21 NOVEMBER 1863, Page 20

THE GLADIATORS.*

CAPTAIN WHYTE MELVILLE has not been well advised in quitting the clubs and the turf, and the fast society of the hour, which he knows, and therefore describea so well, for a picture of Roman, manners, which he only thinks he knows. His story is not exactly a failure, for there is a vigour in all his writing, a distinctness in most of his sketches, which make hopeless failure on any scene, • The Gladittors. By Whyte Melville. Londou : LoLgman.."."-- ever ill-chosen, almost impossible; but The Gladiator* will not live or add to his reputation. They would lower it but for a single feature, the reality which he has contrived to impart to the human brutes whom he has selected as heroes. Whether from his acquaintance with their modern representatives, or from some undeveloped sympathy in his own mental constitution, Captain Melville understands his gladiators, and makes his readers understand them too. An audience of to-day have a difficulty in understanding how, even in an age without moral restraints, men could be found in thousands to adopt public murder as a profession, to delight in contests in which defeat meant death from the enemy, and a blunder death from the mob—to train themselves into heroes and yet remain con- tented slaves. We have always wondered why the gladia- tors did not spring at the Emperor instead of the beasts, cut down the audience instead of each other, and die striving for freedom instead of gain. They were " barbarians " most of them, —men accustomed to freedom, with little fear of the soldiery, and less of the crowd ; yet Imperial Borne was never threatened by a revolt of the Circus. Under Captain Whyte Melville's treatment, however, the difficulty vanishes, and his readers comprehend the compensations which made "the Family" attractive even to freemen and an object of ambition to slaves, perceive the mani- fold inducements, the hope of freedom, the intoxicating applause of the world,—for Borne was the world to its children ,—the ex- emption from personal restraint., the social importance, the full development of physical manliness, and the sense of physical enjoyment which made the life far more endurable than that of a modem prize-fighter. The restraints of the trade were no more felt than are those of the modern soldier ; the life was a hundred times more luxurious, the pay a thousand times greater, and the excitement that of the soldier, the prize-fighter, and the actor com- bined; and as for death, why men commit suicide every day with not a tenth the temptation. Hippias and Hirpinus, Euehenor and Rufus, the trainer and the bull-dog, the subtle bravo and the honest brute, are all made visible to us, and as an essay on gladia- tors the book might be called a success.

It is in all other respects a mistake. The stock characters of such novels, the barbarian who becomes a Christian, and the Jewish girl who makes him one, the Tribune—half soldier, half scoundrel—the Emperor Vitellius and the General Titus, are all stock characters only, without individuality or life. The attempt to rival Dr. Croly's description of the siege of Jerusa- lem is not even a good imitation, and the effort to give to it the air of grandeur and solemnity only spoils the author's naturally vigorous style. These defects would, however, have been scarcely worthy of remark, but for the breakdown in the endeavour to depict the central figure. Captain Whyte Melville, with an audacity we rather respect, has endeavoured to place before us the Roman lady of the Imperial time, to reduce the character Juvenal had in his mind, to just, or at least to conceivable proportions. He introduces a woman beautiful with the beauty of highly deve- loped form, who, born to the highe it grade of earth, the Roman patriciat, has learned deliberately to fight like a gladiator, who governs her slaves by fear, who tries to tempt Esca, the barba- rian slave, in rooms fitted up for voluptuousness, and who at last leaves her palace to follow another gladiator through a cam- paign as his mistress and slave. That women of this stamp once existed is, we suppose, certain,—though the life demanded a phy- sique which seems incompatible with luxurious breeding,—for the Roman poets could not have combined to create a falsity. But Capt. Melville has failed, nevertheless, to make such a woman real. The failure is not his fault, but is inherent in the nature of his design. He could not paint to a British audience the combination of impulses —of respect for a dying-out type of manliness, of satiety with ease and luxury, of morbid pride in despising opinion, and of simple physical lust which provoked Valeria to her passion for Esca, and her liaison with Hippies. And, as he cannot paint them, he is compelled to leave her, not, indeed, a lay figure, but a monstro- sity—a being in whom all manner of impulses act in contradictory, ' and, to the reader, impossible directions. The woman who could ,:bison her lover just as she seems to yield, yet feel all forms of , nobleness ; who was Roman patrician, yet voluntarily became a gladiator's drab ; who, after a life of utter pollution, could still atie storming the Temple, sword in hand, to save another lover, a Witish slave, may have existed. Nobody knows, or will know, what monstrosities the life of Rome and the Circus might possibly have Aduced. But to paint such a character so as to make her seenlhuman is a task beyond Captain Melville's skill, and it is because be has attempted it that we think his story a failure and himsesill-advised.