XII. TO REV. H. JENKYNS.

Rugby, November 11, 1829.

I thank you heartily for two very kind letters, and am very anxious to be favoured with some more of your friend's comments [on Thucydides]. . .. I hope I

am not too old, or too lazy, or too obstinate to be taught better. I do thank you very much for your

kindness in taking so much trouble in my behalf; and I earnestly beg of you to send me more.

And

can you tell me, or, if not, will you ask Amicus Doct.,where is to be found a summary of the opinions of English Scholars about ones and ows un, and the moods which they require and further, do you or he hold their doctrine good for any thing? Dawes, and all men who endeavour to establish general rules, are of great use in directing one's attention to points, which one might otherwise have neglected; and labour and acuteness often discover a rule, where indolence and carelessness fancied it was all hap-hazard. But larger induction and sounder judgment (which I think exist in Hermann in an infinite degree beyond any of our English scholars) teach us to distinguish again between a principle and an usage; the latter may be general, but if it be merely usage, grounded on no intelligible principle, it seems to me foolish to insist on its being universal, and to alter texts right and left, to make them all conformable to the Canon. Equidem,—both in Greek and in other matters,-think liberty a far better thing than uniformity of form merely, where no principle is concerned. Voilà the cloven foot.

I thank

you

XIII. TO J. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. (In allusion to a libel in the John Bull.)

Rugby, May 11, 1830. for another very kind letter. In a matter of this sort, I willingly resign my own opinion to that of

a man like yourself, at once my friend and legal adviser. I think, too, that I am almost bound to attend to the opinion of the Bishop of London; for his judgment of the inexpediency of prosecuting must rest on the scandal which he thinks it will bring upon religion and the Church, and of this he is a far better judge than I am; nor, to say the truth, should I much like to act in a doubtful matter in opposition to the decided advice of a Bishop in a case that concerned the Church. I say this in sober earnest, in spite of what you call my Whiggery and Radicalism.

XIV. TO REV. DR. HAWKINS.

Rugby, May 12, 1830.

The authorities which are arrayed against proceeding are quite decisive, and I heartily agree with you that clergymen must not go to law, when lawyers say they should not. Still, as I had no thought of gain or of vengeance, but simply of procuring a public justification of my character-not my opinions-I feel that it would have been no lack of charity to proceed, though I am heartily glad to be spared the necessity of doing so by so many and such powerful representations. But I trust that you and all my friends will give me credit for being perfectly tolerant of all attacks upon my writings or general abuse of my opinions. Believe me, I am heartily glad of the final result of this discussion, for I had no wish to go to law; but I thought that my known, or rather my misrepresented opinions on politics, ought to make me particularly anxious to deny any charge respecting religious matters. But I am perfectly willing to take the judgment of my friends and of impartial persons in what rests wholly on opinion, and besides, if the attack or loss to my own character were ever so great, I should quite agree with you that it was better to bear it, than to bring sacred things into discussion in places, and through dis

putants wholly unfitted for them. But this I at first did not contemplate as the likely result.

XV. TO F. HARTWELL, ESQ.

Rugby, June 28, 1830.

I have just published one volume of Thucydides; when the others will follow it is hard to say, for the work here is more and more engrossing continually: but I like it better and better; it has all the interest of a great game of chess, with living creatures for pawns and pieces, and your adversary, in plain English, the Devil: truly he plays a very tough game, and is very hard to beat, if I ever do beat him. It is quite surprising to see the wickedness of young boys; or would be surprising, if I had not had my own school experience and a good deal since to enlighten me.

[The following letters, which have been inserted as exhibiting the earlier stages of his views of ancient history, were occasioned by his revision of the "Outlines of General History," and the first numbers of "The History of Rome," for the Useful Knowledge Society.]

XVI. TO T. F. ELLIS, ESQ.

June 26, 1830.

In the Roman History, I have been inclined to doubt Niebuhr's notion of the Alpine origin of the Tuscans. Do not all existing accounts concur in stating that the Metropolis of the race in Italy was south, not north, of the Apennines? and does not the Tuscan notion of the God's dwelling to the north, on the Alps, and from thence looking down on the world, rather imply that the Alps were to the Tuscans in Italy the barrier of their world, the limit of their knowledge, rather than the earliest home of their nation. But this is happily not of any great consequence. Further, I believe that the great falsehood of

the Roman history begins with the Commonwealth; the reigns of the kings I cannot but think contain more truth than Niebuhr allows. The story of the elder Tarquin in particular seems to me thoroughly probable, and to be confirmed by the authority of the Emperor Claudius, in his speech preserved on the brass plate at Lyons; and Claudius was well acquainted with the Tuscan historians.

Again, the great crisis in the foreign powers of Rome seems to me to have been her war with the Samnites, Gauls, Tuscans, and Umbrians, in the fifth century of Rome. Why did the Romans triumph over this coalition? And was it by the superior population of Latium, which we know was exceedingly dense? I have always wanted this period to be brought out into stronger light, though I do not know whether it is practicable. I am delighted that you have given Vico his due. I have mentioned him also in the Appendix to the first Volume of my Thucydides, which is just published. In the account of the origin of the Roman tribes, I do not see clearly whom you suppose the Rhamnes to have been-were they the mixed Casco-Pelasgian people, and the Luceres the pure Pelasgian? But then how came the traditions of the inferior tribe to prevail so entirely? I am still inclined to think that the Luceres were connected with Tuscany.

XVII. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, July 2, 1830.

I ought to have written to you sooner about chapter xiv., but I have had very much to do immediately before the holidays. The following remarks have occurred to me, which I will put down in order.

Sect. 1.-Is not some brief explanation required of the causes of the Roman successes by sea, immediately after the first creation of their navy? And is not the principle of general usefulness, that any superiority acquired only

by one nation getting the start of another, and so having studied the subject longer, is always liable to be overthrown, when the rival nation fairly enters into the race?

[After some remarks on the Jus Italicum.] The Jus Cæritum appears to have been a mere communication of the private rights of citizenship, made at a time when the citizenship of Care was as valuable to a Roman as that of Rome to a Cæritan. I have long had a suspicion that the term "socii navales," habitually applied to the Roman seamen, was derived from a time when all the navy of Rome was furnished by her allies, probably by this very Care or Agylla.

Sect. 5.-The Little St. Bernard is not at the source of the Isere, but some miles below it. If Cramer's statement fail anywhere, I have always imagined that it was here, and that the army might possibly have followed the Isere higher up than he imagines, and descended into a valley which would take them more directly down upon Turin. The passes between the Little St. Bernard and Mount Cenis are almost the only points which I believe have not been examined.

Might not the wisdom and firmness of the Romans in maintaining the struggle in Spain, and thus depriving Hannibal of his great nursery of soldiers, be noticed as contributing mainly to the success of the war? Had Hasdrubal followed him immediately, instead of nine years afterwards, the fate of Rome was inevitable.

I have noticed all that struck me as worth noticing as to the expediency of any alteration. I am very much pleased to have had an opportunity of reading these chapters attentively, and I am sure they must have cost you no little trouble, and will be exceedingly useful. I like much your summary of the second Punic war, and your remarks at the close of it. The great art seems to be to make certain salient points, in an abridged history, in the way of remarks or recapitulation-otherwise it is like travelling through the plains of Lombardy; one is