CHAPTER VI.
LUCIAN AS A ROMANCE-WRITER.
We can readily see, from the spirit and vivacity of Lucian's Dialogues, what an admirable novelist he would have been; especially if he had chosen the style which has of late become deservedly popular, where nice delineation of character, and conversation of that clever and yet apparently natural and easy kind in which "the art conceals the art," form the attraction to the reader, rather than exciting incidents or elaborate plot. But this kind of literature had yet to be born. Lucian has left us, however, two short romances, if they may be so called, which it would be hardly fair to compare with modern works of fiction, but which show that he possessed powers of imagination admitting of large and successful development if his own age had afforded scope and encouragement to literary efforts of that kind. It must be remembered that the modern novel, in all its various types, is the special product of modern society; the love-tales which so largely form its staple, and the nice distinctions of character on which so much of its interest depends, spring entirely out of the circumstances of modern civilisation, and could have no place in Greek or Roman life in the days of Lucian. Yet he may fairly claim to have furnished hints, at least, of which later workers in the same field have taken advantage.
One of these tales Lucian has entitled "The Veracious History." Even here he preserves his favourite character of satirist; for he glances slyly, both in the opening of his story and throughout it, at the stories told by the old poets and historians, which he would have us understand are often about as "veracious" as his own. His old quarrel with the pretenders to philosophy breaks out also from time to time in the same pages. He introduces his story (which is the account of an imaginary voyage made into certain undiscovered regions) by a kind of preface, of which the following is a portion.
"Ctesias, son of Ctesiochus, of Cnidus, has written an account of India, and of the things there which he never either saw himself or heard from any one else. So also Iambulus has told us a great many incredible stories about things in the great ocean, which everybody knew to be false, but which he has put together in a form by no means unentertaining.[1] So many others besides, with the same end in view, have related what purported to be their own travels and adventures, describing marvellously large beasts and savage men, and strange modes of life. But the ringleader and first introducer of this extravagant style is that Ulysses of Homer's, telling his stories at the court of Alcinöus, about the imprisonment of the winds, and the one-eyed Cyclops, and the man-eaters, and suchlike savage tribes; and about creatures with many heads, and the transformation of his comrades by magic potions, and all the rest of it, with which he astonished the simple Phæacians. When I read all these, I do not blame the writers so much for their lies, because I find the custom common even with those who pretend to be philosophers. All I wonder at is, that they should ever have supposed that people would not find out that they were telling what was not true. Wherefore, being myself incited (by an absurd vanity, I admit) to leave some legacy to posterity, that I may not be the only man without my share in this open field of story-telling, and haying nothing true to tell (for I never met with any very memorable adventures), I have turned my thoughts to lying; in much more excusable fashion, however, than the others. For I shall certainly speak the truth on one point,—when I tell you that I lie; and so it seems to me I ought to escape censure from the public, since I freely confess there is not a word of truth in my story. I am going to write, then, about things which I never saw, adventures I never went through, or heard from any one else; things, moreover, which never were, nor ever can be. So my readers must on no account believe them."
The adventures of the voyagers "from the Pillars of Hercules into the Western Ocean" are indeed of the most extravagant kind. They have all the wild impossibilities without much of the picturesqueness of an Eastern tale. A burlesque resemblance is kept up throughout to the kind of incident which, in the mouths of the old bards, had passed for history. We read how they came to a brass pillar with an almost illegible inscription, marking the limit of the travels of Hercules and Bacchus, and found near it on a rock the prints of two footsteps, one "measuring about an acre"—plainly that of Hercules; the smaller one, of course, belonged to Bacchus: how they found rivers of native wine,—a manifest confirmation of the visit of the latter god to those parts: and how a whirlwind carried them, ship and all, up into the moon, where they made acquaintance with Endymion, and saw the earth below looking like a moon to them, which shows that Lucian was not so far wrong in his astronomy. How their ship was swallowed by a sea-monster, and they lived inside him a year and eight months, carrying on a small war against a previous colony whom they found established there: and effected their escape at last by lighting an enormous fire, so that the monster died of internal inflammation. After this they made their way to that hitherto undiscovered country, the 'Island of the Blest,' when they were bound in fetters of roses, and led before Rhadamanthus, the king. We have a glowing description of the city, with its streets of gold and walls of emerald, temples of beryl and altars of amethyst; where there was no day or night, but a perpetual luminous twilight; where it was always spring, and none but the south wind blew; and where the vines ripened their fruit every month.[2] There they found most of the heroes of Grecian legend and of later history. Philosophers, too—genuine philosophers—were there in good number. And here the satirist quite gets the mastery over the story-teller. Plato was remarked as absent; he preferred living "in his own Republic, under his own laws," to any Elysium that could be offered him. The Stoics had not yet arrived, when these voyagers reached the island, though they were expected; Hesiod's 'Hill of Virtue,'[3] which they all had to climb, was such a very long one. Neither were the Sceptics of the Academy to be seen there; they were thinking of coming, but had "doubts" about it—doubts whether there were any such place at all; and perhaps, thinks Lucian, they were shy of encountering the judgment of Rhadamanthus, having a profound dislike to any decisive judgment upon any subject whatever.
The travellers would gladly have remained in the Happy Island altogether, but this was not allowed. They were promised, however, by Rhadamanthus, that if during their further voyage they complied with certain rules, which remind us of the old burlesque oath formerly sworn by travellers at Highgate—such as "never to stir the fire with a sword, and never to kiss any woman above two-and-twenty"[4]—they should in good time find their way there again. Just as the writer is taking his leave, "Ulysses, unknown to Penelope, slipped into his hand a note to Calypso, directed to the island of Ogygia." The note, in the course of their subsequent wanderings, was duly delivered, and Calypso entertained the hearers very handsomely in her island; asking, not without tears, many questions about her old lover; and also—whether Penelope was really so very lovely and so virtuous? to which, very prudently, says Lucian, "we made such a reply as we thought would please her best."
They meet with some other adventures, tedious to our ears, sated as they are with fiction in all shapes, but probably not so to the hearers or readers to whom Lucian addressed them. But either he grew tired of story-telling, or the conclusion of this "Veracious History" has been lost; for it breaks off abruptly, leaving some promises made in the early portion unfulfilled.
De Bergerac, in his 'Voyage to the Moon' and 'History of the Empire of the Sun,' Swift, in his 'Gulliver's Travels,' Quevedo, in his 'Visions,' and Rabelais, in his 'History of Gargantua and Pantagruel,' are all said to have borrowed from this imaginary voyage of Lucian's. But they can have taken from him little more than crude hints, and Swift at least owes a much larger debt to De Bergerac than to Lucian.
Lucius, or The Ass, is another short essay in fiction, complete in itself, and approximating more closely to our modern idea of a story. It relates the transformation of the hero into an ass, through the accidental operation of the charm of a sorceress, and his restoration, after a variety of adventures in his quadruped form, into his own proper shape by feeding on some roses. It is not certain whether the story is original, or merely an abridgment in our author's own style from a tale by one Lucius of Patræ. The "Golden Ass" of Apuleius (written probably at about the same date) seems to be founded either on this piece of Lucian's or on the common original, but Apuleius extends the tale to greater length. The experiences of Lucius in the person of the ass, while retaining all his human faculties, are fairly amusing, but not tempting either for extract or abridgment. The piece is chiefly interesting as one of the few surviving specimens of an ancient novelette.
Shorter, but much more amusing, is the pleasant little sketch, cast in Lucian's favourite form of a Dialogue—"The Cock and the Cobbler."
The Cobbler is our old friend Micyllus, who is awakened one morning much earlier than he likes by the crowing of his cock, whom he declares he would kill if it were not too dark to catch him. The Cock remonstrates: he is only doing his duty; and if his master will not get up and make a shoe before breakfast, he is very likely to go without. Micyllus is very much startled at the prodigy of a cock's finding a human voice; upon which the bird remarks that if Achilles's horse Xanthus could make a long speech, and in verse too, and the half-roasted oxen in the Odyssey could low even on the spit—and there is Homer's excellent authority for both[5]— surely he may say a few words in humble prose. Besides, if his master wants to know, he has not always been a bird—he was a man, once upon a time: Micyllus has surely heard of the great philosopher Pythagoras, and his transformations? Yes, Micyllus has heard all about it—and a great imposter he was. "Pray, don't use violent language," replies the Cock; "I am Pythagoras—or rather, I was." He proceeds to explain how many and various transmigrations he has already gone through; he has been a king, a beggar, a woman, a horse, and a jackdaw; and never more miserable than in the character of a king. Micyllus expresses great surprise at this statement: for his own part, riches are the one thing he has always longed for; and the reason for his having been so angry now at being awakened was that he was in the midst of a most charming and interesting dream—it was, that he had inherited all the great wealth of his rich neighbour Eucrates, and was giving a grand supper on the occasion. He had thought he should now be able to repay the insolence of his former acquaintance Simo, who from a cobbler like himself had become suddenly a rich man, and would no longer recognise his old associate. The Cock assures his master that in his present poor estate he is really happier than many of the wealthy and great; and he will give him proof positive of his assertion. One of the two long feathers in his (the cock's) tail—the right-hand one—has the miraculous power of opening locks, and even making a passage through walls: he bids Micyllus pull it out. The cobbler pulls out both, to make sure, at which the Cock is very angry, until assured by his master that with one feather he would have looked very lop-sided. Armed with this talisman (the same which Le Sage has borrowed for his 'Diable Boiteux'), the pair fly through the sleeping city from house to house. They visit amongst others Simo and Eucrates: they find the former hiding his money, unable to sleep, in an agony for fear of thieves; and the latter cheated and betrayed by his wife and his servants. And the cobbler goes back home a wiser and more contented man.
- ↑ Ctesias's 'Indica,' of which Photius gives an abridgment, though to some extent fabulous, is not so contemptible as Lucian represents. Iambulus, whose account of India Diodorus Siculus adopts, seems to have indulged in pure fiction.
- ↑ It has been thought that the writer must either have seen or heard of the description of the New Jerusalem in the Revelation. But figurative diction has always some features in common; and in this passage reminiscences of the Greek poets are very evident. The ingenuity of some commentators has discovered, not only here, but throughout this "Veracious History," an intentional travesty of Scripture. But such an idea is surely fanciful.
- ↑ See p. 121.
- ↑ This latter caution bears a curious similarity to one of the parting injunctions which Perceval (or Peredur), when setting out from home in quest of adventures, receives from his mother, and which appears with little variation in the Welsh, Breton, and Norman legends—to kiss every demoiselle he meets, without waiting for her permission; it is, she assures him, a point of chivalry. He carries out his instructions, according to one raconteur, by kissing the first lady he falls in with "vingt fois," in spite of her resistance, pleading his filial obligation:
"Ma mère m'enseigna et dit
Que les pucèles saluasse
En quel lieu que je les trovasse."
—Chrestien de Troyes. - ↑ It will be observed that Lucian is continually jesting upon the marvels related by Homer, and affecting to be shocked at them as palpable lies. But his very familiarity with the poet is proof sufficient of his real appreciation of him. Like the old angler, he puts him on his hook, but still "handles him tenderly, as though he loved him."