THE

MONTHLY REVIEW,

For MAY, 1820.

ART. I.

The History of Greece. By William Mitford, Esq. Vols. IV. and V. 4to. 21. 25. each, Boards. Cadell and Davies.

WE

E resume with great satisfaction our examination of Mr. Mitford's valuable work, in order to report the volumes now before us. As our remarks on the former portions of this history were made when they successively and at distant intervals came into the world*, and are therefore disjointed and unconnected, it will render more adequate justice to the author if we now take a retrospective glance at the plan only of his preceding researches, for the purpose of giving them some appearance of connection with those which remain to be considered. Every person knows that, of a history of Greece, one of the principal merits must be the skilful disposition and lucid arrangement of its parts; and it would, therefore, be as unfair to estimate the degree of praise which may in this respect be due to Mr. Mitford, without having some view, however imperfect, of the whole work, as it would be to pronounce concerning the symmetrys and congruitys of a large building from seeing only one of its extremities. A future opportunity perhaps may not be permitted to us; for we can scarcely hope that the labours of this elegant writer and accomplished scholar, which have already consumed forty years of his life, will be prolonged beyond the point to which they have now arrived; the death of Alexander. It was from that period that Greece rapidly declined from her "high and palmy state;" till, after an unquiet and feverish existence of little beyond a century, during which her affairs are more or less intermingled with those of Rome, she sank at first under the protection and at length under the arms of that vast and aspiring domination.

The perils and difficulties of writing a history of Greece are well known, to those who are conversant with the various and often discordant materials out of which it must be formed;

* See M. R. Vol. lxxiii. O. S., and Vols. ii. iii. xxiv. N. S.

VOL. XCII.

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with the uncertainty which overshadows it, and the causes of that uncertainty; with the absence at one time of a just chronological standard, and at another with the direct contrariety of evidence; with the darkness also of genealogical computation from the migrations (so frequent in that country) of tribes and nations, and from those hostile irruptions in which tradition and record have perished, Among these obstacles, any one of which might fatigue a mind of ordinary patience into despair, none is so appalling, and calls for so severe an exercise of the reasoning faculty, as the choice of authority; a difficulty, too, which, though but slightly felt in those ages in which testimonies are few, becomes disheartening as they grow redundant. When the historian of Greece is deprived of his contemporary guides, of those who had been themselves eye-witnesses of the facts which they narrate, or had conversed with persons who were, and on whose authority he may therefore securely repose, he is fated to struggle with fresh perplexity. A delicate and by no means easy office is cast on him, with all its hazard, and some of its responsibility,— the duty of making the requisite allowance for the zeal of writers who, after a considerable interval, derived their materials from contemporary historians, whose works, though extant to them, have unfortunately not descended to us. Under these circumstances, he is sometimes safe only by acquiescing in nothing beyond those statements, which are adverse to the obvious partialities and known passions of those who make them. We might illustrate this position by many instances which occur in Grecian history. With regard, however, to that considerable portion of it which involves the affairs of Sicily, we have scarcely any other writer from the death of Epaminondas, when the narrative of Xenophon ends, than Diodorus the Sicilian, who lived under Augustus, about three hundred years afterward. The deficiencies of this author, whose details are often broken and unconnected, are filled up in detached periods of history by Plutarch; whose claim, however, to an enumeration among historians is rather doubtful. Each of these writers was biassed by vehement prejudices. Diodorus composed his narrative when the Roman liberties had been recently subverted by the most insidious of tyrants; and Plutarch compiled his biographies when the imperial despotism had grown to its worst maturity. Both were idolaters of freedom. As the Roman polity, however, was no longer lawful game, it was beneath the mask of Grecian events and Grecian characters that they wrote at the political vices of the government under which they lived; and hence it is that many of their leading facts have come down to us with those perversions and exaggerations which, originating in honourable

and

and virtuous feelings, are yet fatal to authentic history. It was the want of this species of distrust that rendered Rollin unable to steer his course after the age of Xenophon, and has confined the merit of his epitome to the earlier part of Grecian history; and even that merit is depreciated by the declamations and anecdotes which are for ever impeding his narration.

This is not all that is required from a writer of Grecian history. It is not only in the crowded events, those for ins stance which occur from the Persian to the Macedonian inva sion, that this jealous and nice discrimination is necessary. More perplexity besets him while he is occupied on those remote but equally important periods, in which the void of authentic narrative is filled with traditions that, when rightly examined, will be found to be historical embellished into fabu lous incidents. To separate the real from the romantic requires a familiar intercourse not merely with the elder poets, Homer and Hesiod, (the former almost the father of history as well as of poetry,) but with those writers to whom

"Thebes and Pelops' line,

Or the tale of Troy divine,"

was the staple out of which they spun the shining tissue of their immortal dramas. Nor ought this to be a slight familiarity only with those models: it must be a living knowlege, if we may so speak; for on a single word not unfrequently depends the adjustment of a geographical doubt, or the correction of an historical error. Old hypotheses, originally the fruit of capricious conjecture and afterward adopted without inquiry, must be brought to the test of rigorous examination; and no opportunity is to be omitted of impressing on the reader those maxims of civil or moral wisdom, without which history is a barren chronicle of persons and events. This should be done with a clear, unaffected, and not unpolished expression; in a style not striving at elevation nor descending to humility; although, when the occasion demands it, (and there are occasions on which history as well as comedy exalts her voice,) the writer must not be wholly deficient in those "armis et instrumentis eloquentia," which give to virtuous feelings a warm and effective utterance. Here we pause,-lest the reader, imagining that we look for unattainable perfection, should exclaim nearly as Rasselas did to the poet who was exorbitantly aggrandizing his art," Enough; I am convinced that no human being can be an historian."

We have naturally lingered thus on the qualifications for narrating the affairs of antient Greece. The importance of this

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history as a stage in the progress of moral and literary edu cation has long been settled: it is the elementary tablet from which our first lessons in civil and political prudence are drawn; and it is from this source that we imbibe our love of the fair and the excellent, that our early virtues receive, as it were, in a palæstra their first breathing, and are trained and anointed for nobler exercises. We rise from Grecian story proud of our nature and its capacities; for it is there that we see it in its grandest dimensions and its most graceful attitudes; and that, in a succession of moral prodigies, we become acquainted with those virtues of heroic mould and gigantic. stature which dwarf the noblest growth of modern ages, and almost incline us to adopt the contemptuous contrast of the 0101 VUV BρOTO in which Homer insinuates the declension of mankind from the athletic heroes of the Iliad. We might be allowed to hint also at the strong associations which that country throws around us, as the birth-place of the elegant arts that have refined our species: but what are these compared with the feeling which it awakens as the nurse of those great spirits, whose patriotic virtue upheld and defended its liberty? To us, who have been also nurtured to freedom both civil and political, but under that improved scheme of polity which substitutes the deliberate voice of representative wisdom for the tumultuary decisions of popular will, even to us in the examples of Greece a world of political lesson subsists for our instruction. An insidious corruption preying on her liberties, (a disease generated by the institutions that were framed for their conservation,) but above all the indissoluble and vital connection between a state of civil security and the generous emulation which gives birth to all that is vigorous in genius or exalted in art, illustrated by the mournful example which exhibits liberty, genius, and art at last buried in one common sepulchre, - these are memorials, among many that we forbear to mention, which should never depart from our recollections. It was with this gloomy retrospect that, in a degenerate age, and under an arbitrary government, Longinus uttered the sentiment that we have feebly endeavoured to express, with all the strength and compass of that mighty language which he so well knew how to wield. Θρεψαι τε γαρ ικανη τὰ φρονήματα τῶν μεγαλοφρόνων ή ελευθερια καὶ εφελκύσαι, καὶ ἅμα διαθεῖν το προθύμον τῆς προς αλλήλους έριδος καὶ τῆς περι τα πρωτεία φιλοTipías. De Subl. s. 44.

Such we conceive to be the familiar impression concerning Grecian history. If it be fitting that what is read for so much instruction should be read with confidence in its testimonies and respect for its authority, we shall not be accused of too

much

much fastidiousness in the qualities that we require from the historian. Mr. Mitford has done enough in the course of his laborious work, to shew that he is by no means unequal to the task. To another and far from unimportant test, he can also give a satisfactory answer: Was the subject left in such a state by preceding writers as to render his narrative an accession to the branch of letters which he has undertaken to illustrate?

In the first place, we have but few systematic histories of Greece in our language to which we could refer with confidence or satisfaction; though the affairs of that country have had their share in those general histories in which, probably with few exceptions, we have far outdone our neighbours in France. Raleigh's and even Howell's works possess extraordinary merit: but their plan necessarily excluded minute attention to Grecian history. The compilers of the Antient Universal History have treated the subject with so little regard to chronology, and with such a complete contempt of all scientific arrangement, that, with reference to this part, it is worse than useless. Stanyan has given us a production of acknowleged ability: but it is circumscribed in its plan; and he has bestowed the elaborate minuteness, which ought to have been reserved for the most interesting periods, on those which were long antecedent to authentic narrative. Goldsmith's abridgment had the humble though useful object of an elementary book for schools: but it is deficient in authorities, which are seldom cited, and appear never to have been primarily consulted. It is indeed decorated with the graces of a diction purely English; graces which he poured over every subject that he touched. * Of the history by Dr. Gillies, delicacy forbids us to make an invidious mention. Enough, probably, has been said to shew that a Grecian history, with a full citation of authorities and a nice discrimination of testimony, was still a desideratum in English literature.

Mr. Mitford has, we think, given an adequate degree of attention to those early times of Greece which may be called the mystic and fabulous. To have passed them over altogether would have been an unpardonable neglect of that interesting stage in human societies, which, notwithstanding the almost entire absence of authentic evidence, is in its most interesting features more completely presented to our view in Grecian history than in that of any other country. The deficiency of direct evidence is abundantly supplied by

* See Johnson's epitaph on Goldsmith: "Nullum ferè scribendi genus non tetigit; nullum, quod tetigit, non ornavit.” B 3 those