On this page
-
Text (3)
-
No. 425,May 15, 1858.) THE LEADER, . ^73...
-
MR. FORSTER'S ESSAYS. (second kotice.) H...
-
THE ANCIENTS AND THE MODERNS. Jlistuire ...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Merivale's Roman History. A History Of T...
every language in Europe—from his infancy , through the gradation of his debauched youth , but has examined the pedigree of the Brazen Beards , showing it to have run parallel with a genealogy of ferocity and faithlessness , of cruelty , fraud , lust , and adultery . The father of Nero , an incestuous swindler who married the sister of Caligula , was reputed to have joked at the birth of his child , that from such a father and such a mother nothing could spring but what would be abominable and fatal to the state . The malediction had its fulfilment , and the educators of Nero did their worst to render it impossible that he should be other than a violator of divine laws and an enemy of the human species . First , they assigned him to the care of a dancer and a barber ; then they clothed him in purple , laid him on a couch of down , satisfied the most insane of his caprices , amused him by
immodest exhibitions , made him a sensualist while he was scarcely more than a child , and trained him up to become , while yet a youth , a deliberate fratricide . The poisoning of Britannicus vras a fit inauguration of the Neronic reign , and while the young emperor mounted an undivided throne , the body of his brother was laid upon a funeral pyre , so stained and livid that it was necessary to paint the limbs that the murder might not be evident to all eyes . Dion Cassius says that a shower of rain fell , and washing off these pigments , exhibited the discoloured carcase to the people . We cannot refuse to believe , upon the testimony adduced by Mr . Merivale , that Seneca was an accomplice in this hideous crime ; at all events , he was easily induced to forgive his patron and pupil , and it would appear from the statecraft with which the atrocity was contrived , that Nero had an astute confidential adviser when he employed-L-ocusta to mix such a potion as would strike
young Britannicus dead whenever it touched his lips . Yet Nero has had his apologists . There have been those who have regarded his reign as one of comparative glory , and derided the invective of Suetonius ; but we can discover no single point in the character of "the emperor , or in the influence he exerted upon his contemporaries , which was not corrupt , degraded , and vicious . A brawler in the public streets , depraved in private life , a monstrous and vulgar egotist , unnatural in his affections , first contemplating the debauch and next effecting the assassination of his own mother , he rode in state through the streets of Home while secret hands hung the parricide ' s sack upon his statue , and while the names of matricides were placarded almost in ghastly jest upon the walls . What was this but demoralization in its most odious form ? The imperial court became one enormous lupanar ,
and the courtiers were buffoons , dancers , singers , and female posture ^ makers , with the emperor among them in the disguise of a god , sometimes descending on the stage to sing with a liusky voice , out of his thick and bovine throat , his own verses and those of Seneca- The empire was an empire of baths , games , and prostitution . Into the midst of this profligate levity intrudes the bloody image of Octavia , Nero ' s half-sister , whom he first seduced , and then , as usual , murdei'ed . " The poor child , " says Mr . Merivale , " had not yet attained her twentieth year" when she was seized and bound ; her veins were opened , and the life struggling in her body longer than her assassins expected , she was stifled in a warm , bath and decapitated , and her head sent as a trophy to Julia Poppoea . The lying Tigellinus acted as chief agent in this ungrateful murder . Mr . Merivale , without the introduction of repulsive details or apocryphal anecdotes , illustrates with wonderful force the progression of Zero ' s abasement , from his mock
marriage with a male parasite to his death—an episode of unprecedented humiliation and infamy . There is a strange moral in that last degradation of the last Caesar : starting from his table , taking poison from X » ocusta , who prepared the draught for Britannicus , taunted by his soldiers , without a friend to despatch him , creeping reluctantly to the necessity of . suicide , urged by his slaves to die , measuring his own grave , finding every possible excuse for delay , pleading in extenuation of his pusillanimity for moments of preparation , and only urged to plant in his breast a dagger which he dared not drive home when he read the decree sentencing him to perish " in the ancient fashion . " lie asked what that was , and was informed that the culprit was stripped , his head placed in a fork , and his body smitten with the stick till death . Yet he might say then , as his successor said , " I was once emperor . " The Romans had pronounced him all but divine , the people had shouted round his chariot , the civilized world hud exhausted its llattery upon him , the senate had been liis footstool , and the army his throne .
The ^ natural -workings of Lower Roman imperialism are minutely and with philosophical precision traced by Mr . Merivale , who does not forget , while drawing the portrait of ] Nero , to stigmatize that corruption of ideas and manners which enabled him to be what he was . He points—and this is the most valuable chapter in his new volume—to the fallacies and sophisms by which men are insincerely reconciled to despotism . Nero , without foreign allies to support him , with tin armed patrician constituency , alone at the head of a warlike and powerful nation , was master and tyrant , armed with authority to insult the best , to oppress and plunder all , toollend nature , to commit matricide , to compel the nobles of Koine to bleed themselves to death—a class of mandates with which the Chinese and Japanese are familiar—and Mr . Meriviile asks why was this ? The view he takes is , that the worst enormities of the emperor were unknown to the mass of the people , which is probable , and that even when public men were unjustly put to death the
agonies of their execution were shrouded from the popular sight . But beyond this and every other reason was , that the Romans were debased , that the masters of slaves had become accustomed to slavery , that the women who scourged their handmnida for an error in the adornment of their hair could have no heroic or decent pride , that the multitude in . the circus could have no patriotic feeling , that the Romans loved power more than liberty , and luxury more than cither , and their noetry and philosophy ielt the mlluence of this voluptuous servility . Stoicism was unequal to the task of overcoming the license and sensuality of the empire . It needed a nobler race and a grander creed to create another free community in Europe . A . century of imperialism rendered it impossible that Rome should not abdicate her historical position , and here is tho lesson enforced by Mr . Merivale , whose masterly narration , written with a singular strength and polish of style , is a Work which tho youth of England may study with confidence and With admiration .
No. 425,May 15, 1858.) The Leader, . ^73...
No . 425 , May 15 , 1858 . ) THE LEADER , . ^ 73 ,
Mr. Forster's Essays. (Second Kotice.) H...
MR . FORSTER ' S ESSAYS . ( second kotice . ) Historical and Biograpkical Essays . By John Forster . 2 vols . John Murray-It is no discredit to _ a writer or reader of history that he has forgotten , or never studied , Rapin . Mr . Forster , however , may be surprised to learn that in the work of that old-fashioned compiler , as well as in Rushworth _ , the Grand Remonstrance is printed textually , a fact which we have remembered accidentally upon reperusing his analysis and chronicle of the glorious document , worthy to stand between Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights among the state papers of England . It is good for the mind , in these days of factious insincerity , fiction , and timid compromise , to read the narrative of those grand debates which brought up Pym and Hampden , Hyde and
Culpeper , Falkland , Cromwell , and the giants of their days , who laid the foundations of two centuries of progressive and enlightened'law , and it is of special interest to note the variations of the mighty discussion . It will be remarked as an important passage in the history of the Grand Remonstrance that the Commons then established their right to remonstrate independently of the Lords , a right questioned by old Sir John Culpeper , but vindicated by the majority . Mr . Forster ' s Essay on the Plantagenets and the Tudors , published for the first time in these volumes , is a criticism on the constitutional history of a period to which , he traces an important branch in the genealogy of English freedom . He aims at showing that party spirit , in its strict sense ,
arose in England so early as the reign of John ; that the Great Charter then sanctioned created no rights , but declared and defined them ; that under the first line of Plantagenets a popular element had forced itself into the councils of the state ; that ministerial responsibility and parliamentary control existed when the opposition barons drove the Poitevin Bishop of Winchester across the sea , but that the constitution of parliament , even when these princip les had begun to prevail , was essentially feudal . The immediate vassals of the Crown , representing certain land , possessed the personal right to be present in Parliament . By a fiction , indeed , but a fiction of invaluable influence in after years , villeins were supposed to sit in the assemblage of earls , barons , knights , and freemen . " Is
it difficult to discover , " says Mr . Forster " throughout these efforts of Norman royalty to check the excess of its ministers and obtain the co-operation , of its people , the vague formation of that authority and House of the Commons , -which was to prove more formidable than either of the powers it was called into existence to control ? " It was not long before the faint outlines were fixed distinctly upon public law and practice . In the thirty-eighth of Henry III . the principles of a . real representation had become part of the constitution of the realm . " As of right the commonalty took , and they kept , the place to which they were called , " and through the reigns of the first and second Edwards and their successors , their hold grew firmer upon the institutions they so largely assisted to improve , strengthen , and sustain . The seventy parliaments summoned by the third Edward erected a basis which might be shaken but could never he overthrown . Tracing the process by
which the feudal system was extinguished , Mr . Forster has some excellent comments on the rebellions of Tyler and Cade , unwritten chapters in the history of England , and he does no injustice to the body of the insurgents , to their chiefs , or to the results of those important but misunderstood movements . Passing on to the reign of Elizabeth , his estimate of the queen is high , though not higher , perhaps , than the records warrant ; while speaking ^ of the first James , he presents the big-headed and little-legged mannikin in all the elaborate deformity of his dirt , pedantry , baggy-breeches , clumsy , uncouth , shambling figure , " goggle eyes , " " slobbering tongue , " red face , sandy head , and jabber of incessant vanity . Oliver Cromwell might have derived his first idea of divine right from the spectacle of this Guy at Hinchinbrook .
It will have been noticed that Mr . Forster discusses from an original point of view many controverted questions in connexion with English constitutional history . We must now , however , lay aside these masterly and fascinating volumes , repeating that , although the second is composed of reprinted essay's , with large revisions , the contents of the first are almost entirely new . In a part of our impression last week the publication of this work was , by a clerical error , incorrectly assigned . We therefore deem it a duty to emphasize the announcement that Mr . Forster ' s Historical and Biographical Essays are published by Mr . John Murray .
The Ancients And The Moderns. Jlistuire ...
THE ANCIENTS AND THE MODERNS . Jlistuire de la Querelle des Anciens ct des Modernes . Par Hippolyte Rigault . Paris : Ilachette . The controversy as to whether the ancients were or were not superior to the moderns may be said now to have completely died away . There has been no award on either side . People have simply discovered that the dispute ought never to have taken place , because , unless every ancient is superior to every modern , or every modern superior to every ancient , the whole question is one of appreciation of individuals . The methods and tendencies of classical times are not so different from the methods and tendencies of all modern times as to justify anj'thing more than a chronological division . The only difference between the early litcraturo of the world and the later is , that human knowledge and experience have increased , and it may now , perhaps , require a mind of greater grasp to deal with all the facts presented to it , and at the same time give due attention to form . Life is at present no longer than it was , whilst the l'equirements of art arc more vast . The critics , however , -whose disputes M . Rigault records in this interesting and exhaustive volume , were wanting in the impartiality which would have put an end to the controversy at once . In every case they bccauie hot partisans ; and , as those who took sides for the ancients maintained an opinion offensive to human pride and really puerile in itself , it is not surprising that they have ( it length succeeded iu disgusting the public with classical litcraturo altogether , whilst at the same time tho ndvocutca of tho
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), May 15, 1858, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_15051858/page/17/
-