Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/173

Rh anonymous literary works. The late James T. Fields recognized some of De Quincey's unsigned essays which he found in periodicals; and although their author at first declared he was mistaken finally admitted what he had himself forgotten. Great as were the intellectual endowments of Byron and Goethe, commentators on their works profess to be able to discern their personality in everything that emanated from their pens. They were unable to get away from themselves. They viewed the external world through a medium which they could not lay aside. It is interesting to note the improvement in the esthetic taste the human psyche gradually underwent after men began to reflect upon their mental processes, although this improvement was doubtless at first unconscious. Homer describes minutely the harnessing of mules to a cart and the killing of animals for sacrifice. Furthermore, he exhibits a veritably diabolical ingenuity in devising ways by which men might be mutilated and slain. When their passions were aroused the historical Greeks were bloodthirsty to a degree. They sometimes put to death by thousands their prisoners taken in war. The political factions showed no more mercy than do those in some of the Central American states. Their judicial tribunals were often frightfully unjust. But when they calmly looked upon a tragedy they did not want to see any one openly slain. The Æneid of Virgil, though largely patterned after Homer, is pervaded by a much more humane spirit than the Iliad or the Odyssey. Yet the same Romans who read it with delight found pleasure in witnessing the gladiatorial games in which men and beasts lacerated and killed each other for the delectation of the spectators. During the middle age and far into modern times when religious persecution claimed its wretched victims by squadrons, the execution of human beings was often accompanied by the most frightful atrocities amid the applause or the silent approval of the spectators. But the modern novelist or poet who deals with these gruesome ages passes lightly over the more revolting incidents and permits the imagination of the reader to supply what he darkly hints at. Victor Hugo describes in minute detail, largely from his imagination, the slaughter of men and horses in the "hollow way" at the battle of Waterloo. But he casts a sort of halo of glory over victims and vanquished alike by extolling their bravery, their devotion to duty, their disregard of wounds and death, in order that he may arouse in the minds of his readers a sort of enthusiasm which makes him forget the horrors of the scene. The modern novelist is usually careful to eliminate everything from his production that would offend the esthetic taste, even to the extent of perverting well-established historical facts. "Egmont" is one of Goethe's most popular dramas; but its hero and the Egmont of history are totally different persons. The same may be said of Schiller's "Tell," by most persons regarded as attaining the highest excellence in German tragedy. Many of the eighteenth-century