the field, and two thousand prisoners in the hands of the foe, to whose moderation alone we owe the salvation of the city itself. Such are the fruits of your insane counsels and your predestinated ill-luck, and yet you live, and not only live, but come here into the midst of those on whom you have brought so many calamities, and have the effrontery to ask, not for pardon or oblivion, but for thanks and a crown! Certainly his position was a very trying one, and nothing can give us a higher conception of his influence as a man, a politician and an orator, than the fact that, with Lord Brougham's unanswerable argument against him, he succeeded, in the midst of those very disasters, in convincing the people that they had done only what they were bound to do, then and at all times. He told them that the issue of all human counsels was in the hands of God; that he had not had the command of the army, and so was not strictly responsible for its defeat; but, even were he fairly called to account for it, he should think himself acquitted by showing that everything had been done that depended on his foresight, diligence and courage; they had discharged their duty as Athenians, and left the consequences to Heaven. It was a cheap wisdom which had nothing to say beforehand, but would denounce, after the event, measures of which it might and (if they were really so bad) ought to have prevented the adoption-like a physician at a funeral, mentioning for the first time the prescriptions that would have saved the patient. "If this man had done so or so, he had not died.” εμβρόντητε, ειτα νυν λέγεις.* This is the topic, which, as was remarked by some of the old critics, he was always insisting on. Do not judge by the general result; examine each measure upon its own merits, in reference to the circumstances under which it was adopted. But that answer, however satisfactory to his hearers, does not satisfy him-he is not content to place his, or rather their case, upon such low though safe ground. Any other orator, Eschines or Lord Brougham, for instance, would have stopped there, and thought the argument exhausted. Not so, the heroical imitator of the glorious past. He ventures to go much farther; he disdains to skulk behind the uncertainty of events, and to ask indulgence and pardon for human weakness. He wants no forgiveness; he needs none; he throws away the advantage of his obvious and unanswerable defence. He challenges his adversary forth upon the ground on which he means to plant his own fame for ever. He concedes that the contest, instead of being a doubtful one—so doubtful, that Philip himself, when it was over, looked back to it with a feeling of awe-had been altogether desperate; and he maintains that the example of their ancestors, who had resolutely rejected *II. 5spavou, ¡71. See 66. Theo. Sophist. Progym, c. 11. all offers of peace and protection from the Mede, if they would only consent to his conquering the rest of Greece, and had chosen rather to abandon their hearths and altars, and to give up their fair city with its most holy temples to be sacked and devastated by a barbarous foe, with no hope or resource but in "the courage never to submit or yield," and their gallant ships to fight it out unto the last-that their position at the head of the civilized world, and the duties it imposed upon them--left them no alternative but to resist to resist with arms in their hands-to resist at all hazards, to the uttermost extremity, and be the consequences what they might. Even Lord Brougham himself, with a temperament most un-Demosthenian, and treating this whole matter as honest Jack Falstaff discusses honor, admits this splendid and prodigious passage to be successful-in spite of its being just no argument at all-and we venture to say that no man capable of interpreting Greek prose ever reads this chapter with its equally admirable context, without experiencing some, at least, of the tumultuous enthusiasm which Dionysius of Halicarnassus* declares is awakened in him by the eloquence of by far the mightiest orator that ever swayed the souls of men. Nobody has the least doubt that the paradox, so bold for a degenerate people, that Demosthenes begs they will not reject it till they hear him out with it, nobody has a shadow of doubt but that it is fully established long before he has done with it. There is not a man of us all but is ready to swear with him that it was all perfectly right, and would have been so, though Athens had been blotted out for ever from the face of the earth, and nothing left of her but the glory of such a defeat. But then, it seems, though the topic is so satisfactory, and so irresistibly put, it is no argument, and why? Because the great men, whose example is cited and whose merit Demosthenes alleges to have consisted in their courage, undismayed, even in what seemed a desperate case, having, in fact, succeeded after all, (though that, according to the hypothesis, is a perfectly immaterial circumstance,) it was not "a case that ran on all fours," with the one before the court. What is to be done with such Nisi-Prius cavilling? εμβροντήτε τί λέγεις. This part of the argument of Demosthenes rests upon an illustrious precedent, or rather a series of illustrious precedents, the history of Athens in the day of her glory and power. He aims to show that, in this second attempt of a barbarian (as he pronounces Philip) to conquer Greece, her position had been precisely what it was at the time of the first, and that his policy, as her adviser, had been, in all respects, except what he labors throughout his whole speech to prove was wholly immaterial * Π. τ. λ. Δ. δεινότητος. success in the issue-identical with that of Miltiades and Themistocles. What he regards as the great feature in the conduct of that heroic age was the sublime spirit of self-sacrifice in the people of Athens. Spurning at all terms, however tempting to baser natures, from the enemy, they had chosen, rather than see the liberty and civilization of Greece overthrown without an effort to save it, to abandon their country, for many reasons peculiarly sacred in their eye, and had determined, should events be, as seemed probable, unfavorable, to emigrate for ever to some distant clime. It was not because Themistocles had conquered at Salamis that his name was immortal-that only proved his skill and address as a captain-but what made him a hero, and gives to the whole story of the war the air of mythology or epic poetry, was that he had fought there under such desperate circumstances-hazarding the very existence of the state upon a single cast of the die. It was the spirit, the generous devotedness, the nice sense of what was due to the superiority of Greek nature, and the unshaken determination to live Greeks or live no more. was the choice of Achilles: Κῆρα δ' εγώ τότε δέξομαι, όππότε κεν δη II. 18. 115. It Certainly the whole reasoning of Demosthenes proceeds upon the assumption that all this is right. If you deny his principle, there is an end of the whole argument, for one of the first rules of logic is that there is no disputing with him that questions principles. How should you prove to a Quaker that any war was just, or necessary, or glorious? How could Sir John's argument on the point of honor be refuted to the satisfaction of a jury of Falstaffs? If Lord Brougham does not feel and acknowledge the force of the precedent, as he seems not to do, then he is no fit judge of Demosthenes or his reasoning the whole matter is to him coram non judice. But, if he admits the premises of the orator, his conclusion is irresistible; and the verdict of the only tribunal competent to do it full justice-the people of Athens has settled the question for ever. Nor, indeed, do we envy him that reads this wonderful oration-wonderful in every thing that can enter into the composition of a perfect speech, but most of all in the heroical elevation of sentiment-without feeling it to be true that the motives, the conduct, the spirit of the contest, were those of Salamis and Artemisium-that this spirit. had moved the mighty orator from the beginning, as it did to the end of his great and tragical career-had made him throw him * Contra negantem principia non est disputandum. self into the breach on the memorable occasion, painted in all its terrors (in this very speech,) of the sudden capture of Elateia by Philip, when no other public man durst utter an opinion or propose a measure --had dictated his immortal manifesto, as full of statesman-like wisdom and high patriotism, as of matchless eloquence had gone with him on his embassy to Thebes, and there armed him with invincible might, and insured him a complete triumph over every difficulty of sloth, and fear, and rooted prejudice, and over the most formidable opposition from the partizans of Philip-and was now, in this last solemn account of his stewardship, by the lofty tones in which the examples of the past were invoked to justify his measures, attesting in the most unequivocal manner their moral identity. As to his failure in the great result, we shall say more of that hereafter, but the orator has not left us to conjecture the disadvantages under which he labored in his contest with Philip. In a passage of this very speech, they are most clearly and forcibly summed up.t But we have already, perhaps, dwelt too long upon this part of the subject, and we must hasten to another. The second volume, at the head of this article, is one of many contributions to the literature of Demosthenes which Professor Westermann has made within a few years past. This little volume contains his remarks upon the causes which the orator argued himself, in contradistinction to those wherein he furnished arguments to others. These were the Lis Tutoria, or his action of account against his guardians--the Lis Midiana, or his action against Midias for a ruffianly assault upon him, of which we have already spoken-the two contests with Eschines on the Embassy and the Crown-the Lis Aristogeitonia, two declamatory pieces, certainly not genuine-and the Lis Harpalica, involving the famous charge of corruption against him, for extending his protection to the fugitive treasurer of Alexander, and sharing in the fruits of his famous embezzlement. The book closes with an epimetrum, in which the author treats of the repetitions that occur in the orations of Demosthenes, and animadverts upon certain critical remarks of Lord Brougham in regard to them. We shall take notice of these, if our space admit of it, by and by. 1. The two speeches against Aphobus were delivered when Demosthenes was only eighteen or twenty years of age; the third is condemned as spurious. Crassus, in the Dialogue de Oratore, mentions his appearing before the public, on an important occasion, at almost as early an age. In the case of Demosthenes, the wonder is greatly increased by the extreme matu rity of thought and style that distinguishes these speeches. This was, indeed, so remarkable, that his master Isæus was charged with having helped him in the composition of them. The only * De Corona, § 55. : L. 3, c. 20. + Ibid. § 65. difficulty in the way of that supposition is, that they happen to be better than any thing the said master has done for himself. The peroration of the first is extremely pathetic, and there is one point in it (13) that is particularly well reasoned. The speech is in other respects a dry matter of account, which he states, item by item, with the precision of a master in chancery. He appears, however, to make out his case very clearly, and the judgment of the court shows that his evidence was as strong as his statement was plain. It seems that he was left, at his father's death, a boy of seven years old, with a sister two years younger, and a fortune, the bulk of which had been bequeathed to him, of fourteen talents, which properly managed would have increased, by the time he was of age, to thirty (about £7,250). Instead of this opulent estate, (for so it was then.) he received from his guardians only a house, fourteen staves, and thirty mina (£120) in money. This was the beginning of his misfortunes, and, according to some of his biographers, of his greatness. Facit indignatio versus. To be revenged on these wicked men, they suppose him to have devoted himself to the study of eloquence-as if the orator, par excellence, of all time, was a creature of accident or art, or as if any body can be eloquent, after the manner of Demosthenes, without a physical organization of a most peculiar kind. But it deserves to be mentioned that, if Demosthenes afterwards wrote, as we have seen he did, many speeches for money, this humiliating necessity was imposed upon one born for better things, by the profligate mismanagement of others. The profession of a feed advocate, or logograph, at Athens, was regarded with extreme disfavor.* Demosthenes himself informs us, it was generally admitted that the worst class in the community were those who wrote and spoke for money. There is a terrible picture, though in very exaggerated colors, in the oration against Aristogeiton, of the vast influences, as well as of the detestable practices, of the orators in general, but especially the venal sycophants-brokers in iniquity, as they are called, who traffic in their influence with the people, and live on the terrors of the rich.‡ The speeches against Aphobus, we may add here, stand at the head of those composed for private causes. These are a curious variety of the Demosthenic style, and strikingly illustrate its wonderful versatility, so much extolled by Cicero and Dionysius. It is equally perfect, that is, fit and appropriate, on all subjects, from the highest to the lowest. There was no imaginable sort [* Aristoph. Plut. 30.] Cont. Aristocrat. § 36. Cf. Midiana, § 52. "He will call me orator, to make me odious." Timocrat. § 17. "Have no pity for him, he writes for pay." #Aristogeit. §§ 9-11. "The dogs of Demus." [Or rather keepers of the Dog, Demus, whom they starve into ferocity and let slip upon their enemies. Aristoph. Vesp. 704.] Passages, these, certainly not of Deinosthenes. VOL. I.-60 |