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Page 18
Do we not observe something analogous taking place in the terrible
crush of civilised human life? To thoughtful minds there is no surer
sign of the progress that humanity is slowly making than the fact that
among our race the weak are succoured. Were it not for the sights of
helpfulness and pity that we can always see, many of us would give way
to despair, and think that man is indeed no more than a two-legged
brute without feathers. The savage even now kills aged people without
remorse, just as the Sardinian islanders did in the ancient days; and
there are certain tribes which think nothing of destroying an
unfortunate being who may have grown weakly. Among us, the merest
lazar that crawls is sure of some succour if he can only contrive to
let his evil case be known; and even the criminal, let him be never so
vile, may always be taken up and aided by kindly friends for the bare
trouble of asking.
But there are still symptoms of the animal disposition to be seen, and
only too many people conspire to show that human nature is much the
same as it was in the days when Job called in his agony for comfort
and found none. Wonderful and disquieting it is to see how the noblest
of minds have been driven in all ages to mourn over the disposition of
men to strike at the unfortunate! The Book of Job is the finest piece
of literary work known to the world, and it is mainly taken up with a
picture of the treatment which the Arabian patriarch met with at the
hands of his friends. People do not look for sarcasm in the Bible, but
the unconscious lofty sarcasm of Job is so terrible, that it shows how
a mighty intellect may be driven by bitter wrong into transcendencies
of wrath and scorn. "Ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with
you." The old desert-prince will not succumb even in his worst
extremity, and he lashes his tormentors with wild but strong bursts of
withering satire. But Job was down, and his cool friends went on
imperturbably, probing his weakness, sneering at his excuses, and, I
suspect, rejoicing not a little in his wild outbreaks of pain and
despair. The book is one of the world's monuments, and it has been
placed there to remind all people that dwell on earth of their own
innate meanness; it has been placed before us as a lesson against
cruelty, treachery, ingratitude. Have we gone very far in the
direction since Job raged and mourned? Those who look around them may
answer the question in their own way.
The world had not progressed much in Shakspere's time, at any rate.
Like all of us, Shakspere was able to look on the work of beautiful
and kind souls--no one has ever spoken more nobly of the benefactions
conferred on their brethren by the righteous; but that calm immortal
soul had in it depths of awful scorn and anger, which bubbled up only
a very few times. Few people read "Timon of Athens"; and I do not
blame the neglect, for it is a spirit-crushing play, and a man must be
bold if he cares to look at it twice. But in it it is plain to me that
Shakspere lets us see a gleam from the boiling flood of scorn that
raged far under his serene exterior. The words bite; the abandonment
of the satirist is complete. He puts into the mouth of the man who is
down a whole acrid and scurrilous philosophy of success and failure;
and there is not a passage in Swift which can equal for venom and
emphasis the ferocious words of the Athenian misanthrope. We know
nothing of Shakspere's mood while he was writing this cruel piece, but
I should imagine he must have been ready to quit the world in a
veritable ecstasy of wild passion and contempt.
If we take away the literature of love and the literature of fear, we
have but little left save the endless works that harp on one
theme--the remorseless savagery of civilised men toward those who
fail, or are supposed to fail, in life's grim warfare.
"Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot!
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy tooth is not so sharp
As friend remembered not!"
Those lines are hackneyed until every poetaster can quote them or
parody them at will; but very few readers consider that the bitter
verse summarises a whole literature. From Homer to Tennyson the ugly
tune has been played on all strings; and mankind have such a vivid
perception of the truth uttered by the satirists, that they read the
whole story with gusto whenever it is put into a fresh form--and each
man thinks that he at least is not one of those for whom the poet's
lash is meant. Novel, essay, poem, play, and sermon--all recur with
steady persistence to one ancient topic; and yet men try their best to
bring themselves low, as they might if Job, Shakspere, Congreve, and
Tennyson had never written at all, and as though no warnings were
being actually enacted all round, as on a stage.
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