 Publishers' Preface to Beacon Lights of History, Volume 13. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Kay Hand. Beacon Lights of History, Volume 13, Great Writers by John Lord. Publishers' Preface. This being the last possible volume in the series of Beacon Lights of History from the pen of Dr. Lord, its readers will be interested to know that it contains all the lectures that he had completed, although not all that he had projected, for his review of certain of the chief men of letters. Lectures on other topics were found among his papers, but none that would perfectly fit into this scheme, and it was thought best not to attempt any collection of his material which he himself had not deemed worthy or appropriate for use in this series, which embodies the best of his life's work. All of his books and his lectures that he wished to have preserved. For instance, the old Roman world, enlarged in scope and rewritten, is included in the volumes on old pagan civilizations, ancient achievements, and imperial antiquity. Much of his modern Europe reappears in great rulers, modern European statesmen, and European national leaders, etc. The consideration of great writers was reserved by Dr. Lord for his final task, a task interrupted by death and left unfinished. In order to round out and complete this volume, recourse has been had to some other masters in literary art whose productions are added to Dr. Lord's final writings. In the present volume, therefore, are included the paper on Shakespeare by Emerson, reprinted from his representative men by permission of Messer's Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, the authorized publishers of Emerson's works. The famous essay on Milton by Macaulay, the principal portion, biographical and generally critical, of the article on Gerta, From Hours with the German Classics, by the late Dr. Friedrich H. Hedge, by permission of Messer's Little Brown and Company, the publishers of that work, and a chapter on Tennyson, The Spirit of Modern Poetry by G. Mercer Adam. A certain advantage may accrue to the reader in finding these masters side by side for comparison and for gauging Dr. Lord's unique life work by recognized standards, keeping while in view the purpose no less than the perfection of these literary performances, all of which, like those of Dr. Lord, were aimed at setting forth the services of selected forces in the world's life. New York, September 15, 1902. End of the Publishers' Preface. Section one of Beacon Lines of History, Volume 13, Great Writers by John Lorde. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Kay Henth. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Part One. 1712 to 1778. Socialism and Education. Two great political writers in the 18th century of antagonistic views, but both original and earnest, have materially affected the whole science of government and even of social life from their day to hours, and in their influence really belong to the 19th century. One was the apostle of radicalism, the other of conservatism. The one, more than any other single man, stimulated, though unwittingly, the French Revolution. The other opposed that mad outburst with equal eloquence and caused in Europe a reaction from revolutionary principles. While one is far better known today than the other, to the thoughtful, both our exponents and representatives of conflicting political and social questions which agitate this age. These men were Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke, one Swiss and the other English. Burke, I have already treated of in a former volume. His name is no longer a power, but his influence endures in all the grand reforms of which he was a part, and for which his generation in England is praised. While his writings remain a treasure house of political and moral wisdom, sure to be drawn upon during every public discussion of governmental principles. Rousseau, although a writer of a hundred years ago, seems to me a fit representative of political, social and educational ideas in the present day, because his theories are still potent. And even in this scientific age, more widely diffused than ever before. Not without reason, it is true, for he embodied certain Germanic ideas in a fascinating literary style. But it is hard to understand how so weak a man could have exercised such far reaching influence. Himself a genuine and passionate lover of nature, recognizing in his principles of conduct no duties that could conflict with personal inclinations. Born in democratic and freedom loving Switzerland, and early imbued through his reading of German and English writers with ideas of liberty, which in those conservative lands were wholesome. He distilled these ideas into charming literary creations that were eagerly read by the restless minds of France, and wrought in them political frenzy. The reforms he projected grew out of his theories of the rights of man without reference to the duties that limit those rights, and his appeal for their support to men's passions and selfish instincts, and to a sentimental philosophy, in an age of irreligion and immorality, aroused a political tempest, which he little contemplated. In an age so infidel and brilliant as that which preceded the French Revolution, the writings of Rousseau had a peculiar charm, and produced a great effect even on men who despised his character and ignored his mission. He engendered the Robes-Pierres and Condorcets of the Revolution. Those sentimental murderers, who under the guise of philosophy attacked the fundamental principles of justice and destroyed the very rights which they invoked. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva in the year 1712, when Voltaire was first rising into notice. He belonged to the Plebeian ranks, being the son of a watchmaker, was sickly, miserable, and morbid from a child, was poorly educated but a great devourer of novels, which his father, sentimental as he, read with him, poetry and gushing biographies. Although a little later he became, with impartial facility, equally delighted with the sturdy Plutarch. His nature was passionate and inconstant, his sensibilities morbidly acute, and his imagination lively. He hated all rules, precedents, and authority. He was lazy, listless, deceitful, and had a great craving for novelties and excitement, as he himself says, feeling everything and knowing nothing. At an early age, without money or friends, he ran away from the engraver to whom he had been apprenticed, and after various adventures was first kindly received by a Catholic priest in Savoy, then by a generous and airing woman of wealth lately converted to Catholicism, and again by the priests of a Catholic seminary in Sardinia, under whose tuition, and in order to advance his personal fortunes, he abjured the religion in which he had been brought up, and professed Catholicism. This, however, cost him no conscientious scruples for his religious training had been of the slimmest, and principles he had none. We next see Rousseau as a footman in the service of an Italian Countess, where he was mean enough to accuse a servant's girl for a theft he had himself committed, thereby causing her ruin. Again employed as a footman in the service of another noble family, his extraordinary talents were detected, and he was made secretary. But all this kindness he returned with insolence, and again became a wanderer. In his isolation he sought the protection of the Swiss lady who had before befriended him, Madame de Warrens. He began as her secretary and ended in becoming her lover. In her house he saw society and learned music. A fit of caprice induced Rousseau to throw up this situation, and then he taught music in Chambere for a living, studied hard Red Voltaire, Descartes, Locke, Hobbes, Leibniz, and Puffendorf, and evinced an uncommon vivacity and talent for conversation, which made him a favorite in social circles. His chief labor, however, for five years was in inventing a system of musical notation, which led him to Lyon, and then in 1741 to Paris. He was now twenty-nine years old, a visionary man full of schemes with crude opinions and unbounded self-conceit, but poor and unknown, a true adventurer with many agreeable qualities, irregular habits, and not very scrupulous morals. Favored by letters of introduction to ladies of distinction, for he was a favorite with the ladies who liked his enthusiasm, freshness, elegant talk, and grand sentiments, he succeeded in getting his system of musical notation examined, although not accepted, by the French Academy, and secured an appointment as secretary in the suite of the ambassador to Venice. In this city, Rousseau remained but a short time, being disgusted with what he called official insolence, which did not properly recognize native genius. He returned to Paris as poor as when he left it, and lived in a cheap restaurant. There he made the acquaintance of his Therese, a healthy, amiable woman but low, illiterate, unappreciative in course, the author of many of his subsequent miseries. She lived with him till he died, first as his mistress and housekeeper, although later in life he married her. She was the mother of his five children, every one of whom he sent to a foundling hospital, justifying his inhumanity by those sophistries and paradoxes with which his writings abound, even in one of his letters appealing for pity because he had never known the sweetness of a father's embrace. With extraordinary self-conceit, too, he looked upon himself all the while in his numerous illicit loves as a paragon of virtue, being apparently without any moral sense or perception of moral distinctions. It was not till Rousseau was thirty-nine years of age that he attracted public attention by his writings, although earlier known in literary circles, especially in that infidel Parisian coterie where Diderot, Grimm, Dolback, Dallambert, David Hume, the Marquis de Mirabeau, Hveltius, and other wits shined, in which circle no genius was acknowledged and no profundity of thought was deemed possible unless allied with those pagan ideas which St. Augustine had exploded and Pascal had ridiculed. Even while living among these people, Rousseau had all the while a kind of sentimental religiosity which revolted at their ribald scoffing, although he never protested. He had written some fugitive pieces of music and had attempted and failed in several slight operettas, composing both music and words, but the work which made Rousseau famous was his essay on a subject propounded in seventeen forty-nine by the Academy of Dijon, has the progress of science and the arts contributed to corrupt or to purify morals. This was a strange subject for a literary institution too propound, but one which exactly fitted the genius of Rousseau. The boldness of his paradox, for he maintained the evil effects of science and art, and the brilliancy of his style secured readers, although the essay was crude in argument and false in logic. In his confessions he himself condemns it as the weakest of all his works, although full of force and fire, and he adds, with whatever talent a man may be born, the art of writing is not easily learned. It has been said that Rousseau got the idea of taking the offside of this question from his literary friend Diderot, and that his unexpected success with it was the secret of his lifelong career of opposition to all established institutions. This is interesting, but not very authentic. The next year his irregular activity having been again stimulated by learning that his essay had gained the premium at Dijon, and by the fact of its great vogue as a published pamphlet, another performance fairly raised Rousseau to the pinnacle of fashion, and this was an opera which he composed, La Devine du Viage, The Village Sorcerer. We was performed at Fontainebleau before the court, and received with unexampled enthusiasm. His profession, so far as he had any, was that of a copyist of music, and his musical taste in facile talents had at last brought him an uncritical recognition. But Rousseau soon abandoned music for literature. In 1753 he wrote another essay for the Academy of Dijon on the origin of the inequality of man, full of still more startling paradoxes than his first in which he attempted to show, with great felicity of language, the superior ority of savage life over civilization. At the age of 42 Rousseau revisited Protestant Geneva, abjured in its turn the Catholic faith, and was offered the post of librarian of the city. But he could not live out of the atmosphere of Paris, nor did he wish to remain under the shadow of Voltaire, living in his villa near the city gate of Geneva, who had but little admiration for Rousseau, and whose superior social position excited the latter's envy. Yet he professed to hate Paris with its conventionalities and fashions, and sought a quiet retreat where he could more leisurely pursue his studies and enjoy nature, which he really loved. This was provided for him by an enthusiastic friend. Madame de Epenet, in the beautiful valley of Montmorency, and called the Hermitage, situated in the grounds of her chateau de la Chevrette. Here he lived with his wife and mother-in-law, he himself enjoying the hospitalities of the chateau besides. Society of a most cultivated kind, also woods, lawns, parks, gardens, all for nothing, the luxuries of civilization, the glories of nature, and the delights of friendship combined. It was an earthly paradise given him by enthusiastic admirers of his genius in conversation. In this retreat, one of the most favored, which a poor author ever had, Rousseau ever craving some outlet for his passionate sentiments created an ideal object of love. He wrote imaginary letters, dwelling with equal rapture on those he wrote and those he fancied he received in return, and which he read to his lady friends, after his rambles in the forests and parks, during the reunions at the supper table. Thus was born the Novel Eloise, a novel of immense fame in which the characters are invested with every earthly attraction, living in voluptuous peace, yet giving vent to those passions which consume the unsatisfied soul. It was the forerunner of Corinne, the sorrows of Werther, Thaddeus of Warsaw, and all those sentimental romances which amused our grandfathers and grandmothers, but which increased the prejudice of religious people against novels. It was not until Sir Walter Scott arose with his wholesome manliness that the embargo against novels was removed. The life which Rousseau lived at the Hermitage, reveries in the forest, luxurious dinners, and sentimental friendships, led to a passionate love affair with the Comtesse de Uldetot, a sister-in-law of his patroness, Madame de Apenet, a woman not only married, but who had another lover besides. The result, of course, was miserable. Jealousies, peaks, humiliations, misunderstandings, and the sundering of the ties of friendship, which led to the necessity of another retreat, a real home the wretched man never had. This was furnished still in the vicinity of Montmorency by another aristocratic friend, the Maréchal de Luxembourg, the fiscal agent of the Prince de Condes. And nothing to me is stranger than that this wandering, morbid, irritable man without birth or fortune, the father of the wildest revolutionary and democratic doctrines, and always hated both by the courts and the church, should have found his friends and warmest admirers and patrons in the highest circles of social life. It can be explained only by the singular fascination of his eloquence and by the extreme solidity of his worshippers in appreciating his doctrines and the state of society to which his principles logically led. In this second retreat, Rousseau had the entree to the palace of the Duke of Luxembourg, where he read to the friends assembled at its banquets his new production, Émile, a singular treatise on education, not so faulty as his previous works, but still false in many of its principles, especially in regard to religion. This book contained an admirable and powerful impulse away from artificiality and towards naturalist and education, which has exerted an immense influence for good. We shall revert to it later. A few months before the publication of Émile, Rousseau had issued the social contract, the most revolutionary of all his works, subversive of all precedents in politics, government, and the organization of society, while also confounding Christianity with ecclesiasticism and attacking its influence in a social order. All his works obtained a wide fame before publication by reason of his habit of reading them to enthusiastic and influential friends who made them known. The social contract, however, dangerous as it was, did not when published, aroused so much opposition as Émile. The latter book, as we now see, contained much that was admirable, but its freedom and looseness in religious discussion called down the wrath of the clergy, excited the alarm of the government, and finally compelled the author to fly for his life to Switzerland. Rousseau is now regarded as an enemy to Christian doctrine, even as he was a foe to the existing institutions of society. In Geneva, his books are publicly burned. Henceforth his life is imbittered by constant persecution. He flies from Canton to Canton in the freest country in Europe, obnoxious not only for his opinions, but for his habits of life. He effectively adopts the Armenian dress with its big fur bonnet and long girdled caftan among the Swiss peasantry. He is as full of personal eccentricities as he is of intellectual crochets. He becomes a sort of literary vagabond with every man's hand against him. He now writes a series of essays called Letters from the Mountain, full of bitterness and anti-Christian sentiments. So incensed by these writings are the country people among whom he dwells that he is again forced to fly. David Hume, regarded him as a mild, affectionate and persecuted man, gives Rousseau a shelter in England. The wretched man retires to Derbyshire and there writes his confessions, the most interesting and most dangerous of his books showing a diseased and irritable mind and most sophistical views on the immutable principles of both morality and religion. A victim of mistrust and jealousy, he quarrels with Hume who learns to despair his character while pitting the sensitive sufferings of one whom he calls a man born without skin. Rousseau returns to France at age of 55. After various wanderings he is permitted to settle in Paris, where he lives with great frugality in a single room, poorly furnished, supporting himself by again copying music, sought still in high society, yet shy, reserved, forlorn, bitter. Occasionally making new friends who are attracted by the infantine simplicity of his manners and apparent amiability, but losing them almost as soon as made by his petty jealousies and irritability, being equally indignant at neglect and intolerant of attention. Rousseau's declining health and the fear of his friends that he was on the borders of insanity led to his last retreat, offered by a munificent friend at Arminonville, near Paris, where he died at 66 years of age in 1778 as something from poison administered by his own hand. The revolutionary National Assembly of France in 1790 bestowed a pension of 1500 francs on his worthless widow, who had married a stable boy soon after the death of her husband. Such was the checkered life of Rousseau. As to his character, Lord Brohum says that, never were so much genius before united with so much weakness. The leading spring of his life was egotism. He never felt himself wrong and the sophistries he used to justify his immoralities are both ludicrous and pitiable. His treatment of Madame Des Warrens, his first benefactor, was heartless while the abandonment of his children was infamous. He twice changed his religion without convictions for the advancement of his fortunes. He pretended to be poor when he was independent in his circumstances. He supposed himself to be without vanity while he was notoriously the most conceited man in France. He quarreled with all his friends, he made war on society itself, he declared himself a believer in Christianity but denied all revelation, all miracles, all inspiration, all supernaturalism, and everything he could not reconcile with his reason. His bitterest enemies were the atheists themselves who regarded him as a hypocrite since he professed to believe in what he undermined. The hostility of the church was excited against him, not because he directly assailed Christianity, but because he denied all its declarations and sapped its authority. Rousseau was, however, a sentimentalist rather than a rationalist, an artist rather than a philosopher. He was not a learned man, but a bold thinker. He would root out all distinctions in society because they could not be reconciled with his sense of justice. He preached a gospel of human rights based not on Christianity but on instinct. He was full of impracticable theories. He would have no war, no suffering, no hardship, no bondage, no fear and even no labor, since these were evils and according to his notions of moral government unnecessary. But in all his grand theories he ignored the settled laws of providence, even those of that nature he so fervently worshipped, all that is decreed concerning man or woman, all that is stern and real in existence. And while he uttered such sophistries, he excited discontent with the inevitable condition of man. He loosened family ties. He relaxed wholesome restraints. He infused an intense hatred of all conditions subject to necessary toil. The life of this embittered philanthropist was as great a contradiction as were his writings. This benevolent man sends his own children to a foundling hospital. This independent man lives for years on the bounty of an airing woman whom at last he exposes and deserts. This high-minded idealizer of friendship quarrels with every man who seeks to extricate him from the consequences of his own imprudence. This affectionate lover refuses a seat at his table to the woman with whom he lives and who is the mother of his children. This proud Republican accepts a pension from King George III and lives in the houses of aristocratic admirers without payment. This religious teacher rarely goes to church or respects the outward observances of the Christianity he affects. This moral theorizer on his own confession steals and lies and cheats. This modest innocent corrupts almost every woman who listens to his eloquence. This lofty thinker consumes his time in frivolity and senseless quarrels. This patriot makes war on the institutions of his country and even of civilized life. This humble man turns his back on everyone who will not do him reverence. Such was this precursor of revolutions, this agitator, this hypocrite, this egotist, this lying prophet. A man admired and despised, brilliant but indefinite, original but not true, acute but not wise, logical but reasoning on false premises, advancing some great truths but spoiling their legitimate effect by sophistries and falsehoods. Why then discuss the ideas and influence of so despicable a creature? Because, sophistical as they were, those ideas contained truths of tremendous germinant power. Because in the rank soil of his times they produced a vast crop of bitter poisonous fruit, while in the more open, better aerated soil of this century they have borne and have yet to bear a frutage of universal benefit. God's ways seem mysterious. It is for men patiently to study, understand, and utilize them. Let us turn to the more definite consideration of the writings which have given this author so brilliant a fame. I omit any review of his operas and his system of musical notation as not bearing on the opinions of society. The first work, as I have said, which brought Rousseau into notice was the treatise for the Academy of Dijon as to whether the arts and sciences have contributed to corrupt or to purify morals. Rousseau followed the bent of his genius in maintaining that they have done more harm than good, and he was so fresh and original and brilliant that he gained the prize. This little work contains the germ of all his subsequent theories, especially that in which he magnifies the state of nature over civilization. An amazing paradox, which, however, appealed to society when men were wearied with the very pleasures for which they lived. Rousseau's cant about the virtues engendered by ignorance, idleness, and barbarism is repulsive to every sound mind. Civilization may present greater temptations than a state of nature, but these are inseparable from any growth and can be overcome by the valorous mind. Who but a madman would sweep away civilization with its factitious and remediable evils for barbarism with its untutored impulses and animal life? Here, Rousseau makes war upon society, upon all that is glorious in the advance of intellect and the growth of morality, upon the reason and aspirations of mankind. Can inexperience be a better guide than experience when it encounters crime and folly? Yet, on the other hand, a plea for a greater simplicity of life, a larger study of nature and a freer enjoyment of its refreshing contrasts to the hot house life of cities is one of the most responsible and helpful impulses of our own day. What can be more absurd, although bold and striking, than Rousseau's essay on the origin of human inequalities? In this, he pushes out the doctrine of personal liberty to its utmost logical sequence, so as to do away with government itself and with all regulation for the common good. We do not quarrel with his abstract propositions in respect to political equality, but his deduction struck a blow at civilization, since he maintains that inequalities of human condition are the source of all political and social evils, while Christianity, confirmed by common sense, teaches that the source of social evils is in the selfish nature of man, rather than in his outward condition. And further, if it were possible to destroy the inequalities of life, they would soon again return, even with the most boundless liberty. Here, common sense is sacrificed to a captivating theory and all the experiences of the world are ignored. This shows the folly of projecting any abstract theory, however true to its remote and logical sequence. In the attempt, we are almost certain to be landed in absurdity, so complicated are the relations of life, especially in governmental and political science. What doctrine of civil or political economy would be applicable in all ages and all countries and all conditions? Like the ascertained laws of science or the great and accepted truths of the Bible, political axioms are to be considered in their relation with other truths equally accepted, or men are soon brought into a labyrinth of difficulties and the strongest intellect is perplexed. And especially, will this be the case when a theory under consideration is not a truth, but an assumption? That was the trouble with Rousseau. His theories, disdainful of experience, however logically treated, became in the remotest sequence and application insulting to the human understanding because they were often not only assumptions but assumptions of what was not true, although very specious and flattering to certain classes. Rousseau confounded the great truth of the justice of moral and political equality with the absurd and unnatural demand for social and material equality. The great modern cry for equal opportunity for all is sound and Christian, but any attempt to guarantee individual success in using opportunity to ensure the lame and the lazy and equal rank in the race must end in confusion and distraction. The evil of Rousseau's crude theories or false assumptions was practically seen in the acceptance of their logical conclusions, which led to anarchy, murder, pillage and outrageous excess. The great danger attending his theories is that they are generally half truths, truth and falsehood blended. His writings are sophisticle. It is difficult to separate the truth from the error by reason of the marvelous felicity of his language. I do not underrate his genius or his style. He was doubtless an original thinker and a most brilliant and artistic writer. And by so much did he confuse people even by the speciousness of his logic. There is nothing indefinite in what he advances. He is not a poet dealing in mysticisms but a rhetorical philosopher, propounding startling theories, partly true and partly false, which he logically enforces with matchless eloquence. End of Section 1. Section 2 of Beacon Lights of History Volume 13, Great Writers by John Lorde. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kay Hant. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Parts 2. Probably the most influential of Rousseau's writings was the social contract. The Great Textbook of the Revolution. In this famous treatise he advanced some important ideas which undoubtedly are based on ultimate truth such as that the people are the source of power, that might does not make right, that slavery is an aggression on human rights. But with these ideal truths he combines the assertion that government is a contract between the governor and the governed. In a perfect state of society this may be the ideal but society is not and never has been perfect. And certainly in all the early ages of the world governments were imposed upon people by the strong hand irrespective of their wills and wishes. And these were the only governments which were fit and useful in that elder day. Governments, as a plain matter of fact, have generally arisen from circumstances and relations with which the people have had little to do. The Oriental monarchies were the gradual outgrowth of patriarchal tradition and successful military leadership and in regard to them the people were never consulted at all. The Roman Empire was ruled without the consent of the governed. Feudal monarchies in Europe were based on the divine rights of kings. There was no state in Europe where a compact or social contract had been made or implied. Even later when the French elected Napoleon they chose a monarch because they feared anarchy without making any stipulation. There were no contracting parties. The error of Rousseau was in assuming a social contract as a fact and then reasoning upon the assumption. His premises are wrong or at least they are nothing more than statements of what abstractly might be made to follow from the assumption that the people actually are the source of power, a condition most desirable and in the last analysis correct, even since military despots used the power of the people in order to oppress the people but which is practically true only in certain states. Yet after all when brought under the domain of law by the sturdy sense and utilitarian sagacity of the Anglo-Saxon race Rousseau's Doctor of the Sovereignty of the People is the great political motor of this century in republics and monarchies alike. Again Rousseau maintains that whatever acquisitions an individual or a society may make the right to this property must always be subordinate to the right which the community at large has over the possessions of all. Here is the germ of much of our present state socialism. Whatever element of truth there may be in the theory that would regard land and capital the means of production as the joint possession of all the members of the community the basic doctrine of socialism any forcible attempt to distribute present results of individual production and accumulation would be unjust and dangerous to the last degree. In the case of the furious carrying out of this doctrine by the crazed French revolutionists it led to outrageous confiscation on the ground that all property belonged to the state and therefore the representatives of the nation could do what they pleased with it. This shallow sophistry was accepted by the French National Convention when it swept away a state of nobles and clergy not on the tenable ground that the owners were public enemies but on the baseless pretext that their property belonged to the nation. From this sophistry about the rights of property Rousseau advanced another of still worse tendency which was that the general will is always in the right and constantly tends to the public good. The theory is inconsistent with itself. Light and truth do not come from the universal reason but from the thoughts of great men stimulated into growth among the people. The teachers of the world belong to a small class. Society is in need of constant reform which are not suggested by the mass but by a few philosophers or reformers the wise men who save cities. Rousseau further says that a whole people can never become corrupted a most bare faced assertion. Have not all nations suffered periods of corruption? This notion that the whole people cannot air opens the door for any license. It logically leads to that other idea of the native majesty of man and the perfectability of society which this sophist boldly accepted. Rousseau thought that if society were released from all law and all restraint the good impulses and good sense of the majority would produce a higher state of virtue and wisdom than what he saw around him since majorities could do no wrong and the universal reason could not air. In this absurdity lay the fundamental principle of the French revolution so far as it was produced by the writings of philosophers. This doctrine was eagerly seized upon by the French people maddened by generations of oppression, poverty and degradation because it appealed to the pride and vanity of the masses. At that time congregated bodies of ignorance and wickedness. Rousseau had an unbounded trust in human nature that it is good and wise and will do the best thing of left to itself. But can anything be more antagonistic to all the history of the race? I doubt if Rousseau had any profound knowledge or even really extensive reading. He was a dreamer, a theorist, a sentimentalist. He was the arch-priest of all sensationalism in the guise of logic. What more acceptable to the vile people of his age than the theory that in their collective capacity they could not air that the universal reason was divine? What more logical than its culmination in that outrageous indecency the worship of reason in the person of a prostitute? Again, Rousseau's notion of the limitations of law and the prerogative of the people carried out would lead to the utter subversion of central authority and reduce nations to an absolute democracy of small communities. They would divide and subdivide until society was resolved to its original elements. This idea existed among the early Greek states when a state rarely comprised more than a single city or town or village such as might be found among the tribes of North American Indians. The great political question in ancient Greece was the autonomy of cities which kept the whole land in constant wars and dissensions and quarrels and jealousies and prevented that centralization of power which would have made Greece unconquerable and the mistress of the world. Our wholesome American system of autonomy and local affairs with a common authority in matters affecting the general good is organized liberty. But the ancient and outgrown idea of unregulated autonomy was revived by Rousseau and though it could not be carried out by the French revolutionists who accepted nearly all of his theories, it led to the disintegration of France and the multiplication of offices fatal to a healthy central power. Napoleon broke up all this in his centralized despotism, even if to keep the revolutionary sympathy, he retained the departments which were substituted for the ancient provinces. The extreme spirit of democratic liberty which is the characteristic of Rousseau's political philosophy led to the advocacy of the wildest doctrines of equality. He would prevent the accumulation of wealth so that, to use his words, no one citizen should be rich enough to buy another and no one so poor as to be obliged to sell himself. He would have neither rich people nor beggars. What could flow from such doctrines but discontent and unreasonable expectations among the poor and a general fear and sense of insecurity among the rich? This state of nature, moreover, in his view, could be reached only by going backward and destroying all civilization and it was civilization which he ever decried. A very pleasant doctrine of Agobon's but likely to be treated with derisive mockery by all those who have something to conserve. Another and most dangerous principle which was advocated in the social contract was that religion has nothing to do with the affairs of civil and political life, that religious obligations do not bind a citizen, that Christianity, in fact, ignores all the great relations of man and society. This is distinct from the Puritan doctrine of the separation of the church from the state by which simply meant that priests ought not interfere in matters purely political, nor the government meddle with religious affairs. They prime doctrine in a free state. But nobody of men were ever more ardent defenders of the doctrine that all religious ideas ought to bear on the social and political fabric than the Puritans. They would break up slavery if it derogated from the doctrine of the common brotherhood of man as declared by Christ, they would use their influence as Christians to root out all evil institutions and laws and bring the sublime truths of the master to bear on all the relations of life, on citizens at the ballot box, at the helm of power, and in legislative bodies. Christianity was, to them, the supreme law which all human laws must harmonize. But Russo would throw out Christianity altogether as foreign to the duties and relations of both citizens and rulers, pretending that it ignored all connection with mundane affairs and had reference only to the salvation of the soul, as if all Christ's teachings were not regulative of the springs of conduct between man and man as indicative of the relations between man and God. Like Voltaire, Russo had the excuse of a corrupt ecclesiasticism to be broken into, but the Church and Christianity are two different things. This he did not see. No one was more impatient of all restraints than Russo, that he maintained that men, if calling themselves Christian, must submit to every wrong in injustice looking for a remedy in the future world, thus pouring contempt on those who had no right, according to his view of their system, to complain of injustice or strive to rise above temporal evils. Christianity, he said, inculcates servitude and dependence. Its spirit is favorable to tyrants. True Christians are formed to be slaves and they know it and never will trouble themselves about conspiracy and insurrections, since this transitory world has no value in their eyes. He denied that Christians could be good soldiers, a falsehood rebuked for us by the wars of the Reformation, by the troops of Cromwell and Gustavus of Dolphus, by our American soldiers in the late Civil War. Thus he would throw away the greatest stimulus to heroism, even the consciousness of duty and devotion to great truths and interests. I cannot follow out the political ideas of Russo and his various other treatises in which he prepared the way for evolution and for the excesses of the reign of terror. The truth is, Russo's feelings were vastly superior to his thinking. Whatever of good is to result from his influence will arise out of the impulse he gave toward the search for ideals that should embrace the many as well as the few in their benefits. When he himself attempted to apply this impulse to philosophic political thought, his unregulated mind went all astray. Let us now turn to consider a moment his doctrines pertaining to education as brought out in his greatest and most unexceptionable work, his Emil. In this remarkable book, everything pertaining to human life appears to be discussed. The duty of parents, child management, punishments, perception, and the beginning of thinking, toys, games, catechisms, all passions and sentiments, religion, friendship, love, jealousy, pity, the means of happiness, the pleasures and profits of travel, the principles of virtue, of justice and liberty. Language, books, the nature of man and woman, the arts of conventional life, politeness, riches, poverty, society, marriage. On all these and other questions he discourses with great sagacity and good sense, and with unrivaled beauty of expression, often rising to great eloquence, never dull or uninstructive, aiming to present virtue and vice in their true colors, inspiring and salted sentiments and presenting happiness in simple pleasures in natural life. This treatise is both full and original. The author supposes an imaginary pupil named Amiel, and he himself, entrusted with the care of the boy's education, attends him from his cradle to his manhood, assists him with the necessary directions for his general improvement, and finally introduces him to an amiable and unsophisticated girl whose love he wins by his virtues and whom he honorably marries. So that, although a treatise, the work is invested with the fascination of a novel. In reading this book, which made so great a noise in Europe with so much that is admirable, I find but little to criticize, except three things, which mar its beauty and make it both dangerous and false, in which the unsoundness of Rousseau's mind and character, the strange paradoxes of his life in mixing up good with evil, are brought out, and that so forcibly that the author was hunted and persecuted from one part of Europe to another on account of it. The first is that he makes all natural impulses generous and virtuous and man, therefore, naturally good instead of perverse, thus throwing not only Christianity but experience entirely aside and laying down maxims, which logically carried out would make society perfect if only nature were always consulted. This doctrine indirectly makes all the treasures of human experience useless and untutored impulse the guide of life. It would break the restraints with civilization and a knowledge of life imposed and reduce man to a primitive state. In the advocacy of this subtle falsehood, Rousseau pours contempt on all the teachings of mankind, on all schools and colleges, on all conventionalities and social laws, yay, on learning itself. He always stigmatizes scholars as pedants. Second, he would reduce woman to insignificance, having her rule by arts and small devices, making her the inferior of man on whom she is dependent and to whose caprice she is bound to submit. A sort of toy or slave engrossed only with domestic duties, like the woman of antiquity. He would give new rights and liberties to man, but none to woman as man's equal, thus keeping her and a dependent utterly irreconcilable with the bold freedom which he otherwise advocates. The dangerous tendency of his writings is somewhat checked, however, by the everlasting hostility with which women of character and force of will, such as they call strong-minded, will ever pursue him. He will be no oracle to them. But a still more market-defect weakens a meal as one of the guidebooks of the world, great as are its varied excellencies. The author undermines all faith in Christianity as a revelation or as a mean of man's communion with the divine for guidance, consolation, or inspiration. Nor does he support one of his moral or religious doctrines by an appeal to the sacred scriptures which have been so deep a well of moral and spiritual wisdom for so many races of men. Practically he is in Fidel and Pagan, although he professes to admire some of the moral truths which he never applies to his system. He is a pure theist or deist, recognizing like the old Greeks no religion but that of nature and valuing no attainments but such as are suggested by nature and reason, which are the gods he worships from first to last in all his writings. The confession of faith by the Savoyard Vicar introduced into the fourth of the six books of this work, which having nothing to do with his main object, he unnecessarily drags in, is an artful and specious onslaught on all doctrines and facts revealed in the Bible, on all miracles, all prophecies and all supernatural revelation, thus attacking Christianity in its most vital point and making it of no more authority than Buddhism or Muhammadianism. Faith is utterly extinguished. A cold reason is all that he would leave to man, no consolation but what the mind can arrive at, unaided, no knowledge but what can be reached by original scientific investigation. He destroys not only all faith but all authority by a low appeal to prejudices and by vulgar wits such as the infidels of a former age used in their heartless and flippant controversies. I am not surprised that the hostility displayed even in France against him by both Catholics and Protestants. When he advocated his rights of man from which Thomas Payne and Jefferson himself drew their maxims, he appealed to the self love of the great mass of men ground down by feudal injustices and inequalities. To the sense of justice, sophisticly it is true but in a way which commanded the respect of the intellect. When he assailed Christianity in its innermost fortresses while professing to be a Christian, he incurred the indignation of all Christians and the contempt of all infidels, for he added hypocrisy to skepticism, which they did not. Diderot, de Alembert and others were bold unbelievers and did not veil their hostilities under a weak disguise. I've never read a writer who in spirit was more essentially pagan than Rousseau or who wrote maxims more entirely antagonistic to Christianity. Aside from these great falsities, the perfection of natural impulse, the inferiority of women and the worthlessness of Christianity as inculcated in this book, Emil must certainly be ranked among the great classics of educational literature. With these expurgated, it confirms the admirable methods inspired by its unmethodical suggestions. Noting the oppressiveness of the usual order of education through books and apparatus, he scorns all tradition and cries, let the child learn direct from nature. Himself, sensitive and humane, having suffered as a child from the tyranny of adults, he demands the tenderest care and sympathy for children, a patient's study of their characteristics, a gentle, progressive leading of them to discover for themselves rather than a cramming of them with facts. The first moral education should be negative. No preaching of virtue and truth, but shielding from vice and error. He says, take the very reverse of the current practice and you will almost always do right. This spirit indeed is the key to his entire plan. His ideas were those of the 19th, not the 18th century. Free play to childish vitality, punishment the natural inconvenience consequent on wrongdoing, the incitement of the desire to learn, the training of sense activity rather than reflection. In early years, the acquirement of the power to learn rather than the acquisitions of learning. In short, the natural and scientifically progressive rather than the bookish and analytically literary method was the end and aim of a meal. Actually, this book accomplished little in its own time, chiefly because of its attack on established religion. Influentially, it reappeared in Pestilasi, the first practical reformer of methods in Frable, the inventor of the kindergarten, in Spencer, the great systematizer of the philosophy of development. And through these, its spirit pervades the whole world of education at the present time. In Rousseau's new hallowees, there are the same contradictions, the same paradoxes, the same unsoundness as in his other works, but it is more eloquent than any. It is a novel in which he paints all the aspirations of the soul, all its unrest, all its indefinite longings, its raptures and its despair, in which he unfetters the imagination and sanctifies every impulse, not only of affection, but of passion. This novel was the pioneer of the sentimental romances, which rapidly followed in France and England and Germany. Worse than our sensational literature, since the author veiled his immoralities by painting the transports of passion under the guise of love, whichever has its seat in the affections and is sustained only by respect. Here, Rousseau was a disguised seducer, a poisoner of the moral sentiments, a foe to what is most sacred, and he was the more dangerous from his irresistible eloquence. His sophistries in regard to political and social rights may be met by reason, but not his attacks on the heart with his imaginary sorrows and joys, his painting of raptures which can never be found. Here he undermines virtue as he had undermined truth and law. Here reprobation must become unqualified and he appears one of the very worst men who ever exercised a commanding influence on a wicked and perverse generation. And this view of the man is rather confirmed by his own confessions, a singularly attractive book, yet from which, after the perusal of the long catalog of his sorrows, joys, humiliations, triumphs, ecstasies and miseries, glories and shame, one rises with great disappointment. Since no great truths, useful lessons, or even ennobling sentiments are impressed upon the mind to make us wiser or better. The confessions are only a revelation of that sensibility, excessive and morbid, which reminds us of Byron and his misanthropic poetry, showing a man defiant, proud, vain, unreasonable, unsatisfied, supremely worldly and egotistic. The first six books are merely annals of sentimental debauchery, the last six a kind of thermometer of friendship, containing an accurate account of kisses given and received, with slights, huffs, visits, quarrels, suspicions and jealousies, interspersed with grand sentiments and profound views of life and human nature, yet all illustrative of the utter vanity of earth and the failure of all moral pleasures to satisfy the cravings of an immortal mind. The confessions remind us of Manfred and Ecclesiastes blended, exceedingly readable and often unexceptionable, where virtue is commended and vice portrayed in its true light. But on the whole, a book which no unsophisticated or inexperienced person can read without the consciousness of receiving a moral taint, a book in no respect leading to repose or lofty contemplation or to submission to the evils of life, which it catalogs with amazing detail, a book not even conducive to innocent entertainment. It is the revelation of the inner life of a sensualist, an egotist and a hypocrite, or the modlin, although genuine admiration for nature and virtue and friendship and love. And the book reveals one of the most miserable and dissatisfied men that ever walked the earth, seeking peace and solitude and virtue, while yielding to unrestrained impulses, a man of morbid sensibility, ever yearning for happiness and pursuing it by impossible and impractical paths. No sadder autobiography has ever been written. It is a lame and impotent attempt at self-justification, revealing on every page the writer's distrust of the virtues which he exalts and of man whose reason and majesty he deifies, even of the friendships in which he sought consolation and of the retirements where he hoped for rest. The book reveals the man. The writer has no hope or repose or faith. Nothing pleases him long and he is driven by his wild and undisciplined nature from one retreat to another by persecution more fancied than real until he dies not without suspicion of having taken his own life. Such was Rousseau, the greatest literary genius of his age, the apostle of the reforms which are attempted in the French Revolution and of ideas which still have a wondrous power, some of which are grand and true, but more of which are sophisticated, false and dangerous. His theories are all plausible and are all enforced with matchless eloquence of style but not with eloquence of thoughts or true feeling, like the soaring flights of Pascal in every respect is superior and genius because more profound and lofty. Rousseau's writings, like his life, are one vast contradiction, the blending of truth with error, the truth valuable even when commonplace, the error subtle and dangerous, so that his general influence must be considered bad wherever man is weak or credulous or inexperienced or perverse. I wish I could speak better of a man whom so many honestly admire and whose influence has been so marked during the last hundred years and will be equally great for a hundred years to come, a man from whom Madame de Stahl, Jefferson and Lamartine drew so much of their inspiration, whose ideas about childhood have so helpfully transformed the educational method of our own time. But I must speak my honest conviction from the light I have, at the same time hoping that fuller light may justify more leniency to one of the oracles whose doctrines are still cherished by many of the guides of modern thought. End of section two. Section three of Beacon Light of History, volume 13, Great Writers by John Lord. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Kay Hand. Sir Walter Scott, part one. 1771 to 1832, the modern novel. In the early decades of the 19th century, the two most prominent figures in English literature were Scur, Walter Scott and Lord Byron. They are still read and admired, especially Scott, but it is not easy to understand the enormous popularity of these two men in their own day. Their busts or pictures were in every cultivated family and in almost every shop window. Everybody was familiar with the lineaments of their countenances and even with every peculiarity of their dress. Who did not know the shape of the Byronic collar in the rough, plated form of the Wizard of the North? Who could not repeat the most famous passages in the writings of these two authors? Is it so now? If not, what a commentary might be written on human fame? How transitory are the judgments of men in regard to everyone whom fashion stamps? The verdict of critics is that only some half dozen authors are now read with the interest in glow which their works called out a hundred years ago. Even the novels of Sir Walter, although to be found in every library, kindle but little enthusiasm, compared with that excited by the masterpieces of Thackeray, Dickens, George Elliott, and of the favorites of the passing day. Why is this? Will these later lights also cease to burn? Will they too pass away? Is this age so much advanced that what pleased our grandfathers and grandmothers has no charm for us, but is often flat, stale and unprofitable, at least decidedly uninteresting? I am inclined to the opinion that only a very small part of any man's writings is really immortal. Take out the elegy in a country churchyard and how much is left of gray for other generations to admire. And so of Goldsmith, besides the vicar of Wakefield and the deserted village, there is little in his writings that is likely to prove immortal. Johnson wrote, but little poetry that is now generally valued. Certainly his own dictionary, his greatest work is not immortal and is scarcely a standard. Indeed, we have outgrown nearly everything which was prized so highly a century ago, not only in poetry and fiction, but in philosophy, theology, and science. Perhaps that is least permanent which once was regarded as most certain. If then the poetry and novels of Sir Walter Scott are not so much read or admired as they once were, we only say that he is no exception to the rule. I have in mind but two authors in the whole range of English literature that are read and prized as much today as they were 200 years ago. And if this is true, what shall we say of rhetoricians like Macaulay, of critics like Carlisle, of theologians like Jonathan Edwards, of historians like Hume and Guizot, and of many other great men of whom it has been the fashion to say that their works are lasting as the language in which they are written. Some few books will doubtless live, but alas, how few? Where now are the 800,000 in the Alexandrian Library, which Ptolemy collected with some great care? What, even their titles? Where are the writings of Varro said to have been the most learned man of all antiquity? I make these introductory remarks to show how shallow is the criticism passed upon a novelist or poet like Scott, in that he is not now so popular or so much read as he was in his own day. It is the fate of most great writers, the Augustines, the Voltaires, the Baals of the world. It is enough to say that they were lauded and valued in their time, since this is about all we can say of most of the works supposed to be immortal. But when we remember the enthusiasm with which the novels of Scott were at first received, the great sums of money which were paid for them and the honors he received from them, he may well claim a renown and a popularity such as no other literary man ever enjoyed. His eyes beheld the glory of a great name, his ears rang with the plaudits of idolaters. He had the consciousness of doing good work, universally acknowledged and gratefully remembered. Scarcely any other novelist ever created so much healthy pleasure combined with so much sound instruction. And further, he left behind him a reproachless name, having fewer personal defects than any literary man of his time, being everywhere beloved, esteemed and almost worshiped, whom distant travelers came to see. Sure of kind and gracious treatment, a hero in their eyes to the last, with no drawbacks such as marred with the fame of Byron or of Burns. That so great a genius as Scott is fading in the minds of this generation may be not without comfort to those honest and hardworking men in every walk of human life who can say, we too were useful in our day and had our share of honors and rewards, all perhaps that we deserved or even more. What if we are forgotten as most men are destined to be? To live in the mouths of men is not the greatest thing or the best. Act well your part, there all the honor lies. For life after all is a drama or a stage. The supremist happiness is not in being praised, it is in the consciousness of doing right and being possessed with the power of goodness. When however a man has been seated on such a lofty pinnacle as was Sir Walter Scott, we wish to know something of his personal traits and the steps by which he advanced to fame. Was he overrated as most famous men have been? What is the niche he will probably occupy in the temple of literary fame? What are the characteristics of his productions? What gave him his prodigious and extraordinary popularity? Was he a born genius like Byron and Burns or was he merely a most industrious worker aided by fortunate circumstances and the caprices of fashion? What were the intellectual forces of his day and how did he come to be counted among them? All these points it is difficult to answer satisfactorily but some light may be shed upon them. The bulky volumes of Lockhart's biography constitute a mine of information about Scott but are now heavy reading without much vivacity affording a strong contrast to Boswell's life of Johnson which concealed nothing that we would like to know. A son-in-law is not likely to be a dispassionate biographer especially when family pride and interest restrain him. On the other hand it is not wise for a biographer to be too candid and belittle his hero by the enumeration of foyables not consistent with the general tenor of the man's life. Lockhart's knowledge of his subject and his literary skill have given us much and with Scott's own letters and the critical notice of his contemporaries both the man and his works may be fairly estimated. Most biographers aim to make the birth and parentage of their heroes as respectable as possible. Of authors who are nobly born there are very few. Most English and Scotch literary men are descended from ancestors of the middle class lawyers clergyman physicians small landed proprietors merchants and so on who were able to give their sons an education in the universities. Sir Walter Scott traced his descent to an ancient Scottish chief. His grandfather Robert Scott was bred to the sea but being shipwrecked near Dundee he became a farmer and was active in the cattle trade. Scott's father was a writer to the signet in Edinburgh what would be called in England a solicitor. A thriving respectable man having a large and lucrative legal practice and being highly esteemed for his industry and integrity. A zealous Presbyterian formal and precise in manner strict in the observance of the Sabbath and of all that he considered to be right. His wife and Rutherford was the daughter of a professor of medicine in the University of Edinburgh a lady of rather better education than the average of her time. A mother whom Sir Walter remembered with great tenderness and to whose ample memory and power of graphic description he owed much of his own skill in reproducing the past. 12 children were the offspring of this marriage although only five survived very early youth. Walter the ninth child was born on the 15th of August 1771 and when quite young in consequence of a fever lost for a time the use of his right leg. By the advice of his grandfather Dr. Rutherford he was sent into the country for his health. As his lameness continued he was at the age of four removed to Bath going to London by sea. Bath was then a noted resort and its waters were supposed to cure everything. Here little Walter remained a year under the care of his aunt when he returned to Edinburgh to his father's house in George Square which was his residence until his marriage with occasional visits to the county seat of his maternal grandfather. He completely regained his health although he was always lame. From the autobiography which Scott began but did not complete it would appear that his lameness and solitary habits were favorable to reading. That even as a child he was greatly excited by tales and poems of adventure and that as a youth he devoured everything he could find pertaining to early Scottish poetry and romance of which he was passionately fond. He was also peculiarly susceptible to the beauties of Scottish scenery being thus led to enjoy the country and its sports at a much earlier age than is common with boys. Which love was never lost but grew with his advancing years. Among his fellows he was a hearty player, a forward fighter in boyish bickers and a teller of tales that delighted his comrades. He was sweet-tempered, merry, generous and while beloved yet preemptory and pertinacious in pursuit of his own ideas. In 1779 Walter was sent to the high school in Edinburgh but his progress here was by no means remarkable although he laid a good foundation for the acquisition of the Latin language. He also had a tutor at home and from him learned the rudiments of French. With a head all on fire for chivalry and Scottish ballads he admired the old Tory Cavaliers and hated the round heads and Presbyterians. In three years he had become fairly familiar with Caesar, Livy, Salist, Virgil, Horace and Terence. He also distinguished himself by making Latin verses. From the high school he entered the University of Edinburgh very well grounded in French and Latin. For Greek and mathematics he had an aversion but made up for this deficiency by considerable acquisitions in English literature. He was delighted with both Ossian and Spencer and could repeat the Fairy Queen by heart. His memory like that of Macaulay was remarkable. What delighted him more than Spencer were Hull's translations of Tasso and Aristotle. Later he learned Italian and read these in the original and Percy's relics of ancient poetry. At college he also read the best novels of the day especially the works of Richardson, Fielding and Smollett. He made respectable progress in philosophy under the teaching of the celebrated Dugald Stewart and Professor Bruce and in history under Lord Wode-Housley. On the whole he was not a remarkable boy except for his notable memory which however kept only what pleased him and his very decided bent toward the poetic and chivalric in history, life and literature. Walter was trained by his father to the law and on leaving college he served the ordinary apprenticeship of five years in his father's office and attendance upon the law classes in the university but the drudgery of the law was irksome to him. When the time came to select his profession as writer to the signant or an advocate he preferred the latter although success here was more uncertain than as a solicitor. Up to the time of his admission to the bar he had read an enormous number of books in a desultory way and made many friends some of whom afterwards became distinguished. His greatest pleasures were in long walks in the country with chosen companions. His love of nature amounted to a passion and in his long rambles he acquired not only vigorous health but the capacity of undergoing great fatigue. Scott's autobiography closes with his admission to the bar. From his own account his early career had not been particularly promising although he was neither idle nor immoral. He was fond of convivial pleasures but never had uncommon self-control. All his instructors were gentlemanly and he had access to the best society in Edinburgh when that city was noted for its number of distinguished men in literature and in the different professions. His most intimate friends were John Irving, Sir Archibald Campbell, the Earl of Dalhousie and Adam Ferguson with whom he made excursions to the Highlands into ruined castles and abbeys of historic interest. Following with tireless search the new trail of an old border ballad were taking a 30 mile walk to clear up some local legend of battle, foray or historic event. In all these antiquarian raids the young fellows mingled freely with the people and tramped the counties round about in a most hilarious mood by no means escaping the habits of the day and tavern sprees and drinkabouts although Scott's companions testified to his temperate indulgence. The young lawyer was indeed unwittingly preparing for his mission to paint Scottish scenery so vividly and Scottish characters so charmingly that he may almost be said to have created a new country which succeeding generations delight to visit. No man was ever a greater benefactor to Scotland whose glories and beauties he was the first to reveal showing how the most thrifty, practical and parsimonious people may be at the same time the most poetic. Here burns and he go hand in hand although as a poet Scott declared that he was not to be named in the same day with this most unfortunate man of genius that his country and his century produced. How singular that in all worldly matters the greater genius should have been a failure while he who was born a poet was the lesser light should have been the greatest popular success of which Scotland can boast. And yet there is something almost as pathetic and tragical in the career of the man who worked himself to death as in that of the man who drank himself to death. The most supremely fortunate writer of his day came to a mournful end notwithstanding his unparalleled honors and his magnificent rewards. At the time, Scott was admitted to the bar he was not of course aware of his great original creative powers nor could he have had very sanguine expectations of a brilliant career. The profession he had chosen was not congenial with his habits or his genius and hence as a lawyer he was not a success. And yet he was not a failure for he had the respect of some of the finest minds in Edinburgh and at once gained as an advocate enough to support himself respectively among aristocratic people. Aided no doubt by his father who as a prosperous writer to the signet threw business into his hands. Amid his practice at the courts he found time to visit some of the most interesting spots in Scotland and he had money enough to gratify his tastes. He was a thriving rather than a prosperous lawyer that is to say he earned his living. But Scott was too much absorbed in literary studies and in writing ballads to give to his numerous friends the hope of a distinguished legal career. No man can serve two masters. His heart was in the Highlands a chase in the deer or ransacking distant villages for antiquarian lore or collecting ancient Scottish minst story or visiting mosque covered in ivy clad ruins famous before John Knox swept monasteries and nunneries away as cages of unclean birds. But most of all he was interested in the feuds between the Lowland and Highland chieftains and in the contest between round heads and cavaliers when Scotland lost her political independence. He did however find much in Scotch law to enrich his mind with entanglements and antiquarian records as well as the humors and tragedies of the courts. And of this his writings show many traces. No young lawyer ever had more efficient friends than Walter Scott and richly he deserved them for he was generous, compatible, loyal a brilliant storyteller a good hunter and sportsman bright, cheerful and witty doubtless one of the most interesting young men in his beautiful city modest too and unpretentious yet proud claiming nothing that nothing might be denied him a favorite in the most select circles. His most striking peculiarity was his good sense keeping him from all exaggerations which were always offensive to him. He was a Tory indeed but no aristocrat ever had a more genial humanity taking pleasure in any society where he could learn anything. His appetite was so healthy from his rural sports and pedestrian feats that he could dine equally well on a broiled headache or a saddle of venison although from the minuteness of his descriptions of Scottish banquets one might infer that he had great appreciation of the pleasures of the table. It is not easy to tell when Scott began to write poetry but probably when he was quite young. He wrote for the pleasure of it without any idea of devoting his life to literature. Writing ballads was the solace of his leisure hours. His acquaintance with Francis, Lord Jeffrey began in the 1791 at a club where he read an essay on ballads which so much interested the future critic that he sought an introduction to its author and the acquaintance thus begun between these two young men both of whom unconsciously stood on the threshold of great careers ripened into friendship. This happened before Scott was called to the bar in 1792. It was two years afterwards that he produced a poem which took by surprise a literary friend, Miss Cranston and caused her to exclaim upon my word Walter Scott is going to turn out a poet something of a cross between Burns and Gray. In 1795, Scott was appointed one of the curators of the Advocates Library, a compliment bestowed only on those members of the bar known to have a zeal in literary affairs. But I do not read that he published anything until 1796 when appeared his translation from the German of Burgers ballads The Wild Huntsman and Lenore. This called out high commendation from Dugald Stewart, the famous professor of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh and from other men of note but obtained no recognition in England. It was during one of his rambles with his friend Ferguson to the English Lakes in 1797 that Scott met Miss Charlotte Margaret Carventer or Charpentier, a young French lady of notable beauty and lovely character. She had an income of about 200 pounds a year which added to his earnings as an advocate then about 150 pounds encouraged him to offer to her his hand. For a young couple just starting in life, 350 pounds was an independence. The engagement met with no opposition from the ladies family and in December of 1797, Scott was married and took a modest house in Castle Street being then 26 years of age. The marriage turned out to be a happy one although Covey Nance had something to do with it. Of course, so healthy and romantic in nature as Scott's had not passed through the susceptible time of youth without a love affair, from so small a circumstance as the lending of his umbrella to a young lady, Margaret, the beautiful daughter of Sir John Belches, he enjoyed five years of affection and of what seems to have been a reasonable hope which however was finally ended by the young lady's marrying Mr. William Forbes, a well-to-do banker and later one of Scott's best friends. Three years of dreaming and two years of waking, Scott calls it in one of his diaries 30 years later and then his own marriage followed within a year after that of his lost love. With an income sufficient only for the necessities of life as a married man in society, Scott had not much to spare for expensive dinners although given to hospitality. What money he could save was spent for books and travel. At 26 he had visited what was most interesting in Scotland either in scenery or historical associations and some parts of England, especially the Cumberland Lakes. He took a cottage at last wade near Edinburgh and began there the fascinating pursuit of tree planting and place making. His vacations when the courts were not in session were spent in excursions to mountain scenery and those retired villages where he could pick up antiquarian lore, particularly old border ballads, heroic traditions of the times of chivalry and of the conflicts of Scottish chieftains. Concerning these, no man in Scotland knew so much as he, his knowledge furnishing the foundation alike of his lays and his romances. His enthusiasm for these scenic and historic interests was unquenchable, a source of perpetual enjoyment which made him a most acceptable visitor wherever he chose to go, both among antiquaries and literary men and ladies of rank and fashion. In March 1799, Mr. and Mrs. Scott visited London where they were introduced to many distinguished literary men. On their return to Edinburgh, the office of sheriff depute of Selkirkshire having become vacant, worth 300 pounds a year, Scott received the appointment which increased his income to about 700 pounds. Although his labors were light, the office entailed the necessity of living in that county a few months in each year. It was a pastoral, quiet, peaceful part of the country belonging to the Duke of Buckley, his friend and patron. He published translation in this year of Gertes Getz of Berklegen, added to his growing reputation and led him on towards his career. End of section three. Section four of Beacon Lengths of History, volume 13, Great Writers by John Lorde. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kay Hand. Sir Walter Scott, part two. With a secure and settled income, Scott now meditated a literary life. A hundred years ago, such a life was impossible without independent means if a man would mingle in society and live conventionally and what was called respectively. Even Burns had to accept a public office although it was a humble one and far from lucrative. But it gave him what poetry could not, his daily bread. Hogg, peasant poet of the Ettrick Forest was supported in all his earlier years by tending sheep and borrowing money from his friends. The first genuine literary adventure of Scott was his collection of a Scottish minstrel tree. Printed for him by James Valentine, a former school fellow who had been encouraged by Scott to open a shop in Edinburgh. The preparation of this labor of love occupied the editor a year assisted by John Layden, a man of great promise who died in India in 1811 having made a mark as an Orientalist. About this time began Scott's memorable friendship with George Ellis, the most discriminating and useful of all his literary friends. In the same year he made the acquaintance of Thomas Campbell, the poet who had already achieved fame by his pleasures of hope. It was in 1802 that the first and second volumes of the minstrel sea appeared in an edition of 800 copies. Scott's share of the profit amounting to 78 pounds, 10 shillings, which did not pay him for the actual expenditure in the collection of his materials. The historical notes with which he elucidated the value of the ancient balance and the freshness and vigor of those which he himself wrote for the collection secured warm commendations from Ellis, Ritzen and other friends and the whole issue was sold. Yet the work did not bring him wide fame. The third and last volume was issued in 1803. The work is full of Scott's best characteristics, wide historical knowledge, wonderful industry, humor, pathos and a sympathetic understanding of life, that of the peasant as well as the knight, such as seizes the imagination. Lockhart quotes a passage of Scott's own self-criticism. I am sensible that if there be anything good about my poetry or prose either, it is a hurried frankness of composition which pleases soldiers, sailors and young people of bold and active dispositions. His ability to toil terribly and accumulating choice material and then fusing it in his own spirit to throw it forth among men with this hurried frankness that stirs the blood was the secret of his power. Scott did not become famous, however, until his first original poem appeared, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, printed by Ballantine in 1805 and published by Longman of London and Constable of Edinburgh. It was a great success, nearly 50,000 copies were sold in Great Britain alone by 1830. For the first edition of 750 copies quarto, Scott received 169 pounds, six shillings and then sold the copyright for 500 pounds. In the meantime, a rich uncle died without children and Scott's share of the property enabled him in 1804 to rent from his cousin, Major General Sir James Russell, the pretty property called Ass Heshtiel, a cottage and farm on the banks of the Tweed, altogether a beautiful place where he lived when discharging his duties of Sheriff of Selkirkshire. He has celebrated the charms of Ass Heshtiel in the Canto production to Marmion. His income at this time amounted to about 1,000 pounds a year which gave him a position among the squires of the neighborhood, complete independence and leisure to cultivate his taste. His fortune was now made with poetic fame besides and powerful friends, he was a man every way to be envied. The Lay of the Last Minstrel placed Scott among the three great poets of Scotland for originality and beauty of rhyme. It is not marked by pathos or by philosophical reflections. It is a purely descriptive poem of great vivacity and vividness, easy to read and true to nature. It is a tale of chivalry and is to poetry what Frost's chronicles are to history. Nothing exactly like it had before appeared in English literature. It appealed to all people of romantic tastes and was reproachless from a moral point of view. It was a book for a lady's bower full of chivalric sentiments and stirring incidents and of unflagging interest from beginning to end, partly warlike and partly monastic, scribing the adventures of knights and monks. It deals with wizards, harpers, dwarfs, priests, warriors and noble dames. It sings of love and wassalings, of gentle ladies' tears, of castles and festal halls, of penins and lances, of ancient deeds so long forgot, a feuds whose memory was not, a forest now laid waste and bare, of towers which harbor now the hare. In the lay of the last minstrel, there is at least one immortal stanza which would redeem the poem, even if otherwise a mediocre. How few poets can claim as much as this. Very few poems live except for some splendid passages which cannot be forgotten and which give fame. I know nothing even in burns finer than the following lines. Breeds there the man with soul so dead who never to himself hath said, this is mine own, my native land, whose heart hath nare within him burned as home his footsteps he hath turned from wandering on a foreign strand. If such there breathe, go mark him well, for him no minstrel raptures swell. High though his titles, proud his name, boundless wealth as wish can claim. Despite those titles, power and pelf, the wretch, concentered all in self, living shall forfeit far renown and doubly dying shall go down to the vile dust from whence he sprung, unwept, unhonored, and unsung. The favor with which the lay of the last minstrel was received, greater than that of any narrative poem of equal length which had appeared for two generations, even since Dryden's day, naturally brought great commendation from Geoffrey, the keenest critic of the age, in the famous magazine of which he was the editor. The Edinburgh Review had been started only in 1802 by three young men of genius, Geoffrey, Broham, and Sidney Smith, and had already attained great popularity, but not such marvelous influence as it wielded 10 years afterwards when 9,000 copies were published every three months and at such a price as gave to its contributors a splendid remuneration and to its editors absolute critical independence. The only objection to this powerful periodical was the severity of its criticisms which often also were unjust. It seemed to be the intent of the reviewers to demolish everything that was not of extraordinary merit. Fierce attacks are not criticism. The articles in the Edinburgh Review were of a different sort from the polished and candid literary dissections which made the Saint Bev so justly celebrated. In the beginning of the century, however, these savage attacks were all the fashion and to be expected, yet they stung authors almost to madness as in the case of the review of Byron's early poetry. Literary courtesy did not exist. Justices gave place generally to ridicule or sarcasm. The Edinburgh Review was a terror to all pretenders and often to men of real merit, but it was published when most judges were cruel and severe even in the halls of justice. The friendship between Scott and Geoffrey had been very close for 10 years before the inception of the Edinburgh Review and although Scott was, perhaps growing out of his love for antiquarian researches and admiration of things that had been and inveterate conservative and Tory, while the new review was slashingly liberal and progressive, he was drawn in by friendship and literary interest to be a frequent contributor during its first three or four years. The politics of the Edinburgh Review, however, and the establishment in 1808 of the Conservative Quarterly Review caused a gradual cessation of this literary connection without marring the friendly relations between the two men. About this time began Scott's friendship with Wordsworth, for whom he had great respect. Indeed, his modesty led him to prefer everybody's good poetry to his own. He felt himself inferior not only to Burns, but also to Wordsworth and Camel and Coleridge and Byron, as in many respects he undoubtedly was, but it requires in an author discernment and humility of a rare kind to make him capable of such a discrimination. More important to him than any literary friendship was his partnership with James Ballantine, the printer, whom he had known from his youth. This, in the end, proved unfortunate and nearly ruined him. For Ballantine, though an accomplished man and a fine printer, as well as enterprising and sensible, was not a safe businessman being oversanguine. For a time, however, this partnership, which was kept secret, was an advantage to both parties, although Scott embarked in the enterprise his whole available capital, about 5,000 pounds. In connection with the publishing business, soon added to the printing with James Ballantine's brother, John, as figurehead of the concern, a talented but dissipated and reckless good fellow with no more head for business than either James Ballantine or Scott. The association bound Scott hand and foot for 20 years and prompted him to adventurous undertakings. But it must be said that the Ballantines always deferred to him, having for him a sentiment little short of veneration. One of the first results of this partnership was an 18-volume edition of Dryden's poems with a life, which must have been to Scott little more than drudgery. He was well paid for his work, although it added but little to his fame, except for intelligent literary industry. Before Dryden, however, in the same year, 1808, appeared the poem of Marmion, A Tale of Floddenfield, which was received by the public with great avidity and unbounded delight. Jeffrey wrote a chilling review for which Scott, with difficulty forgave him, since with all his humility and amiability, he could not bear unfriendly or severe criticism. In a letter to Joanna Bailey, Scott makes some very sensible remarks as to the incapability of such a man as Jeffrey, appreciating a work of the imagination, distinguished as he was. I really have often told him that I think he wants the taste for poetry, which is essentially necessary to enjoy, and of course to criticize with justice. He has learned with the most learned in its canons and laws, skilled in its modulations, and an excellent judge of the justice of the sentiments which it conveys, but he wants that enthusiastic feeling, which like sunshine upon a landscape, lights up every beauty and palliates if it cannot hide every defect. To offer a poem of imagination to a man whose whole life and study have been to acquire a historical indifference towards enthusiasm of every kind would be the last as it would surely be the silliest action of my life. As stated above, it was about this time that Scott broke off his connection with the Edinburgh Review. Perhaps that was what Jeffrey wished since the review became thenceforth more intensely partisan and Scott's tourism was not what was wanted. It is fair to add that in 1810, Jeffrey sent Scott advanced proofs of his critique on The Lady of the Lake with a frank and friendly letter in which he says, I am now sensible that there were needless asperities in my review of Marmian and from the hurry in which I have been forced to write, I dare say there may be some here also. I am sincerely proud both of your genius and of your glory and I value your friendship more highly than most either of my literary or political opinions. Southeast Ellis and Wordsworth, Erskine, Hever and other friends wrote to congratulatory letters about Marmian with light allusions to minor blemishes. Lockhart thought that it was on the whole the greatest of Scott's poems in strength and boldness. Most critics regarded the long introduction to each canto as a defect since it broke the continuity of the narrative. But it may at least be said that these preludes give an interesting insight into the author's mood and views. The opinions of literary man of course differ as to the relative excellence of the different poems. Marmian certainly had great merit and added to the fame of the author. There is here more variety of meter than in his other poems and also some passages of such beauty as to make the poem immortal. Like the death of Marmian and those familiar lines in reference to Clara's Constancy. Oh woman, in our hours of ease uncertain coy and hard to please and variable as the shade by the light quivering aspen made when pain and anguish ring the brow a ministering angel thou. The sale of Marmian ultimately reached 50,000 copies in Great Britain. The poem was originally published in a luxurious quarto at 31 and a half shillings. Besides 1,000 de Guineas in advance, half the profits went to Scott and must have reached several thousand pounds. A great sale when we remember that it was confined to libraries and people of wealth. In America, the poem was sold for two or three shillings less than one-tenth of what it cost the English reader. A successful poem or novel in England is more remunerative to the author from the high price at which it is published than in the United States where prices are lower and royalties rarely exceed 10%. It must be borne in mind however that in England additions are ordinarily very small, sometimes consisting of not more than 250 copies. The first edition of Marmian was only of 2,000 copies. The largest edition published was in 1811 of 5,000 copies octavo, but even this did not circulate largely among the people. The popularity of Scott in England was confined chiefly to the upper classes at least until the copyright of his books had expired. The booksellers were not slow in availing themselves of Scott's popularity. They employed him to edit an edition of Swift for 1,500 pounds and tried to induce him to edit a general edition of English poets. The scheme was abandoned in consequence of a disagreement between Scott and Murray, the London publisher, as to the selection of poets. I think the quarrels of authors 80 or 100 years ago with their publishers were more frequent than they are in these times. We read of a long alienation between Scott and Constable, the publisher, who enjoyed a sort of monopoly of the poet's contributions to literature. Constable soon after found a great rival in Murray, who was at this time an obscure London bookseller in Fleet Street. Both these great publishers were remarkable for sagacity and were bold in their ventures. The foundation of Constable's wealth was laid when he was publishing the Edinburgh Review. In 1809, Murray started the Quarterly Review, its great political rival, and with the aid of Scott, who wrote many of its most valuable articles, and William Guilford, satirist and critic, became its first editor. Growing out of the quarrel between Scott and Constable was the establishment of John Ballantine and Co. as publishers and booksellers in Edinburgh. Shortly after the establishment of the Quarterly Review as a Tory Journal, Scott began his third great poem, The Lady of the Lake, which was published in 1810 in All the Majesty of Accordo at the price of two guineas a copy. He received for it 2,000 guineas, the first edition of 2,000 copies disappeared at once and was followed the same year by four octavo editions. In a few months, the sale reached 20,000 copies. The poem received great commendation both from the Quarterly and the Edinburgh Review. Mr. Alice, in his article in the Quarterly, thus wrote, there is nothing in Scott of the severe Majesty of Milton or of the terse composition of Pope or the elaborate elegance of Campbell or the flowing and redundant diction of Southie, but there is a medley of bright images and addiction tinged successively with a careless richness of Shakespeare, the antique simplicity of the old romances, the holiness of vulgar ballads and the sentimental glitter of the most modern poetry, passing from the borders of the ludicrous to the sublime, alternately minute and energetic, sometimes artificial and frequently negligent, but always full of spirits and vivacity abounding in images that are striking at first sight to minds of every contexture and never expressing a sentiment which it can cost the most ordinary reader any exertion to comprehend. This seems to me to be a fair criticism, although the lucidity of Scott's poetry is not that which was most admired by modern critics. Fashion in these times delights in what is obscure and difficult to be understood as if depth and profundity must necessarily be unintelligible to ordinary readers. In Scott's time, however, the fashion was different and the popularity of his poems became almost universal. However, there are the same fire, vivacity and brilliant coloring in all three of these masterpieces as they were regarded two generations ago, reminding one of the witchery of Aristotle. Yet, there is no great variety in these poems, such as we find in Byron, no great force of passion or depth of sentiment, but a sort of harmonious rhythm, more highly prized in the earlier part of the century than in the latter, since Wordsworth and Tennyson have made us familiar with what is deeper and richer, as well as more artistic in language and versification. But no one has denied Scott's originality and high merits in contrast with the pompous tameness and conventionality of the poetry which arose when Johnson was the oracle of literary circles and which still had the stage in Scott's day. Even Scott's admirers, however, like Canning and Ellis, did not hesitate to say that they would like something different from anything he had already written. But this was not to be, and perhaps the reason why he soon after gave up writing poetry was the conviction that his genius as a poet did not lie in variety and richness, either of style or matter. His great fame was earned by his novels. One thing greatly surprises me. Scott regarded Joanna Bailey as the greatest poetical genius of that day, and he derived more pleasure from reading Johnson's London and The Vanity of Human Riches than from any other poetical composition. Indeed, there is nothing more remarkable in literary history than Scott's admiration of poetry inferior to his own, and his extraordinary modesty in the estimate of his own productions. Most poets are known for their morbid vanity, their self-consciousness, their feeling of superiority, and their deprecation of superior excellence. But Scott had eminently a healthy mind as he had a healthy body and shrank from exaggeration as he did from vulgarity in all its forms. It is probable that his own estimate of his poetry was nearer the truth than that of his admirers who were naturally inclined to be partial. There has been so much poetry written since The Lady of the Lake was published, not only by celebrated poets like Wordsworth, Southie, Moore, Byron, Campbell, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Bryant, but also by many minor authors, that the standard is now much higher than it was in the early part of the century. Much of that which then was regarded as very fine is now smiled at by the critics and neglected by cultivated readers generally, and Scott has not escaped unfavorable criticism. It has been my object to present the subject of this lecture historically rather than critically, to show the extraordinary popularity of Scott as a poet among his contemporaries rather than to estimate his merits at the present time. I confess that most of Marmion, as also of The Lady of the Lake, is tame to me and deficient in hypoetic genius. Doubtless we are all influenced by the standards of our own time and the advances making in literature as well as in science and art. Yet this change in the opinions of critics does not apply to Byron's child Herald, which is as much, if not as widely admired now as when it was first published. We think as highly too of the deserted village, the elegy in a country churchyard, and the codders Saturday night as our fathers did. And men now think much more highly of the merits of Shakespeare than they have at any period since he lived, so that after all, there is an element in true poetry which does not lose by time. In another hundred years, the verdicts of critics as to the greater part of the poems of Tennyson, Wordsworth, Browning and Longfellow may be very different from what they are now, while some of their lyrics may be, as they are now, produced immortal. Poetry is both an inspiration and an art. The greater part of that which is now produced is made not born. Those daintily musical and elaborate measures which are now the fashion because they claim novelty or reproduce the quaintness of an art so old has to be practically new, perhaps will soon again be forgotten or derided. What is simple, natural, appealing to the heart rather than the head, may last when more pretentious poetry shall have passed away. Neither criticism nor contemporary popularity can decide such questions. Scott himself seemed to take a true view. In a letter to Miss Seward, he said, the immortality of poetry is not so firm a point in my creed as the immortality of the soul. I've lived too long and seen the death of much immortal song. Nay, those that have really attained their literary immortality have gained it under very hard conditions. To some it has not attached till after death. To others it has been the means of lauding personal vices and follies which had otherwise been unremembered in their epitaphs and all enjoy the same immortality under a condition similar to that of Nereddin in an Eastern tale. Nereddin, you remember, was to enjoy the gift of immortality but with this qualification that he was subjected to long naps of 40, 50, or 100 years at a time. Even so Homer and Virgil slumbered through whole centuries. Shakespeare himself enjoyed undisturbed sleep from the age of Charles I until Garrick waked him. Dryden's fame has nodded that if Pope begins to be drowsy, Chaucer is as sound as a top and Spencer is snoring in the midst of his commentators. Milton indeed is quite awake but observe he was at his very outset refreshed with a nap of half a century. And in the midst of all this, we sons of degeneracy talk of immortality. Let me please my own generation and let those who come after us judge of their facts and my performances as they please. The anticipation of their neglect or censure will affect me very little. End of section four.