Richard Garnett

“ The essays published under the title of The Statesman occupy a peculiar place in literature. They have serious faults, especially the too obvious imitation of Bacon, but they nevertheless are original in their point of view, and their wisdom is the result of a different kind of observation from that which qualifies the bulk of essayists on human life. When writing as one of these Taylor is less removed from the commonplace, though many of his remarks are admirable. As a literary critic he seems unable to get beyond Wordsworth and the select circle of poets admired by the latter. ”

“ As scholar, critic, and ecclesiastical statesman Thirlwall is almost above praise. He was not a great original thinker; he lacked the creative faculty and the creative impulse. The world owes such vestiges of his power as it possesses to a series of fortunate accidents—an importunate editor, vexatious church controversies, and an admirable friend. ”

“ As a man Trench was universally beloved and esteemed. He was remarkable for a high spirit, munificence, and general elevation of sentiment. As a prose author he ranks among the most useful and agreeable of his generation, and may almost be said to gain in both respects by his deficiency in originality. Both as Biblical commentator and philologist, he has done far more by popularizing the researches of more exact scholars and more profound thinkers than he could have done by striving to make discoveries of his own. For durable fame as a poet originality is indispensable, and here Trench fails. ”

“ XIX. Michael Ducas, the chief historian of the fall of the Greek empire, escaped from the sack of Constantinople to Lesbos, where he entered into the service of the prince of that island, and wrote his history after the reduction of Lesbos by the Turks in 1462. It commences in 1342, aud goes down to the conquest of Lesbos. Ducas is the most difficult and barbarous of all the Byzantine historians, and the only one who appears entirely unacquainted with classical models. At the same time he is among the most intelligent, impartial, and sagacious. ”

“ Their narrative is most unmethodical and inartificial ; their style is tame and plebeian; their conception of biography is that of a collection of anecdotes; they have no notion of arrangement, no measure of proportion, and no criterion of discrimination between the important and the trivial; they are equally destitute of critical and of historical insight, unable to sift the authorities on which they rely, and unsuspicious of the stupendous social revolution comprised within the period which they undertake to describe. ”

“ Sir Henry Taylor is pre-eminently the statesman among English poets. When he can speak poetically in this character he is impressive, almost great; when he deals with the more prosaic aspects of policy he is dignified and weighty, without being altogether a poet when his theme is entirely unrelated to the conduct of public affairs or private life he is usually little more than an accomplished man of letters. ”

“ The latter books of Nicetas's history possess especial importance, inasmuch as they contain the Byzantine account of the taking of Constantinople by the Latins in the fourth crusade (1204) . Nicetas's own palace was burned and plundered, and he escaped with difficulty to Nicæa, where he composed his history under the protection of the emperor Theodore Lascaris. His narrative, though too rhetorical, is striking and pathetic; it necessarily requires careful comparison with the Latin accounts. The remainder of his history is also valuable. ”

“ In like manner the Byzantine historians preserved the traditions of historical composition, while their brethren of the West were merely chroniclers and annalists. They have safely embalmed in their generally unattractive pages a vast mass of most valuable information, for which we are in most cases solely dependent upon them, and they aid us to reconstruct the polity, and to some extent the social life, of what was for several centuries the only really civilized Christian state in the world. They are undoubtedly for the most part perfectly ignorant of the significance of their own times ”

“ Literary History of the Greek Anthology.—The art of occasional poetry had been cultivated in Greece from an early period, less, however, as the vehicle of personal feel ing, than as the recognis-ed commemoration of remarkable individuals or events, or the accompaniment of votive offerings. Such compositions were termed epigrams, i.e., inscriptions. The modern use of the word is a departure from the original sense, which simply indicated that the composition was intended to be engraved or inscribed. ”

“ Style and Value of the Anthology.—One of the principal claims of the Anthology to attention is derived from its continuity, its existence as a living and growing body of poetry throughout all the vicissitudes of Greek civili sation. More ambitious descriptions of composition speedily ran their course, and having attained their complete de velopment became extinct, or at best lingered only in feeble or conventional imitations. ”

“ The chronologers usually published in the Byzantine collection are frequently very valuable, but neither their lives nor their writings need detain us long. They are I. Georgius Syncellus, the attendant (syncellus) upon the patriarch Tarasius, about the beginning of the 9th century. His unfinished chronicle extends from Adam to Diocletian, and was continued to 813 A.D. by II. Theophanes Isaurus, a martyr in the cause of image worship. ”

“ To peruse the entire collection, accordingly, is as it were to assist at the disinterment of an ancient city, where generation has suc ceeded generation on the same site, and each stratum of soil enshrines the vestiges of a distinct epoch, but where all epochs, nevertheless, combine to constitute an organic whole, and the transition from one to the other is hardly perceptible. ”

“ Thirlwall's private life was happy and busy. He never married, but found sufficient outlet for his deep affectionateness of nature in his tenderness to the children of others, and to all weak things except weak-minded clergy men. ”

“ Isaac Comnenus is more Elizabethan in tone than his other dramas. Comnenus is like a preliminary sketch for Van Artevelde; and the picture of the Byzantine court and people is exceedingly lively. The idea of the revival of romantic comedy in The Virgin Widow is excellent, but the play lacks the humour which might have made it a success. The length of the speeches, even when not set speeches, is a drawback to all these dramas. Taylor's lyrical work is in general laboriously artificial. ”

“ No one ever possessed a more judicial mind. Of his oratory, Mill, whom he opposed at a debating society, says, "Before he had uttered ten sentences I set him down as the best speaker I had ever heard, and I have never since heard any one whom I placed above him."
It is not often that a scholar twice makes an epoch by a translation. Such was Thirlwall's destiny: he joined with Hare in translating Niebuhr's History of Rome ”

“ BÁBI, or Báby, the appellation of a remarkable modern sect in Persia, is derived from the title (bob, i.e., gate) assumed by its founder, Seyed Mohammed Ali, born at Shiraz about 1824, according to Count Gobineau, but ten years earlier according to Kasem Beg. Persia, as is well known, is the least strictly Mahometan of all Mahometan countries, the prophet himself occupying an almost secondary place in the popular estimation to his successor Ali, and the latter s sons, Hassan and Hosein. ”

“ Translations, Imitations, &c., of the Anthology.—The best versions of the Anthology ever made are the Latin renderings of select epigrams by Hugo Grotius. They have not been printed separately, but will be found in Eosch and Lennep s edition of the Planudean Anthology, in the Didot edition, and in Dr Wellesley s Anthologia Poly- fflotta. The number of more or less professed imitations in modern languages is infinite, that of actual translations less considerable. ”

“ Christian epigrams " are totally value
less in a literary point of view.
It would be hard to exaggerate the substantial value of the Anthology, whether as a storehouse of facts bearing on antique manners, customs, and ideas, or as one among the influences which have contributed to mould the literature of the modern world. The multitudinous votive inscrip tions, serious and sportive, connote the phases of Greek religious sentiment, from pious awe to irreverent familiarity and sarcastic scepticism ; the moral tone of the nation at various periods is mirrored with corresponding fidelity ”

“ It is not otherwise apparent in this highly interesting book, which, sinning a little by the egotism pardonable in a poet and the garrulity natural to a veteran, is in the main a pleasing and faithful picture of an aspiring youth, an active maturity, and a happy and honoured old age. ”

“ AUGUSTAN HISTORY is the title bestowed upon a collection of the biographies of the Roman emperors, from Hadrian to Carinus, written under Diocletian and Constantine, and usually regarded as the composition of six authors, Ælius Spartianus, Julius Capitolinus, ^Elius Lampridius, Vulcatius Gallicanus, Trebellius Pollio, and Flavins Vopiscus. ”

“ The prophetic character of Moses, Christ, and Mahomet is acknowledged, but they are considered as mere precursors of the Bâb. The morality of the sect is pure and cheerful, and it manifests an important advance upon all previous Oriental systems in its treatment of woman. Polygamy and concubinage are forbidden, the veil is disused, and the equality of the sexes so thoroughly recognised that one at least of the nineteen sovereign prophets must always be a female. ”

“ Under these circumstances the good sense and sagacity of many among them are very remarkable, and are chiefly to be explained by the large proportion among them of men accustomed to practical life and public affairs. ”

“ When, however, all their disadvantages are taken into consideration, it will probably be deemed that they are much better than might have been expected. They were isolated from all the rest of the known world by prejudice, policy, and religious hatred. ”

“ Their roll includes sovereigns, generals, prime ministers, secretaries of state, diplomatists, and other important public officers; even the ecclesiastics among them are not recluses but men versed in business. The Byzantine civil service was the strong point of the empire, and its solid if prosaic qualities are admirably reflected by its literary representatives.
The first collective edition of the Byzantine historians was published at Paris, 1648–1702, in 27 volumes, with a preface by Labbe, and notes and translations by Fabrotus, Combefisius, and others. ”

“ He has written little beyond the reach of any man uniting exquisite culture to the accomplishment of verse: the pieces where poetry seems a natural language with him are chiefly to be found among his elegiac poems, which express real personal experience, and appeal movingly to the heart. ”

“ Two other apostles were speedily added, the appearance of one of whom may almost be said to mark an epoch in Oriental life. It is rare indeed to find a woman enacting any distinguished part in the East, least of all that of a public teacher. ”

“ The further his researches extend, the greater will be his astonishment at the extent to which the Anthology has been laid under contribution for thoughts which have become household words in all cultivated languages, and at the beneficial effect of the imitation of its brevity, simplicity, and absolute verbal accuracy upon the undisciplined luxuriance of modern genius. ”

“ Vopiscus was solicited by the urban prefect, Junius Tiberianus, to undertake the life of Aurelian; this biography appears from internal evidence to have been published by 307 A.D., and the lives of Aurelian's successors down to Carinus were added before the death of Diocletian in 313. We may therefore reduce the Augustan historians from six to four, and assign their respective shares as follows: To Spartianus, the biographies from Julius Cæsar to Alexander Severus, all anterior to Hadrian being lost ”

“ The caution of Vopiscus s references to Diocletian cannot be made a reproach to him.
No biographical particulars are recorded respecting any of these writers. From their acquaintance with Latin and Greek literature they must have been men of letters by profession, and very probably secretaries or librarians to persons of distinction. They appear particularly versed in law. Spartianus s reference to himself as "Diocletian s own " seems to indicate that he was a domestic in the imperial household. ”

“ Nearly all the pieces of this era are actual bona fide inscriptions, or addresses to real personages, whether living or deceased ; narratives, literary exercises, and sports of fancy are exceedingly rare. ”

“ The other chief precepts of Bâbism inculcate hospitality, charity, and generous living, tempered by abstinence from intoxicating liquors and drugs. Asceticism is entirely discountenanced, and mendicancy, being regarded as a form of it, is strictly prohibited. ”

“ The translation was attacked in the Quarterly as favourable to scepticism, and the translators jointly replied. In 1831 the friends established the Philological Museum, which lived through only six numbers, though among Thirlwall's contributions was his masterly paper on the irony of Sophocles,—"the most exquisite criticism I ever read," says Sterling. On Hare's departure from Cambridge in 1832, Thirlwall became assistant college tutor, which led him to take a memorable share in the great controversy upon the admission of Dissenters which arose in 1834. ”

“ The con stant reference to the details of private life renders the Anthology an inexhaustible treasury for the student of archaeology ; art, industry, and costume receive their fullest illustration from its pages. ”