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an extraordinary deficiency of personal courage" is absolutely impossible. What mercenary warrior of the time exposed his life to greater or more constant perils? Was there a single soldier at Choronea who had more cause to tremble for his safety than the orator, vho, in case of defeat, could scarcely hope for Lercy from the people whom he had misled, or the prince whom he had opposed? Were not the ordinary fluctuations of popular feeling enough to deter any coward from engaging in political conflicts? Isocrates, whom Mr. Mitford extols because he constantly employed all the flowers of his schoolboy rhetoric to decorate oligarchy and tyranny, avoided the judicial and political meetings of Athens from mere timidity, and seems to have hated democracy only because he durst not look a popular assembly in the face. Demosthenes was a man of a feeble constitution; his nerves were weak, but his spirit was high; and the energy and enthusiasm of his feelings supported him through life and in death.

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notion to those readers who have not the means of comparing his statements with the original authorities, of his extreme partiality and carelessness. Indeed, whenever this his torian mentions Demosthenes, he violates all the laws of candour and even of decency; he weighs no authorities; he makes no allow ances; he forgets the best-authenticated facts in the history of the times, and the most generally recognised principles of human nature. The opposition of the great orator to the policy of Philip, he represents as neither more nor less than deliberate villany. I hold almost the same opinion with Mr. Mitford respecting the character and the views of that great and accomplished_prince. But am I, therefore, to pronounce Demosthenes profligate and insincere? Surely not; do we not perpetually see men of the greatest talents and the purest intentions misled by national or factious prejudices! The most respectable people in England were, little more than forty years ago, in the habit of uttering the bitterest abuse against Washington and Franklin. It is certainly to be regretted that men should err so grossly in their estimate of character. But no person who knows any thing of human nature will impute such errors to depravity.

Mr. Mitford is not more consistent with him self than with reason. Though he is the advocate of all oligarchies, he is also a warm admirer of all kings; and of all citizens who raised themselves to that species of sovereignty which the Greeks denominated tyranny. If monarchy, as Mr. Mitford holds, be in itself a blessing, democracy must be a better form of government than aristocracy, which is always opposed to the supremacy, and even to the eminence of individuals. On the other hand, it is but one step that separates the demagogue and the sovereign.

So much for Demosthenes. Now for the orator of aristocracy. I do not wish to abuse Eschines. He may have been an honest man. He was certainly a great man; and I feel a reverence, of which Mr. Mitford seems to have no notion, for great men of every party. But when Mr. Mitford says, that the private character of Æschines was without stain, does he remember what Eschines has himself confessed in his speech against Timarchus? I can make allowances, as well as Mr. Mitford, for persons who lived under a different system of laws and morals; but let them be made impartially. If Demosthenes is to be attacked, on account of some childish improprieties, proved only by the assertion of an antagonist, what shall we say of those maturer vices which that antagonist has himself acknowledged? Against the private character of If this article had not extended itself to so Eschines," says Mr. Mitford, "Demosthenes great a length, I should offer a few observaseems not to have had an insinuation to op- tions on some other peculiarities of this writer, pose." Has Mr. Mitford ever read the speech-his general preference of the Barbarians to of Demosthenes on the embassy? Or can he have forgotten, what was never forgotten by any one else who ever read it, the story which Demosthenes relates with such terrible energy of language concerning the drunken brutality of his rival? True or false, here is something more than an insinuation; and nothing can vindicate the historian who has overlooked it from the charge of negligence or of partiality. But Eschines denied the story. And did not Demosthenes also deny the story respecting his childish nickname, which Mr. Mitford has nevertheless told without any qualification? But the judges, or some part of them, showed, by their clamour, their disbelief of the relation of Demosthenes. And did not the judges, who tried the cause between Demosthenes and his guardians indicate, in a much clearer manner, their approbation of the prosecution! But Demosthenes was a demagogue, and is to be slancered. Eschines was an aristocrat, and is to be panegyrized. Is this a history, or a party-pamphlet?

These passages, all selected from a single nage Mr. Mitford's work, may give some

the Greeks,―his predilection for Persians, Carthaginians, Thracians, for all nations, in short, except that great and enlightened nation of which he is the historian. But I will confine myself to a single topic.

Mr. Mitford has remarked, with truth and spirit, that "any history perfectly written, but especially a Grecian history perfectly written, should be a political institute for all nations." It has not occurred to him that a Grecian history, perfectly written, should also be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry. philosophy, and the arts. Here his work is extremely deficient. Indeed, though it may seem a strange thing to say of a gentleman who has published so many quartos, Mr. Mitford seems to entertain a feeling, bordering on contempt, for literary and speculative pursuits. The talents of action almost exclusively attract his notice, and he talks with very complacent disdain of the "idle learned." Homer, indeed, he admires, but principally, I am afraid, because he is convinced that Homer could neither read nor write. He could not avoid speaking of Socrates; but he has been

far more solicitous to trace his death to politi- | and useless minutenes but improvements cal causes, and to deduce from it consequences the most essential to the comforts of human unfavourable to Athens and to popular go-life extend themselves over the world, and invernment, than to throw light on the character and doctrines of the wonderful man,

"From whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams that watered all the schools
Of Academics, old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe."

He does not seem to be aware that Demos-
thenes was a great orator; he represents him
sometimes as an aspiring demagogue, some-
times as an adroit negotiator, and always as a
great rogue. But that in which the Athenian
excelled all men of all ages, that irresistible
eloquence, which, at the distance of more than
two thousand years, stirs our blood and brings
tears into our eyes, he passed by with a few
phrases of commonplace commendation. The
origin of the drama, the doctrines of the so-
phists, the course of Athenian education, the
state of the arts and sciences, the whole do-
mestic system of the Greeks, he has almost
completely neglected. Yet these things will
appear, to a reflecting man, scarcely less
worthy of attention than the taking of Sphac-
teria, or the discipline of the targeteers of
Iphicrates.

This, indeed, is a deficiency by no means peculiar to Mr. Mitford. Most people seem to imagine that a detail of public occurencesthe operation of sieges-the changes of administrations-the treaties-the conspiracies--the rebellions-is a complete history. Differences of definition are logically unimportant, but practically they sometimes produce the most momentous effects: thus it has been in the present case; historians have, almost without exception, confined themselves to the public transactions of states, and have left to the negligent administration of writers of fiction a province at least equally extensive and valuable.

troduce themselves into every cottage, before any annalist can condescend from the dignity of writing about generals and ambassadors, to take the least notice of them. Thus the pro gress of the most salutary inventions and dis coveries is buried in impenetrable mystery, mankind are deprived of a most useful species of knowledge, and their benefactors of their honest fame. In the mean time every child knows by heart the dates and adventures of a long line of barbarian kings. The history of nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best studied in works not professedly historical. Thucydides, as far as he goes, is an excellent writer, yet he affords us far less knowledge of the most important particulars relating to Athens, than Plato or Aristophanes. The little treatise of Xenophon in Domestic Economy contains more historical information than all the seven books of his Hellanics. The same may be said of the Satires of Horace, of the Letters of Cicero, of the novels of Le Sage, of the memoirs of Marmontel. Many others might be mentioned, but these suffi ciently illustrate my meaning.

I would hope that there may yet appear a writer who may despise the present narrow limits, and assert the rights of history over every part of her natural domain. Should such a writer engage in that enterprise, in which I cannot but consider Mr. Mitford as having failed, he will record, indeed, all that is interesting and important in military and political transactions; but he will not think any thing too trivial for the gravity of history, which is not too trivial to promote or diminish the happiness of man. He will portray in vivid colours the domestic society, the manners, the amusements, the conversation of the Greeks. He will not disdain to discuss the state of agriculture, of the mechanical arts, and of the conveniences of life. The progress of painting, of sculpture, and of architecture, will form an important part of his plan. But above all, his attention will be given to the history of that splendid literature from which has sprung all the strength, the wisdom, the freedom, and the glory of the western world.

All wise statesmen have agreed to consider the prosperity or adversity of nations as made up of the happiness or misery of individuals, and to reject as chimerical all notions of a public interest of the community, distinct from the interest of the component parts. It is therefore strange that those whose office it is to supply statesmen with examples and warnings, Of the indifference which Mr. Mitford shows should omit, as too mean for the dignity of his- on this subject, I will not speak, for I cannot tory, circumstances which exert the most ex- speak with fairness. It is a subject in which tensive influence on the state of society. In I love to forget the accuracy of a judge, in the general, the under current of human life flows veneration of a worshipper and the gratitude steadily on, unruffled by the storms which agi- of a child. If we consider merely the subtlety tate the surface. The happiness of the many of disquisition, the force of imagination, the commonly depends on causes independent of perfect energy and elegance of expression, victories or defeats, of revolutions or restora- which characterize the great works of Athe tions, causes which can be regulated by no nian genius, we must pronounce them intrin laws, and which are recorded in no archives.sically most valuable; but what shall we say These causes are the things which it is of main importance to us to know, not how the Lacedæmonian phalanx was broken at Leuctra-not whether Alexander died of poison or by disease. History, without these, is a shell without a kernel; and such is almost all the history which is extant in the world. Paltry skirmishes and plots are reported with absurd

when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly or indirectly, all the noblest creations of the human intellect; that from hence were the vast accomplishments and the brilliant fancy of Cicero, the withering fire of Juvena!; the plastic imagination of Dante; the humour of Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon; the wit of Butler; the supreme and universa.

excellence of Shakspeare? All the triumphs | the hidden riches of the universe. Surely it is

of truth and genius over prejudice and power,
in every country and in every age, have been
the triumphs of Athens. Wherever a few
great minds have made a stand against vio-
lence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and
reason, there has been her spirit in the midst
of them; inspiring, encouraging, consoling;
'by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless
bed of Pascal; in the tribune of Mirabeau; in
the cell of Galileo; on the scaffold of Sidney.
But who shall estimate her influence on pri-
vate happiness? Who shall say how many
thousands have been made wiser, happier, and
better, by those pursuits in which she has
taught mankind to engage; to how many the
studies which took their rise from her have
been wealth in poverty,--liberty in bondage,
health in sickness,-society in solitude. Her
power is indeed manifested at the bar; in the
senate; in the field of battle; in the schools of
philosophy. But these are not her glory.
Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or as-
suages pain, wherever it brings gladness to
eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears,
and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,
-there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the
immortal influence of Athens.

no exaggeration to say, that no external advantage is to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye, which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world; all the hoarded treasures of the pri meval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of its yet unexplored mines. This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power have for more than twenty centuries been annihilated; her people have degenerated into timid slaves; her language into a barbarous jargon; her temples have been given up to the successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is imperishable. And, when those who have rivalled her greatness shall have shared her fate: when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the sceptre shall have passed away from England; when, perhaps, travellers from distant regions shall in vain labour to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief; shall hear savage hymns chanted to some misshapen idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple: and shall see a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts,-her influence and her glory will still survive,—fresh in eternal youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual principle from which they derived their origin, and over which they exer

The dervise, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to abandon to his comrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while he re tained the casket of that mysterious juice, which enabled him to behold at one glance all | cise their control.

END OF VOL. IIL

ON THE ATHENIAN ORATORS.

To the famous orators repair,

Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratie,

Shook the arsenal, and thundered over Greece

To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.

MILTON.

THE celebrity of the great classical writers | all that could be done by the resolving and is confined within no limits, except those combining powers of the understanding, seems which separate civilized from savage man. not to have possessed much of sensibility or Their works are the common property of every imagination. Partly, also, it may be attributed polished nation. They have furnished sub- to the deficiency of materials. The great works jects for the painter, and models for the poet. of genius which then existed were not either In the minds of the educated classes through- sufficiently numerous or sufficiently varied to out Europe, their names are indissolubly asso- enable any man to form a perfect code of literaciated with the endearing recollections of ture. To require that a critic should conceive childhood, the old school-room,-the dog-classes of composition which had never exeared grammar, the first prize, the tears so often shed and so quickly dried. So great is the veneration with which they are regarded, that even the editors and commentators, who perform the lowest menial offices to their memory, are considered, like the equerries and chamberlains of sovereign princes, as entitled to a high rank in the table of literary precedence. It is, therefore, somewhat singular that their productions should so rarely have been examined on just and philosophical principles of criticism.

isted, and then investigate their principles, would be as unreasonable as the demand of Nebuchadnezzar, who expected his magicians first to tell him his dream, and then to interpret it.

With all his deficiencies Aristotle was the most enlightened and profound critic of antiquity. Dionysius was far from possessing the same exquisite subtlety, or the same vast com prehension. But he had access to a much greater number of specimens, and he had devoted himself, as it appears, more exclusively to the study of elegant literature. His parti cular judgments are of more value than his general principles. He is only the historian of literature. Aristotle is its philosopher.

The ancient writers themselves afford us but little assistance. When they particularize, they are commonly trivial: when they would generalize, they become indistinct. An exception must, indeed, be made in favour of Aris- Quintilian applied to general literature the totle. Both in analysis and in combination, same principles by which he had been accusthat great man was without a rival. No phi- tomed to judge of the declamations of his pulosopher has ever possessed, in an equal de- pils. He looks for nothing but rhetoric, and gree, the talent either of separating established rhetoric not of the highest order. He speaks systems into their primary elements, or of con- coldly of the incomparable works of Eschylus. necting detached phenomena in harmonious He admires, beyond expression, those inexsystems. He was the great fashioner of the haustible mines of commonplaces, the plays of intellectual chaos: he changed its darkness Euripides. He bestows a few vague words on into light, and its discord into order. He the poetical character of Homer. He then brought to literary researches the same vigour proceeds to consider him merely as an oraand amplitude of mind, to which both physical tor. An orator Homer doubtless was, and a and metaphysical science are so greatly in-great orator. But surely nothing is more redebted. His fundamental principles of criti-markable, in his admirable works, than an art cism are excellent. To cite only a single in- with which his oratorical powers are made stance; the doctrine which he established, subservient to the purposes of poetry. Nor that poetry is an imitative art, when justly understood is to the critic what the compass is to the navigator. With it he may venture upon the most extensive excursions. Without it he must creep cautiously along the coast, or lose himself in a trackless expanse, and trust, at best, to the guidance of an occasional star. It is a discovery which changes a caprice into a

science.

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can I think Quintilian a great critic in his own province. Just as are many of his remarks, beautiful as are many of his illustrations, we can perpetually detect in his thoughts that flavour which the soil of despotism generally communicates to all the fruits of genius. Eloquence was, in his time, little more than a condiment which served to stimulate in a des pot the jaded appetite for panegyric, an amuse ment for the travelled nobles and the blue stocking matrons of Rome. It is, therefore. with him, rather a sport than a war: it is a contest of foils, not of swords. He appears to think more of the grace of the attitude than of

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the direction and vigour of the thrust. It must be acknowledged, in justice to Quintilian, that this is an error to which Cicero has too often given the sanction, both of his precept and his example.

French Anas a ludicrous instance of this. A scholar, doubtless of great learning, recommends the study of some long Latin treatise, of which I now forget the name, on the reli gion, manners, government, and language of the early Greeks. "For there," says he, “you will learn every thing of importance that is contained in the Iliad and Odyssey, without the trouble of reading two such tedious books." Alas! it had not occurred to the poor gentleman that all the knowledge to which he had attached so much value was useful only as it illustrated the great poems which he despised, and would be as worthless for any other purpose as the mythology of Caffraria or the vo

Longinus seems to have had great sensibility but little discrimination. He gives us eloquent sentences, but no principles. It was happily said that Montesquieu ought to have changed the name of his book from L'esprit des Lois to L'esprit sur les Lois. In the same manner the philosopher of Palmyra ought to have entitled his famous work, not "Longinus on the Sublime," but "The Sublimities of Longinus." The origin of the sublime is one of the most curious and interesting subjects of in-cabulary of Otaheite. quiry that can occupy the attention of a critic. In our own country it has been discussed with great ability, and, I think, with very little success, by Burke and Dugald Stewart. Longinus dispenses himself from all investigations of this nature, by telling his friend Terentianus that he already knows every thing that can be said upon the question. It is to be regretted that Terentianus did not impart some of his knowledge to his instructor, for from Longinus we learn only that sublimity means height -or elevation.* This name, so commodiously vague, is applied indifferently to the noble prayer of Ajax in the Iliad, and to a passage of Plato about the human body, as full of conceits as an ode of Cowley. Having no fixed standard, Longinus is right only by accident. He is rather a fancier than a critic.

Of those scholars who have disdained to confine themselves to verbal criticism, few have been successful. The ancient languages have, generally, a magical influence on their faculties. They were "fools called into a circle by Greek invocations." The Iliad and Eneid were to them not books, but curiosities, or rather relics. They no more admired those works for their merits, than a good Catholic venerates the house of the Virgin at Loretto for its architecture. Whatever was classical was good. Homer was a great poet, and so was Callimachus. The epistles of Cicero were fine, and so were those of Phalaris. Even with respect to questions of evidence, they fell into the same error. The authority of all narrations, written in Greek or Latin, was the same with them. It never crossed their minds that the Modern writers have been prevented by many lapse of five hundred years, or the distance of causes from supplying the deficiencies of their five hundred leagues, could affect the accuracy classical predecessors. At the time of the re- of a narration,-that Livy could be a less veravival of literature no man could, without great cious historian than Polybius,—or that Pluand painful labour, acquire an accurate and tarch could know less about the friends of Xeelegant knowledge of the ancient languages. nophon than Xenophon himself. Deceived by And, unfortunately, those grammatical and the distance of time, they seem to consider all philological studies, without which it was im- the classics as contemporaries; just as I have possible to understand the great works of known people in England, deceived by the disAthenian and Roman genius, have a tendency tance of place, take it for granted that all perto contract the views and deaden the sensibili-sons who live in India are neighbours, and ask ty of those who follow them with extreme assiduity. A powerful mind which has been long employed in such studies, may be compared to the gigantic spirit in the Arabian tale, who was persuaded to contract himself to small dimensions in order to enter within the enchanted vessel, and, when his prison had been closed upon him, found himself unable to escape from the narrow boundaries to the mea-moirs. sure of which he had reduced his stature. It is surely time that ancient literature When the means have long been the objects of application, they are naturally substituted for the end. It was said by Eugene of Savoy, that the greatest generals have commonly been those who have been at once raised to command, and introduced to the great operations of war without being employed in the petty calculations and manoeuvres which employ the time of an inferior officer. In literature the principle is equally sound. The great tactics of criticism will, in general, be best understood by those who have not had much practice in drilling syllables and particles.

I remember to have observed among the

• 'Ακροτης και εξοχη τις λογων εστι τα ύψη.

an inhabitant of Bombay about the health of an acquaintance at Calcutta. It is to be hoped that no barbarian deluge will ever again pass over Europe. But should such a calamity hap pen, it seems not improbable that some future Rollin or Gillies will compile a history of England from Miss Porter's Scottish Chiefs, Miss Lee's Recess, and Sir Nathaniel Wraxall's Me

should be examined in a different manner, without pedantical prepossessions, but with a just allowance, at the same time, for the difference of circumstances and manners. I am far from pretending to the knowledge or ability which such a task would require. All that I mean to offer is a collection of desultory remarks upon a most interesting portion of Greek literature.

It may be doubted whether any compositions which have ever been produced in the world are equally perfect in their kind with the great Athenian orations. Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the production of cotton and molasses. The supply adjusts itself to the demand. The quantity may be dimi

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