Heracles and the Waggoner
Heracles refuses to come to the aid of man who is perfectly able to help himself.
Heracles refuses to come to the aid of man who is perfectly able to help himself.
This little tale has popularised the expression ‘put one’s shoulder to the wheel.’ A waggoner gets into difficulties, and begs heavenly help. All right and proper so far, said Sir Roger l’Estrange, but it wouldn’t do any harm to give it a push too...
A CARTER that had laid his Wagon Fast in a Slough, stood Gaping and Bawling to as many of the Gods and Goddesses as he could Muster up, and to Hercules Especially, to Help him out of the Mire.
Why ye Lazy Puppy you, says Hercules, lay your Shoulder to the Wheel, and Prick your Oxen first, and Then is your Time to Pray. Are the Gods to do your Drudgery, d’ye think, and you lie Bellowing with Your Finger in your Mouth?
Men in Distress must Work as well as Pray, they shall be never the Better else.*
* On the need for work and prayer together, Sir Roger drew the reader’s attention to James 2:15-17, where we are told not just to pray for the poor but to help them directly. “There must be the Penny” as he put it “as well as the Pater Noster.” In Eastern Orthodox tradition this is known as ‘synergy’. See 1 Corinthians 3:6-9, and Psalm 127:1. See also L’Estrange’s retelling of Heracles and the Flea, and William Gladstone on A Spirit of Self-Reliance.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.