The Press. — London, England, 1855-07-28 00:00:00

718 Nittraturt. Gibbon's Roman Empire. (Murray's British Classics.} Vols. IV., V., VI., VII., and VIII. With Notes by Dean Milman and M. Guizot. Edited, with Additional Notes, by William Smith. LL.D. London: Murray. "Is there more literary credit in writing " a history like Flume's England ' or one " like the ' Decline and Fall' ?" was. a question discussed in those select coteries described by Thomas Moore in his diary. It is a good topic for debate, as there are more issues involved in it than are at first apparent. Hume had extraordinary depth of thought. and an originality of observation, which teaches a statesman, while the charm of his easy style rivets a common reader. Greatly inferior to Gibbon in scholarship, Hume in acuteness, originality, and breadth of view is second to no historian of any age, and what Gibbon gains by the wider range of his vast subject is compensated for in Hume by the in tensity of power which always belongs to a Isaiional historian. It would be easier, how ever, to produce a history that might surpass " Hume's England" than to execute a work `hat could rival the " Decline and Fall ; " but, n the other hand, while Gibbon is always at •e full measure of his strength, every chapter Hume suggests that the author could do more, and reminds us that its writer was of the most influential philosophers of the teenth century. Thus the question of riority between these famous historians so easily solved as might be supposed. urning from these considerations to the 4 Gibbon, we must proceed to the im edition before us. We have here its ing volumes, and having on a former (Pam, vol. ii., 376) spoken at length Teneml features, all that remains for to examine the manner in which the \s have been completed. lasy thing to compose proper notes wical work of importance, and it is ifficult for the editors of another r, availing themselves of subse- Ties, to hit the exact degree of stration. In all narrative com bject of notes is embarrassing: ew the text will appear unsup )ey are too numerous the style • of the composition will seem I. " The Wealth of Nations " v Adam Smith on the prin all foot-notes, as, according tter wore of importance it n the text, and if it were ild be omitted. But that mula for superficial echo• rite on profound themes. cent plea mere lectures d off as narratives, and ns for ascertaining the 9arch of a historian. have always been re proofs of his power. close, and compre uling by their re med that they are -e display. In the there is probably wodigious variety mistakes, though has particularly sous pains with literary exerci- Ton his guard example, we 1r with Dr. ma, in which Servetus be it contains 'cry of the the work lished in n to that 'm Res rards— iibbon and it errors 11.• THE PRESS. Dr. Smith, however, has shown us that there are more slips than has been commonly sup posed. In taking up this edition for critical examination we turned at once to see whether the mistake of Gibbon about the Anician family was corrected. The late Sir Harris Nicolas was scarcely a more sure authority on the family history of England than Gibbon was generally upon the patrician pedigrees of Rome. In his thirty-first chapter Gibbon says : During the five first ages of the city the name of the Anicians was unknown ; they appear to have derived their origin from Preeneste ; and the ambition of those new citizens was long satisfied with the plebeian honours of tribunes of the people. _ _ _ To which the note is appended by tho au thor— The earliest date in the annals of Pighius is that of M. Anicius Gallus, Trib. Pl. A.U.C. 506. Another Tribune, Q. Anicius, A.u.c. 508, is distinguished by the epithet of PrEenestinus. Livy (ilv. 43) places the Anicii below the great families of Rome. Gibbon has here overlooked a case of the Anician family mentioned by Pliny; and the oversight is corrected by Dr. Smith:— There is an earlier instance of a member of the family obtaining one of the higher offices of the state. Q. Aniciva Prtenestinus was curdle tedile with Q. Flaying, the cele brated scribe of App. Claudius Ctecus, a.u.c. 450, B.C. 304. See Pliny, list. Nat. 1. c. 1, s. 6. Notes of that kind are a security that the author's text has been carefully examined. We observe that the usual chronology of Roman history has been followed throughout this edition ; and it would certainly not be right in such a work to introduce the compu tation of Niebuhr, even though more accurate, The date 450 A.U.C. in the preceding note is 442 according to Niebuhr. In the arrangement of the additional notes to this edition we observe that Dean Milman has chiefly applied himself to the study of the writings of the modern German scholars in order to elucidate the text of Gibbon, while Dr. Smith, equally conversant with those sources of information, has paid much atten tion to the ethnological research. In doing so he has, perhaps, ascribed too much historical authority to the work of Prichard, which con tains much that is merely conjectural: yet the long note of Dr. Smith on the origin of the Bulgarians, in the forty-second chapter, and its citations from the works of Zeuss and Schafarik, is admirably penned. On the fifty -fifth chapter, also, the note by Dr. Smith (vol. vii., p. 05) is very valuable. Gibbon writes in the text:— The unquestionable evidence of language attests the descent of the Bulgarians from the original stock of the Sclavonian, or more properly Slavonian, race. Dr. Smith supplies the correction : This is a mistake. Gibbon has been misled by the present language of the Bulgarians, which is Slavonic, but was not so originally. The authority of Chaloocondyles, whom Gibbon quotes in his note, is of no value for an earlier period, as he lived in the fifteenth century, after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks. And the continuation of that long and able note is vigorously reasoned. Gibbon thus continues in the text : And the kindred bands of Servians, Bosnians, Rascians, Croatians, Wallachians. Dr. Smith follows him in the note — This again, is a mistake. The Wallachians are not akin to the Servians, Bosnians, and other Slavonic nations. They are a Romance people, speaking a language derived from the Latin, like the French, Italian, and Spanish. They still call themselves Rumunje, Romans. The name of Wallachians, i.e. Wiilschen or Welch, was first given to them by the Germans. On account of the deserved inaportance given to ethnology in our time, we are glad to have an edition of Gibbon with so much superadded learning, on the origin of nations. The general style of Dr. Smith's notes re minds us of the Bishop of London's annota tions (Blomfield's Testament) ; and we can pay him no higher compliment. If less in geniously speculative than the German school, our English classical scholarship is more sure and more relevant in its illustrations. The modern German scholar has too great a ten dency to the encyclopedist, and occasionally, though not often, we see symptoms of that fault in Dr. Smith. Thus, in his notes on the thirty-first chapter of Gibbon, Dr. Smith has occasionally to remark upon a note of Gibbon, and he thus enlarges upon the cos t terrarium SATURDAY, The centenarium was a hundred pounds weight of gold ; and from the time of Constantine the pound contained seventy-two solidi. Supposing the solidus to be worth only 10s. English,* the preetorship of Symmachus cost 72,0001., and that of Maximus 144,0001. In the passage of the Theodosian Code quoted by Gibbon, tbc•follia means a purse of 125 pieces of silver, and, as this follig was equal to 51. Ils. nearly (according to Mommsen), 25,000 folks contained 143,750/. This sum, it is true, is prodigious ; but it is very nearly the same as the amount expended by Maximus in his proctorship. • This is the voles of the solidus, according to Savigny (see note, vol. ii., p. 338), which we have adopted in previous notes, but Mommeen makes the solidus nearly equal to 12s. See Mar quardt in Becker's Altertb., vol. di. pt. IL p. 34. We do not like the appearance of this double annotation of Smith upon Smith's notes on Gibbon's own notes ! But such instances are rare. We think also that the noto on Boethius (vol. v., p. 32), with its references, and notes of that class, might have been spared. Turning to another issue raised by the new notes to this valuable edition of Gibbon, we are oompelled to iterate our previous opinion that the infidelity of the historian should have been more vigorously grappled with by Dean Milman. Without entering into prolix con troversy, the obliquity and the inconsistency of this brilliant historian might be trenchantly exposed in " short, sharp, and decisive" logic. For example, Gibbon ooucludes the fifty-fourth chapter of his work with three pages of poi sonous writing on the results of the Reforma tion, and to that passage, along with its virulaut notes, Dean Milman has nothing better to offer than this note : The observations which the whole of this passage on the effects of the Reformation, in which much truth and jus tice is mingled with much prejudice, would suggest, could not possibly be compressed into a note ; and would, in deed, embrace the whole religious and irreligious history of the time which has elapsed since Gibbon wrote. How weakly that reads after the mass of incrimination in the notes and the text ! Yet the poison could be counteracted briefly. Thus, in a note on the passage where Gibbon says that he is more " scandalised" by the execution of Servetus than by the hecatombs that have blazed in the auto-da-fis, the histo rian presents reasons for his opinions, and artfully winds up : A Catholic inquisitor yields the same obedience which he requires, hut Calvin violated the golden rule of doing as he would be done by; a rule which I read in a moral treatise of Isocrates (in Nicoole, tom. i., p. 93, edit. Bettie) four hundred years before the publication of the Gospel. The sneer in this note could be easily re futed in a sentence. The " word " of Isocrates was not " with power." For tens of scho lars who may have read it, how many mil lions have known Christ's golden precept? Or, again, an annotator might have written that :—Christ came to earth in a far more awful character than that of a mere moralist. Ethical precepts of a fine humanity abound in the literature of all nations. So, again, when on the same page the historian remarks in a note, I em sorry to observe that the three writers of the last age, by whom the rights of toleration have been so nobly defended, Bayle, Leibnitz, and Locke, are all laymen and philosophers, it would have been as well to have reminded the reader that Gibbon forgot that Leibnitz and Locke were Christian " philosophers," whose works have vastly influenced the world for good ; while Bayle never founded a system, but, like Gibbon himself, was a universal sceptic. Is many other passages, also, we wish that more severity had been shown to the historian by Dean Milman. The remark of Porson upon Gibbon ought always to be present to the reader. " The historian," says Porson, " pleads " eloquently for the rights of mankind and " the duty of toleration ; nor does his hu " manity ever slumber, except when women " are outraged, or Christians persecuted." In spite of these serious blemishes of the " Decline and Fall," its exhaustless research and sustained power of composition will always place it in the highest rank of historical productions. In no part of his performance does Gibbon more triumphantly assert his claims to the first literary honours than in the forty-fourth chaper, wherein he analyses and describes the civil law with a clearness of logic and depth of knowledge which few pro fessed jurists have ever equalled ; while even on that comparatively dry theme the opulence of his diction and the dignity of his tone are seen to great and contrasted advantage. No