BOOKS.
CORNEWALE LEWIS ON EARLY ROMAN HISTORY.* TRH publication of tliese two volumes by a writer of competent learning, of rigorous logic, and already established in reputation, completes a circular movement of the English mind in regard to early Roman history. That movement commences with the at- tention excited by the work of M. De Beaufort published at Utrecht in 1738, culminates in the eager reception given to Niebuhr's reconstructive processes on the translation of his history by Hare and Thirlwall, attains popular expansion by Dr. Arnold's history, is subjected to a gradually aggressive sceptical criticism as minds less exclusively scholastic interested themselves in the question, and is finally turned completely back by Sir George Lewis to something very like the original judgment of thoughtful men before Niebuhr so powerfully affected European speculations on ancient history—something very like in form, yet widely different in substance, as the mature simplicity of experience differs from the spontaneous naiveté of children. For those who now adopt the conclusion, with Sir George Lewis, that it is impossible to determine the truth in regard to the first four centuries and a half of what is called Roman history, will do so not upon a first strong impression of the legendary character of the whole record of this period, but after each account of every fad stated to have oc- curred during the period has been subjected to the utmost analyzing and combining skill of the greatest scholars and sonic of the acutest thinkers of the last fifty years. In the course of this process, the nature of mythus and legend has been very fully investigated; its relations to history and to religion, to the external circumstances and internal activities of men, amply illustrated by a wide and profound study of its manifestations in different races, under the influence of various languages, religions, and political and social conditions. Any man may now satisfy himself that the early literature of every European and Asiatic nation that has ever had a literature is analogous to those of Greece and Rome ; that a law of progress is exemplified in such literature ; and that they are all subject to conditions closely corresponding. So that, though we were compelled to adopt Sir George Lewis's negative conclusions, we could not regard the intervening period of discussion as lost time and activity, even viewed in the light of positive results. Our knowledge of antiquity is immensely increased, not by ac- quaintance with the facts of prEehistoric life, but by a definite con- ception of what priehistoric life is in its modes of thought, and by a corrected estimate of those literary productions which either directly spring from such ktime or indirectly borrow their mate- rials from it.
Sir George Lewis examines the accounts that have come down to us of early Roman history with a view to ascertain their exter- nal attestation and their internal probability. The ultimate test of a true historical narrative is that it can be traced in substance to the testimony of contemporary witnesses. All schools agree in demanding thus much in words as a basis of historic credibility, but they differ in the application of the test. Some consider general popular belief a proof that a contemporary record must have lain at the foundation of that belief; others, that however popular belief and poetic fancy may have distorted details and thrown a false colouring over events, the nucleus of historic fact is always to be found beneath these mythic accretions, and that sagacious conjecture based on profound learning may succeed in many cases in disentangling the original fact from the later growths; a third school refuses to analyze legends at all, on the ground that they form a whole in a nation's literature, to be sub- jected throughout to the same treatment, being composed through- out of the same materials under the same mental influences, and that it is impossible to discern in the absence of any evidence but conjecture What is true and what is poetic in them. Sir George Lewis, like Mr. Grote, belongs to the latter school. He does not deny that there may be in the stories of Livy's first decade, or the earlier books of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a great deal of his- torical matter of fact; but he denies that we can at this day decide what is fact and what is fiction. He rests upon the admitted fact that the earliest historians of Rome, from whom these Augustan writers copied, did not themselves know more of the history of the city before its capture by the Gauls than the Augustan writers ; that they had no written documents available for the greater portion, if for any, of that history ; that oral tradition is incompetent to maintain itself uncorrupted for anything like so long a time ; that no spirit of critical historical inquiry had been awakened so early to gather up and sift even existing materials, and finally, that the greater portion of the scanty memorials ofand early republican Rome perished in the conflagration that rfeSolwed the capture of the city by the Gauls. The utmost, therefore, that we can attain in re- spect to this earlier history, is to know, with some degree of accu- racy, what the general belief of the more inquiring Romans was at the time of the second Punic war. This we obtain, because our existing authorities, Cicero, Livy, Dionysius, and the later histo- rians, professedly rested on Fabius Piotor, Valerius Antias, and other lost writers of two centuries earlier date than themselves. When we come to inquire what materials existed on which Fabius Piotor and his fellow annalists could found authentic history for the period preceding the capture by the Gauls, we find ourselves as much iii the dark as in the investigation of the history of
• An Inquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History. By the Right Hon. Sir George Cornewall Lewis. In two volume,. Published by Parker and Son.
Athens before the tem of the Pisistratids. Much may be true, much is undoubtedly false and fanciful; but we cannot distinguish the one from the other, in the absence of contemporary testimony to which to appeal.
If, turning from the external evidence of this history to its in- ternal probability, we inquire for a tradition substantially uniform as the next best guide to actual truth, we are met on the threshold by two difficulties. One is, that no part of the general tradition is less variable than that which we should reject in mass, that which relates miraculous events. Another is, that by no arbitrary suppression of supernatural details can we obtain a tradition sub- stantially uniform. Thus, Sir George Lewis (vol. I. pp. 395-401) narrates twenty-five entirely different accounts of the foundation of Rome; and a similar though not so great a discordance exists with respect to most of the principal events of the early history. The conclusion would seem inevitable that, when we have no evidence that can by any strain of hypothesis be traced to contem- porary records properly so called, and when oral tradition is so in- consistent with itself, and most consistent where we can least give credence to it, we have no alternative but to acknowledge that ac- curate knowledge is out of the question, and plausible hypothesis rather an amusing than an instructive exercise of ingenuity. It is with the application of these common-sense principles of historical judgment to the details of the history of the first four centuries and a half of the Roman state that Sir George Lewis has filled his two volumes. Terribly dry reading, no doubt, they are, when compared with the constructive histories of Rome to which we have been recently accustomed. But if a consciousness of ignorance is better and more profitable than the utmost rich- ness of false conceptions in matters where truth and falsehood are the determining principles of value, his dryness is less to be con- demned than the interest obtained by his predecessors at the sacri- fice of the essential qualities of history. We must for ourselves acknowledge, that the extreme sceptical conclusions which Mr. Grote has adopted with respect to the history of Greece before the Olympiads, and which Sir George Lewis now enforces for all his- tory of Rome before the Gaulish capture, however reluctant we may be to give up the hopes excited throughout literary Europe by Niebuhr% brilliant and learned hypotheses, and the critical elabo- rations and corrections of his English, French, and German fol- lowers, command the unhesitating assent of our judgment. The ballad-theory, which formed so striking a feature in Niebuhr's process of reconstruction, fails utterly to explain the constitutional history which fills so large a space in the regal period, and derives no support from a comparison with the corresponding literature of Greece or of modern European nations, while it not only rests upon no positive evidence but is opposed to all we know of early Roman literature. The Pontifical Annals, dry and meagre it the best, appear to have been arbitrarily filled in for the earlier periods after the Ganlish capture. A contemporary Etruscan literature is a pure hypothesis. Altogether, we cannot resist the conviction that Sir George Lewis is right, and that scholars must be content to date the history of Rome from the invasion of Pyrrhus at the earliest, except for a few leading events, the dates and agents of which are quite uncertain. Sure we are, that if this conviction were heneeforward acted on in schools and colleges, students would have great cause to be thankful. It is within our experience that injury is done to boys and young men by encou- raging them to waste upon speculations that lead to no certain knowledge time and powers that are, at that age; all wanted for de- partments of study in which i industry will bring solid fruits of information and habits of confidence n well-based results. No- thing but uncertainty, weariness, and general unsoundness of judgment, can come of directing young men's attention to a line of study in which brilliant and plausible guesses take the place of sound induction, and audacious and arbitrary criticism of a thorough grammatical and contextual interpretation of ancient authors. Sir George Lewis's book ought to find its way exten- sively into the hands of all who undertake to teach Roman his- tory. Dry as it is for the general reader by its negative critical character, it is the work of a scholar and a thinker accustomed to exhaust the subjects he deals with ; and no one accustomed mainly to the constructive school, whose habit is to select whatever from any source supports their theories and to pass lightly over op- posing evidence can have an adequate sense of the crushing effect Of such an exhaustive exhibition of evidence upon all theories whatsoever.
It would be unjust to the school which Niebuhr founded, to make these remarks without adding, that, while rejecting from the sphere of history their positive conclusions, we owe to them the awakening of a truly historical spirit, which seeks life under the buried form of the past, and which, in its application both to ancient and modern and mediceval history, has produced and must go on to produce effects which no exertions of the negative schools could ever have given birth to. In such men as Mr. Grote we find the two schools blending to produce a history which assigns to mythus all its importance as literature, while it carefully-dis- tinguishes it from history. But the union was not possible till a construbtive genius had made the whole of ancient history alive again for us, and had kindled that ardent spirit of inquiry which has ended in marking clearly out where the region of fact be- gins and that of poetry ends in ancient literature ; though there still remains a border land where both are blended undis- tinguishably for us. If every theory of Niebuhr could be ab- solutely disproved, this merit would remain his ; and future generations will always look back to him with a gratitude 'which,
will increase rather than diminish as the importance is inore pro- foundly felt of distinguishing between real and hypothetical history.
One word more. Though contemporary evidence of early Ro- man history is utterly lost—though tradition confuses us by her discordant reports—yet as political philosophy attains a greater certainty of inductive generalization, and a wider range of political and social facts from which to generalize, we may be able to con- clude, with some assurance of not being far wrong, the progress of Rome before the historical period from her progress afterwards. Particular men and particular facts and particular dates will cer- tainly not be recovered, but a very high degree of assurance may at some future time be attainable as to the earlier steps of the de- velopment which we know in its later stages. Social paltetielogy is yet in its infancy ; it never can attain the assurance of physical pala3tiology, from the greater complexity of its problems and the dif- ference in the permanence and elasticity of its evidence : but, with such a science dawning upon us, aided as it will be by a rapidly extending philology, it would be premature to declare the problem of early Roman history completely settled and sealed against us.
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