created, we do not go so far as to say that the supply of it is a discreditable pursuit in the abstract. It stands in just the same relation to good literature as "knapsack drill" to the campaign of Salamanca; as Groggins and Gallons to theology, as Boozer and Duffin to jurisprudence. If it really is so, that the world, which is so intolerant of all other shop, does like literary shop, we cannot, we say, blame those who talk and write it, any more than we can the followers of any other undignified but honest calling. It is not, strictly speaking, the loftiest position in the world to be taking down the guests names at a nobleman's party; but it has to be done, to please a certain portion of the public; and though people might laugh at Jenkins, they never seriously blamed him. But the case is somewhat different if all this time the writers of literary shop have been mistaken, and the world is profoundly indifferent to the details which these gentlemen discuss. The exact truth on this point it would be difficult to arrive at. Common sense, however, would indicate if we allow that to be our guide-that the public interest in such matters must be confined to the case of great men. No doubt, if the world hears that a new magazine is coming out, all who care for the fact care also to know that a Mr. Thackeray, or a Mr. Dickens, or a Lord Macaulay is going to write for it. But why they should care to be told that Brown, Jones, and Robinson, whose names they have never even heard of, are going to be contributors, we cannot tell. Mr. Thackeray himself has described very well in Pendennis the class of men to whom Brown, Jones, and Robinson belong; established literary workmen, known to the profession and the trade; scholars perhaps and gentlemen ; men who write the greater part of what the public read in the reviews and newspapers, but who are themselves unknown, and care very little to be known. Is the world at large, then, really anxious to penetrate their obscurity, or is it persuaded, upon reading their names in print, that these are certain distinguished persons of whom it had been disgracefully ignorant, and is now thankful to be cognizant? We cannot say that we believe in either of these two suppositions. We will go further and say we think it very doubtful if the writers who drag such names into public believe it themselves. Why, then, it may be asked, do they write it, and why do newspaper editors and proprietors print it? In the first place we must remember that such intelligence fills up but a short space of those columns of miscellaneous news in which it usually appears. The compiler of such articles throws in a good deal which does interest the public, and slips in these scraps chiefly, we think, to gratify himself. For, secondly, it adds greatly to his own self-esteem, to be persuaded that the facts which he narrates are, whatever people may think, of real and permanent importance. If these men whose names he mentions are really great men, he too, may not, after all, be such a small one. If the most trifling features of literature are worthy of public record, there is hope for himself. As he cannot, for obvious reasons, enhance his own value by kicking down those beneath him, he has recourse to just the opposite system, namely, to shoving up those above him. If a man only five feet high can be made to look six, a man only four feet high may perhaps be made to look five. Some such motives as these are what we think do unconsciously actuate many of those writers to whom we are indebted for that well-known species of article which we need not describe at greater length. It is just the old story in another shape of the man who played the "Cock" in Hamlet. In assigning these motives for the production of a species of journalism which is now growing up like a rank weed in our literature, we are far from imputing any special weakness or folly to those who concoct it. Clergymen or barristers would like, just as well as literary men, to write about themselves and the doings of their own small circles. But literary men have the opportunity, and they have not. And we daresay, too, that many a literary "correspondent" merely writes about these matters because he is accustomed to talk about them; and for no worse motive than makes any other class of men in the world talk shop. But what we wish to impress upon the literary class is that such writing is shop, and just the same in principle as the parish talk of parsons, or the barrack talk of soldiers. All these relate equally to the mechanical routine-we had almost said drudgery-of the three professions; and contain nothing either to please or to improve persons who are not already familiar with them. Among a party of literary men seated round a club table, or enjoying a tavern dinner, such talk is natural, and perhaps profitable. But what reason there is why they should rush out, write it down, and print it, which would not equally justify curates, ensigns, or lawyers in rushing out and printing theirs, we defy any man to say. In a word, the outside public cares not for professional topics except when they rise above the lower level of the workshop into that broader region where they are to some extent common property. In the case of literature this region is wider, and extends lower than in the case of other professions. But literature, too, like them, has its mere mechanical sphere, its "shop," in fact; and this, we say, can be interesting only to the workmen. We suppose it would be impossible to organize a Calcraft club. There are not, we fear, a sufficient number of gentlemen that way inclined in the whole kingdom, for Mr. Calcraft ever to find himself in a company where an allusion to the gallows would not savour of egotism. That great man accordingly has learned his lesson, and now, we are told, never broaches the theme, even in his cups. And yet there would be great excuse for him if he did. For the world is certainly more curious to know how great murderers die than how literary gentlemen live. And "our Newgate correspondent" would, we fancy, be read with an avidity which no one of the whole tribe of "Puffs" has ever yet succeeded in exciting. However, as this exalted kind of shop does not find its way into print, the question occurs if we could not dispense with what does. It cannot do much good; and it certainly does some harm. It either interests the public not at all, or interests them only by appealing to a silly curiosity. And it is unfair to men who, never having courted publicity, suddenly find it thrust upon them. Julius Cæsar. MODERN French literature is rich in works on Roman history. The passion of the French people for military glory, their worship of success, their inclination for rhetorical display, give them, perhaps, a special interest in tracing the career of the great conquering nation of antiquity, the founders of the mightiest of empires, most extensive in its sway, most enduring in its ultimate effects. Within the last twenty years there have appeared the monographs of Prosper Merimée on the Social war and the Conspiracy of Catiline; clear, shrewd, and accurate, and disfigured by none of the straining for effect which is the bane of so much French writing: the brief and rapid résumé of Roman history by Michelet, quite as spirited, and almost as whimsical as his later writings on many other subjects: the Roman history of Duruy, which, with a few sentimentalisms and other sins against what we should call good taste, is really a consummate model of a compact and full epitome:-the very elaborate and deeply learned work of Champagny on the Caesars, warped unfortunately to a theory, and resolutely presenting to us the dark side, and nothing but the dark side, of an age and a people which deserve to be regarded on every side and in every light that history and philosophy can shed upon them, as a complement and counterpart to the Cæsars of Champagny, the "Tacitus and his Age" of Dubois-Guchan, whose theory is precisely the opposite of Champagny's, and sheds, with equal learning and with eloquence only a little inferior, a gleam of rose-colour over every figure and every incident of the period:-again, the light and graceful sketches to which Ampère has given the title of a "History of the Romans at Rome," in which the existing monuments of the ancient city are made to tell, as it were, their own story, not without many a touch of modern political innuendo:-the "Roman Emperors" of Zeller, an essay, if not so brilliant and fascinating as some, more sound, perhaps, and solid than any of these lastly, the valuable "Picture of the Roman Empire" with which Amédée Thierry has crowned the series of histories in which he has more particularly traced the connection of the Romans with Gaul. From this work, which is a short sketch of principles and results, the English reader will collect a clearer idea of the working of the Roman character than from many complete and regular narratives. Such, at least, is the series of works upon this immortal theme which recur to our recollection when invited to consider a new account of the greatest. epoch of Roman history, introduced by a rapid review of the carlier career of the Roman people. The Emperor of the French, whose long-announced and much-expected life of Julius Caesar is now at last before us, can hardly have discovered a blank to fill up in the long array of works above referred to, though such is commonly the excuse of a new author when he ventures into the field with his contribution to the stock of our knowledge. He is more generally impelled really by a special impulse, by a special attraction to his subject, by a personal conviction that he has something of his own to say, and a mission to go and say it. The Emperor does not pretend to tell us what we did not know before. The facts of his immediate subject lie in a comparatively narrow compass, and have been marshalled before us in their order by all his predecessors in succession; nor does he profess to combine these clearly, more graphically than others: but he tells us plainly that he has a theory to illustrate, and he suggests to us in almost every page that he has a purpose to advance. The theory which the new life of Cæsar is intended to illustrate is indicated more or less distinctly in various passages in the body of the work; yet the preface is evidently put forward with a view of explaining it deliberately at the outset. "Historic truth ought to be no less sacred than religion. If the precepts of faith raise our soul above the interests of this world, the lessons of history, in their turn, inspire us with the love of the beautiful and the just, and the hatred of whatever presents an obstacle to the progress of humanity. These lessons, to be profitable, require certain conditions. It is necessary that the facts be produced with vigorous exactness, that the changes, political or social, be analysed philosophically, that the exciting interest of the details of the lives of public men should not divert attention from the political part they played, or cause us to forget their providential mission. Let us take it for granted that a great effect is always due to a great cause, and not to a small one; in other words, an accident insignificant in appearance never leads to important results without a preexisting cause, which has permitted this slight accident to produce a great effect. . . If, during nearly a thousand years, the Romans always came triumphant out of the severest trials and greatest perils, it is because there existed a general cause which made them always superior to their enemies, and which did not permit partial defeats and misfortunes to entail the fall of the empire. If the Romans, after giving an example to the world of a people constituting itself and growing great by liberty, seemed, after Cæsar, to throw themselves blindly into slavery, it is because there existed a general reason which, by fatality, prevented the Republic from returning to the purity of its ancient institutions." We have marked in italics the two passages which seem here to contradict each other, and to vitiate the whole of this reasoning. It is nothing new to trace the revolutions of empires to the agency of a Providence which directs them for its own wise and beneficent ends; it is nothing new to disregard all the moral evidence of providential design in the conduct of human affairs, and refer their issues to a blind Destiny or Fortune; it is not altogether unheard of even among writers of repute and pretenders to philosophy and logic, to jumble the two theories together, and so ring the changes alternately, from mere caprice or carelessness, or for the indulgence of a rhetorical fancy, upon both the one and the other, to confound providence with fate, God with fortune. This is precisely what the poet Lucan has done in introducing the same subject-the narrative of the fall of the Roman commonwealth. The poet was a disciple of the Stoic philosophy: was nephew and pupil of a great master of that school of thought; he was versed in the logic of the declaimers, and his mind was stored with all the abundance of their figures and illustrations. He was a man of genius, an enthusiast, a fanatic, a great rhetorician if not a great poet; but he never bore the character of a great reasoner; and of the causes he assigned for the terrible revolution which he undertakes to describe in immortal verse, the first is precisely the same confusion of fate and providence that is here repeated to us:— Invida fatorum series, summisque negatum Stare diu, nimioque graves sub pondere lapsus, It was the act of destiny, a hard and hapless law of which no account can be required, which suffers not anything to grow too great upon earth; the same destiny which, by and by, will destroy the whole world, and reduce all things again to chaos. Then follows In se magna ruunt: lætis hunc numina rebus Destiny is here transformed into deity, fate has assumed the name of providence; and this providence lapses again, in the next line, into a capricious fortune, which takes a spiteful pleasure in thwarting human power itself, and will not suffer so sweet an enjoyment to fall to the lot of mortals :— Nec gentibus ullis Commodat in populum terræ pelagique potentem The poet has bestowed upon his thesis some rhetorical embellishment, which is lacking to the severe prose of our philosophical historian; but the confusion between fate and providence is the same in both. When the preface proceeds to illustrate this theory by particular examples, the purpose of the work that is to follow is immediately revealed. "The preceding remarks sufficiently explain the aim I have in view in writing this history. This aim is to prove that when Providence raises up such men as Cæsar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, it is to trace out to peoples the path they ought to follow; to stamp with the seal of their genius a new era; and to accomplish in a few years the labour of centuries. Happy the peoples who comprehend and follow them! woe to those who misunderstand and combat them! They do as the Jews did who crucified their Messiah; they are blind and culpable: blind, for they do not see the impotence of their efforts to suspend the definitive triumph of good; culpable, for they only retard progress, by impeding its prompt and fruitful application." |