Conclusion of the narrative: in the same continuous chain of consequences by the gorgeous armaments of Xerxes and their destruction at Salamis, Platæa, and Mycale. Nor could the just epic conclusion of the narrative be better marked out than at the point selected by its merits, Herodotus. Herodotus. A more appropriate winding-up of the mighty series of vicissitudes could hardly be imagined than that supplied by the final return home of the victorious Athenian fleet from the Hellespont. By it the sea had now been swept of hostile galleys. The disasters of the haughty invader had been crowned by the ejection of his routed rearguard from their last strong hold on the shore of Europe; and among the trophies carried home by his conquerors, were the fragments of the bridge which had transported to that shore the millions collected for the subjugation of those who were now forcing him to drain the cup of humiliation to the very dregs.1 and defects. Here again, however, in the close as in the previous course of his undertaking, the judgement of the historian appears rather in the general conduct of his subject than in the adjustment of its details. No where has his inveterate habit of anecdotal excursion been attended with worse effects, than at this important stage of his work where its dignity and propriety so imperatively required to be sustained. The long digression on the murders, adulteries, and incests of Xerxes and his family, inserted between the battle of Mycale and the final operations of the Greeks on the Hellespont, is lamentably out of place. While destructive of the just effect of the principal narrative, it loses the interest which, if See Appendix M. sense. more appositely introduced, it might have possessed as a picture of manners, and becomes simply offensive as a disgusting chapter of court scandal. Still more prejudicial in its way to the just consummation of a great historical work, is the absurd story of the fried fish which follows the taking of Sestus, and forms in fact the end of the narrative in the proper The remaining purely episodical passage by which that end, as in the allegory of the snake biting its own tail, is so quaintly connected with the beginning, where Cyrus is described as having enjoined on his subjects to maintain their primitive simplicity of manners, seems to be intended as a sort of concluding moral commentary on the change in their character and fortunes since we parted with that monarch in the first book. If so, the moral is too obscurely inculcated to compensate by the matter for the clumsiness of the manner of its introduction. subdivision None of the antient authors who quote Herodotus Existing betray a knowledge of any other technical division of of the text. his text but that into nine books as we now possess it.1 This fact certainly forms a historical argument in favour of the belief that the received mode is the original mode, and by consequence the one sanctioned by Herodotus, assuming the work to have been published by himself: for it is hardly to be supposed that any author would put forth a book of such bulk without some species of distribution into sections or chapters. There remains however to be considered the argument from internal evidence, which involves the following inquiries: how far the present distri 1 The earliest author who alludes to the division into Muses is Lucian: Herodotus, 1.; and De Conscrib. Histor. 42. bution is either appropriate in itself or such as was likely to occur to Herodotus; and how far it may or may not be confirmed by the allusions contained in the text to the mode of its arrangement. The existing mode, granting in any case the propriety of so bulky an allotment of parts, cannot on the whole be taxed with want of unity or consistency in those parts; although in some cases perhaps the points of subdivision might have been better selected. It seems however very doubtful whether any such system of comprehensive masses, embodying often each several well distinguished heads of subject, was likely to have suggested itself to Herodotus. The epic historian would probably have preferred a less arbitrary or artificial distribution, corresponding to the rhapsodies or cantos in which the narratives of the old epic bards were recited in his time, and into which they were supposed to have been arranged by their authors; and the term logos, used by him in referring to different heads of his subject, seems in fact to bear, in respect to prose composition, a signification parallel to that of rhapsody in epic poetry. The only example in the author's own text of a specific application of this term, is a passage of the fifth book1 where he refers to a statement made in a former place as being in his first logos; which statement is found in § 92. of the present first book. We have thus his own evidence that some of his divisions of the text were of considerable bulk, for the one in question comprises about one half of the existing first book. But we have no evidence that any of them exceeded the limits of a natural logos or head of subject; the passage referred to being within the limits of what . 6. We have had occasion to notice the disad- Delinea- Elaborate portraiture of character, even within the just limits of probability, is however the province of the poet rather than the historian. The selection of some remarkable personage as the centre of an important train of events, the studied delineation of his own qualities, and the working up of the events themselves in such a manner as to place his actions and influence in a prominent light, are among the most essential attributes of poetical art. The duty of the historian, on the other hand, is simply to represent both persons and events in their authentically recorded relation to each other; to allow consequently his characters to exhibit themselves in as far as possible through the transactions in which they are engaged, without either prejudging their conduct or forestalling the judgements of his readers, by detailed commentaries on their virtues, defects, or peculiarities. In order to give to remarkable men that special prominence, both personal and historical, which is requisite to form a complete historical picture, he may, in the legitimate exercise of his discretion, give a similar prominence to transactions which tend to. throw any vivid light on their characters, even when those transactions may not in themselves be of primary importance. But the practice of introducing elaborate descriptions of celebrated personages, often before their first entry on the scene, before consequently they have had any opportunity of speaking or acting for themselves, while one of the prominent characteristics is also one of the defects of the historical art of later times, and of the popular taste which sanctions it. Of the three Greek historians of the best period whose works have survived, Herodotus is the one who has been most successful in this essential part of his office. His mode of protraiture, like that of his great model Homer, is exclusively dramatic. Thucydides and Xenophon, while resorting, and not always with the happiest effect, to the descriptive mode, have been far less successful than their distinguished predecessor in the art of making their heroes portray themselves. This faculty in Herodotus, as in Homer, is displayed no less effectively in the case of nations than in that of individuals; in distinguishing the genius of the Asiatic and European races, as in distinguish |