retirement of Mecenas from power, he says, "There seems on the whole no reason to seek for the motives of the minister's retirement, least of all to ascribe it with Tacitus, esteemed, and generally not without reason, an eminently philosophical historian, to the blind agency of Fate." (IV. 250.) The words of Tacitus are (speaking, Ann. iii. 30, of Salustius Crispus, who in his latter years had lost the confidence of the emperor), "Idque et Mecænati acciderat, fato potentiæ raro sempiternæ; an satias capit, aut illos, cum omnia tribuerunt, aut hos cum jam nihil reliquum est quod cupiant." May not an historian say that it is "the destiny of immoderate power (the true meaning of potentia) rarely to be permanent," without being chargeable with exalting Fate into a blind agent in human affairs? Tacitus himself goes on to assign two philosophical causes for this instability of power, the weariness of giving on the one side, indifference to the gift on the other. Speaking of the authorities for the history of the empire, he says (IV. 608), "The guides who will deign to aid us will prove too often blind and treacherous; and we shall march like the hero of Virgil in the infernal twilight by the malign rays of Tacitus and Suetonius, through the gloom of a tyranny which has overshadowed men and things, and confused the various colours of events and characters." This transprosing* of Virgil's imagery is not in the best taste in an historian, but, more than that, it is unjust. The scholar knows that the maligna lux of Virgil has no character of malignity, and merely expresses a scanty and dubious light; transferred to English, the word insinuates a grave charge of wilful misrepresentation, while the author may still say that he has used it in the classical and not the ordinary sense. Mr. Merivale omits no opportunity of exciting distrust in his reader's mind against Tacitus. The historian winds up his account of the suicide of Piso by saying, that he had heard old people mention that Piso had been assassinated, in order to prevent his laying before the senators some papers which would have revealed the guilt of Tiberius, adding, "Quorum neutrum asseveraverim; neque tamen occulere debui narratum ab iis qui nostram ad juventutem duraverunt." (Ann. iii. 16.) On these words Mr. Merivale makes the following comment:

"The writer concludes this narration, however, with cautioning the reader that he does not affirm this circumstance as an ascertained fact; and such, it must be remarked, is too frequently his habit, to be excused, perhaps, only from the paucity of really trustworthy documents in his reach-to insinuate the truth of popular rumours, under pretence of merely recounting them. It is not too much to assert that he really means us to believe most of the stories he thus repeats, under the pro

Mr. Merivale is seldom happy in inlaying his prose with fragments of poetry. He calls liberty (V. 167) "the prime jewel of a Roman's existence." Shakespeare had made Diana, in All's Well that Ends Well, call chastity "the jewel of our house, bequeathed down by many ancestors,"-a precious heirloom. But what is the "prime jewel of existence"?

test that he cannot actually vouch for them. With this caution against the seductive influence of the most eloquent of historians, I return to the narrative before us."-V. 105.

The words of Tacitus are before our readers, and they can judge whether they justify Mr. Merivale's imputation. They seem to us to express simply the duty of an historian in cases of doubtful testimony; and there is an affectation of candour in the excuse offered. The paucity of historical documents affords an opportunity to an artful historian to insinuate what he did not venture to affirm; how it could excuse him for such baseness we are unable to see. And if, now and then, public men, whose indisputable actions make the worst things credible, have their crimes exaggerated, we feel little interest in lightening the load. There cannot be a more just retribution, than that those whose tyranny has stifled the voice of historical truth should themselves suffer by its suppression.

Mr. Merivale has traced minutely the unfavourable influences under which the character of Tiberius was formed. His temper was naturally unamiable and his manners unpopular; he had been kept in the back ground by Augustus for many years; he knew that the affections of the people were fixed on Germanicus; he lived in constant apprehension that the old republican spirit might revive and overturn the imperial power. These and many other causes which might be enumerated, above all, the fatal gift of unlimited authority,-contributed to the gradual deterioration of a character which, though it could never have been attractive, might have escaped censure. These circumstances may serve to explain the depth of moral degradation which Tiberius reached in the latter years of his reign, though we think Mr. Merivale approaches very near the fatalism with which he charges Tacitus, when he says (V. 91), "There are positions in life in which such men are unavoidably thrust into crimes, and into such we shall soon find Tiberius impelled without the power of resistance." In a subsequent passage of his History, he appears to think that his atrocities must be attributed to an hereditary taint in the blood of the Claudii, which sometimes shewed itself in extravagant pride and insolence, at others in ungovernable violence. This fashion of giving the name of insanity to the perversion of a selfish mind, has lately made its appearance in our courts of justice, but has been repudiated by the common sense of Englishmen. They have refused to acknowledge that a man can be released from moral responsibility by the surrender of himself to an intense hatred or a passionate desire. Tacitus more justly draws the inference from the mental misery of Tiberius, that tyrants are their own tormentors. "Neque frustra præstantissimus sapientiæ firmare solitus, si recludantur tyrannorum mentes, posse aspici laniatus et ictus; quando ut corpora verberibus, ita sævitia, libidine, malis con

sultis animus dilaceratur. Quippe Tiberium non fortuna, non solitudines protegebant, quin tormenta pectoris suasque ipse pœnas fateretur." (Ann. vi. 6.) It is but fair to Mr. Merivale to allow him to justify in his own words the lenity with which he is inclined to treat Tiberius.

"If we examine the authorities for the history of the reign we have been reviewing, we shall find that those who were nearest to the times themselves have generally treated Tiberius with the greatest indulgence. Velleius Paterculus indeed, and Valerius Maximus, his contemporaries and subjects, must be regarded as mere courtly panegyrists; but the adulation of the one, though it jars on ears accustomed to the dignified self-respect of the earlier Romans, is not more highflown in language and sentiment than what our own writers have addressed to the Georges, and even the Charleses and Jameses, of the English monarchy; while that of the other is chiefly offensive from the connexion in which it stands with the lessons of virtue and patriotism which his book was specially designed to illustrate. The elder Seneca, the master of a school of rhetoric, to which science his writings are devoted, makes no mention of the emperor under whom he wrote; but his son, better known as the statesman and philosopher, though he was under the temptation of contrasting the austere and aged tyrant with the gay young prince to whom he was himself attached, speaks of him with considerable moderation, and ascribes the worst of his deeds to Sejanus and the delators, rather than to his own evil disposition. In the pages of Philo and Josephus, the government of Tiberius is represented as mild and equitable; it is not till we come to Suetonius and Tacitus, in the third generation, that his enormities are blazoned in the colours so painfully familiar to us. It will suffice here to remark that both these later writers belong to a period of strong reaction against the Cæsarean despotism, when the senate was permitted to raise its venerable head and assume a show at least of its old imperial prerogatives; when the secret police of Rome was abolished, delation firmly repressed, freedom of speech proclaimed by the voice of the emperor himself, and the birthright of the Roman citizen respectfully restored to him. There ensued a strong revulsion of feeling, not against monarchy, which had then become an accepted institution, but against the corruptions which had turned it into tyranny; and Tiberius, as the reputed founder of the system of delation, bore the odium of all the crimes of all the tyrants who had succeeded him. Tacitus admits that the affairs of Tiberius were misrepresented during his power by fear, and after his death by spite: yet we cannot doubt that Tacitus himself often yields to the bias of his detractors, while Suetonius is at best indifferent to the truth. After all, a sober discretion must suspend its belief regarding many of the circumstances above recorded, and acknowledge that it is only through a treacherous and distorting haze that we have scanned the features of this ill-omened principate."-V. 334—336.

A more plausible plea might be urged on behalf of Caligula and Claudius, since the former was subject to epilepsy, and the latter so notorious for the weakness of his intellect, that he had been treated as little better than an idiot by his mother, by Augustus and Tiberius. But there is no ground for supposing

that disease in the one case, or imbecillity in the other, though it may have increased the power of animal desires and hardened the heart against sympathy, so far impaired the understanding as to take away moral responsibility. Caligula's is an intelligible character; brutal passions had unchecked sway over him; but Claudius is a paradox. In his uncouthness, his pedantry, his weak submission to the influence of others, he reminds us of our own James I., while the vigour and success of his public measures may be compared with those of Elizabeth or Cromwell. Mr. Merivale has observed that his merit consisted in his close imitation of the measures of Augustus; and the remark is just; the marvel is, that endeavouring to tread in his steps "haud passibus æquis," he should generally have followed his track so successfully. He re-established the ascendancy of Rome on the Rhine; he resumed, and in great measure accomplished, the subjugation of Britain; he founded new colonies, renewed the senatorial and equestrian orders, devoted himself to the administration of justice, and endeavoured by legislation to reform the public morals. But, in his station, weakness was as pernicious as evil dispositions, and the influences to which he submitted himself perverted all that was good in his nature and aggravated all that was bad. Hence the bloody tyranny of the latter years of his reign. Mr. Merivale would fain find a reason for disbelieving the accounts which have come down to us of the vices of Messalina. We cannot wonder that a man of benevolence, whose duty compels him to detail these revolting stories, should seek relief from an oppressive weight, by persuading himself that such enormities are simply incredible. In an age, however, so thoroughly corrupt as its own literature shews that of the Cæsars to have been, it is difficult to fix the limit to which profligacy and impudence may proceed. We conclude our extracts with the summary of the character of Claudius.

"We meet with more than one instance in the imperial history of the parents suffering for the sins of their children. We have already seen how much reason there is to believe that the hatred of the Romans to Tiberius disposed them readily to accept any calumny against Livia. Tiberius himself was hated the more for the crimes of his successor Caius; and there is ground to surmise that much of the odium which has attached to Claudius is reflected from the horror with which Nero came afterwards to be regarded. Thus did the Romans avenge themselves on the authors of the principle of hereditary succession, so long unknown to their polity, and known at last so disadvantageously. Of Claudius, at least, a feeling of compassion, if not of justice, may incline us to pronounce with more indulgence than has usually been accorded to him. He was an imitator, as we have seen, of Augustus, but only as the silver age might parody the golden; for the manners he sought to revive, and the sentiments he pretended to regenerate, had not been blighted by the passing tempest of civil war, but were naturally decaying from the over-ripeness of age. Nevertheless, it was honourable to

admire a noble model: there was some generosity even in the attempt to rival the third founder of the state. Nor, in fact, does any period of Roman history exhibit more outward signs of vigorous and successful administration: none was more fertile in victories, or produced more gallant commanders or excellent soldiers; domestic affairs were prosperously conducted; the laborious industry of the emperor himself tired out all his ministers and assistants. The senate recovered some portion of its authority, and with authority of courage and energy. Claudius secured respect for letters, in an age of show and sensuality, by his personal devotion to them. From some of the worst vices of his age and class he was remarkably exempt. His gluttony, if we must believe the stories told of it, was countenanced at least by many high examples; his cruelty, or rather his callous insensibility, was the result of the perverted training which made human suffering a sport to the master of a single slave, as well as to the emperor on the throne; and it was never aggravated at least by wanton caprice or ungovernable passion. The contempt which has been thrown upon his character and understanding has been generated, in a great degree, by the systematic fabrications of which he has been made the victim. Though flattered with a lip-worship which seems to our notions incredible, Claudius appears to have risen personally above its intoxicating vapours; we know that in one instance at least, the fulsome adulation of a man the most remarkable of his age for eloquence and reputed wisdom, failed to turn the course whether of his justice or his anger."-V. 596-598.

Mr. Merivale's style is forcible and lively, but it is deficient in precision and often offends against good taste. Indeed, the pure, simple, dignified historical style seems to have forsaken our literature, and to have taken refuge in America with Prescott and Washington Irving. He deals profusely in epithets, which have often no special congruity or authority, but come along with certain substantives, as if by frequent association they had acquired the right always to appear in their company. It is curious to see how the simple expressions of the ancients are sometimes frothed up in the translation in order to make the narrative appear more graphic and the sentiment more intense. Where his authority makes the senators proceed in a body to the Capitol, he makes them "rush tumultuously;" instead of "the consuls arose," we have "the consuls sprang to their feet,"-a Scotticism, by the way, which has only crossed the Tweed within the last few years. Suetonius says of Caligula, "Incitabatur insomnia maxime, neque enim plus quam tribus nocturnis horis quiescebat; ac ne his quidem placida quiete, sed pavida miris rerum imaginibus: ut qui inter cæteras pelagi quondam speciem colloquentem se cum videre visus sit. Ideoque magna parte noctis, vigiliæ cubandique tædio, nunc toro residens nunc per longissimas porticus vagus, invocare identidem atque expectare lucem consuerat" (50). This is Mr. Merivale's expansion of the passage:

Through the weary darkness of the night he would toss in listless