Michael Psellos: his Times and Writings.

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ful expression of Shelley's idealism is put into the mouth of the mysterious Ahasuerus in 'Hellas.'

'Adonais,' besides philosophy, sublimated by imagination and feeling into poetry, contains a strange, longing prophecy of the manner of the poet's own death.

Made one with Nature!

he sings concerning the dead, and who does not know that those we call dead may be made one with man? be felt as a presence in the home and abroad, to strengthen and sustain, to elevate and to bless? may even look out with their own dear eyes from eyes we name living?

'Adonais' is not more about Keats than about Shelley. It. is altogether in that sphere of the ideal and beautiful into which the poet ever lifted any special subject and person when he touched them. And thus, too, Epipsychidion' hardly concerns Emilia Viviani, but rather that supernal, celestial Loveliness for which his spirit thirsted, and with which, for a moment, he identified that one particular lady.

RODEN NOEL.

ART. III.-Michael Psellos: his Times and Writings.

It is a great pity for the public at large that the two highly interesting volumes M. Sathas has given to the world are in, to most, an unintelligible tongue. The author's prologue is modern Greek; the works of Psellos, printed for the first time from MSS. in various libraries, are in that stilted Byzantine of the eleventh century which exaperates the keenest scholar. Yet the matter is of surpassing interest, containing as it does 'a century of Byzantine history,' written by the man who was minister and confidant of four emperors and three empresses, and in close intimacy with all the leading men of his day. Besides this we have 205 letters written by Psellos on public and private business, numerous funeral orations, encomiums, and controversies, from which material we are able to draw for ourselves a perfect picture of Byzantine history and life during the days of this remarkable man. Psellos was the Voltaire of his age, perhaps even a really more capable man, for he possessed great culture and refinement in an age when literature was at its lowest ebb. Besides being the leading politician of his day, he was a prolific writer on politics, astronomy, medicine, music, theology, demonology,

and the virtues of stones. Furthermore, he was a connecting link between the past and the present, between ancient and modern Greece. In his works we read of customs which have filtered down through the corruption of Roman, Byzantine, and Turkish days, from classical times to our own; when Psellos lived they were in vogue in the capital of the East, now they may only be found in the remoter corners of Hellas. In his time Christianity had hardly conquered paganism, for very much of the old was then being blended with the new, which accounts for the curious existence even still of pagan ideas in the orthodox church.

Psellos was the leading philosopher of his day. Through his instrumentality the university of Constantinople, which had been closed, was re-opened for a season; and, whilst occupying the professor's chair, Psellos delivered a course of lectures. Like the philosophers of late Athenian life, he revived the study of Greek classics, and gave out curious ideas on the subject. To him Homer's Iliad was an allegory, Troy was the world, the inhabitants of which neglected celestial beauty, and preferred carnal lusts-namely, Helen. Jupiter and the gods of the Iliad, he tells us, are but the God of the Christians, the angels, cherubs, and saints. If Homer was Psellos's Bible, Plato was the father of his church. Plato, he says, 'was the greatest of philosophers, the precursor of Christianity.' In all his lectures he fights for Plato and runs down Aristotle. Psellos may be said to have revived or kept alive that Platonic school which migrated to Italy a little later, and which travelled northwards and developed itself into modern freedom of thought.

Such is the man whose history we read in the volumes M. Sathas has carefully edited from MSS. in Venice, Paris, and elsewhere; and in perusing the pages with an intelligent eye, we can draw for ourselves a picture of an otherwise obscure period of history when the Eastern Empire was rapidly falling into decay. From the funeral oration Psellos delivered over the grave of his mother we gather most about his early life; but the authoress, Anna Comnena, who was Psellos's pupil, gives us a few additional touches. He was born in Constantinople A.D. 1018, and was called Constantine. It was not till entering monastic life in later days that he took the additional name of Michael. His father, he tells us, was of a family which had counted patricians and consuls amongst its members, but now was in reduced circumstances, so that rigid economy had to be practised in the household, and a small commercial business carried on to secure a livelihood. Psellos did not

think very highly of his father's intellectual capacities, and describes him as a man who went through life easily, without actually making any false step, but with an equal course, like oil which runs without noise.'

In sketching his father's features Psellos says he was sketching his own, for every one said the likeness between them was ridiculous. So we may imagine him 'tall as a cypress, erect as a reed, with beautiful eyes and gay expression, well-marked eyebrows and aquiline nose.' Our voluminous writer was not wanting in self-conceit, and was careful, in painting his father's portrait, to do himself justice. And then we wonder that the man whose life trickled like oil could have had for a son so active and irrepressible a man. Psellos evidently inherited his mental powers from his mother, of whom he says, 'Divine Providence gave my father a wife, not an auxiliary or a lieutenant, but a chief, who took the initiative in all great undertakings.'

Such were the heads of this Byzantine household, a timid, apathetic, but honourable merchant, and a wife who had a mind and spirit strong enough for two, proud of her ancestors, and ambitious for her son. When Psellos was eight he left the primary schools, and his relatives met to give their advice as to what should be done with him. Luckily they decided to send him to the secondary schools, and his advance here was such that he could not only say the Iliad by heart, but explain the prosody and the rhythm.

O my mother (writes Psellos in his funeral eulogy), you were not only at my side like a wise councillor, but you worked with me, and you gave me the benefit of your instruction. . You made me recite my lessons, and one would have said that you enjoyed nothing more than listening to a lesson on orthography, poetry, syntax, or construction.

It was most unfortunate for this talented youth that he lived at a period of the greatest intellectual debasement, when the learned men of the day were utterly unable to appreciate the works of their ancestors, and when a scholar of more than ordinary note was supposed to have gained his knowledge by magic, like Photius, who was said to have received lessons in the black art from a Jewish sorcerer (Theoph. Cont. 670). The university was closed, and the only opening for a man who aspired to a literary career was to pay for private lessons from the few scholars that existed, and the merchant's family purse would not allow of this. So Psellos had to look elsewhere for a livelihood, for he had an only sister, who must be dowered with the paternal home and receive a settled income before the son got anything. This custom is still in vogue 19

NO. CLXIV.

in parts of Greece, and daughters usually inherit the paternal mansion.

So at the age of sixteen Psellos was placed as clerk to a personage of distinction who was going to fill the post of judge in a distant province. And for the first time in his life he tells us he saw the country and the effect of the domes and towers of the great city from outside the walls.

Soon after this his sister died, and her parents were in a position to recall their only surviving child, which they accordingly did without telling him the reason for so doing. And then we have some real touches of feeling, unlike the future hard statesman and sophist, which prove to us that Psellos was essentially a Greek when he chose to set aside the pedantic air of the courtier. In fact, Byzantine life, like its language, must have been double -the one natural and Hellenic, the other strained and artificial.

Psellos entered the capital several days after his sister's death; and on passing the cemetery saw mourners holding their lamentations over the grave. This is done to-day in the out-of-the-way parts of Greece. They make cakes of boiled corn (zólußa) on that day, and reassemble the relatives and hired mourners for renewed grief at the grave on the ninth and fortieth days, and at the expiration of six and twelve months after the death, when the cakes are distributed to the poor. He asked a bystander whose funeral it was, and learnt for the first time of his sister's death. He fainted; and his mother, he tells us, 'for the first time ventured to raise her veil without fearing to expose her face to the regard of men.' It is a custom still in remote villages of Greece for women to hide their faces in public. Many travellers will tell you that they have learnt it from the Turks; but I have seen it in islands where Turkish influence and Turkish customs have scarcely penetrated at all. It is a custom which has survived from the days when Homer represents Penelope as followed by two women, her face covered with a magnificent veil.

Psellos recovered his composure, and went to the grave to sing an improvised lament (potpoldyta), just like a peasant would to-day in a remote corner of Greece; and the words he tells us he gave utterance to closely resemble those I have heard again and again on these occasions used by the relatives and hired mourners at funerals, just like the wails sung by those hired mourners in ancient days.

Psellos's mother in the agony of her grief then and there dedicated herself to a religious life, and established herself in a hermitage near the grave of her lost child, imploring the

Virgin to preserve the only remaining one she had. This is the sort of thing the Byzantines were accustomed to do, and to a small extent is done by the Greeks to-day. When they have worked hard and are tired of the anxieties and trials of life they retire to a convent. Statesmen, military men, emperors, all did it, just as an English officer retires to the country, and loses money over his farm. But as a nun she did not relinquish her interest or her ambition for her son, who, since the family purse was fuller, had now become a student, and was showing great promise. In the evenings he would retire to his mother's cell and there go through his I work with her. The absence of proper advantages greatly impeded his progress: he wished to master the intricacies of Byzantine law as well as philosophy, but the course his studies had hitherto taken, and his father's poverty, prevented him from getting the necessary instructor; so he entered into a curious literary compact with one Xiphitinos, with whom he was to be associated through life on terms of the greatest intimacy. Their compact was this: Xiphitinos was to be Psellos's pupil as far as philosophy was concerned, Psellos was to be Xiphitinos's pupil as far as law was concerned, and the result was highly satisfactory for both parties - the one became patriarch, the other confidant of many rulers.

Into the intrigues of the Byzantine court at this period, and especially a few years later, when Psellos himself entered it in a subordinate character, his historical reminiscences give us a keen insight. The last of the male descendants of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, of the Macedonian line, which had ruled in the East for a century and a half, was on his deathbed: Constantine VIII. was about to leave behind him only two daughters, both of them well on in years. So he felt the necessity of having one of them at least married. Zoe and Theodora were their names, the former of whom, though forty-five years of age, appears to have been the most attractive according to Psellos, and the one selected by her dying father for matrimony. The emperor sent for one Romanòs Argyros, promised him Zoe in marriage, or the alternative of having his eyes put out. Romanòs, though he had an affectionate wife of his own, to whom he was strongly attached,' our author tells us, preferred his eyesight and the imperial throne to blindness and domestic felicity. On the death of Constantine, Zoe, Romanòs, and Theodora ascended the imperial throne, and ruled conjointly. Even Psellos, who does his best to gloss over the imperfections of his rulers, admits that the Empress Zoe was an atrocious character,