The Battle of the Books; with selections from the literature of the Phalaris controversy/Appendix 4
A DISSERTATION
UPON THE EPISTLES OF
PHALARIS, THEMISTOCLES,
SOCRATES, EURIPIDES, AND OTHERS;
AND THE FABLES OF ÆSOP,
BY
[1697]
[pp. 55–63]
XV
But to let pass all further arguments from words and language, to me the very matter and business of the letters sufficiently discovers them to be an imposture. What force of wit and spirit in the style, what lively painting of humour, some fancy they discern there, I will not examine nor dispute: but methinks little sense and judgement is shewn in the ground-work and subject of them. What an improbable and absurd story is that of the fifty-fourth [Epistle]! Stesichorus was born at Himera; but he chanced to die at Catana, a hundred miles distance from home, quite across the island. There he was buried, and a noble monument made for him. Thus far the sophist had read in good authors. Now upon this he introduces the Himerenses, so enraged at the others for having Stesichorus's ashes, that nothing less will serve them than denouncing of war, and sacking their city. And presently an embassy is sent to Phalaris, to desire his assistance, who, like a generous ally, promises them what arms and men and money they would: but withal, sprinkles a little dust among the bees, advising them to milder counsels, and proposing this expedient, that Catana should have Stesichorus's tomb, and Himera should build a temple to him. Now was ever any declamator's theme so extravagantly put? What! to go to war upon so slight an occasion, and to call in too the assistance of the tyrant? Had they so soon forgot Stesichorus's own counsel, who, when upon another occasion they would have asked succour of Phalaris, dissuaded them by the fable of the horse and his rider? Our sophist had heard that seven cities contended about Homer; and so two might go to blows about another poet. But there's a difference between that contention, and this fighting in earnest. He is as extravagant too in the honours he would raise to his poet's memory; nothing less than a temple and deification. Cicero tells us, that in his days there was his statue still extant at Himera (then called Thermae), which, one would think, was honour enough. But a sophist can build temples in the air, as cheaply and easily as some others do castles.
What an inconsistency is there between the fifty-first and sixty-ninth Epistles! In the former he declares his immortal hatred to one Pytho, who, after Phalaris's flight from Astypalaea, would have persuaded his wife Erythia to a second marriage with himself; but seeing her resolved to follow her husband, he poisoned her. Now this could be no long time after his banishment; for then she could not have wanted opportunities of following him. But in the sixty-ninth Epistle we have her alive again, long after that Phalaris had been tyrant of Agrigentum; for he mentions his growing old there. And we must not imagine, but that several years had passed, before he could seize the government of so populous a city, that had two hundred thousand souls in it; or, as others say, eight hundred thousand. For he came an indigent stranger thither, according to the letters; and by degrees rising from one employment to another, at last had opportunity and power to effect that design. Besides, in the sixty-ninth letter, she is at Crete with her son; and in the fifty-first, she is poisoned (I suppose) at Astypalaea, for there her poisoner dwelt; and 'tis expressly said, she designed, but could not follow her husband: which seems an intimation, that the Sophist believed Astypalaea to be a city in Crete. 'Tis certain, our diligent editors, by comparing these two passages together, made that discovery in geography, for it could not be learned anywhere else; and 'tis an admirable token, both that the Epistles are old and genuine, and that commentators are not inferior to, nor unworthy of, their author.
What a scene of putid and senseless formality are the seventy-eighth, seventy-ninth, and hundred and forty-fourth Epistles? Nicocles, a Syracusan, a man of the highest rank and quality, sends his own brother a hundred miles with a request to Phalaris, that he would send to Stesichorus, another hundred miles, and beg the favour of a copy of verses upon Clearista his wife, who was lately dead. Phalaris accordingly sends to Himera with mighty application and address, and soon after writes a second letter of thanks for so singular a kindness. Upon the fame of this, one Pelopidas entreats him, that he would procure the like favour for a friend of his; but meets with a repulse. Now, whether there was any poem upon Clearista among the works of Stesichorus, whence our sophist might take the plot and ground-work of this story, or whether all is entirely his own invention and manufacture, I will not pretend to guess. But let those believe that can, that such stuff as this busied the head of the tyrant: at least they must confess then, though the letters would represent him as a great admirer, and judge too, of poetry, that he was a mere asinus ad lyram. For, in the seventy-ninth epistle, he calls this poem upon Clearista μέλος and μελῳδίαν, which must here (as it almost ever does) signify a lyric ode, since it is spoken of Stesichorus a melic or lyric poet. But in the hundred and forty-fourth he calls it an elegy, ἐλεγεῖον; which is as different from μέλος, as Theognis is from Pindar, or Tibullus from Horace. What! the same copy of verses both an ode and an elegy? Could not some years acquaintance with Stesichorus teach him the very names? But to forgive him, or rather the sophist, such an egregious piece of dulness: why, forsooth, so much ado, why such a vast way about, to obtain a few verses? Could not they have writ directly to Stesichorus, and at the price of some present have met with easy success? Do not we know, that all of that string, Bacchylides, Simonides, Pindar, got their livelihood by the Muses? So that to use Phalaris's intercession, besides the delay and an unnecessary trouble to both, was to defraud the poet of his fee.
Nay certainly, they might have employed any hand rather than Phalaris's. For, begging pardon of the Epistles, I suspect all to be a cheat about Stesichorus's friendship with him. For the poet, out of common gratitude, must needs have celebrated it in some of his works. But that he did not, the letters themselves are, in this point, a sufficient witness. For, in the seventy-ninth, Phalaris is feigned to entreat him, not once to mention his name in his books. This was a sly fetch of our sophist, to prevent so shrewd an objection from Stesichorus's silence as to any friendship at all with him. But that cunning shall not serve his turn. For what if Phalaris had really wished him to decline mentioning his name? Stesichorus knew the world well enough, that those sort of requests are but a modest simulation; and a disobedience would have been easily pardoned. In the seventy-fourth letter, he proclaims and glories to his enemy Orsilochus, that Pythagoras had stayed five months with him: why should he then seek to conceal from posterity the twelve years' familiarity with Stesichorus? Pindar, exhorting Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse, to be kind to poets and men of letters, tells him how Croesus had immortal praise for his friendship and bounty to them, but the memory of that cruel and inhospitable Phalaris was hated and cursed everywhere. How could Pindar have said this, had he heard of his extraordinary dearness with Stesichorus? for their acquaintance, according to the letters, was as memorable and as glorious, as that of Croesus with Æsop and Solon. So that Pindar, had he known it, for that sole kindness to his fellow poet, would have forborn so vile a character. Plato, in his second Epistle, recounts to Dionysius some celebrated friendships of learned men with tyrants and magistrates: Simondes' with Hiero and Pausanias, Thales' with Periander, Anaxagoras's with Pericles, Solon's and others with Croesus. Now, how could he have missed, had he ever heard of it, this of Stesichorus with Phalaris—being transacted in Sicily, and so a most proper and domestic example? If you say, the infamy of Phalaris made him decline that odious instance; in that very word you pronounce our Epistles to be spurious. For if they had been known to Plato, even Phalaris would have appeared as moderate a tyrant as Dionysius himself. Lucian, that feigns an embassy from Phalaris to Delphi for the dedication of the brazen bull, makes an oration in his praise, as Isocrates does of Busiris; where, without doubt, he has gathered all the stories he knew for topics of his commendation: but he has not one word of his friendship with Stesichorus. Nor, indeed, has anybody else. And do not you yet begin to suspect the credit of the letters?
It would be endless to prosecute this part, and shew all the silliness and impertinency in the matter of the Epistles. For, take them in the whole bulk, if a great person would give me leave, I should say, they are a fardel of common places, without any life or spirit from action and circumstance. Do but cast your eye upon Cicero's letters, or any statesman's, as Phalaris was: what lively characters of men there! what descriptions of place! what notifications of time! what particularity of circumstances! what multiplicity of designs and events! When you return to these again, you feel by the emptiness and deadness of them, that you converse with some dreaming pedant with his elbow on his desk; not with an active, ambitious tyrant, with his hand on his sword, commanding a million of subjects. All that takes or affects you, is a stiffness, and stateliness, and operoseness, of style: but as that is improper and unbecoming in all epistles, so especially it is quite aliene from the character of Phalaris, a man of business and despatch.
[pp. 66–68]
I must now beg the favour of one word with our late Editors of this author [Phalaris]. They have told the world, in their Preface, that among other specimens of their diligence, they collated the King's MS. as far as the XLth Epistle, and would have done so throughout, but that the Library-keeper out of his singular humanity denied them the further use of It. This was meant as a lash for me, who had the honour then and since to serve His Majesty in that office. I must own 'twas very well resolved of them, to make the preface, and the book, all of a piece; for they have acted in this calumny both the injustice of the tyrant, and the forgery of the sophist. For my own part, I should never have honoured it with a refutation in print, but have given it the neglect that is due to weak detraction, had I not been engaged to my friend to write this censure upon Phalaris; where to omit to take notice of that slander, would be tacitly to own it. The true story is this: a bookseller came to me, in the name of the Editors, to beg the use of the manuscript. It was not then in my custody, but as soon as I had the power of it, I went voluntarily and offered it him, bidding him tell the collator not to lose any time; for I was shortly to go out of town for two months. 'Twas delivered, used, and returned. Not a word said by the bearer, nor the least suspicion in me, that they had not finished the collation; for, I speak from experiment, they had more days to compare it in, than they needed to have hours. 'Tis a very little book, and the writing as legible as print. Well, the collation, it seems, was sent defective to Oxon; and the blame, I suppose, laid upon me. I returned again to the Library some months before the edition was finished: no application was made for further use of the manuscript. Thence I went for a whole fortnight to Oxon, where the book was then printing, conversed in the very College where the Editors resided. Not the least whisper there of the manuscript. After a few weeks, out comes the new edition, with this sting in the mouth of it. 'Twas a surprise indeed, to read there, that our manuscript was not perused. Could not they have asked for it again, then, after my return? 'Twas neither singular nor common humanity, not to inquire into the truth of the thing before they ventured to print, which is a sword in the hand of a child. But there is a reason for everything; and the mystery was soon revealed. As for the King's manuscript, they had no want nor desire of it; for, as I shall show by and by, they had neither industry nor skill to use either that or their own. And for my part, I, it seems, had the hard hap, in some private conversation, to say the Epistles were a spurious piece, and unworthy of a new edition. Hinc illae lacrimae. This was a thing deeply resented; and to have spoken to me about the manuscript had been to lose a plausible occasion of taking revenge.
Pro singulari sua humanitate! I could produce several letters from learned professors abroad, whose books our Editors may in time be fit to read, wherein these very same words are said of me, candidly and seriously. For I endeavour to oblige even foreigners by all courtesy and humanity: much more would I encourage and assist any useful designs at home. And I heartily wish that I could do any service to that young gentleman of great hopes, whose name is set to the edition. I can do him no greater, at present, than to remove some blemishes from the book that is ascribed to him; which I desire may be taken aright—to be no disparagement to himself, but a reproof only to his teachers.