Nor was I wholly free from some foul attempts against me by those whose enmity I had incurr'd in defence of my master's cause; neither was I free from several tedious and dangerous sickness's, such as made my recovery more admired than expected; nor from perpetual domestick discontents through the unreasonable Turks imposed upon me, by an unsatisfied master, who because I was willing to do the utmost y' I could, expected yet more from me, not considering y when a vessell is full, one drop will make it run over, not affording me such moderate recreations as sufficed to refresh my mind, or to keep my body healthful, but taunting always at me for w I had left undone, whiles I had even torn the skin off from my fingers and elbows with incessant writing; and using a tyranny over my mind worse than y' over my body, in y' he debarr'd me the society of those men whom I knew the most ingenious of o nation; and if sometimes I did perhaps overcome my business, and was imploying my spare time in study or in musick, to find me so seem'd very unpleasing to him. In some such discouragem's and discontents he fed me with and all cover'd with feign'd proffessions of affection, as no reward should prevail on me to endure again; yet, I thank God, I waded thro' all with a continued faithfulness to him, as in the important actings of his merchants' imployments, so in his intended marriage with my Ld Ambass's daughter, gaining his ladies averse affections firmly towards him, and bringing all matters to an agreement between, as will partly appear by an epithalamium intended them, and in other dialogues, songs, masques, and anticks wch I composed to celebrate ye nuptials y more cheerfully.

"An Epithalamium to Mr. James Mody. ford and Mrs. Abigail Bendish, on their appointed weds day.

[This, together with a dialogue, a masque, musick, and a conclusion of the intended match being broken off, are omitted.]

Thus, when all was ripe, his rotten love fell fairly off, and defeated his lady's belief and his own, with my endeav". But to allay my griefs, let me now acquaint you with the enjoym's I had in counter balance. First, that wee spent much of of time in a fair country pallace, about 6 miles distant from the city, where wee had many pleasing divertisements, and sundry priviledges granted us by of noble patron Mamoud Effendee, Cadiliskier (chief judge) first of Anatoli (Asia), then of Romeli (Europe). The palace wee commanded as o' own, with a dairy of buffalos, cows, and goats, as also of gardens,

such as the country yields, serving ye mouth more than the eye. The house was scituate on the side of a little hill, over a pleasant narrow dale, which was embraced by a rivulet in two branches, and fenc't with woods almost round it, such as afforded a various and a pleasant chase of wild boars, of wolves, of chackalls, and of wild deers, so y' wee seldom wanted venison of sundry sorts, besides pheasant, partridge, and wild fowle in cheap plenty. Hither the great number of nightingales invite in the spring many great persons to their melody, and oftentimes their great families of concubines came to recreate themselves, attended only with their eunuchs, not contented unless they saw the Franks' chambers (by wch name they call all western Christians), and there entertaining themselves and us, with dancing, leaping, and roaring like wild persons let out of a prison. But, above all, I was in love with ye solitude of ye place, ye fountains, shades, ye rivolets, and private walks conferring much to ye stolen contemplation I delighted in. Sometimes also we met (as wee rid abroad) ye Grand Seign's falconers, or huntsmen, both which recreations they follow with great numbers in the field. The masters of the game are clad in red velvet, wearing fantastick fool's caps, cut with 5 lolling ears; they fly 2 or 3 cast of hawks at the same covey, and kill with their dogs and horses what the hawks do not catch. They carry the hawks always unhooded, making them thus so well acquainted with each other, y', being all off at once, they do not (like or hawks) fly one at another. The Grand Seign" hunting is diverse,― sometimes all sorts of game are caught alive and brought into some spacious plain, where a vast circle being made by the multitude of his followers, ye wild beasts are let loose, and according to their spe cies combated wth dogs or weapons, as suits each proper chase, whiles the Grand Seign' looks upon them from a high seat, amidst an armed guard.

But the more noble chase, as when multitudes of men are put into some great woods, with numerous trumpets, drums, and loud brass instruments, which, together with ye people's shouting, make a dreadfull confused noise, which affrights all the beasts ye woods contain, and drives them out into some capacious plain, in fair view of the Grand Seign' and his retinue, who stand all in array fitted to encounter them, be they of what species soevar; with spears, with javelins, darts, and swords, others with dogs y' are kept on purpose in dark houses and in chains, to heighten their fierceness, but yet comb, washt, and cloathed, to make them handsome and agile.

some

lowing the dictates of natural selfishness, advanced in power and civilization; the former, who obeyed only the law of custom, was unwilling to overstep the boundaries prescribed by it. The Roman was the full-grown man, who realised the idea of heroism; the Spartan remained ever the youth who, with the down on his chin, delights in the name of man, but wants the energy to give full scope to the practical developement of designs that require no less the vigour of youth than the gravity of age.

The arts and sciences, and even religion itself, were all subservient at Rome to patriotism. Rome was the absorbing feeling in all the proceedings of the state, and any study, history especially, unless connected with'Rome, was a matter of secondary importance, and unworthy of the occupation of a Roman citizen; and even the Republic of a Cicero was modelled rather by the institutions of Rome, than intended (like that of Plato) to serve as a model for improvement in legislation.

The diction, form, and matter of Roman history betray by themselves already, a late origin, and show us clearly that the foundation of the Roman state falls in a period when history had already assumed its proper sphere, and when a strong line of demarkation was already drawn between fiction and fact. It is true, that all the events that precede and follow by nearly a century the banishment of the last of the Tarquins, are of a rather doubtful, and, may be, of a contradictory nature; that we miss in them the precision which distinguishes the subsequent periods of Roman history; yet the cause of the difference does not lie in the poetical character of Rome's early history, as Niebuhr would have us believe, but in external circumstances, and especially in the destruction of the state-papers and similar documents, under Brennus king of the Gauls. The Romans were a matter-of-fact people; but few events in their early history savour of fic tion, and even in these few we can casily detect intentional fraud to serve some political purpose. Hence, their accumulation of facts, from the partial way of treating them, renders their history of little interest to the inquisitive reader. From Romulus to Michael GENT. MAG. VOL. VIII.

Paleologus, we read but of eternal foreign and civil wars, and the alterations in the original constitution resulting from both. The old brawls with the neighbouring nations seem rather to slumber than to be extinguished; and until the first Punic War her history offers nothing to engage our feelings beyond our admiration of her bravery and perseverance in a line of politics which often brought her to the verge of ruin.

With the Punic War, the history of Rome begins to shed light over almost all the nations of the ancient world; but like a planet that gives light only to other worlds, how minute soever are the accounts of the Roman historians with regard to the life and manners, politics and morals, the arts and sciences of other nations, the account of themselves is confined to foreign and domestic feuds the only occupation of a true Roman. The cultivation of the arts of peace was deemed useless, and even dangerous; hence, the banishment of the few Greek literati who attempted to smuggle in outlandish lore, with which the Romans would have been unacquainted but for the introduction of Asiatic luxury, the fruit of their extended conquests in the East, and which naturally led to that of the arts, that were cultivated from the time of Mummius with some success, and even more love than could be expected from men accustomed rather to handle the sword than the pencil.

With Augustus, the second half of the History of Rome may be said to begin. The machine had become so large and unwieldy, that it threatened falling to pieces by its own weight, and though still rolling up on the original principle, and by the impulse it had acquired, the motion was visibly diminished, and patriotism became more a Roman law than a Roman feeling. History affords many instances of the singular struggle made by the Romans of that time between their veneration for things which time had made holy, and the cold calculating spirit of an age apparently civilised, though in reality debauched. Religion was fast declining, both morally and politically, and while in Greece it degenerated into Atheism, it presented in Rome the opposite extreme of bigotry, and as the

E

Nævius him

matter-of-fact Roman.* self introduces his Epos with the words

"Qui terrai Latiai taserunt homones Veiras frudesque Phænicas fabor." The strict adherence to historical truth in the narration of actual events, so manifest in the poets of early Rome, may with much more reason be supposed to have been adopted by her early historians, who were bound to truth by virtue of their office. And yet, strange to say, Niebuhr sees in the early historians nothing but prosaic poets, in other words, historians who have converted into prose the fables and fictions of the poets. Strange, that the poets should have been historians, and the historians poets!!! But before we enter into a closer examination of Niebuhr's views about the history of Rome, it will be necessary to state his opinion respecting the origin of Rome itself. He endeavours (vol. i. p. 184) to shew that the Romans were actually descended from Eneas, or at least from Trojan blood, by asserting that the Trojan mythology was not of Greek invention but of Italian origin, since it was current among the Italic tribes long before they came in contact with the Greeks; "for," says he, "The belief in their descent from Æneas was universal among the Romans, which could scarcely have existed had there been no foundation for it, still less had it been of foreign origin. Above all, it is improbable that a belief of this kind should be of foreign growth, when it is recognised by the state, and one so proud and so contemptuous towards every thing foreign as Rome was. Of its having been so recognised, we find remarkable proofs -proofs drawn from times when Greek literature had certainly not found admission except with a few individuals.

Thus, Timæus, who, at all events, was writing for Sicilian readers, could scarcely

have invented fables on matters

states, about the year 490 U. C., that he had been told by certain inhabitants of Lavinium, that there were Trojan images of clay preserved in their temple."

Let us now examine in detail every one of his arguments, and see on how slight a basis they all rest. Of the

* In truth, so well pleased were the Romans with an Annual Register turned into verse, that they bore patiently the Punica of Silicus Italicus and the Pharsalia of Lucan; nor did they miss, what

reasons alleged, the first hangs only on a belief, supported by a tradition which none can prove to be true, and all will doubt, who, with Bryant, disbe lieve the very existence of Troy. Such a belief shares the fate of all traditional whether they are genuine and pure, reports, of which no one can tell or intermixed with poetical embellish

ments.

The second reason, however, is founded partly on historical facts:

"The first transaction," says Niebuhr, "between the Romans and the states of

Greece that we have any account of, is

the application of the Senate to the Etolians for the freedom of the Acarnanians, grounded on the plea that the Romans were bound to protect those whose ancestors alone of all the Greeks had taken no share in the war against their progenitors the Trojans."

We will for a moment suppose, with Niebuhr, that this occurrence, related by Justin alone, did actually take place about 509 U. C.

"It was about the same time," he proceeds, "that the Senate wrote a letter to King Seleucus, as the condition of entering into a treaty of friendship and alliance with him, that the Ilians, the kinsmen of the Roman people, should be exempted from tribute. The Ilians were also included by the Romans in their first treaty of peace with Macedonia in the year 549 fifteen years after, when the Scipios crossed the Hellespont, the Ilians boasted of their affinity with the Roman people, calling them their colony; the Romans were delighted to see their mother-country, and the consul went up to the citadel to offer a sacrifice to

Athene."

:

These facts bear, indeed, strong evidences in favour of Niebuhr's opinion; but their validity depends entirely on that of the assertions of our author, "that at that time Greek literature had

certainly as yet not found admission except with a few individuals." This last assertion the author not only leaves unsupported by any argument or authority, but places in direct contradiction with another of his asser

tions (i. p. 257), where he says:

"The middle of the fifth century U. C. the golden age of Roman art, may perhaps

we so much desiderate, the want of every thing like the thoughts that breathe and words that burn, in a genuine epic like the Iliad.