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

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