The poem of "Hellas", written at the suggestion of the events of the
moment, is a mere improvise, and derives its interest (should it be
found to possess any) solely from the intense sympathy which the
Author feels with the cause he would celebrate.
The subject, in its present state, is insusceptible of being treated
otherwise than lyrically, and if I have called this poem a drama from
the circumstance of its being composed in dialogue, the licence is not
greater than that which has been assumed by other poets who have
called their productions epics, only because they have been divided
into twelve or twenty-four books.
The "Persae" of Aeschylus afforded me the first model of my
conception, although the decision of the glorious contest now waging
in Greece being yet suspended forbids a catastrophe parallel to the
return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I have,
therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric
pictures, and with having wrought upon the curtain of futurity, which
falls upon the unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and
visionary delineation as suggest the final triumph of the Greek cause
as a portion of the cause of civilisation and social improvement.
The drama (if drama it must be called) is, however, so inartificial
that I doubt whether, if recited on the Thespian waggon to an Athenian
village at the Dionysiaca, it would have obtained the prize of the
goat. I shall bear with equanimity any punishment, greater than the
loss of such a reward, which the Aristarchi of the hour may think fit
to inflict.
The only "goat-song" which I have yet attempted has, I confess, in
spite of the unfavourable nature of the subject, received a greater
and a more valuable portion of applause than I expected or than it
deserved.
Common fame is the only authority which I can allege for the details
which form the basis of the poem, and I must trespass upon the
forgiveness of my readers for the display of newspaper erudition to
which I have been reduced. Undoubtedly, until the conclusion of the
war, it will be impossible to obtain an account of it sufficiently
authentic for historical materials; but poets have their privilege,
and it is unquestionable that actions of the most exalted courage have
been performed by the Greeks--that they have gained more than one
naval victory, and that their defeat in Wallachia was signalized by
circumstances of heroism more glorious even than victory.
The apathy of the rulers of the civilised world to the astonishing
circumstance of the descendants of that nation to which they owe their
civilisation, rising as it were from the ashes of their ruin, is
something perfectly inexplicable to a mere spectator of the shows of
this mortal scene. 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.
