Discords and Harmonies

The citizens of ancient Athens, according to Bishop Sprat, were ‘men of hot, earnest, and hasty minds’. ¹ Perceiving the dangers to which their temperaments exposed them, they wisely urged upon one another the need for self-knowledge and moderation, while some upheld the value of Stoic ‘apathy’ and serenity. For very similar reasons the most articulate of Bishop Sprat’s contemporaries advocated the disciplining of passion and imagination, and espoused some of the tenets of Stoicism, not only because the shadow of the Civil War still hung darkly over them, but also because they recognized that they and their fellow-countrymen were all too easily swayed by their hot and hasty dispositions. Sir William Temple was ‘apt to be warme in disputes & expostulations, wch made him hate the first, & avoy’d the other’. ² Matthew Prior recalls that the Earl of Dorset ‘was naturally very subject to Passion’, but adds that ‘the short Gust was soon over, and served only to set off the Charms of his Temper, when more Compos’d.’ ³ At a time when libels and lampoons were weapons freely drawn in self-defence, Pope’s unwillingness to retaliate upon his enemies (Tull ten years slander’d, did he once reply?’) seems so exceptional as to be positively virtuous. ‘If a Man has any Talent in Writing, it shews a good Mind to forbear answering Calumnies and Reproaches in the same Spirit of Bitterness with which they are offered: But when a Man has been 169at some pains in making suitable returns to an Enemy, and has the Instruments of Revenge [invectives and satires] in his Hands, to let drop his Wrath, and stifle his Resentments, seems to have something in it Great and Heroical. There is a particular Merit in such a way of forgiving an Enemy… .’ ¹ It is a measure of what the age expects of human nature that the renunciation of revenge can be exalted into an act of forgiveness, and that Pope can follow Horace in proposing, as a test of true wisdom, the question ‘Can’st thou endure a Foe, forgive a Friend?’ ²