• The Goths : from the Earliest Times to the
End of the Gothic Dominion in Spain. By Henry Bradley. London : T. Fisher Unwin. 1888. BRADLEY'S HISTORY OF THE GOTHS.* Mn. BRADLEY'S volume is the first History of the Goths that has appeared in the English language. The blank in our historical literature is a visible sign of the oblivion which has befallen a name which at one time promised to be more far. sounding than the name of Frank. In the fourth century the Goths were the most powerful people in Europe. One Gothic King ruled over Spain and the richest part of Gaul, and another was the ruler of the whole of Italy. Nor was it the . extent of their dominions alone that pointed out the Goths as the people of the future. They were the most gifted of the barbarian races, acquired the Roman civilisation with marvel- lous rapidity, and produced rulers with an unusual capacity for government. The Letters of Cassiodoras bear witness to
the -wisdom with which the great Gothic King Theodoric governed from Ravenna the mixed population of his Italian Kingdom. Far less promising for the future were the political beginnings of the Franks, who, according to Gregory of Tours, were repulsive barbarians—Ottoman Turks of the-West--more likely to destroy the still existing civilisation, than to found a new one. The respective fate of Frank and Goth cannot be regarded as satisfactory by those who believe that the history of the world is the judgment of the world. The Fra,nks, mot- -withstanding their evil beginnings, founded the two greatest Kingdoms in Europe, while the Goths were overthrown by the armies of the Eastern Empire, at a time when they were governed and led by a King who is justly described by Mr. Bradley as having a passion for justice and a lofty ideal of kingship. The old ecclesiastical explanation, that the Goths -perished as a nation because they were Arians, has been revived by writers who have no tenderness for Catholic dogma. Catholicism, they maintain, was the fitting discipline for nations in their infancy, and bound them together ; Arianism, which is incipient rationalism, acted as a dissolvent. The explanation would be more convincing, were we certain that the barbarians understood the difference between the rival creeds. Chlodwig, it is true, profited by the lucky accident that he had embraced the Catholic form of Christianity, for his orthodoxy secured for him the good-will, which was not always passive, of the Catholic priesthood in the dominions of the Arian Kings which he invaded. But more material causes than their Arianism led to the downfall of the Gothic Kingdoms. The Goths were everywhere in a minority in their own dominions ; they were so surrounded by foreign in- fluences that they changed their character with dangerous rapidity, and because of their isolation, they could not, like the Franks, recruit their national spirit and -fighting power from the realms of virgin barbarism.
Those who feel an interest in the tragic history of the Goths will find Mr. Bradley a trustworthy guide. He has followed Dalm—and he could have followed no better—faithfully, but not slavishly. He was precluded by the plan of the series from citing authorities ; but he has supplied some interesting illus- trations from archeology and philology, on which he can speak with authority ; and such side-lights are specially welcome in a History where documentary authorities are unusually scanty. He does full justice to Theodoric, the greatest of all German Kings until the time of Charles the Great. So profound was the impression made upon the popular mind by Theodoric's wisdom, that before the sixth century closed, legend was busy -with his name, and men told in Italy, what was told of our own Alfred, that he so made righteousness to prevail in his realm, that gold pieces could be left exposed on the highway for a year and a day without being stolen. Theodmic intro- duced just and merciful methods of taxation, fostered agriculture, industry, and art, and Goth though he was, pro- tected with anxious care the remains of Roman architecture. He manifested a spirit of toleration in advance of the times, not only to his Catholic subjects, but even to the unfortunate Jews. He did not succeed, however, in uniting his Gothic and Italian subjects into one nation ; and the evil effect of this was felt afterwards, when the East Gothic Kingdom was assailed by the armies of Justinian. Dahn calls Theod.oric's reign a "blunder of genius;" and it is the blunder which the man of genius naturally commits, to do things on a scale which his successors cannot continue. Mr. Bradley describes with spirit the great duel between the Gotha and the Generals of Justinian. The final struggle was ennobled by the personality of Totila, the last Gothic King of Italy, whose deeds and chivalrous character remind us of the best period of the Middle Ages. Mr. Bradley has little to tell of Roderic, the last of the Goths, whose name is so familiar to the readers of Scott and Southey. Roderic belongs to legend rather than to history. All that is known of him is that he was defeated by the Moors on the Guadalete in 711; and in consequence of his defeat, the followers of the Prophet became masters of the Kingdom of the Visigoths. The Visigoths were not driven out of Spain, as the Ostrogoths were driven out of Italy ; and it was the Gothic element in the in- habitants of the Peninsula which enabled them to throw off the Mahommedan rule, and created the chivalry of Castile. To this day, Mr. Bradley remarks, the noble families of Spain boast, if not always truly, of the purity of their Gothic blood. For the last traces of the Gothic name in Europe-we must look,
not to Spain, but to the Crimea, which was sometimes called Gothia as late.as the eighteenth century ; and in the sixteenth century, a traveller from Belgium discovered that the inhabi- tants of the Crimea spoke a language which was.a corrupt form of the speech used by Wulfila, in his translation of the Bible.
Their tragic ill-fortune followed the Goths after their national extinction. The Gothic History by Cassiodorus, which might have preserved their renown, was lost, and only survives in the blundering abridgment of Jordanes. Their name has almost disappeared from the map of Europe, while the insignificant Lombards gave their name to the great Italian plain. The Goths were the most cultivated of the barbarian peoples, and their name is a synonym for wantonly destructive barbarism. They were the most tolerant of the barbarians, and the ugly word " bigot " is a corrupt survival of the name Visi- goth. Surely no Guardian Angel watched over the fortunes of the Gothic nation.
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