Marius the Epicurean, Volume One

ginal and on the whole graver. The petulant, boyish Cupid of Apuleius was become more like that "Lord, of terrible asp

springtide, men's actual loves, with which at many points the book brings one into close contact, might appear to him, like the general tenor of their lives, to be somewhat mean and sordid. The hiddenness of perfect things: a shrinking mysticism, a sentiment of diffidence like that expressed in Psyche's so tremulous hope concerning the child to be born of the husband she had never yet seen-"in the face of this little child, at the least, shall I apprehend thine"-in hoc saltem parvulo cognoscam faciem tuam: the fatality which seems to haunt any signal+ beauty, whether moral or physical, as if it were in itself something illicit and isolating: the suspicion and hatred it so often excites in the vulgar:-these were some of the impressions, formin

relied on the acquisition and display of brilliant military qualities. In him, a fine instinctive sentiment of the exact value and power of words was connate with the eager longing for sway over his fellows. He saw himself already a gallant and effective leader, innovating or conservative as occasion might require, in the rehabilitation of the mother-tongue, then fallen so tarnished and languid; yet the sole object, as he mused within himself, of the only sort of patriotic feeling proper, or possible, for one born of slaves. The popular speech was gradually departing from the form [95] and rule of literary language, a languag

hich our own times afford. For it is not true that nature, as if weary and effete, no longer produces what is admirable." And he, Flavian, would prove himself the true master of the opportunity thus indicated. In [96] his eagerness for a not too distant fame, he dreamed over all that, as the young Caesar may have dreamed of campaigns. Others might brutalise or neglect the native speech, that true "open field" for charm and sway over men. He would make of it a serious study, weighing the precise power of every phrase and word, as t

time, a sort of chivalrous conscience. What care for style! what patience of execution! what research for the significant [97] tones of ancient idiom-sonantia verba et antiqua! What stately and regular word-building-gravis et decora constructio! He felt the whole meaning of the sceptical Pliny's somewhat melancholy advice to one of his friends, that he should seek in literature deliverance from mortality-ut studiis se literarum a mortalitate vindicet. And t

er examples of it, this Roman Euphuism, determined at any cost to attain beauty in writing-es kallos graphein+-might lapse into its characteristic fopperies or mannerisms, into the "defects of its qualities," in truth, not wholly unpleasing perhaps, or at least excusable, when looked at as but the toys (so Cicero calls them), the strictly congenial and appropriate toys, of an assiduously cultivated age, which could not help being polite, critical, self-conscious. The mere love of novelty also had, of course, its part there: as with the Euphuism of the Elizabethan age, and of the modern French romanticists, its neologies were the ground of one of the favourite charges against it; though indeed, as regards these tricks of taste also, there is nothing new, but a quaint family likeness rather, between the Euphuists of successive ages. Here, as elsewhere

tions. How had the burden of precedent, laid upon every artist, increased since then! It was all around one:-that smoothly built world of old classical taste, an accomplished fact, with overwhelming authority on every detail of the conduct of one's [100] work. With no fardel on its own back, yet so imperious towards those who came labouring after it, Hellas, in its early freshness, looked as distant from him even then as it does from ourselves. There might seem to be no place left for novelty or originality,-place only for a patient, an infinite, faultlessness. On this question too Flavian passed through a world of curious art-casuistries, of self-tormenting, at the threshold of his work.

had

imenos polybenth

anto, thesan d'

bainon epi phê

eak, in an age which had felt itself trite and commonplace enough, on his opportunity for the touch of "golden alchemy," or at least for the pleasantly lighted side of things themselves? Might not another, in one's own prosaic and used-up time, so uneventful as it had been through the long reign of these quiet Antonines, in like manner, discover his ideal, by a due waiting upon it? Would not a future generation, looking back upon this, under the power of the enchanted-distance fallacy, find it ideal to view, in contrast with its own languor-the languor that for some reason (concerning which Augustine will one day have his view) seemed to haunt men always? Had Homer, even, appeared unreal and affected in his poetic flight, to some of the people of his o

at he had a matter to present, very real, [103] at least to him. That preoccupation of the dilettante with what might seem mere details of form, after all, did but serve the purpose of bringing to the surface, sincerely and in their integrity, certain strong personal intuitions, a certain vision or apprehension of things as really being, with important results, thus, rather than thus,-intuitions which the artistic or literary faculty was called upon to follow, with the exactness of wax or clay, clothing the model within. Flavian too, with his fine clear mastery of the practically effective, had early laid hold of the principle, as axiomatic in literature: that

ely physical excitement, that he can hardly distinguish it from the animation of external nature, the upswelling of the seed in the earth, and of the sap through the trees. Flavian, to whom, again, as to his later euphuistic kinsmen, old mythology seemed as full of untried, unexpressed motives and interest as human life itself, had long been occupied with a kind of mystic hymn to the vernal principle of life in things; a composition shaping itself, little by little, out of a thou

e freighting of the vessel, its launching and final abandonment among the waves, as an object really devoted to the Great Goddess, that new rival, or "double," of ancient Venus, and like her a favourite patroness of sailors.

qui nunq

mavit cr

ng slightly, with the smoothly paved streets on either side, between its low marble parapet and the fair dwelling-houses, formed the main highway of the city; and the pageant, accompanied throughout by innumerable lanterns and wax tapers, took its course up one of these streets, crossing the w

eir rear were the mirror-bearers of the goddess, carrying large mirrors of beaten brass or silver, turned in such a way as to reflect to the great body of worshippers who followed, the face of the mysterious image, as it moved on its way, and their faces to it, as though they were in fact advancing to meet the heavenly visitor. They comprehended a multitude of both sexes and of all ages, already initiated into the divine secret, clad in fair linen, the females veiled, the males with shining [107] tonsures, and every one carrying a sistrum-the richer sort of silver, a few very dainty persons of fine gold-rattling the reeds, with a noise like the jargon of innumerable birds and insects awakened from torpor and abroad in the spring sun. Then, born

ices and other costly gifts, offered in great profusion by the worshippers, and thus, launched at last upon the water, left the shore, crossing the harbour-bar in the w

the shadow of a mass of gray rock or ruin, where the sea-gate of the Greek town had been, and talked of life in those old Greek colonies. Of this place, all that remained, besides those rude stones, was-a handful of silver coins, each with a head of pure and archaic beauty, though a little cruel perhaps, supposed to represent the Siren Ligeia, whose tomb was formerly shown here-only these, and an ancient song, the very strain which Flavian [109] had recovered in those last months. They were records which spoke, certainly, of the charm of life within those walls. How strong must have been the tide of men's existence in that little republican town, so small that this circle of gray stones, of service now only by the moisture they gathered for the blue-flowering gentians among them, had been the line of its rampart! An epitome of all that was liveliest, most animated and adventurous, in the old Gree

ed to find no refreshment in the coolness. There had been something feverish, perhaps, and like the beginning of sickness, about his almost forced gaiety, in this sudden

O

the Macmillan editio

allos graphein. Translatio

432-33, 437. T

imenos polybenth

anto, thesan d'

bainon epi phê

tor's tra

d safely mad

sail, laid it in

re just past

a neotês. Pater translates