  In an old bookshop which I visit, never without making a discovery or two—not infrequently, as in the present case, assisted in my good fortune by the bookseller himself—I lately came upon an edition of Long's Marcus Aurelius with an admirable prefatory note that is, I believe, peculiar to this issue—that of 1869. And since the eyes of the present generation have never been turned towards America so often and so seriously as latterly, when our Trans-Atlantic cousins have become our allies, blood once more of our blood, the passage may be reprinted with peculiar propriety. Apart, however, from its American interest, the document is valuable for its dignity and independence, and it had the effect of sending me to that rock of refuge, The Dictionary of National Biography, to inquire further as to its author. There I found that Late in life he brought out anonymously a book of essays, entitled An Old Man's Thoughts about Many Things, in which I have been dipping. I do not say it would bear reprinting now, but anyone seeing it on a friend's shelf should borrow "It is in the nature of things that statues should be made. They were made more than two thousand years ago, and I believe the business has never stopped, for when people could not get good statues, they were content with bad, as we are now. "If I might give advice to the men now living, who look forward to the honour, if it is an honour, of being set up in bronze in the highways, or in marble in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's; if I might advise, I would say, leave a legacy in your will for your own statue. It will save much trouble and people will think better of you when you are gone, if you cost them nothing. As to their laughing at you for looking after your own statue, be not afraid of that. "It is very disagreeable nowadays to see a man standing for ever on his legs in public, doing nothing but stand, and seeming as if he were never going to do anything else. "If a man shall try to persuade me that a statue should be nothing more than the effigy of a man standing on a pedestal, I shall never be convinced. I would rather see a living man standing on an inverted cask, as I have seen a slave when he was sold, not that the sale is a very pleasant thing to see, but the man produced a much better effect than many of our statues, for he expressed something and they express nothing. "As we cannot or at least ought not to make our statues naked or blanket-dressed, and as body and legs are merely given to a statue in order to support the head, for the legs and body might be any legs and any body, would it not be wise to be satisfied with the head only? This would be a great saving, and though the sculptor would get less for a head than for a head with body and legs to it, he would have more heads to make. This is a hint, which I throw out by the way, for "When the negroes of Africa have been brought to the same state of civilization as the white man, they will make statues and set them up in public; and as we who are white make black statues, they who are black will of course make white statues. "Can anybody say what sin Dr. Jenner committed for which he does perpetual penance, not in white, but in black, his face black and his hands too, seated in the most public part of London, fixed to his chair, with no hope of rising from it? "This seated figure might be anybody. I see nothing by which I recognize Dr. Jenner; to say nothing of a cow, there is not even a calf by his side, with the benevolent physician's hand on the animal. "I cannot approve of a seated black statue in the open air—a black man sitting, and no more. "I sincerely pity our seated gentlemen in London, poor Cartwright, who looks like an old cobbler on his stool, and Fox, worse treated still, blanket-dressed, fat and black. No wonder some shortsighted man from the new Confederate States once took Fox for a negro woman, the emblem of British philanthropy and a memorial of the abolition of the slave trade. "The only beasts on which we can now place our heroes are horses. I may be wrong in my opinion, but I see no beauty in a horse standing still and a man's legs dangling down from the beast's back; nor do I think that the matter is mended by the horse and rider being of colossal size, though they ought to be larger than life. Perhaps we shall not have any more of these statues; but is it impossible to remove those that we have? "As we are a fighting people, we have been great makers of statues of fighting men. We put them even in churches. This reminds that when the time shall come for finishing and adorning the inside of St. Paul's, there will be an enormous quantity of old stone to dispose of, which is now "It is singular, or it is not singular, I can't say which, that we who box, wrestle, run and in many ways work our bodies, more than any other nation, have not employed our sculptors to immortalize our athletic heroes. Some of them would make good subjects for the artist. He might strip the boxer or runner naked, if he liked, and exhibit his art in the representation of strength and beauty of form. I have some misgivings about the faces of boxers, which are not remarkable for beauty, but the artist may improve them a little without destroying the likeness; and besides, in a naked figure we look less at the face than at the body and limbs. The champion of England would certainly have had a statue by Lysippus or some artist as good, if he had been lucky enough to live in ancient times.... We shall, of course, want a place to put these statues in, for we may be sure they will not get into the churches, which are only made for statues of fighting men who have killed somebody or ordered somebody to kill somebody. "I could go on much longer, but I don't choose. I write to amuse myself, and also to instruct, and when I am tired, I stop. I see no reason why I should exhaust the subject. I should only be giving my ideas to people who have none, who make a reputation out of other folks' brains, who pounce on anything that they find ready to their hand, and flood us with books made only to sell." It is already, I imagine, abundantly clear that Long would not have much liked many things that we do to-day. Writing of "Place and Power," he says: "At that very distant time when all members of Parliament shall be Andrew Marvells and will live on two hundred a year, poor men may do our business for us; but for the present I prefer men who are rich enough to live without the profits of place. I wish somebody would move for a return of all the visible and invisible means of support which every member of the Commons has. I want to know how much every man in the House receives of public money, whether he is soldier, sailor, place-holder, sinecurist, or anything else; and also how much he But I am not proposing to dissect Long's essays; it is the fine rebuke to an American publisher that I want to bring to your notice, for there Long's habitual serenity takes an edge. His protest runs thus: "I have been informed that an American publisher has printed the first edition of this translation of M. Antoninus. I do not grudge him his profit, if he has made any. There may be many men and women in the United States who will be glad to read the thoughts of the Roman Emperor. If the American politicians, as they are called, would read them also, I should be much pleased, but I do not think the emperor's morality would suit their taste. "I have also been informed that the American publisher has dedicated this translation to an American. I have no objection to the book being dedicated to an American, but in doing this without my consent the publisher has transgressed the bounds of decency. I have never dedicated a book to any man, and if I dedicated this, I should choose the man whose name seemed to me most worthy to be joined to that of the Roman soldier and philosopher. I might dedicate the book to the successful general who is now the President of the United States, with the hope that his integrity and justice will restore peace and happiness, so far as he can, to those unhappy States which have suffered so much from war and the unrelenting hostility of wicked men. "But, as the Roman poet said, Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni; and if I dedicated this little book to any man, I would dedicate it to him who led the Confederate armies against the powerful invader, and retired from an unequal contest defeated, but not dishonoured; to the noble Virginian soldier, whose talents and virtues place him by the side of the That is excellent prose, is it not? The general to whom Long would dedicate the edition was Robert Edward Lee, who had then become head of the Washington College and survived only until 1870. The President at the time that Long wrote was General Grant, to whom Lee surrendered. One or two anecdotes of Long which have recently come my way would alone convince me, apart from the evidence of his record and his writings, that here was a very sterling and very independent "character" of whom much more should be known. Some day I hope to know more. Meanwhile I relate one of the stories. An appeal for cast-off clothing for the poor clergy being made, some one took the line that such an appeal was infra dig. Long smoked, pondered, and thus delivered himself: "But is it not paramount that these gentlemen should have trousers?" |
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