DEATH OK SOLON. 157 laws :" and lie Ilien renounced all farther hope of opposition, though resisting the instances of his friends that he should flee, and returning for answer, when they asked him on what he relied for protection, " On my old age. " Is or did he even think it nec- essary to repress the inspirations of his Muse : some verses yet remain, composed seemingly at a moment when the strong hand of the new despot had begun to make itself sorely felt, in which ha tells his countrymen: "If ye have endured sorrow from your own baseness of soul, impute not the fault of this to the gods. Ye have yourselves put force and dominion into the hands of these men, and have thus drawn upon yourselves wretched slavery." It is gratifying to learn that Peisistratus. whose conduct throughout his despotism was comparatively mild, left Solon un- touched. How long this distinguished man survived the prac- tical subversion of his own constitution, we cannot certainly determine ; but according to the most probable statement he died the very next year, at the advanced age of eighty. We have only to regret that we are deprived of the means ot following more in detail his noble and exemplary character. He represents the best tendencies of his age, combined with much that is personally excellent ; the improved ethical sensibility ; the thirst for enlarged knowledge and observation, not less potent in old age than in youth ; the conception of regularized popular in- stitutions, departing sensibly from the type and spirit of the gov- ernments around him, and calculated to found a new character in the Athenian people ; a genuine and reflecting sympathy with the mass of the poor, anxious not merely to rescue them from the op- pressions of the rich, but also to create in them habits of self- relying industry ; lastly, during his temporary possession of a power altogether arbitrary, not merely an absence of all selfish ambition, but a rare discretion in seizing the mean between con- flicting exigencies. In reading his poems we must always recol- lect that what now appears common-place was once new, so that to his comparatively unlettered age, the social pictures which he draws were still fresh, and his exhortations calculated to live in the memory. The poems composed on moral subjects, generally inculcate a spirit of gentleness towards others and moderation in personal objects ; they represent the gods as irresistible, retribu
