(Book iii. vv. 1045 et seq.)

'Tu vero dubitabis et indignabere obire?
Mortua cui vita est prope jam vivo atque videnti,
Qui somno partem majorem conteris ævi,
Et vigilans stertis nec somnia cernere cessas,
Sollicitamque geris cassa formidine mentem,
Nec reperire potis quid sit tibi sæpe mali, cum,
Ebrius urgeris multis miser undique curis,
Atque animi incerto fluitans errore vagaris.'

CREECH.

Then how darest thou repine to die, and grieve,
Thou meaner soul, thou dead e'en whilst alive,
That sleep'st and dream'st the most of life away?
Thy night is full as rational as thy day:
Still vexed with cares, who never understood
The principles of ill nor use of good,

Nor whence thy cares proceed, but reel'st about
In vain unsettled thoughts, condemned to doubt.'
DRYDEN.

'And thou, dost thou disdain to yield thy breath,
Whose very life is little more than death?
More than one half by lazy sleep possest,
And when awake, thy soul but nods at best,

Day dreams and sickly thoughts revolving in thy breast.
Eternal troubles haunt thy anxious mind,

Whose cause and cure thou never hopest to find,
But still uncertain, with thyself at strife,

Thou wanderest in the labyrinth of life.'

GOOD.

'And dost thou murmur, and indignant die,
Whose life, while living, scarcely death exceeds?
Thou, who in sleep devourest half thy days,
And, e'en awake, who snorest, dreaming still,
And torturing all thy mind with vain alarms?
Thou, who lamentest oft, unknowing why,
Urged on, with fear intoxicated deep,
And in a maze of mental errors lost?'

WATSON.

'Wilt thou then hesitate and grudge to die, in whom, even while living and seeing, life is almost dead? thou, who wastest the greater part of existence in sleep, and snorest waking, nor ceasest to see dreams, and bearest a mind disturbed with empty terror; nor canst thou frequently discover what evil affects thee, when, stupified and wretched, thou art oppressed with numerous cares on all sides, and, fluctuating with uncertain thought, wanderest in error?'

MUNRO.

Wilt thou then hesitate and think it a hardship to die? thou for

whom life is well nigh dead while yet thou livest and seest the light, who wastest the greater part of thy time in sleep, and snorest wide awake, and ceasest not to see visions, and hast a mind troubled with groundless terror, and canst not discover often what it is that ails thee, when, besotted man, thou art sore pressed on all sides with a multitude of cares, and goest astray tumbling in a maze of mental error.'

Our readers will see that Creech is not to be despised: he is not quite grammatical, but he is vigorous, and it is no fault of his that he has been eclipsed by Dryden. That great man is, as usual, easy and masterly. Of the last two lines of his original we think he might have made more than he has done. The metaphor, as we understand it, is not from a man wandering in a labyrinth, but from a ship without a pilot, which reels and staggers through the water, pressed and tossed by billows on all sides. Virgil, at any rate, that diligent student of the language of Lucretius, has borrowed the word 'fluitare' for the motion of Æneas' ship when deprived of her helmsman. Good is nearly valueless. Blank verse ought to be almost as close as prose, and he is far from close, while what he substitutes is no compensation for what he takes away. away. Indignant 'die' is not the same thing as indignabere obire.' Scarcely ' death exceeds' is a wretched dilution of mortua est prope.' Dreaming still and torturing all thy mind' represents as the same state two phases of unsoundness which had better have been kept distinct. In the next line lamenting is substituted for being ill at ease. Urged on' is not urgeris; and neither multis nor undique' is given. Mr. Watson is very tolerable, though less good than Mr. Munro. Wastest,' by which both of them render conteris,' would have been a better equivalent for a less strong word, like 'teris.' We should prefer 'wearest away,' not as in itself more graphic than wastest,' but as less hackneyed, and so preserving its original outline more clearly. Geris,' which Mr. Watson renders bearest,' Mr. Munro extenuates into hast.' Perhaps he is right, as Lucretius constantly uses gerere' when he means no more than habere.' If we had only this passage to think of, we should be inclined to suggest bearest about with thee.' Stupified and wretched' couples two words which Lucretius. has not coupled. There is force in the order of the Latin: 'ebrius,' standing at the head of the line, gives the tone to the whole; miser' is little more than a qualifying adverb. For the rest, stupified' seems to us rather better than besotted,' which has come to be appropriated to extreme folly, with scarcely a notion of bewilderment or unsteadiness. Stagger

6

·

6

ing as from drink,' or 'drunken as with wine' would, we think, give the figure better. In the last line, whether we read animi' or animo,' we do not like Mr. Munro's 'mental error,' which turns into conventional prose what in Lucretius is graphic and poetical.

We must conclude. We doubt, as we have already intimated, whether even Mr. Munro's labours will make Lucretius popular, in that limited sense in which any Latin classic can be made popular. But we have no sort of doubt that his book will tell powerfully on English scholarship, and that English students of Latin literature will gladly resort to him for much which could not have been obtained from any English source, and something perhaps which even Germany might have failed to supply.

ART. XI.—An Essay on the History of the English Government and Constitution from the Reign of Henry VII. to the Present Time. By JOHN, Earl RUSSELL. New edition. London: 1865.

THIS HIS volume combines a luminous survey of the past history of the British Constitution by a great master in Parliamentary statesmanship, with a forcible and instructive comparison between the period which preceded, and the period which has succeeded, the Reform Bill of 1832. The author of that great measure himself relates this history, exhibiting from the same point of view, but in different lights, the East and the West, the dawn and the setting, the aspirations and the performances of his own useful and honourable life. The Essay on the History of the English Government' was originally written by Lord John Russell between the years 1820 and 1823, before its author had completed his thirtieth year. It is now republished, more than forty years afterwards, with no material alteration, but with the addition of an Introduction, explaining the great changes these forty years have brought forth. A remarkable destiny-both of the book and of the author! For in these pages, which record the studies of his youth, Lord Russell found but little to efface; and the changes he has occasion to relate are changes of fact rather than of opinion. An entire consistency of conviction and of conduct prevails throughout the work and throughout the career of Lord Russell. No man who has navigated so long the vexed and fluctuating tides of public life ever steered more straight by the chart. Imbued from

VOL. CXXII. NO. CCXLIX.

his earliest youth with strong and clear convictions, drawn from the headsprings of English history, and inspired by the actions and the writings of the noblest Englishmen, the author of this book, as a member of Opposition and as a member of Government, as the leader of the House of Commons and as First Minister of the Crown, or in whatever other position he may have served the country, has made these principles his constant guide. This is not the place to record his numerous services to that cause of freedom and justice which he has loved so well, but great as those services are, this succinct record of his judgments and opinions on English constitutional history may be reckoned among the most durable The greatest resoluAction passes away. of his works. tions of the statesman, the greatest triumphs of the orator, lose something of their importance and their lustre with the occasion that gave them birth, and an infinite amount of intellectual power, expended in the work of government, But the written word leaves no visible trace behind it.

remains. Posterity counts the 'De Oratore' of Cicero or the Thoughts' of Burke on the present Discontents' as of far higher value to itself than the transactions in which the illustrious Roman or the not less illustrious Irishman was engaged. Lord Russell, not untouched by literary ambition, and well versed in the literary stores of his own and of foreign countries, has, at various times and in various forms, sought, with greater or less success, to leave his mark on If we were to select from his the literature of England. writings that one which appears to us the most likely to earn and to retain the rank of a classic, we should name thisEssay on the Constitution.' Our language boasts of no volume in which the leading facts of our history and the leading principles of the Constitution are stated with so much clearness in so small a compass. The composition is the more remarkable, inasmuch as, at the time it was written, Hallam had not yet explored to their sources the springs of the Constitution. Brodie, Godwin, Forster, Macaulay, had not yet directed their powerful analysis to the events of the seventeenth century, and the public archives, which are the sources of authentic history, now so profusely opened, were still comparatively closed. The authority of Clarendon, Blackstone, and Hume was, forty years ago, almost as undisputed as the authority of Lord Sidmouth at the Home Office, or of Lord Eldon in the Court of Chancery. Nevertheless, in those days Lord John Russell found means to extract and elaborate for himself, from such materials as he possessed, a more true and

living image of the earlier and the later freedom of his country. He traced from the days of the Plantagenets the origin of those liberties which set a peculiar stamp upon the political and social institutions of the kingdom. He showed that even the haughty and unscrupulous Tudors discreetly avoided that collision with the fundamental rights of the nation which was afterwards provoked by the infatuated Stuarts. Their presumption and their punishment, fatal to themselves, consolidated the rights of the people, and established the limited character of the monarchy; and for nearly two centuries, since the Revolution, the stream of our history has flowed steadily onwards, gathering here and there a tributary to its course, expanding in a broader channel as the nation grows in intelligence and wealth, increasing by natural development rather than by curious innovation, but retaining that ponderation of classes and of powers, which is, after all, the most peculiar and essential characteristic of our form of government.

In 1823, Lord John Russell, conscious of the difficulties of the task, but not doubting the spirit and resources of his country and of his time, thus stated the condition of the nation :

'Upon the whole, to sum up the circumstances which favour and these which oppose the establishment of arbitrary power in England, we have, on the one hand, the immense patronage in the hands of the Crown, the corruption of the boroughs, the horror caused by the French Revolution, the growing disposition of men to cling to ease and quiet as a security for property, the want of respect for old forms, the custom lately and perniciously begun of recurring to new reme dies and new restraints on the appearance of popular excesses, and the increase of the numbers of the people causing dissensions to kindle more quickly, and appear more formidable than formerly. We must add to all this, that a late minister has greatly abused all those means of government which our Whig ancestors were the first to use, thereby making the usual machinery of the State odious to the people, and of dangerous employment to all future rulers. Mr. Pitt, entrusted at an early age with the care of the government, made the country live too fast. Prodigality and profusion everywhere prevailed; the nation borrowed year after year, with increased and thoughtless extravagance; new and artificial facilities were invented to enable us to run into debt; the peerage was depreciated by creations which, at the same time, enfeebled the gentry of the kingdom; a factitious vigour was produced by the application, from time to time, of the most hurtful stimulants, and a temporary repose was obtained at the expense of permanent strength and the stamina of life itself. Hence a frame, which was formed to endure longer than the ordinary period, may be cut off by a premature failure of its powers. Nations which have been our inferiors or our rivals are watching us