ANCIENT CLASSICS FOR ENGLISH READERS.— TH UCYDIDES.'
WE are glad to welcome this valuable addition to a valuable series of books. The scope and aim of that series are too well known to need recapitulation here, and when due regard is given to the wants and wishes of the class of readers for whom Mr. Collins writes, it is not at all too much to say that his brief mono- graph is a complete success. To give an adequate account in so small a compass of the greatest historian in all literature was no light task, and very great credit indeed is due to Mr. Collins for the way in which he has accomplished it. There is little or nothing of the dreary characteristics of a so-called educational work in this elegant little book. Crammers and their victims will regard it not, but those happier students of antiquity who have not the fear of the ubiquitous examiner before their eyes, will learn from its perusal all that a person of ordinary culture needs to learn about the stern Athenian's celebrated history. Although avowedly not written for advanced students, indi- cations are not wanting in this book of sound judgment and independent thought, which may challenge attention even from those who have Mure and Grote at their fingers-ends. Two examples will suffice. The most objectionable passage in Colonel Mure's brilliant but unequal sketch of Thucydides, is the one in which he dwells upon what he is pleased to call the naturally morose disposition and the temper soured by disappointment of the son of Olorus, and goes on to say that this morbidity of temperament shows itself where the historian's personal feelings are concerned in a discreditable manner, "in the sarcastic, almost malignant terms, for example, of his indirect allusions to Herod- otus." 'We cannot, of course, stop here to discuss at length the error which we hold that Mure has committed, in confounding seriousness with moroseness ; but so far as Herodotus is concerned, Mr. Collins supplies the corrective very promptly. "it is somewhat remarkable," he says, "that Thucy- dides nowhere mentions or alludes to—unless it be under cover of his general strictures on the writers of the past—his .Ths,letides. By the Rev. W. Lucas Collins. London: Blackwood and Sons. lsi's
great predecessor, Herodotus. A story is briefly referred to by Suidas of the boy Thucydides having been present when Herod- otus read his history in public at the Olympian games, and that he shed tears of emulation, with the tacit resolve to follow in his steps. But modern criticism has gone so far as to doubt whether he ever read, or heard of, Herodotus's researches." Again, Mr. Collins is not afraid to cross swords with the redoubtable Grote himself, and deep as are the obligations which all lovers of Greek literature and all students of history owe to that great man, there can be little doubt that he was prone at times to read too much between the lines of his authorities. This is what Mr. Collins has to say, for instance, on the "Terror," as he calls it, "at Corcyra "
" It is somewhat startling to tarn from the calm and dispassionate account which Thucydides gives of the horrors which marked the con- duct of both parties in these struggles for power, to the remarks which Mr. Grote has made upon them in what he calls 'a discriminative criticism.' Everything which falls from such an authority is weighty, and must be received with respect. But when we find that he can see little in these Corcyroan horrors, but the work of a selfish oligarchical party, playing the game of a foreign enemy—aiming to subvert the existing democracy, and ready to employ any means of violence for the attainment of these objects '—when he speaks of the democratic faction as being 'thrown on the defensive,' and says that 'their conduct as victors is only such as we might expect in such maddening oircum. stances,'—we feel that we are not listening to the historian but to the politician. It is fair, at least, to the ordinary reader to warn him that such a judgment cannot justly be gathered from the pages of Thuoy- dides. He has set before as clearly the bitter fruits of political faction carried to extremes by a fierce and crafty people ; the recklessness of human life which marked the age, and which we know was not confined, as Thucydides would seem almost disposed to think, to Greece and its neighbourhood, under the pressure of intestine war. But he nowhere gives us reason to suppose that the guilt could be laid exclusively or mainly to the charge of either party in the struggle,—noble or plebeian, democrat or aristocrat, islander or Athenian."
A goodly portion of Mr. Collins's book is composed of ex- tracts from Thucydides, and the translations, he assures us, are all original. We are not all disposed to carp at these transla- tions, so conscious are we of the all but insuperable difficulties of rendering Thucydides into anything like adequate English. But we are bound to confess that they fill us with the same abiding sense of sullen dissatisfaction which we derive from our own attempts, and from the versions of Hobbes and Bloomfield, and Dale and Crawley. We have not, indeed, found any blunder in them so gross as Dale's mistranslation of xecrecyyiAvotr;, in vii. 48, —a blunder, by the way, which Crawley follows with sheep-like stolidity ; but we must decline, for instance, to accept "We can all judge of public measures, at least, if we cannot originate them," as even a respectable quivalent for the well-known irci xpluotcrs ye Y..TA., in ii. 40. But we have said that we would not carp at these translations, nor will we. The readers whom Mr. Collins addresses will perhaps feel some disappointment when they compare with Macaulay or Napier these specimens of the writer who is among historians what Hannibal is among Generals ; they must be content to know that Thucydides "done into Eng- lish" does not differ leas from Thucydides in Greek than flat swipes differs from fresh champagne. If they can read German, they will get a better idea of the Athenian's immortal work from the anonymous translation published by Engelmann, of Leipzig, than from any English version ; and on the whole this is the best version of Thucydides which we have ever met with, just as Kriiger's is far away the best edition. But so deeply—from causes which we find it difficult to analyse—do we feel the annoyance and vexation of spirit which an English Thucydides generates, that we are fain to recommend in preference the lively and amusing, and by no means too inaccurate, French version by M. Zevort.
But if it is bard, and perhaps impossible, for the English language, as a vehicle of interpretation, to do justice to the language of Thucydides, the common-sense on which we pride ourselves as a nation is precisely the quality which Thucydides displays in perfection. So marked, indeed, and unmistakable is the note of common-sense in Thucydides, that it is not surprising that English writers so different from one another in many re- spects as are Grote and Arnold and Macaulay, should combine to do him reverence and homage. But it is much too late in the day to weary our readers and ourselves with a panegyric of Thucydides. His place is fixed in the hierarchy of literature, and the coming historian who shall thrust him from his pride of place will be nothing less than a prodigy. As to the lelum imbelle vine ielu which Mr. Mahaffy, with buoyant ignorance and ultra- Milesian levity, has cast at his honoured name, we may treat that lightly enough. Mr. Mahaffy looks upon Thucydides as the most misleading, and therefore the most misunderstood, of our authorities. We can answer for the capacity which Mr. Mahaffy has shown for misunderstanding Thucydides, but we demur entirely to his inconsequent inference that Thucydides is a misleading writer. No man was ever less so ; and it is to the cogent earnestness and sincerity of his work, where every word seems given in upon oath, and when hardly an excuse is left for misunderstanding the meaning of the words even when the words themselves are, syntactically speaking, inexplicable, that this great author owes his immortality. Cobden said once that there was more to be learnt from a single num- ber of the Times than from the whole of Thucydides, and Cobdeu was right, so far as mere information goes. But Coleridge was much nearer the truth, when he asserted that the writings of Thucydides contained more political wisdom than was to be found in all the newspapers that had ever been published in England. Many years have elapsed since Coleridge made this assertion, but we believe that it remains substantially true. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt of the surpassing worth and importance of Thucydides as a manual of political in- struction. We deeply regret to think that this admirable book is yearly slipping more and more from the position which it once held in the eldest of our Universities. We have no belief in the efficacy of metaphysics as food for the brains of babes and suck- lings in statu pupillari, and in the colluvies oniniu»1 seientiarum with which Oxford is at present being swamped, we are displeased rather than surprised at the waning influence of Thucydides. We look, however, with hope to the days when a new reformation shall contemptuously sweep away the multitudinous examinations of shreds and patches which are at present in vogue ; and when, some scheme having duly been devised for torturing the idle and stupid by weekly, or if it please the examiners, by bi-weekly examina- tions, a reasonable curriculum for clever and industrious youths between eighteen and twenty-one may be re-established. Or if this hope be vain, and if our Universities are to be turned into gymnasia for examiners, then would we urge, and strenuously urge, the man who has a public career before him to neglect the goods the Dons provide him, and to give his days and nights to the study of Thucydides. If, on the other hand, better counsels should prevail at Oxford, an obvious way of spending some of the money which is to be withdrawn from College control would present itself. We have grave doubts about this prudence of endowing research entirely, and we have no doubt whatever about the folly of trying to supplant at large the " coach " by the Professor. The man who by all the tests that could be devised would fairly claim the Professorship of Greek, let us say, might be, and even probably would be, the worst pos Bible lec- turer on the subject which he had made his own. A good oral teacher, like a poet, is born, not made, and it would be rash in the extreme to make the studies of a University depend upon the caprice of nature. But there is no really good edition of Thucydides in English, and no really good translation ; and a scholar—whose qualification for the task could easily be ascertained—might, and ought to be, liberally pensioned till he had given us both. If death interrupted his labours, a successor might inherit them ; and if a proper instalment were not ready at the end of every lustrum, this pensioner's salary should cease. If any such a pensioner should be so fortunate as to succeed in bringing his task to a successful issue, he might retire on half-pay, as emeritus, or have another author assigned to him. Whatever other objections might be offered to this scheme, which we make with perfect seriousness and sincerity, the University would, at all events, at the end of a century, have something to show for its money, instead of, what will otherwise infallibly happen, a still further increase in the number of those stemmata longa of highly re- spectable office-holders, who, so far as fame and profit to Oxford are concerned,— " Nomen habent nullum, nee at bone colligis mum."
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