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Mosaics of Grecian History by Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

M >> Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson >> Mosaics of Grecian History

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The Battle of Nava'rino.

Hearts of Oak, that have bravely delivered the brave,
And uplifted old Greece from the brink of the grave!
'Twas the helpless to help, and the hopeless to save,
That your thunderbolts swept o'er the brine;
And as long as yon sun shall look down on the wave
The light of your glory shall shine.

For the guerdon ye sought with your bloodshed and toil,
Was it slaves, or dominion, or rapine, or spoil?
No! your lofty emprise was to fetter and foil
The uprooter of Greece's domain,
When he tore the last remnant of food from her soil,
Till her famished sank pale as the slain!

Yet, Navari'no's heroes! does Christendom breed
The base hearts that will question the fame of your deed?
Are they men?--let ineffable scorn be their meed,
And oblivion shadow their graves!
Are they women?--to Turkish serails let them speed,
And be mothers of Mussulmen slaves!

Abettors of massacre! dare ye deplore
That the death-shriek is silenced on Hellas' shore?
That the mother aghast sees her offspring no more
By the hand of Infanticide grasped?
And that stretched on yon billows distained by their gore
Missolonghi's assassins have gasped?

Prouder scene never hallowed war's pomp to the mind
Than when Christendom's pennons wooed social the wind,
And the flower of her brave for the combat combined--
Their watchword, humanity's vow:
Not a sea-boy that fought in that cause but mankind
Owes a garland to bon or his brow!
No grudge, by our side, that to conquer or fall
Came the hardy, rude Russ, and the high-mettled Gaul:
For whose was the genius that planned, at its call,
When the whirlwind of battle should roll?
All were brave! but the star of success over all
Was the light of our Codrington's soul.

That star of thy day-spring, regenerate Greek!
Dimmed the Saracen's moon, and struck pallid his cheek:
In its fast flushing morning thy Muses shall speak,
When their love and their lutes they reclaim;
And the first of their songs from Parnassus's peak
Shall be "Glory to Codrington's name!"

The result of the conflict at Navarino so enraged the Turks that
they stopped all communication with the allied powers, and prepared
for war. In the following year (1828) France and England sent
an army to the Morea: Russia declared war for violations of
treaties, and depredations upon her commerce; and on the 7th of
May a Russian army of one hundred and fifteen thousand men, under
Count Witt'genstein, crossed the Pruth, and by the 2d of July
had taken seven fortresses from the Turks. In August a convention
was concluded with Ibrahim Paesha, who agreed to evacuate the
Morea, and set his Greek prisoners at liberty. In the mean time
the Greeks continued the war, drove the Turks from the country
north of the Corinthian Gulf, and fitted out numerous privateers
to prey upon the commerce of their enemy. In January, 1829, the
Sultan received a protocol from the three allied powers, declaring
that they took the Morea and the Cyc'lades under their protection,
and that the entry of any military force into Greece would be
regarded as an attack upon themselves. The danger of open war
with France and England, as well as the successes and alarming
advances of the Russians, now commanded by Marshal Die'bitsch,
who had meantime taken Adrianople, within one hundred and thirty
miles of the Turkish capital, induced the Sultan to listen to
overtures of peace; and on the 14th of September "the peace of
Adrianople" was signed by Turkey and Russia, by which the former
recognized the independence of Greece.

* * * * *

VI. GREECE UNDER A CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY.

Though freed from her Turkish oppressors, Greece was severely
agitated by domestic discontents, jealousies, and even manifest
turbulence. Count Cae'po d'Is'tria, a Greek in the service of
Russia, who had been chosen, in 1828, president of the provisional
government, aroused suspicions that he designed to establish a
despotism in his own person, and he was assassinated in 1831.
A period of anarchy followed. The great powers had previously
determined to erect Greece into a monarchy, and had first offered
the crown to Prince Leopold, afterward King of Belgium, who, having
accepted the offer, soon after declined it on account of the
unwillingness of the Greeks to receive him, and their
dissatisfaction with the territorial boundaries prescribed for
them. Finally, the boundaries of the kingdom having been more
satisfactorily determined by a treaty between Turkey and the
powers in 1832, the crown was conferred on Otho, a Bavarian
prince, who arrived at Nauplia, the then capital of Greece, in
1833. Athens became the seat of government in 1835. Says a writer
in the British Quarterly, "The Greeks neither elected their own
sovereign nor chose their national polity. In a spirit of generous
confidence they allowed the three protecting powers to name a
king for them, and the powers rewarded them by making the worst
selection they could. They gave the Greeks a boy of seventeen,
with neither a character to form nor an intellect to develop."

The treaty by which Otho was placed on the throne made no provision
for a constitution, but one was expected; and, after ten years
of oppressive subjection by the king and his Bavarian minions,
both the people and a revolted soldiery surrounded the palace,
and demanded a constitution. The king acquiesced, a national
assembly was held, and a constitution was framed which received
the king's approval in March, 1844. In this bloodless revolution
we have an instance both of the determination, and peaceable,
orderly, and well-disposed tendencies of the Greek people. An
eye-witness of the scene has thus described it:

"I well recollect the uprising of 1843. Exasperated by the
miserable rule of Otho, a plot was hatched to wrench a constitution
from him, and when everything was ripe the Athenians arose. At
midnight the hoofs of horses were heard clanging on the pavements,
and the flash of torches gleamed in the streets, as the populace
and military hurried toward the palace; and when the amber-colored
dawn lighted the Acropolis and the plain of Athens, the king
found himself surrounded by his happy subjects, and discovered
two field-pieces pointing into the entrance of the royal residence.
A constitution was demanded in firm but respectful terms--it
being suggested at the same time that, if the request were not
granted by four o'clock in the afternoon, fire would be opened
on the palace. In the mean while all Athens was gathered in the
open space around the palace, chatting, cracking jokes, taking
snuff, and smoking, as if they had assembled to witness a show
or hear the reading of a will. Not a shot was fired; no violence
was offered or received; and precisely as the limiting hour
arrived, the obstinate king succumbed to his besiegers, and the
multitude quietly dispersed to their homes." [Footnote: B. G. W.
Benjamin, in "The Turk and the Greek."]

The Constitution which the Greeks secured contained no real
guarantee for the legislative rights of the people, and the minor
benefits it gave them were ignored by the government. A continuance
of the severe contests between the national party and foreign
intriguers materially interfered with the prosperity of the
country. Other events, also, now occurred to disturb it. In 1847
a diplomatic difficulty with Turkey, and, in 1848, a difference
with England, that arose from various claims of English subjects,
and that continued for several years, assumed threatening
proportions, and were only terminated by the submission of Greece
to the demands made upon her. When the Crimean war broke out,
Greece took a decided stand in favor of Russia; but England and
France soon compelled her to assume and maintain a strictly neutral
position. In 1859 the residents of the Ionian Islands, which were
under the protectorate of England, sought annexation to Greece,
and manifested their intentions in great popular demonstrations,
and even insurrections; but Greece, though sympathizing with them,
was too feeble to aid them, and no change was then made in their
relations.


THE DEPOSITION OF KING OTHO.

While these events were transpiring, the feeling of hostility
toward King Otho and the royal family was taking deeper root
with the Greek people, and open demonstrations of violence were
frequently made. The king promised more liberal measures of
government; but these fell short of the popular demand, and the
Greeks resolved to dethrone the dynasty. In October, 1862, after
several violent demonstrations elsewhere, matters culminated in
a successful revolution at Athens. A provisional government was
established by the leaders of the popular party, who decreed
the deposition of the king. Otho, who was absent from Athens
at the time, on a visit to Napoli, finding himself without a
throne did not return to Athens, but issued a proclamation taking
leave of Greece, and sailed for Germany in an English frigate.
He had occupied the throne just thirty years. MR. TUCKERMAN thus
describes him: "An honest-hearted man, but without intellectual
strength, dressed in the Greek fustinella, he endeavored to be
Greek in spirit; but under his braided jacket his heart beat to
foreign measures, and his ear inclined to foreign counsels. But
for the quicker-witted Amelia, the queen, his follies would have
worn out the patience of the people sooner than they did." The
condition of Greece under his government is thus described by
the writer in the British Quarterly, who wrote immediately after
the coup d'etat: "To outward appearance, the Greece which the
Philhel'lenists of the days of Canning declared to be re-animated
and restored, has presented, during thirty years of settled
government, the aspect of a country corrupt, intriguing, venal,
and poor. The government has kept faith neither with its subjects
nor with its creditors; it has endeavored, by all means in its
power, to crush the constitutional liberties of its subjects;
and by refusing, throughout this period, to pay a single drachma
of its public debt, it has stamped itself either hopelessly
bankrupt or scandalously fraudulent. The people, meanwhile,
crushed by the incubus of a dishonest and extravagant foreign
rule, remain in nearly the situation they held on the first
establishment of their kingdom. In a word, Greece was thirty
years ago transferred from one despotism to another. The Bavarian
rule was no appreciable mitigation of the Turkish rule. If the
Christian monarch hated his Hellenic subjects less than the
Mussulman monarch, he was still more ignorant of the conditions
of prosperous government."


THE ACCESSION OF KING GEORGE.

If it has ever had an existence, Greek independence may be properly
dated from the deposition of the Bavarian dynasty. In December,
1862, a committee appointed by the provisional government ordered
the election of a new king. The national assembly shortly after
met at Athens, and, having first confirmed the deposition of
Otho, of those proposed as candidates for the vacant throne by
the European powers, Prince Alfred of England was elected by
an immense majority on the first ballot. This choice of a scion
of the freest and most stable of the constitutional monarchies
of Europe, was an expression of the desire and the resolve of
the Greek people to secure as full political and civil liberties
as was possible for them under a monarchical government. But
Prince Alfred was held ineligible in consequence of a clause
in the protocol of the protecting powers, which declared that
the government of Greece should not be confided to a prince chosen
from the reigning families of those states. Thereupon, in March,
1863, Prince George of Denmark, the present king, was unanimously
elected by the assembly, and his election was confirmed by the
great powers in the following July. There is every reason to
suppose that England assumed the honor of choosing Prince George.
On the withdrawal of Prince Alfred she expressed her willingness
to abandon her protectorate of the Ionian Islands, and cede them
to Greece, provided a king were chosen to whom the English
government could not object. The Ionian Islands were ceded to
Greece within two months after the accession of King George;
and Mr. Tuckerman relates that, "when Prince Christian, King
of Denmark, was in London, attending the marriage of his daughter
to the Prince of Wales, Lord John Russell discovered the second
son of Prince Christian in the uniform of a midshipman, and
suggested his name as the successor of Otho."

King George took the constitutional oath in October, 1863. In
1866 the revolution in Crete, or Candia, broke out, and, owing
to Greek sympathy with the insurrectionists, thousands of whom
found an asylum in Greece, grave complications arose between
Greece and Turkey, which were only settled by a conference of
the great powers in 1869. By the treaty with the Porte in 1832
the boundary line of Greece had been settled in an arbitrary
manner, by running it from the Gulf of Volo along the chain of
the Othrys Mountains to the Gulf of Arta--by which Greece was
deprived of the high fertile plains of Thessaly and Epirus, the
largest and richest of classical Greece. At the close of the late
Russian-Turkish war, however, the boundary line was changed by
the powers so as to include within the kingdom a large portion
of those ancient possessions; but this change occasioned serious
conflicts between the government and the people of the annexed
districts, and difficulties also arose with Turkey in consequence.
But these were finally settled by an amendment to the treaty,
passed in 1881."

With the exceptions just noted, no important events have disturbed
the peace of Greece since the accession of King George. In him
the country has a ruler of capacity, who is in great measure his
own adviser, and who comprehends the chief wish of his subjects,
"that Greece shall govern Greece." As MR. TUCKERMAN has said
of him, "Unlike his predecessor, he is a Greek by sympathy of
language and ideas. He feels the popular pulse and tries to
keep time with it, not more as a matter of policy than from
national sympathy; and his hands are comparatively free of the
impediment of those foreign ministerial counselors who, each
struggling for supremacy, united only in checking the political
advancement of the kingdom." It was no fault of the Greek people
that, under King Otho, Greece failed to make the internal
advancement that was expected of her on her escape from Moslem
tyranny. It was the fault of the government; for, when a better
government came, there was a corresponding change in the inner
life of the people; and at the present time, with the freest of
constitutional monarchies, and under the guidance of a ruler so
sympathetic, competent, and popular, redeemed Greece is making
rapid strides in intellectual and material progress. Of this
progress we have the following account by a prominent American
divine, a recent visitor to that country:


Progress in Modern Greece. [Footnote: Rev. Joseph Cook, in the
New York Independent, February, 1883.]

"You lean over the parapet of the Acropolis, on the side toward
the modern city, and look in vain for the print of that Venetian
leprous scandal and that Turkish hoof which for six hundred years
trod Greece into the slime. In the long bondage to the barbarian,
the Hellenic spirit was weakened, but not broken. The Greek, with
his fine texture, loathes the stolid, opaque temperament of
the polygamistic Turk. Intermarriages between the races are very
few. The Greek race is not extinct. In many rural populations
in Greece the modern Hellenic blood is as pure as the ancient.
Only Hellenic blood explains Hellenic countenances, yet easily
found; the Hellenic language, yet wonderfully incorrupt; and
the Hellenic spirit, omnipresent in liberated Greece. Fifty years
ago not a book could be bought at Athens. To-day one in eighteen
of the whole population of Greece is in school. In 1881 thirteen
very tall factory chimney-stacks could be counted in the Pirae'us,
not one of which was there in 1873. It is pathetic to find Greece
at last opening, on the Acropolis and in the heart of Athens,
national museums for the sacred remnants of her own ancient art,
which have been pillaged hitherto for the enrichment of the museums
of all Western Europe. During sixty years of independence the
Hellenic spirit has doubled the population of Greece, increased
her revenues five hundred per cent., extended telegraphic
communication over the kingdom, enlarged the fleet from four
hundred and forty to five thousand vessels, opened eight ports,
founded eleven new cities, restored forty ruined towns, changed
Athens from a hamlet of hovels to a city of seventy thousand
inhabitants, and planted there a royal palace, a legislative
chamber, ten type-foundries, forty printing establishments, twenty
newspapers, an astronomical observatory, and a university with
eighty professors and fifteen hundred students. After little
more than half a century of independence, the Hellenic spirit
devotes a larger percentage of public revenue to purposes of
instruction than France, Italy, England, Germany, or even the
United States. Modern Greece, sixty years ago a slave and a beggar,
to-day, by the confession of the most merciless statisticians,
stands at the head of the list of self-educated nations."




INDEX.

[Names in CAPITALS denote authors to whom prominent reference
is made, or from whom selections are taken.]

Aby'dos. Xerxes and his army at.
Acade'mla, or Ac-a-deme'. A public garden or grove, the resort
of the philosophers at Athens.
Acarna'ni-a, description of; aids Athens.
Achae'ans, the; origin of.
Achae'an League, the.
Achae'us, son of Xuthus, and ancestor of the Achaeans.
Acha'ia, description of. Name given to Greece by the Romans.
Achelo'us, the river, described.
Ach'eron, the river; described.
Acheru'sia (she-a), the lake, described.
Achil'les, accompanies expedition to Troy; contends with Agamemnon,
and withdrawn; refuses to enter the contest, puts his armor
on Patroclus, and the armor is lost; description of his new
armor; he enters the fight; encounters AEneas, who escapes;
kills Hector; delivers the body to Priam; death of.
Acri'si-us (she-us), King of Argos.
Acrop'olis, the Athenian; seizure of, by Cylon; by Pisistratus;
by the Persians; famous structures of; its splendors in the
time of Pericles; injury to, inflicted by the Venetians.
Actae'on, the fable of.
Adme'tus, King of Pherae.
AEge'an Sea.
AEgi'na, island of; war of, with Athens.
AE'gos-pot'ami. Defeat of Athenians at.
AEmo'nia, same as Haemonia, an early name of Thessaly.
AEne'as, a Trojan hero, and subject of Virgil's AEne'id; wounded,
and put to flight by Diomed; fights for the body of Patroclus;
encounters Achilles, and is preserved by Neptune; account of
his escape from Troy.
AEne'id, the.
AEo'lians, the; colonies of.
AE'olus, progenitor of the AEolians.
AES'CHI-NES, the orator; prosecutes Demosthenes; exile of; oratory
of. Extracts from: The Death of Darius; Oration against Ctesiphon.
AES'CHYLUS, poet and tragedian. Life and works of. Extracts from:
Punishment of Prometheus; Retributive justice of the gods; The
taking of an oath; The name "Helen"; Beacon fires from Troy to
Argos; Battle of Salamis; Murder of Agamemnon.
AEscula'pius, god of the healing art. Shrine of.
AE'son, King of Iolcus.
AEt'na, a city in Sicily, founded by Hiero.
AEto'lia.
Agamem'non, King of Mycenae; commands the expedition against Troy;
contends with Achilles; demands restoration of Helen; return
to Greece and is murdered.
Agamemnon, the. Extracts from.
Aganip'pe, fountain of.
Ag'athon, a tragedian.
Agesan'dros, a Rhodian sculptor.
Agesila'us, King of Sparta. Defeats the Persians at Sardis.
A'gis, King of Sparta.
Agrigen'tum, in Sicily.
A'jax. Goes with the Greeks to Troy; fights for the body of
Patroclus; his death.
AKENSIDE, MARK.--Character of Solon; of Pisistratus, and his
usurpation; Alcraes; Anacreon; Melpomene.
ALAMANNI, LUIGI.--Flight of Xerxes.
ALCAE'US, a lyric poet.--Life and writings of. Extracts from:
The spoils of war; Sappho.
ALCAE'US, of Messene.--Epigrams of, on Philip V.
Alcestis, the.
Alcibi'ades. Artifices of; retires to Sparta; intrigues of, against
Athens; is condemned to death, but escapes; is recalled to
Athens; is banished; death of.
Alcin'o-us, King. Gardens of.
"Al'ciphron, or the Minute Philosopher".
ALC'MAN, a lyric poet.--Life and writings of.
Alexander the Great. Quells revolt of the Grecian states; invades
Asia; defeats Darius; further conquests of; feast of, at
Persepolis; invades India; dies at Babylon; career, character,
and burial of; wars that followed his death.
Alexandria, in Egypt. Founded by Alexander.
Alex'is, a comic poet.
ALISON, ARCHIBALD.-Earthquake at Sparta, and Spartan heroism.
Alphe'us, river. Legends of.
A'mor, son of Venus, and god of love.
Amphic'tyon, Amphicty'ones, and Amphictyon'ic Council.
Amphip'olis, in Thrace.
Amphis'sa, town of.
Amy'clae, town of.
Anab'asis, the.
ANAC'REON, a lyric poet.--Life and writings of.
An'akim, a giant of Palestine.
Anaxag'oras, the philosopher; attacks upon, at Athens; life,
works, and death of.
Anaximan'der, the philosopher.
Anaxim'enes, the philosopher.
Anchi'ses, father of AEne'as.
Androm'a-che, wife of Hector. Lamentation of, over Hector's body.
An'gelo, Michael.
ANONYMOUS.--Tomb of Leonidas; Queen Archidamia.
Antae'us, son of Neptune and Terra. Encounter with Hercules.
Antal'cidas, the peace of.
Anthe'la, village of.
ANTHON, CHARLES, LL.D.--Apelles and Protogenes.
Antig'o-ne, the.
Antig'onus, one of Alexander's generals; conquests and death of.
Antig'onus II., a king of Macedon.--War of, with Phyrrus; becomes
master of Greece, and death of.
Antil'ochus (in the Iliad).
Anti'ochus, King of Syria.
ANTIP'ATER, of Sidon.--Extracts from: The birthplace of Homer;
Sappho; Desolation of Corinth; The painting of Venus rising
from the sea.
Antip'ater, one of Alexander's generals. Is given command of
Macedon and Greece; suppresses a Spartan revolt; the Athenian
revolt; is given part of Macedonia and Greece; death of.
Antiph'anes, a comic poet.
An'tiphon, orator and rhetorician.
An'tium (an'she-um); a city of Italy.
An'tonines, the. Treatment of Greece by.
An'ytus, the accuser of Socrates.
Apel'les, an Ionian painter; anecdote of.
Aphrodi'te. (See Venus.)
Apollo, the god of archery, etc.; aids the Trojans; character
of; conflict of, with Python.
Apollo Bel've-dere, statue of.
Apollodo'rus, of Athens, a painter.
Apollo'nia, town in Illyria.
Ap'pius Claudius, the Roman consul.
Arach'ne, tower of.
Arbe'la. Battle of.
Arca'dia and Arcadians. Arcadians assist Messenia; assist Thebes
in war with Sparta.
Archidami'a, Queen of Sparta.
Archela'us, King of Macedon.
Archida'mus, King of Sparta.
Archil'ochus, lyric poet.
Archime'des, the Syracusan; Cicero visits the tomb of.
Architecture.--First period. Second period. Third period.
Ar'chons. Institution of, in Athens.
Areop'agus, or Hill of Mars. Court of; changes in power of.
A'res (same as Mars).
Arethu'sa, fountain of.
A're-us, King of Sparta.
Ar'gives, the.
Ar'go, the ship.
Argol'ic Gulf.
Ar'golis.
Argonau'tic expedition, the.
Ar'gos, city of.
Ari'on, the poet.
Aristi'des, the Athenian general and statesman. At Marathon;
rise of, in Athenian affairs; banishment of, and return to
fight at Salamis; leadership and death of.
Aristi'des, a painter.
Aristoc'rates, King of Arcadia.
Aristode'mus, one of the Heraclidae.
Aristogi'ton. Conspiracy of, against the Pisistratidae, and death
of; tribute to.
Aristom'enes, a Messenian leader.
ARISTOPH'ANES, the comic poet. Life and works of. Extracts from:
The Wasps; Cleon the Demagogue; The Clouds; The Birds.
Aristot'le, the philosopher. Life and works of.
ARNOLD, EDWIN.--The Academia.
Ar'ta, Gulf of.
Artaba'nus, uncle of Xerxes.
Artapher'nes, Persian governor of Lydia.
Artaxerx'es Longim'anus.
Artaxerxes Mne'mon.
Ar'temis. (See Diana.)
Artemis'ia (she-a), Queen of Carin.
Artemis'ium. Naval conflict at.
Arts. (See Literature.)
As'cra. Birthplace of Hesiod.
A'sius (a'she-us). A marshy place near the river Ca-ys'ter,
in Asia Minor.
Aso'pus, the river, in Boeotia.
Aspa'sia (she-a). Attacks upon.
Asty'anax, Hector's son. Fate of.
A'te, goddess of revenge.
Athe'na. (See Minerva.)
Athenodo'rus, a Rhodian sculptor.
Athens, and the Athenians; founding of the city; early history
of; legislation of Draco and Solon; usurpation of Pisistratus;
birth of democracy at; battle of Marathon; affairs of, under
Aristides and Themistocles; war of, with AEgina, and settlement
of; abandonment of city; successes of, at Artemisium and Salamis;
at Plataea; empire of Athens; Athens rebuilt; affairs of, under
Cimon; at battle of Eurymedon; jealousy of Sparta against;
affairs of, under Pericles; changes in Constitution of; war
of, with Sparta; reverses of, in Egypt, decline of, and thirty
years' truce of, with Sparta; the "Age of Pericles"; war of,
with Sparta; the plague at; violates the Peace of Nicias;
Sicilian expedition of; war of, with Sparta, and revolt of
allies; reverses and humiliation of; fall of Athens; the rule
of the Tyrants; lead of, in intellectual progress; literature
and art of; adornment of; glory of; alliance of, with Sparta;
engages in the Sacred War; leads against Macedon; censured by
Demosthenes; allies of, defeated by Philip; first open rupture
with Macedon; alliance of, with Thebes, and defeat at Chaeronea;
revolt of, against Alexander; captured by Antigonus; late
architecture, sculpture, and painting of; immortal influence
of; the Duchy of Athens; captured by Turks and Venetians;
revolution at, against Otho.
A'thos, Mount, in Macedonia.
Atos'sa, mother of Xerxes.
Atri'dae, the. A term meaning "sons of Atreus," and applied by
Homer to Agamemnon and Menelaus.
Attica.
"Attic Wasp," the.
Augustus, the Roman emperor.
Au'lis, on the Euripus.
Auso'nian, or Au'sones. An ancient race of Italy.
Aver'nus, lake of.

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It became one of the most important American novels of the last century and yesterday the original manuscript - a scroll taped together with eight reels of paper - of Jack Kerouac's On The Road was unfurled in the UK for the first time.
Fifty years after the novel which more or less defined the Beat generation, was published in Britain, the Barber Institute in Birmingham is showing what is now one of the most valuable literary manuscripts in existence as part of its exhibition Jack Kerouac: Back On the Road.

The exhibition's curator Professor Dick Ellis said there had been a lot of competition to get the scroll which is itself spending a lot of time on the move, having toured a string of US cities and hitting the road to Rome once this show is over. "We're very excited indeed," he said. "This is an iconic manuscript. It is a record of the huge effort Kerouac put into composing it. It was 20 days of typing 6,500 words a day, flat out, in spontaneous composition. He wanted to record things with the most possible accuracy using the spontaneous technique. His typewriter became a compositional instrument.

"Truman Capote once accused Kerouac of typing rather than writing, I would say he was learning the ability of using the typewriter like a jazz instrument, like a saxophone. He also had an incredible memory. And he had great speed at typing, he became a lightning typist. He came to be able to use a typewriter in a way that has not been seen before or since. Kerouac said he wrote fast because the road was fast."

About 22 of the scroll's 120ft will be on display in a specially built cabinet and while visitors will have to slightly tilt their heads, Ellis believes they will get a much deeper knowledge of what Kerouac was all about. It comes to Birmingham courtesy of Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, who bought it for $2.4m (£1.6m) in 2001 before agreeing to a tour. Of course, in the published novel, there are paragraph breaks but in the scroll, there are none. Kerouac did not have the time. The exhibition runs until January 28.

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