SCIENCE AND POETRY 169 



anonymous literary works. The late James T. Fields recognized some 

 of De Quincey's unsigned essays which he found in periodicals; and al- 

 though their author at first declared he was mistaken finally admitted 

 what he had himself forgotten. Great as were the intellectual endow- 

 ments 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 un- 

 conscious. 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 iEneid 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 wit- 

 nessing the gladiatorial games in which men and beasts lacerated and 

 killed each other for the delectation of the spectators. During the mid- 

 dle 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 revolt- 

 ing 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 vic- 

 tims 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 for- 

 get 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 



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