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We should be pleased to illustrate by direct citation the characteristics of Roman Tragedy which have been hurriedly indicated if our space would permit the undertaking. We should be gratified to exhibit the lofty sentiments, the acute maxims, the sententious wisdom, the pregnant utterance, and, above all, the exhilarating freshness of these old tragedians. This last peculiarity is often indicated by slight touches which must be felt spontaneously to be adequately recognised: there are but few examples remaining which, taken by themselves, directly indicate the spirit with which they are impregnated; but these are so characteristic, so accordant with the general tone of the utterance-so utterly foreign to the Greek mind, except in the single case of Homer-that we may safely ascribe the qualities evinced by them to the general tenor of the original portions of these productions when they still existed unmutilated. A few of these examples we shall venture to quote:

Hoc vide circum supraque quod complexu continet

Terram

Solisque exortu capessit candorem, occasu nigret,

Id quod nostri cœlum memorant, Graii perhibet æthera:

Quidquid est hoc, omnia animat, format, alit, auget, creat,

Sepelit recipitque ni sese omnia, omniumque idem est pater,

Indidemque eadem quæ oriuntur, de integro atque eodem occidunt."

With the philosophy, good or bad, propounded in these lines we have no present concern; the sole thing to which we are desirous of calling attention is the close observance of nature and the sympathy with her changes which they display.

Here is a solitary line which could scarcely have been written by one not intimately familiar with rustic life, or without a genial interest in its trivial incidents.

Item ac mæstitiam mutam infantum quadrupedum.†

We doubt whether the habitual resident of a great city can appreciate this notice of the dumb suffering and agony of infant beasts. It is a spectacle sufficiently striking to affect the imagination and excite the sympathy of persons who have spent much of their lives in the country. The silent anguish, the look of helpless pain manifested by some of the domestic animals are well calculated to elicit a mournful pity.

But the most marked of these passages is one which we believe to be altogether unique in the whole series of the still surviving productions of Roman literature. It seems to have made a very Trag. Lat. Reliqu. p. 71, 72, vv. 86-92. Chryses. Frag. vi.

:

† Trag. Lat. Reliqu.: p. 149, v. 315. Attii Epinansimache, Fr. vi.

strong impression on the mind of Cicero, by whom it has been preserved, though without commemoration of the author.*

Cœlum nitescere, arbores frondescere,
Vites lætificæ pampinis pubescere,
Rami baccarum ubertate incurvescere,
Segetes largiri fruges, florere omnia,

Fontes scatere, herbis prata convestirier.

The language is inharmonious and negligent enough, and has its full share of affectations, but there is nothing in either the Bucolics or the Georgics of Virgil which is as redolent of the fragrance of the forest and the field, or which brings home to us more forcibly the aspects of rural life and the genial vicissitudes of the changing year. The subject and the form of expression may excite a doubt whether these verses are of tragic or even of dramatic origin, or do not rather belong to a lyric poem or a song of harvest home. The latter supposition is strengthened by their consonance with the rustic feeling of poetry which manifests itself in the phrases reported by Cicero, "gemmare vites," "luxuriem esse in herbis," "lætas segetes," and mentioned by him in connexion with a passing allusion to one of these lines. Still, M. Ribbeck has received them as a genuine tragic relic, and as such we accept them for the reason previously stated. Whatever their origin may be, they are animated with that healthy, genial, lively, observant and affectionate regard for the scenes of nature which so pre-eminently characterizes the Provençal songs.

We were the more anxious to note this feature in the ancient Latin poetry, inasmuch as it is so foreign to its classical productions, which paint nature too often with the fancy of a Cockney. Moreover, this element is distinctly of Roman and not of Greek origin. At the outset of these remarks, we spoke in such sharp terms of derision of the derivative and Hellenic character of the whole body of Latin literature, and of Latin tragedy in particular, that we are glad to mitigate that censure, as far as may be consistent with the facts, by directing attention to the evidences of a genuine and native poetic tendency, in a form so meritorious and so rare among the ancients.

Humboldt has remarked the deficiency of sympathetic appreciation of the detailed beauties of nature on the part of both the Greeks and the Romans, but the passages cited, and others of a similar complexion which may be gathered from this repertory of mangled skeletons, may suggest that there was a period of Roman development, and a branch of Roman literature, wherein the Roman poets Trag. Lat. Rel.: p. 217, vv, 133-7. Inc. Inc. Fab. Fr. lxxii. Cic. Tusc. Disp. I., xxviii, sec. 69. † Cic. De Or. III, xxxvviii, sec. 155. Humboldt, Cosmos., vol. ii, p. 373. Ed. Bohn. FOURTH SERIES.-VOL. VIII.-7

freely yielded to the hearty influences of the country life still habitual with the people, and reproduced its teachings in their artistic labours.

There is neither opportunity nor necessity to give utterance to all the reflections suggested by this volume, "car qui pourrait dire tout sans un mortel ennui?" Much forbearance and some discretion must always be exercised in repressing the observations which seek expression in relation to any subject. We have announced only a few of the views which have presented themselves to us on the present occasion; but they may suffice to give a satisfactory response to the question with which we commenced these remarks, and to show that many instructive lessons may be acquired even from the shattered relics of an antiquated, extinct, and almost forgotten department of literature. Very many of these lessons we have passed over in silence; the most important we have exhibited only briefly-so briefly as to afford only a limited insight into their character and use. Nevertheless, enough has been said to render intelligible the acknowledgment of our gratification at receiving the fruits of Otto Ribbeck's labours, notwithstanding they are burdened with the erudite and cumbrous divinations of his imaginative commentary.

Is it not a remarkable and mournful exemplification of the perishable nature of every human device, and of the evanescence of even high intellectual triumphs, that a copious body of literature, which won even the fastidious admiration of Cicero, and the partial homage of Virgil and Horace, and formed at one time the most refined enjoyment of a great people, should have been so completely dissipated by the changes of literary taste and the accidents of time, as to be reduced to these scanty and petty memorials of their former glory?

Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?

The longest of these fragments does not exceed a dozen linesmany of them consist of only a single verse, and in numerous instances the solitary verse is incomplete, or is reduced to a phrase or a word. The aggregate of these remains, capable of being exhibited under a metrical aspect, does not attain to two thousand lines, in this collection. This is all that has been saved from the wreck of the ante-Augustan tragedy of Rome, and constitutes the Tragicorum Latinorum Reliquiæ.

We have only to add that the work is beautifully printed on excellent paper, and is a very handsome specimen of the improved typography and preparation of recent German publications.

ART. V.-ROBERT NEWTON.

The Life of the Rev. Robert Newton, D. D. BY THOMAS JACKSON. New-York: Carlton & Phillips. 1855.

"BOSWELL," says Macaulay, "is the first of biographers. He has no second. He has distanced all his competitors so decidedly, that it is not worth while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere."

It is one of the strange things in literature-a real phenomenonthat in all the "Lives" of great men and small, learned and unlearned, good and bad, there are so few interesting, readable, and instructive biographies. Instead of what we want to know of a man, about whom or concerning whose actions or the results of whose course of life we feel an interest, we are furnished, by his biographer, with a resumé of the history of the times in which he lived; philosophical speculations on government; the rise and fall of empires; essays on the wordy warfare of the sects; or a rhapsodical eulogy on the real or fancied greatness of his subject. All, or nearly all, that we know about him, after reading from five hundred to a thousand pages, more than we knew before, is the precise time of his birth, and, it may be, some particular circumstances attending his death. Perhaps we may learn that on some day he went without his supperwhat many a one has often done-and that by drinking a cup of green tea instead of black, he was kept awake when he very much desired to sleep.

It is supposed, and with reason, too, when one man undertakes to write a "life" of another, that he has materials for the biography; else why undertake it? If what was upon the surface only, and what consequently was known to all, is to be thrown together in compilation, why tax our pockets for what we already possess? A "life," in an important sense, is an original work. It is a compilation not from published documents merely, but from the private records of the subject, now no longer of use to him, and from the memoranda of friends. It is a revelation to the multitude of what was known before only to the few. The writer of a "life" either has the necessary materials for his work or he has not. If he has them not he has no moral right to publish what purports to be a biography, when, in fact, it is not. Such a practice is false pretense in literature; and the author, if he be not sent to Newgate, is subject to what perhaps is more annoying to him-the castigation of the

critics. If he has the materials and a good subject, and fails in his undertaking, he has missed his calling; whatever else he does, he had better not write "lives."

It is much to be regretted that the biographies of those whose example is worthy of imitation should be deficient in what gives to such compositions one of their greatest charms-incidents and illustrations of life; especially because, in spite of such defects, they are sought after with avidity and read by all classes of persons. Law-books find their way mostly into the untidy, smoky offices of the profession. Polemic divinity, elaborate essays on Church dogmas, and old sermons, interlarded with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, borrowed from the books, go to the shelves of clergymen, for the most part, where quite generally their slumbers are profound and undisturbed. Philosophy is taught in the schools; but only a few schoolmen read philosophy. Not so with biography; that is read by men, women, and children. There is a reason for this; indeed there is a deep philosophy in the fact: biography is the written life of man. We have consequently an interest in it of which we cannot divest ourselves if we would, and of which we would not if we could. Besides, the design of biography is to show us how to live by showing us how others lived. If it does not do this it fails in an important essential.

What we want, and what we expect, in the biography of a man whose talents, virtues, position, and achievements were such as to make his history necessary or desirable, is to know how he developed those talents; how he cultivated and fostered those virtues; by what means he obtained his position, and how he accomplished his achievements. The privacies of life, the inner man, the thoughts, the actions, the words, the freaks, the beauties and deformities of his social life; his manner of life in his own house, his carriage towards his wife, his habits with his children, his hours of study; his authors, how he used them and what he thought of them; his preparation for public life; the labour and time required for this preparation; adventitious circumstances and incidents, all these are bargained for in the purchase of the "life" of a good and great man. During the occupancy of a mansion we may look unbidden upon its external beauties and magnificent proportions. Without the owner's permission or invitation we may not cross its threshold: but if, when he is gone, his executor opens the doors, and admits us on fee, we have a right to see the house within. And we should not be satisfied to enter the front door and simply pass through the main hall to the back door, and out. He, without a further exhibition, would not fulfil his implied contract. No more does the writer of a "life"

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