefs of Karaman, the old rivals of 
 the Ottomans, break their engagements, and stir up 
 war. Their inveterate feud made them intrigue with 
 Amurath's Christian enemies — with Manuel of Con- 
 stantinople, and Sigismund of Hungary. Yet after 
 each victory Amurath was content with a tribute, or 
 the cession of a city, with allying their princes to his 
 family by marriage, or investing them with distant 
 governments ; he never pushed his advantage to 
 extremity, and the rebellious house of Karaman was 
 neither extirpated nor dispossessed. The Ottomans 
 also began to employ against rebels whom it was 
 difficult to attack, the smooth perfidy which their 
 successors learnt so well to use. Thus was cut off 
 the wily and able Djouneid, one of the most turbulent 
 and dangerous chiefs of the Ionian coast, who had 
 been the life of every civil war since Bajazet's defeat, 
 and who had successively betrayed every pretender, 
 whose cause he had directed and strengthened. 
 lurkedsch-Pasha set the precedent of that peculiar 
 fashion of ensnaring an enemy, which is so familiar 
 to all readers of Ottoman history. Four Turcoman 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 401 
 
 brothers were the chiefs of a band of freebooters who 
 infested lurkedsch's government of Amasia. He sent 
 to offer them, in the Sultan's name, a territory of 
 their own, if they would give their assistance against 
 another tribe. The offer was accepted, the treaty 
 concluded, the chiefs complimented and honoured 
 with presents, and the whole band, 400 men, enticed 
 to partake of the Pasha's hospitality at Amasia. In 
 the drunkenness and carelessness of a sumptuous 
 banquet, they were overpowered and seized. They 
 were thrown into a cavern in the rock of the citadel, 
 the entrance was walled up, and all were stifled with 
 smoke. The doer of this deed was the Lola, the 
 tutor of Amurath, and after him, of his sons ; and 
 the deed itself is recorded to his honour by the 
 historian, who relates nothing but the worthy actions 
 of his master's house. In this there is nothing to 
 wonder at : the banquet was, from the times in which 
 Idris wrote, the usual scene of the Ottoman's craftiest 
 and deadliest revenge. ■■■ 
 
 Yet Amurath accomplished what his father had 
 begun. At the end of his long reign, the Ottoman 
 power, which was yet in danger at its commencement, 
 was once more all that it had been, in greatness and 
 security, on the eve of Angora. His reign began by 
 Manuel of Constantinople dictating conditions of 
 friendship, and setting up a creature of his own to 
 invade Amurath's birthright. It ended by Amurath's 
 choosing a vassal C»sar among_ Manuel's children, 
 1 Von Hammer, i. 330. Idris died 1523. 
 
 2d 
 
402 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 and imposing the last emperor on the throne of 
 Constantine. 
 
 The old preponderance of the Ottomans in all the 
 countries between the Carpathians and the three seas, 
 gradually rose clearer and more irresistible. Their 
 frontier began to advance again, no more to recede 
 for centuries. Beyond their frontier, the adjoining 
 Christian states paid them tribute, and served them 
 in their wars ; and their armies began to appear with 
 terrible power in those which still bade them defiance, 
 and had hitherto been beyond their reach. Their 
 western post on the Danube was pushed from Widdin 
 to Semendra ; and when they were obliged to retire 
 from before Belgrade, Amurath said he could afford 
 to wait, for Belgrade must be theirs sooner or later. 
 Janina the southern, and Croia the northern capital 
 of Albania, became Turkish cities. Janina offered its 
 keys on condition of retaining its franchises ; and in 
 the demolition of its churches and the forced marriages 
 of its daughters, experienced what Turkish faith was 
 worth. The Lord of Croia, John Castriota, died 
 when his four sons were hostages at Amurath's Porte ; 
 and Amurath, when he seized their heritage, compelled 
 them to embrace his faith, and serve it with their 
 swords. But the outrage and the perfidy raised up 
 its avenger ; and one of these forced converts has left 
 his name to history, as the wiliest and fiercest foe the 
 Ottomans ever encountered, the implacable, and un- 
 conquered Scanderbeg. Later in his reign, Amurath 
 wrested the Morea from the stoutest of the Palseologi, 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 403 
 
 and restored it only, swept of 60,000 slaves, as a 
 tributary fief 'of the Porte. Within the limits of 
 the old Greek Empire, he fiercely warned off every 
 intruder, even when he had not actually taken posses- 
 sion. John Palaeologus, or the inhabitants themselves, 
 had sold Thessalonica to the Venetians. Amurath 
 claimed it of the Eepublic. " It had been conquered 
 by his grandfather Bajazet ; it was part of the inherit- 
 ance of his house ; its possession by the Greeks and 
 their Caesars he might have overlooked — they were 
 the natural tenants of the land, and its first masters 
 — ^but no Latin would he allow to intercept his claim. 
 The Venetians must go back to their own land : other- 
 wise he would be there himself J' The embassies of the 
 Eepublic were sent in vain : " Have you authority to 
 restore me my Salonik?"^ was his first and only 
 question. The Venetians kept their ground for a 
 few years, but at length Amurath appeared with 
 overpowering numbers before its walls. The Italian 
 defenders were few; the Greek inhabitants disaffected; 
 an earthquake spread discouragement and alarm. 
 Amurath, while his arrows swept the ramparts and 
 his miners dug beneath them, was liberal in his 
 promises of pardon and protection; but when the 
 Venetians still held out, he gave the spoil and the 
 people of Thessalonica to his army, and only reserved 
 to himself the ground on which it stood, and the bare 
 walls of its buildings. Thessalonica was stormed and 
 depopulated — the last of the many terrible calamities 
 ' Daru, xiii. No. 7. 
 
404 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 ■wHch had fallen on that great city — one, like Thebes, 
 of the unlucky cities of history;^ the first great siege 
 in which the Ottomans, soon to become famous in 
 this trying operation of war, assailed with success, 
 obstinately defended walls, and proved the fury and 
 power of their storming columns. 
 
 The first great siege in which they had succeeded, 
 — but not the first which they had attempted. 
 Amurath had, early in his reign, replied to the slippery 
 and ill-judged policy of Manuel, and to his insincere 
 excuses when it failed, by saying that he would bring 
 an answer in person to the gates of Constantinople. 
 He came, through ravaged fields and wasted villages, 
 where his soldiers had torn up the very roots of the 
 vines and fruit-trees, and invested the land front of 
 the city, from the sea to the head of the Golden Horn. 
 The attack was the prelude and rehearsal of the great 
 siege, thirty-one years later : the points assaUed 
 were the same ; the siege-works and engines of the 
 Ottomans were on a greater scale than any yet re- 
 corded in their history. They raised a continuous 
 mound with fire-proof towers, facing, at a bow-shot's 
 distance, and commanding with its missiles, the ram- 
 part of the city ; they had all the ancient machinery 
 of a siege, but they had not yet the new artillery of 
 Mahomet the Conqueror. Amurath had promised 
 Constantinople and its treasures to the conquering 
 Moslems. Besides the soldiers of his host, there were 
 collected round the Christian capital a rabble from all 
 ' Von Hammer, i. 336. 
 
THE BAELY OTTOMANS 405 
 
 parts, lusting for plunder and blood, — armed ruffians 
 to secure, and monied ruffians to purchase, the spoil, 
 — such a cre-w as always collects in the East, when a 
 rich and populous city is about to fall.^ But foremost 
 in ferocity and the madness of savage expectation and 
 fanatic passion — crying, howling, whirling, raging 
 like wild beasts — ^was an unclean rout of iive hundred 
 dervishes, who claimed the convents as their share of 
 the prey, and kept at its height the excitement of the 
 army. Their leader was the great Scheikh, Mahomet 
 of Bochara, the Emir-Sultan, "the chief among the 
 princes " of Moslem holiness, the brother-in-law of 
 Bajazet, who had girded Amurath with Othman's 
 sword, and who had once before, it was believed, helped 
 the true heir of Othman by his prayers. At the river 
 of Ulubad, when Amurath and his rival Mustafa stood 
 with their armies on the opposite banks, and the 
 fortune of the Empire hung in doubt between them, 
 the great Scheikh of Bochara had prayed three days 
 continuously for Amurath : at the end of the three 
 days, the loud voice of Michalogli stirred their old 
 allegiance in the hearts of Mustafa's Akindjis, and 
 the rest of the usurper's host melted away from him. 
 Now, the great Scheikh rode into the Ottoman camp 
 amid a crowd of dervishes, who prostrated themselves 
 before him, and kissed his hands, his feet, and the 
 bridle of his mule. He shut himself up in his tent, 
 to ascertain the fortunate day and hour when Con- 
 
 1 Cf. Gordon and Triooupi, on tlie siege of Tripolitza by the 
 Greeks in 1821. 
 
406 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 stantinople was to fall. When he came forth, he 
 announced that on Monday, the 24:th August, one 
 hour after midday, he would lead the Ottomans into 
 their destined capital. A dervish with a wooden 
 sabre had preceded the early Ottomans in their 
 attacks on the Bithynian cities ; so now, at the 
 appointed moment, the great Scheikh mounted his 
 horse at the head of the army ; a huge buckler was 
 borne before him, and surrounded by the crowd of 
 yelling and frantic dervishes, he drew his scimitar 
 and shouted forth the signal for assault. But Con- 
 stantinople resisted stoutly and successfully. Manuel 
 the Emperor lay dying in his palace ; but his son, 
 John Palseologus, was at the post of danger — the fated 
 gate of St. Eomanus. This time the Csesar did not 
 stand there in vain. Women armed themselves with 
 reaping-hooks for swords, and the ends of barrels for 
 bucklers ; monks and priests were mingled with the 
 fighting men, and shouted the sacred names of the 
 Gospel in answer to the war-cry of the dervishes. 
 The fury of the assailants broke in vain against the 
 ramparts ; it raged till the setting of the sun ; then, 
 says the Greek historian of the siege, it suddenly 
 passed into a panic terror; the Holy Virgin had 
 appeared on the battlements, in awful majesty, to 
 the very eyes of the great Scheikh himself ; and the 
 whole Turkish host burned their engines and broke 
 up from Constantinople. The Turkish power had not 
 yet regained its strength for the great effort : an out- 
 burst of civil war, and the appearance of a new pre- 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 407 
 
 tender at Nicsea, recalled Amurath from his pre- 
 mature enterprise ; and lie never after attempted to 
 renew it. 
 
 And till the very end of the second Amurath's long 
 and fortunate reign, that power, though mounting 
 year by year to its old supremacy, was not safe from 
 trials which jeoparded its existence. The last and 
 decisive one — the issue of which might have over- 
 thrown the Ottomans more hopelessly than they were 
 overthrown at Angora, but which did in fact give the 
 Empire of the East finally into their hands — ^was their 
 great coniiict with Hungary. During the earlier part 
 of Amurath's reign a desultory but bloody strife had 
 raged on the border, in Transylvania and the Bannat ; 
 success had alternated, but Sigismund was an unlucky 
 leader, and the wounds which the Turks inflicted were 
 the deepest. Hungary was beginning to feel their 
 system of preliminary ravage, by which each country, 
 as they drew near its hmits, was prepared for the con- 
 dition of a tributary province, till they were able to 
 occupy and parcel it out among themselves into 
 sanjaJcs and timars, the military fiefs by which the 
 Empire was maintained and carried forward. The 
 cry of terror, "The wolves, the wolves !" continually 
 gave notice to the Hungarian villages that the dreaded 
 turbans had been descried in their neighbourhood ; 
 and Hungarian boys and maidens, swept from under 
 the walls of Kronstadt and Hermanstadt, were driven 
 in such troops through the passes of the Carpathians, 
 that a slave was bartered against a pair of boots in 
 
408 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 the Ottoman camp.^ There were intervals of truce. 
 The sessions and intrigues of the council of Basle 
 were relieved by the appearance of the envoys and 
 magnificent presents of the Emperor of the Turks to 
 the Emperor of the Eomans ; the embassy came to 
 congratulate Sigismund on his election to the empire, 
 and to offer a lasting peace ; it was received by him 
 with solemn pomp and honour in the cathedral, and 
 the presents and the peace accepted. Yet Sigismund 
 was at the same time corresponding with the Kara- 
 manian disturbers of the Ottoman power in Asia, 
 and Amurath's pashas were soon leading the Chris- 
 tians of Servia and Wallachia to join in a foray on 
 their brethren of Transylvania. But towards the end 
 of Amurath's life, the raids and inroads on the Hun- 
 garian border gradually swelled into a serious and 
 formidable war, which for once threatened the 
 Turkish power with the combined and determined 
 hostility of Christendom. John Hunyady, who is 
 said to have owed his existence to a furtive amour 
 of King Sigismund with a fair Hungarian lady, when 
 
 ^ The Hstoriau AsoMk-paohasade thus relates his own ex- 
 perience : — "Cette annee (1438) le Sultan Mourad devasta 
 I'HoDgrie. Le butin fut immense. Moi-m^me, le pauvre, 
 j'achetai pour 100 aspres un beau gar9on, car moi, le pauvre, je 
 iis partie de I'armde. Un jour, je me pr&entai chez le Sultan, 
 et il me fit don de plusieurs prisonniers ; alors je lui dis r Seig- 
 neur et Sultan, il faudrait avoir des chevaux et de I'argent poui 
 emmener ces prisonniers. Sur le champ il me fit donner deux 
 chevaux et 5000 aspres. J'arrivai done k Adrinople avec quatre 
 chevaux et neuf prisonniers. Je vendis ceux-oi pour 300 et 200 
 aspres la tgte.'— Von Hammer ; (trad, de Hellert), notes : ii.492. 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 409 
 
 he was seeking refuge from Bajazet's liorsemen,^ — a 
 chief who in the irregular warfare of his country had 
 no equal, except his contemporary Scanderbeg, fiery, 
 audacious, crafty, and pitiless as the Ottomans whom 
 he fought, and as open as they to corrupt and selfish 
 influences, — had made his name, in two or three years, 
 a word of fear to those before whom Europe 
 trembled. The terrible and bloody "YanJco," as the 
 Turks called him, had slain one of Amurath's veteran 
 chiefs, and captured a second ; his soldiers had 
 slaughtered his captives before him while he sat at 
 meat, and he had sent to Buda a chariot, heaped 
 with the choicest spoils and surmounted with the 
 heads of the fallen pashas. The warlike chiefs of 
 Servia and Wallachia, who had so often fought for 
 Amurath, went over to the winning Christian side ; 
 and a legate from Eome appeared in Hungary to fan 
 the rising enthusiasm, and urge on the fierce valour 
 of Hunyady. The rival councils of Basle and Flor- 
 ence, exhausted but not reconciled, had just ended 
 their weary and fruitless sessions ; and the crafty 
 Venetian patrician, who sat in St. Peter's chair at 
 Eome, seized the moment to turn men's thoughts 
 from the thorny questions of internal reformation to 
 a war with the Turks. G-iuliano Cesarini, the car- 
 dinal who had so ably led the pertinacious and dis- 
 respectful fathers of Basle in their struggle with the 
 Pope, and had already shown his zeal, if not his 
 
 ^ Engel, in Von Hammer, i. 188. It is not the common 
 account. 
 
410 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 aptitude, in the conduct of a religious war against 
 the Bohemian heretics, was despatched to employ his 
 eloquence, his subtlety, and his turbulence, in rousing 
 the wild nations of the Danube and the Vistula, in 
 the name of the Holy Father. He succeeded. A 
 little while before, Amurath could interfere in the 
 internal affairs of Poland, and prescribe the conditions 
 on which he was willing to support young Ladislaus 
 on its throne. Now Ladislaus, king at once of Poland 
 and Hungary, was the head of a confederacy, which 
 included all the neighbouring Christian nations, 
 Hungary, Poland, Servia, Wallachia, together with 
 the Pope, the great maritime powers, Genoa, Venice, 
 and Philip of Burgundy, and lastly, the Caesar, of 
 Constantinople. A fleet of Italian and Flemish 
 galleys, with the Pope's nephew, the Cardinal of 
 Venice, as their admiral, — such a post might not be 
 wholly unsuitable to one who, though a churchman, 
 was a Venetian nobleman — assembled at the Helles- 
 pont. John Hunyady, followed by the king and 
 Cardinal Julian, burst like a tempest across the 
 Danube. He beat the Turks out of Servia. He 
 swept them before him, along that famous north- 
 western road, the old pathway of armies on their 
 march to decide the fate of nations, which, for many 
 years, had only seen them moving with unbroken 
 uniformity against the west, and never in the reverse 
 direction. Amurath stood under the walls of Mssa, 
 only to be utterly overthrown. The Turks were 
 pushed back to the mountain ramparts of the Balkan ; 
 
THE EAKLY OTTOMANS 411 
 
 half the great road to Constantinople, with its stations, 
 was in the hands of the Christian army, and winter 
 found them preparing to scale, amid snow and storm, 
 the guarded defiles of the Balkan. Hunyady first 
 tried the pass of Trajan's Gate, through which the 
 direct road is carried, but he found it barricaded 
 with rocks and paved with ice; he tried the next 
 one to the east, the pass of Isladi, and on Christmas 
 Eve, amid rolling rocks and descending avalanches, 
 fought his way to the southern crests of Hsemus, and 
 opened the road through Trajan's Gate to the army 
 of Ladislaus. Once more the Turks were routed 
 beyond the Balkan ; and Hunyady, after slaughtering 
 a hundred and seventy of his prisoners, led back a 
 brother-in-law of Amurath, and the Beglerbeg, or 
 military chief of Eoumelia, to grace his triumph at 
 Buda. 
 
 For the first time in their history, a sultan of 
 the Ottomans sued for peace. It was not the time 
 for peace ; for Albania was rising against him under 
 Scanderbeg; the Christian fleet was in the Helles- 
 pont; the Karamanian Turks were in league with 
 the Christian powers, which had driven him across 
 the Balkan; and while he was losing Europe, he 
 was threatened in Asia. It was not the time for 
 peace; but Ladislaus waited long for promised 
 succours to renew the war, and they did not come. 
 George Brankovich, lord of Servia, wanted to get his 
 children out of the hands of Amurath, and to bargain 
 with him for the future remission of all tribute and 
 
412 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 vassalage; it is alleged that 60,000 Turkisli ducats 
 won the influence of the great Hunyady to the side 
 of peace. ^ In spite of the earnest efforts of Cardinal 
 Julian peace was granted. The spring of 1444 was 
 wasted, and in the summer a truce of ten years, by 
 which Amurath surrendered the tributes of Servia 
 and Wallachia, but retained possession of Bulgaria, 
 was solemnly agreed to. Copies of the treaty were 
 made in both languages. Amurath swore to it on the 
 Koran, and the Turks demanded that King Ladislaus 
 should swear on the Sacred Host. This was refused ; 
 but he gave his oath to observe it on the Gospels. 
 
 Such was the fruit of Hunyady 's boasted "Long 
 Campaign." Such was the use which the Christian 
 potentates of the Danube made of the first great 
 success they had ever won against the Ottomans. 
 One of them got back his children ; a couple of 
 provinces were spared their tributes, till their mighty 
 and inflexible enemy had gathered up his strength, 
 in the breathing time which their princes had pledged 
 to him ; and for this ignoble and miserable bargain, 
 the only moment when they had him at advantage 
 was thrown away, the claims were neglected of their 
 allies, who had gone with them into the war but 
 were not included in the peace, and the hopes and 
 the future of their brethren and their children, and 
 of that Christian faith for which they had so 
 pompously taken up arms, finally sacrificed. Well 
 might Cardinal Julian indignantly protest against 
 ^ Contin. de Fleury, an. 1444. No. 2. 
 
THE EiRLY OTTOMANS 413 
 
 their selfish and short-sighted folly. Well might 
 remonstrances from the Bosporus and the Hellespont 
 denounce their breach of faith with their confeder- 
 ates, and warn them of their madness, in dreaming 
 that a treaty would keep hack the Turks. A great 
 opportunity — the greatest chance which the Christians 
 had yet had against them — was lost. It would have 
 been well if this had been all ; if the gross mistake 
 of levity and greediness had not been followed by a 
 great and memorable crime, deliberately committed 
 under the auspices of the most venerable authority 
 in Christendom. 
 
 Cardinal Julian had spoken like a statesman, 
 wisely and manfully, lefore the oath by which King 
 Ladislaus had confirmed the treaty. He spoke like 
 a swindler and a knave after it. The word of a 
 king, and the oath of a Christian, sworn, if not on 
 the Holy Sacrament, at least on the Holy Gospels, 
 were in his view no difficulties in attempting to undo 
 what he had failed to prevent. It is likely enough that 
 the light and wayward chiefs around him soon 
 repented of their bargain. It is certain that the 
 representative of the apostolic throne left no means 
 untried to make them do so. But to their instincts, 
 rude and fierce as they were, the oath was a barrier. 
 Then did their chief spiritual guide, speaking in the 
 name of the Great Pastor of Christians, and by the 
 authority of Christ, undertake to allay their scruples. 
 To these untaught barbarian children of rapine and 
 war, the subtle and practised lawyer of Padua, who 
 
414 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 had come bringing them wisdom and benedictions 
 from Eome, unfolded and explained the favourite 
 thesis of that age of audacious hypocrisy and perfidy, 
 that an oath is not binding, when high considerations 
 of public good, and especially of the good of religion, 
 are interfered with by its observance : and when the 
 plausible diplomatist had confounded their sense of 
 right and wrong, the Apostolic Legate, by the com- 
 mand and the divine powers of his master, pronounced 
 the oath invalid, and absolved all from its obligation. 
 On the 15 th of July Ladislaus swore peace on the 
 Gospels to Amurath. On the 4th of August, Cardinal 
 Julian, the Legate of the Pope, made the king and 
 his council swear again, in the name of the most Holy 
 Trinity, of the most Glorious Virgin Mary, of St. 
 Stephen and St. Ladislaus, that he would break his 
 treaty with the Ottomans, and appear with an army 
 before Orsova on the 1st of September. After such 
 a deed, by such actors, it is hardly worth noticing, 
 that some of them contrived that corruption and deceit 
 should be added to perjury ; but it is recorded that 
 Hunyady, who is said to have been bought for the 
 treaty by Amurath's gold, was bought for its violation 
 by the promise of the kingdom of Bulgaria ; and that, 
 at his instance, the public declaration of war was 
 delayed till the 1st of September, in order that the 
 Ottomans might have restored the fortresses which 
 they were to give up by the treaty, before they had 
 warning that it was at an end. 
 
 Amurath had chosen that very moment for the 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 415 
 
 first of his two abdications: whatever his reason, 
 the step itself argued as much reliance on the oath 
 of Ladislaus, as confidence in the general strength of 
 the Ottoman state. But he at once reassumed the 
 government, and hurried back to Europe, when he 
 heard that the Hungarians were assailing the for- 
 tresses of Bulgaria, on the Danube and the sea. 
 How he crossed from Asia is yet a question. The 
 Hellespont was held by the Western galleys; the 
 Bosporus, it might be supposed, was commanded 
 by the navy of the Golden Horn ; and for neither 
 were the warships of the Turks at that time a match. 
 It is reported by one of the Hungarian historians 
 that ships of Genoa ferried the Turkish soldiers 
 across the Bosporus, and that the fare was a ducat 
 a-head. However this was, Amurath crossed the 
 Balkan, and with greatly superior numbers, met the 
 Christian host, encamped before Varna, with their 
 left flank resting on the marshy lake of Devno, on 
 ground which has sijice been made but too famous, 
 by the losses of a Eussian army in an obstinate siege, 
 and of an English one in the idleness of a pestilential 
 summer. On St. Martin's Eve, 1444, was fought this 
 great wager of battle. On high, between the two 
 armies, and between earth and heaven, was exposed 
 on a spear-point the treaty which Ladislaus had 
 signed and sworn to ; and in terrible words — words 
 recorded by Christians and Ottomans — Amurath 
 called on Him by whom it was sworn, to prove his 
 truth by punishing the guilty. The wild and con- 
 
416 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 fused battle of the cavalry, the main arm on both 
 sides, and the only one employed by the Christians, 
 seemed at first to go heavily against the Ottomans. 
 Even Amurath's courage and hope gave way: he 
 was turning his horse out of the throng, when one 
 of his pashas, more trustful than himself, seized his 
 bridle and forced him to remain ; but so near were 
 the Hungarian sabres to his person, that one of 
 them struck down an officer of the Janissaries, who 
 attempted to release the Sultan's bridle from the 
 hand of his daring subject. The horsemen of 
 Hunyady and of Wallachia had borne down and 
 swept before them, on the right wing and the left, 
 the spahis of Thrace and of Anatolia ; but the burning 
 core of battle was, as always, where amid the whir] 
 and reflux of charging and rallying squadrons, the 
 infantry of the Janissaries fought and stirred not. 
 The Janissaries stood firm behind their ditch and 
 palisades, and till they were broken, the field was not 
 lost. Ladislaus dashed against them with the fiery 
 youth of Hungary, and perished beneath their spears. 
 He fell wounded : they refused him quarter : his head 
 was raised aloft on a pike, and Hunyady fought in 
 vain to wrest from them this signal of the Ottoman 
 victory. That ghastly sight spoke to both armies 
 in clear and dreadful emphasis the verdict of the day. 
 The Wallachs and Servians fled and dispersed ; and 
 in the evening Hunyady himself escaped, and left the 
 Hungarians to defend themselves as they could, 
 behind the baggage waggons. Next day the camp 
 
THE EABLY OTTOMANS 417 
 
 was stormed, and they were massacred. Two 
 bishops of Hungary fell among the magnates and 
 chiefs who perished with King "Ladislaus ; and with 
 them, perished the lying prophet, who had absolved 
 them from their oath, Cardinal Julian. 
 
 The miserable fall, in the flower and pride of youth, 
 of a King of Poland and Hungary j the death in 
 battle of a Cardinal and a Legate of Eome, who had 
 played such a leading part in the history of his day ; 
 and the swift and sudden stroke of retribution on 
 violated faith, inflicted before the eyes of both Chris- 
 tian and Mahometan worlds, have made the field of 
 Varna memorable, above more decisive battles. 
 Varna, terrible as was its lesson, had not broken the 
 Hungarian power, nor quelled the spirit of Hunyady. 
 Which nation was to be mistress on the Danube had 
 still to be determined. It was determined four years 
 after. In the summer of 1448 Hunyady led forth a 
 numerous army, the flnest and best equipped that 
 Hungary had yet raised, with auxiliaries from Wal- 
 lachia, and a band of German and Bohemian mus- 
 keteers, across the great river, and up the valley of 
 the Morava. Servia was then leagued with the 
 Moslems, and ravaged by the Christians. In the 
 autumn Amurath and Hunyady met again; their 
 meeting was where Turks and Christians had met 
 once before, under another Amurath, and a king of 
 Servia, — the mountain plain of Kossova, the famous 
 " Ousel's field." ^ At Kossova, the natural trysting 
 1 Vide p. 356. 
 
 2 E 
 
418 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 place and battle -lists for the nations between the 
 Adriatic and the Euxine, Scanderbeg, from Albania, 
 was to have joined with Hunyady. But he did not 
 come ; the year was wearing on, and Hunyady 
 attacked without him. On St. Luke's Eve (17th Oct.^ 
 began a three days' battle ; a harder one than even 
 that which, sixty years before, had made the high- 
 land brook, that wanders through the " Ousel's field," 
 run red with Ottoman and Sclavonian blood. The 
 cavalry sldrmishes of the first day, the fierce and 
 earnest conflicts of the second, between Hunyady's 
 skilfully divided and successively relieved squadrons, 
 and Amurath's huge and storming masses, left the 
 victory still to win : the German musketeers bravely 
 kept the centre and key of the Christian line ; the 
 Janissaries, entrenched and immovable, were again the 
 sure rallying point of the Turks. A night-attack 
 failed against their composed and steady courage. 
 The morrow of St. Luke found the battle, still raging 
 which had begun on the eve, but found discourage- 
 ment in the Christian ranks. By the evening, 
 Amurath had won his last and greatest victory. Once 
 more Christian warriors had sold their brethren ; 
 once more the first of Christian captains had deserted 
 his soldiers in the hour of disaster, and left them 
 behind him, to find their own way from the field, or 
 be slaughtered on it. The Wallachians had been 
 bought, and had gone over to Amurath. Hunyady, 
 at the last, led his Germans and his artillery to stop 
 the Janissaries, and sheltered by the engagement, 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 419 
 
 escaped, and escaped with difficulty, through hostile 
 Servia. The second Kossova decided between the 
 Ottomans and the Hungarians, — as the first had done 
 between the Ottomans and the Sclavonians, — vho 
 were to advance, and who to yield. Hunyady's 
 valour was henceforth reserved for the defence of his 
 country. Scanderbeg, who, if he had been waited for, 
 might have turned the scale at Kossova, continued 
 to maintain his freedom fiercely among the Illyrian 
 precipices, and on his mountain eyrie of Croia;^ but 
 now the last struggle had been made, and henceforth 
 the cause of Christendom was irretrievable, to the 
 south of the Danube. 
 
 And the man who had carried through to its 
 triumphant close this fateful conflict, vrho had won 
 back for his house and race all that they had lost in 
 Timour's victory, who had coped successfully with 
 greater difficulties within, and more dangerous foes 
 without, than his great conquering namesake, had, at 
 forty years of age, become weary of his power, and 
 longed for repose. A devotee in the view of Gibbon, 
 a voluptuary in that of Von Hammer, — in reality, 
 perhaps, both (for a life of easy and luxurious indulg- 
 ence has often been no illegitimate accompaniment of 
 Moslem devotion), — Amurath twice, with eager and 
 hasty pertinacity, seized the occasion of apparent 
 peace to relinquish the throne of Othman and Bajazet 
 to a son of only fourteen years. The first time was 
 when the oath of the King of Hungary seemed to 
 ' See a sketch of Croia, in Lear's Albania, p. 116. 
 
420 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 secure a ten years' truce with the only Christians 
 whom he feared. He returned to conquer and to 
 avenge. Theti, from the bloody field of Varna, and 
 the imperial state of Adrianople, he hastened away, 
 the second time, to the unclouded Ionian skies, and 
 the cypress groves and tulip gardens of Magnesia. 
 With them he reserved to himself the revenues of 
 Ionia and Caria. Of his favourite pleasance, the 
 fragment of a wall, and few straggling cypresses stiU 
 remain. Near them — with the mosques and baths, 
 the madhouse and the almonry, the school and the 
 caravanserai, which are the motley monuments of 
 another Amurath's luxury and devotion at Magnesia 
 — is a mausoleum with more than twenty tombs, — 
 tombs of the youths and dames, it is said, who shared 
 the retirement of the two sultans. But whether that 
 of the conqueror of Varna was ascetic or voluptuous ; 
 whether he danced and howled with dervishes, or 
 gave himself up to a soft and Epicurean ease, the 
 Ottoman state soon needed again his experienced and 
 vigorous hand. The first recorded mutiny of the 
 Janissaries followed his abdication ; the viziers of 
 his son appeased it, and taught the soldiers their 
 strength, by an increase of pay ; and then earnestly 
 entreated Amurath to return once more. A second 
 time, within a year, he came back to the power, which 
 he found that -he could not abandon ; and distaste or 
 weariness did not abate the vigour and spirit with 
 which he resumed the ambition and the policy of his 
 race. His last years were at once his most glorious 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 421 
 
 ones, and his most chequered. He overran the Morea : 
 he conquered at Kossova: he gave its last Greek 
 emperor to Constantinople. But he, who had broken 
 the might of kingdoms, was bafSed and humbled, to 
 the very day of his death, in a petty and protracted 
 mountain war. He made no more obstinate efforts 
 anywhere than he did to break or soften the spirit 
 of Scanderbeg ; he had never known such reverses 
 as dogged his armies through the stern passes of 
 Albania, and before the crags on which were perched 
 its robber fastnesses. The last scene of a long and 
 fortunate reign was his repulse, sick and heart-broken, 
 from before the walls of Croia, into which his gold 
 could not buy an entrance, and which the huge stone 
 buUets, launched for the first time from Turkish 
 cannons, could not shatter ; and the envied and 
 dreaded Amurath went back to die by a fit of 
 apoplexy, at a banquet at Adrianople. 
 
 With him ended the first series of the Ottoman 
 kings, — of those remarkable and persevering chiefs, 
 who laid the foundations, and drew the plan, and 
 prepared the power, of the Ottoman state. A little 
 more than two years after Amurath 's death, his son, 
 a conqueror at twenty-three, rode through the broken 
 wall to take possession of St. Sophia, — so ready was 
 everything left to his hand ; so successfully had his 
 father and grandfather laboured to repair the ruins 
 and efface the stain of Angora. With Mahomet the 
 Conqueror, a change comes over the character of the 
 Ottoman state and its rulers. The possession of the 
 
422 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 centre of Eastern civilisation, instead of softening 
 and taming them, corrupted and debased them. 
 They retained and exaggerated the vices of their 
 fathers; they lost, what appear at least at this 
 distance of time, their nobler and more hopeful 
 qualities. For, fierce and remorseless conquerors as 
 they were, men of passion and men of blood, the 
 earlier sultans yet exhibit a far higher stamp, both 
 of intellect and of character, than is to be found, 
 with perhaps one exception, in the long line which 
 followed the Conqueror. They planned, they ruled, 
 they fought in person, and not by the mind and 
 hand of slaves. There appears in them a power of 
 self-control and self-constraint, of patience and for- 
 bearance, which disappeared when their children 
 found themselves in the palace of the Csesars ; and 
 merciless as their wars were, we do not read, except 
 in the instance of the massacre of Nicopolis, of those 
 monstrous and wanton slaughters of helpless crowds, 
 which marked the victories of Timour, and even the 
 civil administration of the Ottomans of Constantinople. 
 When Amurath II. gave Thessalonica to the spoiler, 
 he forbade and prevented massacre.^ Two points 
 may be particularly observed, in which the earlier 
 are strikingly contrasted with the later sultans. One 
 is, the praise that is given to most of them for justice 
 and consideration to their Greek subjects, by the 
 Greek historians who wrote at the very time when 
 they were destroying the Greek Empire. When all 
 1 Von Hammer, i. 351. 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 423 
 
 abatements that may be necessary are made, these 
 reports yet show a feeling on the subject which 
 assuredly could seldom be found in later times. 
 We are told of the strict impartiality of Othman's 
 tribunal at Kara Hissar. We are told that under 
 Orchan, the Greeks of Nicsea and Brusa preferred 
 submitting to his rule, than passing over, as they 
 might have done, to the dominions of the Christian 
 Caesar. Chalcocondylas compares the justice of the 
 first Amurath to that of Cyrus, though the historian 
 had suffered bitterly at his hands.^ The united testi- 
 mony of Ottomans and Byzantines bears witness to the 
 humanity, the uprightness, the truthfulness and good 
 faith, the gentleness, both to Greeks and Turks, of 
 the first Mahomet. Ducas and Chalcocondylas both 
 speak of the nobleness, justice and equity, of the 
 redoubtable conqueror of Varna ;^ and perhaps he 
 was the last of the sultans whose word was generally 
 given in sincerity, and could be trusted without 
 imprudence. The other point is, their relations to 
 their own ministers and servants. Every one who 
 has looked into later Ottoman history has been 
 tormented by the confounding rapidity with which 
 the names of the great men of the state are changed, 
 or rather, what adds to the perplexity, with which 
 the changes are rung on a very confined list of names. 
 With a very few exceptions, no grand vizier, no 
 general or admiral, stays long enough on the scene 
 for the reader to fix and master a distinct image of 
 1 Von Hammer, i. 180. " Idem, i. 351. 
 
424 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 the man. In each case a slave has toiled up from 
 the meanest condition, and often by the basest 
 services ; he appears for a moment on the pinnacle 
 of power — for a moment the absolute disposer of life 
 and of welfare, in the mightiest despotism of the 
 world ; his master's hand waves, and the head rolls ; 
 or the slave drops, without a murmur or a memorial, 
 into the nameless herd from which he rose. But 
 the names are few, and recur continually and 
 for long spaces of time, of those who helped and 
 served the early sultans. Their prolonged and un- 
 broken service speaks of honour and attachment on 
 the part of the master, as much as of loyalty in 
 the dependant. They were vassals and liege men, 
 not slaves. We do not find a single instance of 
 capricious and sanguinary outbursts of displeasure 
 against a great servant of the state, till the cruel and 
 vindictive Mahomet the Conqueror. We hardly find 
 tUl his day an instance of even a change or a 
 disgrace. Great families grew up, and took root in 
 the conquered provinces, from whom the chiefs of 
 the army were taken, like the children of Evrenos in 
 Macedonia, or Timurtash in Anatolia. There was 
 even a strong tendency to hereditary office, — in some 
 cases, apparently, even by special privilege. Out of 
 the first six viziers of the Empire, one family. Black 
 Halil's children, the Dchendereli, furnished four. 
 The difference is perhaps made most palpable when 
 we look at the lists, in Von Hammer's book, of the 
 grand viziers and other great officers of the Empire; 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 425 
 
 In four centuries and a half, he enumerates one 
 hundred and sixty -two grand viziers; of these 
 the first six occupy more than the first of the 
 centuries. The first six viziers served five sultans, 
 till the reign of Mahomet the Conqueror. In the 
 third year of his reign, the year of the taking of 
 Constantinople, he put to death the vizier his father 
 had left him, the namesake and descendant of 
 Black Halil. In the thirty years of his reign six 
 grand viziers were deposed, — exactly as many as 
 had served- his five predecessors during a space of 
 a hundred and thirty years. The seventh was slain 
 hy the Janissaries. And the changes were equally 
 rapid under the succeeding sultans. 
 
 Three times did Mahomet the Conqueror ascend 
 the Ottoman throne. Twice he had resigned it, a 
 sullen and reluctant boy of fourteen, whom it was 
 necessary to inveigle out of the way, lest he should 
 resist his father to his face, when, to save the state, 
 he appeared to resume his abdicated . power. The 
 third time, seven years older, he sprang on the great 
 prize with the eagerness and ferocity of a beast of 
 prey. He never drew bridle from Magnesia, when 
 he heard of his father's death, till on the second day 
 he reached Gallipoli, on his way to Adrianople. To 
 smother his infant brother in the bath was his first 
 act of power ; and then he turned, with all the force 
 of his relentless and insatiate nature, to where the 
 inheritor of what remained of the greatness of the 
 Csesars — leisurely arranging marriages and embas- 
 
426 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 sies — still detained from the Moslems the first city 
 of the East ; — little knowing the savage eye that was 
 fixed upon him, little suspecting the nearness of a 
 doom, which had so often threatened and had been 
 so often averted. 
 
 For a hundred and fifty years the Ottomans had 
 marked Constantinople for their own, and had 
 waited. Long had been the waiting. Rapidly, and 
 in hot and urgent haste, did the end arrive at last. 
 All was at first peace and amity between the Ottoman 
 and the Greek. The Greek even presumed to be 
 the first to menace : the grand vizier, the friend 
 of the Greeks, warned them of their madness in 
 rousing the tiger before the time ; but the words of 
 Mahomet were still grave and coxu'teous. • The first 
 year of his reign was almost over, and yet no signs 
 were apparent to the Greeks of the fate which was 
 drawing near. But in the winter, the tidings came 
 to Gonstantine that the Ottomans purposed to build 
 a castle on the European shore of the Bosporus, at 
 its narrowest interval, and corresponding to one 
 already built in Asia ; that the site had been chosen 
 at five miles' distance from Constantinople, and 
 the materials collected. Constantino remonstrated,, 
 but vainly. " No," said the Ottoman, " he meant 
 nothing against Constantinople ; but he should 
 build on his own ground, for his own purposes ; and 
 the next messenger who dared to interfere should be 
 flayed alive ! " The announcement and the message 
 revealed to Gonstantine the greatness of the crisis ; 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 427 
 
 but not to his people. He would have drawn the 
 sword, but they refused. "Amid hope and fear, 
 the fears of the wise and the hopes of the credulous, 
 the winter rolled away," while Mahomet was burning 
 his lime, and felling his timber, and quarrying his 
 stone, to be ready for the first days of spring. 
 Spring came, and with it his busy masons and 
 zealous oflScers ; and the summer saw the Bosporus 
 commanded by a new Turkish castle, bearing, in its 
 fantastic outline,^ an augury and a memorial of the 
 man and the faith which were henceforth to reign 
 along those shores. Still Mahomet spoke not of 
 conquesfr; but he pulled down churches to build his 
 towers, and his soldiers turned their horses into the 
 corn-fields under the walls of Constantinople, and 
 slaughtered the peasants when they resisted. And 
 he himself was eagerly and curiously questioning the 
 cunning Hungarian engineer, whom the niggardness 
 of the Greek arsenal had driven over to the Ottomans, 
 about the powers of his art ; and whether he could 
 cast a cannon whose stroke should shatter the walls of 
 Constantinople. " Of Constantinople or of Babylon ! " 
 answered the craftsman. His cannon was cast ; a 
 Venetian galley, whose topsail was not lowered to 
 Mahomet's castle, was sunk to try its range, and the 
 survivors from the wreck impaled or beheaded, as 
 
 ^ The outline of tlie walls was made to imitate the Arabic 
 letters of the name of Mohammsd. The three Ms, a, round 
 character in Arabic, were represented by three towers at unequal 
 distances. 
 
428 THE EARLY OTTOMANS 
 
 an earnest of the purposes for which the cannon was 
 destined, and the mind of its employer towards the 
 Christians. Winter came on again, the second 
 winter. The foundry of the Hungarian engineer 
 was kept in full work. The hugest cannon that had 
 yet been imagined or cast, issued from his moulds, 
 and Adrianople was terrified by its explosion when 
 it was tested. As the time drew on a fierce and 
 savage impatience took possession of the terrible 
 young man, who was preparing to seize what the 
 greatest of his fathers had vainly longed for. He pried 
 with feverish and dangerous suspicion into the 
 thoughts and wishes of his soldiers and ministers; 
 " Give me Constantinople ; that is all I require of 
 thee,'' was his ejaculation to his grand vizier, whom 
 he had summoned in the restlessness of a sleepless 
 night, to warn him not to be drawn away, as his 
 father and his grandfather had been, by the bribes 
 of the Greeks. So the winter passed with Mahomet, 
 in anxious excitement, but in diligent and careful 
 preparation. In Constantinople it passed, the last 
 winter of the Christian Empire, in dull and sluggish 
 expectancy of evil, — deepened by the gloom of dis- 
 mal prophecies, which were repeated more frequently 
 and more confidently, — disturbed only by furious 
 quarrels of which religion was the watchword, — 
 enlightened by scarcely a gleam of hopefulness, of 
 self-reliance, of purpose. The Emperor, in the mad- 
 dening extremity of his helplessness, had consented 
 once more to the submission, which the pride of the 
 
THE EAELY OTTOMANS 429 
 
 Popes was content to exact, from those who only 
 gave it in distress, and never with sincerity. The 
 Emperor had consented, but not the people of 
 Constantinople. The Eoman union was celebrated 
 in St. Sophia, but cursed in the streets and conyents 
 of the city. Christmas and Lent and Easter were 
 spent in the bitterness of party war, which avowed its 
 preference for the Moslem turban over the cardinal's 
 hat. And on the Friday after Easter, 1453, the 
 Moslem appeared before the city, to take the boasters 
 at their word, and to still the feuds of the two 
 Churches in a common destruction. 
 
 Christendom was cold. The Pope, in spite of the 
 submission of the Emperor, was oflfended and sus- 
 picious. In Constantinople itself, Constantine had 
 made a muster of those who were willing and able to 
 stand by him for their homes and churches. Out of 
 that great city — the number has been preserved — 
 they amounted to four thousand, nine hundred, and 
 seventy-one ! Those who defended Constantinople 
 were not its own children, but foreign merchants and 
 foreign adventurers. Out of the twelve posts of 
 consequence around its walls, two only were held by 
 Greeks ; the other ten were commanded by Spanish, 
 Italian, and German officers. To the last hour of the 
 Greek Empire, it was Christians who betrayed the 
 cause of Christendom. WhUe the flower of that 
 mighty and enthusiastic host, which their determined 
 and remorseless master had gathered round the wails, 
 had been won from Christendom, " while the greatest 
 
430 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 part of Mahomet's pashas and Janissaries were the 
 offspring of Christian parents," Christians, who had 
 their faith and their liberty to save, hung back, and 
 refused to fight in company. The Genoese traders of 
 G-alata were bargaining for themselves with Mahomet, 
 in the very height and crisis of the siege ; and looked 
 on without molesting him, when he dragged his barks 
 under their fortifications from the Bosporus to the 
 harbour. It was a Christian engineer who gave 
 Mahomet his artillery — but he was, perhaps, only a 
 dull craftsman working for his bread ; it was a 
 Christian ambassador in the camp of Mahomet, the 
 ambassador of the great Hunyady, who instructed the 
 awkward artillerymen how to breach the rampart. 
 
 It is some relief in this oppressive spectacle of 
 blindness, of baseness, and of decay, to rest our eyes 
 on the imperfect virtue and desolate end of the last 
 Constantine. A brave man in a herd of cowards, yet 
 even he did not deserve to save Constantinople ; for 
 he had sold his conscience and outraged his people 
 by purchasing the niggard aid of the Latins at the 
 price of the humiliation of the Eastern Church. But 
 he, at least, had taken his resolution to endure even 
 to death, and that gave him nobleness. He calmly 
 bore the insults of the fanatic and dastardly populace 
 in the streets, who remembered only that he had 
 suffered a Eoman legate to profane by the Western 
 ritual the altar of St. Sophia, and hooted him, while 
 he was toiling against hope to save them. Then, 
 when all was done, — when, in spite of all, the Turks 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 431 
 
 were in the harbour, and the walls had crumbled 
 beneath their cannon; when the great breach was 
 now ready at the gate of St. Romanus, and the 
 last sun had set on an empire of eleven hundred 
 years, — -he prepared to die, as one who bore the 
 name and the crown of him who had been the 
 first of Christian kings. All Christmas time, all 
 Lent, all Eastertide, there had been emptiness and 
 solitude under the mighty dome of Justinian ; since 
 the Latin prelate had been there, the crowds of 
 Greek worshippers had forsaken it, as delivered over 
 to demons. Its midnight gloom was the fit refuge 
 for a deserted emperor, when his soul came to seek 
 for the last mournful moments of peace. All round 
 the city, from the heights of Galata, along the bridge 
 across the harbour, and in front of the city walls to the 
 shore of the Propontis, a dazzling blaze of illumination 
 lighted up the Turkish lines ; in the camp, and on the 
 sea,- festive lamps were hung out on tent, and mast, 
 and yard-arm, and the shouts of exulting multitudes, 
 proclaiming the greatness of the false prophet, and the 
 victory of the morrow, rose fierce and wild on all sides 
 through the night, while the last rite that Christians 
 were to perform in St. Sophia was celebrated, the mid- 
 night communion of its doomed emperor. Humbled 
 and meek in his fortitude, he earnestly craved, as his 
 last request, the forgiveness of those from whom he 
 was parting. Dawn found him in the breach, breasting 
 the destroying storm. He bore up while the Genoese 
 captain, Giustiniani, who had fought with him through 
 
432 THE EAELY OTTOMANS 
 
 the siege, remained by his side. He might, perhaps, 
 have borne up successfully, but Giustiniani was at 
 length wounded ; whether from the agony of his 
 wound, or as others thought, from a despair which he 
 could control no longer, the gallantest of the Italian 
 captains left the breach; and when the stranger 
 forsook him, Constantine sunk beneath his fate : 29th 
 May 1453. He perished, unrecognised, by an un- 
 known hand. A few hours afterwards, Mahomet 
 rode through the gate, in which the heaps of corpses 
 showed where the last fierce struggle for the perishing 
 empire had taken place, and knew not that the 
 Csesar's was among them. It was found before 
 evening ; and, for the second time within ten years, 
 the head of a Christian king was borne on a pike 
 through the camp of the Ottomans. 
 
 The great capital city of the East had fallen, and 
 both Greeks and Latins were alarmed, and mourned 
 its fall. But it had changed owners before ; and 
 neither were at once alive to the full significance of 
 this change to the history of the world. Neither 
 suspected what strong and what cruel masters had 
 come to take possession of the desolate palaces where 
 the spider had long stretched her web,^ and to fiU 
 once more, for centuries, their vast and echoing 
 emptiness with the crowds of a gorgeous court. 
 Mahomet declared himself the protector of the Greeks 
 of Constantinople. The new patriarch, he who had 
 
 ■^ See the Persian verses repeated by Mahomet. Gibbon, 
 viii. 256. 
 
THE EAKLY OTTOMANS 433 
 
 inveighed so fiercely against the Latin union and the 
 compliances of Constantinp, received his jewelled 
 crozier from the hand of the infidel, according to the 
 old ceremonial of the Byzantine court ; paid him the 
 same homage, received the same honours as had 
 accompanied the investiture of his predecessors under 
 Christian emperors. But in time the waste streets 
 of Constantinople became peopled with new inhabit 
 ants from distant and strange regions. Where the 
 venerable palace of Bucoleon had stood, the new 
 Seraglio began to crown the promontory of the 
 Golden Horn ; the Mosque of the Conqueror rose on 
 the ruins of the Church of the Holy Apostles, and the 
 tombs of the Caesars ; and the Greeks were reminded 
 that in Constantinople they were in a capital which 
 was not their own. And very soon too the massacre 
 of their noblest, and the dishonour of their fairest, 
 told them more terribly what a change had come in 
 the place of the dull and oppressive, yet not sanguin- 
 ary, Byzantine rule. Then they began to see what 
 was meant by the settlement of the Ottomans at 
 Constantinople ; and Europe soon saw it too. The 
 conquering fury of the Ottomans burst forth with 
 new and consuming force along all its old tracks ; 
 Austria and Hungary felt its desolations renewed 
 again and again, though it broke it in vain against 
 the walls of Belgrade : it drove Scanderbeg from the 
 haunts to which he clung so fiercely, to die before he 
 could be conquered ; in Europe, Albania, Bosnia, and 
 Peloponnesus — in Asia, Karamania, and the Christian 
 
 2f 
 
434 THE EAKLY OTTOMANS 
 
 kingdom of Trebizond, sank finally under its strengtL 
 But this was not all. Lords of the Bosporus, the 
 Ottomans from this time, began to claim the seas, as 
 they had subdued the lands. Mahomet was the first 
 builder of an Ottoman fleet, and he lived to see its 
 power. It gave him Negropont and the Archipelago ; 
 then it destroyed the settlement of the Genoese at 
 Kaffa, and explored the sea of Azoff, and the mouths 
 of the Don, and the Danube ; and from Kilia and 
 Akerman, from the Crimea and Trebizond, the Otto- 
 mans were masters of the Black Sea. First of the 
 European states, the Signory of Venice understood 
 the great revolution in the East, and measured its 
 danger. From the time of Mahomet II. no state 
 recognised the importance of the Ottomans so clearly, 
 or had such continual relations with them, both in 
 peace and war, as Venice. Her keen-sighted envoys 
 soon discovered how firmly the Ottoman power was 
 fixed at Constantinople ; how, under its remorseless 
 and able chief, it was becoming consolidated and 
 organised" into a strong and enduring engine of con- 
 quest. Her own fierce wars and chequered negotia- 
 tions with her new rival at once began, to last till 
 both Venice and the sultans were exhausted. And 
 she had early and ample confirmation of her forebod- 
 ings. In a few years the Ottoman conquests had 
 reached to the shores of her own Adriatic ; their 
 fleets had conquered Zante and Cephalonia, had 
 crossed the Ionian Sea and sacked Otranto. And 
 while the entrance of the jealously-guarded Gulf was 
 
THE EARLY OTTOMANS 435 
 
 bordered by a Turkish coast, and threatened by 
 Turkish fleets, the Turkish horsemen had found their 
 way through Dalniatia and Friuli, across the rivers 
 which pour into it at its head ; and before the end 
 of Mahomet's reign, the watch-fires and the burnings 
 of the Ottoman ravagers had been descried from the 
 steeples of the Lagunes. 
 
 The chronology of the Ottoman chiefs to Mahomet II. is as 
 follows : — 
 
 Othman, 1288-1325. 
 Orchan, 1325-1359. 
 Amurath I., 1359-1389. 
 Bajazet, 1389-1403. 
 Mahomet I., 1413-1421. 
 Amurath II., 1421-1451. 
 Mahomet II., 1451-1481. 
 
 Othman, Orchan, and Amurath I. styled themselves Emirs. 
 The title of Sultan is said to have heen first taken by Bajazet ; 
 hut Mahomet II. stiU called himself, also, the Great Emir. His 
 style in the capitulation of Galata, 1453, is — 6 iiiyai AiO^vTrjs, 
 Kal liiyas 'Afivpas SouXriicos 6 MexA^ Mtt^tjs, k.t.\. — Von 
 Hammer (Hellert), ii. 523. 
 
 END OF VOL. I 
 
 Printed ly R. & R. Clark, Edtnhnrgh. 
 
MESSRS. MACMILLAN & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 BY TEE SAME AUTHOR. 
 Just Published. 8vo. 
 
 THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. 
 Twelve Years, 1833-1845. 
 
 By the Very Rev. B. W. Chubch, M.A., D.C.L., 
 late Dean of St. Paul's, etc. 
 
 *»* This volume is based upon the tnriter's personal recollections, mid 
 contains a rteord of the principal phases of the movement, imth character- 
 sketches of the priauipal figures— Newnum, EebU, Hwrrell Fronde, W. 
 G. Ward, etc 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 
 
 COLLECTED EDITION. 
 JVow Beady in Five Volwmes, Globe Svo. 5s. each. 
 
 Vol I. MTSCBT.T.A"NEOTTS ESSAYS. 
 
 TIMES. — "He makes us iraJise more clearly tlie men and the 
 scenes he de^ds Hmn H^e standard historjans and biographers who 
 hare dealt witii i^s streets inore eshaiutiTely." 
 
 Vol. n. DAISTE Ajn> OTHBB ESSAYS. 
 
 SPECTATOR. — "A B^ie and sdiolaflike essay on the great 
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