On this page
-
Text (3)
-
rf MC lwni No. 498. Oct. 8, 1869.1 THE L...
-
*rj _"Q^J3 ^ 7TT""r ' -*- !ir ",' ¦JiJsm...
-
ECSTATICS OF GENIUS. By J. W. Jackson. -...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Rf Mc Lwni No. 498. Oct. 8, 1869.1 The L...
rf MC lwni No . 498 . Oct . 8 , 1869 . 1 THE LEADER U 35
*Rj _"Q^J3 ^ 7tt""R ' -*- !Ir ",' ¦Jijsm...
* rj _ "Q ^ J 3 ^ "" r ' - * - ! ir " , ' ¦ JiJsmwwsei * wwff ^ w * . ^^^^^» —— ... « Crede Biron , " is now in the possession of Dr . S . G . Howe of Boston , -Who received it from Count Garaba . It is so small that few men could be found whose heads could be put into it . ] He was very punctual in his attendance at the drill , and disregarded a . proper protection from the weather , fearing that an appearance of effeminacy would weaken his influence over his men . " Mr . Finlay , then a young ardent Philhellene , was sent with dispatches from Athens to Missolonghi , about the close of March , 1824 . After remaining a few days he prepared to return ; buf heavy rains had swollen the river Achelous , and he was obliged to delay his departure ; His plan was to cross the Crult of Corinth in a small boat , so as to avoid the risk ot being captured by the Turks at Lepanto , and then push on eastward through the denies of the Achaian mountains . One morning , at last , the weather seemed better , and he set out . Biding eastward over the plain , towards the Achelous , he met Byron on horseback . The latter turned and rode along with him for two or three miles , conversing on the prospects of the cause . Finally , Byron said : " You'd better turn back ; the river is still top high . " "I think not , " said Mr . Firilay ; " but , at least , I ' ll try it . " " You'll be wet to the skin , at any rate / ' urged Byron , pointing to a heavy black cloud , which was rapidly approaching . " You will be wet , not -I , '' Mr . Finlay answered , whereupon Byron saying : " I'll see to that , " turned his horse , and gallopped back towards the town . "In a few minutes , however , the cloud broke , and the rain f . ' 11 in torrents . Byron ' s house was at the western end-of Missolonghi , so that , in order to avoid the breakneck streets , he was in the habit of crossing the harbour in a boat , and mounting his horse outside the eastern wall . On this occasion , he reached the boat in a dripping state , and , being obliged to sit still during the passage , received a violent chill , wliich was followed by an attack of fever . Mr . Finlay , finding the river still too high , returned to Missolqiighi , where he was obliged to wait two days longer . Byron then lay ; upon the bed from which he never arose . " One evening , " related Mr . F ., " he said to Col . Stanhope and the rest of us , ¦ ¦« Well ,. I expected something to happen this year . " It ' s allowing to the old witch . ' We asked for an explanation . ' When I was a boy , ' said lie , ' an old woman , who told my fortune , predicted that four particular years would be dangerous , to me . Three times her prediction has come true ; and now this is the fourth year she named . So you see , it won't do to laugh at the witches . ' He said this in a gay , jesting voice , and seemed to have no idea that bis illness would prove fatal . Indeed , none of us considered him in a dangerous , condition at that time . " " During his first visit to Greece , Byron resided for several months at Athens , and every fair or inspiring feature of the illustrious region was familiar to him . Two points seem to have especially attracted him—the ancient fortress of Phyle , in the defile of Fames , through which passed one of the roads into Boeotia , and the sunset view from the Propylso , or pillared entrance at the western end of the Acropolis . The latter is frequently called Byron ' s View , " by the English , and no poet ' s name was ever associated with a lovelier landscape . Seated on a block of marble opposite the main entrance , which steeply climbs the slope , you look down between the rows of fluted Doric columns , to the Hill of the Nymphs , rising opposite , across tho valley of the Cephissus , twinkling with olives and vines , over the barren ridge of Corydallus , the mountains of Salamis and Megara , and away to the phantom hills of the Peloponnesus , whoso bases are cut by tho azure arc of the Saronic Gulf , Here was written tho often quoted description of a Grecian sunset , commencing : " Slow sinks , morolovoly oro hla raoobo run , ' . Along Worcft ' a bills tno sotting 1 aim— " , and every feature of the picture is correct . Tn tho soutH " , you see Egina , crowned by the JPanhollenic temple of Jupiter , Hydra , and Poros ; while tho " Delphian cliff" on tho west , behind which the still triumphant god sinks to rest , though hidden from sight byftspurofParnesjia nevertheless visible from the sides of Hymettus . " To mo , thi » view had an indescribable charm . Apart from the magic of its immortal associations , it is drawn and coloured with that exquisite artistic fooling , ' which seems to bo a characteristic of Nature in Greece , and therefore takes away from the almost despairing wonder with which we should otherwise contemplate her porfoct temples . We tho more easily comprehend why proportion should , have boon an inborn faculty of the Grecian mind—why tho laws of form , with oil their elusive secrets , should have been so thoroughly mastered . Tho studied irregularity ' of the Parthenon , tho result of which is absolute symmetry , was never attained by mathematical calculation . It sprang from tUo inspired sagacity of a brain so exquisitely educated to order ,
that it could give birth to no imperfect conception . Ictinus eaught the magic secret ( which all Apostle 3 of the- Good Time Coming would do well to learn ) , that nature abhors exact mathematical arrangement —that true order and harmony lie in a departure from it . By violating the apparent law , the genuine law was found . " This is a long extract-and we mig ht multiply many such from this charming book . The very names of the su bjects , Parnassus , Thessaly , Argolis , Arcadia , and such like , command associations which to the mind , among its treasures of the beautiful , are joys for ever . Satisfactory , however , as Nature is , man is still deficient , and inflicts and suffers many abuses . But he is deficient also in the means of redress—at least , that is the excuse made by modern Greeks . They hold _ that they are not responsible for their condition , inasmuch as the ccreat powers have taken away from them Crete , Chios , Epirus , and Thessaly . Our traveller justly objected that , while they talked ot poverty , they spent more upon their court , proportionately , than any country in Europe ; but they justified themselves on the ground that a throne necessarily implied a large expenditure ; and , democratic as they were , their pride stimulated them to make it . ¦ _ Let us pass on to the Russian dependencies . It appeared to Mr . Taylor that the Poles are fast acquiescing in the rule of the Gzar Alexander II ., who , they say , has : made many changes for the better . He was . interested to hear that Longfellow ' s poems had been published in the Polish lan ° Tia <* e at Lublin , a large city about a hundred miles south-east of Warsaw . ' The distinguished Polish poet , Adam Mickiewicz , is a great ad mirer of Emerson , whom he frequently cites in his prose writings . The Emperor Alexander has recently authorised the publication of the collected works of Mickiewicz ( with the exception of some political papers ) at Warsaw for the benefit of the poet ' s family , and lias also permitted contributions to be taken for the same purpose . The volume also contains copious details of Moscow ,, ¦ w hich , are very interesting . We are gratified in recording Mr . Taylor ' s conviction that , thanks to the railroads , the cause of freedom is looking up in Russia .
Ecstatics Of Genius. By J. W. Jackson. -...
ECSTATICS OF GENIUS . By J . W . Jackson . -A . Hall , Virtue , & Co . A curious book , and a bold . The writer confessedly selects for his subjects those heroes and events which biography and history in general ignore . For his own part , he hates " a dead piece of state-machinery that goes by clock-work , " and refuses to believe in " an impossible combination of wild enthusiasm with coldrhearted hypocrisy . " But he accepts at once the " vitalised enthusiast , whose electrical sympathies render him irrosistible with all generous spirits . " He would recognise the heroic in others and himself . Earth ' s masterspirits have frequently been " obviously ecstatics , that is , they were clairvoyants or seers . " This is a fact , he tells us , that has beon overlooked : and most are ignorant of all that pertains to it . Hence , we have been too often led into false estimates of individuals , and of the higher phases of development . Instances of lucid vision are , in history , numerous and varied . Mr . Jackson commences with Pythagoras , whom he thus introduces to his roader : — " Compared with Asia , that birth-place of man and cradle of civilisation , that mother of knowledge and nurse ' art , Europe , with all the splendour of her classic traditions and the magnitude and importance of her subsequent history , seems but a young and morally dependent colony . Our antiquity may be venerable to the Occident , but it is a thing of yesterday to tho Orient . When we talk of our " ancients , " tho Brahmin smiles in pity , and tho Persian snoors with illdisguisod contempt . They wero old when we wore young ; they aro tho originals of which wo aro tho tho copies . Ethnology and philology have shown us tho quarry whonco wo wore hewn . From tho tooming plains of India and Iran came those bands of primeval emigrants , to whom the West owes alike its culture and its power , its intellectual activity and its politioal supremacy . Wo , too , though afar off and at many romovos , aro " children of the sun , " albolt wo have followed our radiant sire , as worshippers of his vesper glory rather than his matin splendour . Wo are tho descendants of Asia ' s noblest nations , and tho inhorltors alike of their grandest ideas and tholr purest blood . Lot ua not , thon , despise our venerable mother in
the hour of her decrepitude . To the East we owe our lineage and language , our religion and philosophy . The Druid in his grove and the Papal priest at his altar equally exhibit the pliant acquiescence of European faith , in its uninquiring submission to Asiatic apostleship ; while a more extensive study of Sanscrit literature has shown us that the Grecian schools , from the earliest Eleatics to the latest Alexandrians , were little other than the reflected li ht of Asian intellect . In none , however , is his so strongly marked as in that of Pythagoras , whose principles were so obvious an Eastern transcript , that their relationsliip is unmistakable . He taugiit transmigration as a doctrine , and enforced vegetarianism as a practice . Returning from long years of studious travel , which is said to have extended from India to Britain , he brought to his great work a mind suffused with all the higher elements of Oriental theosophy , and looms out upon us , through the mists of tradition , rather in the semblance of a Brahminical or Uixdhistic mediationist , the subject of interior illumination , with its visional inspirations , than a Gre cian sage , with ideas limited by the range of his logical faculties , and conceptions regulated by the exercise of his judgment . Regarded , indeed , by hi 3 followers as of divine descent , he seems to have not wholly disclaimed the position and attributes of an incarnation . Mystical in his teacliings and miraculous in his operations , he-spoke from and to the supersensuous sphere , and hence required a prepared audience , " fit though few , " as' the capable recipients of his transcendental tuition . " So much will serve t o show that we are dealing with a penman well practised in his ealigraphy , and not to be scorned , however singular in his manner . ¦ Further on , he acknowledges that modern inductive philosophy has a firm though low foundation , in fact . He well paints the myth which we have learned to mistake for Pythagoras . He recognises him as a travelling p hilosopher and an accomplished scholar ; a saint and a sage , a priest and a poet , in one august personage , who sought to correct the domination of intellect over tlie ° moral nature . We have in him an Oriental , a primitive , spirit in art Hellenic form . But the democratic nature of Greek institutions baffled his efforts . Failing to found a relig ion , he originated a school , However , " the- gifted Sauiian was a lucide , not an occasional crisiac , but a permanent seer . " Mr . Jackson believes in what the Germans call " dopple gangers ; " and , therefore , that Pythagoras may possibly have lectured in two places at one time , and have cultivated the habit and power of liberating " the nervo-vital powei * , by which the eidolon is projected forth on the magic mirror of nature , " Socrates next engages his attention , whose claims to seerdom are not only asserted , but those also of Lord Bacon . The Novum Organum is painted as a prophecy , in which each sentence is an oracle . " What is prophecy if it be not a precognitiou of coming events , and who then shall deny to Francis Bacon the gift of soerdom ? Poet and philosopher , sage and seer , haa not all human culture ever commenced with such grand humanitarian spirits , who could embrace both these characters , whoso vast circuit of being comprehended at least thus much of perfected manhood ? Did not the first lawgivers propound their authoritative edicts in rythinicai cadences , and what were the primal creeds ot mon put deductions of after generations from those revelations of tho celestial in which the anthems and other productions of early bards abounded ? Tho weak and unauthorised separation of sage and aoor is a poor after-thought , to which tho colossal minds ot tho first ages , of ifUo oyelopean remains in the moral world our existing beliefs aro but fragmentary remnants , would never have condescended . Ihey 5 J uod tHp man in his intcyritu , and fteomod o «« t «« in tho work and entiret y in tho author as a needful Lcco npanhnont of all true greatness , without which to predicate perpetuity of any human production wero tho vainest of fanoios . " Coloridgo , too , Mr . Jackson adds to the Sooratio category . His tliird instance is Josephus , winch ho introduces with somo eloquent remark * on the mission of tho Jcwh . Ho dwells largely on hw Efeonio life , and that of tho soct that , formed what ho calls tho " holy acadomy , which , in the predominance of hypooriny and decline of t uth , nought refuge from the profanity of men in the purity of the desert , and there ,. doHpito tho uroUigate deaoneraoy of anantoward generation , endeavoured to maintain somewhat of tho fiery zeal and fervent pioty of tho older prophets . ' But , m all respects , ho was thoir inferior : " Born too late for tho high and holy oQioe of sacred propheoy , no
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 8, 1859, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08101859/page/19/
-