And on
the whole it must be allowed that his influence has been altogether
good, has insensibly enlarged and humanized his readers, winning them
over to benevolence, moderation, and magnanimity. And so wide was his
own curiosity that they must be few who shall not find somewhat to their
purpose in his discursive pages. For he was equally at home among men
and ideas, open-eared to the one and open-minded to the other. His
influence, too, it must be remembered, begins earlier than that of any
other ancient author except Aesop. To boys he has always been the
Robinson Crusoe of classic antiquity, making what had hitherto seemed a
remote island sequestered from them by a trackless flood of years,
living and real. Those obscure solitudes which their imagination had
peopled with spectral equestrian statues, are rescued by the sound of
his cheery voice as part of the familiar and daylight world. We suspect
that Agesilaus on his hobby-horse first humanized antiquity for most of
us. Here was the human footprint which persuaded us that the past was
inhabited by creatures like ourselves.
A PLEA FOR FREEDOM FROM SPEECH
AND FIGURES OF SPEECH-MAKERS
A PLEA FOR FREEDOM FROM SPEECH
AND FIGURES OF SPEECH-MAKERS
I must beg allowance to use the first person singular. I cannot, like
old Weller, spell myself with a We. Ours is, I believe, the only
language that has shown so much sense of the worth of the individual (to
himself) as to erect the first personal pronoun into a kind of votive
column to the dignity of human nature.
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