INTO LATIN PROSE 
 
 H. NETTLESHIP
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION.
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OP 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION 
 INTO LATIN PROSE. 
 
 WITH 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 H. NETTLESHIP, M.A., 
 
 CORPUS PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET, 
 COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 1887.
 
 CHISWICK PRESS : C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT, 
 CHANCERY LANE.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS little book consists of two parts, an Introduction, 
 and a selection of passages for translation. The Intro- 
 duction deals (i) with political and social ideas as ex- 
 pressed in Latin, (2) with the range of metaphor known 
 to Latin writers, (3) with the historical development 
 of Latin prose style. It is intended to meet, to some 
 small extent, the wants of such students of Latin as 
 may be supposed to have mastered the ordinary laws 
 of syntax and prose structure, and to have gained a 
 fair command of the Latin vocabulary ; but who desire 
 some guidance to a more accurate knowledge of Latin 
 expression in its higher ranges, and to a rational ap- 
 preciation of Latin style. Having, for the last five or 
 six years, made a point of lecturing on Latin Prose com- 
 position in Oxford, I have found that hints of the kind 
 offered in the Introduction have constantly been required, 
 even by good scholars. I say hints, because the scope 
 of the volume precludes my attempting anything more. 
 But I am not without hope that the suggestions made 
 may open up new points of view not only to students of 
 Latin style, but to students of Latin antiquity generally. 
 Words mean things, and the study of words is the 
 natural introduction to that knowledge of ancient life, 
 social and political, which it is the object of the scholar
 
 vi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to attain. For obvious practical reasons I have added 
 some notes on Latin orthography. 
 
 The passages are mostly of my own selection ; but a 
 few have been taken from examination papers, or collec- 
 tions based on examination papers. 
 
 H. N.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION. I. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS . . i 
 II. THE RANGE OF METAPHORICAL EX- 
 PRESSION 27 
 
 III. THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 LATIN PROSE STYLE IN ANTI- 
 QUITY 39 
 
 IV. CAUTIONS AS TO ORTHOGRAPHY . . 64 
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION INTO LATIN PROSE ... 71
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 I. 
 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 
 
 A CITY community, the Tro'Xte of the Greeks, is in 
 Latin called populus. Populus is the whole community, 
 embracing all orders of citizens, and including, therefore, 
 patricians and plebeians as its constituent parts. Gens 
 stands in two relations to populus. It means either 
 a family included in the sphere of the populus, as 
 the gens Fabia, or gens Cornelia at Rome ; or a 
 tribe or nation, including several populi or city com- 
 munities. Thus Vergil in his tenth Aeneid (v. 205), 
 speaks of the populi sub gente quaterni, or four populi for 
 each of her own gentes, which owned the supremacy of 
 Mantua; and Livy (4, 56) says, eorum (Antiatiuni) 
 legatos utriiisque gentis (i.e. Aequorum et Volscorum), 
 populos circumisse. 
 
 It is important to notice that the plural populi is
 
 2 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 
 
 always used in the strictly plural sense of communities, 
 cities, never in the sense of a single community. When 
 Vergil at the beginning of his fourth Georgic, says 
 poetically, that he will tell of totius gentis Mores ac studia 
 ac populos ac proelia ; he means that his theme will include 
 the townships or communities of the bees. 
 
 Natio, which like gens, means a nation or tribe, is 
 generally applied to non-Italian races. Exterae gentes, 
 exterae nationes, and other expressions of the kind, are 
 common in Cicero. 
 
 We have noticed that populus means the whole com- 
 munity, not any part of it. Publicus (=popliais) and 
 popularis means, therefore, what affects or belongs to the 
 whole people. This brings us to the consideration of the 
 important expression, res publica. Res, in all probability, 
 meant originally wealth or possessions, and so, by an 
 easy transition, came to be used for power. Its meaning 
 soon extended, very much as did the meaning of the 
 English word power. In old Latin (as in Plautus), res often 
 meant the state; and so Ennius said of Fabius Maximus, 
 that unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rent. Thus, res 
 Romana, res Albana, would be used for the Roman or 
 Alban state or power. Res publica then properly means 
 the power of the populus. And as, where the power of 
 a people is, there is its main interest or concern, res
 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 3 
 
 publica easily came to mean the interest, concern of the 
 populus. Cicero says (De Re Ptiblica, i, 48), a regum 
 et a patrum dominatione solere in libertatem rem populi 
 vindicari ; and just above hanc imam rite rem publicam, 
 id est rem populi, appellari putant. From this root spring 
 the various uses of the common phrase res publica, one 
 or two of which concern us here. 
 
 An older phrase, revived by Vergil (Aen. 2. 322; n. 
 302), for res publica, in the sense of the public interest, 
 is res summa, Cicero and Livy sometimes combine the 
 two expressions, and speak of summa res publica (for 
 instance, Livy, 39, 16, 3). 
 
 In ordinary Latin res publica embraces very much what 
 we mean by politics. Thus, rem publicam adire, or 
 capessere, is to take part in public life : de re publica 
 loqui, to speak about the political situation : ret publicae 
 causa aliquid facere, to do anything on political grounds. 
 Livy (4, 56, 12), uses the expression communicare (plebi) 
 rem publicam, in the sense of granting to the plebeians a 
 share in political power. 
 
 It should be observed that res publica, not res publicae, 
 is always used by good authors in this connection. Res 
 publicae for politics, or public affairs, is bad Latin, unless 
 publicae is opposed to privatae. Res privatae atque publicae 
 is good Latin, in the sense of public and private affairs,
 
 4 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS, 
 
 but res publicae should not be used alone in this 
 sense. 1 
 
 Thus res publica is the state, if regarded as the common 
 wealth or common interest. But if regarded as a body 
 of citizens, the state is civitas. Civitas, originally meaning 
 citizenship, came to mean the body of citizens, and is 
 thus often used in good Latin, as an exact equivalent 
 for rives. But civitas often bears the extended meaning 
 in which we use the word society. Sallust says, for 
 instance (Bellum Catilinae, 5, 9), res ipsa hortari videtur, 
 qtwniam de moribus civitatis tempus admonuit, supra re- 
 petere, ac paucis instiiuta maionim, quo modo rem publicam 
 
 habuerint quo modo mutata sit disserere. 
 
 "Having, as the occasion suggested, touched on the moral 
 condition of Roman society, I need not apologize for 
 explaining the changes which took place in the institutions 
 of our ancestors : what was their political position, how 
 this has changed," etc. So again in the same work (53, 
 5), we find postquam luxu atque desidia civitas corrupta 
 est, rursus res publica magnitudine sua imperatorum 
 atque magistratuum vitia sustentabat " the corruption 
 of society by luxury and sloth did not prevent the 
 
 1 It is true that Cicero says {R. P. 2, 16), Romulus 
 
 omnibus publicis rebus instituendis . . . cooptavit augures. But here 
 publicae res does not mean politics, but public business.
 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS, 5 
 
 constitution from supporting the burden laid upon it 
 by the vices of its own generals and magistrates." And 
 Seneca says of Cato, adversus vitia civitatis degenerantis 
 et pessum sua mole sidentis stetit solus, et cadentem rem 
 publicam . . . tenuit. (De Constantia Sapientis, 2, 3.) 
 
 It appears, then, that both res publica and civitas can 
 be used in the sense of a state, a city, a body politic, and 
 that in many cases the terms are synonymous. But res 
 publica should be used, if attention is to be drawn to the 
 interest of the state or community, as opposed to that of 
 the individuals composing it : civitas should be used, if 
 the point is to call attention to the individual members of 
 the community. 
 
 "Constitution," or "form of government," would 
 usually be expressed by res publica. Thus, Cicero says 
 (De Oratore, 3, 127) : quae de naturis rerum, quae de 
 hominum moribus, quae de rebus publicis dicerentur, 
 meaning by de rebus publicis about constitutions, the 
 Greek irepl TroXimwj/. And again in his De Re Publica, 
 (i, 44), hoc loquor de tribus his generibus rerum pub- 
 licarum ; i, 69, de tribus optimis rerum publicarum 
 modis. But the same idea may be expressed differently : 
 for instance, by forma, or conformatio ret publicae. 1 
 
 1 Cicero, R. P. i, 42 (of absolute monarchy), regnum (vo- 
 carnus),eius rei publicae statitm : 44, de tribus his generibus rerum
 
 6 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 
 
 These expressions, and sometimes forma civitatis, or genus 
 civitatis, or discriptio civitatis, are sometimes used, if 
 attention is to be drawn to the outline or aspect of a 
 constitution. If, however, the idea emphasized is that 
 of a stable or settled condition of political arrangement 
 (as when in English, the phrase " an unconstitutional 
 act " is used of an act which disturbs the fundamental 
 conditions of civil life), then status or status civitatis, or 
 status ret publicae may be used. 
 
 If, again, by " constitution " be meant constitutional 
 government as opposed to despotism, the idea may be ex- 
 pressed by res publica ; Cicero, DeRe Publica, 3, 43, ubi 
 tyrannus est, ibi non vitiosam, ut heri dicebam, sed ut nunc 
 ratio cogit, dicendum est plane nullam esse rein publicam. 
 The words constituere and constitutio are used by Cicero 
 of the act or the method of framing or organizing a con- 
 stitution, but constitutio is not a constitution in the con- 
 crete sense. Thus, in the De Re Publica, i, 3, we find 
 bene constitute civitati, very much in the sense of " a well- 
 
 publicamm. . . . suum statum tenentibus : 53, earn formam ret 
 publicae : 69, hoc iuncta moderateq^^e permixta conformatione rei 
 publicae: 2, 43, regale genus civitatis : In Verr., 2, I, 18, 
 hunc statum rei publicae, quo mine utenmr. Livy, 3, 15, ^formaque 
 eadem civitatis esset quae, etc. : 3, 17, 3, haec vobis forma sanae 
 civitatis videturl 45 , 1 6, 2, res . . . . in alium statum ex regno 
 formandas.
 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. ^ 
 
 organized society ;" and again (i, 69), placet esse quiddam 
 in re publica praestans et regale, esse aliud audoritati 
 prindpum impartitum ac tributum, esse quasdam res 
 servatas iudicio voluntatique multitudinis. Haec constitute 
 primum habet aequabilitatem magnam, etc. Not " this con- 
 stitution," but " this method of arrangement." Again 
 (i, 41), omnis civitas, quae est constitutio populi ; " every 
 body of citizens (in their orders), and by this body 
 of citizens I mean the organization of the community : " 
 i, 70, nullam omnium rerum publicarum aut constitutione 
 aut discriptione aut disciplina conferendam esse cum ea, 
 quam patres nostri. . . . reliquerunt ; "in organization, or 
 arrangement, or tradition": 2, 37, illud Catonis. . . . 
 nee temporis unius nee hominis esse constitutionem ret 
 publicae " the framing of our constitution was not the 
 work of a single age or a single man." 
 
 Latin has its definite modes of expression for the 
 different forms of government known to antiquity. A 
 despotism is to Cicero singulare imperium, singulorum 
 dominates, or regnum. Or, again, a monarchical state 
 may be called regale genus civitatis. The members of an 
 oligarchy or aristocracy are delecti principes, optimates, 
 optimi, or principes alone. A democracy is civitas popu- 
 laris, or popularis res publica : of a mixed constitution 
 Cicero speaks as id quod erit aequatum et temperatum ex
 
 8 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 
 
 tribus optimis rerum publicarum modis ; or, iuncta mo- 
 derateque permixta conformatio rei publicae. (De Re 
 Publica, i, 42, 69.) 
 
 The general idea of society may, as we have seen 
 above, be expressed in Latin by clvitas, if by society be 
 meant the body of citizens. Thus, such a phrase as 
 " the moral tone of society has improved," might be ex- 
 pressed in Latin by mores cimtatis in melius mutati sunt. 
 "A state of society " might well be rendered by mores, 
 hi mores, his moribus; the present state of society, in or 
 considering the present state of society. If society means 
 "the age," or "the spirit of the age," a good Latin 
 equivalent (though I do not know that the usage is older 
 than the Augustan age), is saeculum : thus Propertius 
 says, turpius et saecli vivere luxuria : Seneca {De Con- 
 stantia Sapientis, 2, 3), saeculo ad summam perducto 
 sollertiam : Tacitus (Germania, 19), nee corrumpere et 
 corrumpt saeculum vocatur, "mutual corruption is not 
 excused on the plea of its being the fashion of the 
 time." 
 
 Sodetas can hardly be used as an equivalent for 
 " society." The word means a partnership or alliance, 
 and is always used strictly in this sense in good Latin ; 
 so that it stands rather for a definition or description of 
 society, than for society itself. For instance, Cicero
 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 9 
 
 (De Re Publica, i, 42), says, illud vinculum, quod 
 primum homines inter se rei publicae societate devinxit : "in 
 the partnership or association of political life :" ib. i, 49, 
 cum lex sit civilis societatis vinculum. . . . quo iure 
 societas civium teneri potest ? &tc. Not quite "civil society," 
 but "the association of fellow-citizens." So ut societas 
 hominum coniunctioque servettir ; ius humanae societatis: 
 hominum inter homines societas : ad societatem communi- 
 tatemque generis humani. (De Officiis, i, 17, 19, 22 ; 
 De Finibus, 4, 4.) 
 
 The most general word for law, in most of the usages 
 of that expression, is ius, the original meaning of which 
 is probably a bond or tie. Thus, iura consuetiidinis, 
 amicitiae, consanguinitatis, are the bonds of acquaintance, 
 friendship, kindred. In the sense of binding authority, 
 ins may mean law ; that is, a body of law, as, for instance, 
 in the phrases ius civile, ius gentium, the law binding on 
 Roman citizens, the law observed all over the known 
 world. Or again, ius may stand for law in the sense of 
 authority or power, as when Horace says, ius imperium- 
 que Phrahates Caesaris accepit : quern penes arbitrium est 
 et ius et norma loquendi ; or Livy, Athamania omnis in 
 ius dicionemque Philippi concessit : in ius dicionemque 
 venerunt : sub ius iudidumque suum Mam coegit gentem 
 (3 6 , i4t 9; 4, 35. J 3; 4i, 22, 4).
 
 io POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 
 
 Lex is not, in its original sense, a law, but a formal 
 contract or agreement governing a transaction between 
 two or more persons. Thus, for instance, lex domus 
 aedificandae would be the contract or specification, ac- 
 cording to which a house is to be built : lex templi, the 
 formal provision affecting the use and purposes of a 
 consecrated locality. To take one instance out of a 
 thousand; larbas, in the fourth Aeneid (v. 213), com- 
 plains that he gave to Dido loci leges, or conditions on 
 which she might occupy the ground on which Carthage 
 was built. So again, in Horace (2 Epist, 2, 18), the 
 man who sells the slave, after telling the buyer of his 
 faults, says prudens emisti vitiorum, dicta tibi est lex: " you 
 bought the boy with a full knowledge of his faults you 
 heard the terms of the bargain." 
 
 Lex came to mean a law, because a law, according to 
 the Roman constitution, was originally an agreement 
 between the king (or consuls representing him) and the 
 populus. 
 
 What is the relation, then, between ius and lex ? lura 
 and leges are often spoken of together in good Latin, 
 much as we say " laws and ordinances." Thus Lucretius 
 says (5, 1147), sponte sua cecidit sub leges artaque iura. 
 But ius may be wider than lex, as right or power is wider 
 than any particular enactment based upon right or power.
 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. \\ 
 
 It may, again, be narrower than lex, as a particular sec- 
 tion or provision of a law is narrower than the whole law. 
 In this sense ins occurs always in the plural. Thus 
 Cicero (De Inventione, 2, 22) speaks of iura legitima, iura 
 consuetudinis, iura naturae. In another sense, as distinct 
 from leges, iura often means rules of law, as when a 
 learned lawyer is said clienti promere iura (Horace, 2 Epist. 
 i, 104), or condere iura (Gaius, Inst. i, i, 7). 1 In yet 
 another application iura are the rules according to which 
 the praetor in his edictum announced that he intended to 
 decide particular cases. The praetor is said iura de- 
 scribere, or to write down his iura for the benefit of intend- 
 ing litigants. Or, again, iura may mean the actual deci- 
 sions given by the praetor in particular cases, and the 
 praetor is said in this connection by Cicero and Livy 
 iura reddere. In this sense Vergil says of the husband- 
 man (Georgic 2, 501), nee ferrea iura, Insanumque forum 
 aut populi tabularia vidit " the shameless decisions of 
 the courts." 
 
 It appears, then, that ius is wider than lex, as the prin- 
 ciple of right which underlies all laws is wider than any 
 special law ; but iura are narrower than lex, as the single 
 provisions of a law, or rules of law, are narrower than the 
 
 1 The common use of iura in the sense of rights must, of course, 
 be separated from the usage under discussion.
 
 12 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 
 
 law which contains them, or the law which they are 
 intended to supplement or illustrate. 
 
 Unwritten usage or custom is mos, a word which ori- 
 ginally seems to have meant measure, and so, as applied 
 to action, a rule or pattern affecting and regulating it. 
 Mos may mean either a single usage, or a whole body of 
 usages. In the latter sense the phrase more institutoque 
 maiorum is common, and the poets Vergil and Lucretius 
 speak of mos sacrorum, or religious usage. So, too, Vergil 
 says of Rome (Aen. 6, 852) that it was her mission pacts 
 imponere morem, to impose upon the nations the usage or 
 custom of observing peace, to make the pax Romana the 
 law of the world. 
 
 If mos is a custom, mores are customs, and so some- 
 times training, discipline, as when Horace says (4 Od. 
 4, 35) Utcunque defecere mores Dedecorant bene nata 
 culpae. But far more frequently mores is applied to an 
 age or an individual, and means habits, and so character. 
 
 Duty, in the most general sense of the term, is officium. 
 Officium may mean a particular duty, or duty in general. 
 It is often joined nearly synonymously with munus, as 
 when Cicero (Pro Fonteio, 25) says, huic muneri 
 atque officio praeesse, or Horace (Ars Poetica, 305). 
 poetae Munus et officium, nil scribens ipse, docebo. But 
 the words are often used in distinct senses, and the
 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 13 
 
 distinction seems to be this : Munus, derived probably 
 from mu-, to defend, and connected with munis, service- 
 able or obliging, 1 and munire, to make strong, means a 
 service or duty to be performed by a person in some 
 particular capacity, while officium means duty in ge- 
 neral, in all relations of life. The two words may 
 be found in the same clause in two different senses, 
 as when Cicero says (De Senectute, 35), nullum 
 officii atit omnino vitae munus ; " no service demanded 
 either by one's duty or by any circumstances of life at 
 all;" or, again {In Pisonem, 23), toto munere con- 
 sulatus met omni officio tuendo : " by attending with all 
 duty," that is, with scrupulous conscientiousness, " to my 
 functions as consul." 
 
 Officium being a duty, an act of service or act of kind- 
 ness, kind office, in any relation of life, qfficiosus means 
 not officious, but obliging. The inner principle of duty, 
 conscience, if that word be used in the sense of the force 
 which restrains a person from wrong-doing, is religio. 
 Cicero, for instance, constantly uses such phrases as 
 religionem adhibere in aliqua re facienda, " to act con- 
 scientiously, to show a sense of right and wrong, to have 
 
 1 Immunis may mean disobliging, as it does in Plautus, Tri- 
 nummus I Amicum castigare ob meritam noxiam Immune est f acinus: 
 so Cicero (Laelius, 50), non est amicitia immunis neque superba.
 
 14 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 
 
 a conscience in a given proceeding." Or he will use 
 such expressions as fides ac religio, very much as we speak 
 of honour and conscience. So Caesar says (De Bello 
 Civili, i, 67), miles in discordia civili timori potius quam 
 religioni consulit : "thinks more of his fear than his 
 honour." Often, in such a context, religio or officium 
 might be used indifferently ; but officium would mean 
 duty, religio conscience. 
 
 But conscience may have another meaning, namely, 
 the knowledge of what one has done, as when we speak 
 of a good or a bad conscience ; and this is not religio, but 
 conscientia. This word properly means joint knowledge 
 (conscire) on the part of those concerned in it, of a pro- 
 ceeding in which two or more persons have taken part. 
 Then, by the familiar metaphor which enables us to 
 divide our own personality into two, a person is said to 
 have joint knowledge with himself of his own acts (sibi 
 conscire). Conscientia facti may thus mean, according to 
 the context, either one's joint knowledge of a deed done 
 by oneself and others, or merely the knowledge that 
 oneself has done it. The writers of the Ciceronian age 
 frequently express the idea of conscience in this sense by 
 animi or mentis conscientia. Thus Cicero says (Pro 
 Roscio A merino, 67), malae cogitationes conscientiae- 
 que animi, and Publilius Syrus, O taciturn tormentum
 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 15 
 
 animi conscientia. But not unfrequently, even in the 
 Ciceronian age, conscientia is used in this sense by itself; 
 sometimes, too, as with us, with an epithet. Cicero 
 (Ad Atticum, 13, 20) uses the expression, a recta 
 conscientia transversum unqnam non oportet discedere, 
 " one should not move a hair's breadth from the position 
 which enables one to maintain a good conscience ;" and 
 Sallust (Bellum lugurthinum, 62, 8), ex mala con- 
 scientia digna timere. In the good writers of the first 
 century A.D.. as in Quintilian and Tacitus, bona and 
 mala conscientia are quite common in the sense of a 
 good and bad conscience. 
 
 The English expression " character," if it mean the 
 type impressed upon a person by Nature herself, as dis- 
 tinguished from his nature with habits and customs 
 super-added, may be translated by natura, tndoles, or 
 sometimes ingenium. Cicero (Pro Archia, 15) says, 
 Ego multos homines excellent animo ac virtute ftdsse sine 
 doctrina, et naturae ipsius habitu prope divino per se ipsos 
 et moderatos et graves fuisse ; where naturae habitus is very 
 much what we mean by " cast of character." " Natural 
 disposition" might be represented in Latin by animus. 
 Meres, on the other hand, means character as formed 
 both by nature and habit. The idea of moral qualities 
 is often expressed in the older writers, and again in
 
 1 6 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 
 
 Sallust and Tacitus, by artes, often with the qualification 
 of bonae or malae. In Cicero and Caesar, however, attes 
 has usually the exclusive meaning of intellectual accom- 
 plishments. 
 
 Virtus and vttitim are, in philosophical or quasi- 
 philosophical language, equivalent to our words virtue 
 and vice. But in popular or non-philosophical parlance 
 virtus has rather the general notion of manhood, worth, 
 excellence. A good man, in the widest acceptation of 
 the term, is vir bonus, and goodness is bonitas. The chief 
 virtues recognized in Latin antiquity may briefly be 
 mentioned here. lustus and iustitia give exactly the 
 meaning of their derivatives, just and justice. Honour, 
 in the ordinary and general meaning of the word, is fides ; 
 truthfulness, veritas. Probus and probitas imply, strictly 
 speaking, the quality of soundness, and so vir probus, 
 from meaning a sound or thoroughly trustworthy man, 
 came to mean an upright, honourable man. Integer, 
 uncorrupt, expresses the same idea from another point of 
 view. Apertus and simplex would express the ideas of 
 candour and simplicity, whether in a person or in an 
 action. Sanctus is stainless in all relations of life, imper- 
 vious to any degrading influence whatever. Severus and 
 tristis may both be used in the sense of incorruptible or 
 strict ; thus they are often used in a good sense of per-
 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 17 
 
 sons acting in a judicial capacity. In this connection 
 severus means not severe, but upright, while tristis goes a 
 little beyond this, and implies the notion of austerity. A 
 conscientious man might be described as diligens (care- 
 ful) or religiosus (scrupulous), in accordance with the 
 sense of religio which has been discussed above. 
 
 Honestus is a word somewhat difficult to translate. It 
 is not honest, which is rather probus or bonus, but reput- 
 able, honourable, and implies that a man stands high 
 both in position and in character. It connotes, in short, 
 rather the distinction conferred on a man by high 
 character than the high character itself. No doubt, 
 connected etymologically with honor, and meaning 
 originally distinguished, it came to mean beautiful, as 
 when Vergil says (Georgic 4, 232), Taygete simul os 
 terris ostendit honestum. Thus, when applied to an act, 
 honestus is beautiful, and is used in a moral sense, 
 exactly in the same way as the Greek raXo?. Horace 
 says to Maecenas (Sat. i, 6, 63), placui tibi qui turpi 
 secernis honestum. Benignus is generous ; largus, liberal. 
 Sanctus and sanctitas are as often used of purity as of 
 stainless honour. Castus is chaste, while purus would 
 rather imply freedom from any moral stain for instance, 
 if so be, the stain of bloodguiltiness. For instance, the 
 elder Seneca (Controv., i, 9 ; p. 71, Bursian) says, neque 
 
 c
 
 1 8 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 
 
 meretrice castior neque homirida purior. Pudicus and 
 pudicitia imply personal chastity; pudens and pudor, 
 modesty, in its special sense. Modesty in its most 
 general sense is expressed by verecundus and verecundia. 
 
 The idea of self-control may be given in Latin by 
 modestia or temperantia, and their corresponding adjec- 
 tives. Courage is either virtus or fortitude, though the 
 latter word and its adjective, fortis, imply properly not 
 so much bravery as stoutness, strength to bear and 
 endure, and so general worth. This is clearly seen in 
 such colloquial expressions as wide mihi tarn fortem 
 tamquefiddem ? fortem crede bonumque (Horace, 2 Sat. 5, 
 102; i Epist. 9-13). 
 
 Practical wisdom or insight is prudentia ; while sapi-- 
 entia rather implies philosophy, or the kind of wisdom 
 which is based upon thought and high cultivation. In 
 this sense Laelius was called Sapiens by his friends. 
 
 Vitium, as was remarked above, is the philosophical 
 word for vice, but its meaning is properly a flaw or crack. 
 Thus a wall which has cracked is said vitium fecisse, and 
 Caesar (Bell. Civ. 3, 63) speaks of vitium munitionis, 
 meaning a weak place in the fortifications. So that, in 
 a moral sense, vitium, as generally used, implies rather 
 a weakness or defect of character than positive depravity. 
 The idea of the word is negative rather than positive.
 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 19 
 
 For fault, the most general term is culpa, which seems 
 originally to mean a reproach. A crime is scelus, crimen, 
 or flagitium, flagitium being the strongest word of the 
 three. Probrum implies a scandal, an outrageously inde- 
 cent or unbecoming act. 
 
 Many of the names of the vices are, as might be 
 expected, the mere negations of their opposite virtues. 
 Thus improbus is properly unsound, so untrustworthy, 
 unscrupulous; inhonestus is disreputable; impudent, 
 shameless; impudicus, unchaste; intemperans, without 
 self-control ; impunts, tainted. Probrosus, flagitiosus, sce- 
 leratus correspond to the substantives from which they 
 are derived. Malignus is niggardly, as benignus is gene- 
 rous. Malitia is general badness, as bonitas is general 
 goodness. Nequam and nequitia have the special sense of 
 dissolute living. 
 
 Superbus, when used in a bad ' sense, means not so 
 much proud as insolent, overbearing. 
 
 Libido is by no means confined to the specific idea of 
 wanton desire. It means uncontrolled or ill-regulated 
 
 1 The word has also a good sense, as applied to things, 
 meaning lofty, kingly, royal, as when Vergil says (Aen. 3, 2), ceci- 
 ditque superbnm Ilium. Sitperbia is usually employed in a bad 
 sense, for insolence, arrogance, and the like ; though Horace says 
 (3 Od. 30, 14), sume superbiam Quaesitam mentis, meaning "the 
 lofty place."
 
 20 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 
 
 feeling of any kind, from mere caprice or changeableness 
 of inclination (as when Horace says, cut si vitiosa libido 
 Feceret auspiciunt) to unbridled passion. Cicero constantly 
 uses it in the milder sense, in such phrases as libido iudici- 
 orum, the fickle caprice of the law-courts. And thus, in 
 suitable contexts, libido might be used in the general 
 sense of uncontrolled emotion, as opposed to ratio, or 
 reason. The notion of restless or ill-regulated desire 
 may also be expressed by cupiditas, properly the condi- 
 tion of the cupidus, or man who is habitually in a state of 
 undue longing or wishing for something. Thus Cicero 
 says of Verres (In Verrem, 2, 2, 184), quant niultas 
 cupiditates, quam varias, quam infinitas habuerit, and 
 (De Oratore, i, 194), domitas habere libtdines, coer- 
 cere omnes cupiditates. But for the emotions or feel- 
 ings in general there seems to be no one word in use 
 earlier than the Augustan age, when adfectus began to be 
 employed in that sense. The difficulty which even Cicero 
 felt in hitting upon such a term may be seen from the 
 beginning of the third book of the Tusculan Disputa- 
 tions. Wishing to give an equivalent for the Greek word 
 Tradrj, he says ( 7), Num (cadere videntur in sapienteni) 
 rdiquae quoque perturbationes animi, formidines, libidines, 
 iracundiae ? haec enim fere sunt eius modi, quae Graeri 
 iradri appellant ; ego poteram morbos, et id verbunt esset e
 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 21 
 
 verbo, sed in consuetudinem nostram non caderet. Nam 
 misereri, invidere, gestire, laetari, haec omnia morbos Graeci 
 appellant, motus animi rationi non obtemperantes : nos 
 autem hos eosdem motus concitati animi recte, ut opinor, 
 perturbationes dixerimus, morbos autem non usitate. 
 Motus animi (as may be seen even from this passage) is 
 not a good Latin equivalent for feeling or emotion. 
 Like the Greek word KtVijtng, it would stand as a defini- 
 tion of emotion (one might say, for instance, omnes 
 cupiditates sunt motus animi}, or again as a metaphorical 
 description of it, as when Vergil says {Georgic 4, 86), 
 Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta Pul- 
 veris exigui iactu compressa qtiiesctint ; or Horace (Ars 
 Poetica, in) describes nature as uttering animi motus, 
 the stirrings of the soul. That this is so may, I 
 think, be conclusively shown by the following passages 
 from Cicero's De Officiis, in which the emotions of the 
 mind are spoken of as resembling the motions of the body 
 (i, 100) : maxima vis decori in hac inest parte de 
 qua disputamus ; neque enim solum corporis, qui ad natu- 
 ram apti sunt, sed multo etiam magis animi motus pro- 
 bandi, qui item ad naturam accommodati sunt ; ( 131), 
 multo etiam magis elaborandum est ne animi motus a 
 natura recedant ; quod adsequemur, si cavebimus ne in per- 
 turbationes atque exanimationes inridamus, etc. And again
 
 22 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 
 
 in the following section Cicero includes thoughts as well 
 as feelings in motus animi: motus autem animorum 
 duplices sunt ; alteri cogitationis, alteri appetitus. It is 
 clear that in all these passages motus animi means exactly 
 what it says, not emotion, but stirring or agitation of 
 the mind: just as Cicero uses the phrase agilitas animi 
 as a metaphor for what we should call sensibility or sen- 
 sitiveness. 
 
 Such a phrase as "a man of uncontrolled feelings," or 
 " passions," is hardly susceptible of literal translation into 
 classical Latin, though impotens would come near it. 
 The Romans would, perhaps, have expressed the idea by 
 specifying what feelings they were which the man could 
 not control ; whether, for instance, it was anger, avarice, 
 or superstition to which he was a victim. 
 
 Passion, as opposed to reason, may often be rendered 
 by animus, as when Horace says (Epistles, i, 2, 62), 
 animum rege, qui nisi paret Imperat ; or even by mens, 
 as when he says (i Od. 16, 22), Compesce menttm ; or 
 as when Vergil in the sixth Aeneid speaks of mala 
 mentis gaudia, the evil joys of passion. 1 The fact is 
 that both animus and metis have a very wide application, 
 sometimes standing for passion, sometimes for reason, 
 
 1 Pectus is sometimes used of intellect or good sense (as cor always 
 is), sometimes of feeling.
 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 23 
 
 sometimes for imagination, sometimes for what we call 
 the soul, as the seat of all these. 
 
 In the language of literary criticism adfectus is used 
 after the Augustan age in the general sense of feeling or 
 emotion. Quintilian constantly employs it in this sense, 
 making a distinction between leniores adfectus, the 
 gentler feelings, such as love and pity, and adfectus con- 
 citati, or the stronger passions, such as anger. This 
 is his language (Institutio Oratoria, 6, 2, 7, 8) : Velut 
 spiritus opens huius atque animus est in adfectibus. Horum 
 autem, sicut antiquitus aaepimus, duae sunt species : alterant 
 Graeci Trddog vacant, quod nos vertentes recte ac proprie 
 adfectum dicimus, alterant $605, cuius nomine, ut ego quidem 
 sentio, caret sermo Romanus. . . . Adfectus igitur concitatos 
 Kudos, mites atque composites 7)6oc esse dixerunt : in altero 
 vehementes motus, in altero lenes : denique hos imperare, 
 illos persuadere, hos ad perturbationem, illos ad benivolen- 
 tiam praevalere. And in his tenth book (i, 48) he 
 says of Homer, adfectus quidem vel illos mites vel hos 
 concitatos nemo erit tarn indoctus qui non in sua potes- 
 tate hunc auctorem habuisse fateatur. " No critic will 
 be found so incompetent as to deny that Homer is 
 master of the whole field of emotion, whether gentle or 
 violent." 
 
 Turning for a moment to the individual feelings, we
 
 24 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 
 
 should observe that the most general expression for 
 pleasure is voluptas. Laetus and laetitia, metaphors from 
 the growth of plants, and properly implying healthy 
 growth and fertility, express delight, gladness, exultation, 
 rejoicing. The same idea may be given by gaudium, 
 though gaudium is also susceptible of a bad meaning, which 
 I do not think ever attaches to laetitia. With regard to 
 the opposite emotions, a distinction must be drawn 
 between dolor, luctus, and maestitia, with their respective 
 verbs, dolere, lugere, and maerere. Dolor and dolere express 
 the idea of pain, physical or mental, and mental pain 
 of all kinds, whether strong annoyance, indignation, or 
 sorrow. It is not unusual, for instance, to find in Cicero 
 and Caesar such expressions as dolor repulsae, annoyance 
 at a political defeat. So that "grief" is, generally speak- 
 ing, a bad translation of dolor, though the context 
 may, of course, give it that meaning. Again, dolor 
 is pain as felt, not as expressed, while luctus is sor- 
 row, both as felt and as expressed. Luctus, again, is 
 particularly applied to distress or sorrow felt and ex- 
 pressed by large numbers of persons, as to the agony 
 of a captured city: Sallust (Bellum Catilinae, 51, 9), 
 caedem, incendia, fieri, postremo armis, cadaveribus, cru- 
 ore atque luctu omnia complen ; (Bellum Jugurthinum, 
 92, 3), luctu atque caede omnia complentur ; and so
 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 25 
 
 Vergil in his second Aeneid, Diverso interea com- 
 plentur moenia luctu : Crudelis ubique Lucius, ubique 
 paver, et plurima mortis imago (vv. 298, 368). Maerere, 
 maestus, maestitia express the signs of mourning rather 
 than the sorrow itself tears, black raiment, and all 
 " trappings and suits of woe." Thus Cicero says, after 
 the death of his daughter Tullia, in an often quoted 
 sentence, maerorem minui, dolorem non possum, nee si 
 possim velim. 
 
 Tristis is not so much sad as depressed, gloomy, moody, 
 or even sulky ; in more serious applications grim or grisly, 
 as when Vergil speaks of tristis Erinys, tristia bella. 
 Tristis poena is an almost technical expression for a 
 severe punishment. 
 
 The motive of an action may be expressed in Latin, 
 according to the meaning of the word motive, either by 
 ratio or by animus. Ratio, which means properly count- 
 ing or reckoning up, stands constantly in good writers for 
 motive in the sense of consideration of consequences, 
 calculation of advantage to follow from an act. Quae 
 ratio tibi fuit Ha agendi would mean, "What motive 
 could you have had in acting thus ? " i.e., " What were 
 you counting on or thinking about in acting thus ? " But 
 if by motive be meant the intention or spirit of an act, 
 animus should be used, as in such a phrase as videndum
 
 26 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS. 
 
 est quo animo id fecerit, " we must consider what was the 
 motive (/.<?., the spirit) of the act." 
 
 Religion, in the most general sense of the word, may 
 be expressed by religio, and superstition by superstitio. So 
 religiostis and superstitiosus are roughly opposed, exactly 
 as are their English derivatives, religious and supersti- 
 tious. But it is important to define the meaning of 
 religio a little more precisely. It seems to mean origi- 
 nally something which restrains or holds back (re and 
 leg-, to bind) ; and thus, objectively, a prohibition on the 
 part of a recognized authority ; subjectively, a scruple 
 felt in the mind of an individual. A common colloquial 
 expression, to be found in the comedians, was re- 
 ligio est, "I cannot do it" properly, "There is a 
 scruple in my mind which prevents it." This is the 
 subjective sense of the word, which developed, as we 
 saw above, into the meaning of conscience. When, 
 on the other hand, Vergil says (Georgic i, 270), rivos 
 deducere nulla Religio vetuit, he seems to me to be 
 using the word in the objective sense, " no religious pro- 
 hibition has ever said," &c. Exactly in the same way 
 Lucretius says, religionibus atque minis obsistere vatum, 
 " the prohibitions and the menaces of prophets." So it 
 came about that religiones is often used in the sense of a 
 body of religious laws a religious system. The singular,
 
 RANGE OF METAPHORICAL EXPRESSION. 27 
 
 religio, may also be used in the same sense, as when 
 Cicero says (Pro Flacco, 69), sua cuique civitati religio, 
 nostra nobis. 
 
 Whether, then, by religion be meant a system of reli- 
 gious belief and ceremonial, or the scrupulous feeling of 
 awe and reverence with which an individual regards a 
 supernatural power, religio may be used to express it. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE RANGE OF METAPHORICAL 
 EXPRESSION. 
 
 IN the following pages I have collected a few instances 
 of metaphorical expression actually employed by good 
 Latin writers. I have not, on the one hand, thought it 
 worth while, for present purposes, to include such ex- 
 pressions as attendere animo, advcrtere animum, prae- 
 bere aures, and the like, which, though undoubtedly meta- 
 phors, are too common in all prose, to require special 
 notice, and too numerous to be written down here. Nor, 
 on the other hand, have I made any attempt to be ex- 
 haustive. I have confined myself to noting instances of 
 the more striking images used by the writers whose 
 prose is tinged with poetry, such as Cicero and Livy,
 
 28 RANGE OF METAPHORICAL EXPRESSION. 
 
 who, it may be remarked by the way, differ widely in this 
 respect from Varro and Caesar. 
 
 One of the commonest, and, at the same time, most 
 beautiful metaphors, is taken from light and darkness. 
 Read, for example, the following instances : Cicero, 
 In Verrem, 2, 3, 177, ilia omnis pecunia latuit in 
 ilia caligine ac tenebris, quae totam rem publicam turn 
 occuparant. De Lege Agraria, 2, 69, habet socerum, 
 qui tantum agri in illis ret publicae tenebris occupavit, 
 quantum concupivit. De Provinciis Consularibus , 43. 
 Ecce ilia tempestas, caligo bonorum et sttbita atque improvisa 
 formido, tenebrae rei publicae, ruina atque incendium civi- 
 tatis, terror iniectus Caesari de eiiis actis, etc. Post 
 Reditum in Senatu, 5, ex stiperioris anni caligine ac 
 tenebris lucem in re publica Kalendis lanuariis dispicere 
 coepistis. Pro Sulla, 40, vos denique in tantis tenebris 
 erroris et inscientiae clarissimum lumen menti meae prae- 
 tulistis. Philippicae, 12, 3, quod videbam equidem, 
 sed quasi per caliginem : praestrinxerat aciem animi D. 
 Bruti salus. Ib. 5, discussa est ilia caligo quam paulo 
 ante dixi: diluxit, patet, tidemus omnia. 
 
 Of persons : Pro Sulla, 5, in quibus subselliis hacc 
 ornamenta ac lumina rei publicae viderem, in his me 
 apparere nollem ? Philippicae, 2, 54, Cn. Pompeium, 
 quod imperii populi Romani decus ac lumen fuit. Ib. n,
 
 RANGE OF METAPHORICAL EXPRESSION. 29 
 
 14, lumen et decus illius exercitus paene praeterii, T. 
 Annium Cimbrum. So, elsewhere, Cicero calls Rome 
 the lux orbis terrarum ; and, indeed, the image is a 
 favourite one with him in many applications. 
 
 In literary criticism lumen and lux are often used, 
 sometimes for clearness, sometimes for brightness or 
 brilliancy of style : thus Cicero (De Oratore, 2, 119), 
 art em quidem et praecepta dumtaxat hactenus requirunt, ut 
 certis dicendi luminibus omentur. Quintilian, 8, 2, 
 23, in consilio est habendum non semper tarn esse acrem 
 iudicis intentionem, ut obscuritatem apud se ipse discutiat 
 et tenebris orationis inferat quoddam intelhgentiae suae 
 lumen, sed multis eum frequenter cogitationibus avocari, nisi 
 tarn clara fuerint quae dicemus, ut in animum eius oratio, 
 ut sol in oculos, etiamsi in earn non intendatur, occurrat. 
 Ib. 8, 5, 28, 29 (Quintilian is speaking of the fre- 
 quency of sententiae, or pithy and pointed sayings, and 
 its effect upon style), praeter Jioc etiam color ipse dicendi 
 quamlibet claris, multis tamen ac variis velut maculis 
 conspergitur. Porro, ut adferunt lumen clavus et purpurae 
 in loco insertae, ita certe neminem deceat intertexta pluribus 
 notis vestis. Quare licet haec et nitere et aliquatenus extare 
 videantur, tamen et lumina ilia non flammae, sed scintillis 
 inter fumum emicantibus similia dixeris (quae ne apparent 
 quidam, ubi tota lucet oratio, ut in sole sidera ipsa desinunt
 
 30 RANGE OF METAPHORICAL EXPRESSION. 
 
 cernt), et quae crebris parvisque conatibus se attollunt, in- 
 aequalia tantum et velut confragosa, nee admirationem 
 consequuntur eminentium et planonim gratiam perdunt. 
 Matthew Arnold's "sweetness and light" may almost 
 be paralleled from Aulus Gellius {Nodes Atticae, 10, 3, 
 15), si quis est tarn agresti aure ac tarn hispida, quern 
 lux ista et amoenitas orationis verborumque modificatio 
 parum delectat, amat autem priora idcirco quod incompta 
 ac brevia et non operosa, sed nativa quadam suavitate sunt, 
 quodqite in Us umbra et color quasi opacae vetustatis est, etc. 
 The operations of the elements are also a common 
 source of metaphor in poetical Latin prose. The words 
 conflare, inflammare, incendere, ardere are, for instance, 
 very frequent in Cicero, who is fond of such expressions 
 as conflare invidiam, inflammari, ardere, cupiditate, in- 
 cendere iram. Some of the more striking instances of 
 this metaphor which I have observed, are the following : 
 Cicero, De Re Publica, i, i, nee duo Scipiones oriens 
 incendium belli Punici secundi sanguine suo extinxissent. 
 Ib. 2, 37, non latuit scintilla ingenii quae turn elucebat 
 in puero. In Verrem, 2, 5, 8, cum bello sociorum 
 tota Italia arderet. Pro Rabirio Postumo, 13, 
 quamquam turn propter multorum delicta etiam ad inno- 
 centium pericula tempus illud exarserat, tamen, cum odium 
 nostrum restingueretis, huic ordini ignem novum subici non
 
 RANGE OF METAPHORICAL EXPRESSION. 31 
 
 sivistis. Livy, 3, 35, 2, tanta exarsit ambitio ut primores 
 quoque civitatis. . . . prensarent homines. Tacitus, Dia- 
 logus de Oratoribus, 36, magna eloquentia, sicut flamma, 
 materia alitur et motibus excitatur et urendo clarescit. 
 
 So from the winds, Cicero, In Verrem, 2, i, 35, 
 auram posse aliquant adflari in hoc crimine voluntatis de- 
 fensionisque eorum. The metaphor popularis aura, aura 
 favoris, is too common to need illustration. 
 
 A great deal of imagery is drawn from the perils of 
 the sea and of storms, far more formidable to the ancients 
 than to us. Cicero, R. P., i, i, in his undis ac 
 tempestatibus maluit iactari, quam in ilia tranquillitate 
 atque otio iucundissime vivere. Ib. 7, non dubitaverim 
 me gravissimis tempestatibus ac paene fulminibus ipsis 
 obvium ferre conservandorum civium causa. Pro Rabirio 
 Perduellionis Reo, 25, nee tuas umquam rates ad eos 
 scopulos appulisseS) ad quos Sexti Titii adflictam navem, et 
 in quibus C. Deciani naiifragium fortunarum videres. In 
 Catilinam, i, 22, quanta tempestas invidiae nobis, si 
 minus in praesens tempiis, . ... at in posteritatem im- 
 pendeat : so exactly, ib. 2, 15, huius invidiae falsae 
 atque iniquae tempestatem subire. In Verrem, 3, 
 23, Apronius. . . . immensa aliqua vorago est aut 
 gurges vitiorum turpitudinumque omnium : so, Pro 
 iO) in, gurges ac vorago patrimonii. In.
 
 32 RANGE OF METAPHORICAL EXPRESSION. 
 
 Pisonem, 20, ut qui in maximis turbinibus ac 
 fluctibus rei publicae navem gubernassem sahamque in 
 portu conlocassem, frontis tuae nubeculam .... perti- 
 mescerem. Pro Milone, 5, equidem ceteras tempestates 
 el procellas in illis dumtaxat fluctibus contionum semper 
 putavi Miloni esse subeundas. Livy, 42, 62, 4, modum 
 imponere secundis rebus, nee nimis credere serenitati prae- 
 sentis fortunae (the fair weather). 45, 41, i, qttae duo 
 fulmina domum meam per has dies perculerint, non igno- 
 rare vos, Quirites arbitror. 
 
 Metaphors taken from navigation are quite as common : 
 for instance, Cicero, Pro Sestio, 20, quis enim clavum 
 tanti impeni tenere et gubernacula rei publicae. . . . 
 maxima cursu et fluctibus posse arbitraretur hominem, 
 etc. In Catilinam, i, 12, exhaurietur ex urbe tur- 
 rum comitum magna ac perniciosa sentina rei publicae. 
 Livy, 44, 22, 13, qui in eodem velut navigio participes 
 sunt periculi. 
 
 Many are taken from the analogy of the human 
 frame : thus, Cicero, R. P., 2, 3, nascentem et crescentem 
 et adultam et tarn firmam rem publicam. In Catilinam^ 
 3, 26, memoria vestra nostrae res alentur, litterarum 
 monumentis inveterascent et corroborabuntur. 
 
 In Catilinam, 3, i, ex faucibus fati ereptam rem 
 publicam. Pro Archia, 21, urbem .... ex totius
 
 RANGE OF METAPHORICAL EXPRESSION. 33 
 
 belli ore ac faudbus ereptam. Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, 
 5 2 > 35> Catilina cum exerritu faucibus urguet, alii intra 
 moenia atque in sinu urbis sunt hostes. 
 
 Os is often used in the sense of impudence : e.g. In 
 Verrem, 2, 2, 48, nostis os hominis : Pro Rabirio 
 Postumo, 34, quod habeat os, quam audaciam. 
 
 Sinus, gremium, medulla, for "the embrace," "the lap," 
 "the heart." Cicero, In Catilinam, 2, 22, de complexu 
 eius et sinu. Pro Caelio, 59, cum Metellus abstraheretur 
 e sinu gremioque patriae. Philippicae, i, 36, in medullis 
 populi Romani et visceribus haerebant. 
 
 Sanguis (for life, life-blood), Cicero,-/?. P., 2, 2, cum rem 
 publicam exsanguem et iacentem sustentasset Demetrius. De 
 Lege Agraria, 2, 1 6, sanguine maiorum vestrorum partam 
 vobisque traditam libertatem. 
 
 Vena ingenii, Quintilian, 6, 2, 3 : compare Horace, Ars 
 Poetica, 410, ego nee studium sine divite vena, quidfacerepossit, 
 video: Juvenal, 7, 53, vatemegregium,cuinon sit publica vena. 
 
 In literary criticism sanguis stands for fulness of life 
 and vigour. Cicero, Brutus, 283 (of Calvus), nimium 
 tamen inquirens in se atque ipse sese observans metuensque 
 ne vitiosum colligeret, etiam verum sanguinem deperdebat. 
 Quintilian, 8, 3, 6, hie ornatus virilis et fortis et 
 sanctus sanguine et viribus niteat : 10, i, 60 (of Archi- 
 sanguinis atque nervorum. 
 
 D
 
 34 RANGE OF METAPHORICAL EXPRESSION. 
 
 Corpus 1 and caro are also used metaphorically in 
 literary criticism. Thus Quintilian, 5, 8, 2, nervis illis 
 quibus causa continetur adiciunt inducti super carports 
 specietn. Tacitus, Dialogus de Oratoribus, 26, plus carnis 
 habet quam sanguinis. 
 
 Nervi (muscles) is very frequent in the sense of vigour, 
 whether in life or in literary style. Cicero, R. P., i, i, 
 neque id (bellum), excitatum maioribus copiis Q. Maximus 
 enervavisset, etc. Philippicae, 5, 32, experietur con- 
 sentientis senatus nervos atque vires: In Verrem, i, 
 35> * n Q uo omnes nervos aetatis industriaeque meae con- 
 tenderem : Pro Caelio, 80, omnium huius nervorum 
 ac laborum vos .... fructus uberes capietis : Tacitus, 
 Dialogus de Oratoribus, 18, Calvum Ciceroni visum 
 exsanguem et aridum, Ciceronem a Calvo male audisse 
 tamquam solutum et enervem : Quintilian, 5, 12, 17, 
 declamationes nervis carent. 
 
 Metaphors from warfare are pretty frequent. The 
 commonest of these is, perhaps, that of wounding : e.g., 
 Cicero, Ad Fam., 4, 6, 2, nunc autem hoc tarn gravi 
 vulnere ilia quae consanuisse videbantur recrudescunt : 
 Ad Atticum, 12, 18, i, quae res sit forsitan refrica- 
 
 1 It should be remembered that the proper meaning of corpus is 
 flesh. Thus Lucretius and others use the phrase amittere corpus, 
 exactly as we say, "to lose flesh."
 
 RANGE OF METAPHORICAL EXPRESSION. 35 
 
 tura vulnus meum. As instances of other applications 
 of metaphors from war, may be quoted Cicero, De 
 R. P., i, 3, teneamus eum cursum qui semper fuit 
 optimi cuiusque, neque ea signa audiamus quae receptui 
 canunt : In Pisonem, 9, lex Aelia et Fufia, pro- 
 pugnacula murique tranquillitatis atque otii : Seneca, De 
 Providentia, 4, i, calamitates terroresque mortalium sub 
 iugum mittere. 
 
 Quintilian, 8, 3, 2, speaking of style in oratory, 
 says : cultu vero et ornatu se quoque commendat ipse qui 
 dicit . . . nee fortibus modo sed etiam fulgentibus armis 
 proeliatur: and again, of sayings, as if they were arrows 
 (10, i, 60), breves vibrantesque sententiae. 
 
 The various arts of peace are a fertile source of ima- 
 gery : for instance, agriculture, as in the following 
 passages : Cicero, Pro Gaelic, 42 (of the narrow path 
 of virtue), haec deserta via et inculta atque interclusa 
 tarn frondibus et virgultis deseratur : Pro Ligario, 32, 
 Sabinos . . . totumque agrum Sabinum, florem Italiae ac 
 robur rei publicae: Pro Milone, 35, Clodium, segetem 
 ac materiam suae gloriae: In Verrem, 2, 3, 160, fac 
 fuisse in eo C. Laeli ant M. Catonis materiam atque in- 
 dolent: Pro Archia, 30, ego vero omm'a, quae gere- 
 bam, iam turn in gerendo spargere me ac disseminare arbi- 
 trabar in orbis terrae memoriam sempiternam.
 
 36 RANGE OF METAPHORICAL EXPRESSION. 
 
 Aucupium, aucupari (bird-catching) are often used in 
 the general sense of looking out for a thing, catching at 
 it ; thus Cicero would say aucupari verba, laudem and 
 the like. 
 
 Building: Cicero, De Lege Agraria, i, n, architecti 
 huius legis : Pro Roscio Amerino, 132, omnium archi- 
 tectum ac machinatorem : Pro Cluentio, 60, principem 
 atque architectum sceleris : Livy, 6, 18, 14, solo aequan- 
 dae sunt didaturae et consulates, ut caput attollere Romana 
 plebes possit. 
 
 The theatre : Cicero, In Verrem, 2, 5, 35, ut me 
 et quaesturam meam quasi in aliquo orbis terrarum theatro 
 versari existimarem. Brutus, 6, forum populi JRomani, 
 quodfuisset quasi theatrum illius ingenii: De Lege Agraria, 
 2, 49, vos mihi praetori . . . personam hanc imposuistis, 
 ut, etc. 
 
 Painting : Cicero, De Re Publica, 5, 2, cum 
 rem publicam sicut picturam accepisset egregiam, sed iam 
 evanescentem vetustate, non modo earn coloribus iisdem 
 quibus fuerat renovare neglexit, sed ne id quidem curavit, 
 ut formam saltern eius et extrema tamquam lineamenta 
 servaret. De Lege Agraria, 2, 31, tilts ad speciem 
 atque ad usurpationem vetustatis per triginta lictores au- 
 spiciorum causa adumbratis (decem viris). Pro Rabirio 
 Postumo, 41, umbram equitis Romani et imaginem videtis.
 
 RANGE OF METAPHORICAL EXPRESSION. 37 
 
 The following instances of metaphorical usages, taken 
 from the common surroundings of life, hardly admit of 
 definite classification. 
 
 Vinculum is very common in the sense of a tie, a bond : 
 e.g., Cicero, De Offices, 3, in, nullum vinculum 
 ad astringendam fidem iure iurando maiores artius esse 
 voluerunt. 
 
 So Cicero (In Verrem, 5, 39), says ut earum 
 rerum vi et auctoritate omnia repagula pudoris officiique 
 perfringeres (break through all the barriers of shame) ; 
 and again, he uses cancelli several times for limits, 
 bounds : Pro Quinctio, 36, si extra hos cancellos 
 egrediar, quos mihi ipse circumdedi : In Verrem, 2, 3, 
 I 3S> satisne vobis praetori improbo circumdati cancelli 
 videntur in sua provinria, immo vero in sella ac tribunalil 
 De Oratore, i, 52, quasi certarum rerum forensibus 
 cancellis circumscripta scientia. 
 
 A statesman is spoken of as a steward by Cicero, De 
 Re Publica, 5, 5, sic nosier hie rector studuerit sane 
 iuri et legibus cognoscendis, . . . sed se . . . ne impediat, 
 ut quasi dispensare rem publicam et in ea quodam modo 
 vilicare possit. 
 
 Supellex is used by good authors in the same 
 metaphorical sense as our word furniture ; Cicero, De 
 Oratore, i, 165, hanc ego omnem scientiam et copiam
 
 38 RANGE OF METAPHORICAL EXPRESSION. 
 
 rerum in tua prudentia sciebam esse ; in oratoris vero 
 instrumento tantam supellectilem numquam videram. 
 Orator, 79, verecundus erit usus oratoriae quasi 
 supellectilis. Supellex est enim quodam modo nostra, quae 
 est in ornamentis, alia rerum, alia verborum. Seneca 
 Controversiae, i, pr. 23 (p. 55 Bursiari), hoc (Porcius 
 Latro) sententiarum supellectilem vocabat. Quintilian, 
 8 praef. 28, lectione multa et idonea copiosam sibi 
 verborum supellectilem comparabat. 
 
 Fucus and fucosus are often used as we use varnished, 
 veneered, tricked out, to imply a fine appearance hiding 
 the reality: thus Cicero says in the Pro Plancio, 
 22, vicinitas . . . non infuscata malevolentia, .... 
 non fucosa, non fallax. Elsewhere he uses such phrases 
 as fucosa amicitia, a hollow friendship. 
 
 Macula and labes may imply either a moral stain, or a 
 disgrace : Cicero, Pro Lege Manilla, 7, delenda est 
 ilia macula bello Mithridatico priore suscepta : Pro 
 Balbo, 15, huius saeculi macula atque labes, iiirtuti 
 invidere. 
 
 Contagion and poison in a metaphorical sense may be 
 rendered by their equivalents in Latin: Cicero, In 
 Verrem, 2, 5, 7, contagio ista servilis belli: Livy, 
 3, 67, 6, discordia ordinum, et venenum urbis huius 
 patrum ac plebis certamina, sustulere illis animos.
 
 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LA7 IN PROSE. 39 
 
 III. 
 
 A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE DEVELOPMENT 
 OF CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 
 
 IT was the tradition of Roman literary criticism that 
 Latin prose was first artistically written by the great 
 statesman Appius Claudius Caecus (censor B.C. 314). 
 Of his style, Cicero, in whose time some of the speeches 
 of Appius were extant, says that he thought it obsolete, 
 and ruder even than that of Cato. This indeed it must 
 have been, coming as it did a full century earlier. 
 Beyond this we have no means of forming a judgment 
 upon it, for not a sentence of Appius's speeches has been 
 preserved. We are obliged to begin our study of Latin 
 prose with the orations of Marcus Porcius Cato the 
 censor (B.C. 234-149). 
 
 The history of Latin prose previous to the Ciceronian 
 age may be divided into three periods : (i) the age 
 of Cato himself, (2) the generation of Laelius and the 
 Gracchi, (3) the generation of Crassus and Antonius, 
 from which we pass, by an almost imperceptible tran- 
 sition, into that of Cicero and Caesar. 
 
 (i) Cato's life began at the very time when the 
 study of Greek was becoming a passion with the Romans
 
 40 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 
 
 of superior taste and intellect. Though he was himself 
 a staunch opponent of Greek influence, it is impossible 
 to suppose that he altogether escaped it. It did not, 
 however, make itself felt at this time in such a way as 
 seriously to modify the roughness of the early Latin 
 composition. This will be easily seen if we examine 
 the following passage from Cato's oration Pro Rho- 
 diensibus : 
 
 Sdo solere plerisque hominibus rebus secundis atque 
 prolixis atque prosperis animum excellere, superbiam atque 
 feroaam augescere atque crescere. Quod mihi nunc magnae 
 curae est, quod haec res tarn secunde processit, ne quid 
 adversi eveniat, quod nostras secundas res confute t, neve 
 haec laetitia nimis luxuriosa eveniat. Adversae res domant, 
 et decent quid opus sit facto. Secundae res transversum 
 trudere sclent a recte consulendo atque intellegendo. Quo 
 maiore opere dico suadeoque, uti haec res aliquot dies 
 proferatur, dum ex tanto gaudio in potestatem nostram 
 redeamus. 
 
 Atque ego quidem arbitror, Rhodienses noluisse nos ita 
 depugnare, uti depugnatum est, neque regent Persen virisse. 
 Non Rhodienses modo id nohtere, sed multos populos atque 
 multas nationes idem noluisse arbitror. Atque haud sew 
 an partim eorum fuerint, qui non nostrae contumeliae 
 causa id noluerint evenire ; sed enim id metuere, si nemo
 
 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 41 
 
 esset homo quern vereremur, quodque luberet faceremus, ne 
 sub solo imperio nostro in servitute nostra essent. Libertatis 
 suae causa in ea sententia fuisse arbitror. Atque Rhodienses 
 tamen Persen publice numquam adiuvere. Cogitate, quanta 
 nos inter nos privatim cautius facimus. Nam unusquisque 
 nostrum, si quid advorsus rem suam quid fieri arbitratur, 
 summa vi contra nititur ne advorsus earn fiat : quod illi 
 tamen perpessi. 
 
 Ea nunc derepente tanta nos beneficia ultro citroque 
 tantamque amicitiam relinquemus ? Quod illos dicimus 
 voluisse facere, id nos priores facere occupabimus ? 
 
 Qui acerrime advorsus eos dicit, ita dicit, Jwstes voluisse 
 fieri. Ecquis est tandem vostrum qui, quod ad sese attineat, 
 aequom censeat poenas dare ob earn rem quod arguafur 
 male facere voluisse ? Nemo, opinor; nam ego, quod ad 
 me attinet, nollem. 
 
 I may perhaps be allowed, in speaking of the style of 
 this passage, to quote what I have said in a recent 
 number of the "Journal of Philology." "The style is 
 clear and forcible, it is therefore luminous; but harmony, 
 and therefore beauty, it has none. The sentences follow 
 the thoughts, without any idea of rhythm to modify 
 them. There are but few connecting particles, those 
 employed being of the simplest kind, such as relatives, 
 conditionals, or adversatives. Three consecutive sentences
 
 42 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 
 
 begin with atque. Verbs are often placed in the same 
 position at the end of the sentence, without any attempt 
 to vary the sound ; excellere, augescere, crescere : processerit, 
 eveniat, confutet, eveniat : proferatui, redeamus. The 
 order of the words is sometimes entirely without art; 
 secundae res trudere solent a recte consulendo atque in- 
 tellegendo. The same idea is reiterated by the use of 
 words almost synonymous ; rebus secundis atque prosperis 
 atque prolixis : superbiam atque ferodam : multos populos 
 atque multas nationes. Words are repeated for the sake 
 of emphasis and distinctness, to the destruction of true 
 rhetorical effect ; adversae res, secundae res, depugnare uti 
 depugnatum est : adversus rem suam, adversus earn ; ditit, 
 ita dicit." 
 
 (2) In the fragments of the speeches of Scipio 
 Aemilianus (184-129 B.C.), it is, I think, possible 
 to trace an attempt towards realizing a more artistic 
 manner of expression. Read, for instance, the following 
 account of the degeneracy of morals at Rome : 
 
 Docentur (pueri nostri) praestigias inhonestas ; cum 
 sambucis psalterioque eunt in ludum histrionum. Discunt 
 cantare quae maiores nostri ingenuis probro ducier volue- 
 runt. Eunt, inquam, in ludum saltatorium virgines 
 puerique ingenui. Haec mihi cum quispiam narrabat, 
 non poteram animum inducere ea liberos suos homines
 
 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LA TIN PROSE. 43 
 
 nobiles docere. Sed cum ductus sum in ludum sanatorium, 
 plus medius fidius in eo ludo vidi pueris virginibusque 
 quingentis : in his unum, quod me rei publicae maxime 
 miseritum est, puerum bullatum, petitoris filium, minorem 
 annis duodecim, cum crotalis saltare, quam saltationem 
 impudicus servulus honeste saltare non posset. 
 
 In this there is more distinction of manner, more 
 harmoniousness of composition, than in Cato. The 
 following fine climax is preserved from a speech of 
 Scipio : 
 
 Ex innocentia nascitur dignitas, ex dignitate honor, ex 
 honore imperium, ex imperio libertas. 
 
 Cicero more than once praises the genius and pas- 
 sionate fervour which in his opinion raised Gaius 
 Gracchus (154-121 B.C.) to the very highest position 
 among Roman orators. In the Brutus ( 125-126), 
 the one great speaker thus praises the other : 
 
 Sed ecce in manibus vir et praestantissimo ingenio et 
 flagranti studio et doctus a puero, Gaius Gracchus. Noli 
 enim putare quernquam, Bruto, pleniorem aut uberiorem ad 
 dicendum fitisse. Et ille, Sic prorsus existimo, atque istum 
 de superioribus paene solum lego. Immo plane, inquam, 
 Brute, legas censeo. Damnum enim illius immature interitu 
 res Romanae Latinaeque litterae fecerunt. Utinam non 
 tarn fratri pietatem quam patriae praestare voluisset! quam
 
 44 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 
 
 ille facile tali ingenio, diutius si vixisset, vel paternam 
 esset vel avitam gloriam consecutus ! Eloquentia quidem 
 nescio an habuisset parem neminem. Grandis est verbis, 
 sapiens sententiis, genere toto gravis: manus extrema non 
 accessit operibus eius ; praedare incohata multa, perfecta 
 non plane. Legendus, tnquarn, est hie orator, Brute, si 
 quisquam alius, iuventuti ; non enim solum acuere, sed 
 etiam alere ingenium potest. 
 
 The following are among the very few specimens of 
 his style which have survived : 
 
 Versatus sum in provincia, quomodo ex usu vestro 
 existimabam esse, non quomodo ambitioni meae conducere 
 arbitrabar. Nulla apud me fuit popina, neque pueri 
 eximia facie stabant, et in convivio liberi vestri modestius 
 erant quant apud principia. 
 
 Ita versatus sum in provinda, ut nemo vere posset dicere 
 assem aut eo plus in muneribus me accepts se, aut mea 
 opera quemquam sumptum fecisse. Biennium fui in 
 provincia. Si ulla meretrix domum meant introivit, aut 
 cuiusquam senmlus propter me sollicitatus est, omnium 
 raponunfl- postremissimum nequissimumque existimatote. 
 Cum a servis eorum tarn caste me habuerim, inde poteritis 
 considerare, quomodo me putetis cum liberis vestris vixisse 
 .... Itaque, Quirites, cum Romam profectus sum, zonas, 
 
 1 I propose this reading for nalionum, which must be corrupt.
 
 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 45 
 
 quas plenas argenti extuli, eas ex provincia inanes rettuli. 
 Alii vini amphoras, quas plenas tulerunt, eas argentorepletas 
 domum reportaverunt. 
 
 In the following fragment there is considerable elabo- 
 ration of structure, and a cadence almost musical: 
 
 Si vellem apud vos verba facere et a vobis postulare, cum 
 genere summo ortus essem, et cum fratrem propter vos 
 amisissem, nee quisquam de P. Africani et Ti, Gracchi 
 familia nisi ego et puer restaremus, ut pateremini hoc 
 tempore me quiescere, ne a stirpe genus nostrum interiret, 
 et uti aliqua propago generis nostri reliqua esset: hand scio 
 an lubentibus a vobis impetrassem. 
 
 Here is a specimen of his style in narrative : 
 
 Nuper Teanum Sidicinum consul venit. Uxor eius 
 dixit se in balneis virilibus lavari velle. Quaestori Sidicino 
 a M. Mario datum est negotium uti balneis exigerentur 
 qui lavabantur. Uxor renuntiat viro, parum cito balneas 
 traditas esse et parum lautas fuisse. Idcirco palus des- 
 titutus est in foro, toque adductus suae civitatis nobilissirnus 
 homo M. Marius. Vestimenta detracta sunt ; virgis caesus 
 est. Caleni ubi id audierunt, edixerunt ne quis in 
 balneis lavisse vellet, cum magistratus Romanus ibi esset. 
 Terentini ob eandem causam praeta noster quaestores 
 arripi iussit. Alter se de muro deiecit, alter virgis caesus 
 est.
 
 46 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 
 
 Quanta libido quantaque intemperantia sit hominum 
 adulescentium, uno exemplo vobis ostendam. His annis 
 paucis ex Asia missus esl, qui per id tempus magistratum 
 non ceperat, homo adulescens pro legato. Is in lectica 
 ferebatur. Ei obviam bubulcus de plebe Venusina venit, et 
 per iocum, cum ignoraret qui ferretur, rogavitnum mortuum 
 ferrent. Ubi id audivit, lecticam iussit deponi ; struppis, 
 quibus lectica deligata erat, ^lsque adeo verberari iussit, dum 
 animam efflavit. 
 
 (3) A careful reading of these passages will show that 
 there has been a gradual advance from the prose of Cato 
 to that of Gracchus ; a progress all in the direction of 
 producing a harmonious effect, partly by a better collo- 
 cation of the words, partly by subordinating the clauses 
 to one another, and tempering them into a musical period. 
 This tendency is still more apparent in the style of the 
 orator Lucius Licinius Crassus (140-91 B.C.), one of 
 Cicero's masters, and the one with whom Cicero seems 
 to have been most in sympathy. In his treatise entitled 
 Orator, Cicero expresses, at great length, his views as 
 to the laws which he thinks should govern the harmonious 
 composition of Latin prose, and the metrical feet with 
 which it was best to conclude the sentence. The principle 
 underlying the rules which he gives is obvious. He 
 takes as his basis the rhythmical laws of Greek prose,
 
 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 47 
 
 as developed by Isocrates, and modifies them so as to suit 
 the requirements of the Italian ear, which was accustomed 
 to a different accentuation from that of the Greeks. 
 
 In 223 of the Orator, Cicero says that the clause, 
 the form of which he most approves, should consist of 
 two short sentences (ico/x/iara), a larger sentence (<cw\ov), 
 and a concluding period (comprehensio). This form, he 
 adds, was a favourite one with Crassus, from whom he 
 quotes the following instance : 
 
 Domustibideeratl At habebas. Pecunia superabat ? At 
 egebas (5/i/uara) , Incurristi amens in columnas : in alienos 
 insanus insanisti (vwXov) : depressant, caecam, iacentem 
 domum pluris quam te et fortunas tuas aestimasti (com- 
 prehensio). 
 
 The following specimens of Crassus's style will show 
 how nearly we have now arrived at the manner of Cicero, 
 though something of the old formalism still lingers : 
 
 ' Forte evenit ut in Privernati essemus.' Brute, testi- 
 ficatur pater se tibi Privematem fundum reliquisse. ' In 
 Albano eramus ego et Marcus filius.' Sapiens videlicet 
 homo aim primis nostrae civitatis norat hunc gurgitem ; 
 metuebat ne, cum is nihil haberet, nihil esse ei relictum 
 putaretur. 'In Tiburti forte adsedimus ego et Marcus 
 films. .' Ubi sunt ii fundi, Brute, quos tibi pater publicis 
 commentariis consignatos reliquit ? Quod nisi puberem te
 
 48 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LA TIN PROSE. 
 
 iam haberet, quartum librum composuisset, ct se etiam in 
 balneis locutum cum filio scriptum reliquisset. Brute, quid 
 sedes ? Quid illam anum patri nuntiare vis tuo ? Quid 
 illis omnibus, quorum imagines duci vides, quid maioribus 
 tuts ? Quid L. Bruto, qui hunc populum dominatu regio 
 liberavit ? quid te facere, cui ret, cui gloriae, cui virtuti 
 studere ? Patrimonione augendo ? At id non est nobilitatis. 
 Sed fac esse, nihil superest : libidines totum dissipaverunt. 
 An iuri civilil Est patemum. Sed dicet te, cum aedes 
 venderes, ne in rutis quidem et caesis solium tibi paternum 
 recepisse. An ret militant qui nunquam castra videris ? 
 An eloquent iae ? quae nulla est in te, et quicquid est vocis 
 ac linguae, omne in istum turpissimum calumniae quaestum 
 contulisti. Tu lucem aspicere audes, tu hos intueri? Tu 
 in foro, tu in urbe, tu in civium esse conspectu ? tu illam 
 mortuam, tu imagines ipsas non perhorrescis ? quibus non 
 modo imitandis, sed ne conlocandis quidem tibi ullum locum 
 reliquisti. 
 
 We have now arrived at the period of Cicero and 
 Caesar, the two masters who best combine the essential 
 qualities of good writing, clearness and harmony. Both 
 these writers aim at a clear, broad, periodic style. In 
 the case of both we feel that their manner is greatly 
 influenced by the exigencies of public life ; that it is the 
 manner of men accustomed to address large bodies of
 
 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 49 
 
 people who wish to understand at first hearing, not the 
 manner of the student writing for a small number of 
 select readers. 
 
 There is this general resemblance between Cicero and 
 Caesar, and both have the same mastery over the mere 
 mechanism of style. But there is an important difference 
 between them, independent of the fact that we have only 
 specimens of Caesar's most careless work, while much of 
 Cicero's most elaborate writing has survived. The 
 difference is this, that Cicero's prose is poetical, while 
 Caesar's is not. It must not be forgotten that Cicero 
 was nearly a poet. He was undoubtedly a considerable 
 master of metre and poetic diction, and as such was the 
 admiration of Lucretius. His prose is not only beautiful 
 in its harmony and clearness, but charged with meta- 
 phorical expression to an extent quite without parallel in 
 any other prose writer of his age. It is this fact, together 
 with his persevering and patriotic devotion to the im- 
 provement of Latin writing, his pure taste, and his wide 
 views of culture and education, which makes him, in 
 spite of the fault of excessive diffuseness, the greatest 
 master of Latin prose. 
 
 Cicero's early style is marked by great diffuseness, and 
 elaborate balance of structure, as the following specimens 
 will show : 
 
 E
 
 50 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 
 
 De Inventione, i, i. 
 
 Saepe et multitm hoc mecum cogitavi, bonine an mail plus 
 attulerit hominibus et civitatibus copia dicendi ac summum 
 eloquentiae studium. Nam cum et nostrae rei publicae 
 detrimenta considero et maximarum civitatum veteres animo 
 calamitates colligo, non minimam -video per disertissimos 
 homines invectam partem incommodorum : cum autam res 
 ab nostra memoria propter vetustatem remotas ex litterarum 
 monumentis repetere instituo, multas urbes constitutas, 
 plurima bella restincta, firmissimas societates, sanctissimas 
 amicitias intellego cum animi ratione, turn facilius eloquentia 
 comparatas. 
 
 Pro Quinctio, 95-98. 
 
 Miserum est deturbari fortunis omnibus, miserius est 
 iniuria : acerbum est ab aliquo circumveniri, acerbius a pro- 
 pinquo ; calamitosum est bonis evei'ti, calamitosius cum 
 dedecore ; funestum est a forti atque honesto viro iugulari, 
 funestius ab eo, cuius vox in praeconio quaestu prostitit ; 
 indignum est a part vinti aut superiore, indignius ab inferior e 
 atque humiliore ; luctuosum est tradi alteri cum bonis, 
 luctuosius inimico ; horribile est causam capitis dicere, horri- 
 bilius priore loco dicere. Omnia circumspexit Quinctius, 
 omnia periclitatus est, C. Aquili ; non praetorem modo, 
 a quo ius impetraret, invenire non potuit, atque adeo 
 ne unde arbitratu quidem suo pcstularet, sed ne amicos
 
 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 51 
 
 quidem Sexti Naevi, quorum saepe et diu ad pedes iacuit 
 stratus, obsecrans per decs immortales ut aut secum iure 
 contenderent aut iniuriam sine ignominia sibi imponerent. 
 Denique ipsius inimici voltum superbissimum subiit, ipsius 
 Sexti Naevii lacrimans manum prehendit in propinquorum 
 bonis proscribendis exercitatam, obsecravit per fratris sui 
 cinerem, per nomen propinquitatis, per ipsius coniugem et 
 liberos, quibus propior P. Quinctio nemo est, ut aliquando 
 misericordiam caperet, aliquant, si non propinquitatis, at 
 aetatis suae, si non homim's, .at humanitatis, rationem 
 haberet, ut secum aliquid integra sua fama qualibet, dum 
 modo tolerabili, condicione transigeret. Ab ipso repudiates, 
 ab amicis eius non sublevatus, ab omni magistratu agitatus 
 atque perterritus, quern praeter te appellet, habet neminem ; 
 tibi se, tibi suas omncs opes fortunasque commendat, tibi 
 committit existimationem ac spem reliquae vitae. 
 
 This is Cicero's earlier manner, comparatively stiff, as 
 well as excessively redundant. It seems that it was not 
 until after his thirty-fifth year that he had really mastered 
 the art of expression. I think it worth while to give the 
 two following specimens, the first from the orations 
 against Verres (70 B.C.), the second from the Pro 
 Cluentio (66 B.C.), as instances of his style in middle life. 
 How much more powerful and plastic has it become ! 
 
 /// Verrem, Actio i, i. Inveteravit enim iam
 
 52 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 
 
 opinio perniciosa rei publicae vobisque periculosa, quae non 
 modo Romae sed etiam apud exteras nationes omnium 
 sermone percrebruit, his iudiciis, quae mine sunt, pecuniosum 
 hominem, quamvis sit nocens, neminem posse damnari. 
 Nunc in ipso discrimine ordinis iudiciorumque vestrorum 
 cum sint parati qui contionibus et legibus hanc invidiam 
 senatus inflammare conentur, reus in indicium adductus est 
 C. Verres, homo vita atque factis omnium iam opinione 
 damnatus, pecuniae magnitudine, sua spe et praedicatione 
 absolutus. Huic ego causae, indices, cum summa voluntate 
 et expectatione populi Romani actor accessi, non ut augerem 
 invidiam ordinis, sed ut infamiae communi succurrerem. 
 Adduxi enim hominem in quo reconciliare existimationem 
 iudiciorum amissam, redire in gratiam cum populo Romano, 
 satis facere exteris nationibus possetis, depeculatorem aerarii, 
 vexatorem Asiae atque Pamphyliae, praedonern iuris, labem 
 atque perniciem provinciae Siciliae. 
 
 Pro Cluentio, 70-71. Cum esset egens, sumptuosus, 
 egens, callidus, et cum domi suae, miserrimis in locis et in- 
 anissimis, tantum nummorum positum videret, ad omnem 
 malitiam et fraudem versare mentem suam coepit. ' Ego 
 dem iudicibus ? mihi ipsi igitur praeter periculum et in/a- 
 miam quid quaeretur ? Nihil exccgitem, quam ob rem Oppi- 
 anicum damnari necesse sit ? Quid tandem ? (nihil enim est, 
 quod non fieri possif) si quis eum forte casus ex periculo
 
 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 53 
 
 eripuerit, nonne reddiindum est? Praedpitantem igitur 
 impellamus] inquit, ' et perditum prosternamus? Capit 
 hoc consilii, ut pecuniam quibusdam iudicibus levissimis 
 polliceatur, deinde earn posted supprimat, ut, quoniam 
 graves homines sua sponte severe iudicaturos putabat, eos, 
 qui leviores erant, destitutione iratos Oppianico redderet. 
 Itaque, ut erat semper praeposterus atque perversus, initium 
 facit a Bulbo, et eum, quod iam nihil quaesierat, tristem 
 atque oscitantem leviter impellit. ' Quid tuT inquit, ' ecquid 
 me adiuvas, Bulbe, ne gratis ret piiblicae serviamus ? ' Ille 
 vero simul atque hoc audivit, ' ne gratis:' ''Quo voles] 
 inquit, ' sequar : sed quid adfers ' ? Turn ei HS quadraginta 
 milia, si esset absolutus Oppianicus, pollicetur, et eum, ut 
 ceteros appelletquibuscumloquiconsuesset, rogat, atque etiam 
 ipse conditor totius negotii Guttam aspergit huic Bulbo. 
 Itaque minime amarus Us visus est, qui aliquid ex eius 
 semwne speculae degustarant. 
 
 Cicero's style had however at this time not entirely 
 emancipated itself from the formality of his earlier period, 
 as any one will see who studies the peroration of the 
 Verrine orations. It is in his latest years that his manner 
 attains its perfection. Here axe two passages, one from 
 the Laelius, and the other from the end of the second 
 Philippic : 
 
 {Laelius, 10.) Ego si Scipionis desiderio me moveri
 
 54 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 
 
 negem, quam id recte faciam viderint sapientes, sed eerie 
 mentiar. Moveor enim tali amico orbatus, qualis, ut arbitror, 
 nemo unquam erit, ut confirmare possum, nemo certe fuit. 
 Sed non egeo medidna : me ipse consoler, etmaxime illosolado, 
 quod eo errore careo quo amicorum decessu plerique angi 
 solent. Nihil malt acddisse Sdpioni puto : mihi acddit, 
 si quid acddit : suis autem incommodis graviter angi non 
 amicum sed se ipsum amantis est. Cum illo vero quis neget 
 actum esse praedare ? Nisi enim, quod Hie minime putabat, 
 immortalitatem optare vellet, quid non adeptus est quod 
 homini fas esset optare, qui summam spent civium, quam de 
 eo iam puero habuerant, continuo adulescens incredibili 
 virtute superavit : qui consulatum petivit numquam, factus 
 est bis, primum ante tempus, iterum sibi suo tempore, rei 
 publicae paene sero : qui duabus urbibus eversis inimidssimis 
 huic imperio non modo praesentia, verum etiamfutura bella 
 delevit ? 
 
 (Philippica 2, 1 18.) Respice, quaeso, aliquando rempub- 
 licam, M. Antoni ; quibus ortus sis, non quibuscum vivas, 
 considera. Mecum, ut voles ; cum re publica redi in gratiam. 
 Sed de te tu ipse videris ; ego de me ipso profitebor. Defendi 
 rem publicam adulescens, non deseram senex : contempsi 
 Catilinae gladios, non pertimescam tuos. Quin etiam corpus 
 libenter obtulerim, si repraesentari morte mea libertas civitatis 
 potest, ut aliquando dolor populi Romani pariat quod tarn
 
 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 55 
 
 diu parturit. Etenim si abhinc annos prope viginti hoc 
 ipso in templo negavi posse mortem immaturam esse consulari, 
 quanto verius nunc negabo seni ? Mihi vero,patres conscripti, 
 etiam optanda mors esf, perfuncto rebus Us quas adeptus 
 sum quasque gessi. Duo modo luzc opto, unum ut moriens 
 populum Romanum liberum relinquam, alterum ut ita cuique 
 eveniat, ut de re publica quisque mereatur. 
 
 There was a reaction against the Ciceronian style in 
 the last century of the republic, the chief representative 
 of which is Sallust. Whether the historians who wrote 
 between the period of Cato and that of Sallust had 
 followed in Gate's steps, and adopted an abrupt and un- 
 periodic style of writing, cannot now be ascertained. We 
 only know that Cicero complains of the badness of Latin 
 historical writing up to his time. Now if Cicero's models 
 were Isocrates and Crassus, those of Sallust were Thucy- 
 dides and Cato. In pregnancy of thought Sallust would 
 fain have figured as the Latin Thucydides. In the antique 
 style of his diction, it is well known that he imitated 
 Cato. Quintilian (8, 3, 29) quotes an epigram upon 
 
 him : 
 
 Et verba antiqui multum furate Catonis, 
 
 Crispe, lugurthitiae conditor historiae. 
 
 And it is not impossible that he also imitated Cato in 
 the abrupt and unconnected character of his sentences.
 
 56 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 
 
 The following extract will give a fair idea of the style 
 of Sallust : 
 
 (Bellum Catilinae c, 53-54.) Postqtiam Cato adsedit, 
 consulares omnes itemque senatus magna pars sententiam eius 
 laudant, virtutem animi ad caelum ferunt, alii alios in- 
 crepantes timidos vocant. Cato clarus atque magnus habettir, 
 senati deer etum fit, sicuti ille censuerat. 
 
 Sed mihi multa legenti, multa audienti, quae populus 
 Romanus domi militiaeque mart atque terra praedara 
 fadnora fecit, forte libuit attendere quae res maxume tanta 
 negotia sustinuisset. Sciebam saepe numero parva manu 
 cum magnis legionibus hostium contendisse. Cognoveram 
 parvis copiis bella gesta cum opulentis regibus, ad hoc saepe 
 fortunae violentiam toleravisse, facundia Graecos, gloria belli 
 Gallos, ante Romanes fuisse. Ac mihi multa agitanti 
 constabat paucorum civium egregiam virtutem cuncta patra- 
 visse, eoque factum uti divitias paupertas, multitudinem 
 paucitas superaret. Sed postquam luxu atque desidia civitas 
 corrupta esf, rursus res publica magnitudine sua imperatorum 
 atque magistratuum vitia sustentabat, ac, sicut effeta parents, 
 multis tempestatibus haud sane quisquam Romae virtute 
 magnus fuit. Sed memoria mea ingenti virtute divorsis 
 moribtis fuereviri duo M. Cato et C. Caesar: quosquoniam 
 res obtulerat, silentio praeterire non fuit consilium, quin 
 utriusque naturam et mores, quantum ingenio possem,
 
 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 57 
 
 aperirem. Igitur eis genus, aetas, eloquentia, prope aequaha 
 fuere, magnitude animipar, item gloria, sedalia alii. Caesar 
 benefiriis ac mtmificentia magnus habebatur, iniegritate 
 vitae Cato. Ille mansuetudine et misericordia clarus factus, 
 huic severitas dignitatem addiderat. Caesar dando levando 
 ignoscundo, Cato nihil largiundo gloriam adeptus est. In 
 altero miseris perfugium erat, in altero malis pernicies. 
 Illius fadlitas, hums constantia laudabatur. Postremo 
 Caesar in animum induxerat laborare, vigilare, negotiis 
 amicorum intentus sua mglegere, nihil denegare quod dono 
 dignum esset, sibi magnum imperium exercitum novom bellum 
 exoptabat, ubi virtus enitescere posset. At Catoni studium 
 modestiae, decoris, sed maxime severitatis erat. Non divitiis 
 cum divite, nequefactione cumfactioso, sed cum strenuo virtute, 
 cum modesto pudore, cum innocents abstinentia certabat : 
 esse quam videri bonus malebat : ita quo minus petebat 
 gloriam, eo magis ilium sequebatur. 
 
 Towards the end of the Augustan age a great change 
 in Latin writing begins, which culminates in the style of 
 Tacitus, at the end of the first century A.D. Between 
 Cicero and Tacitus stands Livy, a great admirer of Cicero, 
 and yet the master, the only master, of a style very 
 different from Cicero's, and which was never successfully 
 imitated. Two points should be noticed in the style of Livy. 
 It is perhaps the best example of the periodic manner.
 
 58 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 
 
 The writer's first aim seems to be to weld his clauses into 
 a harmonious period, over which the reader must pause 
 before he can thoroughly grasp it. It is, secondly, a 
 poetical manner, coloured with expressions which recall, if 
 not Vergil, at least the old poets whom Vergil and Livy 
 undoubtedly studied in common. 
 
 Cicero's style, as we have seen, is both periodic and 
 poetical, but not in the same way as Livy's. In con- 
 structing his periods Cicero aims only at raising the 
 expectation, and satisfying the requirements of the ear. 
 But his meaning is generally (so far as the form of the 
 sentence goes) clear at first sight, and the grammatical 
 construction is quite simple. Livy's periods are longer and 
 more complicated than Cicero's, and the grammatical 
 structure is elaborately adapted to the exigencies of the 
 composition. Secondly, the poetical character of the style 
 is rather to be traced to study and imitation than (as in 
 the case of Cicero) to a spontaneous impulse towards 
 imaginative expression. 
 
 The following is Livy's account of the life and cha- 
 racter of Cicero, quoted by the elder Seneca : 
 
 M. Cicero sub adventum trium virorum urbe cesserat, pro 
 
 certo habens, id quod erat^ non magis Antonio eripi se quam 
 
 Caesari Cassium et Brutum posse. Primo in Tusculanum 
 
 fugit, inde transversis itineribus ad Formianum, ut ab
 
 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PKOSE. 59 
 
 Caieta navem conscensurus, proficiscitur. Unde aliquotiens 
 in altum provectum cum modo venti adversi rettulissent, 
 modo ipse iactationem navis, caeco volvente fluctu, pati non 
 posset, taedium tandem eum fugae et vitae cepit, regressusque 
 ad superiorem villam, quae paulo plus mille passibus a man 
 abest, 'Mortar,' inquit, ' in patria saepe servata.' Satis 
 constat servos fortiter fideliterque paratos esse ad dimican- 
 dum ; ipsum deponi lecticam, et quietos pati quod sors iniqua 
 cogeret, iussisse. Prominentiex lectica praebentique immotam 
 cervicem caput praedsum est. Nee satis stolidae crudelitati 
 militumfuit ; manus quoque, scripsisse aliquidin Antonium 
 exprobrantes, praeciderunt. Ita relatum caput ad Antonium, 
 iussuque eius inter duas manus in rostris positum, ubi ille 
 consul, ubi saepe consularis, ubi eo ipso anno adversus 
 Antonium, quanta nulla unquam humana vox, cum admi- 
 ratione eloquentiae auditus fuerat. Vix attollentes prat 
 lacrimis oculos homines intuf.ri eius trucidata membra 
 poterant. Vixit tres et sexaginta annos, ut, si vis afuisset, 
 ne immatura quidem mors videri possit. Ingenium et 
 operibus etpraemiis operumfelix; ipsefortunae diuprosperae 
 et in longo tenore felicitatis magnis interim ictus vulneribus, 
 exilio, ruina partium pro quibus steterat, filiae exitu tarn 
 tristi atque acerbo, omnium adversorum nihil, ut viro dignum 
 erat, tulit praeter mortem ; quae vere aestimanti minus 
 indigna videri potuit, qiiod a victore inimico nihil crudelius
 
 60 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 
 
 passus erat quam quod eiusdem fortunae compos in eofecisset. 
 Si quis tamen virtutibus vitia pensartt, vir magnus et 
 memorabilis fuit, et in cuius laudes exsequendas Cicerone 
 laudatore opus fuerit. 
 
 With the establishment of the empire upon a firm basis, 
 the conditions necessary for producing such a style as 
 that of Caesar or of Cicero disappeared. Oratory was 
 driven from the forum into the senate and the courts of 
 law, and the aim of the speaker was now to please a 
 comparatively small and select audience. A school arose, 
 and soon prevailed, which admired and cultivated not 
 breadth, massiveness, and generous inspiration, but nicety, 
 point, and adornment. The harmonious period was dis- 
 placed in favour of short, pithy sentences, calculated to 
 strike and surprise the ear : cleverly worded sayings 
 took the place of a manly and comprehensive treatment 
 of facts. 
 
 At the same time two changes took place in education 
 which aided the tendency already started. In the first 
 place, the older poets, Ennius, Accius, and Pacuvius, 
 admired of Cicero, were driven from the schools, and 
 Vergil and Horace took their place as school books. 
 This fact encouraged the fancy for giving an artificially 
 poetical colouring to prose : a colouring such as cannot 
 fail to be noticed by a careful reader of Tacitus. In the
 
 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 61 
 
 second place, the habit of declamatio, as it was called, or 
 speaking and writing make-believe orations on fictitious 
 themes, supplanted the older custom of teaching boys to 
 speak and write on theses, or general subjects. Instead, 
 for instance, of discussing and illustrating such questions as 
 "the comparative usefulness of the legal and military 
 professions," the youth was taught to treat themes such 
 as " Hannibal deliberates whether to march on Rome 
 after Cannae:" or "Sulla is advised to resign his dic- 
 tatorship." It will readily be understood that more 
 originality and power of handling was required for the 
 discussion of the thesis, in which the student had to find 
 and arrange his own facts and examples, than for the 
 composition of a declamatio, in which they were found 
 for him. 
 
 The declamatio, as may well be imagined, soon degene- 
 rated into a barren and formal exercise, in which the main 
 object of the pupil was to make clever points. His eye 
 was directed not to things, but to words and phrases. 
 The result was, as the elder Seneca well puts it, that he 
 wrote not to convince, but to give pleasure. He tried to 
 exhibit, not his case, but his own talent, in a favourable 
 light. And thus it became a main object of a declaimer 
 to adorn his piece with sententiae or pithy sayings ; to 
 strain the language in every way so as to attract attention ;
 
 62 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 
 
 sometimes to overload a simple matter with a number of 
 words, sometimes only to give a hint when a full explana- 
 tion was necessary ; to depart as far as possible from 
 ordinary language and diction, to challenge the acuteness 
 of the audience by puzzles in expression, and in short to 
 avoid by every possible device the art of saying a plain 
 thing in a plain way. 
 
 A strong reaction against this prevailing tendency was 
 headed by Quintilian and his pupil, the younger Pliny. 
 A far greater stylist than Pliny, his friend Tacitus (who 
 was also probably a pupil of Quintilian) made an attempt 
 in his earliest work, the Dialogus de Oratoribus, to revive 
 the taste for the republican manner : a taste which was now 
 only represented by a minority among the critics. In the 
 Dialogus, Tacitus still writes in the Ciceronian style : 
 but in his later works he abandons the vain attempt to 
 swim against the stream, and throws his whole genius into 
 the opposite direction. He takes the style of Sallust as 
 his basis, but varies and enriches it with all the resources 
 of the prevailing rhetoric. Tacitus may be described as 
 a great master working with bad tools. In his hands the 
 Latin language is strained beyond its powers. The words 
 are made to say what naturally they ought not to say, and 
 the effect is that the reader, if not left in doubt as to 
 the writer's exact meaning, is at any rate constantly in
 
 CLASSICAL STYLE IN LATIN PROSE. 63 
 
 a state of astonishment at the tours de force by which so 
 much is extorted from the words. Read, for instance, the 
 fine account of the last hours of Otho (Historiae 2, 48, 49). 
 
 Talia locutus, ut cuique aetas aut dignitas, comiter appel- 
 latos, irent propere neu remanendo iram victoris asperarent, 
 iuvenes auctoritate, senes precibus movebat, placidus ore, in- 
 trepidus verbis, intempestivas suorum lacrimas coercens. 
 Dan' naves ac vehtcula abenntibus iubet ; libellos epistulasque 
 studio erga se aut in Vitelliiim contumeliis insignes abolet : 
 pecunias distribuit parce nee ut periturus. Mox Salvium 
 Cocceianum, fratris filium prima iuventa ; trepidum et 
 maerentem ultro solatus est laudando pietatem eius, casti- 
 gando formidinem : an Vitellium tarn inmitis animi fore, ut 
 pro incolumi tota domo ne hanc quidem sibi gratiam 
 redderet ? Mereri se festinato exitu clementiam victoris ; 
 non enim ultima desperatione, sed poscente proelium exercitu 
 remisisse ret publicae ultimum casum. Satis sibi nominis, 
 satis posteris suis nobilitatis quaesitum. Post lulios, 
 Claudios, Servios se primum in familiam novam imperium 
 intulisse : proinde erecto animo capesseret vitam, neu patruum 
 sibi Othonem fuisse aut oblivisceretur umquam aut nimium 
 meminisset. 
 
 Post quae dimotis omnibus paulum requievit. Atqtie 
 ilium supremas iam curas animo volutantem repens tumultus 
 avertit nuntiata consternatione ac licentia militum : namque
 
 64 CAUTIONS AS TO ORTHOGRAPHY. 
 
 abeuntibus exitium minitabantur atrocissima in Verginium 
 vi, quern clausa domo obsidebant, Increpitis seditionis 
 auctoribus regressus vacavit abeunlium adloquiis, donee 
 omnes inviolati digrederentur. Vesperascente die sitim haustu 
 gelidae aquae sedavit. Turn adlatis pugionibus duobus, cum 
 utrumque pertemptasset, alterum capiti subdidit. Et ex- 
 plorato iam profectos amices, noctem quietam, utque adfir- 
 matur, non insonmem egit : luce prima in ferrum pectore 
 incubuit .... Funus maturatum : ambitiosis id precibus 
 petierat, ne amputaretur caput ludibrio futiirum .. . . . 
 Quidam militum iuxta rogum interfecere se non noxa neque 
 ob metum, sed aemulatione decoris et caritate principis . . . . 
 Othoni sepulcrum extructum est modicum et mansurum. 
 
 With this quotation the chapter may be brought to a 
 close, for Tacitus is the last original genius in the history 
 of Latin prose writing. 
 
 IV. 
 
 CAUTIONS AS TO ORTHOGRAPHY. 
 I HAVE thought it worth while to make an alphabetical 
 list of the words about the spelling of which (to judge 
 from the experience I have gained in lecturing) there 
 seems to be most doubt in the minds of students. The 
 correct or more usual spelling is printed on the left hand.
 
 CAUTIONS AS TO ORTHOGRAPHY. 65 
 
 A (interjection) not Ah. 
 
 Abicio not Abiicio. 
 
 And so ad- con- de- e- in- ob- pro- icio. 
 Acddere,accedere,accurare &c.,more usual than Adddere,&c. 
 
 Adulescens as a substantive, not Adolescens : but 
 Adolescent, as participle of adolesce. 
 
 Adventidus not Adventitius. 
 
 Aedilicius not Aedilitius. 
 
 Agnatus, agnosco more usual than Adgnatus, adgnosco. 
 
 Appareo more usual than Adpareo. 
 
 Ascribo, astringo, asto, &c., or 
 Adscribo, &c. 
 
 Baca not Bacca. 
 
 Brattea not Bractea. 
 
 Caelebs not Coelebs. 
 
 Caelum\ (Coelum. 
 
 not \ 
 
 Caelus j I Coelus. 
 
 Caenum not Coenum. 
 
 Caeremonia not Coerimonia. 
 
 Camena not Camoena. 
 
 Cena not Coena. 
 
 Ceteri not Caeteri. 
 
 Clipeus or clupeus not Clypeus. 
 
 Condido, bargain (condico, = condition) not Conditio, 
 
 but 
 
 F
 
 66 CAUTIONS AS TO ORTHOGRAPHY. 
 
 Condltio (condire), seasoning. 
 Conditio (condere), building. 
 Conitor not Connitor. 
 
 Coniveo not Conniveo. 
 
 Conubium not Connubium, 
 
 Contio not Concio. 
 
 Convicium not Convitium. 
 
 Culleus not Culeus. 
 
 Cumba not Cymba. 
 
 Derigo to straighten, to extend a thing in a straight line, 
 
 downwards or horizontally. 
 Dirigo to extend in different directions. 
 Describe to write down, copy. 
 Discribo to allot to different people. 
 
 Dido not Ditto. 
 
 Dilectus (a levy) not Delectw. 
 
 4 
 
 Ei (interjection) not Hei. 
 
 Epistula better than Epistola. 
 
 Equos or ecus better than Equus. 
 
 Erus not Hems. 
 
 Faenum not Foenum. 
 
 Femina not Foemina. 
 
 Fetus (adjective) not Foetus.
 
 CAUTIONS AS TO ORTHOGRAPHY. 67 
 
 Fetus (substantive) not Foetus. 
 
 Foedus (adj. and subst) not Faedus. 
 
 Foeteo, foetidus, foetor not Faeteo, &c. 
 
 Gains not Cat'us, 
 
 but abbreviated C. not G. 
 
 Gnaeus not Cnaeus, 
 
 but abbreviated Cn. not . 
 
 Grai not 
 
 Harena not Arena. 
 
 Harundo not Arundo. 
 
 Holitor, holus not Olttor, Olus. 
 
 Imperium, impero better than Inperium, inpero. 
 
 Incoho not Inchoo. 
 
 Intellego not Intelligo. 
 
 Lacrima or Lacruma not Lacryma. 
 
 Loquella not Loquela. 
 
 Mulcare to mutilate } 
 
 not Mulctare, mulcta. 
 Multare (multa) to fine) 
 
 Neglego not Negligo. 
 
 Nuntius not Nuncius. 
 
 Obscenus not Obscaenus or 
 
 Obscoenus.
 
 68 
 
 CAUTIONS AS TO ORTHOGRAPHY. 
 
 Paenitet 
 
 Paenula 
 
 Pinna 
 
 Praemium 
 
 Proelium 
 
 not Poenitet. 
 
 not Poenula, 
 
 not Penna. 
 
 not Proemimn. 
 
 not Praelium. 
 
 Querella 
 
 not Querela. 
 
 Reda 
 
 not Rheda or 
 Rhaeda. 
 
 not 
 
 Saeculum 
 
 Saepes, saepire 
 
 Secus otherwise 
 
 Setius in an inferior manner) 
 
 Silva 
 
 Solarium 
 
 Succipio to catch something falling, but 
 
 Suscipio to hold up. 
 
 Sulpur not Sulfur or sulphur. 
 
 Summitto more usual than Submitto. 
 
 not Seculum 
 
 not .SV^, sepire. 
 f Sectius or 
 I Secius. 
 
 not Sylva. 
 
 not Solatium. 
 
 Taeter 
 Tribunirius 
 
 not 
 
 not Tribuniiius.
 
 CAUTIONS AS TO ORTHOGRAPHY. 69 
 
 Umeo, timtdus, umor not Humeo, humidus, humor. 
 
 Umerus not Humerus. 
 
 Vergilius not Virgilius. 
 
 Verginius not Virginius.
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 I. 
 
 BACON. 
 
 FROM moral virtue let us pass on to matter of power 
 and commandment, and consider whether in right reason 
 there be any comparable with that wherewith knowledge 
 investeth and crowneth man's nature. We see the dignity 
 of the commandment is according to the dignity of the 
 commanded. To have commandment over beasts, as 
 herdsmen have, is a thing contemptible ; to have com- 
 mandment over children, as schoolmasters have, is matter 
 of small honour ; to have commandment over galley 
 slaves is a disparagement rather than an honour. Neither 
 is the commandment of tyrants much better, over people 
 which have put off the generosity of their minds ; and 
 therefore it was ever holden that honours in free 
 monarchies and commonwealths had a sweetness more 
 than in tyrannies, because the commandment extendeth 
 more over the wills of men, and not only over their deeds 
 and services. And therefore when Virgil putteth himself 
 forth to attribute to Augustus Caesar the best of human 
 honours, he doth it in these words : 
 
 Victorqtie volentes 
 Per populos dat iura, viamque adfectat Olytnpo.
 
 72 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 But the commandment of knowledge is yet higher than 
 the commandment over the will, for it is a commandment 
 over the reason, belief, and understanding of man, which 
 is the highest part of the mind, and giveth law to the 
 will itself; for there is no power on earth, which setteth 
 up a throne or chair of state in the spirits and souls of 
 men, and in their cogitation, imagination, opinions, and 
 beliefs, but knowledge and learning. 
 
 II. 
 
 MILTON. 
 
 Worthy deeds are not often destitute of worthy re- 
 lators ; as by a certain fate great acts and great eloquence 
 have most commonly gone hand in hand, equalling and 
 honouring each other in the same ages. 'Tis true, that 
 in obscurest times, by shallow and unskilful writers, the 
 indistinct noise of many battles, and devastations of many 
 kingdoms overrun and lost, hath come to our ears. For 
 what wonder if in all ages ambition and the love of rapine 
 hath stirred up greedy and violent men to bold attempts 
 in wasting and ruining wars, which to posterity have left 
 the work of wild beasts and destroyers, rather than the 
 deeds and monuments of men and conquerors. But he 
 whose just and true valour uses the necessity of war and 
 dominion, not to destroy, but to prevent destruction, to 
 bring in liberty against tyrants, law and civility among 
 barbarous nations, knowing that when he conquers all 
 things else, he cannot conquer time or detraction, wisely 
 conscious of this.his want, as well as of his worth not to
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 73 
 
 be forgotten or concealed, honours and hath recourse to 
 the aid of eloquence, his friendliest and best supply : by 
 whose immortal record his noble deeds, which else were 
 transitory, becoming fixed and durable against the force 
 of years and generations, he fails not to continue through 
 all posterity, over envy, death, and time also victorious. 
 
 III. 
 DR YD EN. 
 
 The design, the disposition, the manners, and the 
 thoughts, are all before diction ; where any of these are 
 wanting or imperfect, so much wants or is imperfect in 
 the imitation of human life ; which is the very first defini- 
 tion of a poem. Words indeed, like glaring colours, are 
 the first beauties that arise and strike the sight ; but if the 
 draught be false or lame, the figures ill disposed, ihe 
 manners obscure or inconsistent, or the thoughts unna- 
 tural, then the finest colours are but daubing, and the 
 piece is a beautiful monster at the best. Neither Virgil 
 nor Homer were deficient in any of the former beauties ; 
 but in this last, which is expression, the Roman poet is 
 at least equal to the Grecian, as [ have said elsewhere ; 
 supplying the poverty of his language by his musical ear, 
 and by his diligence. But to return : our two great poets, 
 being so different in their tempers, one choleric and san- 
 guine, the other phlegmatic and melancholic ; that which 
 makes them excel in their several ways is, that each has 
 followed his own natural inclination, as well in forming 
 the desisrn as in the execution.
 
 74 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 IV. 
 BOLINGBROKE. 
 
 I say then very frankly, that the church and the king 
 having been joined in all the late contests both by those 
 who attacked them and those who defended them, eccle- 
 siastical interests, resentments, and animosities came in to 
 the aid of secular, in making the new settlement. Great 
 lenity was shown at the restoration, in looking backwards : 
 unexampled and unimitated mercy to particular men, 
 which deserved, no doubt, much applause. This conduct 
 would have gone far towards restoring the nation to its 
 primitive temper and integrity, to its old good manner, 
 its old good humour, and its old good nature (expres- 
 sions of my lord chancellor Clarendon, which I could 
 never read without being moved and softened) if great 
 severity had not been exercised immediately after, in 
 looking forward, and great rigour used to large bodies of 
 men, which certainly deserves censure, as neither just nor 
 politic. I say not just, because there is, after all, a wide 
 difference between moral and party justice. The one is 
 founded in reason ; the other takes its colour from the 
 passions of men, and is but another name for injustice. 
 
 V. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 Moral justice carries punishment as far as reparation 
 and necessary terror require ; no farther. Party justice 
 carries it to the full extent of our power, and even to the
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 75 
 
 gorging and sating of our revenge : from whence it 
 follows that injustice and violence once begun, must have 
 become perpetual in the successive revolutions of parties, 
 as long as these parties exist. I say, not politic ; because 
 it contradicted the other measures taken for quieting the 
 minds of men. It alarmed all the sects anew ; confirmed 
 the implacability, and whetted the rancour of some ; dis- 
 appointed and damped a spirit of reconciliation in others ; 
 united them in a common hatred to the church; and 
 roused in the church a spirit of intolerance and persecu- 
 tion. This measure was the more imprudent, because 
 the opportunity seemed fair to take advantage of the re- 
 sentments of the presbyterians against the other sectaries, 
 and to draw them, without persecuting the others, by the 
 cords of love into the pale of the church. . . . But when 
 resentments of the sort we now mention were let loose, to 
 aggravate those of the other sort, there was no room to 
 be surprised at the violences which followed. 
 
 VI. 
 SWIFT. 
 
 I have perused many of their books, especially those 
 on history and morality. Among the rest I was much 
 diverted with a little old treatise which treats of the 
 weakness of human kind, and is in little esteem, except 
 among the women and the vulgar. However, I was 
 curious to see what an author of that country could say 
 upon such a subject. This writer went through all the 
 usual topics of European moralists, showing how diminu-
 
 76 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 tive, contemptible, and helpless an animal was man in 
 his own nature ; how unable to defend himself from the 
 inclemencies of the air, or the fury of wild beasts ; how 
 much he was excelled by one creature in strength, by 
 another in speed, by a third in foresight, by a fourth in 
 industry. He added that nature was degenerated in 
 these latter declining ages of the world, and could now 
 produce only small abortive births in comparison of those 
 in ancient times. He said it was very reasonable to 
 think not only that the species of men were originally 
 much larger, but also that there must have been giants in 
 former ages ; which, as it is asserted by history and 
 tradition, so it hath been confirmed by huge bones and 
 skulls casually dug up in several parts of the kingdom, 
 far exceeding the common dwindled race of men in our 
 days. He argued that the very laws of nature absolutely 
 required we should have been made in the beginning of a 
 size more large and robust, not so liable to destruction 
 from every little accident of a tile falling from a house, 
 or a stone cast from the hand of a boy, or being drowned 
 in a little brook. From this way of reasoning the author 
 drew several moral applications, useful in the conduct of 
 life, but needless here to repeat. For my own part, I 
 could not avoid reflecting how universally this talent was 
 spread, of drawing lectures on morality, or, indeed, rather 
 matter of discontent and repining, from the quarrels we 
 raise with nature. And I believe upon a strict enquiry, 
 these quarrels might be shown as ill-grounded among 
 us as they are among that people.
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 77 
 
 VII. 
 JOHNSON. 
 
 He had, apparently, such rectitude of judgment as 
 secured him from everything that approached to the 
 ridiculous or absurd ; but as laws operate in civil agency 
 not to the excitement of virtue, but the repression of 
 wickedness, so judgment in the operations of intellect 
 can hinder faults, but not produce excellence. Prior is 
 never low, nor very often sublime. It is said by Longinus 
 of Euripides, that he forces himself sometimes into 
 grandeur by violence of effort, as the lion kindles his fury 
 by the lashes of his own tail. Whatever Prior obtains 
 above mediocrity seems the effort of struggle and of toil. 
 He has many vigorous, but few happy lines ; he has 
 everything by purchase, and nothing by gift ; he had no 
 " nightly visitations " of the muse, no infusions of 
 sentiment or felicities of fancy. 
 
 His diction, however, is more his own than that of any 
 among the successors of Dryden ; he borrows no lucky 
 turns, or commodious modes of language, from his pre- 
 decessors. His phrases are original, but they are 
 sometimes harsh ; as he inherited no excellence, none 
 has he bequeathed. His expression has every marl; of 
 laborious study ; the line seldom seems to have been 
 formed at once ; the words did not come till they were 
 called, and were then put by constraint into their places, 
 where they do their duty, but do it sullenly. In his 
 greater compositions there may be found more rigid 
 stateliness than graceful dignity.
 
 78 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 VIII. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 If any judgment be made, from his books, of his moral 
 character, nothing will be found but purity and excellence. 
 Knowledge of mankind, indeed, less extensive than that 
 of Addison, will show that to write and to live are very 
 different. Many who praise virtue do no more than 
 praise it. Yet it is reasonable to believe that Addison's 
 profession and practice were at no great variance, since, 
 amidst that storm of faction in which most of his life was 
 passed, though his station made him conspicuous, and 
 his activity made him formidable, the character given him 
 by his friends was never contradicted by his enemies ; of 
 those, with whom interest or opinion united him, he had 
 not only the esteem, but the kindness ; and of others, 
 whom the violence of opposition drove against him, 
 though he might lose the love, he retained the reverence. 
 
 It was justly observed by Tickell that he employed wit 
 on the side of virtue and religion. He not only made the 
 proper use of wit himself, but taught it to others ; and 
 from his time it has been generally subservient to the 
 cause of reason and of truth. He has dissipated the 
 prejudice that had long connected gaiety with vice, and 
 easiness of manners with laxity of principle. He has 
 restored virtue to its dignity, and taught innocence not 
 to be ashamed. This is an elevation of literary character 
 " above all Greek, above all Roman fame."
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 79 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE SAME. 
 
 He was of a middle stature, of a thin habit of body, 
 a long visage, coarse features, and a melancholy aspect ; 
 of a grave and manly deportment, a solemn dignity of 
 mien, but which, upon a nearer acquaintance, softened 
 into an engaging easiness of manners. His walk was slow, 
 and his voice tremulous and mournful. He was easily ex- 
 cited to smiles, but very seldom provoked to laughter. 
 
 His mind was in an uncommon degree vigorous and 
 active. His judgment was accurate, his apprehension 
 quick, and his memory so tenacious, that he was fre- 
 quently observed to know what he had learned from 
 others, in a short time, better than those by whom he 
 was informed ; and could frequently recollect incidents, 
 with all their combination of circumstances, which few 
 would have regarded at the present time, but which the 
 quickness of his apprehension impressed upon him. He 
 had the peculiar felicity that his attention never deserted 
 him ; he was present to every object, and regardful of 
 the most trifling occurrences. He had the art of es- 
 caping from his own reflections, and accommodating 
 himself to every new scene. To this quality is to be 
 imputed the extent of his knowledge, compared with the 
 small time which he spent in visible endeavours to ac- 
 quire it. He mingled in cursory conversation with the same 
 steadiness of attention as others apply to a lecture ; and 
 amidst the appearance of thoughtless gaiety, lost no new 
 idea that was started, nor any hint that could be improved.
 
 8o PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 X. 
 
 GOLDSMITH. 
 
 " No sir," replied I, " I am for liberty, that attribute of 
 gods ! Glorious liberty ! That theme of modern de- 
 clamation I would have all men kings. I would be a 
 king myself. We have all naturally an equal right to the 
 throne ; we are all originally equal. This is my opinion, 
 and was once the opinion of a set of honest men who were 
 called Levellers. They tried to erect themselves into a 
 community where all should be equally free. But alas ! 
 it would never answer ; for there were some among them 
 stronger, and some more cunning than others, and these 
 became masters of the rest ; for as sure as your groom 
 rides your horses, because he is a cunninger animal than 
 they, so surely will the animal that is cunninger or 
 stronger than he sit upon his shoulders in turn. Since, 
 then, it is entailed upon humanity to submit, and some 
 are born to command and some to obey, the question is, 
 as there must be tyrants, whether it is better to have 
 them in the same house with us, or in the same village, 
 or still farther off, in the metropolis. Now, sir, for my 
 own part, as I naturally hate the face of a tyrant, the 
 farther off he is removed from me, the better pleased am 
 I. The generality of mankind are also of my way of 
 thinking, and have unanimously createrl one king, whose 
 election at once diminishes the number of tyrants, and 
 puts tyranny at the greatest distance from the greatest 
 number of people. Now the great who were tyrants 
 themselves before the election of one tyrant, are naturally
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 81 
 
 averse to a power raised over them, and whose weight 
 must ever lean heaviest on the subordinate orders. It 
 is the interest of the great, therefore, to diminish kingly 
 power as much as possible ; because whatever they take 
 from that, is naturally restored to themselves ; and all 
 they have to do in the state is to undermine the single 
 tyrant, by which they resume their primeval authority." 
 
 XL 
 HORACE WALPOLE. 
 
 I have made several more notes to the new Topography, 
 but none of consequence enough to transcribe. It is 
 well it is a book only for the adept, or the scorners 
 would often laugh. Mr. Gough, speaking of some cross 
 that has been removed, says there is now an unmeaning 
 market-house in its place. Saving his reverence and 
 our prejudices, I doubt there is a good deal more 
 meaning in a market-house than in a cross. They 
 tell me that there are numberless mistakes. Mr. 
 Pennant, whom I saw yesterday, says so. He is not one 
 of our plodders ; rather the other extreme. His corporal 
 spirits (for I cannot call them animal) do not allow him 
 to digest anything. He gave a round jump from orni- 
 thology to antiquity and, as if they had any relation, 
 thought he understood everything that lay between 
 them. These adventures divert me, who am got on 
 shore, and find how sweet it is to look back on those 
 who are toiling in deep waters, whether in ships or cock- 
 
 G
 
 82 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 boats, or on old rotten planks .... Captain Grose's 
 dissertations are as dull and silly as if they were written 
 for the Ostrogoth maps of the beginning of the new 
 Topography; and which are so square and so incom- 
 prehensible that they look as if they were ichnographies 
 of the New Jerusalem. I am delighted with having done 
 with the professions of author and printer, and intend to 
 be most comfortably lazy, I was going to say idle (but 
 that would not be new) for the rest of my days. 
 
 XII. 
 HUME. 
 
 The character of this prince, as that of most men, was 
 mixed : but his virtues predominated extremely above 
 his vices, or, more properly speaking, his imperfections ; 
 for scarce any of his faults rose to that pitch as to merit 
 the appellation of vices. He deserves the epithet of a 
 good, rather than of a great man ; and was more fitted 
 to rule in a regular established government, than either 
 to give way to the encroachments of a popular assembly, 
 or finally to subdue their pretensions. He wanted sup- 
 pleness and dexterity sufficient for the first measure ; he 
 was not endowed with the vigour requisite for the second. 
 Had he been born an absolute prince, his humanity and 
 good sense had rendered his name happy, and his 
 memory precious : had the limitations on prerogative 
 been, in his time, quite fixed and certain, his integrity 
 had made him regard, as sacred, the boundaries of 
 the constitution. Unhappily, his fate threw him into a
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 83 
 
 period, when the precedents of many former reigns 
 savoured strongly of arbitrary power, and the genius of 
 the people ran violently towards liberty. 
 
 XIII. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 With a detail of his private character we must set 
 bounds to our panegyric on Charles. The other parts 
 of his conduct may admit of some apology, but can 
 deserve small applause. He was, indeed, so much fitted 
 for private life preferably to public, that he even possessed 
 order, frugality, and economy, in the former; was pro- 
 fuse, thoughtless, and negligent, in the latter. When we 
 consider him as a sovereign, his character, though not 
 altogether destitute of virtue, was in the main dangerous 
 to his people, and dishonourable to himself. Negligent of 
 the interests of the nation, jealous of its liberty, lavish 
 of its treasure, sparing only of its blood : he exposed it 
 by his measures, though he ever appeared but in sport, 
 to the danger of a furious civil war, and even to the ruin 
 and ignominy of a foreign conquest. Yet may all these 
 enormities, if fairly and candidly examined, be imputed 
 in a great measure to the indolence of his temper; a 
 fault which, however unfortunate in a monarch, it is im- 
 possible for us to regard with great severity.
 
 84 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 XIV. 
 BURKE. 
 
 There is a dreadful schism in the British nation. 
 Since we are not able to reunite the empire, it is our 
 business to give all possible vigour and soundness to 
 those parts of it which are still content to be governed 
 by our councils. Sir, it is proper to inform you that our 
 measures must be healing. Such a degree of strength 
 must be communicated to all the members of the state, 
 as may enable them to defend themselves, and to co- 
 operate in the defence of the whole. Their temper too 
 must be managed, and their good affections cultivated. 
 They may then be disposed to bear the load with cheer- 
 fulness, as a contribution towards what may be called 
 with truth and propriety, and not by an empty form of 
 words, a common cause. Too little dependence cannot 
 be had, at this time of day, on names and prejudices. 
 The eyes of mankind are opened ; and communities 
 must be held together by an evident and solid interest. 
 God forbid, that our conduct should demonstrate to the 
 world that Great Britain can in no instance whatsoever 
 be brought to a sense of rational and equitable policy, 
 but by coercion and force of arms ! 
 
 XV. 
 
 THE SAME. 
 
 Nor is it the worst effect of this unnatural contention 
 that our laws are corrupted. Whilst manners remain
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 85 
 
 entire, they will correct the vices of law, and soften it at 
 length to their own temper. But we have to lament that 
 in most of the late proceedings we see very few traces of 
 that generosity, humanity, and dignity of mind, which 
 formerly characterized this nation. War suspends the 
 rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is 
 in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars strike 
 deepest of all into the manners of the people. They 
 vitiate their politics; they corrupt their morals; they 
 pervert even the natural taste and relish of equity and 
 justice. By teaching us to consider our fellow-citizens 
 in a hostile light, the whole body of our nation becomes 
 gradually less dear to us. The very names of affection 
 and kindred, which were the bond of charity whilst we 
 agreed, become new incentives to hatred and rage, when 
 the community of our country is dissolved. We may 
 flatter ourselves that we shall not fall into this misfortune. 
 But we have no charter of exemption, that I know of, 
 from the ordinary frailties of human nature. 
 
 XVI. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 I entirely agree with you that in all probability we owe 
 our whole constitution to the restoration of the English 
 monarchy. The state of things from which Monk 
 relieved England was, however, by no means at that 
 time so deplorable in any sense as yours is now, and 
 under the present sway is likely to continue. Cromwell 
 had delivered England from anarchy. His government,
 
 86 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 though military and despotic, had been regular and 
 orderly. Under the iron, and under the yoke, the soil 
 yielded its produce. After his death, the evils of anarchy 
 were rather dreaded than felt. Every man was yet safe 
 in his house and in his property. But it must be ad- 
 mitted that Monk freed this nation from great and just 
 apprehensions both of future anarchy and of probable 
 tyranny in some form or <*ther. The king whom he gave 
 us was indeed the very reverse of your benignant sove- 
 reign, who, in reward for his attempt to bestow liberty on 
 his subjects, languishes himself in prison. The person 
 given us by Monk was a man without any sense of his 
 duty as a prince, without any regard to the dignity of his 
 crown, without any love of his people ; dissolute, false, 
 venal, and destitute of any positive good quality what- 
 ever, except a pleasant temper, and the manners of a 
 gentleman. Yet the restoration of the monarchy, even 
 in the person of such a prince, was everything to us ; for 
 without monarchy in England, most certainly we never 
 can enjoy either peace or liberty. 
 
 XVII. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 There is a courageous wisdom : there is also a false, 
 reptile prudence, the result, not of caution, but of fear. 
 Under misfortunes it often happens that the nerves of 
 the understanding are so relaxed, the pressing peril of 
 the hour so completely confounds all the faculties, that 
 no future danger can be properly provided for, can be
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 87 
 
 justly estimated, can be so much as fully seen. The 
 eye of the mind is dazzled and vanquished. An abject 
 distrust of ourselves, an extravagant admiration of the 
 enemy, present us with no hope but in a compromise 
 with his pride, by a submission to his will. This short 
 plan of policy is the only counsel which will obtain a 
 hearing. We plunge into a dark gulf with all the vast 
 precipitation of fear. The nature of courage is, without 
 a question, to be conversant with danger ; but in the 
 palpable night of their terrors, men under consternation 
 suppose, not that it is the danger which, by a true 
 instinct, calls out the courage to resist it, but that it is 
 the courage which produces the danger. They therefore 
 seek for a refuge from their fears in the fears themselves, 
 and consider a temporizing meanness as the only source 
 of safety. 
 
 A great state is too much envied, too much dreaded, 
 to find safety in humiliation. To be secure, it must be 
 respected. Power, and eminence, and consideration, are 
 things not to be begged. They must be commanded ; 
 and they who supplicate for mercy from others can never 
 hope for justice through themselves. 
 
 XVIII. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 Deprived of the old government, deprived in a manner 
 of all government, France, fallen as a monarchy, to 
 common speculators might have appeared more likely 
 to be an object of pity or insult, according to the dis-
 
 88 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 position of the circumjacent powers, than to be the 
 scourge and terror of them all ; but out of the tomb of 
 the murdered monarchy in France has arisen a vast, 
 tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise 
 than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagina- 
 tion, and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight 
 forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by 
 remorse, despising all common maxims and all common 
 means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who 
 could not believe it was possible she could at all exist, 
 except on the principles which habit rather than nature 
 had persuaded them were necessary to their own par- 
 ticular welfare, and to their own ordinary modes of 
 action. But the constitution of any political being, as 
 well as that of any physical being, ought to be known, 
 before one can venture to say what is fit for its conser- 
 vation, or what is the proper means of its power. The 
 poison of other states is the food of the new republic. 
 That bankruptcy, the very apprehension of which is one 
 of the causes assigned for the fall of the monarchy, was 
 the capital on which she opened her traffic with the 
 world. 
 
 XIX. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they 
 vote under the dominion of a stern necessity. They sit 
 in the heart, as it were, of a foreign republic ; they have 
 their residence in a city whose constitution has emanated 
 neither from the charter of their king, nor from their
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 89 
 
 legislative power. There they are surrounded by an 
 army not raised either by the authority of the crown, or 
 by their command ; and which, if they should order it 
 to dissolve itself would instantly dissolve them. There 
 they sit, after a gang of assassins had driven away some 
 hundreds of the members ; whilst those who held the 
 same moderate principles, with more patience or better 
 hope, continued every day exposed to outrageous insults 
 and murderous threats. There a majority, sometimes 
 real, sometimes pretended, captive itself, compels a 
 captive king to issue as royal edicts, at third hand, the 
 polluted nonsense of their most licentious and giddy 
 coffee-houses. It is notorious that all their measures are 
 decided before they are debated. It is beyond doubt, 
 that under the terror of the bayonet, and the lamp-post, 
 and the torch to their houses, they are obliged to adopt all 
 the crude and desperate measures suggested by clubs com- 
 posed of a monstrous medley of all conditions, tongues, and 
 nations. Among these are found persons, in comparison 
 of whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and 
 Cethegus a man of sobriety and moderation . . . The 
 assembly, their organ, acts before them the farce of de- 
 liberation with as little decency as liberty. They act 
 like the comedians of a fair before a riotous audience ; 
 they act amidst the tumultuous cries of a mixed mob or 
 ferocious men, and of women lost to shame, who, ac- 
 cording to their insolent fancies, direct, control, applaud, 
 explode them, and sometimes mix and take their seats 
 among them ; domineering over them with a strange 
 mixture of servile petulance and proud presumptuous 
 authority.
 
 90 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 XX. 
 
 THE SAME. 
 
 All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and 
 chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and me- 
 chanical politicians who have no place among us ; a sort 
 of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross 
 and material ; and who therefore, far from being qualified 
 to be directors in the great movement of empire, are not 
 fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly 
 initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master 
 principles, which, in the opinion of such men as I have 
 mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth 
 everything and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not 
 seldom the truest wisdom : and a great empire and little 
 minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our situa- 
 tion, and glow with zeal to fill our places as becomes 
 our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our 
 public proceedings on America, with the old warning of 
 the church Sursum corda ! We ought to elevate our 
 minds to the greatness of that trust to which Providence 
 has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high 
 calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness 
 into a glorious empire ; and have made the most ex- 
 tensive, and the only honourable conquests, not by 
 destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, 
 the happiness of the human race.
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 91 
 
 XXI. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 But it is no reason, because there is a bad mode of 
 enquiry, that there should be no examination at all. 
 Most certainly it is our duty to examine ; it is our interest 
 too. But it must be with discretion ; with an attention 
 to all the circumstances and to all the motives; like 
 sound judges, and not like cavilling pettifoggers and 
 quibbling pleaders, prying into flaws and hunting for ex- 
 ceptions. Look, gentlemen, at the whole tenor of your 
 member's conduct. Try whether his ambition or his 
 avarice have justled him out of the straight line of duty ; 
 or whether that grand foe to the offices of active life, 
 that master-vice in men of business, a degenerate and 
 inglorious sloth, has made him flag and languish in his 
 course ? This is the object of our enquiry. If our 
 member's conduct can bear this touch, mark it for 
 sterling. He may have fallen into error ; he must have 
 faults ; but our error is greater, and our fault is radically 
 ruinous to ourselves, if we do not bear, if we do not 
 even applaud, the whole compound and mixed mass of 
 such a character. Not to act thus is folly ; I had almost 
 said it is impiety. He censures God, who quarrels with 
 the imperfections of men.
 
 92 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 THE SAME. 
 
 But if I profess all this impolitic stubbornness, I may 
 chance never to be elected into Parliament. It is cer- 
 tainly not pleasing to be put out of the public service. 
 But I wish to be a member of Parliament, to have my 
 share of doing good and resisting evil. It would there- 
 fore be absurd to renounce my objects in order to 
 obtain my seat. I deceive myself indeed most grossly, 
 if I had not much rather pass the remainder of my life 
 hidden in the recesses of the deepest obscurity, feeding 
 my mind even with the visions and imaginations of such 
 things, than to be placed on the most splendid throne in 
 the universe, tantalized with a denial of the practice of 
 all which can make the greatest situation any other 
 than the greatest curse. Gentlemen, I have had my 
 day. I can never sufficiently express my gratitude to 
 you for having set me in a place wherein I could lend 
 the slightest help to great and laudable designs. If by 
 my vote I have aided in securing to families the best 
 possession, peace ; if I have joined in reconciling kings 
 to their subjects, and subjects to their prince ; if I have 
 thus taken part with the best of men in the best of their 
 actions ; I can shut the book. I might wish to read a 
 page or two more; but this is enough for my measure, 
 I have not lived in vain.
 
 PASSAGES FOX TRANSLATION. 93 
 
 XXIII. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 There is nothing more memorable in history than the 
 actions, fortunes, and character of this great man, whether 
 we consider the grandeur of the plans he formed, the 
 courage and wisdom with which they were executed, 
 or the splendour of that success, which adorning his 
 youth continued without the smallest reserve to support 
 his age even to the last moments of his life. He lived 
 above seventy years, and reigned, within ten years, as 
 long as he lived sixty over his dukedom, above twenty 
 over England both of which he acquired or kept by 
 his own magnanimity, with hardly any other title than 
 he derived from his arms ; so that he might be reputed 
 in all respects as happy as the highest ambition the most 
 fully gratified can make a man. The silent inward 
 satisfaction of domestic happiness he neither had nor 
 sought. He had a body suited to the character of his 
 mind ; erect, firm, large, and active, whilst to be active 
 was a praise ; a countenance stern, and which became 
 command. Magnificent in his living, reserved in his 
 conversation, grave in his common deportment, but 
 relaxing with a wise facetiousness, he knew how to relieve 
 his mind, and preserve his dignity ; for he never forfeited 
 by a personal acquaintance that esteem he had acquired 
 by his great actions.
 
 94 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 THE SAME. 
 
 And now, having done my duty to the bill, let me say 
 a word to the author. I should leave him to his own 
 noble sentiments, if the unworthy and illiberal language 
 with which he has been treated, beyond all example of 
 parliamentary liberty, did not make a few words neces- 
 sary; not so much in justice to him, as to my own 
 feelings. I must say, then, that it will be a distinction 
 honourable to the age, that the rescue of the greatest 
 number of the human race that ever were so grievously 
 oppressed, from the greatest tyranny that was ever exer- 
 cised, has fallen to the lot of abilities and dispositions 
 equal to the task ; that it has fallen to one who has the 
 enlargement to comprehend, the spirit to undertake, and 
 the eloquence to support, so great a measure of hazardous 
 benevolence. His spirit is not owing to his ignorance 
 of the state of men and things ; he well knows what 
 snares are spread about his path, from personal animosity, 
 from court intrigues, and possibly from popular delusion. 
 But he has put to hazard his ease, his security, his 
 interest, his power, even his darling popularity, for the 
 benefit of a people whom he has never seen. This is the 
 road that all heroes have trod before him. He is tra- 
 duced and abused for his supposed motives. He will 
 remember that obloquy is a necessary ingredient in the 
 composition of all true glory : he will remember, that it 
 was not only in the Roman customs, but it is in the
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 95 
 
 nature and constitution of things, that calumny and 
 abuse are essential parts of triumph. These thoughts 
 will support a mind, which only exists for honour, under 
 the burden of temporary reproach. He is doing, indeed, 
 a great good ; such as rarely falls to the lot, and almost 
 as rarely coincides with the desires, of any men. Let 
 him use his time. Let him give the whole length of the 
 reins to his benevolence. He is now on a great eminence, 
 where the eyes of mankind are turned to him. He may 
 live long, he may do much. But here is the summit. 
 He never can exceed what he does this day. 
 
 XXV. 
 GIBBON. 
 
 Our estimate of personal merit is relative to the 
 common faculties of mankind. The aspiring efforts of 
 genius or virtue, either in active or speculative life, are 
 measured not so much by their real elevation as by the 
 height to which they ascend above the level of their age 
 or country ; and the same stature which in a people of 
 giants would pass unnoticed, must appear conspicuous 
 in a race of pigmies. Leonidas and his three hundred 
 companions devoted their lives at Thermopylae ; but the 
 education of the infant, the boy, and the man, had pre- 
 pared and almost ensured this memorable sacrifice ; and 
 each Spartan would approve, rather than admire, an act 
 of duty of which himself and eight thousand of his fellow- 
 citizens were equally capable. The great Pompey might 
 inscribe on his trophies that he had defeated in battle
 
 96 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 two millions of enemies, and reduced fifteen hundred 
 cities from the Lake Maeotis to the Red Sea : but the 
 fortune of Rome flew before his eagles ; the nations were 
 oppressed by their own fears ; and the invincible legions 
 which he commanded had been formed by the habits of 
 conquest and the discipline of ages. In this view the 
 character of Belisarius may be deservedly placed above 
 the heroes of the ancient republics. His imperfections 
 flowed from the contagion of the times ; his virtues were 
 his own, the free gift of nature or reflection ; he raised 
 himself without a master or a rival ; and so inadequate 
 were the arms committed to his hand, that his sole ad- 
 vantage was derived from the pride and presumption of 
 his adversaries. 
 
 XXVI. 
 G RATTAN. 
 
 That man preferred this country and our religion, and 
 brought to both a genius superior to what he found in 
 either ; he called forth the latent virtues of the human 
 heart, and taught men to discover in themselves a mine 
 of charity of which the proprietors had become uncon- 
 scious ; in feeding the lamp of charity, he had almost 
 exhausted the lamp of life ; he comes to interrupt the 
 repose of the pulpit, and shakes one world with the 
 thunder of the other . . . What reward? . . . The 
 curse of Swift is upon him, to have been bom an Irish- 
 man ; to have possessed a genius, and to have used his
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 97 
 
 talents for the good of his country. Had this man, instead 
 of being the brightest of preachers, been the dullest of 
 lawyers ; had he added to dulness venality, had he aggra- 
 vated the crime of venality, and sold his vote, he had 
 been a judge. . . . But under the present system, Ire- 
 land is not the element in which a native genius can rise 
 unless he sells that genius to the court, and atones by the 
 apostasy of his conduct for the crime of his nativity. 
 
 XXVII. 
 aCONNELL. 
 
 Have you heard of Abercrombie, the valiant and the 
 good, he who, mortally wounded, neglected his wound 
 until victory was ascertained he who allowed his life's 
 stream to flow unnoticed because his country's battle was 
 in suspense he who died the martyr of victory he who 
 commenced the career of glory on the land, and taught 
 French insolence, than which there is nothing more per- 
 manent, that the British and Irish soldier was as much 
 his superior by land as the sailor was confessedly by sea 
 he, in short, who commenced that career which has 
 since placed the Irish Wellington on the pinnacle of 
 glory? Abercrombie and Moore were in Ireland under 
 Camden. Moore, too, has since fallen at the moment of 
 triumph, Moore, the best of sons, of brothers, of friends, 
 of men, the soldier and the scholar, the soul of reason 
 and the heart of pity. Moore has, in documents of which 
 you may plead ignorance, left his opinions upon record 
 
 H
 
 98 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 with respect to the cruelty of Camden's administration. 
 But you all have heard of Abercrombie's proclamation, 
 for it amounted to that : he proclaimed that cruelty in 
 terms the most unequivocal ; he stated to the soldiery 
 and to the nation that the conduct of the Camden ad- 
 ministration had rendered " the soldiery formidable to all 
 but the enemy." 
 
 XXVIII. 
 DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Great as Caesar was by benefit of his original nature, 
 there can be no doubt that he, like others, owed some- 
 thing to circumstances ; and perhaps, amongst those 
 which were most favourable to the premature develop- 
 ment of great self-dependence, we must reckon the early 
 death of his father. It is, or it is not, according to the 
 nature of men, an advantage to be orphaned at an early 
 age. Perhaps utter orphanage is rarely or never such ; 
 but to lose a father betimes may, under appropriate cir- 
 cumstances, profit a strong mind greatly. To Caesar it 
 was a prodigious benefit that he lost his father when not 
 much more than fifteen. Perhaps it was an advantage 
 also to his father that he died thus early. Had he stayed 
 a year longer, he might have seen himself despised, 
 baffled, and made ridiculous. For where, let us ask, in 
 any age, was the father capable of sustaining that relation 
 to the unique Gaius Julius to him, in the appropriate 
 language of Shakespeare, " the foremost man of all this 
 world"? And, in this fine and Caesarean line, "this
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 99 
 
 world" is to be understood not of the order of coexistences 
 merely, but also of the order of successions ; he was the 
 foremost man not only of his contemporaries, but within 
 his own intellectual class of men generally of all that 
 ever should come after him, or should sit on thrones 
 under the denominations of Czars, Kesars, or Caesars of 
 the Bosporus and the Danube ; of all in every age that 
 should inherit his supremacy of mind, or should subject 
 to themselves the generations of ordinary men by qualities 
 analogous to his. 
 
 XXIX. 
 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 My dear Manning : The general scope of your letter 
 afforded no indications of insanity, but some particular 
 points raised a scruple. For God's sake, don't think 
 any more of " Independent Tartary." Think what a sad 
 pity it would be to bury such parts in heathen countries, 
 among nasty, unconversable Tartar people ! Some say 
 they are cannibals ; and then conceive a Tartar fellow 
 eating my friend, and adding the cool malignity of 
 mustard and vinegar ! I am afraid 'tis the reading of 
 Chaucer has misled you ; his foolish stories about Cam- 
 buscan, and the ring, and the horse of brass. Believe 
 me, there are no such things. The Tartars really are a 
 cold, insipid set. . . . You'll be sadly moped, if you are 
 not eaten, among them. Pray try and cure yourself. 
 Take hellebore. Shave yourself oftener. Accustom 
 yourself to write familiar letters on common subjects to
 
 ioo PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 your friends in England, such as are of a moderate under- 
 standing. God bless you. Air and exercise may do 
 great things. 
 
 Your sincere friend, 
 
 C. LAMB. 
 
 XXX. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 The true poet dreams being awake. He is not 
 possessed by his subject, but has dominion over it. In 
 the groves of Eden he walks familiar as in his native 
 paths. He ascends the empyrean heaven, and is not 
 intoxicated. He treads the burning marl without dismay; 
 he wings his flight without self-loss through realms of 
 chaos and "old night." Or, if abandoning himself to that 
 severer chaos of " a human mind untuned," he is content 
 awhile to be mad with Lear, or to hate mankind (a sort 
 of madness) with Timon, neither is that madness, nor 
 this misanthropy, so unchecked, but that never letting 
 the reins of reason wholly go, while most he seems to do 
 so he has his better genius still whispering at his ear, 
 with the good servant Kent suggesting saner counsels, or 
 with the honest steward Flavius recommending kindlier 
 resolutions. Where he seems most to recede from 
 humanity, he will be found the truest to it. From beyond 
 the scope of Nature to summon possible existences, he 
 subjugates them to the law of her consistency. He is 
 beautifully loyal to that sovereign directress, even when 
 he appears most to betray and desert her.
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 101 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 THE SAME. 
 
 In the criminal characters in Shakespeare so little do 
 the actions comparatively affect us, that while the im- 
 pulses, the inner mind in all its perverted greatness, solely 
 seems real and is exclusively attended to, the crime is 
 comparatively nothing. But when we see these things 
 represented, the acts which they do are comparatively 
 everything, their impulses nothing. The state of sublime 
 emotion into which we are elevated by those images of 
 night and horror which Macbeth is made to utter, that 
 solemn prelude with which he entertains the time till the 
 bell shall strike which is to call him to murder Duncan, 
 when we no longer read it in a book, when we have given 
 up that vantage-ground of abstraction which reading 
 possesses over seeing, and come to see a man in his 
 bodily shape before our eyes actually preparing to commit 
 a murder, if the acting be true and impressive, as I have 
 witnessed it in Mr. Kemble's performance of that part, 
 the painful anxiety about the act, the natural longing to 
 prevent it while it yet seems unperpetrated, the too close 
 pressing semblance of reality, give a pain and an uneasi- 
 ness which totally destroy all the delight which the words 
 in the book convey, where the deed doing never presses 
 upon us with the painful sense of presence ; it rather 
 seems to belong to history, to something past and inevi- 
 table, if it has anything to do with time at all. The sublime 
 images, the poetry alone, is that which is present to our 
 minds in the reading.
 
 102 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 XXXII. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 Yet, noble as the whole passage is, it must be confessed 
 that the manner of it, compared with Shakespeare's first 
 scenes, is faint and languid. Its motion is circular, not 
 progressive. Each line revolves on itself in a sort of 
 separate orbit. They do not join into one another like a 
 running hand. Fletcher's ideas moved slow ; his versi- 
 fication, though sweet, is tedious, it stops at every turn ; 
 he lays line upon line, making up one after the other, 
 adding image to image so deliberately, that we see their 
 junctures. Shakespeare mingles everything, runs line into 
 line, embarrasses sentences and metaphors ; before one 
 idea has burst its shell, another is hatched and clamours 
 for disclosure. Another striking difference between 
 Fletcher and Shakespeare is the fondness of the former 
 for unnatural and violent situations. He seems to have 
 thought that nothing great could be produced in an 
 ordinary way. The chief incidents in some of his 
 most admired tragedies show this. Shakespeare had 
 nothing of this contortion in his mind, none of that 
 craving after violent situations, and flights of strained and 
 improbable virtue, which I think always betrays an im- 
 perfect moral sensibility. The wit of Fletcher is excellent, 
 like his serious scenes, but there is something strained 
 and far-fetched in both. He is too mistrustful of nature ; 
 he always goes a little on one side of her. Shakespeare 
 chose her without reserve, and had riches, power, un- 
 derstanding, and length of days with her for a dowry.
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 103 
 
 XXXIII. 
 LANDOR. 
 
 Without the sublime, we have said before, there can 
 be no poet of the first order ; but the pathetic may exist 
 in the secondary ; for tears are more easily drawn forth 
 than souls are raised. So easily are they on some 
 occasions, that the poetical power needs scarcely be 
 brought into action ; while on others the pathetic is the 
 very summit of sublimity. We have an example of it in 
 the Ariadne of Catullus ; we have another in the Priam 
 of Homer. All the heroes and gods, debating and 
 fighting, vanish before the father of Hector in the tent 
 of Achilles, and before the storm of conflicting passions 
 his sorrows and prayers excite. But neither in the 
 spirited and energetic Catullus, nor in the masculine and 
 scornful and stern Lucretius, no, nor in Homer, is there 
 anything so impassioned, and therefore so sublime, as 
 the last hour of Dido in the Aeneid. Admirably as two 
 Greek poets have represented the tenderness, the anguish, 
 the terrific wrath and vengeance of Medea, all the works 
 they ever wrote contain not the poetry which Virgil has 
 condensed into about a hundred verses, omitting, as we 
 must, those which drop like icicles from the rigid lips of 
 Aeneas, and also the similes, which here as everywhere 
 sadly interfere with passion. In this place Virgil fought 
 his battle of Actium, which left him poetical supremacy 
 in the Roman world, whatever mutinies and conspiracies 
 may have arisen against him in Germany and elsewhere.
 
 104 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 HALLAM. 
 
 Those who know the conduct and character of the Earl 
 of Strafford, his abuse of power in the North, his far 
 more outrageous transgressions in Ireland, his dangerous 
 influence over the king's counsels, cannot hesitate to 
 admit, if indeed they profess any regard to the constitu- 
 tion of this kingdom, that to bring so great a delinquent 
 to justice according to the known process of law, was 
 among the primary duties of the new parliament. It 
 was that which all, with scarce an exception but among 
 his own creatures (for most of the court were openly or 
 in secret his enemies) ardently desired ; yet which the 
 king's favour and his own commanding genius must have 
 rendered a doubtful enterprise. He came to London, 
 not unconscious of the danger, by his master's direct 
 injunctions. The first days of the session were critical ; 
 and any vacillation or delay in the commons might 
 probably have given time for some strong exercise of 
 power to frustrate their designs. We must therefore 
 consider the bold suggestion of Pym, to carry up to the 
 lords an impeachment for high treason against Strafford, 
 not only as a masterstroke of that policy which is fittest 
 for revolutions, but as justifiable by the circumstances 
 wherein they stood.
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 105 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 THE SAME. 
 
 In analyzing the characters of heroes it is hardly 
 possible to separate altogether the share of fortune from 
 their own. The epoch made by Charlemagne in the 
 history of the world, the illustrious families which prided 
 themselves in him as their progenitor, the very legends 
 of romance, which are full of his fabulous exploits, have 
 cast a lustre around his head, and testify the greatness 
 that has embodied itself in his name. None, indeed, of 
 Charlemagne's wars can be compared with the Saracenic 
 victory of Charles Martel ; but that was a contest for 
 freedom, his for conquest ; and fame is more partial to 
 successful aggression than to patriotic resistance. As a 
 scholar, his acquisitions were probably little superior to 
 those of his unrespected son ; and in several points of 
 view the glory of Charlemagne might be extenuated by an 
 analytical dissection. But, rejecting a mode of judging 
 equally uncandid and fallacious, we shall find that he 
 possessed in everything that grandeur of conception 
 which distinguishes extraordinary minds. Like Alex- 
 ander, he seemed born for universal innovation : in a 
 life restlessly active, we see him reforming the coinage 
 and establishing the legal divisions of money ; gathering 
 about him the learned of every country ; founding schools 
 and collecting libraries ; aiming, though prematurely, at 
 the formation of a naval force ; attempting, for the sake 
 of commerce, the magnificent enterprise of uniting the
 
 io6 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 Rhine and Danube ; and meditatingj to mould the dis- 
 cordant codes of Roman and barbarian laws into an 
 uniform system. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 It is a singular part of Cromwell's system of policy, 
 that he would neither reign with parliaments nor without 
 them ; impatient of an opposition which he was sure to 
 experience, he still never seems to have meditated the 
 attainment of a naked and avowed despotism. This 
 was probably due to his observation of the ruinous con- 
 sequences that Charles had brought on himself by that 
 course, and his knowledge of the temper of the English, 
 never content without the exterior forms of liberty, as 
 well as to the suggestions of counsellors who were not 
 destitute of concern for the laws. He had also his great 
 design yet to accomplish, which could only be safely 
 done under the sanction of a parliament. A very short 
 time, accordingly, before his death, we find that he had 
 not only resolved to meet once more the representatives 
 of the nation, but was tampering with several of the 
 leading officers to obtain their consent to an hereditary 
 succession. The majority however of a council of nine, 
 to whom he referred this suggestion, would only consent 
 that the protector for the time being should have the 
 power of nominating his successor; a vain attempt to 
 escape from that regal form of government which they 
 had been taught to abhor.
 
 PASSAGES FOK TRANSLATION. 107 
 
 XXXVII. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 Few personages in history have had so much of their 
 actions revealed and commented upon as James ; it is 
 perhaps a mortifying truth that those who have stood 
 highest with posterity have seldom been those who have 
 been most accurately known. 
 
 The turn of his mind was rather peculiar, and laid him 
 open, with some justice, to very opposite censures for 
 an extreme obstinacy in retaining his opinion, and for 
 an excessive facility in adopting that of others. But the 
 apparent incongruity ceases, when we observe that he 
 was tenacious of ends, and irresolute as to means; better 
 fitted to reason than to act ; never swerving from a few 
 main principles, but diffident of his own judgment in its 
 application to the course of affairs. His chief talent was 
 an acuteness in dispute ; a talent not usually much 
 exercised by kings, but which the strange events of his 
 life called into action. He had, unfortunately for himself, 
 gone into the study most fashionable in that age, of 
 polemical theology ; and, though not at all learned, had 
 read enough of the English divines to maintain their side 
 of the current controversies with much dexterity. But 
 this unkingly talent was a poor compensation for the 
 continual mistakes of his judgment in the art of govern- 
 ment and the conduct of his affairs.
 
 108 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 It would surely be erroneous to conceive that many 
 acts of government in the four preceding reigns had not 
 appeared at the time arbitrary and unconstitutional. 
 If indeed we are not mistaken in judging them accord- 
 ing to the ancient law, they must have been viewed in 
 the same light by contemporaries, who were full as able 
 to try them by that standard. But, to repeat what I 
 have once before said, the extant documents from which 
 we draw our knowledge of constitutional history under 
 those reigns are so scanty, that instances even of a suc- 
 cessful parliamentary resistance to measures of the crown 
 may have left no memorial. . . . Camden, writing to 
 the next generation, though far from an ingenuous 
 historian, is somewhat less under restraint. This forced 
 silence of history is much more to be suspected after the 
 use of printing and the Reformation, than in the ages 
 when monks compiled annals in the convents, reckless 
 of the censure of courts, because independent of their 
 permission. Grosser ignorance of public transactions is 
 undoubtedly to be found in the chronicles of the middle 
 ages ; but far less of that deliberate mendacity, or that 
 insidious suppression, by which fear, and flattery, and 
 hatred, and the thirst of gain, have since the invention 
 of printing, corrupted so much of historical literature 
 throughout Europe.
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION, 109 
 
 XXXIX. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 It was now perhaps too late for the king, by any reform 
 or concession, to regain that public esteem which he had 
 forfeited. Deceived by an overweening opinion of his 
 own learning, which was not inconsiderable, of his general 
 abilities, which were far from contemptible, and his 
 capacity for government, which was very small, ... he 
 had wholly overlooked the real difficulties of his position; 
 as a foreigner, rather distantly connected with the royal 
 stock, and as a native of a hostile and hateful kingdom, 
 come to succeed the most renowned of sovereigns, and 
 to grasp a sceptre which deep policy and long experience 
 had taught her admirably to wield. The people were 
 proud of martial glory ; he spoke only of the blessing 
 of the peace-makers : they abhorred the court of Spain ; 
 he sought its friendship : they asked indulgence for 
 scrupulous consciences ; he would bear no deviation 
 from conformity : . . . they had been used to the 
 utmost frugality in dispensing the public treasure ; he 
 squandered it on unworthy favourites : they had seen at 
 least exterior decency of morals prevail in the queen's 
 court ; they now only heard of its dissoluteness and ex- 
 travagance : they had imbibed an exclusive fondness for 
 the common law, the source of their liberties and pri- 
 vileges ; the churchmen and courtiers, but none more 
 than himself, talked of absolute power and the impre- 
 scriptible rights of monarchy.
 
 no PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 XL. 
 
 THE SAME. 
 
 The peace of Constance presented a noble opportunity 
 to the Lombards of establishing a permanent federal 
 union of small republics a form of government congenial 
 from the earliest ages to Italy, and that perhaps under 
 which she is again destined one day to flourish. They 
 were entitled by the provisions of that treaty to preserve 
 their league, the basis of a more perfect confederacy which 
 the cause of events would have emancipated from every 
 kind of subjection to Germany. But dark long-cherished 
 hatreds, and that implacable vindictiveness which, at 
 least in former ages, distinguished the private manners 
 of Italy, deformed her national character, which can 
 only be the aggregate of individual passions. For revenge 
 she threw away the pearl of great price, and sacrificed 
 even the recollection of that liberty which had stalked 
 like an avenging spirit among the ruins of Milan. It 
 passed away, that high disdain of absolute power, that 
 steadiness and self-devotion which raised the half-civilized 
 Lombards to the level of the ancient republics from 
 whose history our first notions of freedom and virtue are 
 derived. The victim by turns of selfish and sanguinary 
 factions, of petty tyrants, and of foreign invaders, Italy 
 has fallen like a star from its place in heaven ; she has 
 seen her harvests trodden down by the horses of the 
 stranger, and the blood of her children wasted in quarrels
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. in 
 
 not their own : conquering or conquered, in the indignant 
 language of her poet, still alike a s/ave, a long retribution 
 for the tyranny of Rome. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 MACAU LAY. 
 
 It is impossible to deny that they committed many 
 acts which would justly bring upon a statesman of our 
 time censures of the most serious kind. But, when we 
 consider the state of morality in their age, and the unscru- 
 pulous character of the adversaries against whom they 
 had to contend, we are forced to admit that it is not 
 without reason that their names are still held in venera- 
 tion by their countrymen. 
 
 There were, doubtless, many diversities in their intel- 
 lectual and moral character. But there was a strong 
 family likeness. The constitution of their minds was 
 remarkably sound. No particular faculty was pre-emi- 
 nently developed, but manly health and vigour were 
 equally diffused throughout the whole. They were men 
 of letters. Their minds were by nature and by exercise 
 well fashioned for speculative pursuits. It was by cir- 
 cumstances, rather than by any strong bias of inclination, 
 that they were led to take a prominent part in active life. 
 In active life, however, no men could be more perfectly 
 free from the faults of mere theorists and pedants. No 
 men observed more accurately the signs of the times. 
 No men had a greater practical acquaintance with human
 
 112 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 nature. Their policy was generally characterized rather 
 by vigilance, by moderation, and by firmness, than by 
 invention, or by the spirit of enterprise. 
 
 XLII. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 Where the play runs so desperately high' as in the 
 seventeenth century, honour is at an end. Statesmen 
 instead of being, as they should be, at once mild and 
 steady, are at once ferocious and inconsistent. The axe 
 is for ever before their eyes. A popular outcry sometimes 
 unnerves them, and sometimes makes them desperate; 
 it drives them to unworthy compliances, or to measures 
 of vengeance as cruel as those which they have reason to 
 expect. A minister in our times need not fear either to 
 be firm or to be merciful. Our old policy in this respect 
 was as absurd as that of the king in the Eastern tale who 
 proclaimed that any physician who pleased might come 
 to court and prescribe for his diseases, but that if the 
 remedies failed the adventurer should lose his head. It 
 is easy to conceive how many able men would refuse to 
 undertake the cure on such conditions ; how much the 
 sense of extreme danger would confuse the perceptions 
 and cloud the intellect of the practitioner at the very 
 crisis which most called for self-possession, and how strong 
 his temptation would be, if he found that he had 
 committed a blunder, to escape the consequences by 
 poisoning his patient.
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 113 
 
 XLIII. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 Chatham, at the time of his decease, had not, in both 
 Houses of Parliament, ten personal adherents. Half the 
 public men of the age had been estranged from him by 
 his errors, and the other half by the exertions which he 
 had made to repair his errors. His last speech had been 
 an attack at once on the policy pursued by the Govern- 
 ment, and on the policy recommended by the Opposition. 
 But death restored him to his old place in the affection 
 of the country. Who could hear unmoved of the fall of 
 that which had been so great, and which had stood so 
 long ! The circumstances, too, seemed rather to belong 
 to the tragic stage than to actual life. A great statesman, 
 full of years and honours, led forth to the Senate House 
 by a son of rare hopes, and stricken down in full council 
 while straining his feeble voice to rouse the drooping 
 spirit of his country, could not but be remembered with 
 peculiar veneration and tenderness. The few detractors 
 who ventured to murmur were silenced by the indignant 
 clamours of a nation which remembered only the lofty 
 genius, the unsullied probity, the undisputed services of 
 him who was no more.
 
 114 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 XLIV. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 His figure, when he first appeared in Parliament, was 
 strikingly graceful and commanding, his features high and 
 noble, his eye full of fire. His voice, even when it sank 
 to a whisper, was heard to the remotest benches ; and 
 when he strained it to its full extent, the sound rose like 
 the swell of the organ of a great cathedral, and shook 
 
 the House with its peal He cultivated all these 
 
 eminent advantages with the most assiduous care. His 
 action is described by a very malignant observer as equal 
 to that of Garrick. His play of countenance was won- 
 derful ; he frequently disconcerted a hostile orator by a 
 single glance of indignation or scorn. Every tone, from 
 the impassioned cry to the thrilling aside, was perfectly at 
 his command. It is by no means improbable that the pains 
 which he took to improve his great personal advantages 
 had, in some respects, a prejudicial operation, and tended 
 to nourish in him that passion for theatrical effect which, 
 as we have already remarked, was one of the most con- 
 spicuous blemishes in his character 
 
 He was no speaker of set speeches. His few prepared 
 
 discourses were complete failures "No man," 
 
 says a critic who had often heard him, " ever knew so 
 little what he was going to say." Indeed, his facility 
 amounted to a vice. He was not the master, but the 
 slave of his own speech.
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 115 
 
 XLV. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 Yet, with all his faults and affectations, Pitt had, in a 
 very extraordinary degree, many of the elements of great- 
 ness. He had genius, strong passions, quick sensibility, 
 and vehement enthusiasm for the grand and the beautiful. 
 There was something about him which ennobled tergiver- 
 sation itself. In an age of low and dirty prostitution, it 
 was something to have a man who might perhaps, under 
 some strong excitement, have been tempted to ruin his 
 country, but who never would have stooped to pilfer her ; 
 a man whose errors arose, not from a sordid desire of 
 gain, but from a fierce thirst for power, for glory, and for 
 vengeance. History owes to him this attestation, that, 
 at a time when anything short of direct embezzlement of 
 the public money was considered as quite fair in public 
 men, he showed the most scrupulous disinterestedness ; 
 that, at a time when it seemed to be taken for granted 
 that Government could be upheld only by the basest and 
 most immoral arts, he appealed to the better and nobler 
 parts of human nature ; that he made a brave and splen- 
 did attempt to do, by means of public opinion, what no 
 other statesman of his day thought it possible to do, except 
 by means of corruption ; that he looked for support, not to 
 a strong aristocratical connection, not to the personal 
 favour of the Sovereign, but to the middle class of English- 
 men ; that he inspired that class with a firm confidence 
 in his integrity and ability ; that, backed by them, he 
 forced an unwilling Court and an unwilling oligarchy to
 
 I 
 
 116 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 admit him to an ample share of power ; and that he used 
 his power in such a manner as clearly proved him to have 
 sought it, not for the sake of profit or patronage, but from 
 a wish to establish for himself a great and durable repu- 
 tation by means of eminent services rendered to the 
 State. 
 
 XLVI. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 The gravest offence of which Hastings was guilty did 
 not affect his popularity with the people of Bengal, for 
 those offences were committed against neighbouring states. 
 Those offences, as our readers must have perceived, we 
 are not disposed to vindicate ; yet in order that the 
 censure may be justly apportioned to the transgression, 
 it is fit that the motive of the criminal should be taken 
 into consideration. The motive which prompted the 
 worst acts of Hastings was misdirected and ill-regulated 
 public spirit. The rules of justice, the sentiments of 
 humanity, the plighted faith of treaties, were in his view 
 as nothing, when opposed to the immediate interest of 
 the State. This is no justification, according to the prin- 
 ciples either of morality, or of what we believe to be 
 identical with morality, namely, far-sighted policy. Never- 
 theless, the common sense of mankind, which in questions 
 of this sort seldom goes far wrong, will always recognize 
 a distinction between crimes which originate in an inor- 
 dinate zeal for the commonwealth, and crimes which
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 117 
 
 originate in selfish cupidity. To the benefit of this 
 distinction Hastings is fairly entitled. 
 
 XLVII. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 The fortunes of Essex had now reached their height, 
 and began to decline. He possessed indeed all the 
 qualities which raise men to greatness rapidly. But he 
 had neither the virtues nor the vices which enable men 
 to retain greatness long. His frankness, his keen sensi- 
 bility to insult and injustice, were by no means agreeable 
 to a Sovereign naturally impatient of opposition, and 
 accustomed, during forty years, to the most extravagant 
 flattery and the most abject submission. The daring and 
 contemptuous manner in which he bade defiance to his 
 enemies excited their deadly hatred. His administration 
 in Ireland was unfortunate, and in many respects highly 
 blamable. Though his brilliant courage and his im- 
 petuous activity fitted him admirably for such enterprises 
 as that of Cadiz, he did not possess the caution, patience, 
 and resolution necessary for the conduct of a protracted 
 war, in which difficulties were to be gradually surmounted, 
 in which much discomfort was to be endured, and in 
 which few splendid exploits could be achieved. For the 
 civil duties of his high place he was still less qualified. 
 Though eloquent and accomplished, he was in no sense 
 
 a statesman The person on whom he chiefly 
 
 depended was his friend Bacon This friend, so
 
 Ii8 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 loved, so trusted, bore a principal part in ruining the 
 Earl's life, in shedding his blood, and in blackening his 
 memory. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 He was a good-natured man, who had during thirty 
 years seen nothing but the worst parts of human nature 
 in other men. He was familiar with the malice of kind 
 people, and the perfidy of honourable people. Proud 
 men had licked the dust before him. Patriots had begged 
 him to come up to the price of their puffed and advertised 
 integrity. He said, after his fall, that it was a dangerous 
 thing to be a minister ; that there were few minds which 
 would not be injured by the constant spectacle of mean- 
 ness and depravity. To his honour it must be confessed 
 that few minds have come out of such a trial so little 
 damaged in the more important parts. He retired, after 
 more than twenty years of supreme power, with a temper 
 not soured, with a heart not hardened, with simple 
 tastes, with frank manners, and with a capacity for friend- 
 ship. No stain of treachery, of ingratitude, or of cruelty, 
 rests on his memory. Factious hatred, while flinging on 
 his name every other foul aspersion, was compelled to 
 own that he was not a man of blood. This would 
 scarcely seem a high eulogium on a statesman of our 
 times. It was then a high and honourable distinction. 
 The contests of parties in England had long been carried
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 119 
 
 on with a ferocity unworthy of a civilized people. Sir 
 Robert Walpole was the minister who gave to our 
 Government that character of lenity which it has since 
 generally preserved. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 THE SAME. 
 
 It was perfectly known to him that many of his 
 opponents had dealings with the Pretender. The lives 
 of some were at his mercy. He wanted neither Whig 
 nor Tory precedents for using his advantage unsparingly. 
 But with a clemency, to which posterity has never done 
 justice, he suffered himself to be thwarted, vilified, and 
 at last overthrown, by a party which included many men 
 whose necks were in his power. 
 
 That he practised corruption to a large extent is, we 
 think, indisputable. But whether he deserves all the 
 invectives which have been uttered against him on that 
 account may be questioned. No man ought to be 
 severely censured for not being beyond his age in virtue. 
 
 Walpole governed by corruption, because in his 
 
 time it was impossible to govern otherwise. Corruption 
 was unnecessary to the Tudors, for their Parliaments were 
 feeble. The publicity which has of late years been 
 given to Parliamentary proceedings has raised the 
 standard of morality among public men. The power of 
 public opinion is so great that, even before the reform 
 of the representation, a faint suspicion that a minister 
 had given pecuniary gratifications to Members of Parlia-
 
 120 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 raent in return for their votes, would have been enough 
 to ruin him. But, during the century which followed 
 the Restoration, the House of Commons was in that 
 situation in which assemblies must be managed by 
 corruption, or cannot be managed at all. 
 
 L. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 The fate of Preston was long in suspense. The 
 Jacobites affected to be confident that the Government 
 would not dare to shed his blood. He was, they said, 
 a favourite at Versailles, and his death would be followed 
 by a terrible retaliation. They scattered about the 
 streets of London papers in which it was asserted that, 
 if any harm befell him, Mountjoy, and all the other 
 Englishmen of quality who were prisoners in France, 
 would be broken on the wheel. These absurd threats 
 would not have deferred the execution one day. But 
 those who had Preston in their power were not unwilling 
 to spare him on certain conditions. He was privy to all 
 the counsels of the disaffected party, and could furnish 
 information of the highest value. He was informed 
 that his fate depended on himself. The struggle was 
 long and severe. Pride, conscience, party spirit were 
 on one side ; the intense love of life on the other. 
 He went during a time irresolutely to and fro. He 
 listened to his brother Jacobites, and his courage rose. 
 He listened to the agents of the Government, and his
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 121 
 
 heart sank within him. In an evening, when he had 
 dined and drunk his claret, he feared nothing. He 
 would die like a man, rather than save his neck by an 
 act of baseness. But his temper was very different 
 when he woke the next morning, when the courage 
 which he had drawn from wine and company had 
 evaporated, when he was alone with the iron gates and 
 stone walls, and when the thought of the block, the axe, 
 and the sawdust rose in his mind. During some time 
 he regularly wrote a confession every morning when he 
 was sober, and burnt it every night when he was merry. 
 His non-juring friends formed a plan for bringing 
 Bancroft to visit the Tower, in the hope, doubtless, that 
 the exhortations of so great a prelate and so great a 
 saint would confirm the wavering virtue of the prisoner. 
 Whether this plan would have been successful may be 
 doubted : it was not carried into effect : the fatal hour 
 drew near ; and the fortitude of Preston gave way. He 
 confessed his guilt, and named his accomplices. 
 
 LI. 
 
 KEATS. 
 
 Knowing within myself the manner in which this 
 poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of 
 regret that I make it public. What manner I mean will 
 be quite clear to the reader, who must soon perceive 
 great inexperience, immaturity, and every error, denoting 
 a feverish attempt rather than a deed accomplished.
 
 122 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 The first two books, and indeed the two last, I feel 
 sensible are not of such completion as to warrant their 
 passing the press, nor should they, if I thought a year's 
 castigation would do them any good ; it will not, the 
 foundations are too sandy. It is just that this youngster 
 should die away a sad thought for me if I had some 
 hope that while it is dwindling I may be plotting and 
 fitting myself for verses fit to live. This may be speak- 
 ing too presumptuously, and may deserve a punishment, 
 but no feeling man will be forward to inflict it ; he will 
 leave me alone with the conviction that there is not a 
 fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. This is 
 not written with the least atom of purpose to forestall 
 criticisms, of course, but from the desire I have to 
 conciliate men who are competent to look, and who do 
 look, with a jealous eye to the honour of English literature. 
 The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature 
 imagination of a man is healthy, but there is a space of 
 life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the 
 character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the 
 ambition thick-sighted; thence proceeds mawkishness 
 and all the thousand bitters which the men I speak of 
 must necessarily taste in going over the following pages. 
 I hope I had not in too late a day touched the beautiful 
 mythology of Greece and dulled its brightness, for I wish 
 to try once more before I bid it farewell.
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 123 
 
 LIT. 
 THOMAS ARNOLD. 
 
 I am delighted that you like Oxford, nor am I in the 
 least afraid of your liking it too much. It does not 
 follow because one admires and loves the surpassing 
 beauty of the place and its associations, or because one 
 forms in it the most valuable and the most delightful 
 friendships, that therefore one is to uphold its foolishness, 
 and to try to perpetuate its faults. My love for any 
 place, or person, or institution, is exactly the measure . of 
 my desire to reform them; a doctrine which seems to 
 me as natural now as it seemed strange when I was a 
 child, when I could not make out how, if my mother 
 loved me more than strange children, she should find 
 fault with me and not with them. But I do not think 
 this ought to be a difficulty to any one who is more than 
 six years old. I suppose that the reading necessary for 
 the schools is now so great that you can scarcely have 
 time for anything else. Your German will be kept up 
 naturally enough in your mere classical reading, and 
 ancient history and philosophy will be constantly re- 
 calling modern events and parties to your mind, and 
 improving, in fact, in the best way, your familiarity with 
 and understanding of them. But I hope that you will be 
 at Oxford long enough to have one year at least of reading 
 directly on the middle ages or modern times, and of 
 revelling in the stores of the Oxford libraries.
 
 124 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 LIII. 
 THACKERAY. 
 
 In these astonishing lines Pope reaches, I think, to the 
 very greatest height which his sublime art has attained, 
 and shows himself the equal of all poets of all times. It 
 is the brightest ardour, the loftiest assertion of truth, the 
 most generous wisdom, illustrated by the noblest poetic 
 figure, and spoken in words the aptest, grandest, and 
 most harmonious. It is heroic courage speaking : splen- 
 did declaration of righteous wrath and war. It is the 
 gage flung down and the silver trumpet ringing defiance 
 to falsehood and tyranny, deceit, dullness, superstition. 
 It is Truth, the champion, shining and intrepid, and 
 fronting the great world-tyrant with armies of slaves at 
 his back. It is a wonderful and victorious single combat, 
 in that great battle which has always been raging since 
 society began. 
 
 In speaking of a work of consummate art, one does 
 not try to show what it actually is, for that were vain ; 
 but what it is like, and what are the sensations produced 
 in the mind of him who views it. But, in considering 
 Pope's admirable career, I am forced into similitudes 
 drawn from other courage and greatness, and into com- 
 paring him with those who achieved triumphs in actual 
 war. I think of the works of young Pope as I do of the 
 actions of young Bonaparte or young Nelson. In their 
 common life you will find frailties and meannesses, as 
 great as the vices and follies of the meanest men. But 
 in the presence of the great occasion, the great soul
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 125 
 
 flashes out, and conquers transcendent. In thinking of 
 the splendour of Pope's young victories, of his merit, 
 unequalled as his renown, I hail and salute the achieving 
 genius, and do homage to the pen of a hero. 
 
 LIV. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 How fatal to the parvenu, throughout history, has been 
 this respect for shoebuckles. Where, for instance, would 
 the Empire of Napoleon have been, if Ney and Lannes 
 had never sported such a thing as a coat-of-arms, and 
 had only written their simple names on their shields, 
 after the fashion of Desaix's scutcheon yonder ? the bold 
 Republican who led the crowning charge at Marengo, 
 and sent the best blood of the Holy Roman Empire to 
 the right-about, before the wretched misbegotten imperial 
 heraldry was born, that was to prove so disastrous to the 
 father of it. It has always been so. They won't amal- 
 gamate. A country must be governed by the one prin- 
 ciple or the other. But give, in a republic, an aristocracy 
 ever so little chance, and it works, and sneaks, and 
 bullies, and sneers itself into place, and you find demo- 
 cracy out of doors. Is it good that aristocracy should so 
 triumph ? That is a question that you may settle ac- 
 cording to your own notions and taste But here, 
 
 in the case of Napoleon, is a simple fact : he founded a 
 glorious, strong, potent republic, able to cope with the 
 best aristocracies in the world, and perhaps to beat them
 
 126 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 all ; he converts his republic into a monarchy, and sur- 
 rounds his monarchy with what he calls aristocratic 
 institutions, and you know what becomes of him. The 
 people estranged, the aristocracy faithless (when did they 
 ever pardon one who was not of themselves ?), the Im- 
 perial fabric tumbles to the ground. 
 
 LV. 
 MILMAN. 
 
 The tumult was stilled ; but many of the more power- 
 ful Lombards retired in disgust to their strongholds. The 
 rest received him as he came forth from that fatal Canosa 
 with cold and averted looks : no one approached him, 
 but they stood apart in small knots, discussing, in hardly 
 suppressed murmurs, his weakness and his disgrace. He 
 retired in shame and sorrow to Reggio. The triumph of 
 sacerdotal Christianity, in the humiliation of the tem- 
 poral power, was complete, but it was premature. Hilde- 
 brand, like other conquerors, must leave the fruits of his 
 victory to later times. He had established in the face of 
 Europe the great principle, the Papal power of judging 
 Kings. Henry himself seemed at first stunned by the 
 suddenness, the force of the blow ; Christendom had in 
 like manner been taken by surprise. But the pause of 
 awe and reverence was but brief and transitory ; a strong 
 recoil was inevitable ; the elements of resistance were 
 powerful and widely spread. The common hatred of 
 Hildebrand brought together again all who, from lower 
 or from loftier motives, abhorred his tyranny : the
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 127 
 
 Germans, who resented the debasement of the Empire ; 
 the Italians, who dreaded the ascendancy of the House 
 of Tuscany ; the clergy, who more or less conscientiously 
 were averse to the monastic rigour of Hildebrand, those 
 who had felt or who dreaded his censures. 
 
 LVI. 
 /. H. NEWMAN. 
 
 Earthly kingdoms are founded, not in justice, but in 
 injustice. They are created by the sword, by robbery, 
 cruelty, perjury, craft, and fraud. There never was a 
 kingdom, except Christ's, which was not conceived and 
 born, nurtured and educated, in sin. There never was a 
 State but was committed to acts and maxims which it is 
 its crime to maintain, and its ruin to abandon. What 
 monarchy is there but began in invasion or usurpation ? 
 What revolution has been effected without self-will, 
 violence, or hypocrisy ? What popular government but 
 is blown about by every wind, as if it had no conscience 
 and no responsibilities? What dominion of the few but 
 is selfish and unscrupulous ? Where is military strength 
 without the passion for war? Where is trade without the 
 
 love of filthy lucre, which is the root of all evil ? 
 
 But this is the indelible distinction between Christ's 
 kingdom and all other kingdoms, that they spring from 
 evil, and depend on evil ; they have their life and 
 strength in bold deeds and bad principles : but that the 
 life of the Church lies, not in inflicting evil, but in 
 receiving it ; not in doing, but in suffering ; in all those 
 things which the world despises, as being fitter in them-
 
 128 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 selves to pull down an empire than to build it up ; in 
 patience, in simplicity, in innocence, in concession, in 
 passiveness, in resignation. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 JAMES HENR Y. 
 (FROM THE END OF HIS COMMENTARY ON THE FOURTH 
 
 Reader, in whose breast may perhaps yet linger some 
 spark of that mens at one and the same time divinior 
 and humanior, which the combined bands of utilita- 
 rianism and puritanism are fast sweeping from the face 
 of this fair world, I would ask thee, ere thou takest 
 leave of the "infelix Phcenissa," what thinkest thou? 
 Does it repent thee of the hour thou hast spent with 
 her, of the tear thou hast perhaps shed over her?' 
 Does it regret thee, as it did Augustine, of so much 
 of thy life lost to the exact sciences, to active occu- 
 pations, even to thy religion ? or dost thou dare to 
 feel that the exercise of thine intellectual faculties in the 
 ennobling, exalting, purifying contemplation of the grand, 
 the beautiful, and the pathetic, whether in the poetical, 
 philosophical, or manuplastic creations of the master 
 spirits of mankind, is not, cannot be, of the nature of 
 sin ? Thou hesitatest ; nor do I wonder : for I too have 
 felt the tyranny of the fashion of the day, the withering 
 oppression of the majority. Go then, and close thine ears 
 against the music of sweet sounds, thine eyes against the 
 gracious forms of the painter's pencil and the sculptor's
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 129 
 
 chisel ; thine heart and understanding against the rushing 
 numbers of the poet, the persuasion of the orator, the 
 irresistible reason of the philosopher, but first hear that 
 same Augustine what it was that rescued him out of 
 the Tartarus libidinis et concupiscentia. . . . What was it ? 
 The philosophical tract of the prose Virgil of Rome, 
 the pagan Cicero's pagan Hortensius. 
 
 LVIII. 
 GOLD WIN SMITH. 
 
 The object of all the parties to the negotiations was 
 acquisition of territory at the expense of their neighbours ; 
 and the treaty of Westphalia, though, as we have said, it 
 was long the Public Law of Europe, was an embodiment, 
 not of principles of justice or of the rights of nations, but 
 of the relative force and cunning of what are happily 
 called the Powers The independence of Ger- 
 many was saved ; and though it was not a national 
 independence, but an independence of petty despotisms, 
 it was redemption from Austrian and Jesuit bondage for 
 the present, with the hope of national independence in 
 the future. When Gustavus broke the Imperial line at 
 Lutzen, Luther and Loyola might have turned in their 
 graves. Luther had still two centuries and a half to wait ; 
 so much difference in the cause of history, in spite of all 
 our philosophies and our general laws, may be made by 
 an arrow shot at a venture, a wandering breath of pes- 
 tilence, a random bullet, a wreath of mist lingering on 
 one of the world's battlefields. But Luther has conquered
 
 130 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 at last. Would that he had conquered by other means 
 than war war with all its sufferings, with all its passions, 
 with the hatred, the revenge, the evil pride which it leaves 
 behind it ! But he has conquered ; and his victory opens 
 a new, and, so far as we can see, a happier era for 
 Europe. 
 
 LIX. 
 /. A. FROUDE. 
 
 A tribe, if local circumstances are favourable, may 
 maintain its freedom against a more powerful neighbour, 
 so long as the independence of such a tribe is a lesser evil 
 than the cost of its subjugation ; but an independence so 
 protracted is rarely other than a misfortune. On the 
 whole, and as a rule, superior strength is the equivalent 
 of superior merit ; and when a weaker people are induced 
 or forced to part with their separate existence, and are 
 not treated as subjects, but are admitted freely to share 
 the privileges of the nation in which they are absorbed, 
 they forfeit nothing which they need care to lose, and 
 rather gain than surfer by the exchange. It is possible that 
 a nobler people may, through force of circumstances, or 
 great numerical inferiority, be oppressed for a time by the 
 brute force of baser adversaries, just as within the limits 
 of a nation, particular classes may be tyrannized over, or 
 opinions which prove in the end true may be put down 
 by violence, and the professors of such opinions perse- 
 cuted. But the effort of nature is constantly to redress 
 the balance. Where freedom is so precious that without
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 131 
 
 it life is unendurable, men with these convictions fight 
 too fiercely to be permanently subdued. Truth grows 
 by its own virtue, and falsehood sinks and fades. An 
 oppressed cause, when it is just, attracts friends and com- 
 mands moral support, which converts itself sooner or 
 
 later into material strength There is no freedom 
 
 possible to man except in obedience to law, and those 
 who cannot prescribe a law to themselves if they desire to 
 be free, must be content to accept direction from others. 
 
 LX. 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHOKNE. 
 
 The faun is the marble image of a young man, leaning 
 his right arm on the trunk or stump of a tree ; one hand 
 hangs carelessly by his side ; in the other he holds the 
 fragment of a pipe, or some such sylvan instrument of 
 music. His only garment a lion's skin with the claws 
 upon his shoulder falls half-way down his back, leaving 
 the limbs and entire front of the figure nude. The form 
 thus displayed is marvellously graceful, but has a fuller 
 and more rounded outline, more flesh and less of heroic 
 muscle than the old sculptors were wont to assign to their 
 types of masculine beauty. The character of the face 
 corresponds with the figure : it is most agreeable in out- 
 line and feature, but rounded and somewhat voluptuously 
 developed, especially about the throat and chin ; the nose 
 is almost straight, but very slightly curves inward, 
 thereby acquiring an indescribable charm of geniality and
 
 132 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 humour. The mouth, with its full yet delicate lips, seems 
 so nearly to smile outright that it calls forth a responsive 
 smile. The whole statue, unlike anything else that was 
 ever wrought in that severe material of marble, conveys the 
 idea of an amiable and sensual creature, easy, mirthful, 
 apt for jollity, yet not incapable of being touched by pathos. 
 It is impossible to gaze long at this stone image without 
 conceiving a kindly sentiment towards it, as if its sub- 
 stance were warm to the touch, and imbued with 
 actual life. 
 
 LXI. 
 STUJSJ3S. 
 
 No sovereign who ever reigned has won from contem- 
 porary writers such a singular unison of praises. He was 
 religious, pure in life, temperate, liberal, careful and yet 
 splendid, merciful, truthful, and honourable; "discreet in 
 mind, provident in counsel, prudent in judgment, modest 
 in look, magnanimous in act;" a brilliant soldier, a 
 sound diplomatist, an able organizer and consolidator of 
 all the forces at his command ; the restorer of the English 
 navy, the founder of our military, international and 
 maritime law. A true Englishman, with all the great- 
 nesses and none of the glaring faults of his Plantagenet 
 ancestors, he stands forth as the typical mediaeval hero. 
 At the same time he is a laborious man of business, a 
 self-denying and hardy warrior, a cultivated scholar, and 
 a most devout and charitable Christian. Fortunately 
 perhaps for himself, unfortunately for his country, he was
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 133 
 
 cut off before the test of time and experience was applied 
 to try the fixedness of his character and the possible 
 permanence of his plans. 
 
 LXII. 
 THE SAME. 
 
 On both these critical occasions he shows good faith 
 and honest intent rather than policy or foresight. As 
 king we find him suspicious, cold-blooded, and politic ; 
 undecided in action, cautious and jealous in private 
 and public relations, and, if not personally cruel, willing 
 to sanction and profit by the cruelties of others. Through- 
 out his career he is consistently devout, pure in life, tem- 
 perate and careful to avoid offence, faithful to the Church 
 and clergy, unwavering in orthodoxy, keeping always 
 before his eye the design with which he began his active 
 life, hoping to die a crusader. Throughout his career, 
 too, he is consistent in political faith; the house of 
 Lancaster had risen by advocating constitutional prin- 
 ciples, and on constitutional principles they governed. 
 Henry IV. ruled his kingdom with the aid of a council 
 such as he had tried to force on Richard II., and yielded 
 to his Parliaments all the power, place and privilege that 
 had been claimed for them by the great houses which he 
 represented. It is only after six years of sad experience 
 have proved to him that he can trust none of his old 
 friends, when one by one the men that stood by him at 
 his coronation have fallen victims to their own treasons 
 or to the dire necessity of his policy, that he becomes
 
 134 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 
 
 vindictive, suspicious, and irresolute, and tries to justify, 
 on the plea of necessity, the cruelties at which, as a 
 younger man, he would have shuddered. 
 
 LXIII. 
 MARK PATTJSON. 
 
 The finite understanding is crushed when it is brought 
 into the presence of the infinite expanse of the knowable, 
 and turns aside in despair, crying, Who is sufficient for 
 these things? Ars longa, vita brevis! Education, which 
 opens this wonderful prospect before us, does but show 
 us from the top of Pisgah the land flowing with milk and 
 honey, which we can never appropriate. Education 
 
 is indeed more than humbling ; the immensity 
 
 of knowledge would crush the understanding ; we should 
 be compelled, not to humility, but to despair, if, when we 
 reached this point in our progress, relief were not afforded 
 to us of a kind till then unknown. There is a point in 
 the career of the learner when, as objects multiply around 
 him with dazzling rapidity, and what is to be learned 
 grows in a ratio far beyond his powers of learning it, there 
 breaks a new light in upon him ; he becomes conscious 
 of a force within himself ; he feels the stirring of an innate 
 power unknown before. His position with regard to 
 things without, to other men, is from this moment altered. 
 His intelligence is not only the passive recipient of forms 
 from without, a mere mirror in which the increasing 
 crowd of images confuse and threaten to obliterate each 
 other ; it becomes active and throws itself out upon
 
 PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 135 
 
 phenomena with a native force, combining or analyzing 
 them anyhow altering them, reducing them, subjecting 
 them, imposing itself upon them. Vivida vis animi per- 
 vicit ; it has broken the bonds which held it captive, the 
 spiritual principle within is born ; we begin to live with a 
 life which is above nature. The point of time in our 
 mental progress at which this change takes place cannot 
 be precisely marked ; it is a result gradually reached, as 
 every higher form of life is developed by insensible 
 transition out of a lower. 
 
 THE END.
 
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 CHANCERY LANE.