Lectures and Essays

Lectures and Essays Goldwin Smith Lectures and Essays Table of Contents Lectures and Essays..................................................................................................................................................1 Goldwin Smith...............................................................................................................................................1 PREFATORY NOTE.....................................................................................................................................1 THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS.......................................................................................................2 THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND...........................................................................................................11 THE GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY....................................................................22 THE LAMPS OF FICTION.........................................................................................................................35 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE OXFORD SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND ART AT THE DISTRIBUTION OF PRIZES....................................................................................................................38 THE ASCENT OF MAN.............................................................................................................................44 PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION.........................................................................................52 THE LABOUR MOVEMENT....................................................................................................................58 WHAT IS CULPABLE LUXURY? .......................................................................................................73 A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY..........................................................................................................80 A WIREPULLER OF KINGS.....................................................................................................................91 THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC................................................................102 FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS.......................................................................................................111 THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.................................................................................122 ALFREDUS REX FUNDATOR...............................................................................................................135 THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME..................................................................................................144 AUSTEN−LEIGH'S MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN................................................................................157 PATTISON'S MILTON.............................................................................................................................161 COLERIDGE'S LIFE OF KEBLE.............................................................................................................166 i Lectures and Essays Goldwin Smith This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online. http://www.blackmask.com • PREFATORY NOTE. • THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS • THE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND • THE GREAT DUEL OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY • THE LAMPS OF FICTION • AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE OXFORD SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND ART AT THE DISTRIBUTION OF PRIZES • THE ASCENT OF MAN. • PROPOSED SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION • THE LABOUR MOVEMENT • WHAT IS CULPABLE LUXURY? • A TRUE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY. • A WIREPULLER OF KINGS. • THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CONQUEROR OF QUEBEC • FALKLAND AND THE PURITANS • THE EARLY YEARS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN • ALFREDUS REX FUNDATOR • THE LAST REPUBLICANS OF ROME • AUSTEN−LEIGH'S MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN • PATTISON'S MILTON • COLERIDGE'S LIFE OF KEBLE. Produced by Tonya Allen, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. This file was produced from images generously made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions. PREFATORY NOTE. These papers have been reprinted for friends who sometimes ask for the back numbers of periodicals in which they appeared. The great public is sick of reprints, and with good reason. The volume might almost have been called Contributions to Canadian Literature, for of the papers not originally published in Canada several were reproduced in Canadian journals. Political subjects have been excluded both to keep a volume intended for friends free from anything of a party character and because the writer looks forward to putting the thoughts scattered over his political essays and reviews into a more connected form. The papers on 'The Early Years of the Conqueror of Quebec,' 'A Wirepuller of Kings,' 'A True Captain of Industry' and 'Early Years of Abraham Lincoln' can hardly pretend to be more than accounts of books to which Lectures and Essays 1 Lectures and Essays they relate, but they interested some of their readers at the time and there are probably not many copies of the books in Canada. All the papers have been revised, so that they do not appear here exactly as they were in the periodicals from which they are reprinted. TORONTO, Feb. 16, 1881 THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS Rome was great in arms, in government, in law. This combination was the talisman of her august fortunes. But the three things, though blended in her, are distinct from each other, and the political analyst is called upon to give a separate account of each. By what agency was this State, out of all the States of Italy, out of all the States of the world, elected to a triple pre−eminence, and to the imperial supremacy of which, it was the foundation? By what agency was Rome chosen as the foundress of an empire which we regard almost as a necessary step in human development, and which formed the material, and to no small extent the political matrix of modern Europe, though the spiritual life of our civilization is derived from another source? We are not aware that this question has ever been distinctly answered, or even distinctly propounded. The writer once put it to a very eminent Roman antiquarian, and the answer was a quotation from Virgil Hoc nemus, hunc, inquit, frondoso vertice clivum Quis deus incertum est, habitat Deus; Arcades ipsum Credunt se vidisae Jovem cum saepe nigrantem AEgida concuteret dextra nimbosque cieret. This perhaps was the best answer that Roman patriotism, ancient or modern, could give; and it certainly was given in the best form. The political passages of Virgil, like some in Lucan and Juvenal, had a grandeur entirely Roman with which neither Homer nor any other Greek has anything to do. But historical criticism, without doing injustice to the poetical aspect of the mystery, is bound to seek a rational solution. Perhaps in seeking the solution we may in some measure supply, or at least suggest the mode of supplying, a deficiency which we venture to think is generally found in the first chapters of histories. A national history, as it seems to us, ought to commence with a survey of the country or locality, its geographical position, climate, productions, and other physical circumstances as they bear on the character of the people. We ought to be presented, in short, with a complete description of the scene of the historic drama, as well as with an account of the race to which the actors belong. In the early stages of his development, at all events, man is mainly the creature of physical circumstances; and by a systematic examination of physical circumstances we may to some extent cast the horoscope of the infant nation as it lies in the arms of Nature. That the central position of Rome, in the long and narrow peninsula of Italy, was highly favourable to her Italian dominion, and that the situation of Italy was favourable to her dominion over the countries surrounding the Mediterranean, has been often pointed out. But we have yet to ask what launched Rome in her career of conquest, and still more, what rendered that career so different from those of ordinary conquerors? What caused the Empire of Rome to be so durable? What gives it so high an organization? What made it so tolerable, and even in some cases beneficent to her subjects? What enabled it to perform services so important in preparing the way for a higher civilization? About the only answer that we get to these questions is race. The Romans, we are told, were by nature a peculiarly warlike race. They were the wolves of Italy, says Mr. Merivale, who may be taken to represent fairly the state of opinion on this subject. We are presented in short with the old fable of the Twins suckled by the She−wolf in a slightly rationalized form. It was more likely to be true, if anything, in its original form, for in mythology nothing is so irrational as rationalization. That unfortunate She−wolf with her Twins has now been long discarded by criticism as a historical figure; but she still obtrudes herself as a symbolical legend into the first THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS 2 Lectures and Essays chapter of Roman history, and continues to affect the historian's imagination and to give him a wrong bias at the outset. Who knows whether the statue which we possess is a real counterpart of the original? Who knows what the meaning of the original statue was? If the group was of great antiquity, we may be pretty sure that it was not political or historic, but religious; for primaeval art is the handmaid of religion; historic representation and political

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