But a new
race has arisen throughout Europe, nursed in the abhorrence of the
opinions which are its chains, and she will continue to produce fresh
generations to accomplish that destiny which tyrants foresee and
dread.
race has arisen throughout Europe, nursed in the abhorrence of the
opinions which are its chains, and she will continue to produce fresh
generations to accomplish that destiny which tyrants foresee and
dread.
Shelley
We are all Greeks.
Our laws, our literature, our
religion, our arts have their root in Greece. But for Greece--Rome,
the instructor, the conqueror, or the metropolis of our ancestors,
would have spread no illumination with her arms, and we might still
have been savages and idolaters; or, what is worse, might have arrived
at such a stagnant and miserable state of social institution as China
and Japan possess.
The human form and the human mind attained to a perfection in Greece
which has impressed its image on those faultless productions, whose
very fragments are the despair of modern art, and has propagated
impulses which cannot cease, through a thousand channels of manifest
or imperceptible operation, to ennoble and delight mankind until the
extinction of the race.
The modern Greek is the descendant of those glorious beings whom the
imagination almost refuses to figure to itself as belonging to our
kind, and he inherits much of their sensibility, their rapidity of
conception, their enthusiasm, and their courage. If in many instances
he is degraded by moral and political slavery to the practice of the
basest vices it engenders--and that below the level of ordinary
degradation--let us reflect that the corruption of the best produces
the worst, and that habits which subsist only in relation to a
peculiar state of social institution may be expected to cease as soon
as that relation is dissolved. In fact, the Greeks, since the
admirable novel of Anastasius could have been a faithful picture of
their manners, have undergone most important changes; the flower of
their youth, returning to their country from the universities of
Italy, Germany, and France, have communicated to their fellow-citizens
the latest results of that social perfection of which their ancestors
were the original source. The University of Chios contained before the
breaking out of the revolution eight hundred students, and among them
several Germans and Americans. The munificence and energy of many of
the Greek princes and merchants, directed to the renovation of their
country with a spirit and a wisdom which has few examples, is above
all praise.
The English permit their own oppressors to act according to their
natural sympathy with the Turkish tyrant, and to brand upon their name
the indelible blot of an alliance with the enemies of domestic
happiness, of Christianity and civilisation.
Russia desires to possess, not to liberate Greece; and is contented to
see the Turks, its natural enemies, and the Greeks, its intended
slaves, enfeeble each other until one or both fall into its net. The
wise and generous policy of England would have consisted in
establishing the independence of Greece, and in maintaining it both
against Russia and the Turk;--but when was the oppressor generous or
just?
[Should the English people ever become free, they will reflect upon
the part which those who presume to represent their will have played
in the great drama of the revival of liberty, with feelings which it
would become them to anticipate. This is the age of the war of the
oppressed against the oppressors, and every one of those ringleaders
of the privileged gangs of murderers and swindlers, called Sovereigns,
look to each other for aid against the common enemy, and suspend their
mutual jealousies in the presence of a mightier fear. Of this holy
alliance all the despots of the earth are virtual members.
But a new
race has arisen throughout Europe, nursed in the abhorrence of the
opinions which are its chains, and she will continue to produce fresh
generations to accomplish that destiny which tyrants foresee and
dread. (This paragraph, suppressed in 1822 by Charles Ollier, was
first restored in 1892 by Mr. Buxton Forman ["Poetical Works of P. B.
S. ", volume 4 pages 40-41] from a proof copy of Hellas in his
possession. ]
The Spanish Peninsula is already free. France is tranquil in the
enjoyment of a partial exemption from the abuses which its unnatural
and feeble government are vainly attempting to revive. The seed of
blood and misery has been sown in Italy, and a more vigorous race is
arising to go forth to the harvest. The world waits only the news of a
revolution of Germany to see the tyrants who have pinnacled themselves
on its supineness precipitated into the ruin from which they shall
never arise. Well do these destroyers of mankind know their enemy,
when they impute the insurrection in Greece to the same spirit before
which they tremble throughout the rest of Europe, and that enemy well
knows the power and the cunning of its opponents, and watches the
moment of their approaching weakness and inevitable division to wrest
the bloody sceptres from their grasp.
PROLOGUE TO HELLAS.
HERALD OF ETERNITY:
It is the day when all the sons of God
Wait in the roofless senate-house, whose floor
Is Chaos, and the immovable abyss
Frozen by His steadfast word to hyaline
. . .
The shadow of God, and delegate _5
Of that before whose breath the universe
Is as a print of dew.
religion, our arts have their root in Greece. But for Greece--Rome,
the instructor, the conqueror, or the metropolis of our ancestors,
would have spread no illumination with her arms, and we might still
have been savages and idolaters; or, what is worse, might have arrived
at such a stagnant and miserable state of social institution as China
and Japan possess.
The human form and the human mind attained to a perfection in Greece
which has impressed its image on those faultless productions, whose
very fragments are the despair of modern art, and has propagated
impulses which cannot cease, through a thousand channels of manifest
or imperceptible operation, to ennoble and delight mankind until the
extinction of the race.
The modern Greek is the descendant of those glorious beings whom the
imagination almost refuses to figure to itself as belonging to our
kind, and he inherits much of their sensibility, their rapidity of
conception, their enthusiasm, and their courage. If in many instances
he is degraded by moral and political slavery to the practice of the
basest vices it engenders--and that below the level of ordinary
degradation--let us reflect that the corruption of the best produces
the worst, and that habits which subsist only in relation to a
peculiar state of social institution may be expected to cease as soon
as that relation is dissolved. In fact, the Greeks, since the
admirable novel of Anastasius could have been a faithful picture of
their manners, have undergone most important changes; the flower of
their youth, returning to their country from the universities of
Italy, Germany, and France, have communicated to their fellow-citizens
the latest results of that social perfection of which their ancestors
were the original source. The University of Chios contained before the
breaking out of the revolution eight hundred students, and among them
several Germans and Americans. The munificence and energy of many of
the Greek princes and merchants, directed to the renovation of their
country with a spirit and a wisdom which has few examples, is above
all praise.
The English permit their own oppressors to act according to their
natural sympathy with the Turkish tyrant, and to brand upon their name
the indelible blot of an alliance with the enemies of domestic
happiness, of Christianity and civilisation.
Russia desires to possess, not to liberate Greece; and is contented to
see the Turks, its natural enemies, and the Greeks, its intended
slaves, enfeeble each other until one or both fall into its net. The
wise and generous policy of England would have consisted in
establishing the independence of Greece, and in maintaining it both
against Russia and the Turk;--but when was the oppressor generous or
just?
[Should the English people ever become free, they will reflect upon
the part which those who presume to represent their will have played
in the great drama of the revival of liberty, with feelings which it
would become them to anticipate. This is the age of the war of the
oppressed against the oppressors, and every one of those ringleaders
of the privileged gangs of murderers and swindlers, called Sovereigns,
look to each other for aid against the common enemy, and suspend their
mutual jealousies in the presence of a mightier fear. Of this holy
alliance all the despots of the earth are virtual members.
But a new
race has arisen throughout Europe, nursed in the abhorrence of the
opinions which are its chains, and she will continue to produce fresh
generations to accomplish that destiny which tyrants foresee and
dread. (This paragraph, suppressed in 1822 by Charles Ollier, was
first restored in 1892 by Mr. Buxton Forman ["Poetical Works of P. B.
S. ", volume 4 pages 40-41] from a proof copy of Hellas in his
possession. ]
The Spanish Peninsula is already free. France is tranquil in the
enjoyment of a partial exemption from the abuses which its unnatural
and feeble government are vainly attempting to revive. The seed of
blood and misery has been sown in Italy, and a more vigorous race is
arising to go forth to the harvest. The world waits only the news of a
revolution of Germany to see the tyrants who have pinnacled themselves
on its supineness precipitated into the ruin from which they shall
never arise. Well do these destroyers of mankind know their enemy,
when they impute the insurrection in Greece to the same spirit before
which they tremble throughout the rest of Europe, and that enemy well
knows the power and the cunning of its opponents, and watches the
moment of their approaching weakness and inevitable division to wrest
the bloody sceptres from their grasp.
PROLOGUE TO HELLAS.
HERALD OF ETERNITY:
It is the day when all the sons of God
Wait in the roofless senate-house, whose floor
Is Chaos, and the immovable abyss
Frozen by His steadfast word to hyaline
. . .
The shadow of God, and delegate _5
Of that before whose breath the universe
Is as a print of dew.
