citizens habitually looked for prudent coun- as long as the Assembly was invariably held sels, derived all his influence from personal in their town. Philopomen acted like a truly qualities, the Sicyonian stood before his liberal statesman when he procured the Countrymen with all the weight of official meetings to be held by rotation among the position, like a Premier or President of our various cities of the League. But so long as own day. We do not indeed find that any the restriction to any one city existed, Achæan general. ever manifested designs of Egium, as one of the less considerable converting his elective and temporary ma- members of the confederacy, was a desirable gistracy into a hereditary empire, or even a place; had the Assembly been habitually consulate for life; but his place was certainly held at Corinth or Megalopolis, one can one of sufficient dignity to induce more than fancy that some pretension to supremacy on one well-disposed tyrant to abdicate his the part of those great cities might have sovereignty and unite his city to the League.* gradually arisen. Lydiades probably enjoyed a greater personal influence over Grecian politics, as the elective magistrate of the Achæan democracy, than he had wielded as irresponsible despot of the single city of Megalopolis. not, by the hand he held up or by the bean he dropped, exercise a conscious influence over the greatest questions of his own age, and an unconscious one over those of all that were to come. The practical working of such a system was doubtless that of a mild and liberal aristocracy, which, existing solely on sufferance, could not venture upon tyrannical or unpopular measures. The material wellIt is clear, that with a President and being of the people may have been equal Cabinet, as we may fairly call them, of such to that of Attica in its best days, but the ina kind, the whole executive power must tense vigour of Athenian political and intelhave been lodged in their hands, and that, lectual life had no scope for its full exercise. even without formal enactments to that The individual Achæan was a free citizen, effect, they must have obtained a practical and not the slave of a tyrant or an oligarchy, initiative in the Assembly at least as effect- but he was not himself minister, senator, and ually as a modern ministry. But the right judge, in the same way as a member of the of individual citizens to make proposals typical democracy. His individual happiness, in the Assembly was very narrowly restrict- as far as human laws can secure it, may ed by law; perhaps not an unnecessary have been equally great, and his existence precaution in a session of three days. The was certainly more peaceful; but he could real business of the Assembly was to elect the magistrates, and to say yes or no to their proposals. After the somewhat unfair monopoly, so long enjoyed by Aratus, had come to an end, it was clearly in the election of the General that the parliamentary warfare of the League had its fullest scope. We continually find the policy of the Republic fluctuating from year to year, according as one or another party had succeeded in placing its leader at the head of the state. Each election might, in fact, bring on what we should call a change of ministry; but to the grand device of constitutional monarchies Achaia never attained. Every year the ministry and its policy was put in jeopardy, but, that ordeal past, it was safe for another twelvemonth. They had not hit upon our happy plan by which the executive power is held at the silent pleasure of the legislative, liable to be continued for an indefinite time, or dismissed at a moment's notice, according as it behaves itself. These parliamentary functions were probably discharged by a few of the leading men of each city, together with a somewhat undue proportion of the inhabitants of Egium. Though, as we shall see, this had no direct effect on the reckoning of the votes, still they must have had an unfair monopoly * See Polyb., ii. 41, 44. One more observation must be made. The votes in the Assembly were not counted by heads, but by cities. Whether one Corinthian or a thousand were present, Corinth had one vote, and no more. Here, as Niebuhr justly says,* lay the great deficiency of the constitution, that great cities like Argos and Corinth had no greater weight in the councils of the united nation than the petty towns of the original Achaia. Had any proportion of this kind been observed, as it afterwards was in the Lycian confederacy, the constitution would have been very nearly a representative one; and in such a case the final step could hardly have been delayed of each city sending just as many deputies as it had votes in the Assembly. But while the great political phenomenon of the League is certainly the first object of attraction, there are not wanting subsidiary ones of considerable importance. The history of the Macedonian monarchy is in itself an interesting one. A small nation, of uncertain origin in its first beginnings, gradually swells into a civilized kingdon: under several * iii. 277, 305, 409. We will not, however, now enter on the question of the exact amount of national kindred between Greeks and Macedonians, as it is a subject far too extensive to be cursorily examined at the end of an It involves the whole Pelasgian article. controversy, and cannot be determined without a complete examination of the entire ethnological phenomena of Greece, Italy, and Lesser Asia. We will at present only express our belief that the Macedonians were a branch of that great Pelasgian familyusing the word in what we conceive to be Niebuhr's sense of it--which extended into all those countries. That barbarian, especially Illyrian, elements were very much intermingled in the Macedonian nationality, is perfectly clear; but it is to our mind no less clear that the predominant aspect of the Macedonian people is, like that of the Siculians, the Epeirots, even the Licians and Carians, one of a quasi-Greek character. Their language was not Greek, consequently in the Greek sense it was barbarous, but it was clearly akin to Greek, in the same way as the different Teutonic tongues are to one another. The whole region which we have mentioned is clearly marked by the recurrence of similar local names in widely dif ferent districts, by a similar style of primæval architecture, and by the extreme facility with which all its inhabitants adopted the fully developed Hellenic language and civilisation. energetic princes it becomes Greek and terest. sovereign of Greece: it overthrows the throne of Cyrus, and, for a while, the single realm of Macedon stretches from the Adriatic to the Hyphasis. Such an empire as this could not be lasting; but the Macedonian race gave rulers and a permanent civilization to vast regions of the East, and the kingdom of Macedonia itself retained its place as the predominant power of Greece, the formidable rival of Rome. This is hardly the history of so worthless a people as Niebuhr and even Thirlwall seem to consider them. We cannot think the former altogether right in so completely identifying the Macedonian royalty with that of oriental states. It rather resembles an irregular medieval monarchy, which, under a weak prince, degene rated into mere anarchy, while an able and popular one had everything his own way. The Macedonian government was indeed essentially monarchical; there was no formal constitution, and probably few or no written laws; the absence of a Legislative Assembly is expressly asserted by Polybius; and Demosthenes testifies to the personal agency of the king himself being the primary moving power of everything, contrasting it herein with the republican governments of Greece. Still the Macedo. nians were clearly anything but slaves like the Asiatics; though political liberty had no existence, there were certain barriers of civil liberty which the king could not venture to There was evidently something The only remaining state of any note duoverpass. analogous to trial by jury; Alexander, in ring the Macedonian period-for the Etothe height of his conquests, did not venture lians were mere bandits, and can afford little to put a free Macedonian to death, in the political instruction-was Sparta. The laway of public justice, till he had been sub- ter history of this once imperial city is mitted to the judgment of his peers. Again, highly important in a political point of view, the Asiatic pomp, both of Alexander himself and it is interesting, far beyond that of any and afterwards of Demetrius, is expressly contemporary state, in the portraits it af alleged to have offended a people used to fords us of personal character and advenvery different treatment at the hands of their ture. Macedonia, after Alexander, gives us, rulers. The mere existence of a Macedonian | unless we may venture to put in a word for monarchy is in itself a remarkable phe- our poor friend Demetrius, no character nomenon, as no other civilized European really calculated to excite our interest; Anstate so long retained a monarchical constitution. Macedonia, and Epeirus also, till in the latter a democratic revolution extinguished the line of Pyrrhus, look like continuations, on a larger scale, of the old heroic monarchies which in Greece and Italy were abolished at a much earlier period. We see then, that, even in a political point of view, Macedonia is far from being an altogether barren subject, while, regarded ethnologically, it is of the very highest in tigonus Doson was certainly a good man and a good king, but we know comparatively little about him, and there is nothing specially attractive in what we do know. Even the chiefs of the League are not men to excite much enthusiasm on their behalf. The character of Aratus was always stained by many weaknesses, and towards the close of his life it assumed a deeper dye; of the gallant Lydiades we know less than we could desire; even the brave, prudent, and excellent Philopomen is, after all, a hero of a somewhat dull order. But far different is * See Müller's Dorians, i. 3, 486. the case when we have to tell how the gallant, unselfish, enthusiastic Agis won the glory of the martyr in the noblest but most hopeless of causes, and how his mantle fell upon an abler, though a less pure successor. Here, for once, we may turn with satisfaction from the prejudiced narrative of Polybius to the picture afforded us by Plutarch of the happy union of kingly virtues with every amiable quality of domestic life. Nowhere either in Grecian or in any other history can we find a character more fitted to call forth our sympathies than the heroic wife of the two last Heracleids; nowhere are more touching scenes recorded than the martyrdom of Agesistrata by the side of her slaughtered son, or the parting of Cleomenes from his mother in the temple of Poseidon, parent and child alike prepared to sacrifice all for the good of Sparta. There can be no doubt but that the designs of Cleomenes would have borne lasting fruit, but for the envious treason with which Aratus stained the glory of his earlier exploits. Agis perished because he undertook the visionary task of restoring a state of things which had for ever passed away; Cleomenes, a keener and less scrupulous statesman, adapted himself to the circumstances of the time. The Dorian element was dying out in Sparta, just as the Norman and Frankish elements have died out in England and France; Sparta was again Achæan, as France is again Celtic, and England again Saxon and Danish. The only difference was, that at Sparta formal barriers had to be removed, while in the other cases the silent operation of time has been sufficient. Cleo. menes, a Heracleid prince of the old Achaan blood, had no sympathy with Dorian oligarchs. He became the true leader of the people. He swept away, by his unscrupulous energy, distinctions which had outlived their purpose, and re-established the throne of Tyndareus rather than that of Agesilaus. That Aratus could not bear the glory of such a rival; that rather than submit to a cordial and equal alliance with the Spartan king, he preferred to undo his own works, and to hand over the Greece he had liberated to the grasp of a Macedonian ru ler, is one of the most painful instances on record of the follies and crimes of otherwise illustrious men. Sparta and the League cordially allied,-for a closer union their circumstances would not have allowed,might have braved the power of Antigonus and Philip, and perhaps have postponed, for some generations, the predestined absorption of all in the vast ocean of Roman conquest. But time would fail us to tell of Laconian heroism and Achæan treason, of Roman di plomacy and Etolian rashness. We must forbear enlarging on the day, when, at Cynoscephala and Pydna, the shield and the sarissa, which had borne the literature and civilisation of Greece into the deserts of Seythia and the burning plains of Hindostan, were themselves doomed to fall before the mightier onslaught of "The good weapons That keep the war-god's land." We have yet to see the successor of Philip and Alexander toiling his weary way, as a dishonoured captive, along "the bellowing forum" and "the suppliant's grove;" we have yet to witness the last throes of Gre cian freedom, disgraced as they were by the rashness and cupidity of a Diæus and a Critolaus, but still calling on us to let fall a tear over the fate of plundered and burning Corinth. But we must tear ourselves from the theme, throwing ourselves in full confidence upon the judgment of our readers, and looking for their favourable verdict in the cause which we have endeavoured to advocate,-that of the high interest and value of Grecian history in all its stages, even down to its latest and most miserable decline. ART. VI.-1. Dante's Divine Comedy.— 2. 3. 4. Translation of the Divina Commedia, By the Rev. E. O'DONNELL. London, 1852Dante's Divine Comedy. The First Part. Translated in the metre of the Original, with Notes. By THOMAS BROOKSBANK, M.A. London, 1854. Dante Hérétique Revolutionnaire et Socialiste. Révélations d'un Catholique sur le Moyen Age. Par E. AROUX, Ancien Député. Paris, 1854. DURING the last few years four new translations of the Divine Comedy have appeared in England, and to these is now added one by Mr. Brooksbank, which does not yet extend beyond the Inferno. New editions have also been issued of the transOf these lations by Cary and Wright. translations there is none which does not give some aid to the student of the original. The difficulties in Dante are seldom, we should perhaps say never, verbal ones, so that the correction of a predecessor's mistakes has not been in any case the motive leading a new adventurer into the field. Each book has its own claim of merit, and they interfere but little with each other. We are disposed to welcome all, and a dozen more, should a dozen more make their appearance. At each successive pe rusal of any profound author, much will strike the mind which had at first escaped notice; and much that had at first perhaps dissatisfied us, will, in other lights, and in connexion with objects not at first brought into our view, be seen to have had, with reference to the purposes of the author, its fitness and proportion, and, in its just adap tation to the place which it occupies, a peculiar beauty and propriety. We are glad to take up a book which, in any way, or from any sources, illustrates a favourite author. If but a single passage is so brought out as to enable us to see what was before obscure, the volume well deserves its place among a student's books; and we sometimes think that there are cases in which our English scholars, fixing their attention on each distinct passage, and even on every minute word and particle, with the object of reproducing its effects in another language, may be of more aid in the interpretation of the letter of Dante, than any of his Italian commentators. Blanco White tells that he once possessed a little pocket edition of Shake speare, in several small volumes, on the margins of which he marked with pencil lines the passages which struck him with admiration. At first a few passages were marked, some happy phrase, having to him, a foreigner, often more force than to a native of England, was noted. Now and then something that, if it had no other right to particular comment, reminded him of the poets of his own country. Then would come one of those wonderful passages which, expressed in language of the utmost simplicity, reveal secrets of our common nature with almost the effect of magic, and make the whole world kin. Line after line-scene after scene was thus noted, till the margin of almost every page bore traces of his pencil. There are moments in which to glance over a translation is even pleasanter than looking at the original work, however well acquainted one may be with such original. Of this we have in the case of Goethe a curious proof. "I do not like," he said, "to read my Faust any more in German, but in this French translation "-he spoke of that published under the name of Girard -"all seems again fresh, new, and spirited." The best Italian scholar is not unlikely at times to prefer taking up Rose's Ariosto to looking at the original,-or to amuse himself, in preference to either, with a book which to us gives the spirit of Ariosto, though with less accuracy in details, more truly than Rose,-the old strange volume of Sir John Harrington, which, "if there be aught in old tradition true," was the pleasant penance imposed on him by Queen Elizabeth, who, having been more amused than became a virgin of her years with his translation of one of the few passages in the Furioso which pass beyond the bounds of that permitted license with which sportive poets treat grave questions of morals, commanded him to translate the whole work. Dryden's noble translation of Virgil, with its thousand faults, redeemed by such unequalled beauties as no other poet ever squandered on a work not properly his own, is probably read with most delight by those who are best acquainted with the original. It is probable that the only readers of Frere's or Mitchell's translations of Aristophanes are those who, recollecting the original, are amused by the dexterity with which difficulties are encountered and evaded, but here the enjoyment is rather for the scholar than for those who read poetry with a truer feeling. Of the earlier translators our acquaintance was first made with Cary, and him we still in all respects prefer. Among the latter books we think Mr. Brooksbank's will probably give pleasure to a greater number of readers than the others. That pleasure Byron and would perhaps have been greater had he not adopted the complicated structure of verse in which the original has been written. This form of verse has also been used by Mr. Cayley. We do not think that any Enlish poet has triumphed over its difficulties. It has been now and then used by Surrey,-by Daniel,-by Sir Philip Sidney, in his translation of the Psalms, and by Milton. It was abandoned because its effect was felt to be monotonous. Shelley again tried it, running the lines into each other with almost the freedom of blank verse. We ourselves incline to think that the most successful experiment of its capabilities was one made by Mr. Heraud, in a poem on the Death and Resurrection of our Lord. It has led the translators of Dante who had adopted it into translating line for line with the original, which is a severer trial to a translator than any difficulty arising from the metre employed, and which is likely sometimes to lead to undue compression,-more often to the worse fault of expansion. But our present business is with Dante himself rather than his transla tors. The translation of Dante is no light task, is not a thing to be accomplished by a * as conception than if science, which, in the imagined case, assists the poet with the language of metaphor and analogy, rested upon a more secure basis. Assume science resting on a basis of ascertained truth, and then its maxims, supported by their truth and not reposing on mere authority, will be intelligible without reference to any peculiar system. To understand the poet with whose language they are blended it will not be necessary to examine the systemitself. In the case of Dante his reader has to acquire the whole science of Dante's age; no part of which science,-except perhaps Ethics, can be said to rest on any secure basis. barrister in his summer holidays, or in such | tions from observations and experience, but intervals of leisure as other studies and oc- mere phantoms of abstraction, we shall feel cupations leave. To those most familiar with how much greater the danger is of misthe poem the difficulties of such a task will probably seem almost insuperable. These difficulties do not arise so much from the veil of allegory thrown over the whole or parts of the work, or from the danger of not distinctly seeing the chief purpose of the poet in any particular passage, as from the circumstance that the language in which he expresses himself is derived from the science of his own day. What was once illustrative is now the cause of obscurity. The Astronomy, the Physics,-the Theology of his time, everything called Science,--proceeded in the teaching of the schools from dogmas, which, whether true or false, were regarded as indisputable maxims, and became In addition to difficulties arising from this embodied in popular language. Dante was cause, and which would affect the intelligiperhaps more than any man of his age bility of any poem of the same date, is skilled in the whole learning of the times. another, arising from the deeply studied disWe are told of his sustaining at the Uni- position of its parts,-more artificial than in versity of Paris an argument against four- any other work of human genius in which teen disputants. He was conqueror in all. the ministry of words has been employed, "This was regarded," says Boccaccio, The arrangement of each scene has plainly a miracle." On his tomb is inscribed,- been the subject of anxious thought; and no Gothic cathedral was ever built with more "Theologus Dantes nullius dogmatus expers;" regard to its minutest parts than this magniand in an edition of the Inferno, mentioned ficent structure, where every stone seems by Foscolo, he is called "Divinissimo numbered and fitted to its place. In LasTeologo." In the modern German poets celles's "Italian Voyage," we find a descrip the language is often framed from that of tion of a picture in the Vatican, which at the their schools of philosophy, a theory, in- time of his visit was over the doorway of volving a number of disputable propositions, the long room leading to the Gallery of will be found lurking in an unsuspected Maps. At the first looking upon it," he word,—that word perhaps used in a love says, "you see nothing but certain types and song, the sentiment of which, as far as it is figures of the Blessed Sacrament, out of the true and capable of influencing the feelings, Old Testament; but, being placed directly is a thing wholly distinct from the words in under it, and looking upwards, you see all which it is conveyed. In Goethe's songs the foresaid types contracted into the form we find expressions which can be fully un- of a chalice, and an host over it, to shew derstood only by one who has studied that those old types and shadows prefigured Spinoza. This will often not be perceived only the body and blood of our Saviour in by a reader unacquainted with the process the Holy Sacrifice of the altar."* which has passed through the poet's mind. Dante's poem we have, in much the same He will catch up some fanciful thought not way, to see it not alone in detail, and rewholly irreconcilable with the poem which garding each part as a separate picture, but he is reading, and the more intelligent he is with reference to a design for ever present the more likely will he be to remain satisfied to the mind of the creator of the work,— with some plausible conjecture,-fortunate which design is, however, not merely not if he does not miss or essentially vary the communicated, but anxiously concealed meaning of his author. The delicacy of from the spectator who has not attained the allusion, the charm which is in suggestive point of view in which it is intended that the words, that which constitutes the magic of several parts shall be contemplated as a style, he is sure to lose. In reading a poet of Dante's age this danger is everywhere to be guarded against; and, if we remember that the dogmas from which every science at that time proceeded were not the result of induc whole. It is easy to say that all this is too artificial to consist with the high claims which the poem possesses,-that such minute attention to objects, which, if not * Italian Voyage, Part ii. (2d Edition), 36; and Southey's Omniana, vol. ii. |