her statesmen and the zeal of her orators. Since the destruction of liberty, in proportion as the whole judicial power became invested in the will of an individual, the senate ceased to be the theatre of a noble emulation; and the forum was no longer the favourite resort of the people. In all countries, I believe that the people are the best judges of genuine eloquence. Their attention may be seduced by tinsel and glitter, and their understandings may be confounded by indefinite and mysterious terms; but when Mark Antony, in plain and simple language, commends Cæsar, speaks honourably of his murderers, and shews his bloody garment pierced with numerous stabs, they seize the arms which first present themselves, and rush with frantic rage to the houses of his assassins. Had an appeal been made to this tribunal, that is, to the judgment of unsophisti cated nature, the false taste, of which I speak, would probably have been corrected, or its progress retarded." P. 21.

But we do not conceive that the writer of Storia della Letteratura Italiana, considers want of liberty as the principal cause of the decline of eloquence during this first period. We are much inclined to doubt the assertion; and though, in our perusal of the history of the middle ages, we see too plainly the use which Mr. Berington has made of the labours of Tiraboschi, yet in some occasions he has mistaken the meaning of the Italian author, and has considered as the one great cause, what was in fact but one out of many, and has taken as a chief argument that which at the best was employed but as an auxiliary one. However, before we proceed, we consider it but an act of justice to acquit Mr. Be rington of any wilful misrepresentation. The style of Tiraboschi is so very diffuse, and the general tenor of his history is so minute, that without the strictest attention, and the most perfect acquaintance with the Italian language, it is too easy for a reader to lose sight of the main point of the question, and mistake the meaning of the author by the intricacy of the details, and the length of the digressions. Now to Mr. Berington.

It is true that Tiraboschi considers Asinius Pollio as the very first man who vitiated eloquence, but it is not to the destruction of liberty, that the Italian author refers the cause of its decay. Had Mr. Berington turned over to page 216 of the first volume, he would have found a long note, in which Tiraboschi positively denies that this has ever been his sentiment. In this note, Mr. Berington would have seen that Count Galeauni had fallen into the same mistake with him, which offered an opportunity to Tiraboschi to explain his meaning. Consequently in that note, after having made a full statement of the objections which the noble Count bad proposed to some of his assertions, he closes the whole with the following remarkable expressions. Conosco che non ho spiegato abbastanza il meo sentimento, et mi compi

accio di aver con ciò data occasione a questo dotto Scrittore (Count Galeani) di mettere in tanto miglior luce, l'accennetd questione. For this reason we fear that Mr. Berington has made use of the edition of Parma, which is not the best; the edition we have consulted is that of Rome, of the year 1782; and we are not aware whether the note in question may be found in the edition of Parma. The silence of Mr. Berington justifies our supposition.

Tiraboschi draws a very wide distinction between arts and sciences; and we beg our reader to bear this difference well in mind, siuce Mr. Berington seems hardly to have noticed its meaning. The Italian historian admits that in science, however great may be the discoveries of any nation or of any age, still greater are those that remain to be made by future ages and fu ture nations. He indeed compares scientific knowledge to an indefinite curve, the vertex of which will for ever be inaccessible to man ; but in literature as well as in arts, he acknowledges the existence of a certain standard, beyond which it is impossible to go. Being an imitation of nature, they cannot improve on their model; and as soon as they have reached perfection, they must become stationary. Any attempt to bring them further, must necessarily deprive them of a part of their beauty; since moving in a definite curve, we cannot go beyond the summit without falling downwards to the opposite side. The same, he adds, must be said of the art of speaking. As soon as eloquence has reached perfection, any new improvement will end either a languid prolixity or a mysterious jargon. Cicero had brought it to a degree, which in Rome at least had never been before witnessed. Ifhis followers, in avoiding his faults, had preserved his beauties, they would have been most perfect orators; but in their desire to improve upon his style, they introduced the most false and dew structive taste. They reproached Cicero with being diffuse, and they in their turn became abrupt and affected; and in attempting to rise higher, they fell infinitely lower. Such is Tiraboschi's opinion, and own we must that in many respects it is a very just one.

Our author opens his second period from Adrian to Constan tine, with the following spirited reflexions.

"If any thing could have rescued from merited reproach the name of Adrian, it would have been the adoption of Antoninus Pius. Endowed by nature with superior talents, which had been carefully improved by cultivation, and possessing an easy flow of eloquence, Antoninus, amidst the cares of empire, could find time for literary pursuits; but it is related of him as principally praise. worthy, that, on the professors of the arts, whom he established in

Rome

Rome and in the provinces, he bestowed stipends, honours, and a variety of privileges. Marcus Aurelius, a name dear to virtue and to science, pursued the same path, and sought glory by the same honourable toils. He had been tutored, from early youth, in all the branches of elegant literature; but his mind, says the historian, was addicted to serious reflection; and he often neglected the captivating society of the Muses, to court the fellowship of the severe disciples of Zeno. In the schools of the Stoics he experienced his greatest delight; and he modelled his conduct by their precepts. Notwithstanding this preference, the masters in every science were objects of his favour; and it is amusing to read of the honours which he conferred. To one he raised a statue in the senate; a second was made a proconsul; and he twice promoted a third to the consular dignity. Their images were suffered to repose with those of his tutelar deities; and he offered victims, and strewed flowers, on their tombs.

"Of the persons who were thus honoured by imperial patronage, few could make pretensions to classical elegance; and many, of whom the greater number were Greeks, clothed in the philosophic garb, devoted their lives to the severer studies; or, in order to secure the countenance of their sovereign, affected the austerity of his school. If Marcus Aurelius returned thanks to the gods for having weaned him from the allurements of poetry and eloquence, his subjects would be less disposed to cultivate those arts which he had renounced.

"At the name of Commodus, the son of Aurelius, and of the cruel Septimius Severus, of Caracalla, and of the dissolute Elagabalus, science hangs her head; nor, in the succeeding reigns, does she find much ground for comfort, though Alexander Severus, and a few others, were well inclined to espouse her cause. But it was observed, that an immature death too often abridged the lives of those, from whose virtues, or from whose talents, some good might have been expected. From Diocletian, or his colleagues in the empire, whom no education had refined, and who were little more, than soldiers of fortune, what good could be expected to proceed?; The school of arms is not the school of letters; and whatever had been their disposition, they were too much involved in civil broils, and absorbed in the interests of ambition, to attend to those of literature and science." P. 10.

By this short account of a period somewhat more than 170 years, Mr. Berington has endeavoured to prove his second assertion, that want of imperial encouragement was the cause of the. decay of literature, which is partly true, but we must allow also for the operation of other causes. The history of the progress of the human mind, evidently proves that at all times, and amongst all nations, few have been the princes who have really patronized learning-and amongst these few, fewer still have done it with any effect. From Charlemague to the present day, during a pe

riod of nearly 1100 years, France can boast only of four kings, Prussia one, Germany and Russia two, Spain hardly one since the expulsion of the Moors; and though Italy perhaps might point to many princes as the protectors of science and the promoters of learning, yet very few indeed will fall as a share to each of the many principalities into which she is divided. Modern Rome itself, this proud seat of the head of the Catholic Church, where learning ought to have fixed its abode under the standard of princely protection, has very seldom been fortunate enough to see the pontifical chair occupied by true and real protectors of literature and science. Many of the Popes expelled the Poets from the vatican, as the tyranny of them all had expelled the ora tors; and the dreadful example which Giulio gave to the world in the persecution of Galileo must have not a little checked even the ardour of a philosopher in the cause of truth.

"Tanto è possente invecchiato costume in petto umano.' Yet, notwithstanding so little princely encouragement which learning and learned men have met with amongst all nations of modern Europe, there is but very little doubt that the human mind has made astonishing progress, and such that, with the exception of eloquence, and on some occasions even of poetry, we have no longer any cause to envy the ancients. For this reason, if Adrian did not entirely neglect literature, for he was a learned man and a poet, if Antoninus, his successor, bestowed stipends, honours, and a variety of privileges on the professors of arts, if Marcust Aurelius possessed classical knowledge even by the confession of Mr. Berington, and notwithstanding his preference of the stoical philosophy, bestowed honours on the masters of every science; if Alexander Severus, and two more of his successors, were by tio means behind hand in promoting the cause of learning, it is clear that the decay of literature during this period cannot be wholly imputed to the want of imperial encouragement. Our author, in order to prove his assertion, represents the protection which Marcus Aurelius gave to science as entirely nugatory, nay even as prejudicial to the advancement of literature; as if the one might be cultivated without the other, and the mind which has been tutored in all the branches of elegant literature, might, by the purity of science, become at once disgusted with all ideas of taste and classical elegance. This is no doubt Mr. Berington's opinion. But to us, and indeed to every man who is in the least acquainted with the history of the human mind, the position appears untenable. The connexion which exists be tween literature and science, is more close than our author has imagined; and we conceive it almost impossible to separate their interests, so as to render the progress of the one prejudicial, or

VOL. IV. AUGúst, 1815.

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useless

useless to the advancement of the other. It is Rousseau declaiming against knowledge by the means of the very eloquence which he endeavours to depreciate.

The third period is represented by Mr. Berington in the fol lowing manner.

"A new order of things, and a more pleasurable prospect, now open before us. We behold a Christian Emperor, who was adorned with those virtues, military and civil, which could command the respect of distant nations, and the love of his subjects, at the death of Licinius, invested with the sceptre of the Roman world! But were letters and the polite arts as dear to Constantine as the general interests of the vast society, to the superintendence of which he had been called?--If we may believe the historian of his life, who is certainly sometimes too encomiastic, letters and the arts were the object of his fond solicitude. His mind had been early imbued with a tincture of learning; he afterwards cultivated eloquence, and composed in the Latin language; and the decrees, published by him in favour of the professors of the learned arts, which may still be read, are an incontestable proof of his goodwill. But Rome, and I may say, the western world, has a charge against him, which can never be effaced: he removed the seat of empire to Byzantium. The charge is thus justly stated by a mo dern writer. The city of Constantinople, he observes, founded as a rival to Rome, and chosen for the imperial residence, proved a source of fatal evils to the ancient capital, to Italy, and to its lite. rature. Rome hitherto had been deemed the metropolis of the world; but the attention of mankind was soon attracted to the new imperial residence. All affairs of moment were transacted at Constantinople, which became the general resort of persons of eminence in all ranks and professions; and what Rome had been, was seen only in the dreary pomp of her edifices, and the silent magnificence of her streets. Literature also forsook her former abode; and whither were her professors likely to retire, but to the new city, where rewards and honours were to be found? The cultivation of the Greek in preference to the Latin language, in a country of Greeks, could not fail soon to be adopted, to the obvious detriment of the western learning. And when the empire, on the death of Constantine, was divided, Rome, even then, was not the ordinary seat of her princes. Her loss, however, turned to the advantage of other cities. When she ceased to be the universal centre, men of learning were sometimes satisfied with their distant stations, where, in a sphere less splendid, they could circulate round them the love, and invite to the cultivation, of letters." P. 13.

Here we must request our reader to pay particular attention to the last two periods. If the loss of Rome, in point of litera ture, turned to the advantage of the other Italian cities, where men of learning repaired and rendered knowledge more general,"