The Press. — London, England, 1854-04-22 00:00:00

APRIL 2,1854. masterly powers will always obtain him ad mirers, and while none can doubt that the splendid monument to his fame will be coeval with our language, the inquisitive reader will feel a natural desire to have the results of continental scholarship and the reflections of posthumous criticism placed before him in judicious comments. How does his erudition stand the scrutinising and circumspective gaze of critics bred in the school of Niebuhr? Have his disguised venom and philosophic sneer lost their dread potency over the timid thinker and the half-educated Christian? What is the exact logical worth of his dispa ragement of the evidences for the Gospel? Such are the questions on which the buyers of Gibbon's work will always desire the newest information. Both of the editions before us are of the variorum sort, and for general circulation we do not see any better plan than that of judiciously compiled notes on the " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." An editor perfectly competent to undertake the trust single handed would be almost the equal of his author. We cannot consider that these two editions should be criticised as rivals, for their merits are dissimilar, and their styles of typography and price differ widely. For the library Mr Murray here gives Gibbon's great work in eight beautifully printed volumes, at the moderate price of seven shillings and sixpence each. Mr. Bohn supplies us with the same work in six vo lumes, of his well-known type, at three shil lings and sixpence each. As the second volume of the Albemarle-street edition con tains the celebrated fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, covertly attacking Christianity, we may say a few words on the mode in which Dean Milman has commented on the insidious art of the specious sceptic. We have already recorded in a cordial spirit our very high estimate of Dean Milman as a scholar and an author, but we have stated our doubts whether, in a polemical encounter, his logic has punishing power in its blow, and whether he has the muscularity required for grappling with a cool and sturdy opponent. We do not think that Dean Milman has ex posed with adequate power the sophistry of Gibbon. The fallacies of Gibbon sprung, in our opinion, from two causes—firstly, from the fact that Gibbon was deeper as a scholar than as a thinker. Strip him of his hoarded knowledge, of his industry, and his passion for literary fame, and will any one say that he had one of those deep originative intellects that, according to the temperaments of their possessors, shake or sustain the moral systems of the world? It is not so much the matter as the manner of his enigmatical assertions and his ambiguous hints, combined with his assumed tone of indifferency, that give such force of artful incrimination to his attacks on Christianity. On the events of his own age, and on the progress of society in England, Gibbon was by no means a deep observer, and it would be very difficult to show that in any high philosophical sense he even attained to a synthesis. How much there is that is contra dictory in his reflections could be best seen by attempting to collect his opinions into a code of infidelity. Secondly : contrary to all the rules of history, he narrates facts in a sneering and sarcastic style, and on grave subjects the spirit of mockery is not to be exorcised by s cience. " Who can refute a sneer ?" asked Paley, with undeniable sense, and the school of affectedly " strong minds" (dashed with epicurean effeminacy), to which Gib bon and other literary ornaments of " the " philosophical century " belonged, too often substituted a satirical for a critical mode of treating speculative and moral subjects. The fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of his history are professedly esoterical, while they are really ambiguous, for Gibbon would . be sorely puzzled if a philosophic al " Deist asked him, " in strict confidence," to define the exact bounds of his opinions on the development of the religious principle in human nature, or as to how far " conscience " was traceable to ac quired perception or innate sources. Those read in speculative, or trained in metaphysical, studies have never held Gibbon as a philoso pher in high respect, though paying every credit to his honest and unborrowed learning, THE PRESS. his sustained grandeur, and the elaborate mag nificence of his stupendous literary work. Considerations of this kind should influence an editor anxious to counteract the poison of Gibbon's fifteenth chapter. Now, the very first note appended by Dean Milman reads with great weakness. He seems to think that ho has hit Gibbon hard when he has made the following quotation from the life of Sir James Mackintosh : In spite of my resolution, Lardner led me to look through the famous fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of Gibbon. I could not lay them down without finishing them. The causes assigned in the fifteenth chapter for the diffusion of Christianity must, no doubt, have contributed to it materially ; but 1 doubt whether he saw them all. Perhaps those which he enumerates are among the most obvious. They might all be safely adopted by a Christian writer, with some change in the language and manlier. The reference to Mackintosh is unfortunate. That accomplished and most estimable person was a highly interesting character. There was a touching union of mental strength and moral simplicity in his nature that commended him to the regard of all who could appreciate talent and virtue. But there were great defects in hisintellect, for he never thought determi nately to a conclusion. In the very work from which the Dean of St. Paul's quotes there occurs a singular passage on the philoso phy of a future life, suggested by Mackintosh hearing a dull preacher endeavouring to ex pound that sublime subject. " These con " siderations," he concludes, " may serve to " show, perhaps, that Turgot and Malesherbes, " so full of love for the good and the fair, have " not apostatised from the true faith of Socrates " and Jesus." Besides, let the aflecting death bed of Mackintosh, described with pathetic eloquence by one of his gifted daughters, be considered attentively, and who will say that so vague a thinker ought to be put forward as a witness against the artful Gibbon? Even in the passage quoted by Dean Milman from Mackintosh let the reader observe the struc tural looseness of the style:—" I doubt whether "he saw them all." And again :—" Perhaps " those which he enumerated are among thg " most obvious." Sir James was the last of the school of the " Scotch philosophers," who are remarkable for using "perhaps " as a peace maker in settling a contest between positive knowledge and speculative conjecture. If Mackintosh were to be quoted at all against Gibbon it would have been as well to have indicated that Sir James really rated the his torian's philosophical faculties as relatively low. For example, we have it recorded in that very curious work, " Green's Diary of a Lover of Literature," that Mackintosh scoffed at the ' notion of contrasting the intellect of Gibbon with Burke. " You might," said he, " cut the " historian of the Decline and Fall ' out of " a corner of our philosophic statesman's mind" —a saying which, of course, must be dis missed as an oral exaggeration, though Mack intosh was fundamentally right as to the difference in power between the intellects of Gibbon and Burke. In the next note, however, Dean Milman tries to strike deeper at his adversary : The art of Gibbon, or at least the unfair impression produced by these two memorable chapters, consists in confounding together, in one undistinguishable mass, the origin and apostolic propagation of the Christian religion with its later progress. The main question, the divine origin of the religion, is dextrously eluded or speciously conceded ; his plan enables him to commence his account, in most parts, below the apostolic times ; and it is only by the strength of the dark colouring with which he has brought out the failings and the follies of succeeding ages that a shadow of doubt and suspicion is thrown back on the primitive period of Christianity. Divest this whole passage of the latent sarcasm betrayed by the subsequent tone of the whole disquisition, and it might commence a Christian history, written in the most Christian spirit of candour. Or, in other and plainer words, distortion and evasion are the polemical artifices employed by the historian. A corps of riflemen scattered through a wood can do dreadful execution on the exposed flank of a hostile army. Skul kin g amongst the brushwood, or clambering into the branches, they take deadly aim at the foremost of the foes, while they are themselves unscathed by the artillery that innocuously plays upon their leafy ambush. So with Gib bon in his taunts, sneers, and suggestive questions. His missiles are small but nu merous; his fire, though irregular, is well sustained; but he never dares the open plains 377 and grapples manfully with a visible adver sary. His annotator should point attention to his merits as a first-class rhetorician when allowed to beg his premises ; but., as a philo• sophical reasoner, what would he be if clutched by the muscular grasp of a Barrow or a War burton, with their terrible tenacity of purpose in argument and their pulverising power in destroying the brood of fallacies that spring from the non-distribution of the middle term—the expanded sophism that runs through Gibbon's mode of philosophising, and which he has so artfully concealed under the gorgeous pomp of his imposing and splendid rhetoric. On subjects where speculative subtlety and controversial logic aro not required, the anno tations of Dean Milman are appropriate and judicious. Dr. Smith's additional notes also give completeness to the work, though in some cases they are superfluous. What particularly deserves praise in this excellent edition is, that the text of the author and the variorum notes are so carefully revised. The historical map, prefixed to the second volume before us, gives facility of study to a reader, and may be used as a mnemonical exercise. _ _ Turning to Mr. Bohn's six-volume and cheap edition, we have to observe that it sustains the reputation of his reprints, though more care should have been taken in the first volume to avoid typographical blunders. We think that it would have been better to have stated the name of the editor it savours of claptrap to put the words " By an English Churchman" on the titlepage. The notes are too frequent in number, and often want compression, but it is impossible to deny their value and the va riety of their knowledge. One of their merits is that they contain many ethnological illustra tions, very useful at a period when questions about " race " are so much discussed. We give an example of the " English Churchman's" style of comment. Referring to Gibbon's ac count of the Huns, the editor of " Bohn's edi tion" says : Gibbon has here made an able and judicious use of the best materials at his command for composing the history of the Huns. Hut later researches have overthrown his work, by demolishing the hypothesis of M. de tiuignes, on which it is constructed. Those who destroyed are not, however, exactly agreed on what ought to replace the wreck. Most of them regard the Huns as a " powerftil nomadic people of Mongolian race, quite distinct from the southern Asiatics and the Europeans, and they make their appearance like the other nations of the tablelands of Upper Asia." (Niebuhr's Lectures, vol. iii., p. al7, 830.) Humboldt, in his " Views of Nature " (p. 5), seems to adopt the theory of M. de Ottignes and its eloquent exposi tion by Gibbon ; but afterwards (p. ) inclines to the opinion of Klaproth, who derives the Huns from " a Finnish race of the Uralian mountains, which race has been variously intermixed with Germans, Turks, and Samoiciles." The inquiry is too remotely connected with the subject of this history to demand the sacrifice of labour and space for a lengthened note. It is enough for us to know, that the Huns, like all their predecessors, came from the same regions, where, resUicted in their wandering courses by the ocean on every side but the west, they poured out their hordes in that direction upon Europe. If they have not been much misrepresented by historians, their descendants must have greatly improved by their mixture with other races. We have no doubt that there is ample room for both these editions of Gibbon, and that they will obtain general support from the public. The Poetical Works of Robert Montgomery, M.A. London : Chapman and Hall. THOUGH precluded by our rules from entering upon retrospective criticism, in the case of authors of established station, there are some peculiar reasons why (if our space allowed) we should he glad to discuss at length the merits of Mr. Montgomery's performances. It is impossible not to feel that in early life he was treated with excessive severity, and, while malevolent criticism counted up his faults, it omitted the more grateful task of in dicating his merits. Appearing before the world for the first time in the days when Ra dicalism was rampant, his qualities as a reli gionist made him an object of aversion to thinkers trained in the Voltairian school. As Lord Byron was vilified for the crime of being a young peer, so Mr. Montgomery was ob noxious for joining cultivation of the Muses to the calling of a divine. If he had been reared in what Mr. Horner once called "the chopped straw " of the Edinburgh Review, Mr. Montgo mery might have had a chance of seeing him.