Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

in chronological order, at Jena, 1808; and those who wish to read them according to their dates, from any other edition, may find use in the table which M. SCHOLL has given in vol. ii. p. 132-138., but which is too long and too dry for us to transcribe into our pages. Philosophy, Science, Jurisprudence, and Grammar, follow in the established order. The question is agitated at what period of his life Cicero wrote De Legibus; and from a passage in which the office of augur is mentioned with respect, it is inferred that the dignity was then new to him, because at a later period he speaks of the same situation with contempt. Much of the literary history of Cicero, which Middleton has somewhat neglected, is interwoven in this disquisition.-The works of Vitruvius introduce a long dissertation on Roman Architecture; - those of Celsus usher in a sketch of Medical Science; and those of Varro, of Agriculture.

The fourth period of this literary history extends from the death of Augustus to the reign of Hadrian. A part of the corruption of taste is attributed to the then novel custom among authors, of convening an audience and reading to them for a specific contribution some new treatise or poem; a sort of oral publication, of which Asinius Pollio is stated to have set the gratuitous example, and which decided the popularity of every fresh production. In Pliny's letters much is said of such literary lectures. The great affluence of strangers to Rome introduced transalpine expressions; and the. Alexandrian literature, which had superseded the Athenian models studied by a preceding generation, contributed still farther to the declension of taste among the cultivated. The ambitious phraseology of Seneca, Tacitus, and Apuleius, acquired favour at the expence of natural writing. Neologisms of all kinds were hazarded; and, to avoid the reproach of triviality, ordinary paths were strewed with embroidery. A curious lexicon of the Latin words peculiar to this period is attached to the present author's introduction. The most prevalent feature, however, of the style of a reading age, is always a recurrence to the rhetorical figure called allusion; which consists in repeating combinations of words occuring in older authors, with some novelty of connection that gives them a new sense. While the original author is remembered, this new application delights: but, when the first nursery of the transplanted ramification has withered, this double employ escapes observation, and the praise of ingenuity is lost, but not the disgust at affectation. Hence, in works intended for duration, allusion should be sparingly used, and be drawn only from permanent classics: but the orator, and all those

who address a transient public, may derive effect from its adoption.

The tragic anthology of Seneca is next reviewed. It contains refaccimentos, refashioned Greek tragedies, accommodated to the Roman taste, which preferred fustian to undress. Octavia is the only one of these pieces which has an origin purely Roman; and it is here ascribed to Sæva Memor, a poet of the time of Domitian, who is supposed to be assailed under the name of Nero. Curatius Maternus was another dramatic poet of Domitian's time, and was punished capitally for some bitter allusions alarming to the safety of the Emperor. Virginius Romanus, a writer of genteel comedy, is known only from the mention of Pliny. We now come to the comments on Lucan's Pharsalia. The eulogy of Calpurnius Piso, by some ascribed to Lucan, is here attributed on strong grounds to Saleius Bassus, his friend. -Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus, and Papinius Statius, are also severally analyzed. Among the didactic poems, is classed Etna, by some ascribed to Virgil, but on better foundation to Cornelius Severus; this poem ought rather to have been introduced in the preceding period, to which it belongs; and so ought that of Terentius Maurus. - Columella, and the satirists Persius and Juvenal, follow in the procession. The poetess Sulpicia, who wrote a satire against the government of Domitian, is noticed; probably she was a Christian, since the purity of her domestic morals is vaunted by Martial, and the Christians were bitterly inimical to Domitian.

"Omnes Sulpiciam legant puellæ,
Uni quæ cupiunt viro placere ;
Omnes Sulpiciam legant mariti,
Uni quæ cupiunt placere nuptæ.”

The fabulist Phædrus, or Phæder, (for his name nowhere occurs in the nominative case, which is consequently doubtful,) is here placed under Tiberius; yet Seneca, in his Consol. ad Polyb. c. 27., says positively that the Romans had as yet made no attempts at the sopian apologue. - The Epigram, and Martial its hero, close the subdivision.

The Prose-writers of the period are considered next. History marshals her Velleius Paterculus, her Valerius Maximus, her Tacitus, her Suetonius, and others of inferior note; Eloquence names her Seneca, Quintilian, and Pliny ;—while Science, Jurisprudence, and Grammar, unroll lists of obscure

names.

With the third volume begins the fifth period, extending from the death of Hadrian to the commencement of the sixth

cen

century. We should have preferred to separate into two periods this extensive subdivision; endeavouring to draw a line between the Heathen and the Christian literature of the antient Romans. Seneca exhibits the first symptoms of a style tinctured by attending to Christian preachers: but this influence of ecclesiastical literature became still more sensible under the successors of Domitian. At length, under Constantine, it attained an ascendancy which gave a new character to composition, and introduced a mystical effeminacy of taste more favourable to morality than to reason. M. SCHOLL is inclined to denominate this fifth period the Brazen Age of Latin Literature: but we would begin a Leaden Age in the middle of the fourth century. Concerning this revolution, the author thus expresses himself:

(Vol. iii. p. 4.)- Dioclesian hoped to defer the fall of the Roman empire, and to give force to the government, by partitioning the administration among several chieftains. This was perhaps a way to save the state, if provision had been made for preserving union among princes independent of each other. Constantine, miscalled the Great, imagined another method to support the tottering monarchy; he expected to interest a large portion of the people in the preservation of the empire by granting to them a benefit in their eyes inestimable; namely, liberty of conscience, or the right of publicly professing a creed hitherto discountenanced. This policy, perhaps suggested by the internal convictions of the prince, in fact gained him numerous partisans, by whose help he triumphed over his rivals: but he could not rekindle a love of the country in bosoms intent only on religious controversy. A great fault committed by Constantine accelerated the destruction of the empire; by investing his new priesthood with an authority unknown in the antient order of things, he weakened that of the government. The bishops and their ministers filled the court and the church with troubles, and scattered sparks of discord among all classes of the community. They destroyed with violence the old national worship, to which popular prejudice ascribed the duration of the empire; they re-placed it by ascetic practices, which, referring every thing to a future state, superinduced an indifference for those ties that attach the citizen to society and to the government of his country; and they created a mischief unknown to Pagan antiquity, namely, religious intolerance.'

Still it must be acknowleged that, in different parts of the empire, at Byzantium, at Alexandria, at Milan, in Gaul, of which the inhabitants were distinguished by a zeal for letters, public schools were established and endowed, and professors salaried by the state, to teach the principles of philosophy, rhetoric, and law. But these schools were themselves the source whence emanated the corruption of taste: because the masters, instead of teaching to their disciples the road to truth, preferred a vain display of scholastic

scholastic phrases; and they have perpetuated a class of productions in prose and verse, that ought never to have emerged from the dusty halls of the convents in which they originated, but which have been copied and recopied with traditional industry, to the detriment, and in some cases to the extinction, of the nobler classics, which they superseded. The taste for mysticism, which progressively quenches intellect itself, became, during the ages that followed the accession of Constantine, a contagious disease, which infected and destroyed superior minds. From the days of Marcus Aurelius, literature had to complain of the decay of that patronage which had previously supported it; and this decline in the fourth century was so rapid, that scarcely a writer occurs afterwards who rose above mediocrity.'

To this introduction is attached a valuable table of the words peculiar to this æra of Latin literature.

Poetry has now to boast her Commodianus, for his Instructiones adversus Paganos; her Antonius, for his Carmen adversus Gentes; her Prudentius, for his Psychomachia and his hymns; her Vettius Aquilinus, for a diatessaron in hexameters; her Damasius, for spiritual songs in Latin rhimes; her Paulinus, for paraphrasing the Psalms; and her Proba Falconia, the wife of a proconsul, who composed a Christiad with hemistichs borrowed from Virgil. Other sacred poets are Prosper; Sedulius; Dracontius, who wrote a poem called Hexameron, on the Creation and the Loss of Paradise; Claudius Marius Victor, who versified the beginning of Genesis; Paulinus, who wrote in verse the Life of Saint Martin; and Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, who produced five books in hexameters, De Mosaicæ Historia Gestis. Of later date are Arator, who versified in two books the Acts of the Apostles; Orientius, who composed a pious satire called Commonitorium fidelium; and Rusticus Helpidius, physician to Theodoric, the Gothic king, who left a poem on the benefits derived from Jesus Christ.

An interesting chapter occurs on the epitaphs and inscriptions of this æra: -the edition of Gruter by Grævius is commended as the best repository.

Another interesting chapter comments on the Augustan History. Thirty-four biographers have given a series of Imperial lives, embracing the period of 165 years between Hadrian and Carinus; in which the servility, that too frequently infects the historian, is abundantly conspicuous. Âmmianus Marcellinus is the last great name in the historical department: he blames Julian for his antichristian mysticism; and, speaking of the orthodox Constantius, he says, Christianam religiomem absolutam et simplicem anili supersitione confundens," &c. which implies in the writer some attachment to a

simpler

simpler form of Christianity. Born at Antioch, he had probably imbibed the sentiments of Paul of Samosata.

The list of ecclesiastical historians in this period is a long one, and includes the names of Hieronymus, Rufinus, Sulpicius Severus, Epiphanius Scholasticus, Cassiodorus, Boethius, Augustin, Gildas, Orosius, Gennadius, Georgius Florentius Gregorius, Fredegarius Scholasticus, Isidorus Hispalensis, Ildefonsus, Julianus Pomerius, and Beda Venerabilis.

A curious chapter lays down the geography of the age, and disserts on the Table of Peutinger, assigning to the year 423 this topographical monument. (See the Dissertation of Meerman in the second volume of Burman's Latin Anthology.) The Itinerary of Antoninus is referred to as late a date; and specifically to Ethicus Ister, the author of a cosmography. Much praise is bestowed on Walckenacr's Récherches géographiques et physiques sur le Livre "De Mensura Orbis Terræ," composé en Irlande par Dicuil, suivies du Texte restitué; Paris, 1814. Dicuil dates his work in 825 another manuscript of it exists in the Cotton library, which some English editor should collate.

The Jurisprudence is next introduced much at length, and the history of the Pandects is given. On this subject, the English reader has received admirable lessons in Gibbon's reign of Justinian: yet materials occur here of which that historian's plan did not include the notice. A curious work of this age is the "Collatio Legis Mosaicæ et Romane” of Licinius Rufinus. From the anthology of antient wills, edited by Fabricius in 1549 at Basil, some comic extracts are given; and a long table of dignities, not much connected with the preceding text, forms a thick appendix to this subdivision.

Volume IV. continues the history of the fifth and concluding period, and is exclusively devoted to the Ecclesiastical Historians. With the progress of composition, the author has insensibly acquired an easier but a better plan of narration; and, instead of separating, as in the first and second volumes, all his literary history into systematic categories, he is contented to marshal his heroes in chronological order, and to say at once all that he has to teach about a given individual. The great art of literary history consists in adopting a skilful order of precedence between contemporary writers. It is not the date of their birth or death that consitutes the expedient rule of sequence, but their period of acmé. Thus only can the reciprocal influence of eminent authors be rendered sensible. Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, Ambrose, Jerom, Augustin, and a crowd of inferior writers, pass in review; and an equity of estimate, which apparently leans neither to the Ca

« FöregåendeFortsätt »