enjoyed the credit of a remarkable proficiency in English prose style; but De Quincey, partly out of partisanship for Bentley, partly from his preference for ornate over severe writing, and partly also out of mere crotchet, laboured to destroy this reputation with a certain success. The controversial part of Middleton's writings has lost its savour; his erudition, which was considerable, has been superseded, and his attacks (if attacks they are to be called) on orthodoxy proceed on a method which has long been exchanged for others by his successors. It is therefore very improbable that he finds many readers now, or will ever find them again, except among students of his special subjects and gifts.

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He was, however, a man of remarkable and altogether exceptional ability, of wide and curiously diversified literary interests, and in my judgment at least much more deserving of his earlier than of his later reputation as a prose writer. Of his supposed theological dishonesty not much should, but something must be said here. He himself grappled boldly and, as far as dialectics go, not ineffectively with the charge, in a Letter to Venn, who had called him an apostate. A specimen of this letter will be found infra. It is open to any one to say that though it displays extreme skill of fence and much dignity, it neither contains any direct and satisfactory confession or profession of belief, nor displays that genuine indignation which might have been expected from innocence. I do not myself think that Middleton was consciously or intentionally anti-Christian, or that in his professed attacks on Popery " and on Superstition" he meant more than he said. But he was evidently possessed strongly by the eighteenth-century hatred of "enthusiasm," and not less strongly by the mania of that century for inquiring into everything, by its disrelish for mysticism and metaphysics, and by its rather crude contempt for former ages. He is thus the opposite, or rather the complement of Berkeley, who was almost exactly his contemporary (they were born within two and died within three years of each other), and exhibits on the negative and lower side the same restless and vigorous love of research and argument which Berkeley shows on the higher and positive. It is particularly noteworthy in how many odd directions Middleton's thoughts exercised themselves. He has for instance a paper on Latin pronunciation which is quite beyond his time, and he took an interest in early printing, which was also not at all of that time, though it may have been prompted in him by a little inter-university jealousy.

His temper

For his style, so far as it is matter of controversy, the following extracts will probably speak better than elaborate comment. He is best at argument and narration-better perhaps in the former than in the latter, where he is apt to follow the ancients in using English relatives as if they had the Latin distinctions of gender, number, and case to preserve their connection with the antecedent from obscurity. In his pugnacious passages the necessity of driving home his argument saves him from this. Indeed I think it would be hardly possible to find a better example than Middleton's of the severely plain style, not quite so homely as Swift's, but not excessively academic. Of ornament, especially in his controversial writings, he has little or nothing; and this of itself accounts for the scant affection with which the nineteenth century has regarded him. He is not merely, as most of his contemporaries were, intolerant of gorgeous or flowery language, but it is the rarest thing for him to attempt a flight, a trope, an epigram in the modern as opposed to the classical sense. was not genial, and he is rather sarcastic than humorous; but his sarcasm was rarely marred by the mere rude horseplay to which his great adversary Bentley too often descended. Thus his series of Remarks on Bentley's Proposals, though their fragmentary nature and their constant quotations make them unsuitable for excerpt here, are really distinguished examples of uncompromising hostile criticism, and it is seldom that nearly as much may not be said for his voluminous and diversified controversies with others. In the Letter from Rome and the Free Enquiry, the semblance at least of an open and candid examination is largely assisted by the perfect perspicuity of the phrase, the apparent abstinence from all flings, shifts, and evasions under cover of declamation on the one side, or of buffoonery on the other. In the Life of Cicero, though the vehicle of communication is somewhat more negligently polished and equipped, there is the same perfect clearness, with very rare exceptions, due to the cause above glanced at and a few others of the same kind. And it is fair or rather necessary to remember that when Middleton began to write, the new balanced English style had had very few applications to historical narrative. It had been used in sermons, in essays, in short critical dissertations and so forth, and already great examples of it had appeared in philosophy. But even Johnson, a much younger man than Middleton, could still speak of Knolles, whose work was more than a century old, as the chief example of historical writing in

English, and though Johnson's well-known prejudices might have made him purposely ignore Robertson and Hume, neither of these writers made a name till long after Middleton. It is thus very

important to observe dates and correspondences of dates in regard to him. And when they are observed, perhaps the best summing up of his position in the history of English prose will be that he wrote with a remarkable combination of vigour and correctness, that he carried the unadorned style almost to its limit, and that while he sometimes went perilously near to being bald he never actually reached baldness.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

THE FIRST TRIUMVIRATE

IN the midst of these transactions, Julius Cæsar returned from the government of Spain, which had been allotted to him for his prætorship, with great fame, both for his military and political acts. He conquered the barbarous nations by his arms, and civilised them by his laws; and having subdued the whole country as far as the ocean, and being saluted emperor by the soldiers, came away in all haste to Rome, to sue, at the same time, for the double honour of a triumph and the consulship. He designed L. Lucceius for his colleague, and privately joined interests with him, on condition that Lucceius, who was rich, should furnish money sufficient to bribe the centuries. But the senate, always jealous of his designs, and fearing the effects of his power, when supported by a colleague subservient to his will, espoused the other candidate, Bibulus, with all their authority, and made a common purse, to enable him to bribe as high as his competitors; which Cato himself is said to have approved. By this means they got Bibulus elected, to their great joy; a man firm to their interests, and determined to obstruct all the ambitious attempts of Cæsar.

Upon Cæsar's going to Spain, he had engaged Crassus to stand bound for him to his creditors, who were clamorous and troublesome, as far as two hundred thousand pounds sterling : so much did he want to be worth nothing, as he merrily said of himself. Crassus hoped, by the purchase of his friendship, to be able to make head against Pompey in the administration of public affairs; but Cæsar, who had been long courting Pompey, and labouring to disengage him from a union with Cicero, and the aristocratical interest, easily saw, that as things then stood, their joint strength would avail but little towards obtaining what they aimed, unless they could induce Pompey also to join with them on pretence, therefore, of reconciling Pompey and Crassus, who had been constant enemies, he formed the project of a

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triple league between the three, by which they should mutually oblige themselves to promote each other's interest, and to act, nothing but by common agreement: to this Pompey easily consented, on account of the disgust which the senate had impolitically given him, by their perverse opposition to everything which he desired or attempted in the state.

This is commonly called the first triumvirate; which was nothing else, in reality, but a traitorous conspiracy of three, the most powerful citizens of Rome, to extort from their country, by violence, what they could not obtain by law. Pompey's chief motive was to get his acts confirmed by Cæsar in his consulship; Cæsar's, by giving way to Pompey's glory, to advance his own; and Crassus's, to gain that ascendant, which he could not sustain alone, by the authority of Pompey and the vigour of Cæsar. But Cæsar, who formed the scheme, easily saw that the chief advantage of it would necessarily redound to himself: he knew that the old enmity between the other two, though it might be palliated, could never be healed without leaving a secret jealousy between them; and as, by their common help, he was sure to make himself superior to all others, so, by managing the one against the other, he hoped to gain, at last, a superiority also over them both. To cement this union therefore the more strongly, by the ties of blood, as well as interest, he gave his daughter Julia, a beautiful and accomplished young lady, in marriage to Pompey: and, from this era, all the Roman writers date the origin of the civil wars which afterwards ensued, and the subversion of the Republic, in which they ended.

tu causa malorum

Facta tribus dominis communis Roma.-Lucan, i. 85.

Hence flowed our ills, hence all that civil flame,

When Rome the common slave of three became.-Cicero.

Cicero might have made what terms he pleased with the triumvirate; been admitted even a partner of their power and a fourth in their league, which seemed to want a man of his character to make it complete. For while the rest were engaged in their governments, and the command of armies abroad, his authority would have been of singular use at home, to manage the affairs of the city, and solicit what they had to transact with the senate or people. Cæsar, therefore, was extremely desirous to add him to the party, or to engage him rather in particular