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.
17464
CHISWICK PRESS : C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.