H. I would like to decide, Doctor, in favour of Sallust, but I feel myself bound in candour to pronounce an opinion against him. The arguments, just adduced in his favour, are, to say the best of them, more imposing than solid, and the hypothesis which you were kind enough to mention is too absurd to require a serious refutation.-But what was the fate of Sallust under this charge of extortion and spoliation?

Dr. B. It was such as might have been expected in the peculiar complexion of the times. He was acquitted by Caesar, his all-powerful protecto.-After the expiration of his government, Sallust renounced all public employments, and betook himself to a luxurious retirement, with his, as I fear you will term it, ill-gotten wealth. He chose for his favourite retreats, a villa at Tibur, which had belonged to Caesar, and a magnificent palace, which he built in the suburbs of Rome, surrounded by delightful pleasure-grounds, afterwards well known and celebrated by the name of the Gardens of Sallust. Possessed of every attraction, the Sallustian palace and gardens became, after the death of their original proprietor, the residence of successive emperors. gustus chose them as the scene of his most sumptuous entertainments. The taste of Vespasian preferred them to the palace of the Caesars. Even the virtuous Nerva, and stern Aurelian, were so attracted by their beauty, that, while at Rome, they made them their constant abode.1-In these gardens, or in his villa at Tibur, Sallust passed the concluding years of his life, dividing his time between literary avocations and the society of his friends, among whom he numbered Lucullus, Messala, and Cornelius Nepos.

Au

H. But, my dear Doctor, if such were Sallust's friends, and such his favourite studies, how is it possible that he could have indulged in that excessive libertinism which has been so often imputed to him?

Dr. B. Your question, Henry, is very well put, and certainly does not admit of an easy answer. I think it more than probable, therefore, that the historian has been here confounded with the dissolute individual of the same name whom Horace mentions in the first book of his satires. For my own part, I do not doubt, as I have already remarked, but that our author was a man of loose morals, and that he rapaciously plundered his province, like most Roman governors of the day. Still, I will never believe him to have been, as he is sometimes depicted, an abandoned profligate. Much of the obloquy, that was heaped upon his name, appears to have emanated from political ar.tagonists, and, of all things in this world, political diatribes are assuredly the most pregnant with false. hood. Now Sallust, it seems, being the decided enemy of Pompey,

1. Nardini Vet. Rom. 47.-Adler, Beschreib. von Rom. p. 221.-Gerhard. Epist. ad Gerlach, p. 25.-Dunlop's Roman Literature, vol. ii,, p. 146.

had said of that Roman, that he was a man "oris probi, animo inverecundo." Lenaeus, the freedman of Pompey, to whom you alluded a short time ago, avenged his master by the most virulent abuse of his enemy, in a work which would seem to have made a complete sacrifice of truth to invective.1

H. From what premises, Doctor, do you draw this latter inference, since the work itself has not come down to us?

Dr. B. Why, Henry, we may fairly judge, I think, of the injustice which he did to the life of the historian, from what he says of him as an author. He calls him, as we learn from Suetonius, "nebulonem vita scriptisque monstrosum; praeterea priscorum Catonisque ineruditissimum furem."2 This is the language of one of your thorough-going political partisans, who has entrusted his reason as well as his principles to the safe-keeping of his leader.-I wish we had the life of Sallust written by Asconius Pedianus, in the age of Augustus; it might have served as a corrective of the unfavourable impressions which have been produced by this libel, for it deserves no better name, of the freedman of Pompey.

H. Aye, Doctor, but what will you say to the declamation against Sallust which has actually reached our times, and that too from the pen of Cicero ?

Dr. B. Cicero never wrote it, Henry. It appeared long after the death of that orator, and is now generally assigned, by critics, to a rheto rician in the reign of Claudius, called Porcius Latro. It is in the style of what we may suppose Lenaeus's work to have been, a tissue of invent. ed or exaggerated calumnies, altogether unworthy of grave credence.3

H. And yet, Doctor, I was told by Boydel, of Christ-church, no longer ago than last evening, that Le Clerc, the Hebrew professor at Amsterdam, and also Meisner of Prague, in their respective accounts of the life of Sallust, have adopted these very calumnies which you so openly condemn.

Dr. B. Boydel should have told you also, Henry, that Sallust's character has received more justice in the prefatory memoir and notes of De Brosses, and from the researches of Wieland.5-But come, let us now consider Sallust as a writer. Which of the Greeks does he appear to you to resemble the most?

H. I should say, that his peculiar taste led him to select Thucydides for his model. He had no one among his own countrymen to imi

1. Sueton. de Grammat. c. 15.

2. Sueton. 1. c.

3. Schoell, Hist. Rom. Lit. vol. ii. p. 23.-Dunlop, Rom. Lit. vol. ii. p. 149.

4. Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscript. vol. xxiv. p. 368.-Histoire de la Repub. Rom. vol. iii., p. 307.

5. Ad. Horat. Sat. 2, 48, p. 57-73.

tate in the art of historic composition, since that was in a very low state when Sallust began to write. He, therefore, naturally recurred to the productions of the Greek historians, and attempted to transplant into his own language the vigour and conciseness which characterise in so eminent a degree the style of Thucydides.

Dr. B. Very correctly remarked, my young friend, only you ought to have added, that the strict imitation, with which Sallust has followed his Grecian prototype, has gone far towards lessening the effect of his own original genius. Still we cannot but admire the wonderful success of the Roman writer, in imitating the vigour and conciseness of the Grecian historian, and infusing into his composition something of that dignified austerity which distinguishes the work of his great model.

H. But, Doctor, you surely do not mean to be understood as affirming, that Sallust's style is an imitation of that of Thucydides?

Dr. B. The question docs you credit, Henry. I mean, when I say that Sallust imitates the historian of the Peloponnesian war, an imitation of his general manner, his rapidity, his force, his power of compression, rather than of his language. Thucydides, for example, often employs long and involved periods, while Sallust is ever abrupt and sententious, even to a fault.-Have you taken notice how often the latter rejects the copulative?

H. I have, Doctor, and I think it produces a monotonous effect, and a total want of that flow and variety which constitute the principal charm of the historic period.—I was walking yesterday, with a fellow-commoner of All-Souls, and, the conversation happening to turn upon Sallust, and the peculiarities of his style, we made up between us the following list of items, about which, my dear Doctor, although a little matter in itself, I would like to have your opinion.-We noticed, in the first place, that, in the ablative absolute, he sometimes suppresses the noun; as, proditis quos ducebat ;2 and the antecedent to the relative; as, quam ob quae praedicabat. We observed also particular expressions frequently occurring; as ex sententia, etiam tum, sine mora, &c. Then again, we found several instances, where two words nearly synonymous were employed; as, carus, acceptusque,-varius incertusquc,-bonum atque honestum,-rogat atque hortatur, &c. We remarked, also, the use of the infinitive for the gerund; as gratificari for gratificandi,1—adgredi, for adgrediendi;5 and the omission of the connectives et and que occurs on almost every page. Another peculiarity, also, forced itself upon our attention, his use of two different constructions in the compass of the

1. Dunlop's Rom. Lit. vol. ii. p. 149, Lond. ed.,

2. Jug. c. 106.

3. Jug. c. 108.

4. Jug. c.3.

5. Jug. c. 89.

same sentence; and, as for his archaisms, we voted the greater part of them to be decided specimens of the worst kind of affectation.-Well, Doctor, what do you think of our critique?

Dr. B. I like it, Henry; and think that you and your fellow-Oxonian have given a very fair sketch of the minor peculiarities of Sallust. Whether his archaisms, however, deserve the name of affectations is a point on which you will find many differing from you. My own opinion is with you and your friend. Sallust introduces into his history a number of words almost considered in his time as obsolete, and which were selected from the works of the older authors of Rome, particularly Cato the censor; and it is here that he laid himself open to attack from Pollio in his letters to Plancus. His style, on the whole, indicates too much study and careful pruning, and is deficient in gracefulness and ease. I would not advise you to make him your model.

H. This reminds me, Doctor, of old Roger Ascham's work, "The Schoolmaster," which I slightly examined the other day in the Bodleian, and where I found the opinion of Sir John Cheke relative to the merits of Sallust's Latinity. Sir John said, "that he could not recommend Sallust as a good pattern of style for young men, because in his writings there was more art than nature, and more labour than art; and in his labour, also, too much toil, as it were with an uncontented care to write better than he could."-But, Doctor, how stands Sallust, as regards the delineation of character?

Dr. B. Here his merits are undoubted. Five or six of the characters drawn by him have been regarded in all ages as master-pieces of their kind. I need hardly mention the portraits of Catiline, Jugurtha, and Marius, nor the celebrated parallel between Caesar and Cato. There is something in the latter which always reminds me of the well-known sketch of Chatham, the father of Pitt:-"The secretary stood alone," &c. Cato and Chatham were congenial spirits, and a Pythagorean would cite them as an illustration of his doctrine of the metempsychosis. H. What think you, Doctor, of the specimens of eloquence that are afforded by the speeches of Sallust?

Dr. B. I think them admirable of their kind, Henry, and in excellent keeping with the characters to whom they are respectively assigned. Nothing, for example, can be better adapted to the character of Caesar, as far as we have been made acquainted with it by contemporary testimony, than the cool, and argumentative, and specious harangue, in which he seeks to rescue the conspirators from the fate which is so justly their duc. In like manner, the bold and fervid language assigned to the Roman Cato, makes him stand forth at once in bold relief, and in genuine colours, from amid the vice and degeneracy of his time. And, again, in Memmius, we have the bold and aspiring leader of the populace, aiming blow after blow against the ill-gotten power of a corrupt aristocracy;

while the words of Marius are the effusions of a blunt and gallant soldier, who had as yet displayed no traces of the cold-blooded assassin, the tyrant, buffoon, and usurper.

H. But is it possible, Dr. Barton, that Sallust can be correct, in making Caesar a sceptic with regard to the soul's immortality?

Dr. B. Aye, Henry, and worse than a sceptic, a downright unbeliever. The whole tenour of Caesar's life is in strict accordance with this. His secret disregard for all morality, his open contempt for all honourable principles, his cold and selfish and murderous ambition, as if the lives of his fellow-men were but the playthings of an hour-every thing, in short, in the character of this remarkable man, reveals to our view a bosom warmed by no spark of social feeling, but as dark and as silent as the grave. It was but natural, therefore, that such a mind should see, or rather wish to see, in the horizon of the future, nothing but the gloom of annihilation, and should regard the doctrine of a future state of existence as a bubble and a dream. How different from all this is the language of our own philosopher, who had penetrated deeply into the mysteries of nature, and yet, with humbled feelings, could stoop to kindle the torch of knowledge at the altars of his God. "I envy no quality of the mind," he remarks, "or of intellect in others, be it genius, power, wit, or fancy but if I could choose what would be most delightful, and I believe most useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing; for it makes life a discipline of goodness; creates new hopes, when all carthly hopes vanish; and throws over the decay, the destruction of existence, the most gorgeous of all lights; awakens life even in death, and from corruption and decay calls up beauty and divinity; makes an instrument of torture and shame the ladder of ascent to Paradise; and, far above all combinations of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of palms and amaranths, the gardens of the blest, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the sceptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair."

H. Beautifully expressed, Dr. Barton, and as true as it is beautiful You are quoting, if I mistake not, Sir Humphrey Davy, the pride of English science.1-How meanly, by the side of this, appear the atheistical speculations of La Place, who could see in the wonders of the universe no indications of the finger of a Deity.

Dr. B. Why, Henry, as for atheists, if such singular beings do in fact exist, there is one simple argument which they can never answer. Ere we can say that there is no God, we must have roamed over all nature, and seen that no mark of a divine footstep was there; and we must have gotten intimacy with every existent spirit in the universe, and

1. Salmonia, p. 158, Lond, ed.