Ideas have a tyrannous power of insisting on being worked out, evenwhen one fears they may be leading in a track already worthilypreoccupied.
But the Hercules myth did not seem to me to be like one of the fairytales that we have seen so gracefully and quaintly modernised; and atthe risk of seeming to travestie the Farnese statue in a shooting-coatand wide-awake, I could not help going on, as the notion grew deeperand more engrossing.
For, whether the origin of the myth be, or be not, founded on solarphenomena, the yearning Greek mind formed on it an unconscious allegoryof the course of the Victor, of whom the Sun, rejoicing as a giant torun his course, is another type, like Samson of old, since the facts ofnature and of history are Divine parables.
And as each one's conquest is, in the track of his Leader, the onlytrue Conqueror, so Hercules, in spite of all the grotesque adjunctsthat the lower inventions of the heathen hung round him, is a farcloser likeness of manhood—as, indeed, the proverbial use of some ofhis tasks testifies—and of repentant man conquering himself. Thegreat crime, after which his life was a bondage of expiation; thechoice between Virtue and Vice; the slain passion; the hundred-headedsin for ever cropping up again; the winning of the sacred emblem ofpurity;—then the subduing of greed; the cleansing of long-neglecteduncleanness; the silencing of foul tongues; the remarkable contest withthe creature which had become a foe, because, after being devoted forsacrifice, it was spared; the obtaining the girdle of strength; therecovery of the spoil from the three-fold enemy; the gaining of thefruit of life; immediately followed by the victory over the hell-houndof death; and lastly, the attainment of immortality—all seem nofortuitous imagination, but one of those when "thoughts beyond theirthoughts to those old bards were given."
I have not followed all these meanings, for this is not an allegory,but a mere distant following rather of the spirit than the letter ofthe old Greek tale of the Twelve Tasks. Neither have I adhered toevery incident of Hercules' life; and the most touching and beautifulof all—the rescue of Alcestis, would hardly bear to come in merely asan episode, in this weak and presumptuous endeavour to show that thehalf-divine, patient conqueror is not merely a classic invention, butthat he and his labours belong in some form or other to all times andall surroundings.
C. M. YONGE.
Nov. 8, 1875.