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writing this I have learned of some cases where it has been done.] The fact is that the library of the Alpine Club is very little used. Under the peculiar conditions of its existence it is difficult to see how it can be made more useful. Meanwhile there is no scope for refined devices of any kind. All we can do is to preserve the collection for posterity, keeping it up and improving it, as occasion offers, on the lines I have indicated. But, lest I should end in a tone of over much humility, I shall tell you that the Alpine Club has at least produced one rare book. The third volume of the Alpine Journal has long been out of print; it is not easy to meet with at all, and it is very difficult to get a perfect copy with the plates. My own is without them, which I lament mainly for the sake of the delightful cat-faced dragon reproduced from Scheuchzer's Itinera Alpina (1723). The original, which we also have in the library, is now, I believe, more easily procurable than the reproduction.

XII

THE FORMS AND HISTORY OF THE SWORD 1

1

THERE seems to be a culminating point not only in all human arts, but in the fashion of particular instruments. And it so happens that the preeminent and typical instruments of war and of music attained their perfection at nearly the same time, in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Within that period the violin, chief minister of the most captivating of the arts of peace, and the sword, the chosen weapon of skilled single combat and the symbol of military honour, assumed their final and absolute forms-forms on which no improvement has been found possible. Strangely enough, the parallel holds a step further. In each case, although nothing more could be added to the model or the workmanship, it was yet to be long before the full capacities of the instrument were developed. A quartet of Beethoven hardly differs more from the formal suites and gavottes of such composers as Rameau than does the sword

1 A Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, June 1, 1883. Cf. the article "Sword," also by the present writer, in the 9th ed. of the Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. xxii. p.

play of the school of Prévost or Cordelois from the nicely balanced movements and counter-movements taught and figured in the works of Liancour or Girard. Nor has fencing been without its modern romantic school; we may even say that it has had its Berlioz in the brilliant and eccentric Bazancourt, a charming writer on the art, and—as he has been described to me by competent authority-un tireur des plus fantaisistes. And in both cases we may truly say that the period of academic formality was the indispensable predecessor of the more free and adventurous development of our own time. But before the modern small-sword could even exist-the sword, as it is called eminently and without addition in its land of adoption, épée as opposed to sabre—a long course of growth, variation, and experiment had to be run through. To give some general notion of the forms and history of the sword is what I shall now attempt; I say some notion, for the subject, narrow as it may seem at first sight, is one that marvellously grows upon consideration. And though there are perhaps not many of us nowadays who would, like Claudio before he fell in love, walk ten mile a-foot to see a good armour, I think we shall find the story not without interest.

The sword is essentially a metal weapon. Here at the outset we are on disputable ground; one cannot take a part either way without differing from good authorities. But some part must be taken, and on this point I hold with General Pitt-Rivers. The larger wooden or stone weapons, clubs and the like,

were not and could not be imitated in bronze in the early days of metal-work, for the one sufficient reason that metal was too scarce. We start then with spearheads of hammered bronze, imitating the pointed flints which doubtless were still used for arrow-heads until bronze was cheap enough to be thrown or shot away without thought of recovering it. The general form of these spear-heads was a kind of pointed oval, a type which has continued with only minor variations in the greater part of the spears, pikes, and lances of historical times. It is difficult to say whether the spears thus headed were oftener used as missile or thrusting weapons, though the javelin has also forms peculiar to itself, of which the most famous example is the Roman pilum. In the semi-historical warfare of the Homeric poems the spear is almost always thrown; in the later historical period it is held fast as a pike; the Romans, carefully practical in all matters of military equipment, had different spears for different kinds of service. In medieval Europe the missile use of spears had, I believe, disappeared altogether, except in the defence of walls and in naval combats. However these things may be, the need of a handier weapon than the spear for close quarters, and a readier and more certain one than the club, must have been felt at an early time. A spear broken off short would at once give a hand-weapon like the Zulu "stabbing assegai." When metal becomes more abundant, and skill in working it more common, such weapons are separately designed and made; the spear-head is enlarged into a blade,

with but little alteration of form, and we have a bronze1 dagger of the type known to English archæologists as "leaf-shaped," the characteristic type of the bronze period everywhere. Some of the Greek bronze daggers, indeed, are rather smaller than the full-sized spear-heads. With increasing command of metal the length of blade is increased; and we have in course of time a true sword. It is impossible to define where the dagger ends and the sword begins, but perhaps the metal-bladed weapon may fairly be called a sword when it is two feet long or upwards, and has a metal grip, or nucleus of a grip (the "tang" of the modern armourer), wrought in the same piece with it, and finished off with a counter-guard or pommel. It may be observed that the prehistoric armourers, as far as one can guess, had no theories as to the most effective length of their weapons. I believe the dimensions were determined (within the limits of practical handling by a man of average stature) almost wholly by the costliness of the material. In the later bronze and earlier iron periods we find the blades attaining almost or quite the length of a modern sabre. And in like manner the bulging curvature towards the point appears not to have been adopted in order to give cutting power (which to some extent it does), but to be a mere imitation of the spear-head, which in turn owes its form to imitation of the earlier chipped flint points.

1 It is not universally true that bronze was known and worked before other metals. Iron came first where, as in Africa, it was most accessible. But I speak here with a view to the European development only.

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