MR. FROUDE'S ClESAR.* Ix his article in the Nineteenth Century,

Mr. Froude has answered beforehand some of the objections which we might otherwise have felt inclined to take to his present work.

He calls his biography of Cmsar a " Sketch," because, as he says, the materials do not exist for a portrait which shall be at once authentic and complete. We venture to express a doubt as to the accuracy of this statement, and if we could trust Sue- tonius as implicitly as Mr. Froude does, we should feel no doubts at all about the matter. Be this as it may, we are inclined to think that if Caesar's biographer is to confine himself entirely to the written letters of original authorities, then Mr. George Long's account of the great Roman leaves nothing to be desired. But greater scope should undoubtedly be given for inferences fairly drawn, and we infinitely prefer Mommseu's brilliant oil-painting to Mr.

Long's painstaking sketch in crayons. In the main, Mr.

Froude's conception of the character and career of his hero agrees with that of the German historian. But Mr. Froude's historical tact is hardly so sure, and his scholarship is by no manner of means so strong, as Mommsen's. It argues, there- fore, great courage in a writer who has so few claims to be called a specialist, to choose a topic which a real specialist has already all but made his own. At the utmost, we can only praise Mr. Fronde's " Sketch " as a good but in every point in- ferior copy of a picture painted by a master-hand, and readers who are well acquainted with the third volume of Momm- sen's Roman History will find little to admire or to learn

in this monograph. There is, however, a host of readers in England to whom Mommsen is " caviare," and who would find Mr. Long both dull and dry, and for them this book will prove a godsend. Dullness and dryness find no place in Mr. Fronde's writings, and if his accuracy were on a par with his vivacity, he would be a very phcenix of biographers. But accuracy is, to say the least, not Mr. Froude's forte, and as we must perforce give a specimen or two of what we deem to be his errors, we may say at once of these errors that, although they are scattered, alas ! as thick as leaves in Vallombrosa along his pages, they are not of such gravity and importance as to impair the substantial value of the book. A bad scholar will not detect these faults, nor will a school scholar think, however much they may vex him, that they deserve to be severely castigated. A far more important question presents itself, and it is, unfortunately, one which our limited space prohibits us from discussing. We can but indicate it, by saying that, in our opinion, Mr. Fronde writes far too much in the spirit of Mitford and Kingsley, and that, to notice one phrase only, to speak of the Roman Senate as the " noble lords," is to use words which, for an English reader, are nothing less than misleading. A great portion of Mr. Froude's narrative is vitiated, we hold, by the colouring thus given to it,—but, as we said before, this is a ques- tion which we cannot discuss hic et ?1,7611C. Still less is it our intention to dwell on the unrivalled abilities of Caesar as a soldier and statesman, and of the use which he made of them. The world is pretty well agreed as to the necessity which compelled him to take the steps which have been most condemned, and there are few indeed who do not agree with Niebuhr in holding that his murder was the most senseless act that history records. We may leave, therefore, all inquiries as to the legality of that deed, and the theories which the defence of it implies, to debating clubs. All that we purpose at present to do is to enter a protest against the extra coat of whitewash which Mr. Fronde has, quite unnecessarily, we think, and quite unjustly, given to Cmsar's moral character; to notice a few of those irritating blunders that we have referred to ; to quote, in justice to Mr. Fronde, one of the many brilliant passages which, in spite of all that criticism may say against it, make his present work a notable and praiseworthy addition to English literature; and finally, to condemn very briefly, but very emphatically, what we cannot but consider as a grave offence against good- taste and good-feeling, in a man of Mr. Froude's mark.

First, then, for a few specimens of what we think to be blunders ; and these we may, for brevity's sake, treat as if we

• Ctesar a Skeich. By J. A. Fronde, M.A. London: Longmana, Green, and Co. 1879.

were correcting errata for the press. " Sertorins," says Mr. Fronde (p. 81), "was poisoned at last;" Sertorins was not poisoned at all. " The mother of the Gracchi ' " (p. 66), " said Mirabeau, cast the dust of her murdered sons into the air, and out of it sprang Marius ;' " Mirabeau said nothing of the kind, and if he did, Mr. Froude ought to have corrected him. Cicero wrote of Pompey's first speech in the Senate after his return from the East,—" Non jucunda miseris, inanis improbis, beatis non grata, bonis non gravis ; itaque frigebat." The meaning of this, of course, is that the speech gave no satisfaction to the "residuum" or canaille, to the democrats, to the moneyed class, or to the aristocrats, and therefore fell very flat. Mr.

Froude (p. 162) translates as follows :—" Pompey gave no pleas- ure to the wretched; to the bad, he seemed without backbone; he was not agreeable to the well-to-do ; the wise and good found him wanting in substance." Speaking of the adoption of Clodius into a plebeian family, Mr. Fronde (p. 187) says, "for a Claudius to descend among the canaille was as if a Howard were to seek adoption from a shopkeeper in the Strand." There was no descent of the kind here implied. The Plebeian " houses " corresponded much more closely to the untitled aristocracy of Eng- land than to her retail traders. " The Helvetii " (p.207) " looked

for nothing less than to be pursued by six Roman legions." This is a German, not an English idiom, and may remind some of our readers of Mr. Ward's mistranslation of the phrase in Curtius's History of Greece,—" Marathon was nothing less than a complete victory," meaning, of course, " anything but " &c.

Cicero's plain-spoken confession that he had been " a downright jackass," —" germanum asinum fuisse,"—would not be more properly rendered, " own brother to an ass." (p. 248.) The suggestion is not germane to the matter• ; nor is another (p. 272), that the " mirificw moles " which guarded the approaches to Britain, might be the "masses of sand under water at the Goodwins." Pompey's cavalry at Pharsalia were 7,000 strong ; six out of the seven were foreign regulars. Mr. Froude describes them (p. 389) as " brilliant squadrons, com- posed of carpet-knights from the saloon and circus." We might easily enlarge this list of errata, but we have probably made it too long already. We cannot, however, forbear from noticing

that Mr. Fronde repeats the error (p. 54), which we exposed long ago, about Sulla's white-and-purple complexion ; and we should like to know what cause he has for• saying, in the teeth of Suetonius's remark that they were " black and lively " (nigris vegetisque), that Caesar's eyes (p. 482) were " dark grey, like an

eagle's."

Of the unnecessary pains, as we think, which Mr. Froude has taken to clear Cmsar's moral character of a stain which Caesar himself, we are confident, was the reverse of ashamed of, we need say nothing. As to the scandal about Nicomedes, Mr. Munro has exploded that ; but we may add, as a rider to Mr. Froude's remark (p. 480) on Cmsar's freedom from the abomin- able form of vice which was so common in his time, that as far as our own recollection goes, Cmsar was never accused of the depraved tastes referred to. There can be no question also, we may add, that Brutus's mother, Servilia, was Caesar's mistress.

It is time, however, that we should drop this nagging criti- cism, and make the quotation we promised. It is but one among many which might be taken, and will show that Mr. Froude has lost none of that command of vigorous English to which he owes his deservedly high reputation as a writer. We quote it also with particular pleasure, because it does, to some extent, make the antende honorable to what we cannot but think the rather harsh view elsewhere taken of the great orator whom it describes, and the final sentence stands out in marked contrast to the verdict which Mommsen had the im- pudence to pronounce. After all, some decency is required even in a German, however gifted and however learned, and for a man who writes his own inferior tongue so ungracefully to treat the man who wrote Latin in perfection, de haut en bas, is as offensive as it is ludicrous. But here is the quotation :- " So ended Cicero, a tragic combination of magnificent talents, high aspirations, and true desire to do right, with an infirmity of purpose and a latent insincerity of character which neutralised and could almost make us forget his nobler qualities. It cannot be said of Cicero that he was blind tothe faults of the party to which he attached himself. To him we owe our knowledge of what the Roman aristocrats really were, and of the hopelessness of expecting that they could have been trusted any longer with the administration of the Empire, if the Empire itself was to endure. Cicero's natural place was at Caesar's side ; but to Cmsar alone of his contemporaries he was conscious of an inferiority that was intolerable to him. In his own eyes, he was always the first person. He had been made unhappy by the thought that posterity might rate Pompey above himself. Closer

acquaintance had reassured him about Pompey, but in Caesar he was conscious of a higher presence, and he rebelled against the humili- ating acknowledgment. Supreme as an orator he would always be, and an order of things was therefore most desirable where oratory held the highest place. Thus he chose his part with the 'boni,' whom he despised while he supported them, drifting on through vacillation into treachery, till the 'ingredients of the poisoned chalice' were

commanded to his own lips.' In Cicero, Nature half-made a great man, and left him incompleted. Our characters are written in our forms, and the bust of Cicero is a key to his history. The brow is broad and strong, the nose large, the lips tightly compressed, the features lean and keen, from restless intellectual energy. The loose, bending figure, the neck too weak for the weight of the head, ex- plains the infirmity of will, the passion, the cunning, the vanity, the absence of manliness and veracity. He was born into an age of violence with which he was too feeble to contend. The gratitude of mankind for his literary excellence will for ever preserve his memory from too harsh a judgment."

We hive nothing more to do now but recommend Mr. Froude's " Sketch " of Ctesar very warmly to all English readers who have not studied Mommsen. But while we do so, very heartily and quite sincerely, we must, as we have said, mark our strong disapproval of what appears to us to be a gra- tuitous offence against good-taste, in which Mr. Fronde occasionally indulges. Here are the phrases and passage which have struck us as unworthy of Mr. Fronde. If they strike the reader differently,—" so mote it be." Mr. Fronde, we may remark, had previously spoken of Cmsar as the " saviour of the world." At page 459 he speaks of him as being at a " Last Supper " at the house of Lepidus, and he concludes his book with the following comparison Strange and startling resemblance between the fate of the founder of the kingdom of this world, and of the founder of the king- dom not of this world, for which the first was a preparation. Each was denounced for making himself a king. Each was

maligned as a friend of publicans and sinners ; each was betrayed by those whom he had loved and cared for; each was put to death; and Cmsar also was believed to have risen again and ascended into heaven, and become a divine being." If Mr. Fronde had added that the word " Christ " begins with a C as well as the word " Cmsar," his comparison would have been still nearer Captain Fluellen's than it is. We can hardly believe that he is serious, and in any case must record our deliberate opinion that the above comparison is much more worthy of Camille Desmouliu g in his stupider moments, than of a writer and a thinker of Mr. Fronde's calibre.