MR. TRO[JLOPE'S 'CIOERO."* To criticise a book like Mr. Trollope's
Life of Cicero is neither an easy nor a pleasant task. Its merits (a) are Bo considerable, and its faults (y) are so numerous, that x ± y=0 might seem to express the net result of both. But the "gay science," as criti- cism has been called, we fear ironically, may not avail itself of such compendious methods. Nor, indeed, would we assert for ,one moment that the value of this book was nil. The spirit and vivacity with which it is animated, and the flashes of mother-wit with which it is brightened, alike protect it from so harsh and unjust a verdict. Moreover, we sympathise, in the main, most warmly with the just enthusiasm which the author shows for the subject of his biography, and we recognise to the fullest extent the claims which a writer like Mr. Trollope has upon us for some exceptional indulgence. But consolation is all that we can offer him, instead of congratulation; and. if the .jealous muse of history has refused him her choicest favours, he must comfort himself as best he can with the reflection that she refused theni to Bacon and Milton, to Scott and Smollett, to Schiller and Voltaire, and to many other men of genius, who have not offered her, what alone she will accept, namely, undivided worship. There was room, in- kleed, for a new Life of Cicero in our literature. But although
* rho Life of Cicero. By Anthony Trollope. Loudon: Chapman and Hall.
Middleton may be rococo and Forsyth dry, and although Mommsen's invective may be almost as false as it is coarse, yet to supplant Forsyth and Middleton and to refute Mommsen need acquirements which Mr. Trollope does not possess. To speak plainly, the great novelist's knowledge of Latin is much too slender, and his grasp of Roman history much too feeble, for the task which be has attempted. Moreover, his Greek, we fancy, is even weaker than his Latin; and he does not, as he tells us himself, read German at all. From a man thus poorly equipped, however great his literary abilities may otherwise be, it would be useless to look for a really good Life of Cicero. No
amount of mere industry could make up for such serious de- ficiencies, and we look in vain for any marks of industry in Mr. Trollope's volumes. He has written them with a careless, if not with a, hasty pen ; and he has neglected the obvious precaution of having them duly revised by some competent scholar.
Having brought so many heavy charges agaitist Mr. Trollope, we have nothing for it but to justify them, as briefly as we can, before we deal with his estimate of Cicero's character. For the careless pen, we might almost say," See both volumes, passim," and that we might justly do so may be inferred from the fact that Mr. Trollopo calls Crassus "a Triumvirate," and says that
on the day of Milo's trial "all the taverns were shut." Of course, Mr. Trollope knows butter than this, and we should not
mention such careless slips, were it not that we would undertake to parallel them with, at least, ninety-eight more errata of a similar or somewhat similar description,—errata, we mean, of false translation, false fact, and false printing, and not of mere false inference. For our author's Greek, we take the quotation from Dio Celsius (introduction, page 14), which,
lie tells us, "is so foul-mouthed that it can only be inserted under the veil of his [Dio Cassius's] own language." Mr. Trollope has darkened the veil by misprinting the pas- sage, but it is easy to see that he cannot translate it, and that it is by no means so foul-mouthed as he supposes. For his Roman history and Latin, a single passage will suffice, "for when one's proofs are aptly chosen, four are as cogent "—we are quoting from memory—" as four dozen." Csar, says Mr. Trollope, translating and commenting on that well-known letter of Cicero's which we have recently noticed, "did not walk long, for at two o'clock he bathed, and heard that story about Mamurra, without moving a muscle. Turn to your Catullus, the fifty-seventh epigram, and read what Ciusar had read to him on this occasion, without showing by his face the slightest feeling, it is short, but I cannot quote it, even in a note,—even in Latin. Who told Camay of the foul words, and why were they read to him on this occasion ? Ho thought but little about them, for he forgave the author, and asked him after- wards to supper. This was at the bath, we may suppose. He then took his siesta, and after that, 4,6orrso)s agebat.' How the Romans went through the daily process is to us a marvel. I think we may say that Cicero did not practise it." Now, in the first place, the foul epigram was written about 55 B.C. There seems no doubt that Cresar read it before the poet died in 54, while this letter was written in 45, about three months before Ciesar's murder. The reading " Vultum non mutavit " is conjectural. If it be right, then what Cmsar heard about Man-limn was his death ; if wrong, then probably that Mamurra had been transgressing some sumptuary law, and Cresar did not desire to interfere with him. The word which Mr. Trollop° translates, " He took his siesta," means, " He sat down to table ;" and" ittsrocim agebat " means that Crasar was in physic, as we might say, at the time, and intended to take an emetic before going to bed. Cicero would have undoubtedly done the same, if ordered to do so by his physician. Caesar was quite as abstemious as the Duke of -Wellington or as Cicero himself. More so, indeed, if we may believe Mr. Trollope, who says, but on what authority we know not, that the latter" wished to be reckoned among the gourmands and gourmets of his times." It gives us no pleasure to disturb this nest of blunders, but what we have to notice is the fact that Mr. Trollope might have avoided, and ought to haven voided, every one of them, by simply turning to Professor Munro's Notes on Catullus. We refrain from dwelling upon the primel facie absurdity of these blunders, and from quoting any more of a similar kind ; but we are half afraid that our lenity is thrown away, seeing that Mr. Trollope has declared in his introduction that if this Life of Cicero appears during his life, it will be because he has become callous through age to criticism. On reflection, though, we need not repent of our tender mercies, for surely, unless the heart has been crushed out of him by disease or affliction, a man no more becomes callous through age to criticism than he becomes indifferent through . age to the weather. Mr. Trollope's C leero obviously challenges comparison with Mr. Froucle's Ccesar. We had to notice that accuracy was not the chief quality displayed in the latter's " Sketch," but we feel bound to say that both as an historian and a scholar, Mr. Fronde is more accurate than Mr. Trollope. The latter says, indeed, and with some truth, that the former's book may be called "anti-Cicero." His own may in some respects be quite as justly called " anti-Cresar." We regret this, for many reasons. Cicero has been wronged, and bitterly wronged, of late, but his good name cannot be cleared by blacking that of Cresar. It would require a much more careful writer than Mr. Trollope to arraign the great Dic- tator at the bar of history. His profligacy and cruelty still cry to her for justice, but of them we speak not here. We have rather to defend, so far as our brief sentence can defend, his political career against Mr. Trollope's strictures. It is wrong, we think, and, even stupidly wrong, to blame Cresar's acts for being illegal. Where there is no law, there can be no illegality, and law had ceased to reign at Rome when he crossed the Rubicon. Once for all, we would call Mr. Trollope's attention to the un- doubted fact that if Cassia's great scheme had not been laid by his own unrivalled genius, and hatched, if we may use so homely a metaphor, by the great abilities of Augustus and Tiberius, Rome would have done " shameful execution on herself" centuries before she actually did. But Mr. Trollope mistakes the character of Cresar in minor matters also. We have already seen that he fancies that the sober Julius was a bit of a " gourmand and gourmet," may we say, and leave the responsibility of this curious phrase to
Mr. Trollop° He quite misunderstands the simplicity of the great man's character. A single example will again suffice. The words " Veni, vidi, vici," were written to a private friend at Rome, who read them, no doubt with much glee, to many of his acquaintances. It came to pass, therefore, very naturally, that they were inscribed on a banner carried in Cremes triumph. Yet Mr. Trollope says of this famous sentence, "If those words were over written. Surely he could not have written them, and sent them home ! Even the subservience of the age would not have endured words so boastful, nor would the glory of Cassar have so tarnished itself." If the author himself knows what he means by this, be it so ; we confess that we do not. Nor can we in the least imagine why he stigmatised the famous " Quirites " with which Omar quelled a mutiny of his veterans as a, "masterpiece of stage-acting." Stage-acting was as foreign to Ca3sar's nature as it was congenial to Napoleon's, and we may refer Mr. Trollope to Lucan, whom he reads, but does not accurately translate, for the serious danger which the "unions imperator " stamped out so masterfully.
We sympathise, as we have said, very warmly in the main with Mr. Trollope's estimate of Cicero, but only in the main. When he, for instance, tells us that Cicero did not hate Cresar, we are compelled to remind him that we have Cicero's own word for it that he did. "The letters to Atticus," says Professor Munro, "which may be looked upon as soliloquies by an impassioned nature of more than Italian fervour of temperament, give a singular picture of Cicero's feelings towards Cresols Cresar behaved to him as an enemy with kinder courtesy than Pompey showed him as a friend ; he forgave his every offence, before he had time to 8,8k for forgiveness ; compelled his subordinates, Antony, Balbris, and the rest, to treat him, when a declared opponent, with punctilious deference. Yet, for all this, perhaps because of all this, admiring, as he could not but do, Cresar's personal and social qualities, he felt all his aspirations so nipped and kept under by the other's com- manding genius, that hatred the most intense took possession of his mind," This hatred was not quenched by the murder, which Goethe truly called the most senseless deed which the Romans ever committed, as is proved by the "awful words," " quern Di rnortuum perduint !" (" Ad Att.," xv. 4), which Cicero, though quite disillusioned about "the Ides of March," did not scruple to use about his slain benefactor. Again, Mr. Trollope says that Cicero would have pardoned Antony, had victory fallen to his own party. We more than doubt it, for Livy, whose opinion must surely carry far more weight than that of any modern writer on such a point, distinctly says that Cicero's death was less lamentable and melancholy, because he only received at the hands of his victorious foes what he would infalhery have inflicted upon them, had they been beaten. When it comes therefore to the peculiarly Christian virtues which Mr. Trollop claims for his hero, we must demur. Cicero did not love his neighbour like himself, and although he had as clear a notion of the value of veracity as St. Paul, or for the matter of that, as Achilles had—Op 4 wit) 1.401 14E40c, X.. T. ?1.—Cicero was not a veracious man. But his per- sonal purity and his humanity—extending to what Burns calls "our earth-born companions, an' fellow-mortals "—mark him out beyond all his contemporaries of whom we have any record. It was said in jest of a great scoundrel, that when he died the average virtue of the world was raised ; the exact opposite of this might be said in earnest of Cicero. Mr. Fronde has stated, with much good-feeling, but with more inaccuracy, that "the gratitude of mankind for Cicero's literary excellence will over preserve his memory from too harsh a judgment." We heartily wish that this was true, and we heartily wish that the defence of that "literary excellence" itself—so roughly assailed by Rome's last and best historian—had fallen to more experienced hands than those of Mr. Trollope.
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