History serves us well to this effect, but in the originals,
not in the pages of the popular epitomiser, who is bound, by
the very nature of his task, to make us feel the difference
of epochs instead of the essential identity of man, and even
in the originals only to those who can recognise their own
human virtues and defects in strange forms, often inverted
and under strange names, often interchanged. Martial is a
poet of no good repute, and it gives a man new thoughts to
read his works dispassionately, and find in this unseemly
jester's serious passages the image of a kind, wise, and
self-respecting gentleman. It is customary, I suppose, in
reading Martial, to leave out these pleasant verses; I never
heard of them, at least, until I found them for myself; and
this partiality is one among a thousand things that help to
build up our distorted and hysterical conception of the great
Roman Empire.
This brings us by a natural transition to a very noble book -
the MEDITATIONS of Marcus Aurelius. The dispassionate
gravity, the noble forgetfulness of self, the tenderness of
others, that are there expressed and were practised on so
great a scale in the life of its writer, make this book a
book quite by itself. No one can read it and not be moved.
Yet it scarcely or rarely appeals to the feelings - those
very mobile, those not very trusty parts of man. Its address
lies further back: its lesson comes more deeply home; when
you have read, you carry away with you a memory of the man
himself; it is as though you had touched a loyal hand, looked
into brave eyes, and made a noble friend; there is another
bond on you thenceforward, binding you to life and to the
love of virtue.
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