The Sun.
London, England, 1865-03-03 00:00:00

HISTORY

OF JULIUS CESAR.

By His Majesty the Emperor Napoleon 111.
CASSELL, PETTER, AND GALPIN.
(Preliminary Notice.)
A supplementary volume or two of a rather ex-
traordinary character ought certainly to be written
some day in continuation of the Earl of Orford's
" Royal and Noble Authors." It was only a very
few weeks since that we had an ex-Prime Minister
of England—an illustrious peer of these realms who
might yet any day be installed once more at the
head of our Government as First Lord of the Treasury
—claiming particular attention in the world of letters
by the complete translation from the Greek into
English blank verse of the earliest, the grandest, the
noblest of all poetic masterpieces. And now, here
again, as it were, upon the very morrow of the pub-
lication of the Earl of Derby's version of The Iliad
of Homer, we have issuing simultaneously from the
printing presses of France, England, Germany, Italy,
Hungary, and we know not what other countries
besides, a very notable and substantial contribution to
Literature—not a translation, but an original work
of conspicuous importance, a highly-elaborated
History, the History of one of the greatest of the
Human Race, The History of Julius Cmar—penned
by no secluded student, by no professional man of
letters, by no University Professor, but by the
Foremost Monarch in Christendom—by the man
at the slightest touch of whose potent finger
the Balance of Power may swerve to the right
or to the left, to Peace or to War. Never have we
had greater reason than upon opening this First
Volume of " The History of Julius Caesar," to bear
in remembrance that famous saying of Dr. Johnson
(vide Boswell), that when a man of rank appears
in the character of an author he deserves to have
his merit handsomely acknowledged. For, in the
instance here before us, it is not simply a man of rank
who dallies for a while with the delights of author-
ship, it is the powerful ruler of a mighty empire
who, in the midst of the supreme responsibilities
devolving upon him as one directing the destinies of
the forty millions of civilised France, has—without
apparently relaxing for a single instant the ap- '
plication of his energies to the direction of the
affairs of his Government—nevertheless, con-
trived to grapple vigorously with one of the
most problematic portions of antique, history, the
culminating epoch, as it may be called, in the annals
of Ancient Rome. And it is expressly notice-
able, here, at the very outset, that the
imperial author of this voluminous and ambitious
History of Julius Cxsar, of the first, and mightiest,
and best of all the Caesars, is no more a mere
dilletante of letters, than he is, in our sense of
the term, a Constitutional Sovereign, delegating
the labours of Government to a set of responsible
ministers, and consequently having abundant
leisure for the cultivation of his own powers with-
out detriment to the affairs of the State over
which he rules, though rules for the most part
merely nominally. Than the author of this book—
Louis XIV. himself could not more emphatically re-
mark, L'Etat c'est moi. The Government of France,
means this very Author of the History of Caesar—
means, in effect, the Emperor Napoleon 111. Not
his Ministers, not his Chambers, but—himself.
From his cabinet in the Palace of the Tuileries,
from which he grandly dates his brief but suffi-
cient Preface—from his cabinet in the Palace
of the Tuileries, in which Palace, by the way,
he himself first drew breath, so that it is truly
his home, his very birthplace—from his cabi-
net in the Tuileries, the reigning Emperor of
France, himself, in his own person, directs the ope-
rations of the vast and complicated machinery of
his empire—hither and thither—in all directions, in
the provinces, in the colonies, among the prefects of
his empire at home, among his ambassadors abroad
at the courts of his brother Sovereigns. As directly,
as immediately, as actually with his own mind and
will as even when in 1859 he conducted the legions
of France from victory to victory across the plains
of Lombardy in his capacity as Commander-in-
Chief upon the field of battle—so directly, so
immediately, so actually with his own mind and
will, during ordinary times of peace or of quasi-
peace, does he himself preside over the conduct
of the affairs of his Government in all its various
departments—over the movements of his fleets
and of his armies in all quarters of the globe (as
his Speech from the Throne indicated plainly enough,
it may be remembered, only the other day)—those
fleets and armies of his which are more or less
widely scattered according to the exigencies of the
moment, along the confines of Europe, Asia, Africa,
and the two Americas. Yet it is this Ruler, this
veritable Ruler of Men—one who so far resembles
the Centurion of the Gospel that he has but to say
to his armed men " Do this," and they do it, " Go
thither," and they fly whithersoever he lists at his
bidding—it is this Emperor who is now reigning
over the 40,000,000 of France who has contrived,
amidst all the cares of empire, to write upon en-
during tablets, in characters sufficiently noble to
accord with our sense of what is befitting alike the
Writer and his Subject, a History of Julius Caesar
not unworthy of having been penned by an Emperor
Napoleon. Thus far, at least, may be pronounced
already as our deliberate opinion in regard to the re-
markable work here submitted to our consideration.
o it
sh ,e instant, s tcaon course,
s see, e gl
y that
a First this
The chapters making up this first of the four volumes
into which the History is apportioned, afford—(as
mFirsaytbe unders understood upon
Volume,
though
Volume, is at the same time One Complete Quarter
of the. Whole Work)—these introductory
making up the bulk of the first of the four volumes
of this History, afford us already far more than
a mere taste of the quality of the writer as a
historian, they reveal, amply enough to admit of our
pronouncing some judgment upon them, the powers
of the author as a biographer of the greatest of the
Caesars. If the work needed any justification in
coming from the hands of a reigning monarch—but
that it does, we cannot for the life of us recognise,
seeing that Napoleon 111., whatever else he may be,
has at the least been no Roi Fainéant while writing
this work, has, at the least, been no crowned
Pococurante neglecting the sterner duties of his
high position, in order that he might the more
selfishly enjoy the luxury of letters at the expense
of the interests of his people—supposing, we say,
that the work under notice, as a literary produc-
tion from the hand of the Emperor Napoleon
required any justification whatever as coming
to us from the pen of a great Ruler—that justifica-
tion the Imperial author has himself incidentally
supplied upon the very threshold of the stately
fane he has here erected to the glory of
Caesar—where he remarks—" My object in writ-
ing this history is to prove that when Providence
raises up such men as Cesar, Charlemagne, or
Napoleon, it is to trace out to the nations the path
they ought to follow, to mark with the impress of
their genius a new era, and to accomplish in a few
years the labour of several centuries. Happy the
people who understand and obey them ! Woe to
those who disregard and oppose them They act
like the Jews, they
crucify their Messiah !" A dis-
tinct analogy is, therefore, designed to be indicated,
a direct analogy is, here, intended to be dis-
cernible between the epoch, the history, the
life, the rise, the fall, the fate of Caesar,
and the epoch, the history, the life, the rise, the fall,
the fate of Napoleon. Therein—that is to say, in this
very analogy—as projected by the reigning Napo-
leon in his present literary masterpiece—lies his
full and complete justification (if any such were
really needed by him) in writing it. Afterwards,
later on, we shall have abundant opportunity to
enter into that careful analysis of the work to which
it is unquestionably entitled—by reason far more of
its own intrinsic importance, of its erudition, its
eloquence, its comprehensive scope, and its minute
detail, than by reason either of the grandeur of its
theme or of the splendour of its author's position in
the eyes of his contemporaries. At present it may
suffice for us to have pronounced upon it the preli-
minary opinion here indicated, an opinion dic-
tated, let us say at once, by the simplest sense of
justice towards a great man in a great position
writing a great work, rather than by a mere
courtly regard for the wisdom latent in
that gracious remark of old Samuel Johnson's,
already indicated-a-to the effect that literary