Gildersleeye's Essays and Studies

THE young classical scholarship of America has been characterized, in the past at any rate, by a quality not ordinarily ascribed to youth, nor to our people, — timidity. We have been too ready to think ourselves so remote from the famous centres of advanced study, and from the original sources of knowledge concerning the Hellenic and Roman races, that we could contribute nothing of value toward the fuller comprehension of ancient life. Even our most conscientious students have too often been content to absorb, and to accept almost slavishly, the teachings of the latest European treatise in each department of research.

On the other hand, we have not even made an aggressive effort to reveal to the wider circle of intelligent men and women the intrinsic beauty and significance of our favorite studies. There has been a general disposition, rather, to take refuge, almost in silence, behind the traditional prestige of the classical languages; to put our trust in the awe inspired by that which is unknown or little understood, — an insecure reliance, indeed, in the midst of a community so practical, irreverent, and inquisitive as our own.

The instruction of the last generation rarely attempted to make any appeal to the imagination even of the “ advanced student.” The college did hardly more than continue the narrow textbook routine the uninspiring study and recitation, of the school. Of course such lessons were forgotten within a few years, with an alacrity which has become almost proverbial, unless the pupil, after graduation, plodded as a teacher over the same narrowly limited path to which his own youthful feet had been trained.

The few and scattered publications of those days were usually of the kind contemptuously designated by our Teutonic kinsfolk as bread-and-butter work. They were chiefly either drill-books for beginners, or annotated editions of the school classics, leaning heavily, whether with or without adequate acknowledgment, upon the labors of German and French predecessors. Even more significant is the fact that it has been possible for some to win their way to high position in prominent seats of learning without feeling the duty, or at least the necessity, of producing anything whatever.

It is believed that this will be accepted as a fair outline of the conditions prevailing in the past. It is not, indeed, a past, remote from our own time, nor have these conditions by any means wholly disappeared. Yet a new day has, without question, already dawned. A sturdier, more independent race of scholars is appearing in this as in other fields.

A second assertion will probably also pass unquestioned. The progress of classical philology among us has been and is almost wholly under the lead of men who have been trained in Germany, and who are still largely dependent upon German influences. The writer is by no means prepared to stigmatize this as wholly a mistake or a misfortune. It is, however, true that we unduly neglect valuable work done in France and England ; in fact, a citation of a French or even an English authority is nearly a rarity in our own philological publications. Yet books frequently appear in both countries which are indispensable to the thorough student. In this respect the Germans are often more catholic than we. Still, Berlin and Leipzig, Göttingen and Bonn, really are the chief centres of organized original research, and to them we must doubtless look for guidance, so long as we are content, or compelled, to follow any lead.

Like all forms of dependence, however, this condition has its especial dangers, to one of which we wish to refer. It is a familiar truth that pupils push to an even greater extreme the tendencies of their masters. Allusion has just been made to the fact that Germany is the home of highly specialized studies and of original investigation. No student there can receive his degree until he has made a creditable effort to contribute his mite toward the sum total of knowledge. Much of this work, indeed, especially under the present reign of statistical grammar, is hardly more inspiring or varied than that of our census enumerators. Yet the unwearied performance of a piece of philological drudgery is by no means a bad training for the youthful scholar. In many cases, moreover, a master is really pushing his own investigations over a wide field, through the tasks divided among his pupils.

But it cannot be too strongly emphasized that such labors are always regarded by the really learned Germans as merely preparatory to some great, constructive work. The special studies, for instance, of Mommsen and his pupils find their goal in his Roman History and the great Manual of Roman Antiquities. Kirchoff scans eagerly each fresh inscription from Asia, hoping that it will prove the keystone for the history of the Greek alphabets. Even the most analytical of Homeric scholars dreams of demonstrating at last the real origin and growth of the immortal epics. And finally, beyond and above all special tasks looms the fair vision of antiquity itself. Through the literature, the art, and the handicraft of the elder races, the true scholar would fain reach an adequate conception of the remote past itself, and of its true relations with our modern life ; though here, certainly, each generation realizes all too well that such an ideal is far beyond its reach, and murmurs in its own words the brave thought of Clough : —

At any rate, the young doctor’s dissertation on, for example, the comparative frequency of two expressions for “ perhaps,”in the various dialogues of Lucian, earns thereby in Germany only the right to enter the arena of the higher scholarship. Among ourselves, on the other hand, one or two such performances are too often accepted as sufficient proof of “accurate scholarship,” upon which the author may well be permitted to retire complacently to the uneventful routine of the college class-room. It would have pointed the antithesis better to have said that such studies are deliberately accepted by us as a sufficient end and aim in themselves ; But the writer Has an abiding faith in the practical good sense, the lofty ideals, and the persevering energy of our race. We shall not rest content with less than the best, and the highest. If we have paused at the foot of the hill, it is but to gather our strength and clear our vision for the ascent.

Such a train of thought is naturally suggested by the appearance; of a volume of essays ¹ from the hand of nn acknowledged leader among American Hellenists, who is without question the most thorough, patient, and judicious of investigators, But who has also pointed out more impressively than any other the dangers and the shortcomings of our classical scholarship. The instructive autobiographical sketch recently contributed by Professor Gildersleeve to the series upon Formative Influences ² gives us the materials, as well as the right, to associate to some extent the individuality and environment of the author with the discussion of his book. known periodical has long ago established itself as a storehouse of laborious research and sound learning, to which an American may point in no apologetic fashion as the equal of any publication in the world within its peculiar field. It is, indeed, “ a quarterly which is not meant for popular reading,” and professed philologists find some of its pages as discouragingly hard as Cicero confesses the speeches in Thucydides were to him. The editor himself does not possess, or rather does not often employ, such a style as that of the stilllamented Hadley. It was said of the latter that he made the most ignorant reader imagine that he could enter into the discussion of almost any question. Gildersleeve oftener causes even the earnest student to feel himself but a crude and incompetent dilettante. Yet his articles have been unique, even in this learned environment, for the patient investigation upon which they are constructed, but still more for the untiring energy, the picturesque style, the vivid and unlooked-for illustrations, employed upon subjects usually regarded as arid and unattractive. The eminence of Gildersleeve, as of every masterful mind, consists chiefly in the ability to see. and to make us see, the essential relations of the subject under discussion to greater, and through them to the greatest realities. This is beautifully illustrated in the volume before us, where Gildersleeve describes a lecture he once heard by another great master, on ‘‘the vanishing of weak vowels in Latin.” The subject did not seem an exhilarating one even to the earnest young philologian ; but “ as he went on, and marshaled the facts, and set in order the long lines that connected the disappearance of the vowel with the downfall of a nationality, and great linguistic, great moral, great historical laws marched in stately procession before the vision of the student, the airy vowels that had flitted into the Nowhere seemed to be the lost soul of Roman life, and the Latin language, Roman literature, and Roman history were clothed with a new meaning.” The great master thus described is evidently a German, perhaps Ritschl. That Gildersleeve is largely under the same Teutonic influences as our other leaders would hardly be questioned, yet we may quote his own words : “ To Germany and the Germans I am indebted for everything, professionally, in the way of apparatus and method, and for much, very much, in the way of inspiration.”But such sentences as the one just quoted — and they occur on many pages — draw their inspiration direct from the true source of the poetic and the beautiful ; from an adequate perception of the relation between the most delicate detail and the most universal law.

In the opening sentence of the first essay in the volume before us, a harmless arrow of jest, aimed at the “ oracular centre of Boston,” may serve to remind us that Mr. Gildersleeve is a Carolinian, whose tenderness for Charleston, his birthplace, forty years in more northern climes have not chilled. “ A Southerner and thoroughly identified with the South, I have shared the fortunes of the land in which my lot was cast, and in my time have shared its prejudices and its defiant attitude. A clearer vision and a more tolerant spirit have come with wider experience and mellower years.” He assures us that, in antebellum days, “as against the North, we were Southerners ; as against England, we were national enough.” And now “ I am, or ought to be, American enough to satisfy even ” —the author of A Man Without a Country. Perhaps it may be permitted us to reply that such assurances are, we trust, hardly necessary now from any quarter.

There is a truly poetic passage in one of these essays, where Mr. Gildersleeve, while alluding to that isolation of American scholars upon which we have already touched, adds : “Who is a stranger to this feeling, and who has a more bitter experience of it than those of us who . . . were cut off . . . from new books, new journals, nay, every sign of life from without, now by the pillar of fire which is called war, now by the pillar of cloud which is called poverty ? ” Many a reader in the Northeast may well be moved by these words to ponder what his own feeling and action might have been, or might yet be, if that circle of fire were drawn about New England. From our saddest memories springs the bitter joy of the knowledge that every type of American manhood has shown its readiness to perish for its own ideal of fatherland. We all rejoice, surely, that the terrible problem which was but our inheritance, and not of our making, is settled, and so settled that all the English-speaking peoples of Hesperia are, or will yet be, welded into an indissoluble union ; perchance the fair foreshadowing of that “ federation of the world” whereof the laureate at twenty dreamed, and in old age despairs. That the men and women of various sections are still, and may always be, somewhat diverse in type and powers is but cause for rejoicing. Just at the darkest midnight and before the brightest dawn of Athenian history, the scholar hears ring out high and clear the words of Aristides, returning from exile : “ It is our destiny to be rivals, now and in the after time, each of us striving to render the greater service to the fatherland.” But if at times the toilers in lonely ways shall feel that recognition is “scant and slow,” they may he assured that the cause is not to be found in sectional or local jealousy. That enlightened national patriotism, which has more of solicitude in it than of pride, must yet be greatly strengthened, and more fully informed with the true scholarly spirit, which regards one’s own generation as heirs of all the past and joint heirs with all posterity. In the growth of such a national spirit all. earnest work is helpful, and the worker will not be forgotten.

President Gilman is quoted as saying, upon the question How to begin a University, “ Enlist a great mathematician and a distinguished Grecian ; your problem will be solved.” This was realized when Sylvester and Gildersleeve were called to Johns Hopkins. During twenty years’ service in the University of Virginia, the latter had already won an undoubted position among the foremost of our Hellenists. The fourteen years since spent in Baltimore have, however, been especially fruitful. In particular, the American Journal of Philology is already eleven years old. This well-

Of course the style of our author does not always maintain so lofty a level. Indeed, though always masculine, energetic, and characteristic, it has some unquestionable faults, of which the writer himself more than once reveals a halfamused consciousness. Sometimes the stores of learning strew the page with unessential names and allusions, so that the scholar once quotes to himself the admonition of Corinna to her pupil, when the youthful Pindar had embodied in a single ode all the chief myths of Thebes : “ Sow from the hand, and not from the sack ! ” A fondness for quaint and vivid illustration occasionally tempts to a jesting side-thrust somewhat below the dignity of the theme, and oftener to the mention of local and temporary celebrities or events, which, after a few years, — to quote Gildersleeve the critic upon himself, — “ belong to ancient history as much as Socrates.” These latter words are from one of the rather scanty footnotes, which are almost the only means by which these papers, most of them written nearly a quarter century ago, have been “ brought up to date.” It detracts from the effect even of a remarkably fine essay, like the one on Lucian, when we are told that its author now sees that it is inadequate and incorrect. But we are already at the end of our little tale of adversaria, which we have set, with some trepidation, here in the centre, as the cautious general or advocate disposes his weakest troops. They all serve to illustrate the undoubted fact, which in these pages, at any rate, it is our evident duty to lament, that such brilliant literary work is only the avocation of a devoted philologian.

The title indicates the dual character of the volume, but this dualism, though real, is not excessively marked. The more purely literary studies are seven in number. One, upon Platen’s poems, is in part a tribute to the German associations and influences which made the author’s last three student years (18501853) both happy and profitable. Here Mr. Gildersleeve shows also, in a number of versions from the German poet, his excellent command of metrical form. We more than suspect that the professor’s desk contains many English translations from the classical masters as well, — translations which would be a most welcome addition to our scanty store of such work executed in a manner at once scholarly and poetical. Another essay is devoted to the ill-fated Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, who seems to us like a mediæval paladin astray in an alien century and an uncongenial land. “ Many of our exiles knew him well,” says a footnote. The other five papers of the group are all upon classical subjects. The one most easily read at a sitting is a defense of Xantippe, which leaves the unlucky dame indeed still in “that Hades of disreputables” where she has made her abode so long, but at least, succeeds in lighting up with singular vividness the interior of a humble Greek home. The learning of the author is carried very lightly in this study, and the humor of the situations is thoroughly enjoyed by writer and reader. Our own favorite, however, is the paper on Lucian, which we mentioned before, and to which we shall return. Apollonius of Tyana, a study of a once famous “ false prophet,” is most of all a tribute of the classical scholar to the firm faith in the divinity of Christ, — a faith in which “ I grew up, a Calvinist like my father.”

But we must turn without further lingering to the “educational" essays. These four papers may be said to be connected like concentric circles, since they treat of the position and work of the Classical Scholar in the World, the College, the University, and the Study. The most striking characteristic upon every page is the wideness of view, combined with a firm grasp of and a hearty enthusiasm for the object under examination at the moment. Many sentences are quite worthy of transcription into the notebook of every scholar or earnest worker in any field, no matter how remote.

George Eliot tells us that, every man or woman who listened to Savonarola seemed to hear in the preacher’s words a thrilling appeal to his own strongest feelings and motives; and so, in these wise utterances of our leader, we naturally receive most eagerly, and would gladly emphasize, those warnings and admonitions which are in closest accord with our own convictions as to the pressing needs of the hour. “ Special studies, by all means, — special even to the minutest variations of form and structure, to the exactest detail of statistic. But, for all that, let us not lose sight of the magnificent idea of philology, which is instinct with the life of humanity.” The popularity of certain French writers “ is a good sign of the intelligent interest of the cultivated public in these subjects, and without such an intelligent interest the department must die. . . . That it is possible to forget the end in the means, that there are those who never go beyond the collection of facts, is most true ; but there are others, and those not a few, who, while they put aside the mere dilettanteism of æsthetic phrase-making, are not insensible of the total effect, and, while they use the measuring-rod, are not blind to the chambers of imagery, — to cherubim and palm-trees and lions.”

This last sentence, with its fierce sidethrust at the dilettante, its reminiscence of early familiarity with the Hebrew scriptures, and the careful reference in the footnote to “ Ezek. ch. xli.” for us of shallower or profaner training, is perhaps the best keynote of a book which every lover of learning and of letters may read with profit; and it is also exactly the one on which we can best base the critic’s demand for more.

Mr. Gildersleeve regards this volume as a farewell to literature ; or rather as a memorial of his alter ego, the man of letters long since departed, for whom the surviving philologian has not even the power to recast those portions of the work which are confessedly inadequate or out of date. To this decision we must, perforce, give a consent, however reluctant. But not, only is the philologian at least full of life and energy, but upon his shoulders rest the heavy responsibilities, as well as the thankless honors, of leadership. Here and elsewhere he has pointed out with firm hand the paths by which we must ascend. We have the best of authority for counting upon at least a decade of years fruitful in results for the enthusiastic chief of our Hellenists. He would himself undoubtedly agree that it is quite time for American scholarship to produce some sustained, independent, and characteristic work of a constructive character.

It is not needful that this work shall be popular, in any degrading sense; yet it is happily true that any such masterly statement of results appeals to a circle far wider than the few able to follow the researches on which it is built. As the author tells us; " Many of the aspects of American life enable us to understand the ancients better than some of our European contemporaries can do. " Again, he refers to " the special aptitude of Americans for the appreciation of the political and social relations of antiquity, due partly to our peculiar endowment, partly to our peculiar position.”

Teaching by example is always more effective than teaching by precept, and we confidently believe that Professor Gildersleeve will yet give us what is in a certain sense due from him, and what he has the power and natural fitness to undertake. Dörpfeld demonstrated the position and form of the original circular orchestra in the Athenian theatre, by discovering and pointing out two fragments of the foundation sufficiently large to show the curvature of the whole structure. In a like manner, many readers of such an essay as that upon Lucian must have felt that it sufficed to indicate the general scope and character, at any rate, of a treatise on Greek literature or Greek life by the same hand, and upon somewhat the same scale. Doubtless the author would desire that we should refer rather to a maturer and perhaps more difficult achievement, the essay on Pindar, prefixed, in 1885, to the masterly edition of the Olympian and Pythian odes. But the earlier paper, especially, seems like a chapter detached from an actual histoxy of Greek thought. The last words, in particular, remind us vividly that the individual can be studied aright only as a part of the larger drama : " The old systems of faith and philosophy are dropping to pieces. New combinations are forming. ... A great struggle is preparing. Lucian has swept the arena.”

In discussing the latest book in English upon Greek literature, which the Journal of Philology would ignore or brush aside as the work of a man who had never grappled with his subject at first hand, a recent review closed with the suggestion that there is already one American scholar whose right to undertake this high and arduous task would not be questioned anywhere. It is but an echo of these words when we express the earnest hope that we may hereafter welcome a book, as yet unannounced and very probably unplanned, which would be a worthy corner-stone for the national scholarship of the twentieth century, — Gildersleeve’s Literature and Life of Hellas.