قراءة كتاب Dialogues of the Dead

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Dialogues of the Dead

Dialogues of the Dead

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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Louis.—Your glory would indeed have been supreme and unequalled if, in civilising your subjects, you had reformed the brutality of your own manners and the barbarous vices of your nature.  But, alas! the legislator and reformer of the Muscovites was drunken and cruel.

Peter.—My drunkenness I confess; nor will I plead, to excuse it, the example of Alexander.  It inflamed the tempers of both, which were by nature too fiery, into furious passions of anger, and produced actions of which our reason, when sober, was ashamed.  But the cruelty you upbraid me with may in some degree be excused, as necessary to the work I had to perform.  Fear of punishment was in the hearts of my barbarous subjects the only principle of obedience.  To make them respect the royal authority I was obliged to arm it with all the terrors of rage.  You had a more pliant people to govern—a people whose minds could be ruled, like a fine-managed horse, with an easy and gentle rein.  The fear of shame did more with them than the fear of the knout could do with the Russians.  The humanity of your character and the ferocity of mine were equally suitable to the nations over which we reigned. 

But what excuse can you find for the cruel violence you employed against your Protestant subjects?  They desired nothing but to live under the protection of laws you yourself had confirmed; and they repaid that protection by the most hearty zeal for your service.  Yet these did you force, by the most inhuman severities, either to quit the religion in which they were bred, and which their consciences still retained, or to leave their native land, and endure all the woes of a perpetual exile.  If the rules of policy could not hinder you from thus depopulating your kingdom, and transferring to foreign countries its manufactures and commerce, I am surprised that your heart itself did not stop you.  It makes one shudder to think that such orders should be sent from the most polished court in Europe, as the most savage Tartars could hardly have executed without remorse and compassion.

Louis.—It was not my heart, but my religion, that dictated these severities.  My confessor told me they alone would atone for all my sins.

Peter.—Had I believed in my patriarch as you believed in your priest, I should not have been the great monarch that I was.  But I mean not to detract from the merit of a prince whose memory is dear to his subjects.  They are proud of having obeyed you, which is certainly the highest praise to a king.  My people also date their glory from the era of my reign.  But there is this capital distinction between us.  The pomp and pageantry of state were necessary to your greatness; I was great in myself, great in the energy and powers of my mind, great in the superiority and sovereignty of my soul over all other men.

DIALOGUE III.

PlatoFenelon.

Plato.—Welcome to Elysium, O thou, the most pure, the most gentle, the most refined disciple of philosophy that the world in modern times has produced!  Sage Fenelon, welcome!—I need not name myself to you.  Our souls by sympathy must know one another.

Fenelon.—I know you to be Plato, the most amiable of all the disciples of Socrates, and the philosopher of all antiquity whom I most desired to resemble.

Plato.—Homer and Orpheus are impatient to see you in that region of these happy fields which their shades inhabit.  They both acknowledge you to be a great poet, though you have written no verses.  And they are now busy in composing for you unfading wreaths of all the finest and sweetest Elysian flowers.  But I will lead you from them to the sacred grove of philosophy, on the highest hill of Elysium, where the air is most pure and most serene.  I will conduct you to the fountain of wisdom, in which you will see, as in your own writings, the fair image of virtue perpetually reflected.  It will raise in you more love than was felt by Narcissus, when he contemplated the beauty of his own face in the unruffled spring.  But you shall not pine, as he did, for a shadow.  The goddess herself will affectionately meet your embraces and mingle with your soul.

Fenelon.—I find you retain the allegorical and poetical style, of which you were so fond in many of your writings.  Mine also run sometimes into poetry, particularly in my “Telemachus,” which I meant to make a kind of epic composition.  But I dare not rank myself among the great poets, nor pretend to any equality in oratory with you, the most eloquent of philosophers, on whose lips the Attic bees distilled all their honey.

Plato.—The French language is not so harmonious as the

Greek, yet you have given a sweetness to it which equally charms the ear and heart.  When one reads your compositions, one thinks that one hears Apollo’s lyre, strung by the hands of the Graces, and tuned by the Muses.  The idea of a perfect king, which you have exhibited in your “Telemachus,” far excels, in my own judgment, my imaginary “Republic.”  Your “Dialogues” breathe the pure spirit of virtue, of unaffected good sense, of just criticism, of fine taste.  They are in general as superior to your countryman Fontenelle’s as reason is to false wit, or truth to affectation.  The greatest fault of them, I think, is, that some are too short.

Fenelon.—It has been objected to them—and I am sensible of it myself—that most of them are too full of commonplace morals.  But I wrote them for the instruction of a young prince, and one cannot too forcibly imprint on the minds of those who are born to empire the most simple truths; because, as they grow up, the flattery of a court will try to disguise and conceal from them those truths, and to eradicate from their hearts the love of their duty, if it has not taken there a very deep root.

Plato.—It is, indeed, the peculiar misfortune of princes, that they are often instructed with great care in the refinements of policy, and not taught the first principles of moral obligations, or taught so superficially that the virtuous man is soon lost in the corrupt politician.  But the lessons of virtue you gave your royal pupil are so graced by the charms of your eloquence that the oldest and wisest men may attend to them with pleasure.  All your writings are embellished with a sublime and agreeable imagination, which gives elegance to simplicity, and dignity to the most vulgar and obvious truths.  I have heard, indeed, that your countrymen are less sensible of the beauty of your genius and style than any of their neighbours.  What has so much depraved their taste?

Fenelon.—That which depraved the taste of the Romans

after the ago of Augustus—an immoderate love of wit, of paradox, of refinement.  The works of their writers, like the faces of their women, must be painted and adorned with artificial embellishments to attract their regards.  And thus the natural beauty of both is lost.  But it is no wonder if few of them esteem my “Telemachus,” as the maxims I have principally inculcated there are thought by many inconsistent with the grandeur of their monarchy, and with the splendour of a refined and opulent nation.  They seem generally to be falling into opinions that the chief end of society is to procure the pleasures of luxury; that a nice and elegant taste of voluptuous enjoyments is the perfection of merit; and that a king, who is gallant, magnificent, liberal, who builds a fine palace, who furnishes it well with good statues and pictures, who encourages the fine arts,

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