Part 1

BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NO. CCCCLXXXV. MARCH, 1856. VOL. LXXIX.

CONTENTS.

LIDDELL’S HISTORY OF ROME, 247 MONTEIL, 266 BIOGRAPHY GONE MAD, 285 THE GREEK CHURCH, 304 NICARAGUA AND THE FILIBUSTERS, 314 THE SCOTTISH FISHERIES, 328 SYDNEY SMITH, 350 PEERAGES FOR LIFE, 362 THE WENSLEYDALE CREATION, 369

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BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCCLXXXV. MARCH, 1856. VOL. LXXIX.

LIDDELL’S HISTORY OF ROME.[1]

Engraved on certain Syrian or Assyrian rocks lie innumerable inscriptions in an unknown character; the solid rock and an Asiatic climate have preserved them for us: they lie there facing the world, in the broad light of day, but none can read them. A whole mountain-side seems covered with the records of departed greatness. What truths, what historic facts might not these mysterious characters disclose! The scholar cannot sleep for desire to interpret them. At length, by extreme ingenuity and indomitable patience, and those happy sudden incidental revelations which ever reward the persevering man, some clue is put into his hand. He begins to read, he begins to translate. We gather round and listen breathless. “I, Shalmanasser,” so runs the inscription, “I assembled a great army—I engaged—I defeated—I slew their sovereigns,—I cast in chains their captains and men of war—I, Shalmanasser, I——” Oh, hold! hold! we exclaim, with thy Shalmanasser! There was no need to decipher the mysterious characters for this. If the rock, with all its inscriptions, can tell us nothing wiser or newer, it is a pity that there were no rains in that climate to wash the surface smooth, and obliterate these boastful records of barbarian cruelty and destruction. Better that the simple weather-stained rock should face the eye of day, oblivious of all but nature’s painless and progressive activities.

Some such feeling as this has passed across the minds of most of us, when invited to peruse new histories of the ancient world. They were terrible men, those warriors of olden time. They besieged towns—and so, indeed, do we; but they did more; they put the children to the sword, and carried away the mother into captivity, and those of the men whom they did not chain and enslave, they slew as grateful sacrifices to their gods! Strange and execrable insanity! and yet the religious rite was the legitimate result, and the clear exponent of their own savage nature. There was no spectacle to them so pleasant as blood that flowed from an enemy. How deny the god who had helped them to win the victory his share in the triumphant slaughter! There have been loathsome and terrible things done upon the earth; let us forget them, as we forget some horrible nightmare. At all events, having known that such men and such times have been, and having gathered what lesson we can from them, let us be spared from the infliction of new Shalmanassers, or from new details of their atrocities. Such feeling of satiety in the old narrative of war and conquest we must confess to participate in, when the narrative relates to some Asiatic monarchy that has appeared and disappeared, leaving no trace of any good result behind it, or which merely lingers on the scene undergoing fruitless and bewildering changes. It is otherwise, however, when we are invited again to peruse the history of Rome, and her conquest of the world, as it has been proudly called. We are reading here the history of European civilisation. The slow, persistent, continuous progress of her consular armies is one of those great indispensable facts, without which the history of humanity could not be written, without which a civilised Christendom could not have existed. It is the conquest of a people, not of a monarch—a people who for many years have to struggle for self-preservation (the secret this of their lasting union and exalted patriotism)—of a people whose pride and ambition undergo the noble discipline of adversity, who, being firmly knit together, proceed steadily to the taming and subjection and settlement of the surrounding nations. It is a conquest the very reverse of those great invasions of Hun or Scythian, where population rolls like an enormous sea from one part of the world to another; it was truly the _settlement_, first of Italy, then of surrounding countries. Nomadic habits were checked. Siculi and Oscans, Sabines, Samnites, and a host of shifting populations too numerous to name, were brought under one government, and moulded into one nation. What the Alps could not do for Italy, was done by the republic of the seven hills. The peninsula was secured from the invasion of the more northern barbarian. The Gaul was first arrested, then subjugated, settled in his own home, civilised and protected. Carthage, who would have conquered or colonised in the interest only of her own commerce, was driven back. Greece, and her arts and her philosophy, were embraced and absorbed in the new empire, which extended over the finest races of men and the most propitious climates of the earth.

It has been well said that the Romans were not the only people who entertained the glorious anticipation of the conquest of the world. There was one other nation that had a still more magnificent conception of its own future destiny, of its own exalted prominence and supremacy. It was impossible for the monotheism of the Jews to attain the elevated character it did, and yet sanction the belief, in any narrow sense, of a national god. The only God of all the world must surely reign over all the world. The universal Monarch must imply a universal monarchy. From this centre of the world,—this holy temple at Jerusalem, and through His chosen and peculiar people, would God govern all the nations of the earth. Such extension of the faith of the Jew to the Gentile was inevitable. All nations would come in, as suppliants and subjects, to the throne of God’s elect. And the prophetic inspiration, though not precisely in the sense in which the ancient Hebrew understood it, was destined to be fulfilled. But it was not the sword of Israel, nor of the angels, that Divine Providence employed to establish the supremacy of the great Truth developed in Judea. It was the sword of the legions of Rome. The armies of a Scipio and a Cæsar were gathering the nations together under the one true worship. The spiritual dominion did issue from Judea, but it governed the world from the throne of the Cæsars.

Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Judea,—these are the four great names which occur to one who looks back on the history of European civilisation. To these four powers or nations we owe that status or condition which has enabled us to make such advances as we claim to be peculiarly our own. Indirect contributions are doubtless due to India and to Persia. Babylon is no more; but a people who once sojourned in Babylon may have learnt something there from the Persian, and transmitted it to us in their imperishable records; and Greek philosophy bears impress, in one phase of it, of the teaching of Indian theosophists. But still the four whom we have mentioned would furnish forth all the essential elements which the past has given to our present European culture.

If we look at the map of the world, or turn under our hand a terrestrial globe, we shall be struck with the peculiar adaptation of the banks of the Nile to be an early seat of civilisation. It is not only that the river, by periodically overflowing its banks, produces a spontaneous or unlaboured fertility, but this fertile tract of land is made precious, and the people are bound to it, by the enormous deserts that extend around it. The desert and the sea imprison the people in their “happy valley,” thus rendering it in all probability one of the earliest abodes of a stationary population. However that may be, it is certain that, whether we appeal to written history or to monumental inscriptions, there is no spot on the earth where the records of the human race extend so far back into antiquity. We must open our history of civilisation with the growth of arts and knowledge in Egypt. From Egypt we proceed to Greece—to Athens, the marvellous, who did so much in so short time, and who accomplished even more for the world at large than for her individual self. She learnt her arts from Egypt; her scientific spirit was her own. What we owe to Judea (which at an early period was not unconnected with Egypt, nor at a later with the mind of Greece) needs not to be here particularised. It was the part of Rome to reduce into order and combine under one sway large tracts of territory and great varieties of people; so that whatever had been given to the Greek, or revealed to the Hebrew, might blend and be diffused over vast portions of the human race. Nor was this office less effectually performed because the empire is seen to break up amidst much temporary confusion, produced by internal corruption and rude invaders. Europe finally assumes a form the most conducive imaginable to progress. It is divided into separate kingdoms, speaking different languages, but possessing a common religion, and many of the same sources of culture. Their similarities, their contrasts, their emulations, form together a condition the most favourable for the excitement and progress of the human intellect.

We can therefore look with complacent admiration, and undecaying interest, upon the wars and victories of ancient Rome. But indeed, such has been the revolution lately brought about in our historical studies, that the mention of a new History of Rome is more likely to call to mind perplexed controversies upon myths and fables, than visions of battles or triumphal processions winding up to the Capitol. Not many years ago, the early periods of Roman history suggested to the imagination the most vivid pictures of war and patriotism; we heard the march of the legions—we followed Cincinnatus from the plough to the camp—we were busied with the most stirring realities and the strongest passions of life. Now these realities have grown dim and disputable, and we are reminded of learned controversies upon poetic legends, or on early forms of the constitution,—we think more of Niebuhr than of Camillus, more of German critics than of the Conscript Fathers. It is not a pleasant exchange, but it is one which must be submitted to. The first question that every one will ask, who hears that Dr Liddell has told again the history of Rome, is, How has he dealt with the mythical or legendary portions? What degree of credibility has he attached to them? Has he followed the example of Arnold, and reserved for them a peculiar style savouring of antique simplicity; or has he followed the older, and, we think, the wiser course, of Livy, and told them with genuine unaffected eloquence, without either disguising their legendary character, or making the very vain attempt to distinguish the germ or nucleus of real fact from the accretions and embellishments of oral tradition?

Before we answer this question, let us say generally of Dr Liddell’s History, that we think the public is indebted to him for a pre-eminently _useful_ book. To the youthful student, to the man who cannot read many volumes, we should commend it as the one History which will convey the latest views and most extensive information. The style is simple, clear, explanatory. There are, indeed, certain high qualities of the writer and the thinker which are requisite to complete our ideal of the perfect historian. We are accustomed to require in him something of the imagination of the poet, combined with and subdued by the wide generalising spirit of the philosopher. We do not wish to have it understood that there is a signal deficiency in these qualities, but, whilst acknowledging the utility of Dr Liddell’s laborious and learned work, we cannot say that he has given to the literature of England a History of Rome.

Indeed, the author in his preface claims for his work no such high distinction. He describes the origin it had in the desire to supply the more advanced students at public schools with a fit work of instruction, conveying to them “some knowledge of the altered aspect which Roman history has assumed.” The work grew upon his hands, “and the character of the book,” he continues, “is considerably changed from that which it was originally intended to bear. A History of Rome suited to the wants of general readers of the present day does not in fact exist, and certainly is much wanted. Whether this work will in any way supply the want is for others to say.”

We have already intimated our opinion that there is no other work at present existing which so ably supplies this want; and our immediate object in placing it at the head of this paper was to assist in giving notice to all whom it might concern where such a work of instruction was to be found. The preface then proceeds to touch upon the thorny and perplexing controversies in the early history:—

“The difficulty inseparable from a work of this kind lies in the treatment of the Early History. Since what may be called ‘The Revolution of Niebuhr,’ it has been customary to give an abstract of his conclusions, with little attention to the evidence upon which they rest. But the acute and laborious criticisms of many scholars, chiefly German, have greatly modified the faith which the present generation is disposed to place in Niebuhr’s authoritative dicta; and in some cases there may be observed a disposition to speak lightly of his services. If I may say anything of myself, I still feel that reverence for the great master which I gained in youth, when we, at Oxford, first applied his lamp to illuminate the pages of Livy. No doubt, many of the results which he assumes as positive are little better than arbitrary assertions. But I conceive that his main positions are still unshaken, or rather have been confirmed by examination and attack. If, however, they were all abandoned, it will remain true for ever, that to him is due the new spirit in which Roman history has been studied; that to him must be referred the origin of that new light which has been thrown upon the whole subject by the labours of his successors. In a work like this, dissertation is impossible; and I have endeavoured to state only such results of the new criticism as seem to be established. If the young reader has less of positive set before him to learn, he will at all events find less that he will have to unlearn.

“Far the greater part of this work was printed off before the appearance of Sir George Cornewall Lewis’s _Inquiry into the Credibility of Early Roman History_. Much labour might be saved by adopting his conclusions, that Roman history deserves little or no attention till the age at which we can securely refer to contemporaneous writers, and that this age cannot be carried back further than the times of Pyrrhus. It is impossible to speak too highly of the fulness, the clearness, the patience, the judicial calmness of his elaborate argument. _But while his conclusions may be conceded in full for almost all the wars and foreign transactions of early times_, we must yet claim attention for the civil history of Rome in the first ages of the republic. There is about it a consistency of progress, and a clearness of intelligence, that would make its fabrication more wonderful than its transmission in a half-traditionary form. When tradition rests solely on memory, it is fleeting and uncertain; but when it is connected with customs, laws, and institutions such as those of which Rome was justly proud, and to which the ruling party clung with desperate tenacity, its evidence must doubtless be carefully sifted and duly estimated, but ought not altogether to be set aside.”

The large concession which the work of Sir G. C. Lewis seems to have extorted from Dr Liddell after the writing of his own History, was not present to his mind during its composition. He sometimes gives as historical fact such-and-such a war, and then relates some legend as connected with this war. “With the Volscian wars is inseparably connected the noble legend of Coriolanus.” The story of Coriolanus is marked as legend, the Volscian wars as fact. If we are justified in making the concession marked in italics, the Volscian wars are no more history than the story of Coriolanus.

As to the remark here made on the civil or constitutional history of this period, it would have great weight if there were really presented to us in that history a clear, intelligible, indisputable account of the earlier constitutions or governments of Rome. It happens that it is precisely on this subject there has been so much conjecture, and so much debate. So far as Dr Liddell can really trace in the narrative preceding the time of Pyrrhus, a manifest, indisputable, _constitutional history_, so far as he can confidently point to that “consistency of progress and clearness of intelligence” of which he speaks, so far he is entitled to claim for the whole narrative our most respectful attention. But the difficulty is notorious of forming a distinct conception of many points in this constitutional history, and this difficulty has given rise to much of our guess-work. We must take care, therefore, and not fall into the logical error, of _first_ eliminating some consistent view of the constitutional history by the aid of much ingenious conjecture, and _then_ appealing to this consistency in the constitutional history as ground of presumption in favour of the whole narrative.

For our own part, we suspect that there is a greater measure of truth in the legend as it stands than is now generally conceded; and at the same time we have an utter distrust of all the attempts which have been made—laudable and ingenious as they may be—to separate the truth from the fable. We can believe in Tarquin the Proud, in Lucretia, in Coriolanus, much more readily than in any new historical views obtained by a sifting of the narrative which contains these heroic stories. One thing is plain, that no historian of Rome can omit these narratives; and we should much prefer that he would relate them in a natural style—in the style due at least to the noble sentiments they illustrate—than reserve for them (a manner to which Dr Liddell on some occasions leans) a certain bald and ballad simplicity, as if the writer were almost ashamed of having to relate them at all.

It is now generally understood, by all who have paid any attention to the subject, that although the name of Niebuhr is popularly associated with a sceptical and destructive criticism, he is really distinguished by the bold manner in which he has undertaken to construct and restore certain portions of the history. Preceding writers, both ancient and modern, had uttered the word “fable” or “legend;” it was the gathering from the fable some truth indirectly revealed; it was the bold inventive genius, which could recast the old materials into a new form, which characterised his labours. Amongst other things, he fearlessly asserted that a modern critic might obtain a more precise knowledge of the civil history and early constitutions of Rome than Livy or Cicero possessed. Now, these reconstructions of Niebuhr, though received at first with great enthusiasm in many quarters, have not stood their ground against a calm and severe examination; and in this country all such conjectural methods of writing the early history of Rome have lately received a decisive check from the work of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, _On the Credibility of Early Roman History_. This is a work which combines the ample and laborious scholarship of the German, with that sound sense which the Englishman lays especial claim to. We can only here incidentally mention it; but it is impossible, and it will be a long time impossible, for any one to touch upon Roman history without alluding to this work. It will be for many years the text-book for the subject of which it treats.

The manner in which a legend, which is itself admitted to be false, may yet convey to us indirectly some important historical truth, admits of easy illustration. Suppose that some chronicler, living in the time of our Henry V., chose to relate a quite fictitious history of Prince Arthur. All his battles, all his victories, his whole kingdom, might be a mere dream; but as the imagination of the writer would have no other types to follow than those which his own times presented to him, he would necessarily convey to us much historical truth touching the reign of Henry V., whilst describing his imaginary Prince Arthur. His inevitable anachronisms would betray him into a species of historical truth. Prince Arthur would assuredly be a valorous knight, and whence would come the ceremony of investiture, and all the moral code of knighthood? Prince Arthur would undoubtedly be a good son of the Church, and from what type would be drawn the picture of the orthodox and pious Christian? If the Prince were to be crowned, whence would come the sceptre and the ball, and the oaths he would take upon his coronation? Prince Arthur would be a knight, a Christian, and a king, after the order of the Plantagenets. It is plain that, in such a fabulous narrative, there would be mingled up much historical matter; it is plain that we, reading such a narrative by the light of knowledge gained from other sources, can detect and discriminate the historic truth: whether, if such a fabulous narrative _stood alone_ before us, we could then make the same discrimination, whether we could then take advantage of its involuntary anachronisms, is another question. Imagination must always have its type or starting-place in some reality, but it may deal as freely with one reality as another; it may take as much liberty with religious ceremonies and coronation oaths as with anything else.

Is there not a slight oversight in the following criticism, which Sir G. C. Lewis makes on the method of Niebuhr? At all events, our quotation of the passage from his work, with a solitary remark of our own upon it, will constitute as brief an exposition as any we can give of this branch of the subject. The question is, what can be gathered of the constitution of Rome under her kings? There is clearly no contemporary history; but _if_ a tradition, though of a quite mythical character, could be fairly pronounced to have originated in the regal period, that tradition might indirectly convey to us some knowledge of the regal constitution. Fragments have come down to us through the works of later classical writers, which may convey this sort of traditional knowledge. Let them by all means be rigidly examined, whatever their ultimate value may be found to be.