Chapter 18

Tried by such a standard, the Koran altogether fails. In its philosophy it is incomparably inferior to the writings of Chakia Mouni, the founder of Buddhism; in its science it is absolutely worthless. On speculative or doubtful things it is copious enough; but in the exact, where a test can be applied to it, it totally fails. Its astronomy, cosmogony, physiology, are so puerile as to invite our mirth, if the occasion did not forbid. They belong to the old times of the world, the morning of human knowledge. The earth is firmly balanced in its seat by the weight of the mountains; the sky is supported over it like a dome, and we are instructed in the wisdom and power of God by being told to find a crack in it if we can. Ranged in stories, seven in number, are the heavens, the highest being the habitation of God, whose throne--for the Koran does not reject Assyrian ideas--is sustained by winged animal forms. The shooting stars are pieces of red-hot stone, thrown by angels at impure spirits when they approach too closely. Of God the Koran is full of praise, setting forth, often in not unworthy imagery, his majesty. Though it bitterly denounces those who give him any equals, and assures them that their sin will never be forgiven; that in the Judgment Day they must answer the fearful question, "Where are my companions about whom ye disputed?"--though it inculcates an absolute dependence on the mercy of God, and denounces as criminals all those who make a merchandise of religion,--its ideas of the Deity are altogether anthropomorphic. He is only a gigantic man, living in a paradise. In this respect, though exceptional passages might be cited, the reader rises from a perusal of the one hundred and fourteen chapters of the Koran with a final impression that they have given him low and unworthy thoughts; nor is it surprising that one of the Mohammedan sects reads it in such a way as to find no difficulty in asserting that "from the crown of the head to the breast God is hollow, and from the breast downward he is solid;" that he "has curled black hair, and roars like a lion at every watch of the night." The unity asserted by Mohammed is a unity in special contradistinction to the Trinity of the Christians, and the doctrine of a Divine generation. Our Savior is never called the Son of God, but always the Son of Mary. Throughout there is a perpetual acceptance of the delusion of the human destiny of the universe. As to man, Mohammed is diffuse enough respecting a future state, speaking with clearness of a resurrection, the Judgment Day, Paradise, the torment of hell, the worm that never dies, the pains that never end; but with all this precise description of the future, there are many errors as to the past. If modesty did not render it unsuitable to speak of such topics here, it might be shown how feeble is his physiology when he has occasion to allude to the origin or generation of man. He is hardly advanced beyond the ideas of Thales. One who is so untrustworthy a guide as to things that are past cannot be very trustworthy as to events that are to come.

Of the literary execution of his work, it is perhaps scarcely possible to judge fairly from a translation. It is said to be the oldest prose composition among the Arabs, by whom Mohammed's boast of the unapproachable excellence of his work is almost universally sustained; but it must not be concealed that there have been among them very learned men who have held it in light esteem. Its most celebrated passages, as those on the nature of God, in Chapters ii., xxiv., will bear no comparison with parallel ones in the Psalms and Book of Job. In the narrative style, the story of Joseph in Chapter xii., compared with the same incidents related in Genesis, shows a like inferiority. Mohammed also adulterates his work with many Christian legends, derived probably from the apocryphal gospel of St. Barnabas; he mixes with many of his own inventions the Scripture account of the temptation of Adam, the Deluge, Jonah and the whale, enriching the whole with stories like the later Night Entertainments of his country, the seven sleepers, Gog and Magog, and all the wonders of genii, sorcery, and charms.

An impartial reader of the Koran may doubtless be surprised that so feeble a production should serve its purpose so well. But the theory of religion is one thing, the practice another. The Koran abounds in excellent moral suggestions and precepts; its composition is so fragmentary that we cannot turn to a single page without finding maxims of which all men must approve. This fragmentary construction yields texts and mottoes and rules complete in themselves, suitable for common men in any of the incidents of life. There is a perpetual insisting on the necessity of prayer, an inculcation of mercy, almsgiving, justice, fasting, pilgrimage, and other good works; institutions respecting conduct, both social and domestic, debts, witnesses, marriage, children, wine, and the like; above all, a constant stimulation to do battle with the infidel and blasphemer. For life as it passes in Asia, there is hardly a condition in which passages from the Koran cannot be recalled suitable for instruction, admonition, consolation, encouragement. To the Asiatic and to the African, such devotional fragments are of far more use than any sustained theological doctrine. The mental constitution of Mohammed did not enable him to handle important philosophical questions with the well-balanced ability of the great Greek and Indian writers; but he has never been surpassed in adaptation to the spiritual wants of humble life, making even his fearful fatalism administer thereto. A pitiless destiny is awaiting us; yet the prophet is uncertain what it may be. "Unto every nation a fixed time is decreed. Death will overtake us even in lofty towers, but God only knoweth the place in which a man shall die." After many an admonition of the resurrection and the Judgment Day, many a promise of Paradise and threat of hell, he plaintively confesses, "I do not know what will be done with you or me hereafter."

The Koran thus betrays a human and not a very noble intellectual origin. It does not however follow that its author was, as is so often asserted, a mere impostor. He reiterates again and again, "I am nothing more than a public preacher." He defends, not always without acerbity, his work from those who even in his own life stigmatized it as a confused heap of dreams, or what is worse, a forgery. He is not the only man who has supposed himself to be the subject of supernatural and divine communications, for this is a condition of disease to which any one, by fasting and mental anxiety, may be reduced.

In what I have thus said respecting a work held by so many millions of men as a revelation from God, I have endeavored to speak with respect and yet with freedom, constantly bearing in mind how deeply to this book Asia and Africa are indebted for daily guidance, how deeply Europe and America for the light of science.

As might be expected, the doctrines of the Koran have received many fictitious additions and sectarian interpretations in the course of ages. In the popular superstition angels and genii largely figure. The latter, being of a grosser fabric, eat, drink, propagate their kind, are of two sorts, good and bad, and existed long before men, having occupied the earth before Adam. Immediately after death, two greenish livid angels, Monkir and Nekkar, examine every corpse as to its faith in God and Mohammed; but the soul, having been separated from the body by the angel of death, enters upon an intermediate state, awaiting the resurrection. There is however much diversity of opinion as to its precise disposal before the Judgment Day: some think that it hovers near the grave; some, that it sinks into the well Zemzem; some, that it retires into the trumpet of the angel of the resurrection; the difficulty apparently being that any final disposal before the Day of Judgment would be anticipatory of that great event, if indeed it would not render it needless. As to the resurrection, some believe it to be merely spiritual, others corporeal; the latter asserting that the _os coccygis_, or last bone of the spinal column, will serve as it were as a germ; and that, vivified by a rain of forty days, the body will sprout from it. Among the signs of the approaching resurrection will be the rising of the sun in the west. It will be ushered in by three blasts of a trumpet: the first, known as the blast of consternation, will shake the earth to its centre, and extinguish the sun and stars; the second, the blast of extermination, will annihilate all material things except Paradise, hell, and the throne of God. Forty years subsequently, the angel Israfil will sound the blast of resurrection. From his trumpet there will be blown forth the countless myriads of souls who have taken refuge therein, or lain concealed. The Day of Judgment has now come. The Koran contradicts itself as to the length of this day; in one place making it a thousand, in another fifty thousand years. Most Mohammedans incline to adopt the longer period, since angels, genii, men, and animals have to be tried.

As to men, they will rise in their natural state, but naked; white-winged camels, with saddles of gold, awaiting the saved. When the partition is made, the wicked will be oppressed with an intolerable heat, caused by the sun, which, having been called into existence again, will approach within a mile, provoking a sweat to issue from them; and this, according to their demerits, will immerse them from the ankles to the mouth; but the righteous will be screened by the shadow of the throne of God. The Judge will be seated in the clouds, the books open before him, and everything in its turn called on to account for its deeds. For greater dispatch, the angel Gabriel will hold forth his balance, one scale of which hangs over Paradise and one over hell. In these all works are weighed. As soon as the sentence is delivered, the assembly, in a long file, will pass over the bridge Al-Sirat. It is as sharp as the edge of a sword, and laid over the mouth of hell. Mohammed and his followers will successfully pass the perilous ordeal; but the sinners, giddy with terror, will drop into the place of torment. The blessed will receive their first taste of happiness at a pond which is supplied by silver pipes from the river Al-Cawthor. The soil of Paradise is of musk. Its rivers tranquilly flow over pebbles of rubies and emeralds. From tents of hollow pearls the Houris, or girls of Paradise, will come forth, attended by troops of beautiful boys. Each saint will have eighty thousand servants and seventy-two girls. To these, some of the more merciful Mussulmans add the wives they have had upon earth; but the grimly orthodox assert that hell is already nearly filled with women. How can it be otherwise, since they are not permitted to pray in a mosque upon earth?

I have not space to describe the silk brocades, the green clothing, the soft carpets, the banquets, the perpetual music and songs. From the glorified body all impurities will escape, not as they did during life, but in a fragrant perspiration of camphor and musk. No one will complain, "I am weary;" no one will say, "I am sick.".

From the contradictions, puerilities, and impossibilities indicated in the preceding paragraphs, it may be anticipated that the faith of Mohammed has been broken into many sects. Of such it is said that not less than seventy-three may be numbered. Some, as the Sonnites, are guided by traditions; some occupy themselves with philosophical difficulties,--the existence of evil in the world, the attributes of God, absolute predestination and eternal damnation, the invisibility and non-corporeality of God, his capability of local motion.... But the great Mohammedan philosophers, simply accepting the doctrine of the oneness of God as the only thing of which man can be certain, look upon all the rest as idle fables--having however this political use: that they furnish contention and therefore occupation to disputatious sectarians, and consolation to illiterate minds.

MICHAEL DRAYTON

(1563-1631)

While London still crowded to the new "Theatre" in Shoreditch, the first built in England; while Ben Jonson was still soldiering in the Low Countries; while Marlowe was working out the tragedy that was to revolutionize all stage traditions, and Shakespeare was yet but a "looker-on at greatness,"--there came up from Warwickshire a young man of good family who had served as page in a noble house, who had studied possibly at Oxford, and who in the first flush of manhood aspired to a place among those prodigies who made the later Elizabethan period immortal. This was Michael Drayton, whose gentle birth and breeding, education and talents, knowledge of the world and of men, together with a most sweet and lovable disposition, made him at once welcome in the literary Bohemia of the day. He became the "deare and bosom friend" of Beaumont and Fletcher, and his work received unquestioned honor from his illustrious contemporaries.

As a child he had demanded of his elders to know what kind of beings poets were, had spent many hours in writing childishly fantastic verses, and had begged of his tutor to make a poet of him. And although he seems to have been poor and to have lived by the gifts of wealthy patrons, he cast in his lot with literature, and cherished no other ambition than that of writing well. His first book, a volume of spiritual poems, or metrical renderings of the Bible, was published in 1590 under the title 'The Harmony of the Church.' It is difficult to see why this commonplace and orthodox performance should have given such umbrage that the Archbishop of Canterbury condemned the entire edition to destruction. Yet this was its fate, with the exception of forty copies which Archbishop Whitgift ordered to be reserved for the ecclesiastical library at Lambeth Palace. Undiscouraged, the poet next produced a cycle of sixty-four sonnets and a collection of pastorals entitled 'Idea: the Shepherd's Garland,' in which under the name "Rowland" he celebrated an early love. It is strange that the intrinsic merit of these verses, and their undoubted popularity, should not have urged Drayton to continue in the same vein. Instead, however, he set about the composition of a series of historical poems which extended over the next twenty-four years, and to which he gave the best energies of his life. Beginning with the epic 'Matilda,' studied from English history, the series was continued by a poem on the 'Wars of the Roses,' afterward enlarged into 'The Barons' Wars.' This was followed by the epic 'Robert, Duke of Normandy.' Destitute of imagination, prolix and tedious, these verses were yet so popular in Drayton's day that in 1612 he began the publication of a poem in thirty books, meant to include the entire chronology and topography of Great Britain, from the earliest times. This was the famous 'Poly-Olbion,' in which, in spite of the inspiring work of his contemporaries, Drayton harked back in spirit to the dreary monotony of the Saxon Chronicle; the detail is so minute, the matter so unimportant, and the absence of discrimination so apparent, that notwithstanding many noticeable beauties of thought and style, it is hard to realize that this poem was a favorite with that brilliant group which had known Shakespeare, and still delighted in Ben Jonson. After issuing eighteen books of 'Poly-Olbion,' his publishers--with whom he was always quarreling, and whom he declared that he "despised and kicked at"--refused to undertake the remaining twelve books of the second part. His friends, however, loyal in their love and praise of him, secured a more complaisant tradesman to bring out the rest of the already famous poem.

Fortunately for his fame, Drayton had in the mean time produced two other volumes of verse, which displayed the real grace and fancifulness of his charming muse. The first of these, 'Poems Lyrical and Pastoral,' included the satire 'The Man in the Moon'; while in the second were printed the 'Ballad of Agincourt,' the most spirited of English martial lyrics, and that delightful fantasy 'Nymphidia, or the Court of Faery,' in which the touch is so light, the fancy so dainty, and the conceit so delicate, that the poem remains immortally fresh and young. Because everybody wrote plays, Drayton turned playwright, and is said to have collaborated with Massinger and Ford. Of his long works, the 'Heroicall Episodes' is perhaps the most readable. His last effort was 'The Muses' Elizium,' published in 1630. A year later he died, and was buried in Westminster, where a monument was erected to him by the Countess of Dorset.

Drayton's place in English literature is with that considerable and not unimportant band who have done somewhat, but whose repute is much more for what they were in their friends' eyes than for what they did. In an age of great intellectual achievement, he yet managed, in spite of the stimulus of kindred minds and his own undoubted gift, to produce little that has sustained the reputation accorded him by his acquaintances. Most of his work lives chiefly to afford pleasing studies for the literary antiquary, to whom the tide of time brings nothing uninteresting. Yet in the art of living, in the unselfish devotion of his powers to his chosen calling, in the graces of affection and the offices of noble friendship, he was so excellent and exemplary that he won and kept the undying regard of the most able men of the most brilliant period of English literature--men who felt a personal and unrequitable loss when he passed away, and who spoke of him always with admiring tenderness.

In person he seems to have been small and dark. He describes himself as of "swart and melancholy face." Yet his talk was most delightful, and a strong proof of his wide popularity appears in the fact that he is quoted not less than one hundred and fifty times in 'England's Parnassus,' published as early as 1600. The tributes of his friends are innumerable, from the "good Rowland" of Barnfield to the "golden-mouthed Drayton, musicall," of Fitz-Geoffrey, the "man of vertuous disposition, honest conversation, and well-preserved carriage" of Meres, or the tender lines of his friend Ben Jonson:--

"Do, pious marble, let thy readers know What they and what their children owe To Drayton's name; whose sacred dust We recommend unto thy trust. Protect his memory, and preserve his story, Remain a lasting monument of his glory. And when thy ruins shall disclaim To be the treasurer of his name, His name, that cannot die, shall be An everlasting monument to thee."

SONNET

Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part,-- Nay, I have done, you get no more of me; And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart, That thus so clearly I myself can free: Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows, And when we meet at any time again, Be it not seen in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain. Now, at the last gasp of Love's latest breath. When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies, When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And Innocence is closing up his eyes,-- Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over, From death to life thou mightst him yet recover!

THE BALLAD OF AGINCOURT

Fair stood the wind for France, When we our sails advance, Nor now to prove our chance Longer will tarry; But putting to the main, At Kaux, the mouth of Seine, With all his martial train, Landed King Harry.

And taking many a fort, Furnished in warlike sort, Marched towards Agincourt In happy hour-- Skirmishing day by day With those that stopped his way, Where the French gen'ral lay With all his power.

Which in his height of pride, King Henry to deride, His ransom to provide To the King sending; Which he neglects the while, As from a nation vile, Yet, with an angry smile, Their fall portending.

And turning to his men, Quoth our brave Henry then:-- "Though they to one be ten, Be not amazed; Yet have we well begun-- Battles so bravely won Have ever to the sun By fame been raised.

"And for myself," quoth he, "This my full rest shall be; England ne'er mourn for me, Nor more esteem me; Victor I will remain, Or on this earth lie slain; Never shall she sustain Loss to redeem me.

"Poitiers and Cressy tell, When most their pride did swell, Under our swords they fell; No less our skill is Than when our grandsire great, Claiming the regal seat, By many a warlike feat Lopped the French lilies."

The Duke of York so dread The eager vaward led; With the main Henry sped, Amongst his henchmen. Excester had the rear-- A braver man not there: O Lord! how hot they were On the false Frenchmen!

They now to fight are gone; Armor on armor shone; Drum now to drum did groan-- To hear was wonder; That with the cries they make The very earth did shake; Trumpet to trumpet spake, Thunder to thunder.

Well it thine age became, O noble Erpingham! Which did the signal aim To our hid forces; When from a meadow by, Like a storm suddenly, The English archery Struck the French horses,

With Spanish yew so strong, Arrows a cloth-yard long, That like to serpents stung, Piercing the weather; None from his fellow starts, But playing manly parts, And like true English hearts, Stuck close together.

When down their bows they threw, And forth their bilbows drew, And on the French they flew, Not one was tardy; Arms were from shoulders sent; Scalps to the teeth were rent; Down the French peasants went;-- Our men were hardy.

This while our noble king, His broadsword brandishing, Down the French host did ding, As to o'erwhelm it; And many a deep wound lent, His arm with blood besprent, And many a cruel dent Bruisèd his helmet.

Glo'ster, that duke so good, Next of the royal blood, For famous England stood, With his brave brother-- Clarence, in steel so bright, Though but a maiden knight, Yet in that furious fight Scarce such another.

Warwick in blood did wade; Oxford the foe invade, And cruel slaughter made, Still as they ran up. Suffolk his axe did ply; Beaumont and Willoughby Bare them right doughtily, Ferrers and Fanhope.

Upon Saint Crispin's day Fought was this noble fray, Which fame did not delay To England to carry; Oh, when shall Englishmen With such acts fill a pen, Or England breed again Such a King Harry?

QUEEN MAB'S EXCURSION

From 'Nymphidia, the Court of Faery'

Her chariot ready straight is made; Each thing therein is fitting laid, That she by nothing might be stay'd, For naught must her be letting: Four nimble gnats the horses were, The harnesses of gossamer, Fly Cranion, her charioteer, Upon the coach-box getting.

Her chariot of a snail's fine shell, Which for the colors did excel,-- The fair Queen Mab becoming well, So lively was the limning; The seat the soft wool of the bee. The cover (gallantly to see) The wing of a py'd butterflee,-- I trow, 'twas simple trimming.

The wheels composed of crickets' bones, And daintily made for the nonce; For fear of rattling on the stones, With thistle-down they shod it: For all her maidens much did fear, If Oberon had chanced to hear That Mab his queen should have been there, He would not have abode it.