Various - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 566, September 15, 1832

(The Marchioness commands silence on the part of the author, who has treated a Roman lady, the daughter of Cicero, with disrespect. The duke explains the discovery of America, and taking out his watch, to which is appended, by way of trinket, a small mariner's compass, shows her how, by means of a needle, another hemisphere is reached. The amazement of the fair Roman redoubles at every word which she hears, and every thing she beholds; and she at length exclaims:)

Tullia. —I begin to fear that the moderns really do surpass the ancients; on this point I came to satisfy myself, and doubt not I shall have to carry back a melancholy report to my father.

Duke. —Console yourself, madam, no man amongst us equals your illustrious sire; neither does any come near Caesar, with whom you were contemporary, nor the Scipios who preceded him. Nature, it is true creates, even at this day, powerful intellects, but they resemble rare seeds, which cannot arrive at maturity in an uncongenial soil. The simile does not hold good respecting arts and sciences; time, and fortunate chances, have perfected them. It would, for example, be easier for us to produce a Sophocles, or an Euripides, than such individuals as your father, because, theatres we have, but no tribunals for public harangues. 6 6 The well-known poetic vanity of Voltaire must be taken into full account, when he thus talks of the easiness of producing a (modern) Sophocles, or an Euripides; perhaps he thought his own tragedies equal, or superior to theirs; and for what follows, the French national prejudice in favour of their own dramatic writers, and which is far more laudable than the English indifference to the interests of the drama, should be recollected. You have hissed the tragedy of Cataline; when you shall see Phaedrus played, you will probably agree that the part of Phaedrus, in Racine, is infinitely superior to the model you have known in Euripides. I hope, also, that you will agree our Molière surpasses your Terence. By your permission, I shall have the honour of escorting you to the opera, where you will be astonished to hear song in parts; that again is an art unknown to you. 7 7 To "astonished" the author might almost have added alarmed, or disgusted. The conversant in music, know that song in parts, i.e. harmonized, is peculiarly distasteful to the ear unaccustomed to it; song, in unison, is the natural music of savage man; harmony is art; to be pleased with it therefore, implies a mind and ear cultivated and refined. The same remark hold good with instrumental music. Here, madam, is a small telescope, have the goodness to apply your eye to this glass, and look at that house which is a league off.

Tullia. —Immortal gods! the house is now at the end of the telescope, and appears much larger than before.

Duke. —Well, madam, it is by means of such a toy that we have discovered new heavens, even as by means of a needle, we have become acquainted with a new earth. Do you see this other varnished instrument, in which is inserted a small glass tube? by this trifle, we are enabled to discover the just proportion of the weight of the atmosphere. After much error and uncertainty, there arose a man who discovered the first principle of nature, the cause of weight, and who has demonstrated that the stars weigh upon the earth, and the earth upon the stars. He has also unthreaded the light of the sun, as ladies unthread a tissue of gold.

Tullia. —What, sir, is it to unthread?

Duke. —Madam, the equivalent of this term will scarcely be found in the orations of Cicero. It is to unweave a stuff, to draw out thread by thread, so as to separate the gold. Thus has Newton done by the rays of the sun, the stars also have submitted to him; and one Locke has accomplished as much by the Human Understanding.

Tullia. —You know a great deal for a duke and a peer of the realm; you seem to me more learned than that literary man who wished me to think his verses good, and you are far more polite.

Duke. —Madam, I have been better brought up; but as to my knowledge it is merely commonplace. Young people now, when they quit school, know much more than all the philosophers of antiquity. It is only a pity that we have, in Europe, substituted half-a-dozen imperfect jargons, for the fine Latin language, of which your father made so noble a use; but with such rude implements we have produced, even in the belles lettres, some very fair works.

Tullia. —The nations who succeeded the Romans must needs have lived in a state of profound peace, and have enjoyed a constant succession of great men, from my father's time until now, to have invented so many new arts, and to have become acquainted so intimately with heaven and earth.

Duke. —By no means, madam, we are ourselves, some of those barbarians, who almost all came from Scythia, and destroyed your empire, and the arts and sciences. We lived for seven or eight centuries like savages, and to complete our barbarism, were inundated with a race of men termed monks, who brutified, in Europe, that human species which you had conquered and enlightened. But what will most astonish you is, that in the latter ages of ignorance amongst these very monks, these very enemies to civilization, nature nurtured some useful men. Some invented the art of assisting the feeble sight of age; and others, by pounding together nitre and charcoal, have furnished us with implements of war, with which we might have exterminated the Scipios, Alexander, Caesar, the Macedonian phalanxes, and all your legions; it is not that we possess warriors more formidable than the Scipios, Alexander, and Caesar, but that we have superior arms. 8 8 We apologize to our zealous correspondent for omitting the ingenious defence of War, contained in the Note to this passage. Its insertion would involve ourselves in a war—we mean of words, words, words." As a private opinion, we admit the argument of the defence; though it militates so strongly with passion and prejudice that its insertion would be the war-hoop for a whole community of peace-makers to break in upon our literary otium. We wish to be the last in the world to feed a popular fallacy on any subject; but in some respects the argument employed in the journal quoted by M.L.B. is of too general a description to controvert the error in the present case. We must be courteous—though not of the court: ours is a system of non-intervention in politics; ever, in matters of literary dispute we do little more than "bite our thumb." It is hoped our correspondent will rightly understand us; and so now, like Mr. Peake's bashful man in the farce, we offer our apology for having apologized. By the way, in the, newspapers is advertised a pamphlet, containing an apology for its publication.—ED, M.

Tullia. —In you, I perceive united, the high breeding of a nobleman, and the erudition of a man of (literary) consideration; you would have been worthy of becoming a Roman senator.

Duke. —Ah, madam, far more worthy are you of being at the head of our court.

Mad. de P. —In which case, this lady would prove a formidable rival to me.

Tullia. —Consult your beautiful mirrors made of sand, and you will perceive you have nothing to fear from me. Well, sir, in the gentlest manner in the world, you have informed me that your knowledge (infinitely) transcends our own.

Duke. —I said, madam, that the latter ages are better informed than those which preceded them; at least no general revolution has utterly destroyed all the monuments of antiquity: we have had horrible, but temporary convulsions, and amid these storms, have been fortunate enough to preserve the works of your father, and of some other great men: thus, the sacred fire has never been utterly extinguished, and has in the end produced an almost universal illumination. We despise the barbarous scholastic systems, which have long had some influence among us, but revere Cicero and all the ancients who have taught us to think. If we possess other laws of physics than those of your times, we have no other rules of eloquence, and this perhaps may settle the dispute between the ancients and moderns.