Читать книгу The Pageant of English Literature - Sir Edward Parrott - Страница 12
ОглавлениеTHE MUSES.
“The glory that was Greece.”—Poe.
A gracious and graceful spectacle now presents itself. Nine tall maidens, daughters of the gods, “divinely fair,” pass before us, clad in the white clinging robes of Attic Greece, their beautiful hair bound with the fillet, their shapely feet shod with the sandal. These are the benign goddesses whom the Greeks figured in their glowing imaginations as the patrons, the inspirers, and the guardian deities of all who set down in language of truth and melody the thoughts and fancies of the human mind and the aspirations and passions of the human heart.
She who leads the throng is Calliope, the noblest of them all, the Muse of Epic Song. She it is who wings the pen of those who celebrate in stately verse the name and fame of heroes, who kindle generous ardour with the torch of ancient glory, who bid men crave for that “crowded hour of glorious life” which is “worth an age without a name.”
Next comes Clio, bearing a scroll. She is the goddess of those who extol all that is great and good in the days of long ago. She is the Muse of History, and it is her part to inspire men to delve into the past, and to give to the present the long story of bygone ages, so that they may learn salutary lessons of warning and guidance for the present and future. Hope shines in her countenance—the steadfast hope that knowledge may “grow from more to more,” and that men may rise “on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things.”
Euterpe, she who gladdens, now advances. Her double flute indicates that she is the Muse of Lyric Song, of those soft, melodious warblings which speak of piping birds, blossoming hedgerows, babbling brooks, moonlit groves, sighing zephyrs, and scented flowers, all the tenderly happy and the gently melancholy fancies of those who throb to every impulse of Nature. Her sweetest flutings and her most dainty measures have power to stir the heart-strings of men and women yet unborn.
She who follows is Thalia, the Muse of those who delight in comedy and the poetry of rustic delight. In one hand she carries the comic mask, and in the other a shepherd's staff. Her ivy wreath symbolizes the ever-green nature of humour, which continues unfading year by year and age by age. Her votaries look on life through the tinted window of a genial and whimsical temperament, and perceive in the conduct and speech of men a thousand incongruities, which call up the spirit of merriment either as a ripple of joy or as a resounding wave of laughter.
Stern Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy, succeeds. She is deep in thought, and joy is banished from her countenance. She inspires those solemn plays in which “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” beset mankind, in which the bitterness of human life is revealed, and the human soul is depicted in torment, blood, and tears, pursued by the Fates to inevitable doom. She waves her gentler sisters aside, and points the moral of the Preacher: “All, all is vanity.” The club, the sword, the tragic mask with its fixed look of horror, accompany her.
But relief is at hand. Terpsichore, the Muse of Choric Dance, trips by to the lilting of her lyre. She is the patron of those who blend poetry and music and the harmonious movements of the body into a drama expressive of mirth and joy.
Near at hand is Erato, the Lovely One, she who touches the lips of those who sing of love. Then comes Polyhymnia, the spirit of the highest wisdom, her lofty, serene looks kindling the fire of genius in those who draw knowledge from contemplation and invoke the gods with strains of humble adoration and holy joy.
Last in the fair throng is Urania, the Heavenly, the Muse of Astronomy. You see her listening with bowed head to the music of the spheres, pondering on the majestic architecture of the universe, and pointing to the celestial globe, whereon are blazoned the shining orbs that “move in mystic dance, not without song.”
Such were the deities whom the Greeks fabled as presiding over all the departments of that literature which they were destined to lift to the highest pinnacle of glory. Circumscribed in extent, scanty in population, poor in material blessings, forced to struggle incessantly for national existence, yet most favourably situated in time and space, with the pure azure sky above, and the soft limpid air around, the Greeks in the course of three pre-Christian centuries gave to the world such triumphs of art and literary expression as have never been transcended in any literary epoch of the world's history.
The Greeks were the first of all nations to set themselves the task of systematic thinking, and their language in the course of time became the finest instrument of human utterance that men have ever known. Thus equipped, and endowed with unerring taste, the Greeks were enabled to give elegance, symmetry, and sublime simplicity to every conception of their original and creative genius.
What a galaxy of great names shines in the firmament of Greek greatness!—Homer, to whom we owe the supremest epic of the world, the epitome of human life in its unchanging essentials; Alcæus and Sappho, who sang with unquenchable and unequalled ardour of love and wine; Theocritus, the first of all pastoral poets; Æschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, and Aristophanes, master dramatists of the ages; Herodotus, the father of history, and Thucydides, the greatest of the world's historians; Plato and Aristotle, the founders of that philosophy which is the mother of all the sciences.
The inspiration which thrilled ancient Greece still throbs through the world to-day. Greek ideas of history and philosophy, and Greek taste with its love of cold beauty, and its hatred of false ornament and meretricious glitter, still dominate the finest minds of the Western world, and impel them to emulation of that perfection of form which they can never hope to surpass. From ancient Greece, as from the fabled fountain of the Azores, have issued those fertilizing streams which roll in shining splendour through the happy fields of all lands where the Muses dwell.
