The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-16 00:00:00

saw it yet, and with a smile thanked his Maker that he saw f this fashion, the real commencement of the narra-

it then also—especially then.
The person who thus passed our hero was more than six
feet in height. He was fair in complexion. His hair was
light auburn, and large locks of it fell, with a natural wave
and return, upon his neck. His head was bare. His dress
was the long flowing robe of the Jews, girdled at the
waist, and, as Paulus afterwards fancied, the colour of it
was red. He was iu the bloom of life. Our hero could see,

as this person passed, that He was the very perfection of
health, beauty, vigour, elegance, and of all the faculties of
physical humanity ; and even the odd, and strange, and
wild, and somewhat mysterious thought flashed through
Paulus's mind :
"fly God," thought ho, "if there were a new Adam to
be created, to be the natural, or rather the supernatural,
king of the human race, would not his appearance surely
be as the appearance and the bearing of this person ?"
And the person who passed was moreover thin, and a
little emaciated. And He would hare seemed wan, only
that the most delicate, faint blood-colour mantled in His
cheeks. And He looked at the hero Paulus, with the look
of Him out of whose hand none hath power to take those
whom He picks from a vast concourse and elects. And
Paulus felt glad, and calm, and without anxiety for the
future, and free from all bitterness for the past, and firm,
yet grave ; and when his mind went actually forth to look
upon the things that were around it, ho saw nothing but

the face and the glance.
And now I come to the strangest particular of all.
Paulus felt that this beautiful and vigorous new Adam, fit
to be the natural and even supernatural king of the world
was ono who never could have laughed, and probably had
never smiled. But no smile was so sweet as His gravity. And
Paulus remembered another extraordinary and unparal-
leled circumstance : it was this—those beautiful and be-
nignant eyes were so full of terror, that it seemed they
could scarcely hold in an equal degree any other expres-
sion in them except that which shone therein with what
seemed to Paulus a celestial and divine lustre ; I mean,
first, love, and next unconquerable, and everlasting, and
victorious courage. As though there was a work to do,
which none but He (from the creation to the day of doom)
could ever accomplish—a dreadful work, a work unspeak-
able in shame, and in pain, and in horror, and yet a work
entirely indispensable, and the most important and real and
momentous that had over been performed. And the sub-
ject or hero of this tale, Paulus, wondered how in the
same look and eyes, and in a single glance of them, two
things so opposite as ineffable terror and yet God-like
adorable courage could be combined.
But, nevertheless, they were both there ; and with this
mighty and mysterious mental combination, Paulus also
saw a sweetness so inexpressibly awful that, at once (and
as if he had heard words formed within his own heart), the
reflection arose within him : " How much more terrible
would be the wrath of the lamb than the rage of the
lion !"
And the figure of this person passed onward, and was
hidden from poor Paulus beyond the olive groves.
Because of the nature and bearing of this most re-
markable passage of all in the work now under re-
view, we have purposely and, as will be readily
understood, not very surprisingly, reversed the
natural order of things when treating of its contents,
by thus giving the foregoing extract at once as our
earliest quotation from " Dion and the Sibyls."
Doing so among other reasons because, as it seems to
us, it affords the very readiest clue of all to the
significance, the aim, the purpose of the whole
book. For the work as a whole, by the way,
it here occurs to us that the very aptest
motto might have been culled from the clos-
ing verse of the opening stanza of the " Dies
Inc." By no more than the change of a single
name that verse would have indicated to a nicety
the significance alike of the narrative and of its title.
Relating, in fact, as the narrative does, immediately
before its conclusion, to that earlier dies irce—
referred to by our author himself (ii. 340) as
" the most awful day the world has known," that
" ever memorable and tremendous Friday"—the
device thus suggested for inscription upon the title-
page might have run—
" Teste Dion cum Sibylla."
Dionysius the Athenian—the Dion of the title and
of the tale—meaning that early convert of Saint
Paul, the Saint Denis of France, the first Arch-
bishop of Paris, he whose preaching-place among
the Gauls was on the spot now consecrated during
many centuries as the site of the Cathedral of
Notre Dame, Dionysius of the Areopagus, Dionysius
the last of the great Greek philosophers. Whatever
erudition has been scattered through the pages of
these two volumes by their author—and there is
much at uncertain intervals that he has lavished upon
them beyond a doubt—it is only fair to him that
we should add, while thus referring to it, that it is
never dragged in, so to speak, by the head and
shoulders, out of any mere ostentation of scholarship.
It is always apropos or, otherwise expressed, it is
always directly to the purpose then more immediately
in hand, in the way of furnishing to the context
a clear, and elegant, and in many cases an absolutely
conclusive elucidation. A happier instance of this
could hardly be adduced than that afforded by the
portion of the narrative having especial reference to
that mysterious sibylline acrostic beginning—
" ISpo.)crt 8E )(Ow Kpnotcos crweLov Or' ecrai"—
the mystical acrostic identified by Lactantius with
the
Leoomr
edodoml
golden
yi
tteei
commented
hhtreteitaldiscussedaegauscenwpr,
do,
hona,
Alexander,sgauco discussed,rrl
veactelhrnecetrPbtleauwri penned—penned
Itj
anther
fsfit othersnpooefwn
whichu e,
remarked
p,,
(i Tost
hpnhi
e,
se,
ll
osmostlongano yue s)r
renowned and awe-inspiring prophetic acrostic
c
by the Sybils long before the Birth at Bethlehem,
snaisttbsiayi
eyibly translatedoCrii egeerno bbyebf
Eyo
e.
bthi
uea,Augustine, birthbyN oaf Natalia
and
before then by Marcus Tullius Cicero. That
blessed Lord's two names all down the lines like a
here very beautifully—
" Ilcrove Xptcrrov OEov Ytor, o-cerqp—"
the mystical verses of this acrostic relating in the
body of the text, dimly and briefly, it may be,
but, when coupled with the initial letters thus
Nothing of
superfluous Mankind.
spelling out the Holy Designation, very distinctly
and very prophetically, the Life and Death of the
Redeemer
is here introduced—nothing
is said but what is, in the fullest meaning of the
words, thrice-welcome to the reader as luminously
illustrative of the force and significance of the mo-
mentous subject touched upon so delicately yet so
firmly with a hand of loving veneration. Scarcely
anywhere can we detect the author in error in his
lore—once only to our remembrance, at this moment,
on glancing back retrospectively. It is where, in
his powerful description of the formidable aspect of
Tiberius, the man in purple-black raiment, the man
with the brick-dust coloured complexion, is spoken
of as small-eyed instead of, as Suetonius Tranquillus
describes him, with eyes proportioned to his huge
bulk and lofty stature. All the stranger, this mo-
mentary slip of the pen is, coming from one who, so
to speak, seems in a manner saturated, through and
through, with the anecdotal data of the biographer
of the Twelve Emperors. Turning, however, from
this romance of "Dion and the Sibyls," to the author
of it himself, thus does he prepare the way for his
narrative by a sort of personal exordium :
"I have no technical, nor professional, nor doctorial claims
of any kind to advance," he says.
" I am not a recluse,
yet a strange, odd sort of person.' lam no preacher,use, onor
r
teacher, nor lecturer, nor projector, nor promoter,
onoor
r
agent, nor missionary, nor martyr, nor saint, nor cns •
I have pursued honour, not wholly in vain, in some com-
mon, open arenas. I have taken my part—and I suppose
it is not over yet—in the battles of life. On certain occa-
sions I have struggled victoriously against very consider-
able odds. Better, abler, more gifted men have succumbed
around me, and I have trembled for myself when I saw
them sink. Inferiority shuddered to witness all their
strength, vigour, genius, and Courage overwhelmed at its
side. Some famous men have teen, and are, my friends,
and some groat men, both in the true and the false sense of
the epithet, I have seen, known, and studied. I have mixed
with many classes in various and large communities ; have
sojourned in four continents ; have conversed in the lane
guages of those whose ideas reflected, contradicted, or.
enlarged my own ; have watched the rage of modern busis-
ness with infectious suspense and sympathy'
the monuments, the arts, the traditions, and the literatures,
where so much human passion and human intelligence
aud amidt
have spent their noblest toil, have experienced my share of
emotion. 1 have erred, and suffered, and blundered; en-
countered checks, and afterwards looked back upon them ;
received directions and given directions. I have striven
and been beaten ; have strived and prevailed ; have missed
my turn and had my turn. I have known both kinds of
disappointment, that of failure and that which better de-
serves the name—l mean the disappointment of success.
"Now, lam not a superior person ;' Iwish I was. lam
no reprover of others, officially or officiously. In fine, I
am anything you may please to conclude, except traitor,
coward, or liar. I would much rather bo something better ;
but such as we are, we are.
"And now," says he, by way of close to this strang
Preface, " And now;while you pass, will you listen to me,
friend, for a while ?"
Whereupon, there follows, immediately after

tive :

It was a fair evening in autumn, towards the end of the
year eleven of our Lord. Augustus CEssar was a white-
haired, olive-complexioned, and somewhat frail-featured,
though stately man of more than seventy-three. At the
beginning of the century in which this is written, the face
of the first Napoleon recalled to the minds of antiquaries
and students of numismatic remains the lineaments en-

graved upon the extant coins of Augustus. Indeed, at this
moment, there is in the Vatican a beautiful marble bust in
excellent preservation, representing one of these two em-
perors, as he was while yet young ; and this bust almost
invariably produces a curious effect upon the stranger who
contemplates it for the first time. " That is certainly a
beautiful artistic work," ho says, "but the likeness is
hardly perfect."
"Likeness of whom ?" replies some Italian friend. "Of
the emperor," says tho stranger. " Sicuro ! But which
emperor ?" asks the Italian, smiling. "Of course, the
first," says the visitor, "not this one." "But that repre-
sents Augustus Ca3sar, not Napoleon Bonapartk," is the
answer. Whereupon the stranger who, a moment before,
had very justly pronounced the resemblance to Bonaparte
to be hardly perfect, exclaims not less justly, What an
amazing likeness to Napoleon ! That sort of admiring sur-
prise is intelligible. Had the bust been designed as an
image of the great modern conqueror, there had been some-

thing to censure. But the work which, at one and the same
time, delineates the second Caesar, and yet now after 1800
years recalls to mind the first Napoleon, has become a
curious monument indeed.
The second Roman emperor, however, had not a fore-
head so broad and commanding nor so marble smooth as
Naplocon's, and the whole countenance, at Me time when
our narrative begins, offered a more decisively aquiline
curve, with more numerous and much thinner lines about
the mouth. Still, even at the age which he had then
reached—in year eleven of our Lord—he showed traces of
that amazing beauty which had enchanted the whole classic
world in the days of his youth. Three years more, and
his reign and life were to go down in a groat, broad, calm,
treacherous sunset together.
How in that broad sunset the grand old Sybarite
Emperor passed away like a stage-player on the
final closing of the curtain upon his performance, is
no more than just faintly hinted at in the text—the
second Caesar exclaiming as in a death cry to those
who were assembled around his couch, "If all be
well, lift up your voices with joy in resounding
plaudits to the actor's honour," meaning to his own
—'Er 8E 7rav EXEC .KaXi.is (these wero his words) rcd
racyvica &'TE Kpeprov, Kai 7ravrer Uµeis ilerA xapa
Krwricrare. Long before his disappearance in Death,
however, Augustus Caesar passes almost wholly
from our ken in the unfolding of the later inci-
dents of the plot of this narrative, so that a mere
casual mention at last of his final exit is perfectly
in keeping with the due arrangement of the pro-
portions of the story as a work of art. The invo-
lutions of the winding plot of the tale here told,
we shall not venture merely to number up and,
as we number them up, dully to epitomise. Let
the romancist have the full benefit of the varying
and (not unfrequently) the long-sustained interest
he contrives to awaken in regard to the linking
together, turn by turn, of the salient incidents of
his chequered narrative. The mastering of the ter-
rible and gigantic horse Sejanus, for example, or
that earlier. parrying of the wondrous blow aimed
at Paulus by the eunuch Lygdus, or the extrication of
the pay of the legions of Germanicus from the toils
of the scum of the Suburra, or the baulking of Plan-
cina's deadly device for the poisoning of Paulus
with the drugged potion, the baulking of that
deadly device by the last of the Sibyls at the very
moment when Paulus is raising the chalice with the
" leprous distillment" to his lips, or, the extrication,
again, of Agatha from the jaws of death, or of far, far
worse than death, at the latest moment, by fire and
by sword, by the mighty arm of Thellus, and by the
mightier fraternal love of Paulus, and by the serried
ranks of the Praetorian Guard marshalled at the
beck of the puissant finger of the chief minister
Sejanus. The epoch in which the story opens is
thus radiantly pencilled with a few easy and rapid
touches, indicating the writer's familiarity with the
age of which he treats, lit up as that whole epoch
is by the golden sheen of its immortal literature :
Ovid had just been sent into exile at Temesvar in Tur-
key—then called Tomos iu Scythia. Cornelius Nepos was
ending hie days in the personal privacy and literary noto-
riety in which he had lived. Virgil had been dead a whole
generation ; so had Tibullus ; Catullus half a century ;
Propertius some twenty years; Horace and Marconas about
as long. The grateful master of the curiosa felicitas ver-
borunt had followed in three weeks to—not the grata iu-
deed, but the urn—the patron whom he had immortalised
in the first of his Odes, the first of his Epodes, the first of
his Satires, and the first of his Epistles; and the mighty
sovereign upon whose youthful court those three charac-
ters—a wise, mild, clement, yet firm minister, a glorious
Epic poot, and an unsurpassed lyrist—have reflected so
much and such enduring lustre, had faithfully and unceas-
ingly lamented their irreparable loss. Lucius Varius was
the fashionable poet, the laureate of the day ; and, Maecenas
being removed, Tiberius sought to govern indirectly, as
minister, all those matters which he did not control directly
and immediately, as one of the two Caesars whom Augus-
tus had appointed. Velleius Paterculus, the cavalry
colonel, or military tribune (chiliarch), a prosperous and
accomplished patrician, was beginning to shine at once in
letters and at the court. The grandsonof Livia, grandson
also of Augustus by his marriage with her, but really
grand-nephew of that emperor—we moan the son of
Antonia, the celebrated Germanicus, second and more
worthy bearer of that surname—a youth full of fire and
genius, and tingling with noble blood—was preparing to
atone for the disgraces, and to repair the disasters which
Quintilius Varus, one year before, amidst the uncleared
forests of Germany, had brought upon the imperial arms
and the Roman name. Germanicus, indeed, was about to
fulfil the more important part of a celebrated classic inj unc-
tion ; he was going to do things worthy to be written,
" while the supple courtier of all Caesars, Paterculus, was
endeavouring to write something worthy to be read.'
Strabo had not long beforo commenced his system of geo-
graphy, which, for about thirty years yet to come, was to
engage his attention and dictate his travels. , Livy, of the
"Pictured Page," who doubtless may he called, next to
Tacitus, the most eloquent, without being set down as
quite the most credulous of classic historians—l venture to
say so, pace Niebuhr—was over 86 years of age, but scarcely
looked 60. He was even then thoroughly and universally
appreciated. No man living had received more genuine
marks of honour—not even the emperor. His hundred and
forty-two books of Roman History had filled the known
world with his praises, a glory which length of days
allowed him fully to enjoy. Modern readers appreciate
and admire the thirty-five books which alone are loft, and
linger over the beauties, quasi stews, with which they shine.
Yet who knows but these may be among the poorest pro-
ductions of Livy's genius? A very simple sum in arith-
metic would satisfy an actuary that we must have lost the
most valuable emanations of the Paduau's great mind.
Given a salvage of five-and-thirty out of a hundred and
forty-two, and yet the whole of this wreck, so marvellous
in beauty! surely that which is gone for ever must have
included much that is equal, probably something far supe-
rior, to what time has spared.
As superbly indicative of the rhetorical power pos-
sessed by the pen of our novelist, we are tempted
here to give yet one other extract from his pages,
one affording the reader what we cannot but regard
as a very noble taste indeed of the writer's quality.
It is a passage descriptive of the apparition of the
demons to the haggard and wondering eyes of
Plancina, the evil-hearted wife of Cneius Piso—
" Some forms were like the human, with red fire in the
veins instead of blood, and white fire in the bones instead
of marrow ; eyes they possessed that had no comfort in
them. They had the air of being utterly without interest
in anything, only that their oyes were filled with fear ; yet
it seemed to me with knowledge, too : unspeakable fear,
immense knowledge : wells and pools they appeared, full
of fear and knowledge. When they glanced upon you,
there were pale rays of hatred strangely combined with an
expression of indifference, fear, knowledge, and hatred.
If you looked at the eyes, when they looked not at
ycu, you saw nothing but an expression of fear and
knowledge ; but when they did look at you, you
saw fear, knowledge, and hatred, too. All these faces
mocked without smiling, and scoffed without enjoyment.
Something, I thought, was dripping down the wan cheeks,
and there was a look of fixed surprise long ago, of long-
past astonishment—the trace loft, and the feeling gone.
The emotion of boundless amazement had once been there ;
the signs of it were loft all over tho countenance, but, if I
may so speak, petrified— an immedicable scar, an ineffaceable
vestige. The character of the countenance was that of a
dead astonishment—the astonishment was dead ; it was no
longer an active sentiment. It had been some boundless
wonder ; the greatest which that creature had ever experi-
enced, and the event which had caused it had apparently
been the most serious which that being had ever known."
Apart from any more highly elaborated descrip-
tive passages such as these, there are little
incidental phrases, moreover, of infinite grace
and beauty scattered with a lavish baud
all through the two volumes—such phrases,
let us say, as that descriptive of the
arcaded impluvium of the Mamurran Palace, with
its central; fountain " smitten into a sorcery of
tints, as it shed into a large basin of green marble
the drooping sheaf of waters, of which the materials
were perpetually changing, and the form and
outlines perfectly main.4ined or instantly and per-