Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/415

Rh harmless pleasures and abstinence from injurious ones: Epicurus.—Self-improvement: Hobbes.—An income of five thousand pounds: Richard Porson.—Success: Bolingbroke.—The citizenship of an illustrious state: Sophocles.—Health, books, and solitude: Zimmermann.—Health, wealth, and a liberal education: D'Alembert.—Day-dreams for those who still hope; resignation and a padded easy-chair for those who know better: Schopenhauer.—Visions of glory before the battle of life; a comfortable lazaretto after the inevitable thrashing: Id.—Virtue and resignation: Seneca.—Freedom from the tyranny of kings and vices: J. J. Rousseau.—A good bank-account, a good cook, and a good digestion: Edmond About.—Fortitude in adversity, moderation in prosperity: Anaxagoras.—Peace: Buddha.

In an article on English Poetry the "Quarterly Review" declares that the historic method shows "how the mind and spirit of the English people in each age is reflected in the poetry of that age as it is nowhere else reflected"; and again, "how truly England's poetry has mirrored the historic condition of the several ages which produced it." The "Quarterly" thus illustrates its theory: 14 No English poet has more historic value than Chaucer, for none more faithfully reflects all the mingled influences that swayed his time. Though belonging by birth to the middle class, Chaucer's sympathies, as those of Shakespeare and of "Walter Scott, were with the aristocrats. He soon became a gentleman and a courtier, and saw life from that side." This looks much as if Chaucer's poetic mirror was somewhat warped, and this is still further confirmed by what the "Quarterly" says: "Wide as was Chaucer's genial humanity, he still looked at life through the eyes of the well-to-do, even of the aristocratic class with whom he was so much associated. No one would guess from his poems that he lived in what a modern historian has called 'a time of shame and suffering, such as England had never known; when her conquests were lost, her shores insulted, her fleet sunk, her commerce destroyed, her people exhausted by the long and costly wars with France, and by the ravages of pestilence.' None would guess from his poems that his was the day when the black-death swept off half the population of England, and when the peasant revolt threatened revolution."

The Age of Faith.—The credulity of the patristic era may be inferred from the superstitions of the so-called philosophers of that age. Celsus, Lucan, and Apuleius, then hailed as morning-stars of rationalism, would now be in danger of a strait-jacket. The elder Pliny has been called the Roman Humboldt, and his "Natural History" a thesaurus of universal knowledge. The value of that treasury may be estimated by the following specimen-bricks: Among the feræ naturæ of Africa he mentions a catoplus, "an animal found only in Ethiopia. All who behold the eyes of this beast fall dead on the spot. Luckily, the creature has' a heavy head, which is always weighed down to the earth. Were it not for this circumstance it would prove the destruction of the human race. "The bodies of whelks and oysters," the Roman Humboldt assures us, "are increased in size and again diminished by the influence of the moon. Certain accurate (!) observers have found out that the entrails of field-mice correspond in number to the days of the moon's age." The flight of ravens, too, is influenced by the changes of the lunar phases, though their observance of certain days may be due to a religious sentiment. In the case of barn-yard fowls there is no room for any such doubt. They are religious birds. By way of establishing this point he thinks it sufficient x to mention that chickens throw dust over their bodies in the manner observed by the augurs in the week of purification. During the