APPENDIX.

A FEW extracts from the notes penciled in Macaulay's Greek and Latin books may interest any one who is wise enough to have kept up his classics, or young enough for it to be still his happy duty to read them. The number of the dates scribbled at the conclusion of each volume, and their proximity in point of time, are astonishing when we reflect that every such memorandum implies a separate perusal.

"This day I finished Thucydides, after reading him with inexpressible interest and admiration. He is the greatest historian that ever lived.-February 27th, 1835.”

"I am still of the same mind.-May 30th, 1836."

At the end of Xenophon's "Anabasis " may be read the words: "Decidedly his best work.―December 17th, 1835.”

"Most certainly.-February 24th, 1837.”

One of the very first works that antiquity has left us. Perfect in

its kind.—October 9th, 1837."

"I read Plautus four times at Calcutta.

"The first, in November and December, 1834.

"The second, in January and the beginning of February, 1835. "The third, on the Sundays from the 24th of May to the 23d of August, 1835.

"The fourth, on the Sundays beginning from the 1st of January, 1837.

"I have since read him in the Isle of Wight (1850), and in the South of France (1858)."

"Finished the second reading of Lucretius this day, March 24th, 1835. It is a great pity that the poem is in an unfinished state. The philosophy is for the most part utterly worthless; but in energy, perspicuity, variety of illustration, knowledge of life and manners, talent for description, sense of the beauty of the external world, and elevation and dignity of moral feeling, he had hardly ever an equal."

“Finished Catullus August 3d, 1835. An admirable poet. No Latin writer is so Greek. The simplicity, the pathos, the perfect grace, which I find in the great Athenian models are all in Catullus, and in him alone of the Romans."

To the "Thebaïs" of Statius are simply appended the dates "October 26th, 1835." "October 31st, 1836." The expressions "Stuff!" and "Trash!" occur frequently enough throughout the dreary pages of the poem; while evidence of the attention with which those pages were studied is afforded by such observations as "Gray has translated this passage," "Racine took a hint here;" and "Nobly imitatedindeed, far surpassed-by Chaucer."

"Finished Silius Italicus; for which Heaven be praised! December 24th, 1835. Pope must have read him before me. In the 'Temple of Fame,' and the 'Essay on Criticism,' are some touches plainly suggested by Silius."

In the last page of Velleius Paterculus come the following comments: "Vile flatterer! Yet, after all, he could hardly help it. But how the strong, acute, cynical mind of Tiberius must have been revolted by adulation, the absence of which he would probably have punished! Velleius Paterculus seems to me a remarkably good epitomist. I hardly know any historical work of which the scale is so small, and the subject so extensive. The Bishop of London admires his style. I do not. There are sentences worthy of Tacitus; but there is an immense quantity of rant, and far too much ejaculation and interrogation for oratory, let alone history. June 6th, 1835; again, May 14th, 1836."

"I think Sallust inferior to both Livy and Tacitus in the talents of an historian. There is a lecturing, declaiming tone about him which would suit a teacher of rhetoric better than a statesman engaged in

recording great events. Still, he is a good writer; and the view which he here gives of the state of parties at Rome, and the frightful demoralization of the aristocracy, is full of interest.-June 10th, 1835; May 6th, 1837."

"I do not think that there is better evidence of the genuineness of any book in the world than of the first seven books of Cæsar's 'Commentaries.' To doubt on that subject is the mere rage of skepticism."

After Cæsar's "De Bello Civili :" "He is an admirable writer, worth ten of Sallust. His manner is the perfection of good sense and good taste. He rises on me, also, as a man. He was on the right side, as far as in such a miserable government there could be a right side. He used his victory with glorious humanity. Pompey, whether he inclined to it or not, must have established a reign of terror to gratify the execrable aristocracy whose tool he had stooped to be."

To the "De Bello Alexandrino:" "This is not a bad history. Hirtius is a very respectable writer. The Alexandrian affair is a curious episode in Cæsar's life. No doubt the influence of Cleopatra was the real cause of his strange conduct. He was not a man to play Charles XII. at Bender, except when under the tyranny of some strong passion. The ability with which he got out of scrapes is some set-off against the rashness with which he got into them."

To the "De Bello Hispaniensi :" "This book must have been written by some sturdy old centurion, who fought better than he composed."

The odds and ends of Cæsar's conversation, gathered far and wide from classical literature into what is perhaps the most tantalizing biographical fragment in the world, are characterized by Macaulay as Disjecta membra gigantis.'

The three volumes of Macaulay's Ovid are enlivened, throughout, with pencil-notes charming in their vivacity and versatility. At the conclusion of the fifteenth and last book he writes: "There are some very fine things in this poem; and in ingenuity, and the art of doing difficult things in expression and versification as if they were the easi

est in the world, Ovid is quite incomparable. But, on the whole, I am much disappointed. I like the romantic poets of Italy far better ; not only Ariosto, but Boiardo, and even Forteguerri. The second book of the 'Metamorphoses' is by far the best. Next to that comes the first half of the thirteenth.

"Finished at Calcutta April 28th, 1835."

"I like it better this second time of reading.-January 14th, 1837."

He was evidently surfeited by the "Heroides," and pleased by the "Amores;" though he read them both twice through with the strictest impartiality. Of the "Ars Amatoria" he says: "Ovid's best. The subject did not require the power, which he did not possess, of moving the passions. The love, which he has reduced to a system, was little more than the mere sexual appetite, heightened by the art of dress, manner, and conversation. This was an excellent subject for a man so witty and so heartless.”

The "Fasti" were almost too much for him.

"June 30th, 1835.

It is odd that I should finish the 'Fasti' on the very day with which the 'Fasti' terminate. I am cloyed with Ovid. Yet I can not but admire him."

"Finished the "Fasti' again.-February 26th, 1837."

After the "Tristia:" "A very melancholy set of poems. They make me very sad, and the more so because I am myself an exile, though in far happier circumstances, externally, than those of Ovid. It is impossible not to feel contempt, mingled with a sort of pitying kindness, for a man so clever, so accomplished, so weak-spirited and timid, placed, unjustly as it should seem, in so painful a situation. It is curious that the three most celebrated Roman writers who were banished, and whose compositions written in exile have come down to us-Cicero, Seneca, and Ovid—have all shown an impatience and pusillanimity which lower their characters;" and which, he might have added, are strangely at variance with the proverbial manliness and constancy of the Roman nature.

At the end of the last volume: "I have now gone through the whole of Ovid's works, and heartily tired I am of him and them. Yet he is a wonderfully clever man. But he has two insupportable faults. The one is that he will always be clever; the other that he

never knows when to have done. He is rather a rhetorician than a poet. There is little feeling in his poems; even in those which were written during his exile. The pathetic effect of his supplications and lamentations is injured by the ingenious turns of expression, and by the learned allusions, with which he sets off his sorrow."

He seems to have been a very good fellow: rather too fond of women; a flatterer and a coward; but kind and generous; and free from envy, though a man of letters, and though sufficiently vain of his literary performances. The 'Art of Love,' which ruined poor Ovid, is, in my opinion, decidedly his best work."

"I finished Livy, after reading him with the greatest delight, interest, and admiration, May 31st, 1835; again, April 29th, 1837."

At the end of Livy's twenty-seventh book there appear the following remarks; which, in a letter to Mr. Ellis, Macaulay entitles "Historic Doubts touching the Battle of the Metaurus:" "I suspect that the whole narrative is too highly colored, and that far too large a share of the praise is allotted to Nero. Who was Nero? What did he ever do before or after this great achievement? His conduct in Spain had been that of an incapable driveler, and we hear of nothing to set off against that conduct till he was made consul. And, after his first consulship, why was he not re-elected? All ordinary rules about succession to offices were suspended while Hannibal was in Italy. Fabius, Fulvius, Marcellus, were elected consuls over and over. The youth of Scipio did not keep him from holding the highest commands. Why was Nero, who, if Livy can be trusted, was a far abler man than any general whom Rome employed in that war-who outgeneraled Hasdrubal, who saved the republic from the most imminent danger—never re-employed against the Carthaginians?

"And then, how strange is the silence of the Latin writers anterior to the Augustan age! There does not exist, as far as I recollect, a single allusion to Nero in all Cicero's works. But, when we come to the time at which Tiberius was rising to the first importance in the State, we find Nero represented as the most illustrious captain of his age. The earliest panegyric on him that I know is in Horace's fine ode, 'Qualem Ministrum.' That ode was written to the praise and glory of Tiberius and Drusus-both Neros. Livy wrote when Tiberius was partner with Augustus in the Empire; Velleius Paterculus, when Ti