History of the transmission of ancient books to modern times / together with the process of historical proof; or, a concise account of the means by which genuineness of ancient literature generally, and the authenticity of historical works especially are ascertained including incidental remarks upon the relative strength of the evidence usually adduced in behalf of the Holy Scriptures

by Isaac Taylor

FOOTNOTES:

[4] The Dark Ages; a series of Essays, intended to illustrate the state of Religion and Literature in the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Centuries. By the Rev. S. R. Maitland, &c.

CHAPTER IX.
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

More than half a century before the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, the learned men of that city, apprehensive of the approaching fall of the empire, had begun to emigrate into Italy, where they opened schools, and became the preceptors of princes and the guides of the public taste, which they directed towards the study of the classic writers of Greece especially, and even of Rome. But it was the fall of Constantinople in 1453 which filled the Italian cities with these learned strangers.

The Italians of that age needed only to receive this kind of direction, and to be aided by these means of study; for they had for some time been placed under those peculiar circumstances which have ever proved the most favourable to the advancement of the human mind. Throughout a number of independent states—crowded upon a narrow space, the same language, yet diversified by dialects, was spoken. The energy, the rivalry, the munificence that accompany an active commerce kept the whole mass of society in movement; while the influence of a gorgeous superstition, which sought to recommend itself by every embellishment that the genius of man could devise or execute, overruled the tendency of successful trade, and directed the ambition of princely merchants towards objects more noble and intellectual than are those which wealth usually selects as the means of distinction.

The formation of libraries, suggested or favoured by the abundant importation of manuscripts from Constantinople, was the means not only of making more widely known the works of those Greek authors which had never fallen into oblivion, but of prompting researches which issued in the recovery of the Latin writers also, many of whom had long been forgotten. The appetite for books having thus been quickened, neither cost nor labour was thenceforward spared in their accumulation; and learned men were despatched, in all directions, throughout Europe, western Asia, and Africa, expressly to collect manuscripts. In the course of a few years, most of the authors that are now known to us, were brought together in the libraries of Rome, Naples, Venice, Florence, Milan, Vienna, and Paris, where they were laid open to those who were best qualified to give them forth anew to the world.

Thus aided by the munificence and zeal of princes and popes, the scholars of the fifteenth century sedulously applied themselves to the discovery, the restoration, and the publication of the remains of Greek and Roman literature; and so it was that in the course of sixty or eighty years, most of the works now known had been committed to the press. Since that time some few discoveries have been made; but the principal improvements in classic literature, of later date, have consisted in the emendation of the text of ancient authors by means of a more extensive collation of manuscripts than the first editors had any opportunity to institute. This restoration of the remains of ancient works to their pristine integrity has not been effected, like that of a dilapidated building, or a mutilated statue, by the addition of new materials in an imagined conformity with the plan and taste of the original work; but by the industrious collection and replacement of the very particles of which it at first consisted.

The invention of printing, which virtually exempts books from the operation of the law that subjects all things mundane to the decays of time, has greatly promoted also the process of their renovation; for, by giving to the issue of an edition of a standard work a degree of importance, several hundred times greater than what belonged to the transcription of a single copy, it has called for the employment of a proportionably larger amount of learning, diligence, and caution in the work of revision; and then, by enabling each successive editor to avail himself of the labours of his predecessors, the advantages belonging to the concentration of many minds upon the same subject have been secured.

It is a fact therefore, the significance of which should be clearly understood, that, since the fifteenth century, the lapse of time, instead of gradually impairing and corrupting the literary remains of antiquity, has incessantly contributed to their renovation and purification. Indeed it may be affirmed that, in relation to the amount, the exactitude, and the certainty of our knowledge, we are not receding from remote ages, but are constantly approaching towards them. In a thousand instances what was unknown, or was doubtful, or imperfect, or corrupted, at the commencement of the fifteenth century, has been ascertained, restored, and completed in the nineteenth. The history and the literature of Greece and Rome—long inhumed in monasteries, were, at the period of their re-appearance, liable to uncertainties and to suspicions which not all the learning and industry of that vigorous age were able to dispel. But the learning and the industry of the four centuries that have since elapsed, constantly directed towards the same objects, and constantly accumulating a various mass of evidence, have left exceedingly few questions of literary antiquity open to controversy.

Thus then, by the mention of some leading facts, we have traced the remains of ancient literature up to the time when they passed to the press, and when their history can no longer be regarded as obscure or questionable. Nor can it be thought that this body of literature is now liable to the hazards of extinction from political changes, or from the decline of learning in this or that country; for unless a universal devastation should take its course, at once, over every region of the civilized world, the literature now extant in books can neither perish, nor suffer corruption. A temple, a statue, a picture, or a gem is but one; and however durable may be the material of which it consists, it continually decays, and it is always destructible. The touch of the sculptor moulders from the chiselled surface; and the time will come when every monument of his genius shall have crumbled into dust, and when his fame—lost from the marble, shall live only in the works of the poets and historians who were his contemporaries.

Thus it is that the written records of distant ages, with the knowledge of which the intellectual, moral, and political well-being of mankind is inseparably connected, are secured from extinction by a mode of conservation that is less liable to extensive hazards than any other that can be imagined. If Man be cut off from the knowledge of the past, he becomes indifferent to the future, and thenceforward sinks into the rudeness and ferocity of the sensual life. The redundant amplitude, therefore, of the means by which this knowledge is preserved, only bears a due proportion to the importance of the consequences that depend upon its perpetuation.

CHAPTER X.
SEVERAL METHODS AVAILABLE FOR ASCERTAINING THE CREDIBILITY OF ANCIENT HISTORICAL WORKS.

The facts referred to in the preceding chapters belong in common to ancient books of all classes, and they tend to prove that the works of the Greek and Roman writers—poets, dramatists, philosophers, critics, and historians—which issued from the press in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, may, by means of various and independent evidence, be infallibly traced up to the age in which they are commonly supposed to have been written.

The reader’s attention is now to be directed to one class of those ancient works, namely, those which are professedly historical; and our object will be to ascertain on what grounds, and with what limitations, such works deserve our confidence as truthful narratives of facts.

The very same mode of inquiry which common sense suggests, on the most ordinary occasions, when we are called upon to estimate the value of testimony, is applicable to all cases of the like nature. Nor can the importance of the consequences that may be involved in the issue of the investigation, in a peculiar instance, render it invalid, or warrant our rejection of it as unsatisfactory.

In some lesser particulars the modes of estimating oral and written testimony must differ; but in substance the heads of inquiry will be the same. In the case with which we have now to do—namely, the credibility of the testimony of ancient historians, it is natural to consider the following points:—

1. The moral and intellectual character of the writer,—if this can be known;

2. The means of information he possessed;

3. The time and circumstances of the first publication of the work;

4. The exceptions it may be necessary to make to his testimony on particular points; arising either from the peculiar nature of the facts affirmed, or from the apparent influence of prejudice—personal, or national; and—

5. The agreement of the narrative in question with evidence derived from other, and independent sources.

In judging then of the authenticity of an historical work we have, in the first place, to form an estimate of the writer’s moral and intellectual character and qualifications; supposing that the means of forming an opinion on these points are within our reach.

If the personal integrity of an historian has happened to be put to the proof by any well known and remarkable events, in which he was concerned, the reader whose own character may qualify him to feel the force of such proof, will seldom ask for better grounds of confidence; for such errors in matters of fact as a thoroughly honest historian may be liable to, will seldom be of vital importance. Even if no such proof of a writer’s personal integrity exists, and if the circumstances of his life are altogether unknown, yet almost every writer leaves in his works sufficient indications of his moral dispositions. The characteristics of honesty are distinct enough to secure the confidence of candid minds; nor can an instance be adduced in which they have been so successfully counterfeited as to have stood the test of time. A perverse intention as certainly betrays itself in writing, as it does in personal behaviour. Nevertheless this sort of evidence, though it will be more satisfactory than any other to one reader, may be unperceived by another; for cold, feeble, and suspicious minds are destitute of the sympathies to which it appeals.

If the proofs of integrity and veracity in an historian are wanting, or are thought to be insufficient, we must descend to that sort of evidence which his works afford relative to his intellectual qualifications; and these may be such as fully to warrant a general confidence in his preference of truth to falsehood. As to the strongest minds, such minds attach themselves to truth by an instinctive movement: to acquire the knowledge of facts is their characteristic passion;—to promulgate this knowledge is the function they feel themselves born to fulfill. Nor can it happen that the falsification of facts—in which neither personal interests nor prejudices are involved—should present an adequate inducement to writers whose powers of narration enable them to command more attention in the direct paths of truth and reality, than they could hope to gain in the regions of fiction. Every gifted mind has its sphere; and there is a native talent for history, as well as a genius for poetry; and he who possesses eminently the former, will as certainly make himself conversant with realities, as he who may boast the possession of the latter will choose to live among the creations of fancy.

If therefore an historical work displays a healthy vigour of intellect—good sense—elevation of sentiment, and the specific talent for narration, these qualities may safely be held to afford a strong presumptive proof of the author’s veracity, even though there should be no direct means of ascertaining his moral dispositions, or his integrity. Those writers who occupy a first rank among ancient historians may therefore safely be held to possess this presumptive proof of their veracity; for the reputation they have so long enjoyed is attributable, quite as much to their talent for narration, as to the interest or importance of the story that forms the subject of their works. These intrinsic merits contain, then, a tacit guarantee for the authenticity of the works that are thus adorned.

On this ground, the good sense, the simplicity, the ease, and the accuracy of Herodotus—the stern vigour, the elevation, and the dignity of Thucydides, the graceful simplicity of Xenophon, and the philosophic terseness of Tacitus, not only win the admiration of the reader, but, in different degrees, these qualities invite, or demand, his confidence.

There are moreover qualities of style which, though they may not entitle an author to a place in the first rank of writers, must secure for him a high regard as an authentic historian. Indeed, in this department of literature, those less brilliant and less attractive qualities which give security as to an historian’s diligence, accuracy, and impartiality, may well be accepted in place of the brighter recommendations of genius, or eloquence, or powers of description. There is a specific taste for details, there is a passion for laborious researches, there is a superstitious regard to exactness, and an indefatigable industry, which, though they may tire the reader who seeks only for amusement, will secure the confidence and attention of the intelligent student of history. Thus, for example, the assiduity of Diodorus the Sicilian, the accuracy and good sense of Polybius, and the minuteness and amplification of Dionysius the Halicarnassian, give to their works a substantial value which goes far to compensate for the want of more shining excellences.

In those historical works which have necessarily been compiled from various documents, a sound judgment in the selection of materials must be considered as the principal merit of an author. In this quality some of the ancient historians were certainly deficient; and yet it must be added that to this very want of judgment we are indebted for the knowledge of innumerable particulars, in themselves curious, or perhaps important, which our modern notions of method, consistency, and propriety, would greatly have retrenched, or entirely have excluded.

Although, to a certain extent, the genius or talent of an historian may be held to vouch for his veracity; yet it is also true that a writer may possess a sort of genius which tends to bring his fidelity into suspicion. If, for example, he continually indulges his taste for scenes of splendour, or terror, or extraordinary action, or if he loves to exhibit images of magnanimity or wisdom, surpassing the ordinary reach of human nature; if his principal personages are heroes, or if he seems pleased to find occasions on which to display his command of the nervous eloquence of vituperation, we may well conclude that his genius will have tempted him to relinquish the merit of being simply exact, or calmly just.

A consideration of personal and national prejudices enters, of course, into the estimate that is formed of an historian’s moral and intellectual character. But these will be best adverted to when we come to mention the exceptions which it is necessary to make against the evidence of historians, on particular points.

We have next to make inquiry concerning the means of information which may have been possessed by an ancient historian.

The same kind of confidence that is due to an historian who narrates events in which he was personally concerned, cannot be claimed by one who compiles the history of remote times from such materials as he can collect: for in the former case, if we are assured of the writer’s veracity and competency, there remains no room for reasonable doubt; at least in reference to those principal facts of the story for the truth of which his character is pledged. But in the other case, though we may think well both of the writer’s veracity and judgment, the confidence we afford him must still be conditional, and will be measured by the opinion we form of the validity of his authorities.

The entire mass of ancient history may therefore be considered as consisting of two kinds, namely, the original and the compiled. In the first class may be comprehended, not merely those narratives that are strictly personal, such for instance as the history of the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, by Xenophon; or again the Commentaries of Cæsar, which describe actions wherein the author was immediately concerned, and was, in fact, the principal actor; but those also which relate to the events of the author’s own times and country, and concerning which he had the most direct and unquestionable means of becoming accurately informed. Such are the history of the Peloponnesian war by Thucydides; and the history of the Catiline conspiracy by Sallust, and much of the histories and annals of Tacitus, and the history of the reign of Justinian by Procopius; and that of her father’s reign by Anna Comnena.

The credibility of historical works of this class must, obviously, be determined chiefly upon the grounds mentioned in the preceding section; that is to say, from those indications of integrity, impartiality, and good sense, which the work exhibits. Every reader of Thucydides, for example, feels that he may rely with confidence upon the general authenticity of the narrative:—the caution and the unwearied assiduity of the author in ascertaining the truth of whatever he affirms, his exactness in minute circumstances, his eminent good sense and fairness, and the dignity of his manner, all concur to stamp upon the work, for the most part, the seal of truth. In original histories the truth of the story and the veracity of the writer are inseparably linked together:—both must be admitted, or both should be denied.

But by far the greater part of all extant history belongs to the second class; and yet, among works that must rank as compilations, some wide distinctions are to be observed; for there are some of this kind of which the authenticity is little, if at all, inferior to that of the best original histories; while many are, in the ordinary sense of the term, compilations, and as such deserve only a qualified confidence. In regard to the nature and probable value of the authorities they have relied upon, each historian—and indeed almost every separate portion of the works of each writer—must be estimated apart. An example or two will be sufficient to show, as well the necessity, as the mode of exercising this discrimination.

The nine books of Herodotus afford instances of every degree of validity in regard to the probable value of the materials that were employed by the author. A reader who, in his simplicity, peruses that work, throughout, with an equal faith, will be in danger of having his indiscriminate confidence suddenly converted into undistinguishing scepticism, by discovering the slenderness of the authority upon which some portions of it are made to rest.

Diodorus, the Sicilian, is reported to have employed thirty years in collecting materials for his universal history. Like Herodotus, he visited the countries of which he speaks—consulting public records—inspecting monuments—conversing with the learned, and collecting books. In fact his work exhibits many proofs of this assiduity; but yet when some of his statements are compared with those of other writers, who were better informed on particular subjects, it becomes apparent that he exercised too little caution in the selection of his authorities; and that therefore the discrimination of the reader, or of the learned annotator, must supply the want of judgment in the writer.

The universal history of Trogus Pompeius, which is extant only in the abridgement made by Justin, seems to have been compiled on a plan somewhat similar to that of the work last mentioned. It is evident that the author, in collecting his materials, employed considerable diligence and judgment; nevertheless, in what relates to remote nations, he shows himself often to have been egregiously misinformed. A striking instance of this kind is furnished in the account he gives of the history and religion of the Jews (Book xxxvi. cap. 2); for it is evident that the author—whether it be Trogus, or Justin, must have received his information—not from the source from which he ought to have derived it—the Jewish records;—nor even from individuals of that nation; but from prejudiced and ill-informed men of the neighbouring countries of Asia or of Africa. The account given by Tacitus (Hist. Book v.) of the same people, is little more just than is that of Trogus. If these instances were to be taken as specimens of the accuracy of ancient historians in all similar cases, their descriptions of remote nations must be held to be of very little value. But there seems reason to believe that the history and institutions of the Jews were much less known, and were more misrepresented, than those of any other people bordering upon the Mediterranean.

Abundant evidence proves that, from the very earliest ages, and in almost all countries, there were persons employed and authorized by governments to digest the current history of the state. These annals contained, of course, the names of kings, and the records of their acts and exploits, their decrees and wars. Each city, as well as the capitals of empires, had its archives; and these public documents appear to have suggested the idea of a more comprehensive form of history. They were certainly consulted by those who, in later times, undertook the composition of historical works: by these means there was imparted to such works more of authenticity and exactness than may be generally supposed. Herodotus, Thucydides, Diodorus, Pausanias, Strabo, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Arrian, Dion Cassius, the Elder Pliny, and others, evidently availed themselves with all possible diligence of such public records.

Ancient historians conversed extensively with official persons, wherever they travelled; and it must be granted they were often too ready to accept these oral communications as authentic. This is especially to be observed in reference to those accounts that were confessedly, or that seem to have been received from priests; for that class of persons, too much accustomed to think truth their enemy, and deception their business, would have thought themselves betraying the interests of their order in furnishing simple facts to an inquirer.

Every city of the ancient world, where civilization had made any progress, was crowded with columns, statues, busts, monuments, inscriptions, by which every memorable event, and every illustrious personage, was perpetually presented to the regards of the people, and was retained in their recollection. It is certain that this monumental and sculptural mode of embodying a people’s history obtained to a far greater extent in ancient cities than it does in those of our times. And so it was that to visit a city—to pace its public ways—to enter its temples and its halls, was to peruse its history. The meanest citizen—even a child, would be able to conduct an inquisitive stranger through the streets, and to explain to him these memorials of the past. It is difficult for us in these times, and in these inclement latitudes, to form an adequate notion of the extent to which the history of each people was familiarized to them by these means; or how much the living conversed with the dead, and identified themselves with whatever was heroic or wise in preceding times. These public monuments, when collated with the public records, and explained by the public voice, furnished historians with abundant materials; and so great was the importance attached to them, that there are instances in which historians made long journeys for the express purpose of examining the sculptures of a city, the history of which they had occasion incidentally to mention.

What was most wanting to give a higher value, in point of authenticity, to the materials so diligently collected by the ancient historians was—that general diffusion of information among neighbouring nations which would have subjected the fables and the boastful pretensions of each people to the animadversion of others, and thus have given room for a more ready and complete collation of discordant evidence on the same points. The Greeks were very little acquainted with the languages of the surrounding nations; and they were egregiously ignorant of facts in which they were not immediately concerned. If the literature of the Asiatic nations had been familiarly current in Greece, and that of Greece in Asia, both would have been purged of many errors and frivolities; and something more of that consistency, expansion, and good sense imparted on both sides, which were acquired by the Roman writers in consequence of their acquaintance with the literature of Greece. In the department of history, especially, such an interchange of light would have enhanced immensely the value, as well as augmented the amount of knowledge. Knowledge, like the vital fluid, corrupts whenever it ceases freely to circulate.

On this ground, the moderns possess, incomparably, an advantage over the ancients; and even if party interests and political prejudices act more forcibly in modern times, the means of correction are also vastly more efficient. European nations have, in relation to important subjects, a common literature:—all things are known by all: national misrepresentations are quickly noticed and chastised. The same corrective process is actively carried on within each community; and if particular falsifications abound, the ultimate probabilities of the prevalence of truth are still more abundant.

In estimating the credibility of ancient writers—historians especially, we have to consider the time and circumstances of the first publication of such works.

To ascertain the antiquity of historical works is peculiarly important, because when that point has been placed out of doubt, we obtain, in most instances, a conclusive proof of the general truth of the narrative. For if a history is known to have been published, and widely circulated, and generally admitted to be authentic, in the very age when the principal facts to which it relates were matters of universal notoriety, and when most of the lesser circumstances were perfectly known to many of the author’s contemporaries, and when some of them stood personally related to the events, we have the best reasons for confiding in the substantial truth and accuracy of the history.

No pretended narrative, published under circumstances such as these, which was altogether untrue in its main elements, or which was grossly incorrect in its details, could, by any accident, or by any endeavours, have gained general and lasting reputation as an authentic work. No such book could endure, and survive, the scrutiny of contemporary antagonists; no such book could maintain its reputation through the next age, while the means of ascertaining the truth of the narrative were still extant, and after the interests and prejudices of the moment had subsided.

As in relation to the sources of information that were possessed by historians, it has been seen that historical works should be divided into two classes—the original, and the derived; so a similar, but not exactly an identical division must be made in relation to the circumstances under which such books were at first published. In the first class are to be included those histories of the truth of which the author’s contemporaries, in general, were competent judges; and in the second, such, as having been drawn from rare, or recondite, or scattered materials—relating to events remote in time or place, could not be open to the test of public opinion, and could be estimated only by a few of the learned class.

Histories of the first kind may be termed—popular; those of the second—learned. It is evident that learned histories, although on different grounds, may deserve a high degree of confidence as to their authenticity and their accuracy; and, indeed, on the score of impartiality and comprehensive information, and exactness in details, they may greatly surpass any of the original narratives from which they may have been compiled. For it is manifest that a later historian, if he be industrious, judicious, and unprejudiced, has the opportunity so to collect and collate the various mass of subsidiary testimonies bearing upon particular facts, as shall impart much more of consistency to his narrative than can belong to any earlier work on the same subject.

But the direct proof of authenticity must belong exclusively to popular histories. A work of this class is, essentially, a condensation of the common knowledge of a nation or community; it is the universal testimony, arranged and compacted by one whose aim it is to found his personal reputation as a writer upon the consent and approval of his contemporaries. Let it be supposed that in passing through the crowded ways of a metropolis, we hear, in substance, the same account of some recent and public transaction, from a thousand lips, and from opposing parties; or we read a narrative of this event drawn up by a contemporary writer, whose veracity has been tacitly or explicitly assented to by the same parties. The validity of the evidence rests upon the same grounds in both cases; only that for accuracy and consistency, the accepted written narrative will be found to surpass the oral testimony.

We may take as an example the latter books of Herodotus, which, viewed with reference to the distinction above mentioned, may be reckoned as belonging to the class of popular histories, and may therefore deserve the confidence that is due to a narrative that has generally been accepted as true by those who were well acquainted with the facts it describes, and many of whom were personally concerned in the transactions it narrates. The history of the Peloponnesian war, by Thucydides, has a still higher claim to unimpeachable authenticity, inasmuch as the facts were more recent at the time of the publication of the work; and because, also, the strongest motives of national rivalry and civil discord were then in activity, and were in readiness to crush, on the instant, any attempted misrepresentation. The author’s hope that his work should descend to posterity, rested directly upon such an adherence to truth, on his part, as should exclude the opportunity of giving any plausibility to a charge of extensive or wilful falsification.

Xenophon’s history of Greece possesses, in part, a claim to credibility on the same ground. But the Cyropædia, on the contrary, is altogether destitute of authentication from this source; for the Greeks, at the time when the work was published, were far from being generally competent to judge of the truth of the story. The same author’s account of the expedition of Cyrus, may, in this respect, take a middle place between the two above-named works. It was not composed, as there is reason to believe, till many years after the writer’s return from Asia; and though the general facts were still matters of notoriety, the particulars could not then be universally recollected; especially as the scene of these transactions was so remote from Greece.

The works of Sallust, the Commentaries of Cæsar, the works of Tacitus, of Suetonius, of Polybius, claim, in whole or in part, the authority of popular histories, having been generally accredited as authentic by those who were well acquainted with the facts they contain.

But, excepting some small portions, or particular facts, the works of Diodorus, of Dionysius the Halicarnassian, of Nepos, of Ælian, of Paterculus, of Curtius, of Plutarch, of Arrian, of Appian, of Pausanias, and many others, are to be regarded only as learned compilations, the claim to authenticity of which is of an indirect kind.

CHAPTER XI.
EXCEPTIONS TO WHICH THE TESTIMONY OF HISTORIANS, ON PARTICULAR POINTS, MAY BE LIABLE.

From the very nature of the case the authenticity of an historical work can be affirmed only in a restricted sense, and must be understood to be open to exceptions in particular instances. Such exceptions may be taken without impeaching the character of the writer for veracity, or even for general accuracy. It is easy to suppose that he may have been imposed upon in certain cases, by his informants; or he may have reported things that were currently believed in his time, without thinking himself personally pledged for their truth: he may not have thought himself called upon, as an historian, to discuss questions which might more properly be taken up by philosophers; or he may merely have been negligent—here and there, in the course of a voluminous work. Yet allowances of this sort must, as it is evident, be confined to cases of an accidental kind, and should only then be brought forward in the way of apology for a writer’s mistakes, when he is giving an account of facts that were not immediately known to himself. For in a narrative of events, of which the writer professes himself to have had a personal knowledge, we must either admit his veracity, and with it the truth of the facts; or we must deny both.

The first point to be considered, when the affirmation of an historian in a particular instance is doubted, is—The nature of the fact in question.

1. If, for example, it be a question of numbers, measures, or dates, it is always to be remembered—as already remarked—that a peculiar uncertainty attaches to these matters, in ancient authors, owing to the method of notation by letters, which were easily mistaken, one for another. The numbers of which armies were composed—the numbers of the slain in battle—the population of cities—the revenues of states—the distances of places—the weight or measure of bodies, and computations of time, must, therefore, always be held open to question, as to what was actually intended and written by the author: this doubt may be entertained without in the least derogating from the credit of the work in which they occur. Besides the probable corruption of copies in such instances, it is to be remembered as to many of the particulars above named, that they are far more liable to uncertainty, or mistake, than other facts, so that scarcely any degree of diligence and care on the part of an historian, will entirely secure him from errors on such points.

2. Geographical details, descriptions of the objects of natural history, or accounts of natural phenomena, must also, generally, be considered as open to a degree of uncertainty, on account of the imperfect information upon such subjects, which was possessed by the ancients. And yet the names and relative distances of places in all the countries bordering upon the Mediterranean sea, as reported by ancient geographers and historians, have been to so great an extent authenticated by the researches of modern scholars, that any apparent inconsistencies should not hastily be assumed as proofs of ignorance. But as to whatever relates to countries remote from Greece and Italy, or lying beyond the bounds of the Persian, Macedonian, Carthaginian, and Roman empires, it must of course be received with hesitation. Many of these descriptions of remote countries, when they come to be compared with the accounts of modern travellers, afford, at once, amusing instances of exaggeration, and striking attestations of the substantial authenticity of the works in which they occur. For the coincidence of these accounts, in many respects, with the facts, as they are now fully known, puts it beyond doubt that the historian had actually conversed with natives of those countries, or with travellers; while at the same time the distortion of the picture is precisely such as might be expected from the channels through which the information was derived.

3. The descriptions so frequently met with in ancient writers, of monstrous men or animals—griffins—dragons—hydras—pygmies—giants; or of trees bearing golden fruit, of fountains flowing with perfumed liquids, or even with the precious metals, may, in most cases, be now traced to their origin in actual facts, which, passing to the writer through the medium of ignorant, fanciful, or interested reporters, assumed the characteristic extravagance of fables. On occasions of this kind it is much more becoming to an intelligent student of history to make search, among the stores of modern science, for the probable source of such accounts, than to pass them by with the sneer of indolent scepticism. Some writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took so much offence at certain passages of this sort in the history of Herodotus, as to treat the entire work of that industrious and generally accurate writer with contempt, as if it were little better than a repository of fables. But these rash censures now fall back upon themselves; for modern travellers, in visiting the countries described by the father of history, find frequent occasion for noticing the correctness of his statements, or their substantial truth, even in those descriptions or relations which may seem the most open to suspicion.

4. In narrating or describing natural phenomena, such as meteors, tempests, eruptions of volcanoes, earthquakes, eclipses, all that is needed is to remove from the narrative of the historian those explanations, or those decorative phrases, by which he endeavoured to accommodate such occurrences to the political events of the moment, at the suggestion of popular superstitions.

And here we may take occasion to point out a remarkable difference, which forms a characteristic distinction in comparing the Jewish writers with those of other nations, as to the nature of those marvellous or supernatural facts which they describe. The marvellous events reported by the Greek and Roman authors may, with few exceptions, be classed under two heads; namely—allegorical and poetical combinations, which were so obviously fabulous as to ask for no credence, and to demand no scrutiny; or they were mere exaggerations, distortions, or misapplications of natural objects or phenomena. But the Jewish historians and poets do not describe, as actually existing, any such allegorical prodigies; and their descriptions of real animals, are either simply exact, or they are evidently poetical (like those in the book of Job), but they are not fabulous. They do not throw a supernatural colouring over ordinary phenomena, or convert plain facts into prodigies. The supernatural events they record—as matters of history, are such deviations from the standing order of natural causes, as leave us no alternative between a peremptory denial of the veracity of the writers, or a submission to their affirmation of divine agency.

The freedom of the Jewish historians, poets, and prophets, from those admixtures of the marvellous and the natural, with which other ancient writers abound, is one of the most remarkable of their characteristics. Their descriptions of human nature are neither heroical, nor fantastic; their narratives of human affairs are of the simplest complexion, and they are strictly consistent with the known modes of the time and country. Nor is our assent taxed, on any occasion, except when an event is recorded which, unless it had actually taken place, could not have been affirmed by any but reckless impostors.

Besides those prodigies which are met with in profane historians, and that only require to be freed from exaggerations appended to natural events by ignorance, poetry, or superstition, there are other accounts which are not to be satisfactorily explained so readily, and which call for the exercise of some discrimination. They are of a kind that must be accounted either altogether false, or else must imply, in some sense, a supernatural agency. Of the former kind may well be reckoned all, or nearly all, those alleged supernatural occurrences which no doubt were contrived to give credit to an established superstition, or to subserve the designs of statesmen or commanders, and which, in most cases, rested exclusively upon the testimony of priests. On the other hand, there are recorded, in the pages of profane historians, some few facts, apparently beyond the range of natural causes, which cannot be rejected as untrue, unless we do violence to the soundest principles of evidence, and which will not be treated with uninquisitive contempt, except by a purblind scepticism, that is more nearly allied to credulity than to true philosophy. These peculiar cases demand a far more full and particular consideration than it is compatible with the design of this volume to bestow upon them.

5. The political habits and tastes of the Greeks and Romans, induced their historians to supply the personages of their story with formal speeches, on all remarkable occasions; for oratory was the spring and life of every political movement; and as the machine of government could not in fact be made to go without the impelling force of harangues, history must not seem to omit them. Yet there is little reason to believe that authentic reports of public speeches were often, if ever, in the possession of historians. Indeed, these brilliant portions of the history are often so much in the manner of the author, as to leave the reader in no doubt to whom to attribute them. Nevertheless it may be imagined that, on some memorable occasions, the very words of a short speech, or the general purport of an oration, was remembered and recorded, and so was worked into the speech, as framed by the historian.

A compliance with the taste of the times seems also to have led some writers to use means for diverting the attention of their readers, and for relieving the burden of the narrative, by introducing digressions, often of a trivial kind, which, though not announced as mere embellishments, and which perhaps were not purely fictitious, are evidently not entitled to an equal degree of confidence with the main circumstances of the story.

6. The secret motives of public men, or the hidden causes of great events, are not the proper subjects of history, which is concerned only with such facts as may be truly and fairly known. The disquisitions of an historian on such topics are therefore to be excepted against; for when he so forsakes his function, he must expect to be forsaken by his reader; his errors, on such points, do not impeach his veracity; although they lower our opinion of his judgment.

7. Very few facts of importance, such as form the proper subjects of history, rest entirely upon the testimony of a single historian, or are incapable of being directly, or remotely confirmed, by some kind of coincident evidence. Whenever therefore a question arises relative to the truth of a particular statement, recourse must be had, either to the testimony of contemporary writers, or to the evidence of existing monuments. But even if all such means of corroboration should fail, and if we meet with a perplexing silence where we might expect to find confirmation, we are by no means justified in rejecting the unsupported testimony, merely on the ground of this want of correlative support. Many instances may be adduced of the most extraordinary silence of historians relative to facts with which they must have been acquainted, and which seemed to lie directly in the course of their narrative. Important facts are mentioned by no ancient writer, though they are unquestionably established by the evidence of existing inscriptions, coins, statues, or buildings. There are also facts mentioned only by some one historian, which happen to be attested by an incidental coincidence with some relic of antiquity lately brought to light; if this relic had remained in its long obscurity, such facts might (we see with how little reason) have been disputed.

Nothing can be more fallacious than an inference drawn from the silence of historians relative to particular facts. For a full, comprehensive, and, if the phrase may be used, a business-like method of writing history, in which nothing important—nothing which a well-informed reader will look for, must be omitted, is the produce of modern improvements in thinking and writing. The general diffusion of knowledge, and the activity of criticism, occasion a much higher demand in matters of information to be made upon writers than was thought of in ancient times. A full and exact communication of facts has come to be valued more highly than any mere beauties of style; at least, no beauties of style are allowed to atone for palpable deficiencies in matters of fact. The moderns must be taught—and pleased; but the ancients would be pleased, and taught. Ancient writers, and historians not less than others, seem to have formed their notions of prose composition very much upon the model of poetry, which, in most languages, was the earliest kind of literature. As their epics were histories, so, in some sense, their histories were epics. Such particulars, therefore, were taken up in the course of the narrative, as seemed best to accord with the abstract idea of the work—not always those which a rigid adherence to a comprehensive plan would have made it necessary to bring forward.

8. The influence of personal or party prejudices is indefinite; and as it may distort the representations of an historian almost unconsciously to himself, and without impugning his general integrity, so will it, in most instances, be difficult, especially after the lapse of ages, to discover the extent to which the operation of such prejudices should be allowed for. But if it cannot be ascertained how much of the colouring of the picture is to be attributed to the medium through which an historian exhibits his characters, yet the general hues of that medium will hardly escape the observation of an intelligent reader; and when once observed, the illusion is destroyed.

But in relation to the influence of prejudices of this sort, ancient historians unquestionably appear to advantage when compared with those of modern times. Instances of equanimity might be cited from the Greek historians to which few parallels could be adduced, drawn from the pages of modern writers. Like the sculptures of the same people, the works of the Greek historians, though not wanting in the distinctive characters, or the moving energy of life, present an aspect from which the sublimity of repose is never lost. These writers seem to have been conscious that they were holding up the picture of their times to the eyes of mankind in all ages: they forgot, therefore, the passions and interests of the moment.

With ourselves, the instantaneous diffusion of books through all ranks of the community, places a modern author too nearly in the presence of his contemporaries to allow him to think much of posterity. The clamour of public opinion rings around his seclusion: his situation, in its essential circumstances, is almost the same as that of the public speaker—the din of the crowd fills his thoughts, and he almost forgets the distant fame which his genius might command. This nearness of his audience offers therefore to a modern writer every excitement and every inducement to the indulgence of party misrepresentations. If it were not for the correcting influences of a free press, nothing worthy of the name of history would be produced in modern times.

9. That the Greeks were not in fact much inferior to the representations given of them by their historians, the existing monuments of their philosophy, of their poetry, and of their arts, sufficiently attest. Indeed if we pass from an examination of these monuments and remains to the perusal of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, we shall be far from thinking that a tone of exaggerated encomium is to be charged upon those writers. From the pages of the historians alone, we should fail to form an adequate idea of the perfection that was attained in all departments of literature and art by the people whose political affairs they narrate. Scarcely half of the history of Greece, in a full and philosophical sense of the term, is to be gathered from its historians:—we must seek for it rather in the remains of its literature at large,—in museums, and cabinets, and among the ruins that still bespread its soil.

It is not therefore this sort of general misrepresentation that is to be suspected in the Greek historians; for more is made certain by other means than is explicitly affirmed by them. Yet it has been supposed that, in their accounts of military affairs, the Greek historians, in order to enhance the glory of their countrymen in repelling the Persian invasions, have exaggerated the power and extent of the Asiatic monarchy, and the numbers of the armies with which those of Greece had to contend. Some amount of misrepresentation, of this kind, may have been admitted. But yet the pictures given by the Greek writers of the wealth and resources of the Persian power—of the puerile ambition of its monarchs—of the countless hosts which they drove before them, by the lash, into Scythia, Egypt, and Europe—conquering nations rather by devastation than by military conduct—by the mouths, more than by the swords of their armies, are so strikingly similar to unquestionable facts in the later history of the Asiatic empires, that, as the one cannot be doubted, the other need not be deemed incredible.

10. The arrogance with which, under the term barbarians, the Greek writers speak of all nations that were not of Greek extraction, naturally suggests the belief that we must not expect to derive from them a just idea of the civilization of the surrounding nations. In truth, not a few indications may be gathered from other sources, which authorize the belief that, in communities not very distant from Greece itself, or its colonies, a degree of intelligence and of refinement existed of which it was their shame to be ignorant, or their greater shame to have taken so little notice.

11. With the Romans it was perhaps less from mere national vanity, than from a dictate of that deep-plotted policy by which they supported their unbounded pretensions, that they were induced to misrepresent the resources and the conduct of the nations on whose necks they trampled. This policy would often produce misrepresentations of a contrary kind to those suggested by national vanity. That universal empire was the right of the Roman arms was the principle of the state: a reverse of fortune therefore was not simply a calamity—it was a seeming impeachment of the high claims of the republic. The nations must not think that their masters could anywhere find equals or rivals in courage or military skill. A defeat hurt the political faith of the Roman citizen more than it alarmed his fears; and he would rather waive the glory of having broken an arm of equal strength with his own, than confess that there was anywhere an arm of equal strength, to resist his will. He would choose to sustain the aggravated shame of having been beaten by an inferior, rather than redeem a part of his dishonour by acknowledging that he had encountered a superior. A writer therefore could not do full justice to the courage, conduct and successes of the enemies of Rome, without offering such an outrage to the common feeling as would have amounted almost to treason against the state. Modern historical criticism—exercised by such a writer as Niebuhr, has sufficed to remove from early Roman history a very large amount of the misstatements and the exaggerations which Livy and his predecessors had accumulated around it.

CHAPTER XII.
CONFIRMATIONS OF THE EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT HISTORIANS, DERIVABLE FROM INDEPENDENT SOURCES.

Most of the principal facts mentioned by ancient historians, as well as many particulars of less importance, are confirmed by evidence that is altogether independent, both in its nature, and in the channels through which it has reached us. In truth, although the narratives of historians serve to connect and explain the entire mass of information that has descended to modern times, relative to the nations of remote antiquity, they are far from being the sole sources of that information:—perhaps they hardly furnish so much as a half of the materials of history. These independent sources of information may be classed under the following heads:—

1. The remains of the general literature of the nations of antiquity:—their poetry, and their oratory especially, and their philosophical treatises.

2. Chronological documents or calculations.

3. Facts—geographical and physical, which are unchanged in the lapse of time.

4. Those institutions, usages, or physical peculiarities of nations, which have been subjected to little change.

5. The existing monuments of ancient art—paintings, sculptures, gems, coins, and buildings.

The information derivable from these sources answers two distinct purposes, namely—in the first place, that of contributing to the amount of our knowledge of the state of civilization among ancient nations; and then that of furnishing the means of corroborating or of correcting the assertions of historians on particular points. It is obvious that to go through the particulars that are comprehended under the general heads above-named, or to do so with any degree of precision, would greatly exceed the limits of this book; indeed, the object aimed at in it will be sufficiently attained by merely pointing out, in a few instances, what is the nature, and what is the value of this sort of corroborative evidence.

1. Corroboratory evidence, derived from books—coming as it does through similar, if not the very same channels with those through which we receive the works of historians, and being of the same external form—is likely to produce less impression on the mind than its real validity ought to command. And yet, when it comes to be examined in detail, nothing can be more conclusive than the proof which thus arises from coincidences of names and allusions, such as are found scattered through the works of dramatists, orators, poets, and philosophers, with the more formal statements of contemporary historians. If, for example, the Greek dramatic writings—those of Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and the Orations of Demosthenes, are collated with the narrations of Thucydides, Xenophon, Diodorus, and Plutarch;—or if the Epistles and the Orations of Cicero, and the Satires of Horace, and of Juvenal, are compared with the historical works of Livy, of Sallust, of Tacitus, and of Dion Cassius, so many points of agreement present themselves, as must convince every one that these historical assertions, and these allusions, must have had a common origin in actual facts.

Yet it is not merely by presenting special coincidences, on particular points, that the remains of ancient literature confirm the evidence of historians; but it is also by furnishing such pictures of the people among whom they were current, as to all points of their political, religious, and social condition, as consist with the representations of historians. To exhibit the full force of this sort of evidence, let it be imagined that the names of men, and of cities, and countries, having been withdrawn from the works of the classical poets, orators, and philosophers, it were attempted to associate, as countrymen and contemporaries, Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, with Cicero, Horace and Seneca; or Tacitus, Cæsar and Suetonius, with Isocrates, Plato and Æschylus: every page in the one class of writers, would present some incongruity with the accounts given of the people by the others. On the contrary, in perusing the contemporary writers of the same nation, whatever may be the diversities of their style or subject, we feel that they were all surrounded by the same objects, and that they were subjected to the same influences.

2. Those corroborative evidences that are derived from chronological inscriptions, or from astronomical calculations, have served in some notable instances to confirm, or to correct, the testimony of ancient writers, in a very conclusive manner. It should be remembered that ancient historians, being destitute for the most part of sufficiently precise chronological information, and being themselves also less observant of dates than the modern style of historical composition demands, leave the subject open to many difficulties; and to these difficulties is added that uncertainty which belongs peculiarly, as we have before remarked, to whatever relates to numbers, in the text of ancient authors. It must not however be supposed that ancient chronology is altogether unfixed; for though it may be impossible now to determine the precise time of many events, the results of different lines of calculation are seldom so widely discordant as to be of much importance in the general outline of history.

3. Those inequalities of the earth’s surface which have undergone no great change within the historic period, and also the course of rivers, and the peculiarities of climate, and the vegetable and animal productions of each country, though they are not absolutely immutable, have not, even in the lapse of many ages, undergone any such changes as to perplex us in fixing the identity of ancient and modern names. There are now open to our observation, the same scenes, and the same physical appearances which were described, or alluded to, by historians, twenty centuries ago; and finding, as we do, their accounts of these permanent objects to accord with present and well-known facts, we accept such coincidences as a pledge of the general accuracy and authenticity of the writings in question: for if an historian is proved to have been careful to obtain correct information on points that were indirectly connected with his subject, it is but just to believe that he was at least equally exact in regard to events, and to what belongs more immediately to his narrative.

We have already adverted to the geographical accuracy of Herodotus, and have remarked that the descriptions he gives of countries, and of their productions, are such, for the most part, as to put it beyond doubt that he had himself seen most of the objects which he describes. That the Greek historians should be exact in what relates to the geography and productions of their own narrow soil, is nothing more than what must be expected. But when we find them accurate also in their descriptions of regions remote from Greece, and which were very imperfectly known to their countrymen in general, they furnish a proof of authenticity that may be extended to cases in which we are obliged to accept their testimony unsupported by other evidence.

A pertinent instance of this kind is furnished in the case of Arrian’s history of Alexander’s expedition—his Indian history, and his description of the shores of the Indian Ocean. The geographical details which occur in these works are, in general, so exact that modern travellers find little difficulty in identifying almost every spot he mentions. This proof of accuracy well supports the claim to the possession of authentic information which is advanced by the author at the commencement of his work, where he declares that his history has been compiled from the memoirs of Ptolemy and of Aristobulus—two of Alexander’s generals; and that he had collated their assertions on all points, and had added, from other sources, only such particulars as seemed to be the most worthy of credit.

Now when Arrian’s history of Alexander’s expedition is compared with that of Quintus Curtius, on points of geography, it will be found that the latter writer was either utterly ignorant on the subject, or that he was quite indifferent as to the correctness of his statements. This proof therefore of want of diligence, or want of information, detracts very greatly from the historian’s authority on all points which rest on his sole testimony. We might say that it is fatal to his credit, in all such instances. Although an able and attractive writer, Curtius awakens the reader’s suspicion by the very character of his style, which betrays his fondness for decoration and enlargement:—this suspicion is then not a little enhanced when we meet with direct evidence of his inaccuracy, in matters of fact.

The permanence of the names of places, under many modifications in the value of vowels or consonants, affords a very curious, as well as important means of authenticating the assertions of ancient historians. Innumerable instances might be adduced in which the names of obscure villages in Asia Minor, Armenia, Persia, Arabia, Palestine, Egypt, and Nubia, recall to every reader’s recollection the names occurring in the ancient histories of the same countries. Those remote names could never have found their way into the pages of the Greek and Roman historians if they had not sought, or had not carefully employed, genuine documents in the composition of their works.

In many particulars the statements of the ancient geographers—Strabo, Ptolemy, Pliny, Stephen of Byzantium, and Pausanias, are at variance with each other, and with the narratives of contemporary historians; but in by far the greater number of instances there is nearly as much accordance as is usually found among modern travellers. And when the ancient geography, whether collected from geographers or historians, comes to be collated with the modern—whatever difficulties may here and there present themselves in the way of a perfect conciliation, no one can doubt that the former—taken as a whole—is a genuine account of facts, collected with industry, by actual observation.

4. A similar species of confirmation arises from a comparison of the descriptions given by ancient historians of the physical peculiarities, the manners, and the usages of nations, with facts known to attach to the modern occupants of the same countries. If national manners and usages are less permanent than the features of the country, or than the productions of the soil, they are much more so than might be supposed, when we recollect how many revolutions have swept across the surface of society in the course of ages. Though man is not absolutely the creature of the soil that supports him, and though he does not retain every peculiarity which descends to him from his progenitors, yet neither is he ever free from some permanent mark of tribe, of climate, or of locality. Or if, by the development of mind, and the advance of civilization, his circumstances and his manners undergo, apparently, a thorough change, yet even then will there remain many lesser indications of his obsolete condition; and many habits and usages, that are too minute and trivial to have attracted attention—if they did not awaken historical recollections, will continue to identify the modern with the ancient race. Four conquests, and eighteen centuries, have not wholly obliterated from the English people all traces of their British ancestors; and in some races, for example—the Egyptian, the Arabian, the Jewish, and the Scythian, a much more perceptible sameness has been maintained throughout even a longer course of ages.

Such living monuments of antiquity are not only highly curious in themselves, but they are very significant in illustration of ancient history. Yet it must be acknowledged that the materials for this kind of confirmatory comment are the most abundant where they are of the least value; and often the scantiest, where they would be the most prized. For it is among half civilized nations, that manners and modes of life are permanent; while the advance of intelligence and refinement produces changes so great as to leave only the faintest traces of aboriginal characteristics. Thus, in the plains of Asia, and in the deserts of Africa, we find nations which, as to their physical peculiarities, their manners and their usages, differ little, if at all, from the descriptions given of their predecessors on the same soil by Herodotus, or Strabo. Meanwhile the successive occupants of the European continent—active, intelligent and free, have passed under all forms of human life, and therefore have retained few resemblances to their remote ancestors.

One climate, indeed, necessitates a much greater degree of permanency in the habits of the people than another. The fervours of the equatorial regions, and the rigours of the north, subdue man to a passive conformity with certain modes of life. These extremes of temperature avail much to vanquish his individual will, to forbid the caprices of his tastes, and to restrain his invention. But in temperate climates, almost every mode of life is found to be practicable, and almost all modes will therefore in turns be practised.

The permanency of manners, even where the most extensive revolutions have taken place, is strikingly displayed among the modern people of Greece. The successive generations of six-and-twenty centuries have passed away since the Iliad and Odyssey were composed; and yet, when the ancient race, as it is described by Homer, comes to be compared with the modern people, the points of sameness are very many. Not only is the language essentially the same; but the modes of thinking and feeling—the superstitions—the costumes—the habits of the inhabitants of particular spots have, in a large number of instances, been very little affected by the lapse of time. If the peculiarities of the race, as described by Homer, may still be recognised, it is no wonder if we find, in the present manners of the people, numerous illustrations of the pictures drawn by the historians of a later age. The descriptions given by Cæsar and Tacitus of the manners of the Gauls, Britons, and Germans, are capable of receiving a like authentication, though not in an equal degree, from usages still existing among the northern nations of Europe.

5. The existing remains of ancient art would very nearly supply the materials for a body of history, even if all books had perished. These relics sometimes serve to establish particular facts, and sometimes they afford ground from which to deduce general inferences, relative to the wealth, the power, and the intelligence of the nations to whom they belonged. In either case the evidence they yield is of the most conclusive kind; for the solid material is actually in our hands, and it is before our eyes, and in most cases it can be liable to no misinterpretation.

So extensive are the inferences that may fairly be derived from these existing remains, that, as to some ancient nations, we know far more from this source, than is to be gathered from the entire evidence of written history: this, at least, is certain, that what is thus learned, if it be in some respects vague, possesses more of the substantial quality of knowledge, and much better deserves to be called history than do those bare catalogues of the names of kings, which are often dignified with the term. A name, or twenty names, unconnected with general facts—or a date, serving only to bring a mere name into its proper place in a chronological chart, may indeed impart the semblance of history, but it affords almost nothing of the substance. What we gather, for example, from written history, relative to the Assyrian empire, or to the early kingdoms of Greece, is much less significant than are the historical inferences relative to the people of Egypt, which are fairly deducible from the remains of their architecture.

The existing monuments of art, which are available as sources of historical information, are, 1. buildings and public works; 2. sculptures and gems; 3. inscriptions and coins; 4. paintings, mosaics, and vases; and 5. implements and arms.

For the purpose of confirming, or correcting, or illustrating, the assertions of historians on particular points, recourse must most often be had to the evidence of inscriptions and coins; and every one knows that from these sources all the leading facts of Greek and Roman history may be authenticated. The latter are especially important, both on account of the information they convey, and of the mode of its transmission to modern times. No one could call in question the utility of inscriptions for the illustration of history: but the student who cannot devote his undivided attention to the subject, or who has not access to the fullest and best sources of information, may very probably waste his time upon documents that he will afterwards discover to be extremely fallacious. In no department of antiquarian learning have misrepresentations, deceptions, and errors of inadvertency more abounded. Authors who were long regarded as unexceptionable authorities are found to deserve little confidence, and on such points a writer who is not worthy of great confidence, is worthy of none.

Coins are concise public records. The device they bear is seldom devoid of some significant allusion to the peculiar pretensions of the realm or city; the image, corresponding in form and expression with sculptures or descriptions, fixes the identity of the personage; and the legend furnishes names, and other specific notices. Coins, therefore, concentrate several kinds of evidence; and, like books, by their multitude, by their wide diffusion, and by the mode of their conservation to modern times, they are, with very few and unimportant exceptions, placed far beyond the reach of fraud or deception. The cabinets of the opulent, in all countries, are filled with series of these historical records; and the spade is every day turning up counterparts to those already known. Statues and buildings have been discovered here and there; but coins are the produce of every soil which civilization has at any time visited.

Sculptures are either historical or poetical; those of the first kind yield a confirmation to history which, though indefinite, is worthy of attention. That the principal personages whose names occur in history were represented by the artists of their times, is not only probable, but is a well-known fact. Statues or busts of the most distinguished public persons were given to the world by several artists, and they were placed in all the principal cities of the republic or the empire, that claimed any reflection of their glory. The principle of competition among artists would secure some tolerable uniformity—the uniformity of resemblance to the originals, among these statues and busts; nor do we at all pass the bounds of probability in supposing them to be, in general, real and good portraits. There is, besides, in most of them, an air of individuality, which at once convinces the practised eye of their authenticity.

So much as this being assumed, the congruity of these forms with the character of the men, as it is presented on the page of history, carries with it a proof of the truth of those records which few observers of the human physiognomy will feel disposed to question. In order to perceive the force of this kind of evidence it is not necessary to call for the aid of any system of physiognomical science (so called); every one’s intuitive discernment will suffice for the purpose. Let the simplest observer of faces and forms, who has read the history of Greece and Rome, look round a gallery of antique statues and busts; and he will be in little danger of misnaming the heads of Themistocles and of Alexander, of Plato and of Cicero, of Phocion and of Alcibiades, of Demosthenes and of Euclid, of Julius Cæsar and of Nero. To those whose eye is exercised in the discrimination of forms, the best executed of these antique heads speak their own biography with a distinctness that gives irresistible attestation to the accounts of historians.

Mythological or poetical sculptures afford inferences of a more general kind; most of which are suggested also by an examination of the temples of which they were the furniture. The exquisite forms of the Grecian chisel declare that the superstition they embodied, although it was frivolous and licentious, was framed more for pleasure than for fear;—that it was rather poetical than metaphysical. They do indicate certainly that the religious system of the people was not sanguinary or ferocious; and that it was not fitted to be the engine of priestly despotism. One would imagine that the ministers of these deities were more the servants of the people’s amusements, than the tyrants of their consciences, their property, and their persons.

The Grecian sculptures give proof that the superstition to which they belonged, however false or absurd it might be, was open to all the ameliorations and embellishments of a highly refined literature. In contrast with these are the sacred sculptures of India, which disgust us as undisguised and significant representatives of the horrid vices enjoined and practised by the priests. But the lettered taste of the Greeks taught their artists to invest each attribute of evil with some form of beauty. The hideousness of the vindictive passions must be hid beneath the character of tranquil power; and the loathsomeness of the sensual passions must be veiled by the perfect ideal of loveliness. Art, left to itself, does not adopt these corrections; nor do the authors of superstitious systems ask for them. There must be poetry, there must be philosophy at hand, to whisper cautions to the wantonness of art, and to confine its exuberances within the limits of propriety.

When the remains of ancient structures are examined for the purpose of collecting thence historical information, they must be viewed under three distinct aspects; namely—the resources that were required for their construction—the purposes to which they were devoted, and the taste which they display. A few instances will show the nature, and the extent of the inferences that may fairly be drawn from such an examination.

The remains of Egyptian architecture have long outlasted the fame of the men whose names they were charged to transmit to distant times. Or if some few names have been handed down by historians, or have been drawn from their hieroglyphical concealments by the genius of modern research, the whole amount of such discoveries may be comprised in a few lines, and it falls very far short of conveying anything like a history of the people. But some general facts relative to the wealth, the commerce, the industry, the institutions, the manners, and the superstitions of the Egyptians, have been reported by historians; and the descriptions of that country and of its people, given by Herodotus, Strabo, Diodorus, and Plutarch, confirmed as they are by incidental allusions in other writers, and especially by a few significant expressions occurring in the Jewish Scriptures, afford a tolerably complete idea of this, the most extraordinary of all nations—ancient or modern. Now this testimony of the historians is corroborated, with a peculiar distinctness, by those ruins which still lead hosts of travellers to the banks of the Nile.

These stupendous remains attest, in the first place, the unbounded wealth that is affirmed by historians to have been at the command of the Egyptian monarchs;—a wealth derived chiefly from the extraordinary fertility of the country, which, like the plains of Babylon, yielded a three hundred-fold return of grain. And as the revenues of a vast empire were added to the home resources of the Babylonian monarchs, so the products of a widely extended commerce came in to augment the treasures of the Egyptian kings. The mouths of the Nile were the centres of trade between the eastern and the western worlds; and that river, after depositing a teeming mud in one year, bore upon its bosom in the next, the harvest it had given, for the feeding of distant and less fertile regions. Nor was the industry of the people—numerous beyond example, wanting to improve every advantage of nature. But for whom was this unbounded wealth amassed, or under whose control was it expended? The testimony of historians coincides with that of the existing ruins in declaring that a despotism—political and religious—of unexampled perfection, and very unlike anything that has since been seen, disposed of the vast surplus products of agriculture and of commerce for the purposes of a gigantic egotism.

By what forms of exaction or of monopoly the Egyptian kings held at their command the property and the services of the people, cannot be certainly determined; but it seems as if one only centre of real possession was acknowledged, and that habits of thinking and acting—bound down to unalterable modes, by a thousand threads of superstitious observance, favoured the tranquil transfer of all rights to the head of the state. With such resources therefore at his disposal, and with a people much better fitted by their temperament and habits for labour than for war—the inhabitants of fertile plains have ever been less warlike than those of mountainous regions—the master of Egypt might find it easy to expend his means in realizing monstrous architectural conceptions.

That degree of scientific skill in masonry which belongs to a middle stage of civilization, in which the human faculties are but partially developed, is what the accounts of historians would lead us to expect; and it is just what these remains actually display. There is science—but there is much more of cost and of labour than of science. The works undertaken by the Egyptian builders were such as a calculable waste of human life would be certain to complete; but they were not such as involve a mastery of practical difficulties by means which mathematical genius must devise.

The Egyptian builders could rear pyramids, or excavate catacombs, or hew temples from out of solid rocks of granite; but they attempted no works like those that were executed by the artists of the middle ages. For to poise so high in air the fretted roof and slender spire of a Gothic Minster required a cost of mind greater far than appears to have been at the command of the Egyptian kings.

The purposes to which the structures of Egypt apparently were devoted, agree also with the accounts of historians. The established despotism was indeed such as to permit capricious sovereigns to indulge their personal vanity without restraint; nevertheless, better and more wise maxims of government were acknowledged, and often followed; and so it is that the traces of public works of vast extent, and of great utility, everywhere attest the intelligence and the good dispositions of some of the Egyptian kings. Canals, piers, reservoirs, aqueducts, are not less abundant than temples and pyramids. Indeed, the temples of Egypt must not be placed altogether to the account either of the vanity of kings, or of the pride of priests; for as the Roman emperors expended a portion of the tribute of the world in the erection of theatres for the gratification of favoured provinces, so the Egyptian kings, for the pleasure of their subjects, reared, in all parts of the land, those sacred menageries of worshipful bulls, crocodiles, cows, apes, cats, dogs, onions, and other—the like august symbols of the common religion. It is recorded that the two kings whose names were held in execration by posterity on account of the cruel labours they exacted from their people, were not builders of temples—but of pyramids.

A mound of earth, one foot in height, satisfies that feeling of our nature which impels us to preserve from disturbance the recent remains of the dead; but a pyramid five hundred feet in height was not too tall a tomb for an Egyptian king! The varnished doll, hideous to look at, into which the art of the apothecary had converted the carcase of the deceased monarch, must needs rest in the deep bowels of a mountain of hewn stone! More complete proof of the utter subjugation of the popular will in ancient Egypt cannot be imagined than what is afforded by the fact, that so much masonry should have been piled, for such a purpose, almost to the clouds. The pyramids could never touch the general enthusiasm of the people, they could only gratify the crazy vanity of the man at whose command they were reared. These tapering quadrangles, as they were the product, so they may be viewed as the proper images of a pure despotism; vast in the surface it covers, and the materials it combines, the prodigious mass serves only to give towering altitude to—a point.

A literature like that of Greece would have protected the Egyptians from the toils of building pyramids:—for, had they possessed poets like Homer, historians like Thucydides, and philosophers like Aristotle, their kings would neither have dared, nor indeed have wished, to attach their fame to bulks of stone, displaying no trace of genius, either in the design, or the execution. The Egyptian kings consigned their names to the custody of pyramids, which have long since betrayed the trust.—The Greeks committed the renown of their chiefs to the frail papyrus of the Nile, and the record has shown itself to be imperishable.

The accordance of the taste displayed in the forms and embellishments of the Egyptian temples, with the temperament and the institutions of the people, as described by historians, deserves to be noticed; though, of course, no very positive conclusions ought to be drawn from facts of this class. It is the province of art, whatever may be the material upon which it works, to combine, in various proportions, the two elements of effect—sameness and difference—uniformity and variety—harmony and opposition. A work of art in which these principles should be wholly disjoined, or which should exhibit only one of them—if that were possible—might amaze the spectator, but could never produce pleasure. To combine them in exact accordance with the intended effect of the work, is the perfection of art. If the impression to be produced inclines to the side of grandeur and sublimity, the principle of sameness or uniformity must predominate; and every variety that is admitted in the embellishments must be quelled by constant repetitions in the same form. But if the sentiment to be awakened is that of pleasure—gaiety, and voluptuousness, the second principle, or that of difference, variety, and opposition, must triumph over the first. Now a uniform preference of one of these styles in works of art, must be held to characterise the prevailing temper of the people whom they are intended to please.

But now the Egyptian architecture is distinguished, perhaps beyond that of any other people, by its subjection to the law of uniformity, and by the apparent aim of the artist to vanquish the imagination of the spectator by an aspect of sublimity; to kindle the sentiment of awe was the intention; and bulk and sameness were the means.

This character of Egyptian art, which prevails almost without exception among the existing remains of the more ancient structures, comports well with the idea of the subjugation of the people beneath a system of stern religious and civil despotism. And yet further, it has a remarkable significance when considered in its relation to the nature of the worship to which these temples were devoted. While we gaze with amazement and awe at the massy buttresses of these structures—at their towering obelisks—at their long ranges of columns, formed as if to support the weight of mountains, and at the colossal guards of the portico, we have to recollect that these temples were the consecrated palaces of crocodiles, of cows, of ichneumons, of dogs, cats, or apes. It seems as if, for the very purpose of effecting the most complete degradation of the popular mind, the national superstition had been framed from the vilest materials it was possible to find; while, to enhance and secure its influence, a nobly-imagined art combined every element of awful grandeur. The imagination was first seduced by a show of sublimity, in order that the moral sense might, the more effectually, be, in the end, trodden in the dust.

The mathematical ornaments, and the vegetable imitations of the Egyptian architecture might be noticed, which, besides being admirably imagined and executed, are in perfect harmony with the general taste of the buildings, and thus consist with what we suppose to have been its main intention. But the character of the human figures attached to many of the temples, demands attention.

Not a few of these figures exhibit the highest degree of excellence—within certain bounds; these bounds are—a strict adherence to the national contour and costume (neither of which could have been preferred by artists who had seen the people of Europe and Asia) and a rigid observance of architectural directness of position. In a very few examples the artists so far transgressed the rules thus imposed upon them, as to prove that they had the command of attitudes more varied than those which ordinarily they exhibited; indeed, it is contrary to all analogy to suppose, that so much executive talent should exist along with an incapacity to give more life and variety to the figure. The Chinese, who as artists are vastly inferior to the ancient Egyptian sculptors, ordinarily pass far beyond them as to the range of action and position which they give to their human figures. Even if a taste so rigid had belonged to the first stage of art, it must—unless otherwise restricted, have admitted amelioration in the course of time. The artists of a second age would no doubt have sought reputation by venturing beyond the limits within which their predecessors had been confined.

It seems then hardly possible to find a reason for that frozen uniformity which is exhibited in the Egyptian sculptures, unless we suppose that art—like everything else, was the slave of an omnipresent despotism. The human forms which support the porticos or roofs, stand and look as if they knew themselves to be in the presence of Superior Power, Freedom of position, or an attitude of force, or of agility, or even of inattentive repose, or any indication of individual will, would have broken in upon the idea of universal subjection. The master of Egypt must look upon no forms that do not speak submission.

And yet there is an air of serenity (though it be not such as springs from the consciousness of personal dignity) tending towards gaiety, in most of these sculptures: the look indeed is altogether servile; yet it is unrepining, and it seems to express entire acquiescence in that immutable order of things which transferred the rights of all to one.

That such a condition of the social system as this actually existed in the times when the Egyptian temples were reared, must not be positively affirmed, merely on the grounds above mentioned; but if, amidst the ill-founded encomiums bestowed upon the Egyptian institutions by ancient historians, there may clearly be traced the indications of a state of unexampled subjection to fixed modes of action in the social, the religious, and the political systems of the people, the existing monuments of their architecture and sculpture are to be acknowledged as according well with these indications. Yet if this accordance were thought to be fanciful, let it be attempted to associate our notions of the Grecian people, and their institutions, with the Egyptian architecture and sculpture.—It would be impossible to combine ideas so incongruous.

The Grecian architecture, although its elements were evidently derived from that of Egypt, is contrasted with it in almost every point. The people to whom these comparatively diminutive, and yet faultless structures belonged, manifestly, were not masters of boundless national wealth; but their intelligence so much exceeded their resources that they at once reached the highest point of art, which is to induce upon its materials a new value—a value so great, that the mere cost of the work is forgotten. In surveying the Egyptian temples we wonder at the wealth that could suffice to pay for them; in viewing those of Greece we only admire the genius of the architect who imagined them, and the taste of the people who admired them.

The plains of Greece are burdened by no huge monuments, the only intention of which is to crush the common feelings of a nation beneath the weight of one man’s vanity; but its surface was thick set with temples which were the property of all—temples, free from gloom, and unstained with cruel rites.

A more striking point of contrast cannot be selected than that presented by a comparison of the human figures (above-mentioned) that are attached to the Egyptian temples, with those that decorate the Grecian architecture. The Grecian caryatides assume the attitude of as much liberty, ease, and variety of position as may comport with the burdensome duty of supporting the pediment: they give their heads to the mass of masonry above them—not with the passiveness of slaves, but as if with the alacrity of free persons. The Egyptian figures stand like the personifications of unchanging duration; but as to the Grecian caryatides, one might think that they had but just stepped up from the merry crowd, and were themselves the pleased spectators of the festivities that are passing before them.

The Roman architecture, as compared with that of India or of China, is only so far less barbarous, as it is more Grecian. In the arts the Romans were imitators, and they are hardly ever to be admired when they wandered from their pattern. Those structures in which they might best claim the praise of originality—namely—their vast amphitheatres, are rather monuments of wealth, luxury, and native ferocity of character, than of taste or intelligence.

The structures which shed the greatest lustre upon the Roman name, are those public works—roads, bridges, and aqueducts, which, in almost every country of Europe, mark the presence of their legions; and these attest that vigour of character—that unconquerable perseverance—that regard to utility, and especially, that steady pursuit of universal empire, which history declares to have characterised the Roman people and government.

The student of history, although he may not have access to museums, and although costly antiquarian publications should never come into his possession, may find, even in his seclusion, some visible and palpable proofs of the authenticity of the Roman historians; for the circuit of a few miles in many districts of the British Islands, will offer illustrations of the narratives of Cæsar, of Tacitus, and of Suetonius. Though the occupation of Britain by the Romans was of shorter continuance than that of almost any other country—included within the empire, and though their possession of the island was always partial and disturbed, they yet made themselves so much at home with our ancestors as that our soil teems with the relics of their sojourn of three hundred years. Roman camps, roads, walls, and baths;—mosaics, vases, weapons, utensils, and coins, are as abundant, almost, in England as in Italy; and they are quite abundant enough to substantiate the proud glories that are claimed for the Roman arms by their historians.

If then there were room to entertain a doubt of the authenticity of the body of ancient history—taken in the mass; or if the credibility of a single author comes to be questioned; or if a particular fact be opened to controversy, it is far from being the case that we are left to rely, alone, upon the validity of general arguments in proof of the apparent competency, veracity, and impartiality of the ancient historians; on the contrary, we may, in almost all cases, appeal to unquestioned facts, supporting the affirmative side of such questions. For instance, we may compare the testimony of the historians themselves—one with another; or with that of contemporary writers in other departments of literature, whose allusions to public events or persons are of an incidental kind; or we may compare the descriptions that are given by historians of natural objects, or of national peculiarities, with the same objects or peculiarities—still existing; or, to take a method still more precise, and still more palpably certain, we may read upon the face of marble, or brass, or gold, or silver, or precious stones—long buried in the earth, explicit records of the very events, or memorials of the very persons, mentioned by historians. Or we may examine the remains of public works and buildings, described by historians, and find them accordant with their accounts of the power, tastes, and habits of the people that reared them.

Notwithstanding all these means of proof, various as they are, there may yet remain some points of history that are not satisfactorily attested, or that are liable to reasonable suspicion; yet as to the great mass of facts, these will be found to be so fully established as to render scepticism regarding them altogether absurd.

But now the proof which establishes the general authenticity of ancient historians, and which demonstrates that their writings are, in the main, what they profess to be—that is—genuine narratives of events, composed and published in the age to which they are usually assigned, carries with it, by implication, a proof of the genuineness of other remains of ancient literature. If, for example, we have under our touch, palpable evidence that the works of Tacitus are genuine and authentic, we can no longer deny that the raft on which ancient books floated down through so many ages was substantially secure; and we may safely conclude that whatever mists may seem to hang over some parts of the channel of transmission, the vessel and its cargo did actually pass, undamaged, through the gloom of ages.

Though this inference may be applicable to the remains of ancient literature more in the mass, than in detail; it nevertheless possesses a conclusive force when brought to bear upon vague and sweeping attacks upon the genuineness and integrity of ancient writings, as if they were incapable of any certain proof. Those who profess to entertain doubts of this sort, do not ordinarily apply themselves with care to the examination of any one instance, nor attempt patiently to refute particular proofs; but rather they fling about broad assertions, tending to destroy all confidence in the process and medium through which the records of antiquity have been conveyed to modern times. Now to such vague insinuations, a full and sufficient reply is given, when we adduce demonstrative proof of the authenticity of historical works which could not have contained consistent and circumstantial truth unless they had actually been written in the age to which they are attributed. If then some books have descended—entire, through eighteen or twenty centuries, others may have done so; and if so, then no objection can be maintained against ancient books, à priori; nor can any suspicion rest upon particular works—except such as may be justified by specific proofs of spuriousness.

CHAPTER XIII.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES, APPLICABLE TO QUESTIONS OF THE GENUINENESS AND AUTHENTICITY OF ANCIENT RECORDS.

Civilization has not ordinarily, if indeed it has ever done so, sprung up spontaneously in any land. A germ of the arts, and of literature, transmitted from people to people, and passed down from age to age, has taken root and become prolific, in a degree, proportioned generally to the amount and variety of those elements of social and intellectual improvement that may have been received from distant sources.

These germs of civilization may have been transported, and scattered by colonization, by trade, or by conquest; but they are never so fully expanded as when they are cherished by an imported literature. It is not by comparing themselves with themselves, that individuals, or that nations, become wise; and though there are fruits of genius which seem to owe nothing to extraneous sources, the general perfectionment of reason and of taste can be attained only by an extended knowledge of what has been thought and performed by men of other nations, and of other times.

Among all the inestimable advantages which have raised the inhabitants of England and of France and of Germany, above those of Turkey or of China, very few can be named that have not—directly or indirectly—sprung from a knowledge of the civilisation, the arts, and the literature of ancient nations. What is it that would be left to the people of Europe, if all this knowledge, and all its remote consequences, could at once be subtracted from their religious, their political, and their intellectual condition? But it must be remembered that it has chiefly been by the transmission of books, from age to age, that this yeast of civilisation is now possessed and enjoyed. If those works which we believe to be genuine are not so in fact, we may be said to hold all the blessings of social and intellectual advancement by a forged title. For on such a supposition the first stock, or the rudiment of our advantages has sprung from a mass of fabrications. No one entertains such a supposition; and yet it must be admitted if any general objections are to be allowed to disparage the mode in which ancient literature has been transmitted to modern times.

If we except the almost forgotten enterprise of the Jesuit, Harduin, no such general objections are ever formally made, or insinuated, in relation to the remains of classic literature, and this for two reasons;—first, because an attempt to support a sceptical doctrine of this sort would be treated by the learned with contempt, as proceeding from a whimsical love of paradox, or from an inane ambition to attract attention; and secondly, because the unlearned could never be induced to take so much interest in a controversy of this kind, as might reward the pains of those who attempted to delude them.

But it is otherwise in relation to the Holy Scriptures; for while some few of the learned are, from sinister motives, willing to aid an attempt to bring the authority of these books into suspicion, there are always thousands of the community who may easily be engaged to listen to objectors, and who, from their want of information, and their incapacity to reason correctly, are easily made the dupes of any plausible sophistry.

Nor is it merely the uneducated classes that are exposed to the artifices of sophists; for persons whose acquirements in general literature are respectable, seem sometimes to be perplexed by objections of a kind which, if levelled at the remains of classic authors, they would deem undeserving of any serious regard.

This strange, and often fatal inconsistency, may sometimes arise from the influence of moral causes, which it does not fall within the design of this volume to notice; but it is often attributable to a want of attention to some common principles of evidence which, though they are so obvious that it may seem almost frivolous to insist upon them, are never respected by objectors, and are seldom remembered by the victims of sophistry. The most prominent of these principles may be classed under the five following heads.

I. Facts remote from our personal observation may be as certainly proved by evidence that is fallible in its kind, as by that which is not open to the possibility of error.

By certain proof is here meant, not merely such as may be presented to the senses, or such as cannot be rendered obscure, even for a moment, by a perverse disputant;—but such as when once understood, leaves no room for doubt in a sound mind. And this degree of certainty is every day obtained, in the common occasions of life, by means of evidence that is fallible in its nature, and which may be questionable in all its parts, separately considered. Let us take such an instance as this.—A person receives letters from several of his friends in a neighbouring town, informing him that an extensive fire has happened the night before, in that place, in consequence of which many of the inhabitants have been driven from their homes:—presently afterwards, a crowd of the sufferers, bringing with them the few remains of their furniture, passes his door:—his friends arrive among them, and ask shelter for their families;—the next day the papers contain a full description of the calamity. Does this person entertain any doubt as to the alleged fact? He cannot do so; and yet he admits that human testimony is fallacious:—he knows that men lie much oftener, than that towns are burned down:—perhaps there is not one of all those who have reported the fact whose veracity ought to be considered as absolutely unimpeachable;—some of them deserve no confidence:—and as for the public prints, they every day admit narratives that are altogether unfounded.

Scepticism of this sort, on such an occasion, if it be supposable, could only arise from a degree of mental perversity, not much differing from insanity. In other words, this amount of evidence is such as leaves absolutely no room for doubt in a sound mind; nevertheless, the material of which it is composed—if we may so speak—is in itself fallible, and as to all the parts of it, if separately taken, they might be rejected.

Or we may take an example or two of another kind.—It has been long affirmed by voyagers, and on their authority it has been assumed as certain by the compilers of geographical works, and by the framers of charts, that, midway in the Pacific Ocean, there are several groups of inhabited islands. And the people of England, generally, think these affirmations as certain, as that two and two are four. And yet who does not know that voyagers are too fond of bringing home tales, invented to amuse the weariness of a long voyage, and published to win the wonder of the vulgar, or to turn a penny? Now it may be imagined that some question of national importance—some argument for the remission of taxes—depended upon proving that such islands do not exist; and then let it be supposed that certain interested disputants are permitted to win the ear of the common people, and to keep it to themselves: in such a case the proof of this fact—certain as it is, might easily be made to appear very questionable, or to be altogether unworthy of belief—in a word, a trick of the Government, contrived to wring money from the people!

Or again:—It has been affirmed by historians that some two hundred years ago the Parliament of England quarrelled with their king—levied war against him—vanquished, and beheaded him, and set up a republican form of government, in the place of the monarchy. But in proof of facts so improbable as these we have no better evidence than the testimony of prejudiced political writers: the whole story rests on the credit of old books or manuscripts; nor is there one of the writers who have repeated the narrative that may not be convicted of some misrepresentation; and some of them are plainly chargeable with many direct and wilful untruths. Notwithstanding this array of objections, yet the principal events of the civil war are, in the estimation of all persons of sound mind, as certainly established as any mathematical proposition. The same may be said of innumerable facts—much more remote, or apparently obscure, than those above mentioned; and yet they are so proved, that they cannot be questioned without doing violence to common sense.

The difference between the proof obtained by mathematical demonstration, and that which results from an accumulation of oral or written testimony, is not—that the latter must always, and from its nature, be less certain than the former; but that the certainty of the former may be exhibited more readily, and by a simpler and more compact process, than that of the other. If it were denied that the three angles of every triangle are equal to two right angles, an actual measurement of lines, or the placing of two pieces of card one over the other, would end the dispute in a moment: or even if the problem were of a more complicated kind, belonging to the higher branches of mathematical science, and therefore if it were such as could not be made plain to an uninstructed person, by any means, or to any one by a very brief process, yet whoever will choose to bestow time enough and is capable of giving attention enough to the demonstration, will not fail, at length, to be convinced of its truth; for all the parts of which it consists are certain, and their connexion, one with another, is also certain. But the certainty that is obtained from a mass of testimony, oral or written, does not result from the solidity of the separate parts, or the firmness of the cement which connects them; but from the irresistible pressure of the multifarious mass. The strength of mathematical demonstration is like that of a pier;—the strength of accumulated testimony is like that of the swelling ocean when its tides are mantling upon the shore.

II. Facts, remote from our personal knowledge, are not necessarily more or less certain in proportion to the length of time that has elapsed since they took place.

An illusion of the imagination, taking its rise, naturally, from the indistinctness of our individual recollections of infancy, and from the entire obliteration of many of the records of memory, leads us, involuntarily, to attach an idea of obscurity, and of uncertainty, to whatever is remote in time. And besides; if the knowledge of remote facts has been imperfectly, or suspiciously, transmitted, and if there be a want of direct evidence on any point of ancient history, then the distance of time does really decrease the chances of collecting any new evidence; and therefore such facts must always be shrouded in uncertainty.

But whatever has been well and sufficiently proved in one age, remains not less certainly proved in the next, so long as all the evidences continue in the same state. Indeed—as we have before remarked, historical evidence often greatly increases in clearness and certainty by the lapse of time. If in the time of Leo X. it was certain that Augustus ruled the Roman world sixteen hundred years before that period, we have no need to deduct anything from our persuasion of the truth of the fact, on account of the four centuries which have since elapsed. On the contrary, the proof of it has become much greater, both in its amount, and in its clearness, now, than it was then.

The proof of the genuineness of books, even if it should not gather particles of evidence, yet remains, from age to age, unimpaired. Nor is the proof of the genuineness of modern works more satisfactory, although it may be more abundant, than that of ancient books. We could not be persuaded that the Paradise Lost was written in the last century by some obscure scribbler; nor would it be a whit less absurd to suppose that the Æneid was composed in the tenth century, or the Iliad at any time subsequent to the invasion of Greece by Xerxes.

The degree of certainty that is attainable on any point of ancient history, or literature, is regulated—not by distance of time, but by the state of the world at the period in question; especially by the contraction, or the diffusion of general knowledge at that time. This certainty therefore rises and falls—it becomes bright or obscure, alternately, from age to age, and it does so quite irrespectively of distance of years. In sailing up the stream of time, mists and darkness rest upon the landscape at a comparatively early stage of our progress; but as we ascend, light breaks upon the scene in the full splendour of a noonday sun; scarcely an object rests in obscurity, and whatever is most prominent and important, may be discerned in its minutest parts.

III. The validity of evidence in proof of remote facts is not affected, either for the better or the worse, by the weight of the consequences that may happen to depend upon them.

No principle can be much more obviously true than this; and if the reader chooses to call it a truism, he is welcome to do so: and yet none is more often disregarded. With the same sort of inconsistency which impels us to measure the punishment of an offence—not by its turpitude, but by the amount of injury it may have occasioned, we are instinctively inclined to think the most slender evidence good enough in proof of a point which is of no importance; while we distrust the best evidence as if it were feeble, on any occasion when the fact in question involves great and pressing interests. We are apt to think of evidence as if it were a cord or a wire, which, though it may sustain a certain weight, must needs snap with a greater. And yet the slightest reflection will dissipate a prejudice that is so groundless and absurd.

It is very true that the degree of care, of diligence, and of attention, with which we examine evidence, may well be proportioned to the importance of the consequences that are involved in the decision. A juryman ought indeed to give his utmost attention to testimony that may sentence a prisoner to a month’s confinement; but if he be open to the common feelings of humanity, he will exercise a tenfold caution when life or death is to be the issue of his verdict. This is very proper; but no one who is capable of reasoning justly would think that, if the proof of guilt in the former case has been thoroughly examined, and is quite conclusive, it can become a jot less convincing, if it should be found that some new interpretation of the law makes the offence capital.

The genuineness of the satires and epistles of Horace is allowed by all scholars to be unquestionable; and any one who has examined the evidence in this instance, must call him a mere sophist who should attempt to raise a controversy on the subject. Would the case be otherwise than it is, even though the proof of the genuineness of these writings should overthrow the British constitution; or should make it the duty of every man to resign his property to his servant?

The evidence of the genuineness and authenticity of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures has, for no other reason than a thought of the consequences that are involved in an admission of their truth, been treated with an unwarrantable disregard of logical equity—and even of the dictates of common sense. The poems of Anacreon, the tragedies of Sophocles, the plays of Terence, the epistles of Pliny, are adjudged to be safe from the imputation of spuriousness, or of material corruption; and yet evidence ten times greater as to its quantity, variety, and force, supports the genuineness of the poems of Isaiah, and the epistles of Paul.

This violation of argumentative equity, in relation to the Scriptures, has been favoured by the mere circumstance of their having to be so continually defended. It matters little how impudently false an imputation may be; the reply, though, in the most absolute sense, conclusive, is apt to beget almost as much suspicion as it dissipates. Herein consists the strength of infidel writings;—they call for a defence of that which is attacked, and this defence seems to imply that there is a question which may fairly be argued, and that it is in some degree doubtful. Let the genuineness of the most indubitable of the classics be boldly questioned in a popular style, and let it be defended in a form level to the mode of attack—and level also to the ignorance of the middle and lower orders, and the result would produce quite as many cases of doubt, as of conviction.

What course ought to be pursued, or which alternative should be adopted, if a case should arise wherein evidence, intrinsically good, seems to support a narrative that is palpably incredible, and contradictory to common sense, is a question that may well be left undecided until such a case actually presents itself. No such incongruity weighs against our acceptance of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures; for the miracles they report, wrought for purposes so wise and benign, accord with every notion we can antecedently form of the Divine character and government.

IV. A calculation of actual instances, taken from almost any class of facts, will prove that a mass of evidence which carries the convictions of sound minds, is incomparably more often true than false.

Evidence may be spoken of as good if it be such that, after an ordinary amount of examination, it does not appear to be liable to suspicion. However much of falsification and of error there may be in the world, there is yet so great a predominance of truth, that any one who believes indiscriminately will be in the right a thousand times to one, oftener, than any one who doubts indiscriminately. Habitual scepticism will render a man the victim of almost perpetual error. Indeed, either to believe by habit, or to doubt by habit, must be regarded as the symptom of a feeble or diseased mind. And yet the former is vastly more congruous to the actual condition of mankind, and to the ordinary course of human affairs, and is more safe, and is more reasonable, than the latter.

No man, unless his mind is verging towards insanity, acts in the daily occasions of common life on the principles of scepticism; for with such a rule of action in his head, he must retreat from human society, and take up his abode in a cavern. Not only is the sceptic an anomalous being among his fellows, but his scepticism itself is an anomaly in his own ordinary conduct; it is an insanity on single points, which of all kinds is the least hopeful of cure.

Adherence to truth is an element of human nature, just as is the love of kindred: and although the operation of both principles is liable to interruption, such deviations from the impulses of nature must always be held to arise from the influence of some specific inducement. Wilful, difficult, and hazardous falsifications, prompted by no assignable motive of interest or ambition, if indeed such are ever attempted, need not be included in a calculation of probabilities. If, therefore, in listening to a professed narrative of facts, we have reason to feel secure against the ordinary motives of deliberate falsehood; and if, on the contrary, the veracity of the narrator is guaranteed by the circumstances in which he is placed; if, moreover, his testimony is confirmed by a measure of independent evidence; and if it is uncontradicted by testimony of equal value; and if the whole case has been again and again scrupulously examined by persons of every cast of mind—then, and in such a case, if indeed a remaining possibility of delusion exists, it is so incalculably small, that to take it up in preference to the positive evidence, must be accounted an infatuation arising from folly or perversity.

Let then the rule above mentioned be applied to the existing remains of ancient literature. Among the works that were brought to light and printed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there were not a few—though few in comparison with the whole—which were very soon discovered to be spurious productions—imitations of the style of ancient authors. Although at first sight they seemed to possess a claim to genuineness, they were soon found to be destitute of that external evidence which may be collected from the quotations of subsequent writers; or there was a manifest failure in the attempted imitation of style; or there were oversights, in phrases or allusions, such as served fully to expose the deception. All these cases stand excluded, therefore, from the intention of our proposition; for they do not possess evidence of authenticity that could be spoken of as seemingly good.

Besides works obviously spurious, there were a few of which the claim to genuineness was good enough to justify controversy, and which yet find a few advocates among scholars; although the majority of critics has returned a verdict against them. Now these doubtful works, inasmuch as their genuineness is not generally acknowledged, may also be excluded from our proposition; for the evidence in their favour can barely be called—seemingly good.

Now after exclusions of this kind have been made, no one acquainted with the evidence that supports the genuineness of the unquestioned portion of ancient literature, and who has given attention to the controversies which have been carried on relative to doubtful works, and who is aware of the assiduity, the acuteness, the learning, the eager pertinacity of research, that have been brought to bear upon such questions, will affirm that there are ancient works, generally supposed by scholars to be genuine, which are in fact spurious. Every one who is competent to form an opinion on the subject grants, that even if there be a chance that a few of the classic authors, the genuineness of which has never been doubted, are after all spurious, such a chance is incalculably small—it is so small, as to leave nothing but paradoxes and absurdities in the hands of those who, on such ground, should attempt to bring them under suspicion.

V. The strength of evidence is not proportioned to its simplicity, or to the ease with which it may be apprehended by all persons; on the contrary, the most conclusive kind of proof is often that which is the most intricate and complicated.

In the mathematical sciences there are many propositions, so simple and so readily demonstrated, that all to whom they are explained may be supposed to carry away an equally clear apprehension of their truth; but the higher departments of these sciences abound with theorems which, though not in any degree less certain than the simplest axioms, are shown to be true by means of a process which may require hours, or even days to work it out. Among those who actually attend to all the parts of such a process, there will be wide differences in the kind and degree of conviction that is obtained of the truth of such propositions. Some, though they may firmly believe the demonstration to be perfect, as well because they have examined—one by one—the links of which it consists, as because they know it is assented to by calculators more competent than themselves, are yet unable, either from the want of habit, or of capacity, to comprehend the method of proof; or to perceive distinctly the connexion of the parts, and the real oneness of the whole. They have walked in the dark over the ground—groping their way from step to step;—they are satisfied that they have arrived, by a right path, at a certain point, though they cannot survey the route.

But another calculator, long practised in the refined modes of abstract reasoning—expert in leaping with certainty over intervals which others must slowly pace, and capable, by the vigour and comprehension of his mind, of retaining his hold of a multitude of particulars, sees the certainty of such operose demonstrations with as much ease as another finds in comprehending an elementary proposition. Yet the conclusion which perhaps not fifty men in Europe can, with full intelligence, know to be true, is actually as true as the axiom which the schoolboy comprehends at a glance.

Now all evidence on questions of antiquity, whether the facts be historical or literary, thus far resembles an operose demonstration in mathematical science, that it is remote from the intellectual habits, and extraneous to the usual acquirements, even of well-educated persons: very far remote, therefore, must it be from the mental range of the uninstructed classes. The strength of our convictions, as to matters of fact, remote in time or place, must bear proportion to the extent and the exactness of our knowledge, and to the consequent fulness and vividness of our conceptions of that class of objects to which the question relates. By long and intimate familiarity with ancient authors, and by an extensive acquaintance with the relics of antiquity, of all kinds, the imagination of the scholar bears him back to distant ages, with a full and distinct consciousness of the reality of those scenes and persons. Nor is this ideal converse with remote objects like that which is produced by fictitious narratives; for such excursions of the fancy through unreal regions, are disconnected with the rest of our ideas and convictions: on the contrary, the ideal presence of an accomplished mind in the scenes of ancient history is firmly, and by innumerable ties, combined with the knowledge of present realities. The imagination does not flit, on the wing of a fantasy, from the real, to an unreal world; but it tracks its way, with a steady step, on solid ground, from times present, to times past; and the intelligent conviction of truth travels up to the farthest point of its progress.

To those who are thus conversant with history, all facts or events—literary or historical—if they be satisfactorily attested, are held in the mind with a firmness of persuasion which cannot, by any statements, or any reasonings, however conclusive or perspicuous, be imparted to other minds; because, neither its own powers of comprehension, nor its variety of knowledge, can be so imparted.

CHAPTER XIV.
RELATIVE STRENGTH OF THE EVIDENCE WHICH SUPPORTS THE GENUINENESS AND AUTHENTICITY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.

Some copies of Quintilian’s Institutions of Oratory, very much corrupted and mutilated by the ignorance or presumption of copyists, were known in Italy before the fifteenth century. But in 1414, while the Council of Constance was sitting, Poggio, a learned Italian, was commissioned by the promoters of learning to proceed to that place, in search of ancient manuscripts, which were believed to be preserved in the monasteries of the city and its vicinity. His researches were rewarded by discovering, in the monastery of St. Gall, beneath a heap of long-neglected lumber, a perfect copy of the Institutions.

The manuscript, thus discovered, was soon subjected to the examination of critics; it was collated with existing copies, it was compared with the references of ancient authors, and thus was ascertained to be genuine, and, in the main, uncorrupted. And yet the substance of the evidence on which this decision rests might be comprised in a page.

The abridged history of Rome, by Paterculus, has come down to our times only in a single manuscript, and that one is so much corrupted, that critics have despaired of restoring the text to its purity. It happens, also, that this history is quoted by one ancient author only—Priscian, a grammarian of the sixth century. Yet, notwithstanding this scantiness of the evidence, and this corruption of the single existing copy, the genuineness of the work is fully admitted by scholars. The style, the allusions, the coincidences, are such as to satisfy those who are competent to estimate the value of this sort of proof. But now if this proof were formally set before us, and even if it were as much expanded as it would bear, it must look exceedingly meagre; and, to uninformed readers, it must appear slender as a thread, and insufficient to sustain any weighty consequence. But scholars, in reading the book, feel that sort of conviction of its genuineness which is experienced by a traveller, who has spent his life in passing from country to country, conversing with men of all nations: when this travelled person meets foreigners in the streets of London, he does not need to look at passports before he can know whether these strangers, whom individually he has never before seen, are Swedes, or Hungarians, or Armenians, or Hindoos, or West Indians; the commonest observer scarcely hesitates on such occasions; but the old traveller feels a conviction which mocks at the demand for formal proof.

After we have excepted a few doubtful cases, the genuineness of classic authors is perceived by scholars, with a vividness and distinctness that is not dependent upon the quantity of assignable evidence which must be adduced in reply to objectors. On this ground it may be affirmed, that, if only a single manuscript, containing certain of St. Paul’s Epistles, had been preserved, and even if no quotations from these writings were to be found, competent scholars (no practical consequences being implied in the question) would doubt that these writings are in fact what they profess to be. Those minute and indescribable characters of genuineness which meet the instructed eye in every line of these Epistles would be enough, apart from that argument which has been derived from the internal accordances of the history and the letters, as exhibited by Paley in the Horæ Paulinæ.

But although the external proof of the genuineness of ancient books might, in a large proportion of instances, be dispensed with as superfluous, it ought not to be disregarded; especially as it is the kind of evidence which may best be made intelligible to general readers. Yet even this, when adduced in its particulars, is not often duly appreciated; nor is it likely to produce its due impression, unless it be viewed in its place among facts of the same class. We propose, therefore, without troubling the reader with details which are to be found, at large, in many well-known works, and which he may be supposed to have in recollection—or within his reach—to direct him to a few principal points of the comparison which may be instituted between the classical and the sacred writings, in relation to the proof of the genuineness and authenticity of each kind.

The Jewish and Christian Scriptures may then be brought into comparison with the works of the Greek and Roman authors, in the following particulars:—

1. The number of manuscripts which passed down through the middle ages, in the modes which have been described in the preceding chapters.

About fifteen manuscripts of the history of Herodotus are known to critics: and of these, several are not of higher antiquity than the middle of the fifteenth century. One copy, in the French king’s library (there are in that collection five or six), appears to belong to the twelfth century; there is one in the Vatican, and one in the Florentine library, attributed to the tenth century: one in the library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, formerly the property of Archbishop Sancroft, which is believed to be very ancient: the libraries of Oxford and of Vienna contain also manuscripts of this author. This amount of copies may be taken as more than the average number of ancient manuscripts of the classic authors; for although a few have many more, many have fewer.

To mention any number as that of the existing ancient manuscripts, either of the Hebrew or Greek Scriptures, would be difficult. It may suffice to say that, on the revival of learning, copies of the Scriptures, in whole or in part, were found wherever any books had been preserved. In examining the catalogues of conventual libraries—such as they were in the fifteenth century, the larger proportion is usually found to consist of the works of the fathers, or of the ecclesiastical writers of the middle ages; next in amount are the Scriptures—sometimes entire; more often the Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, or the Psalms, separately; and last and fewest are the classics, of which, seldom more than three or four, are found in a list of one or two hundred volumes. The number of ancient manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, or parts of it, which hitherto have been examined by editors, is nearly five hundred.

If in the case of a classic author, twenty manuscripts, or even five, are deemed amply sufficient (and sometimes one, as we have seen, is relied upon), it is evident that many hundreds are redundant for the purposes of argument. The importance of so great a number of copies consists in the amplitude of the means which are thereby afforded of restoring the text to its pristine purity; for the various readings collected from so many sources, if they do not always place the true reading beyond doubt, afford an absolute security against extensive corruptions.

2. The high antiquity of some existing manuscripts.

A Virgil (already mentioned) in the Vatican, claims an antiquity as high as the fourth century: there are a few similar instances; but generally the existing copies of the classics are attributed to periods between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. In this respect the Scriptures are by no means inferior to the classics. There are extant copies of the Pentateuch, which, on no slight grounds, are supposed to have been written in the second, or the third century: and there are copies of the Gospels belonging to the third, or the fourth, and several of the entire New Testament, which unquestionably were made before the eighth. But the actual age of existing manuscripts is a matter of more curiosity than importance; since proof of another kind carries us with certainty some way beyond the date of any existing parchments.

3. The extent of surface over which copies were diffused, at an early date.

The works of the most celebrated of the Greek authors always found a place in the libraries of opulent persons, in all parts of Greece, and in many of the colonies, soon after their first publication; and a century or two later they were read, wherever the language was spoken. But a contraction of this sphere of diffusion took place at the time when the eastern empire was being driven in upon its centre; and during a long period these works were found only in the countries and islands within a short distance of Constantinople. As for the Latin classics, how widely soever they might have been diffused during three or four centuries, the incursions of the northern nations, and the consequent decline of learning in the West, went near to produce their utter annihilation. Many of these authors were actually lost sight of during several centuries.

It is a matter of unquestioned history that the Jews, always carrying with them their books, had spread themselves throughout most countries of Asia, of southern Europe, and of northern Africa, before the commencement of the Christian era; nor is it less certain that, wherever Judaism existed, Christianity rapidly followed it. Carried forward by their own zeal, or driven on by persecutions, the Christian teachers of the first and second centuries passed beyond the limits of the Roman empire, and founded churches among nations that were scarcely known to the masters of the world. Nor were the Christian Scriptures merely carried to great distances in different directions;—they were scattered through the mass of society, in every nation, to an extent greatly exceeding the ordinary circulation of books in those ages: these books were not in the hands of the opulent, and of the studious merely; for they were possessed by innumerable individuals, who, with an ardour beyond the range of secular motives, valued, preserved, and reproduced them. And while many copies were hoarded and hidden by private persons, others were the property of societies, and, by continual repetition in public, the contents of them were imprinted on the memories of their members.

The wide, and—if the expression may be used—the deep circulation of the Scriptures, preserved them, not merely from extinction, but, to a great extent, from corruption also. These books were at no time included within the sphere of any one centre of power—civil or ecclesiastical. They were secreted, and they were expanded far beyond the utmost reach of tyranny or of fraud.

4. The importance attached to the books by their possessors.

In a certain sense, the religion of the Greeks and Romans was embodied in the works of their poets; but the religious fervour of the people had never linked itself with those works, as if they were the depositories of their faith: books were the possession of the opulent and the educated classes;—they were prized by the few as the means of intellectual enjoyment. But Judaism first, and Christianity not less, were religions of historical fact: the doctrines and the laws of these religions were inferences, arising naturally from the belief of certain memorable events, and from the expectation of other events, that were yet to take place; the record of the past had become at once the rule of duty, and the charter of hope. To the dispersed and hated Jew his books were the solace of his wounded national pride: to the persecuted Christian his books were his title to “a better country,” and his support under present privations and sufferings. If the canonical books are valued by the Christian of modern times who believes them to be divine, they were valued with a far deeper sense by the early Christians, who, on the ground of undoubted miracles, received them as the word of Him who is omnipotent.

The veneration felt by the Jews for their sacred books was of a kind that is altogether without parallel: the reverence of the Christians for theirs, if it was not more profound, was much more impassioned, and this feeling gave intensity to a sentiment wholly unlike any with which one might seek to compare it: the fondness of a learned Greek or Roman for his books, was but in comparison as the delight of a child with his toys.

To this deep feeling towards the sacred writings, in the minds of Christians, was owing, not only the concealment and the preservation of copies in times of active persecution; but the assiduous reproduction of them by persons of all ranks who found leisure to occupy themselves in a work which they deemed to be so meritorious, and which they found to be so consoling.

5. The respect paid to them by copyists of later ages.

We have seen that, throughout the middle ages, though nothing like a widely diffused taste for the classic authors existed, yet at all times, there were, here and there, individuals by whom they were read and valued, and by whose agency and influence so much care was bestowed upon their preservation as served to insure a safe transmission of them to modern times. But that the Latin authors, at any time after the decline of the western empire, received the benefit of a careful and competent collation of copies there is little reason to believe. Of the Greek authors there were issued new recensions from Alexandria, while that city continued to be the seat of learning; and some measure of the same care was exercised by the scholars of Constantinople; yet even there the celebrated works of antiquity suffered a great degree of neglect during the last four centuries of the eastern empire.

But in this respect, as well as in those already mentioned, the text of the Scriptures—Jewish and Christian—possesses an incomparable advantage over that of the classic authors. The scrupulosity and the servile minuteness of the Jewish copyists in transcribing the Hebrew Scriptures are well known; in a literal sense of the phrase, “not a tittle of the law” was slighted: not only—as with the Greeks—was the number of verses in each book noted, but the number of words and of letters; and the central letter of each book being distinguished, it became, as a point of calculation, the key-stone of that portion of the volume. This unexampled exactness affords security enough for the safe transmission of the text; and if there were any grounds for the suspicion that the Rabbis, to weaken the evidence adduced against them by the Christians, wilfully corrupted some particular passages, we have other security, as we shall see, against the consequences of such an attempt.

The flame of true piety was, at no time, extinguished in the Christian community; nor can any century or half century of the middle ages be named, in relation to which it may not be proved that there were individuals by whom the books of the New Testament were known and regarded with a heartfelt reverence and affection. There were, besides, multitudes in the religious houses who, influenced perhaps by superstitious notions, thought it a work of superlative merit to execute a fair copy of the Scriptures, or any part of them; and all the adornments which the arts of the times afforded, were lavished to express the veneration of the scribe for the subject of his labours.

And more than this;—the Scriptures, especially in the first eight centuries, underwent several careful and skilful revisions in the hands of learned and able men, who, collating all the copies they could procure, restored the text wherever, as they thought, errors had been admitted. The prodigious labours of Origen in restoring the text of the Septuagint version have been often spoken of. The fathers of the Western, the African, and the Asiatic Churches—especially Jerome, Eusebius, and Augustine, with such means as they severally possessed, did what they could to stop the progress of accidental corruption in the sacred text, by instituting new comparisons of existing copies.

6. The wide local separation, or the open hostility of those in whose custody these books were preserved.

This is a circumstance of the utmost significance, and if it be not peculiar to the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, yet it belongs to them in a degree which places their uncorrupted preservation on a basis immeasurably more extended and substantial than that of any other ancient writings. The Latin authors were scantily dispersed over the Roman world, and never were they in the keeping of distant nations, or hostile parties. The Greek classics had indeed, to some extent, come into the hands of the western nations, as well as of the Greeks, in earlier times, and during the middle ages. And, if any weight can be attached to the fact, some of these works were also in the keeping of the Arabians: but they were never the subject of mutual appeal by rival communities.

The Hebrew nation has, almost throughout the entire period of its history, been divided, both by local separation, and by schisms. Probably the Israelites of India, and certainly the Samaritans, have been the keepers of the books of Moses—apart from the Jews, during a period that reaches beyond the date of authentic profane history. Throughout times somewhat less remote the Jews have not only been separated by distance, but divided by at least one complete schism—that on the subject of the Rabbinical traditions, which has distinguished the sect of the Karaites from the mass of the nation.

The reproach of the Christian Church—its sects and divisions—has been, in part at least, redeemed by the security thence arising, for the uncorrupted transmission of its records. Almost the earliest of the Christian apologists avail themselves of this argument in proof of the integrity of the sacred text. Augustine especially urged it against those who endeavoured to impeach its authority: nor was there ever a time when an attempt, on any extensive scale—even if otherwise it might have been practicable—to alter the text would not have raised an outcry in some quarter. From the earliest times the common Rule of Faith was held up for the purposes of defence or of aggression by the Church, and by some dissentient party. Afterwards the partition of the Christian community into two hostile bodies, of which Rome and Constantinople were the heads, afforded security against any general consent to effect alterations of the text. And in still later ages a few uncorrupted communities, existing within the bounds of the Romish Church, became the guardians of the sacred volume.

7. The visible effects of these books from age to age.

On this point also the history of the Greek and Latin classics affords only the faintest semblance of that evidence by means of which the existence and influence of the Scriptures may be traced from the earliest times after their publication, through all successive ages. The Greek and Latin authors indicated their continued existence scarcely at all beyond the walls of schools and halls of learning. During a full thousand years the world saw them not—governments did not embody them in their laws or institutions;—the people had no consciousness of them. They were less known, and less thought of abroad, than were the ashes of the dead—than the bones, teeth, blood, tears, and tatters of the Greek and Romish martyrs.

How different are the facts that present themselves on the side of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures! The Jews—in the sight of all nations—have, through a well-known and uncontested period of two thousand five hundred years, exhibited a living model of the venerable volume which was so long ago delivered to them, and which still they fondly cherish. And though long since debarred from the enjoyment of all that was splendid or cheering in their institutions, and though rent away from their land as well as their worship, and though too often blind to the moral grandeur of their law, and mistaken in the meaning of their prophets, they hold unbroken the shell of the religious system which is described in their books. Whatever in their religion was of less value—whatever served only to cover and protect the vital parts—whatever was the most peculiar, and the least important, whatever might have been laid aside without damage or essential change, has been retained by these wanderers; while that which was precious—the sacred books excepted—has been lost.

The Christian Scriptures have marked their path through the field of time, not in the regions of religion only, or of learning, or of politics; but in the entire condition—moral, intellectual, and political—of the European nations. The history of no period since the first publication of these writings can be intelligible apart from the supposition of their existence and diffusion. If we look back along the eighteen centuries past, we watch the progress of an influence, sometimes indeed marking its presence in streams of blood—sometimes in fires, sometimes by the fall of idol temples, sometimes by the rearing of edifices decked with new symbols; nor can the distant and mighty movement be explained otherwise than by knowing that the books we now hold and venerate were then achieving the overthrow of the old and obstinate evils of idolatry. It is needless to say that the history of Europe in all subsequent periods has implied, by a thousand forms of false profession, and by the constancy of the few, the continued existence of the Christian Scriptures.

8. The body of references and quotations.

The successive references of the Greek authors, one to another, though they are amply sufficient, in most instances, to establish the antiquity of the works quoted, furnish a very imperfect aid in ascertaining the purity of the existing text, or in amending it where apparently it is faulty. A large number of these references are merely allusive, consisting only of the mention of an author’s name, with some vague citation of his meaning. And even in those authors who make copious and verbal quotations, such as Strabo, Plutarch, Hesychius, Aulus Gellius, Stobæus, Marcellinus, Photius, Suidas, and Eustathius, a lax method of quotation, in many instances, robs such quotations of much of their value for purposes of criticism. And yet, after every deduction of this kind has been made, the reader of the classics feels an irresistible conviction that this network of mutual or successive references could not have resulted from machination, contrivance, or from anything but reality; it affords a proof, never to be refuted, of the genuineness of the great mass of ancient literature.

But as to the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, this kind of evidence, reaching far beyond the mere proof of antiquity and genuineness, is ample and precise enough to establish the integrity of nearly the entire text of the books in question. These writings were not simply succeeded by a literature of a similar cast; but they actually created a vast body of literature altogether devoted to their elucidation; and this elucidation took every imaginable form of occasional comment upon single passages—of argument upon certain topics, requiring numerous scattered quotations, and of complete annotation, in which nearly the whole of the original author is repeated. From the Rabbinical paraphrases, and from the works of the Christian writers of the first seven centuries (to come later is unnecessary) the whole text of the Scriptures might have been recovered if the originals had since perished.

If any one is so uninformed as to suppose that this kind of evidence is open to uncertainty, or that it admits of refutation, let him, if he has access to an ordinary English library, open the volumes of writers of all classes since the days of Elizabeth, and see how many allusions to Shakespeare, and how many verbal quotations from his plays, and how many commentaries upon portions, or upon the whole of them he can find; and then let him ask himself if there remains the possibility of doubting that these dramas—such in the main as they now are, were in existence at the accession of James I. If these quotations and allusions were not more than a fifth or a tenth part of what they actually are, the proof would not, in fact, be less conclusive than it is.

9. Early versions.

For the purpose of establishing the antiquity, genuineness, and integrity of the Scriptures, no other proof need be adduced than that which is afforded by the ancient versions now extant. When accordant translations of the same writings, in several unconnected languages, and in languages which have long ceased to be vernacular, are in existence, every other kind of evidence may be regarded as superfluous.

In this respect a comparison between the classic authors and the Scriptures can barely be instituted; for scarcely anything that deserves to be called a translation of those writers—executed at a very early period after their first publication, is extant. But, on the other side, the high importance attached by the Jews to the Old Testament, and by the early Christians to the New, and the earnest desire of the poor and unlearned to possess, in their own tongue, the words of eternal life, suggested the idea, and introduced the practice, of making complete and faithful translations of both.

Thus it is that, independently of the original text, the Old Testament exists in the Chaldee paraphrases or Targums; in the Septuagint, or Greek version; in the translations of Aquila, of Symmachus, and of Theodosian; in the Syriac and the Latin, or Vulgate versions; in the Arabic, and in the Ethiopic; not to mention others of later date.

The New Testament has been conveyed to modern times, in whole or in part, in the Peshito, or Syriac translation, in the Coptic, in several Arabic versions, in the Æthiopic, the Armenian, the Persian, the Gothic, and in the old Latin versions.

10. The vernacular extinction of the languages, or of the idioms, in which these books were written.

To write Attic Greek was the ambition and the affectation of the Constantinopolitan writers of the third and fourth centuries; and thus also, to acquire a pure Latinity, was assiduously aimed at by writers of the middle ages; and, in fact, a few of them so far succeeded in this sort of imitation that they executed some forgeries, on a small scale, which would hardly have been detected, if they had not wanted external proof.

But now the pure Hebrew—such as it had been spoken and written before the Babylonish captivity, had so entirely ceased to be vernacular during the removal of the Jews from their land, that immediately after their return the original Scriptures needed to be interpreted to the people by their Rabbis; nor is there any evidence that the power of writing the primitive language was affected by these Rabbis, whose commentaries are composed in the dialect that was vernacular in their times.

As to the Hellenistic Greek of the New Testament, differing as it does, from the style of the classic authors, and even from that of the Septuagint, to which it is the most nearly allied, it very soon passed out of use; for the later Christian writers, in the Greek language, had, in most instances, formed their style before the time of their conversion; or at least they aimed at a style, widely differing from that of the apostles and evangelists. The idiom of the New Testament, in which phrases or forms of speech borrowed from the surrounding languages occur, resulted from the very peculiar education and circumstances of the writers, which were such as to make their dialect, in many particulars, unlike any other style; and such as could not fail soon to become extinct.

11. The means of comparison with spurious works; or with works intended to share the reputation that had been acquired by others.

Imitations—whether good or bad—are useful in serving to set originals in a more advantageous light. Good imitations, calling into activity, as they do, all the acumen and the utmost diligence of critics, enable them to place genuine writings out of the reach of suspicion. Bad imitations, by serving as a foil or contrast, exhibit more satisfactorily, the dignity, the consistency, and the simplicity of what is genuine.

Several good imitations of the style of Cicero have appeared in different ages, and they have called for so much acuteness on the part of critics as have materially strengthened the evidence of the genuineness of his acknowledged works. In like manner the celebrated epistles of Phalaris excited a learned and active controversy, the beneficial result of which was not so much the settling of the particular question in debate, as the concentration of powerful and accomplished minds upon the general subject of the genuineness of ancient books, by means of which other questionable remains of antiquity received the implicit sanction of retaining their claims, after they had been brought within the reach of so fiery an ordeal.

Many bad imitations of classic authors have been offered to the world, and some such are still extant; and sometimes these are appended to the author’s genuine works. No one can read these spurious pieces immediately after he has made himself familiar with such as are genuine, without receiving, from the contrast, a forcible impression of the truth and reality of the latter. The life of Homer, for example, which is usually appended to the history of Herodotus, and which claims his name, and which has something of his manner, yet presents a contrast which few readers can fail to observe.

No good imitations, either of the Jewish or Christian Scriptures, have ever appeared; but in the place of that elaborate investigation which the existence of such productions would have called forth, other motives of the strongest kind have prompted a fuller and more laborious examination of the Scriptures than any other writings have endured.

Bad imitations of the style of the Scriptures—some of the Old Testament, and many of the New—have been attempted, and are still in existence; and they are such as to afford the most striking illustration that can be imagined of the difference in simplicity, dignity, and consistency, which one should expect to find, severally, in the genuine and the spurious. The apocryphal books (which however are not, most of them, properly termed spurious) afford an advantageous contrast in this way, to the genuine or canonical writings of the Old Testament; and as to the spurious gospels—passing under the names of Peter, Judas, Nicodemus, Thomas, Barnabas—a very cursory examination of them is enough to enhance, immeasurably, the confidence we feel in the genuineness of the true Gospels and Epistles.

The preservation of these latter worthless productions to modern times, is an extraordinary fact, and it affords proof of a state of things, the knowledge of which is important in questions of literary antiquity—namely, that there were many copyists in the middle ages who wrote, and went on writing, mechanically, whatever came in their way, without exercising any discrimination. Now there is more satisfaction in knowing that ancient books have come down through a blind and unthinking medium of this sort, than there would be in believing that we possess only such things as the copyists, in the exercise of an assumed censorship, deemed worthy to be handed down to posterity. It is far better that we should—by accident and ignorance, have lost some valuable works, and that, by the same means, some worthless ones have been preserved, than that the results of accident and ignorance should have been excluded by the constant exercise of a power of selection governed by, we know not what rule or influence. Nothing more pernicious can be imagined than the existence, from age to age, of a synod of copyists sagely determining what works should be perpetuated, and what should be suffered to fall into oblivion. Happily for literature and religion, there were, in the monasteries, numbers of unthinking labourers, who, in selecting the subject of their mindless toils, seemed to have followed the easy rule of taking—the next book on the shelf!

12. The strength of the inference that may be drawn from the genuineness of the books to the credibility of their contents.

Nothing can be more simple or certain than the inference derived from the acknowledged antiquity and genuineness of an historical work, in proof of the general credibility of the narrative it contains. If it be proved that Cicero’s Orations against Catiline, and that Sallust’s History of the Catiline War, were written by the persons whose names they bear; or if it were only proved that these compositions were extant and well known as early as the age of Augustus; that they were then universally attributed to those authors, and were universally admitted to be authentic records of matters of fact; and if the same facts are, with more or less explicitness, alluded to by the writers of the same, and of the following age, there remains no reasonable supposition, except that of the truth of the story—in its principal circumstances, by aid of which the existence and the acceptance of these narratives, these orations, and these allusions, so near to the time of the conspiracy, can be accounted for.

In Sallust’s History some facts may be erroneously stated; or the principal facts may be represented under the colouring of prejudice. In the Orations of Cicero there may be (or we might for argument sake suppose there to be) exaggeration, and an undue severity of censure; but after any such deductions have been made, or any others which reason will allow, it remains incontestably certain that, if these writings be genuine, the story, in the main, is true. The sophisms of a college of sceptics, in labouring to show the improbability of the facts, or the suspiciousness of the evidence, would not avail to shake our belief if we are convinced that the books are not spurious.

Nor is this inference less direct, or less valid in the case above mentioned, than in any similar instance of more recent occurrence. It is as inevitable to believe that Catiline conspired against the Roman state, and failed in the attempt, as that the descendants of James II. excited rebellions in Scotland, or that a French General was for a short time king of Naples. In the one case, as in the others, unless the documents—all of them, have been forged, the facts must be true.

The principle upon which such an inference is founded, scarcely admits of an exception. Narratives of alleged, but unreal facts, may have been suddenly promulgated, and for a moment credited; or false narratives of events—concealed by place or circumstances from the public eye, may have gained temporary credit. Or narratives, true in their outline, may have been falsified in all those points concerning which the public could not fairly judge; and thus the false, having been slipped in along with the true, has passed, by oversight, upon the general faith. But no such suppositions meet the case of various public transactions, taking place through some length of time, and in different localities, and which were witnessed by persons of all classes, interests, and dispositions, and which were uncontradicted by any parties at the time, and which were particularly recorded, and incidentally alluded to, by several writers whose works were widely circulated—generally accepted, and unanswered, in the age when thousands of persons were competent to judge of their truth.

No one—to recur to the example mentioned above, is at liberty merely to say that he withholds his faith from Sallust, and from Cicero, as he might, on many points, withhold it from Herodotus, from Diodorus, or from Plutarch. Yet even in that case, he ought to show cause of doubt, if he would not be charged with the frivolous affectation of possessing more sagacity than his neighbours pretend to. But in the other case, while in professing to doubt the facts, he is not able to impugn the antiquity of the records, he only gives evidence of some want of coherence in his modes of thinking. He who professes not to believe the narrative, should be required to give an intelligible account of the existence of the writings, on the supposition that the events never took place.

When historical facts which, in their nature, are fairly open to direct proof, are called in question, it is an irksome species of trifling to make a halt upon twenty indirect arguments, while the centre proof—that which a clear mind fastens upon intuitively, remains undisposed of. In an investigation that is purely historical, and which is as simple as any that the page of history presents, it boots nothing to say that the books of the New Testament contain doctrines which do not accord with our notions of the great system of things; or that they enjoin duties which are grievous and impracticable; or that they favour despotism, or engender strifes. It avails nothing to say that some professors of Christianity are hypocrites, and that therefore the religion is not true. No objections of this sort weaken in any way that evidence upon which we believe that our island was once possessed by the Romans. But yet they have as much weight in counterpoising that evidence, as they have in balancing the proof of the facts that are affirmed in the New Testament. If such objections were ten-fold more valid than sophistry can make them, they would not remove, or alter, or impair, one grain of the proper proof, belonging to the historical proposition under inquiry.

The question is not whether we admire and approve of Christianity, or not; or whether we wish to submit our conduct to its precepts, and to abide by the hope it offers; or intend to risk the hazards of it being true. The question is not whether, in our opinion, these books have been a blessing to the world, or the contrary; but simply this—whether the religion was promulgated and its documents were extant, and were well known throughout the Roman empire, in the reign of Nero.

There are evasions enough, by means of which we may remove from our view the inference which follows from an admission of the antiquity and genuineness of the Christian Scriptures. But contradiction may be challenged when it is affirmed that, if the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of Paul, of Peter, of John, and of James, were written in the age claimed for them, and were immediately diffused throughout Palestine, Asia Minor, Africa, Greece, and Italy, then this fact carries with it inevitably the truth of the Christian system.

Remote historical facts, though incapable of that kind of palpable proof which overrules contradiction, are yet open to a kind of proof which no one who really understands it can doubt. Just on this ground stand all the main facts of ancient history;—they are inevitably admitted as true by all into whose minds the whole of the evidence enters; and they are believed or doubted, in every degree between blind faith and blind scepticism, by those whose apprehension of the facts is defective, or obscure, or perverted.

When it is said that the events recorded in the four Gospels are presented to us in a form that has been purposely adapted to exercise our faith, it should be added, by way of illustrating the exact meaning of the words—that the events recorded by Thucydides and Tacitus are also presented to us in a form that is adapted to exercise our faith. Yet it would be more exactly proper to say—that this sort of evidence is adapted to give exercise to reason; for faith has no part in things which come within the known boundaries of the system in the midst of which we are called to act our parts. And here it should be understood that facts (intelligible in themselves) may, in the fullest sense, be supernatural, and yet when they are duly attested, in conformity with the ordinary principles of evidence, they as much belong to the system with which we are every day concerned, as do the most familiar transactions of common life.

The Scriptures do indeed make a demand upon our faith; but this is exclusively in relation to facts which belong to a world above and beyond that with which we are conversant, and of which facts we could know nothing by any ordinary means of information. Our assent to miraculous events, when properly attested, is demanded on the ground of common sense: the facts themselves are as comprehensible as the most ordinary occurrences; and the evidence upon which they are attested implies nothing beyond the well-known principles of human nature. If then we reject this evidence, we exhibit, not a want of faith, for that is not called for; but a want of reason. To one who affected to question the received account of the death of Julius Cæsar, we should not say “you want faith,” but “you want sense.” It is the very nature of a miracle to appeal to the evidence of universal experience, in order that, afterwards, a demand may be made upon faith, in relation to extra-mundane facts.

CHAPTER XV.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE PRECEDING STATEMENTS:—A MORNING AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

And now, at this stage of our progress, let the reader indulge the author to the extent of a page of metaphor or allegory.—Imagine then that we are standing on the margin of a mighty river, the opposite shore of which is scarcely visible; and as to the origin of this world of waters, it is far remote and is unknown:—as to the ocean into which it shall at length empty itself and its treasures—this is distant also, nor do we find it anywhere laid down in our maps. The flow of this river is tranquil—its surface is glassy; but upon this surface there float samples and fragments, innumerable, of the products of each of the countries which it has watered in its course:—here come rafts, laden with well-packed bales, and there, confusedly mingled, are things more than can be counted—torn away—rent—shattered—coated with rust—wrapped around with weeds. Moving onward, we see the symbols and the devices of nations long ago extinct, and the utensils of a forgotten civilisation, and the products of lands—thousands of miles up the stream; and these entangled with the symbols, the devices, the rare and curious products, of some country next above us. On the bosom of this mighty river there float samples of all things, and these commingled in all imaginable modes.

This is our day-dream:—now for the interpretation of it. We have imagined ourselves to be stationed in any one of the saloons of the British Museum; or that we are passing up and down, from one of these halls to another: and at length are coming to a rest in the centre of the New Reading-room. The countless collections of antiquities—marbles—coins—gems—utensils—weapons—costumes—the manuscripts—the illuminations, and the printed books—what are all these things, but so many relics of remote ages which, favoured by various chances, have floated down to this, our own era, upon the broad surface of the River of Time?

But are these tens of thousands—these hundreds of thousands of individual objects, are they so many disjointed and disconnected particles?—this is far from being the fact. It is a very small number of things, in this vast collection, concerning which an instructed Curator would acknowledge his ignorance, as to what it is, and to what age it belongs, and of what country or people it is a relic. As to a thousand to one of all the single contents of the British Museum, each of them links itself, either nearly, or remotely, with the nine hundred, ninety and nine, of its neighbours—right and left; or perhaps with some articles that are exhibited in the opposite wing of the building: as for instance—here is a coin, the legend upon which we should have failed to read, or to understand, had it not been that a Greek writer, of whose works a sole manuscript has come down to modern times, incidentally mentions a fact concerning some obscure town of Asia Minor, and its history, under the Roman emperors, of which otherwise we should have been ignorant.

Let us avail ourselves of another supposition, remote as it may be from the fact; and it is this—That the author, and the reader, of this book, whom we imagine to be now pacing together the saloons of the Museum, are possessed of that universality of learning, and that vastness of antiquarian accomplishment, which enables the gentleman at the centre table of the Reading-room to answer all inquirers, and to aid and guide them all in carrying forward their various researches. If, then, the author and the reader were gifted in any such manner as this, we might then, with a sort of second sight, or a veritable clairvoyance, look upon the countless stores around us as if they were all falling into an appointed order, or were obeying some natural law of mutual attraction and cohesion: as thus—there goes an almost illegible manuscript, attaching itself to a colossal sculpture—much as feathers stick themselves on to an electric conductor:—there are coins, arranging themselves spontaneously, like a crown of laurel leaves, around the brows of busts:—there are weapons and fragments of armour, edging themselves on to a copy of Polybius:—there are bits of a pediment, or the chippings of a column, claiming a standing-place upon the Greek text of Procopius—and why? it is because these fragments belong to an edifice of the times of Justinian, which he has described. And now, as to the printed books, and the manuscripts, whence many of the printed books drew their existence, if we will give way to the ideal for a few moments, we shall see them floating out from their shelves, in this vast circus, and knowingly arranging themselves, in a sort of pyramidal form, as if to exhibit their real relationship of quotation, and of reference, in the order of time—the more recent to the more ancient—the many to the few;—until the pile—made up of a million of books, is surmounted by the two or three that quote none older than themselves, and that are quoted by all.

What then is our inference? It is this: that as to the persons and the events—the doings and the notions—the thoughts and the ways—the customs and the manners—the philosophy—the literature—the religion—the politics—the civilisation, of the nations of all those ages which are comprehended within the limits of what is called the historic period—these innumerable matters are assuredly, known to us, at this time;—and they have become known to us with this degree of certainty (in the main) not by the precarious and insulated testimony of a few writers, whose works have reached modern times—we know not how; but very much otherwise than thus; for it is by means of the inter-related, and the mutually attestative evidence of thousands of witnesses—witnesses in stone and marble, in metallic substances, coins and brass plates, in membranous records, and in writings upon every other material, and in every imaginable fashion; and all these things are so netted together and so welded, and dove-tailed, and linked, and glued, and sealed, into a vast conglomerate, as that the combined testimony thence accruing in support of our voluminous historic beliefs is not less solid than are the granitic ribs of a continent; and is as various, and as rich, as all the products of its surface—its faunas and its floras.

So much for a momentary glance at the treasures, the vast accumulations of the British Museum;—but now we might usefully take the Synopsis in hand, and give attention to some few of the articles that are named in it. What we are in search of are those attestations of ancient written evidences, touching the persons, the events, the manners, the religions, of ancient nations, which come upon us—we might say, by surprise, and which are derived from sources altogether and in every sense independent, and unconnected, one with another.

Take with you, in one hand, your Tacitus, Sallust, Dion Cassius;—and in the other hand, your Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, and Ovid. These writers—the one set as historians, the other set as poets, build up to our view the throne, and its personages, of the Imperial Times—say, of two centuries, reckoned back from the life-time of the last of them. But through what channels have the books come into our hands? The editors of the printed copies assure us that there had come into their possession, in each instance, one, two, three manuscripts, that had been raked out of the forgotten heaps of this or that monastery, or other conservatory of curious articles. As to the greater number of these manuscripts, they could not be assigned to an age much beyond the ninth century; therefore, on the supposition that they are genuine works—the products of a time seven hundred, or a thousand years earlier, what the editor had under his eye must have been nothing better than a copy—from a copy—or perhaps, from several in succession! Is not this line of proof somewhat precarious? Ought we to trust ourselves to it?

Advance toward the left hand, from the entrance hall, and by the time you have moved on a dozen steps, the volumes in your hands, if they were gifted with consciousness, would begin to twitch and to jerk themselves about, as if uneasy in being held away from their old friends, right and left, whom they recognise, perched on the pedestals, and fixed to the walls. Whence is it that these solid antiquities have been brought hither? Not from those same lumber-vaults in the monasteries, or the royal libraries of Europe, whence we have received the aforesaid manuscripts;—not so, but from deep under-ground—from cavities—from underneath pavements, sixty feet or more lower than the present surface: they have been picked up in cornfields; they have been sifted from out of heaps of rubbish; they have been taken from the recesses of the houses of a city, buried by a volcanic eruption, many centuries ago. These manifold samples of an ancient civilisation have been fished up from the beds of rivers and the bottoms of lakes; and these recoveries have been effected in all these and many other modes over the extent of Europe, and of Southern and Western Asia, and of North Africa. There is no possibility therefore of calling in question this million-tongued testimony; we must not gainsay what is affirmed by these tongues of stone and of brass, of silver and of gold.

And the more, in any instance, the coincidence is slender and remote, or, as one might say, frivolous or unimportant, so much the surer, and the more to be relied upon is it, in what it does affirm: as thus—Look to your Synopsis, page 87, Compartment III.:—“A pig of lead, inscribed with the name of the Emperor Domitian, when he was consul for the eighth year, A.D. 82, weighing 154 lbs. It was discovered in 1731 underground, on Hayshaw Moor, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, half-way between an ancient lead-mine, north of Pately Bridge, and the Roman road from Ilkley (Olicana) to Aldborough (Isurium).” This pig had slept where he was dropped about 1,650 years.

“A pig of lead, inscribed with the name of the Emperor Hadrian, weighing 191 lbs.; found in 1796 or ’97, at Snailbeach Farm, parish of Westbury, 10 miles south-west of Shrewsbury.” Then follow some other pigs, whose slumbers underground have been more or less prolonged and profound.

“A pig of lead, inscribed with the name of L. Aruconius Verecundus, and the letters Metal. Lvtvd., probably the mine of Lutudæ. Found near Matlock Bank, in Derbyshire.”

“A pig of lead, inscribed CL. TR. LVT. BR. EX. ARG.; found with three other pigs and some broken Roman pottery, at Broomer’s Hill, in the parish of Pulborough, Sussex, January 31, 1824, close to the Roman Road, Stone Street, from London to Chichester.”

“A pig of lead, inscribed with the name of Britannicus, the son of the Emperor Claudius; found on the Mendip Hills, Somersetshire.”

So much for these pigs. What is it which they might say, if we were to bring them into court? Something of this sort: At this time, in the streets of the stannary towns in Cornwall, there are to be seen blocks—pigs of tin, stamped in a manner similar to the lettering of these pigs of lead in the British Museum. This stamping is effected for the purpose of securing the dues of the Duchy of Cornwall, and the symbols and the letters indicate the political fact that the Prince of Wales, as Duke of Cornwall, lays a hand upon every pound of tin that is smelted in the county; and thus, too, the stamping of the produce of the lead-mines of Britain gives evidence of the fact that the Romans were not merely resident in Britain at the time, but were masters also of the island, and the lords of its mineral products. Then the lettering itself finds its interpretation in the Roman imperial history, and this history comes into our hands, partly as it has been narrated by the Roman historians above mentioned; partly in the form of sculptures, statues, busts, and bas-reliefs; and partly, and very copiously, in the unquestionable form of the coins of the same emperors, which alone would suffice for putting us in possession of the series of events, greater and smaller, through a course of many centuries. But what the reader should here keep in view is this: that as our present thesis is—the safe and sure transmission of ancient books, by the means of often-repeated copyings, through the lapse of ages, an evidence to this effect—and it is the most conclusive that can be imagined or desired, is afforded us when, in passing through collections, such as those treasured in the British Museum, the Books in question are found to furnish a coherent, and a continuous, and an exact interpretation of these palpable and ponderous antiquities. Yet, it is manifest that, unless the books were in the main genuine, they could not have supplied any interpretations, such as are those which we find in them.

Go on now to the historical sculptures—the statues, and the busts of the imperial times. These, for the most part, are susceptible of authentication by means of the coins of the same emperors, which may be seen—by “order”—in another department of the Museum; the likenesses are indisputable, and the historic reality of the two samples of Roman art is thus far made good. But beyond this we may safely go. From the Roman writers—specially Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dion Cassius—we acquire what we need not doubt to be a true idea of the individual character, the temperament, the education, the public and private behaviour, and the style of the series of imperial persons, from Julius Cæsar, onward, to the times of each of these writers. What then is the verdict of our physiognomical instincts, when we compare the busts or statues, for instance, of Augustus and of Tiberius, of Nero and of Trajan? We could no more take these, one for the other, than we could misname the portraits of Philip of Spain, or the Duke of Alva, put by the side of George Washington, or John Howard; or misjudge those of Oliver Cromwell, and John Milton; or of Admiral Blake, and Alexander Pope. We need not wait until a science of physiognomy has been concocted before we may risk a guess in writing the names under portraits of Lord Chatham, Dr. Johnson, and Oliver Goldsmith. Mistakes, in single instances, may be made, but not in the long run; and when, on the one hand, we take the entire series of royal portraits, eastern and western, from the first of the Ptolemies to Charlemagne, and, on the other hand, the books of the series of contemporary historians, we shall receive, from this large collation of independent evidences, an irresistible conviction of the general authenticity of the latter; and therefore we must cease to entertain doubts on this question of the secure transmission of ancient books to modern times.

It would be of little avail here to cite a few single instances of the agreement of Roman coins with written history, for such instances are countless. The reader who would wish to inform himself, in whole, or in part, on this extensive subject, should take in hand a Medallic History of Imperial Rome, which, as compared with the medallic treasures of the British Museum, will give him aid in following the train of public events through five or six centuries, exhibited and verified by the double line of testimonies—the metallic and the literary. Or he may be content to take, as a sufficient sample of this species of proof, the facts he will find brought together in a small volume, “Akerman on the Coins of the Romans relating to Britain.”

There is another field upon which a gleaning, and more than a gleaning, may easily be made by help of the Roman poets as our guides. These writers—and we need name only Ovid, Horace, Virgil, and Propertius—are undoubtedly believed to have lived and flourished as the contemporaries of Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius. Their writings, as we have them now in our hands, are accepted as genuine; for the criticism which demonstrates the general integrity of the text (exceptions allowed for) is too erudite and careful to be called in question. Consequently, these writings have safely traversed a period of fifteen hundred years, ending with the date of the earliest printed editions: but this transit has been made by no other means than that of the copyists; and therefore, if, as we shall see, a super-abundance of various and independent evidences removes the possibility of our doubting the fact, then this mode of transmission, precarious as it may seem, is found to be trustworthy, and our main point is established—namely, That ancient books have indeed come down to modern times—whole and entire. Let us look, for a moment, to this corroborative evidence—such as we find it offered to the eye, in passing through the saloons of the British Museum.

The Roman poets were not, perhaps, themselves very firm believers in the Grecian mythology—considered religiously or historically: nevertheless, they took it up—such as it had come into their hands—and it was a splendid inheritance—a boundless treasury of bright conceptions of superhuman power, beauty, grace; a scheme of elegant sensuousness, with a touch of sublimity. Its fables, far more available for poetic purposes than any system of serious truths could have been, opened before the Roman poets a broad meadow land, in roaming through which the imitative, more than originative turn of the Roman mind, might gather fruits and flowers, ripe and gay, and which asked only to be taken and enjoyed. So it is, therefore, that in every imaginable mode of lengthened poetic narrative, and of transient allusion, and of direct and of allusive reference, the gods and the goddesses, and the demi-gods, and the heroes of Greece come up upon the stage of the Roman poetry. These repetitions—these borrowings or plagiarisms, and these flashing glances, are countless:—sometimes they are formal; sometimes they are informal:—they are broad daylight views in some places, and in places innumerable they are as sparks only—visible for an instant.

Now with what objects is it that these mythologic passages are in harmony?—with what is it that they correspond? Our answer is—With tens of thousands of relics of ancient art which, through channels altogether independent of those through which the books have reached us, have come, at this time, to fill, and to over-fill the cabinets and museums of Europe—and thus, also, our British Museum.

But then this mass of ponderable and visible evidences is inter-related in a very peculiar manner, which should be borne in mind. We have just now referred to the correspondence which connects the historic sculptures—the statues and the busts of Roman personages, male and female, and the likenesses of the same men and women which are so copiously supplied in collections of the Roman imperial mintage. But now we pass on to the Græco-Roman saloons—the first, the second, and the third, as well as the basement-room. These are filled with mythologic sculptures—recovered from the soil of Italy and Greece:—they show us, in inimitable marbles, those same divinities, the principal and the subordinate, which the mind of Greece had imagined, and which the Roman artists adopted: these beautiful creations we at once recognise as the celestial personæ with whom we have made acquaintance in the pages of the Roman poets: the conception of superhuman grace and power is the very same; and the attendant symbols are the same. And now furnish yourself with the requisite order for inspecting the collection of antique gems—precious (often) as to their material—precious, incalculably more so, by means of that exquisite taste and that inimitable executive skill which have made them what they are.

These microscopic sculptures, in consequence of the value of the material, and the costliness of the work, and from their smallness, and the facility of preservation, were eagerly sought after by the opulent at the very time of their production; and they have been most carefully hoarded in every age, by the same class of persons; and they have suffered far less injury in the lapse of time than antiquities of any other kind. Especially the intaglios—the indented sculptures, are, for the most part, as perfect and sharp now as they were eighteen hundred years ago. What is it, then, that these gems of art bring under our modern eyes?—it is the very same ideal personages of the same mythology;—and the symbols are the same, and the air, and the grace, and the attributes of beauty and power are the same;—there is the same sensuousness—there are the same ambiguous adventures;—there is the same poetry and the same art—poetry and art, admirable, indeed, how much soever it may be open to censure as to its moral quality.

Here then we have in view three independent, but perfectly concurrent and mutually interpretative evidences—namely, first, the sculptures, secondly, the gems, and then the books—the poetry. If, in examining one of these classes of antiquities, we find ourselves at a loss in attempting to decipher its symbols or its allusions, any such difficulty vanishes—in most instances—when we betake ourselves to another class:—as thus—the gem expounds the statue; or the poet, in a single verse, sheds his beam of light upon both. Thus it is that—with the three at our command—ANTIQUITY, throughout the rich and splendid region of its mythologies, stands unveiled before us! Must we not grant that so many coherences, and so many correspondences, and so many interpretative agreements—countless as they are—can have had their source in nothing but the realities of the age whence we believe them to have descended to modern times? But if it be so, then it is true that ancient books—to wit, the Roman poets—have been securely sent forward—thanks to the copyists!—from age to age, through all the intervening years of so many centuries.

If it were a volume that was now to be filled, instead of the few pages of this chapter, and if, instead of a morning at the British Museum, an entire season were to be diligently spent there, we should still want space and leisure for specifying a sample only of those articles which might properly be referred to in illustration of our present argument. Instead of doing so, we must move forward through the Elgin Saloon, only stopping to make this one observation—that these sculptures, and these bas-reliefs, and these inscriptions, would be to us, at this time, nothing better than a vast confusion—a mass of insoluble enigmas, if we did not carry with us the written remains of the Greek and Roman literature—the works of the historians, and the poets, and the dramatists, and the orators, which were the creations of that same age of refined intelligence, and exquisite taste, and artistic skill: but so it is, that the written memorials of that brief period are found to be available for interpreting the solid memorials of the same times, and these again for illustrating those. It was indeed a brief period: —it was a blossoming and a fruit-bearing summer month of the world’s dull millennial year; and during the long period that followed it—the autumn months, and the winter—there were none among the living who could either have written these books, or who could have chiselled these marbles; but the books in one manner, and the marbles in another, have separately floated down upon the billows of time; and here we have them, confronted under one roof—ten thousand witnesses, attesting the reality of ancient history.

From the classic antiquities we now advance, and enter the Assyrian Galleries. Everybody knows, or may easily know, in what way the sculptures, buried so many centuries, have now come to fill these long apartments, and how they thus find a resting-place under the roof of the British Museum. The places whence they have come, and the circumstances of their disinterment, are (as we must suppose) known and familiar to the visitor in whose company we are spending this morning in its saloons. This being so, and if, moreover, we may believe that he has become, in some degree, conversant with the literature of ancient Greece—especially with its historians—Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Diodorus, and also Strabo—he will be qualified to understand what we mean in speaking of that broad confirmation of the authenticity of ancient history which it receives from a glance at the contents of the “Assyrian Galleries.”

The above-named Greek writers, and these illustrated as they are by the contemporary literature, give us a distinct image of Greece, and of its people, with their intellectuality, and their religion, and their taste; and this portraiture is quite homogeneous in itself, and, as we have already said, it is corroborated and exhibited, in ten thousand instances, by the sculptures, and other objects found in the saloons we have just now visited. But now these same writers open up to us also—sometimes formally, and sometimes incidentally—a prospect, eastward, far over the regions outstretched beyond the limits of the Greek civilisation. In those illimitable expanses there existed a civilisation; but it was quite of another aspect; there was government, and social order; but these were wholly unlike the institutions of Greece. There were religions; but they breathed another spirit: they uttered other voices; they spoke of a different national economy. There was the same human nature; but it had been developed as if under conditions proper to another world.

Now I will ask my companion to tell me with what sort of feeling it is, that, in passing from the monuments of Grecian life, and the remains of its arts, he enters these Assyrian galleries. Does there not take place an involuntary impression to this effect—as if we were here setting foot upon the soil of another world? We have crossed the threshold that divides one phase or mode of human existence from another mode of it; there are here displayed before us the indications of a different climate, a different terrestrial surface; and the vegetation that covers it is of another class, nor are the animals that roam over it the same; and the human forms, and the visages, and the costumes, and the attitudes, and the occupations, and the rites, are of another mould. In these galleries we are surrounded with the symbols and the appendages of a sombre and remorseless despotism. Greece had its warriors and its heroes, and its many orders of mind, and each freely developed; but here the one master of prostrate millions of men is the solitary being: all things follow, or precede, or revolve around him: there is one will, and it carried its purposes unchecked, alike by reason or humanity.

Here then are the monuments of a world, such as that outlying and distant eastern world whereof we find scattered notices in the extant remains of the Greek literature. These notices serve as the interpretation, so far as they go, of these ponderous remains. The historians, the orators, the poets, flourishing under a refined civilisation, look over their enclosures, and they sketch, at points, the far-off barbaric civilisation of Asia, and we recognise, in the written memorials of that ruder social life, the features and characteristics of its sculptured memorials—as they are now in view.

These coincidences are, we say, an evidence at large of the authenticity of that portion of ancient history which might seem to stand most in need of corroboration. It is a broad witnessing to the truth. We might, however, descend to the particulars, and then might verify this proof in very many of its details; but we must go on, and only fix attention, for a moment, upon a single line of these confirmatory coincidences; and it is one which carries with it a momentous inference.

There is one body of extant writings which is not only of much earlier date than the Greek literature—earlier even than its traditions, but which sprung up within the circle of the Asiatic world; it is not Grecian—it possesses not the same merits, the same graces, or merits of a kindred order; it has its own. Asiatic it is; and yet it was so much insulated, and it was so decisively national, that the report it makes of the surrounding social economies, is, in a great degree, an independent report; it looks on, as from a distance. We may expect, therefore, to find in the Hebrew literature—in its historians, poets, and prophets—a reflection of Asiatic life, rather than a native or home-made exhibition of it; and such is the fact. The monster despotisms that had their seats by the side of the Tigris and the Euphrates, appear like phantoms of destructive power, as seen from the heights of Palestine. Now, what we affirm is this; that the idea we obtain, in perusing the Hebrew literature, of the Asiatic military despotisms, and of their horrific superstitions, is conspicuously realized—it is held out to our view with a vivid force and distinctness, as we walk up and down, gazing in awe upon these monstrous sculptures. The Hebrew writers denounce these destroyers of the nations; and now let us confess that they have pictured them truly; they have not calumniated those remorseless tyrants—even the men of these colossal busts and these bas-reliefs, when they recount their deeds of blood, their spoliations, and their oppressions.

Besides and beyond this—which we have called a broad confirmation of ancient history, and which arises spontaneously from the aspect of these Assyrian antiquities—it is well known, and we are supposing our companion to be aware of the fact, that, since the disinterment of these Assyrian sculptures, great progress has been made in the work of deciphering the inscriptions which appear upon many of them. At this time it may safely be affirmed that these records, inscrutable as they were thought to be, have spoken out their meaning. It is true also that these utterances from a long unknown world have fallen in with the testimony of written history—Grecian and Biblical, and that in relation, especially, to the latter, many highly significant coincidences have presented themselves, rewarding the patient intelligence of those who have laboured on this field. But to this subject we shall have occasion to return in a following chapter.

The marvels of the Egyptian galleries might lead us away even into yet another world; but we have already touched upon the subject (pp. 146, and following), and therefore hasten forward, making a momentary stop at one object only, namely, the celebrated “Rosetta stone,” thus described in the Synopsis:—

“The Rosetta stone, containing three inscriptions of the same import, namely, one in hieroglyphics, another in a written character, called demotic or enchorial, and a third in the Greek language. These inscriptions record the services which Ptolemy the Fifth had rendered his country, and were engraved by order of the Synod of Priests, when they were assembled at Memphis for the purpose of investing him with the royal prerogative. It is the key to the decipherment of the hieroglyphical and demotic characters of Egypt. This stone was found near Rosetta, and it appears to have been placed in a temple dedicated to Atum by the monarch Nechao, of the twenty-sixth dynasty: it is of basalt.”

The industry and the sagacity of a succession of learned men have so far availed (greatly by aid of the threefold inscriptions of the Rosetta stone) as that the history of Egypt, up to a very remote age, has been recovered, and has been carried to its place, so as to synchronize with that of the surrounding nations. Every such conquest, or, as we may call it, inroad upon the dark regions of bygone ages, gives a further confidence to our belief in the general trustworthiness of ancient written history. The ancient historians were indeed sometimes misinformed, or perhaps negligent in putting together their materials; nevertheless, on the whole, they have acquitted themselves as honest and intelligent witnesses.

In ascending the north-west staircase, we must not fail to notice several framed and glazed specimens of Egyptian writing, which enliven the walls. These manuscripts are on the Egyptian papyrus, the texture of the material in several instances being quite discernible. These should be looked at as furnishing the best possible illustration of the statements already made in general terms (Chapter V.). What we have there spoken of may here be (not handled indeed, but) seen.

It will now be time to bring our visit to the Museum to a close, lest we should be allured by its multifarious treasures—the memorials of all ages, to wander too far from our proper subject. Yet a glance must be had at the manuscripts that are exposed to view in cases in the saloons on the eastern side of the Museum. These manuscripts, to some of which we must hereafter make a reference, bring under the eye all those varieties of material, of decoration, and of character as to the writing, which already have been briefly mentioned. Among them we may find samples of the writer’s art, and of the art of the writer’s brother—the decorator, as seen in the illuminations; some of them are in the highest degree sumptuous and magnificent; others are more business-like:—a few that have held their integrity as books through sixteen hundred years, and many, during a thousand years. The summers and the winters—times of war and devastation—times of peace:—years of narrow risks from spoliation, conflagration, barbarian recklessness; and centuries, perhaps, when, throughout noiseless days and nights not a breath, not a hand, moved the dust that was always coming to its long rest upon the cover! So it has been that a safe transmission of the inestimable records of mind has had place, notwithstanding the mischances, the storms, the violences, the ignorance, and the neglects, of so many years.

CHAPTER XVI.
FACTS RELATING TO THE CONSERVATION, AND LATE RECOVERY, OF SOME ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS.

Some of the most ancient, and the most valuable of the manuscripts which at present enrich the British Museum, have been very lately acquired, being the product of the researches of learned travellers in Egypt, and in the islands of the Ægæan Sea, and the countries bordering upon it. These researches and these journeys have been undertaken expressly for the purpose, and with the hope of discovering, and of bringing away, some of those literary treasures which were known, or believed, to lie neglected, and almost forgotten, in the now dilapidated monasteries of Egypt and Greece. This hope has, to some extent, been realized, and these labours rewarded; as we may now briefly mention.

The desolate region which stretches away far to the west on the parallel of the Delta of the Nile, bears the marks of having been, at some remote period, and to a great extent, covered with water. The remains of this dried-up sea still appear, as small lakes, filling the cavities among the rugged hills that skirt the desert toward the valley of the Nile. Upon the margins of these lakes is found the Natron, which may be called natural salt-soap, and whence, also, large quantities of pure nitre are obtained. These lakes have received their designation from this natural product.

The district, Nitria, is frequently mentioned by ancient authors; as by Strabo (Book xvii.) and by Pliny (Book xxxi. 46), and again by the Church writers of the fourth and following centuries; especially by those of them who speak of the monastic institutions of their own times. Around these dreary waters the monks of that time established themselves in great numbers;—so many, indeed, that the emperor Valens, thinking that he could find a more useful employment for them than that of reciting the Psalter, enlisted as many as five thousand of them in his legions. But here, notwithstanding disturbances of this kind, these recluses continued to find a refuge from the world, and its temptations—or so they thought; and here, by the aid of grants from some of the better-minded of the emperors, or of opulent and religious persons, many religious houses were constructed; some of them being of ample dimensions, and so built as to be capable of resisting the attacks of the marauders of the desert; and as their precincts included spacious gardens, they might, for lengths of time, support the frugal life of their inmates, even if besieged.

As to these establishments,[5] we find incidental notices of them sufficient to assure us that, in some, if not in all of them, the copying of books afforded occupation to a class of their inmates; and that this was the fact, we now have evidence in the results of the researches above referred to. In some instances there has been enough of continuous life in a decaying monastery, even though the building may seem to be little better than a huge ruin, to maintain the “Copying-room” in some activity. In others, where a score of monks, or even fewer, have slumbered away their term of years, they have yet retained a vague traditionary belief in the value of the manuscripts which they knew to lie, in heaps, in some cell or vault, never visited, by themselves. In some cases the books, which had been huddled away from the library in a moment of danger, when an enemy was under the walls, have remained—safe and forgotten, in their concealment—perhaps for centuries. Thus it has been that—by the intellectual activity of one age, by the slumbering or the inert industry of the next period, and at length, by the utter mindlessness of centuries—the precious products of the ancient world have been conserved for our use in this age. May we not well notice and admire that providential interposition which, in these varying and precarious modes, has made us the inheritors of the wealth of the remotest times!

Among those modern travellers who have prosecuted these researches, one of the most eminent is the learned Tischendorff, whose labours in the field of Biblical criticism have become known to all readers in that line. This accomplished traveller directed his attention especially to the monasteries of the Natron Lakes. He visited them by joining himself to a caravan proceeding from Cairo to the Italian settlement, Castello Cibara.—“Shortly after daybreak,” he says, “we saw in the distance upon the left, in the middle of the Desert, a lofty stone wall, and still further on, a second. These were two of the Coptic monasteries. Presently afterwards one of the salt lakes glittered in the distance, with its obscure reddish blue waters, and a flock of flamingoes sprung out of its reeds. Upon the right was the Castello Cibara; in the background the low Libyan hills formed a dark-red border to the whole scene. About nine in the morning we reached our destination, and I found in the midst of the Desert a hospitable hearth.” What follows, although not closely related to our immediate subject, is not very remotely connected with it; and a few sentences further may be cited.

“In the afternoon we made an excursion to the fields and lakes of nitre. What a singular scene! In the midst of this sandy waste, where uniformity is rarely interrupted by grass or shrubs, there are extensive districts where nitre springs from the earth like crystallized fruits. One thinks he sees a wild, overgrown with moss, weeds, and shrubs, thickly covered with hoar frost. And to imagine this winter scene beneath the fervid heat of an Egyptian sun, will give some idea of the strangeness of its aspect.

“The existence of this nitre upon the sandy surface is caused by the evaporation of the lakes.... The nitre lakes themselves, six in number, situated in a spacious valley, between two rows of low sandhills, presented a pleasing contrast, in their dark blue and red colours, to the dull hues of the sand.... There are four Coptic monasteries at the distance of a few leagues apart. Ruins and monasteries, and heaps of rubbish, I observed scattered in great numbers throughout the district. I was told that there were formerly about three hundred Coptic monasteries in this desert.... Both externally and internally, these monasteries closely resemble one another. Sometimes square, at others in the form of a parallelogram, they are enclosed by walls tolerably high, and usually about one hundred feet long. From their centre a few palms frequently peer forth, for every monastery has a small garden within its circuit, and is also furnished with a tower slightly elevated above the walls, and containing a small bell.... Within the walls are seen nothing but old and dilapidated ruins, amongst which the monks find a habitation. The tower I have just described is insulated from the body of the monastery, and approachable only by means of a drawbridge supported on chains, offering thus an asylum against enemies, who may have mastered the monastery. This tower commands the entrance. The interior consists of a chapel, a well, a mill, an oven, and a store-room, all required in the event of a long siege, and the apartment assigned to the library.... Here and there, in the mural structure of the entrances to the cells and chapelries, we obtain a glimpse of the fragment of a marble pillar, or of a frieze, or some similar decoration. Thus has the sordid present been built out of the splendour and grandeur of the past.”

The scattered fragmentary remains of the architectural magnificence of a remote age may properly be regarded as so many attestations of those incidental notices of these same establishments which occur in the writers of that age; and thus it is that the literary evidence, touching the decaying and almost forgotten ancient manuscripts that have lately been dragged forth from their concealments, is found to consist well with the visible history of the structure wherein they have been so long conserved.

The learned traveller from whose journal the above citations have been made, had been anticipated in his search for manuscripts by several European scholars; and therefore it was little that he found available for his immediate purpose—the collation of manuscripts of the New Testament. What we are just now concerned with are those characteristics of Oriental stagnation and motionless decay, and of monastic persistence, which have been the very means of ensuring an undisturbed custody of literary treasures through the stormy passage of many centuries. The decrepit inmates of these ruins cherish the traditions of a more stirring time, and they are aided in doing so by the pictures of the saints and founders of those times. Some of these pictures are manifestly of great antiquity, and they have been conserved, with reverential regard, by each successive series of abbots and monks. Thus says Tischendorff:—

“The chief pictorial representations, in all the four monasteries (those visited by him), were those of St. Macarius and St. George. In the third, which bears the name of the Syrian, or the Virgin of the Syrians, St. Ephraim (Ephrem Syrus, whose voluminous writings are extant) is held in high honour. A tamarind-tree was there shown me, which had miraculously sprouted forth from the staff of St. Ephraim, who, upon entering the chapel, had stuck it into the ground outside. In the second, St. Ambeschun was represented as the patron. In the fourth, besides St. George, St. Theodore was represented on horseback, with the vanquished dragon beneath his feet.”

In speaking of the main object of his journey, the author says:—

“The special locality set apart for the library (in these buildings) is the tower chamber, which is accessible only by means of the drawbridge. No spot in the monastery could be safer from the visits of the fraternity than this. Here are seen (I speak of the first monastery) the manuscripts heaped indiscriminately together. Lying on the ground, or thrown into large baskets, beneath masses of dust, are found innumerable fragments of old, torn, and destroyed manuscripts. I saw nothing Greek; all was either Coptic, or Arabic; and in the third monastery I found some Syriac, together with a couple of leaves of Ethiopic. The majority of the MSS. are liturgical, though many are Biblical. From the fourth monastery (presently to be mentioned) the English have recently acquired an important collection of several hundred manuscripts for the British Museum, and that at a very small cost. The other monasteries contain certainly nothing of much consequence; yet much might be found to reward the labour of the search. The monks themselves understand extremely little about the matter. Not one among them, probably, is acquainted with Coptic, and they merely read mechanically the lessons of their ritual. The Arabic of the olden MSS. but few can read. Indeed, it is not easy to say what these monks know beyond the routine of their ordinary church service. Still their excessive suspicion renders it extremely difficult to induce them to produce their manuscripts, in spite of the extreme penury which surrounds them. Possibly they are controlled by the mandate of their patriarch. For my own part, I made a most lucky discovery of a multitude of Coptic parchment sheets of the sixth and seventh centuries, already half destroyed, and completely buried beneath a mass of dust. These were given to me without hesitation; but I paid for the discovery by severe pains in the throat, produced by the dust I had raised in the excessive heat.... The monks (taught at length to think much of the value of their literary treasures) are too much accustomed to the visits and to the gold of the English.”

Among these “English” whose visits and whose gold have spoiled the good monks of the Egyptian desert, one of the most noted is the Hon. Robert Curzon, jun., whose entertaining volume, published about ten years ago, has brought his amusing adventures to the knowledge of most people who read at all. Notwithstanding the notoriety of this distinguished traveller’s discoveries and his successes in the desert, it would be an omission of what is very pertinent to our argument, not to cite a few paragraphs from his account of his “Visits to Monasteries in the Levant.”

Preserved—a contradiction, as it may seem—by the very means of the neglect and ignorance, the stupidity and the recklessness, of those in whose custody they have been—the most valuable manuscripts have often been converted to the meanest purposes. A learned traveller, mentioned by Mr. Curzon, in inquiring for manuscripts, was told that there were none in the monastery; but when he entered the choir to be present at the service, he saw a double row of long-bearded holy fathers, shouting the Kyrie eleison, and each of them standing, to save his bare legs from the damp of the marble floor, upon a great folio volume, which had been removed from the conventual library, and applied to purposes of practical utility in the way here mentioned. These volumes, some of them highly valuable, this traveller was allowed to carry away with him, in exchange for some footstools or hassocks, which he presented to the monks.

Mr. Curzon visited the Levant in 1833, and the following years: his description of the monasteries near the Natron Lakes differs little from that of the traveller already cited; but he was fortunate in his researches, not merely as a first comer, but as more amply provided with the means of purchase, and also perhaps better skilled in the sort of diplomacy which the business in hand required. The Coptic manuscripts which he found in one of these monasteries were most of them lying on the floor, but some were in niches in the stone wall; all except three were on paper. One on parchment was a superb manuscript of the Gospels, with commentaries by the early fathers of the Church: two others were doing duty as coverings to a couple of large open pots or jars, which had contained preserves, long since evaporated. “I was allowed to purchase these vellum manuscripts, as they were considered to be useless by the monks; principally, I believe, because there were no more preserves in the jars.” On the floor was a fine Coptic and Arabic dictionary, which the monks would not then sell; but some years afterwards their reluctance was overcome by a more liberal offer. He prevailed, by aid of a tempting bottle, to get access to a long-forgotten cellar or vault, crammed with manuscripts in all stages of decay, but from which some were rescued, and brought away.

The description given by this traveller, first of the desert, and then of the contrast presented by the interior of one of these monasteries, will enable us to understand the attractions of this secluded mode of life to many who had retired to it from the troubles of the open world. To men of sedentary and literary habits, especially, it would be peculiarly attractive; and these would find their happiness through the round of long years, in the occupation of copying books. Mr. Curzon thus presents to us the contrast above mentioned. He says:—

“To those who are not familiar with the aspect of such a region as this, it may be well to explain that a desert, such as that which now surrounded me, resembles more than anything else, a dusty turnpike road in England, on a hot summer’s day, extended interminably, both as to length and breadth. A country of low rounded hills, the surface of which is composed entirely of gravel, dust, and stones, will give a good idea of the general aspect of a desert. Yet, although parched and dreary in the extreme from their vastness and openness, there is something grand and sublime in the silence and loneliness of these burning plains; and the wandering tribes of Bedouins who inhabit them are seldom content to remain long in the narrow enclosed confines of cultivated land. There is always a fresh breeze in the desert, except when the terrible hot wind blows; and the air is more elastic and pure than where vegetation produces exhalations, which, in all hot climates, are more or less heavy and deleterious. The air of the desert is always healthy, and no race of men enjoy a greater exemption from weakness, sickness, and disease, than the children of the desert, who pass their lives in wandering to and fro, in search of the scanty herbage on which their flocks are fed, far from the cares and troubles of busy cities, and free from the oppression which grinds down the half-starved cultivators of the fertile soil of Egypt.

“Whilst from my elevated position, I looked out on my left, upon the mighty desert, on my right how different was the scene! There, below my feet, lay the convent garden, in all the fresh luxuriance of tropical vegetation. Tufts upon tufts of waving palms overshadowed the immense succulent leaves of the banana, which in their turn rose out of thickets of the pomegranate, rich with its bright green leaves and its blossoms of that beautiful and vivid red which is excelled by few even of the most brilliant flowers of the East. These were contrasted with the deep dark green of the caroub or locust-tree; and the yellow apples of the lotus vied with the clusters of green limes with their sweet white flowers which luxuriated in a climate too hot and sultry for the golden fruit of the orange, which is not to be met with in the valley of the Nile. Flowers and fair branches exhaling rich perfume, and bearing freshness in their very aspect, became more beautiful from their contrast to the dreary arid plains outside the convent walls, and this great difference was owing solely to there being a well of water in this spot, from which a horse or mule was constantly employed to draw the fertilizing streams which nourished the teeming vegetation of this monastic garden.”

If we carry this picture back to those times when these Nitrian monasteries were entire in their structure, and were complete in all things proper to a well-appointed religious establishment—when imperial favour, and the patronage of the wealthy were at the command of the community—we may be inclined to think that the conventual life might seem enviable to many in those times, who were beating about in the storms of the open world. No doubt this tranquil existence had its charms, even for such as relinquished much when they buried themselves in a monastery. How attractive must it have been to those who lost nothing in making the exchange, and to whom the vow of poverty brought with it, in fact, an exemption from want, turmoil, labour, misery! It was thus that these establishments kept their cells ever full, and their refectory halls always furnished with guests.

The lively writer from whom we have cited the passages just above, appears to have received his idea of the founders of these religious houses from the absurd legendary literature of a later time. If he had only taken the pains to acquaint himself with the extant writings of some of these good men, he might perhaps have come to think of them more worthily, and then he would have abridged a little the ridicule he heaps upon them. As for instance,—the Great Saint of the Egyptian monks—St. Macarius, concerning whom, and his austerities, there is abundance of childish absurdity in the “Lausiac Memoirs,” and in other books of that class, is, on sufficient evidence, believed to be the author of Homilies and Treatises which indicate a sincere and a sober-minded piety, far remote from the extravagance and the foolish ostentation with which his later biographers have encumbered his better fame.

It is pertinent to our present argument to say, that the existence, in the fourth and following centuries, of works so substantially good as are those of this Macarius, and others, is indicative of a far higher condition of the Christian community, in those times, than we should imagine in looking into the monkish literature of later ages. In truth, it was the substantial merits of many of the early Christian writers that gave an impulse to the zeal and assiduity of the copyists. We have evidence of this in the frequent occurrence of the works of the principal writers of the fourth century, among the now neglected heaps of the Egyptian, and other monasteries.

From the same writer—Mr. Curzon, we may cite a description of an Abyssinian copying apparatus, and library, and the writers there employed—illustrative, as it is, of what has been affirmed in the preceding chapters.

The library, or consistory, of some Abyssinian monks was their refectory also:—

“On my remarking the number of books which I saw around me, the monks seemed proud of their collection, and told me that there were not many such libraries as this in their country. There were perhaps nearly fifty volumes; and as the entire literature of Abyssinia does not include more than double that number of works, I could easily imagine that what I saw around me formed a very considerable accumulation of manuscripts, considering the barbarous state of the country from which they came. The disposition of the manuscripts in this library was very original.... The room was about twenty-six feet long, twenty wide, and twelve high; the roof was formed of the trunks of palm-trees, across which reeds were laid, which supported the mass of earth and plaster, of which the terrace-roof was composed. The interior of the walls was plastered white with lime; the windows, at a good height from the ground, were unglazed, but were defended with bars of iron-wood, or some other hard wood; the door opened into the garden, and its lock, which was of wood also, was of that peculiar construction which has been used in Egypt from time immemorial. A wooden shelf was carried in the Egyptian style round the walls, at the height of the top of the door; and on this shelf stood sundry platters, bottles, and dishes for the use of the community. Underneath the shelf various long wooden pegs projected from the wall; they were each about a foot and a half long, and on them hung the Abyssinian manuscripts, of which this curious library was entirely composed.

“The books of Abyssinia are bound in the usual way, sometimes in red leather, and sometimes in wooden boards, which are occasionally elaborately carved in rude and coarse devices: they are then enclosed in a case, tied up with leather thongs; to this case is attached a strap for the convenience of carrying the volume over the shoulders, and by these straps the books were hung to the wooden pegs, three or four on a peg, or more if the books were small: their usual size was that of a small, very thick quarto.”

The labour required to write an Abyssinian book, it is said, is

“immense, and sometimes many years are consumed in the preparation of a single volume. They are almost all written upon skins; the only one not written upon vellum that I have met with is in my possession; it is on charta bombycina. The ink which they use is composed of gum, lamp-black, and water. It is jet black, and keeps its colour for ever. Indeed, in this respect, all oriental inks are infinitely superior to ours, and they have the additional advantage of not being corrosive or injurious either to the pen or paper. Their pen is the reed commonly used in the East, only the nib is made sharper than that which is required to write the Arabic character. The ink-horn is usually the small end of a cow’s horn, which is stuck into the ground at the feet of the scribe ... seated upon the ground, the square piece of thick greasy vellum is held upon the knee, or on the palm of the left hand. The Abyssinian alphabet consists of eight times twenty-six letters, two hundred and eight characters in all; and these are each written distinctly and separately, like the letters of an European printed book. They have no cursive writing; each letter is therefore painted, as it were, with the reed-pen, and as the scribe finishes each, he usually makes a horrible face, and gives a triumphant flourish with his pen. Thus he goes on letter by letter, and before he gets to the end of the first line he is probably in a perspiration, from his nervous apprehension of the importance of his undertaking. One page is a good day’s work; and when he has done it, he generally, if he is not too stiff, follows the custom of all little Arab boys, and swings his head or his body from side to side, keeping time in a sort of nasal recitative, without the help of which it would seem that few can read even a chapter of the Koran, although they may know it by heart.”

The habitudes of Eastern nations undergo so little change in the lapse of ages that, probably, these descriptions of things as they are now, would differ little from a similarly graphic account of the same operations, dated a thousand years back. Where the arts of life remain in their rude state, all those operations which depend upon them continue nearly the same. We may infer this from the identity of many implements and tools, such as are now seen in Museums, with those at present in use in the same countries; and the same inference is warranted by what we meet with in the illuminations of ancient manuscripts, which often exhibit the usages and methods of common life; just as we see those of China displayed in the decorations of its potteries, and its screens.

“The paint-brush used by the illuminators of Egypt is made by chewing the end of a reed till it is reduced to filaments, and then nibbling it into a proper form: the paint-brushes of the ancient Egyptians were made in the same way; and excellent brooms for common purposes are made at Cairo by beating the thick end of a palm-branch till the fibres are separated from the pith; the part above, which is not beaten, becoming the handle of the broom. The Abyssinian having nibbled and chewed his reed till he thinks it will do, proceeds to fill up the spaces between the inked outlines with his colours; ... the colours are mixed up with the yolk of an egg, and the numerous mistakes and slips of the brush are corrected by a wipe from a wet finger or thumb, which is generally kept ready in the artist’s mouth during the operation; and it is lucky if he does not give it a bite in the agony of composition, when, with an unsteady hand, the eye of some famous saint is smeared all over the nose by an unfortunate swerve of the nibbled reed.”

These descriptions of the oriental literary craft, may perhaps fail to bring before us what might have been witnessed in the copying-room of a Greek monastery a thousand years ago; but as to the technical part of the operation it was not even then in a much higher state of efficiency. For it appears that copies executed in what, to Europeans, seems the rudest manner—as to apparatus, and implements, and accommodation—are often of great beauty—the patient skill and adroitness of the scribe and artist, who is never hurried in his work, making up for the deficiencies of his appointments.

Mr. Curzon’s explorations in these Nitrian monasteries, although not the first that had been made by European travellers and scholars, had the effect of drawing the attention of learned persons afresh towards them; and the result has been to bring to light very many literary treasures which otherwise must soon have fallen into a state of irrecoverable decay. Of these restored treasures, a very remarkable example has just now come before the world; and the reader may inspect it, if he has the opportunity to take in hand a sumptuous quarto, entitled, “Remains of a very ancient Recension of the Four Gospels in Syriac, hitherto unknown in Europe; discovered, edited, and translated by William Cureton, D.D., &c., 1858.”

The account which the learned editor gives of this volume agrees well with that idea of the course of things in the Nitrian monasteries which has been brought before us in Mr. Curzon’s descriptions of what he found there. From his Preface we learn that—

“The manuscript from which the text of the Fragments of the Gospels contained in this volume has been printed, was one of those obtained in the year 1842, by Archdeacon Tattam, from the Syrian monastery, dedicated to St. Mary Deipara, Mother of God, in the valley of the Natron lakes. It consisted of portions of three ancient copies, bound together to form a volume of the Four Gospels, with a few leaves in a more recent hand, added to make up the deficiencies.”

A note added to the last leaf of the volume is such as is commonly found at the end of similar manuscripts. In it the copyist dedicates his labour to the glory of the Holy Trinity, and commends himself to the prayers of those who may read it—these rendered efficacious through the prayers of “the Mother of God, and of all the saints continually.” This note bears date in the year 1533 of the Greek reckoning, which corresponds with the year 1221 A.D. The leaf upon which this note occurs, and which contains some verses of St. Luke’s Gospel, is a palimpsest vellum, “which was formerly a part of a manuscript of the sixth or seventh century, and originally contained a portion of the first chapter of St. Luke, in Syriac.”

On the first leaf of the same volume, there is a note in a more ancient hand; to this effect:—

“This book belonged to the monk Habibai, who presented it to the holy convent of the Church of Deipara, belonging to the Syrians in the Desert of Scete. May God, abounding in mercies and compassion, for the sake of whose glorious name he set apart and gave this spiritual treasure, forgive his sins, and pardon his deficiencies, and number him among His own elect in the day of the resurrection of his friends, through the prayers of all the circle of the saints! Amen, Amen.—Son of the living God, at the hour of Thy judgment, spare the sinner who wrote this!”

The way in which this volume was put together is characteristic of the times in which it was done, and of that union of religious feeling and of literary (not heedlessness but) inobservance, which attach to the monastic mode of life after it has subsided into its inert and mindless condition. Dr. Cureton says that

“the volume containing the Fragments that are now published, were taken, as it would appear, almost by hazard, without any other consideration than that of their being of the same size, and then arranged, so as to form a complete copy of the Four Gospels. There were several other volumes in the Nitrian Library made up in this manner. The person who arranged them seems to have had no idea of selecting the scattered parts of the same original volume, which had fallen to pieces, but merely to have taken the first leaves which came to his hand, which would serve to complete a copy of the Gospels, and then to have bound them together. In this way it came to pass, that parts of three or four manuscripts were found mixed up with three or four others, written at different times, and by different scribes; and sometimes, indeed, not even of the same exact size, apparently without regard to any other circumstance than merely to render the context perfect.”

So far as could be done, this intermixture of leaves has been remedied, by bringing the corresponding portions of the same copy again into their original juxtaposition, so as to constitute continuous copies of several different manuscripts. Within the one volume, such as it had been obtained from the Nitrian monastery, there were included some leaves of thick vellum, apparently transcribed in the sixth or seventh century, and written in a very large, bold hand, with divisions of sections—some of very thin and white vellum, in a large hand, in two columns, similar to the former; but apparently rather older; and some in a different style and of other dates.

Dr. Cureton expresses his belief (as to portions at least) of what has thus been recovered, that they were transcribed in or about the middle of the fifth century; and that they represent a text—especially so far as concerns the recovered portions of the Gospel of St. Matthew—which has been unknown to European scholars; and is, therefore, “of the highest importance for the critical arrangement of the text of the Gospels.”

The use to be made of this ancient copy is not a subject properly belonging to this volume; but it will be well that the reader should bring into his own view the highly significant facts that are, as we may say, linked together in an instance of this sort. Let us then recount them: and we may do so with the more satisfaction, inasmuch as they are now so recently made public; and because, also, the instance, taken in all its circumstances, may stand as fairly representative of very many of those which constitute the evidence adducible in proof of the safe transmission of ancient books to modern times.

The Church writers of the fourth and fifth centuries make frequent references to the monastic establishments of the Scetic desert.[6] In these religious houses, well-ordered and amply furnished as they were in those times, the business of copying books was a principal occupation of such of the recluses as were inclined by their habits and tastes to pursue it. There are notices of these establishments from time to time, down to the Mahometan era; when, although some of the monasteries were dismantled or plundered, more of them were treated indulgently, or even reverentially, by the Arabian conquerors. Several Saracenic writers mention the Nitrian monasteries in a style of oriental encomium. With varying fortunes, the principal of them—that especially of St. Mary Deipara—maintained their existence, and were, at times, even in a flourishing condition, during what are called the Dark Ages. Great additions were made to the libraries, and particularly in the class of Syriac and Aramaic books, which had been brought from similar establishments in Mesopotamia and the remoter East. Incidental notices in evidence of the continuance, and, to some extent, of what we may call the vitality, of four or five of these Nitrian religious houses, may be collected from the writers, in succession, who refer to Egypt, and to its ecclesiastical affairs—down to modern times—or, as we should say, to the revival of learning in Europe. An Arabian author of the fifteenth century affirms that the monasteries, formerly a hundred in number, were, in his time, seven only; but he specifies that of St. Macarius, and speaks of it as a fine building, though its occupants were few.

From about this time, therefore—namely, from the fifteenth century, and until our own times—these ancient structures, with their dosing inhabitants, the mindless guardians of whatever they might contain—have remained as sepulchres, subjected to no other invasions or spoliations than those of Time. The dust of one year has settled down upon the dust of preceding years, in these oven-like vaults, through the tranquil lapse of four centuries. Some peculiar circumstances have contributed to ensure the preservation of the manuscripts hoarded in these tombs, and these ought to be kept in view. Among these are, first, the slumbering ignorance of the monks, together with the unknowing superstition with which they guard their libraries: along with this is the jealousy of the monks toward their abbots; the brethren always suspecting their superiors of an intention to purloin, and to make a commerce with, the books which were held to be the property of the community. Again, there is to be noticed a usage of the copyists, and of the owners of costly manuscripts—namely, that of subjoining a note to the last page of a book, imprecating curses upon any one who should dare, at any distant time, to dispose of, or to alienate the book for his private advantage. Not the least effective of these conservative circumstances has been this—that, in some instances, the entire contents of a monastic library have—in some moment of danger, while an enemy was thundering at the gate—been huddled into a cellar or a vault, and there covered with rubbish—safe for a hundred years or more. It was just in this condition that a large portion of the manuscripts which are now carefully preserved in the British Museum, was discovered by those who have lately succeeded in bringing them off.

In the lapse of these last four centuries, the monasteries of the Egyptian desert have frequently been visited by European travellers and men of learning. Among these was Robert Huntington, afterwards bishop of Raphoe, whose collection of Oriental manuscripts has found its home in the Bodleian Library: this visit was in the year 1678 or 1679. The celebrated Joseph Simon Asseman, in the year 1715, who had been preceded by his cousin Elias, examined these collections and brought away, to enrich the Vatican, a small number of books—Arabic, Coptic, and Syriac. About the same time the Jesuit Claude Sicard visited those of the monasteries that were still inhabited, and found the books packed in chests, covered with dust, and in a neglected condition; they were stowed away in the tower or keep (above mentioned).

In illustration of what we have said concerning the persistence of the monks in refusing to part with their books, we may cite the evidence of a traveller—the Sieur Granger, who visited the Natron monasteries in the year 1730. He says, that the buildings at that time were falling into decay, and the dust destroying the books and manuscripts, of which the monks made no use whatever. Their own patriarch had represented to them that the sum which the books would produce would be sufficient to enable them to restore their churches and to rebuild their cells: but they declared they would rather be buried in the ruins. Lord Prudhoe visited the monasteries in 1828. After much difficulty he got access to a chamber in which was a trap-door, through which he “descended, candle in hand, to examine the manuscripts, where books and parts of books, and scattered leaves, in Coptic, Ethiopic, Syriac, and Arabic, were lying in a mass, on which,” he says, “I stood.... To appearance it seemed as if, on some sudden emergency, the whole library had been thrown for security down this trap-door, and that they had remained undisturbed in their dust and neglect for some centuries.”[7]

In this manner it is that we feel our way from century to century, keeping an eye all the way upon those remains of a distant time, the safe transmission of which is our immediate theme. In this transit we are now reaching the shore of the times we live in. Those fragments of the Gospels which already we have mentioned, and many other highly important manuscripts, which are now in the British Museum, were obtained at different times by Dr. Tattam (Archdeacon of Bedford), who twice visited Egypt expressly for this purpose. In one of these monasteries, in a vault, the manuscripts and fragments of books covered the floor, eight inches deep, where they had laid, apparently, many years. As many as 317 books, entire or in part, were then purchased, and they safely reached their destination: most of them are on vellum; some on paper—all in Syriac, Aramaic, or Coptic; and these, with those before obtained, made 360 volumes of manuscripts. Some of these volumes contain two, three, or four distinct works, written at different periods, but bound up together:—altogether perhaps containing not fewer than a thousand manuscripts—derived from Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, and belonging to different times, from the fifth to the thirteenth century. In fact, it now appears that a few of them are of a much higher antiquity than the fifth century.

In the course of time, as the Mahometan influence extended itself throughout the East, and became more and more exclusive and intolerant, the Christian recluses of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Arabia gradually retired, or were driven westward, bringing with them, when they could do so, their books. Thus it was that the monasteries of the Egyptian desert became stored with these manuscripts in the languages of the East, and especially of Syria and Arabia.

The separate books of the Old and New Testament, or fragments of them, abound in these recovered stores. Liturgies, and Lives of the Saints, the spurious Gospels also, and the works of the early Christian writers, together with the canons of Councils, are also largely present among them; and altogether, many additions to religious literature, and some few to classic literature, have hence accrued. Among these recoveries, in the department of Christian literature, we should name the three Epistles of St. Ignatius—believed to be the only genuine epistles of this father. Fragments also of what are termed the Festal Epistles of St. Athanasius, in Syriac, have been found in the same manner; and the circumstances attaching to this one instance, as narrated by the learned editor, are so characteristic of the times and places which we have now in view, that they may properly be reported in this place; the more so because the publications in which these accounts first appeared, are of a kind rarely coming under the eye of general readers.

It was the custom of the patriarchs—and thus of Athanasius, during the forty years of his official life—to address a circular-letter each year to his clergy, informing them of the day in which the Easter solemnities were to be observed. Nothing more than some fragments of these Epistles, in the Greek original, had reached modern times. But it is now a Syriac version of many of them that has come to light.

The treasures of Syriac literature obtained by Dr. Tattam, in Egypt, as we have already mentioned, were deposited in the British Museum: it was a vast mass—a chaos of manuscripts and fragments; there were volumes, and parts of volumes, and single sheets, and torn fragments of sheets, large and small. This mass of commingled materials was consigned to the care of Dr. Cureton, as belonging to his department; and it became his duty to examine, and to report concerning the whole—a task which seemed to defy human skill and industry. This labour, which at first appeared to need no addition, was, however, afterwards doubled by the arrival of another mass, almost equal to the first; for the fact had transpired that the monks, who received payment as for their entire library, had contrived to hold back a large portion of the whole; which, however, was afterwards obtained by means of a further payment.

A laborious adjustment of these materials—part to part—resulted in bringing to light several Syriac versions of treatises of which the titles were known, but of which the Greek originals have been lost. Among these, and claiming to be noticed, are some of the writings of Eusebius, the ecclesiastical historian; and with them the Theophania, or “Manifestation of Christ,” of which an English translation has been published, by the late Dr. Lee. The manuscript of this Syriac work appears, by dates attached to it, to be not less than fifteen hundred years old, and in fact to have been written a few years only later than the time of the publication of the original treatise.

A curious circumstance connected with one of these ancient manuscripts is mentioned by Dr. Cureton. To one of the leaves of this manuscript—midway in the volume, there is attached a note to this effect: “Behold, my brethren, if it should happen that the end of this ancient book should be torn off and lost, together with the writer’s subscription and termination, it was written at the end of it thus: viz. that this book was written at Orrhoa, a city of Mesopotamia (Edessa), by the hands of a man named Jacob, in the year seven hundred and twenty-three, in the month Tishrin the latter it was completed; and agreeably to what was written there, I have written also here, without addition, and which I wrote in the year one thousand and three hundred and ninety-eight of the era of the Greeks.”

These dates, according to our era, correspond with the years A.D. 411, for the time of the transcription of the volume, and A.D. 1086 for that of the note. What this writer anticipated as probable did actually take place; for the end of the sheet containing the original note of the copyist had been torn off and lost; how small then appeared the probability that the actual fragment should have escaped so many risks of utter destruction, and that it should be recovered. Yet so it was! In the mass of fragments which were afterwards obtained, and brought to England, there were several bundles, promiscuously made up, and consisting of separate leaves or parts of leaves, which were in fact the gatherings and sweepings from the floor, after the principal volumes had been taken up.

“One by one,” says Dr. Cureton, “I untied the bundles (there were about twenty) and diligently and eagerly examined their contents. As I opened the fourth I was delighted at recognising two pieces belonging to one of the leaves of this precious book; in the next I found a third: and now, reader, if thou hast any love for the records of antiquity; if thou feelest any kindred enthusiasm in such pursuits as these; if thou hast ever known the satisfaction of having a dim expectation gradually brightened into reality, and an anxious research rewarded with success,—things that but rarely happen to us in this world of disappointment—I leave it to thine own imagination to paint the sensations which I experienced at that moment, when the loosing of the cord of the seventh bundle disclosed to my sight a small fragment of beautiful vellum, in a well-known hand, upon which I read the following words.”...

These words were those of the original copyist, which had been copied as above mentioned, and attached to another part of the volume, and which fixed its date to the time above stated. This note had itself been torn, yet enough of it remained entire to verify the facts that have been reported. The first sentence of this note is written in red, the second in yellow, and the third in black. Dr. Cureton thus presents to view the series of facts connected with this manuscript; and the statement of them, which we abridge, is quite pertinent to our present purpose. It was written in the country which was the birth-place of Abraham, the Father of the Faithful, and the city whose king was the first sovereign who embraced Christianity; it was written in the year of our Lord 411. It was subsequently transported to the valley of the Ascetics, in Egypt, probably in A.D. 931, and presented to the monastery of St. Mary Deipara. In A.D. 1086, some person with careful foresight, fearing lest the memorial of the transcription of so valuable a book should be lost, took the precaution to copy it into the body of the volume. At what time in the lapse of centuries this fear was realized is not known; but when the volume came to light in 1839, this had taken place; and in that year it was transferred from the solitude of the African desert to London. Three years later two fragments of it followed it to England; and in 1847, other portions were found and restored to their places in it; and then also the transcriber’s own notification of the date of his labours was found in a heap of fragments, and was attached to the leaf whence it had been torn. Through so many chances, and in traversing countries of Asia, Africa, and Europe, it has held its way through a period of one thousand four hundred and thirty-six years. Here then is an instance in point, establishing the fact of the safe transmission of ancient books to modern times.

Other instances, not less striking than this, are reported in the pamphlet whence we have derived the one here brought forward. One of these is that of a palimpsest, upon which was discovered the traces of a very ancient copy of the Iliad—legible beneath a Syriac version of an obscure author.

The subscriptions of the monastic copyists are characteristic of the times, and of the feelings of the men to whose assiduity we are indebted for whatever we possess of acquaintance with antiquity. The following may be cited as an instance, and it is one among many of a similar kind:—

“This book belongs to Daniel, a secular presbyter and visitor of the province of Amida, who gave diligence and procured it for the benefit of himself and of those who, possessed with the same object of love of divine instruction, may approach it, and desire to profit their lives by the truth that is in it. But the poor Simeon, presbyter and a recluse, who is in the holy convent of my Lord Simeon of Cartamin, transcribed it. May every one, therefore, who asks for it, that he may read in it, or write from it, for the sake of the love of God, pray for him who gave diligence and obtained it, and for the scribe, that he may find mercy in the day of judgment, like the thief who was on the right hand (of the cross), through the prayers of all the saints, and more particularly of the holy and glorious and perpetual Virgin, the Mother of God, Mary. Amen, and Amen, and Amen.”

Another of these subscriptions ends thus:—

“Whosoever removeth this volume from this same mentioned convent, may the anger of the Lord overtake him, in this world, and in the next, to all eternity. Amen.”

These imprecations were not impotent forms; for they took great hold of the minds and consciences of those who had the custody of the literary treasures of each monastery; and the instances are frequent in which a religious (we should not call it a superstitious) fear, availed to counterbalance the sordid motive to which collectors of MSS. made their appeal. Shall we either blame or contemn the needy brethren who professed their readiness to be buried under the ruins of their monasteries rather than violate their consciences by accepting gold for their books? These scruples—if such a word should be used in this instance—have at length given way, and Europe—or the learned throughout it—will turn to good account the spoils that have been thus obtained.

Just above ([p. 253]), we have brought forward an instance in which we are able, with certainty, to track our path from the Printing Press of this very year, in following upward the history of a Manuscript to the remote age of the copyist by whom it was executed. Another instance, varying from this in its circumstances, has just now made its long-desired appearance. What we refer to is Cardinal Mai’s edition—in five quarto volumes—of the celebrated Vatican Manuscript of the Old and New Testament (the former is, of course, the Greek of the Septuagint). It has long been known that the Vatican Library contained a manuscript of high antiquity, and great value; but which was guarded with so much jealousy that a glimpse of it—or, at most, a brief examination of a few places in it, was the utmost favour that could be obtained from the papal authorities. Several Biblical scholars had visited Rome for the express purpose of inspecting, or examining, these precious remains; but with little success. One of the last of these—Dr. Tregelles—thus describes it:—

“This MS. is on very thin vellum; the letters are small regularly formed, uncials; three columns are on each page (with some exceptions): the original writer placed neither accents nor breathings, but these have been added by a later hand; they are, however, so delicately written, and with ink which has so much faded in colour (if indeed it ever were thoroughly black), that some who have carefully examined the MS. have thought that the accents and breathings were not additions to what was originally written. It is, however, an established fact, that they did proceed from a later corrector: this is proved by microscopic examination, and also from their omission in places in which the later hand introduced a correction; and also it may be remarked, that if the original copyist had written these fine strokes with the same ink as the letters, they would, of course, have faded in the same proportion, and thus would now be discernible only with difficulty.

“The appearance of this MS. now is peculiar; for after the older ink had considerably faded, some one took the trouble of retouching the letters throughout; this was probably done to make them more legible for actual use. When, however, this restorer differed from the original copyist in orthography, he left letters untouched; and sometimes, he appears to have corrected the readings, or, at least, they are corrected in ink of a similar colour; and in cursive letters.

“This MS. is void of interpunction; and the only resemblance to it is found in a small space being left between the letters where a new section begins. The initial letters, as left by the first copyist, are not larger than the rest; but a later hand has added a large initial letter in the margin, and has erased (wholly or partially) the original initial.”

It is affirmed of this Vatican Manuscript, that “its antiquity is shown by its palæographic peculiarities, the letters even resembling, in many respects, those found in the Herculanean Rolls; the form of the book, the six columns at each opening resembling, in appearance, not a little a portion of a rolled book; the uniformity of the letters, and the absence of all punctuation:” all these points are regarded as indicative of a high antiquity. Dr. Tregelles adds that he had just received a single skin of an Hebrew roll; and the general effect of that portion of a book of the rolled form, when looked at by itself, singularly resembles one page of the Codex Vaticanus ... the history of this Hebrew fragment is peculiar, for it was found in a dry shaft beneath the Mosque of Omar, at Jerusalem—the ancient site of the Temple. The three columns contain Genesis xxii. 1—xxiv. 26. The material is a red skin, prepared for writing on one side only.

A faithful edition of this noted manuscript had long been looked for by those engaged in the criticism of the Scriptures; and this has at length been given to the world. During many years, the late Cardinal Mai had been engaged in accomplishing this task; and though he did not live to see it actually published, he had made provisions for its appearance. With what relates to the exactness of this edition we have nothing to do in this place:—it is said to be not altogether faultless; but perhaps it is as little chargeable with errors as ought to be expected, the immensity of the labour in carrying it through the press being duly considered.

The faultiness of the manuscript—the mischances, and the oversights of the original scribe, are matters immediately connected with our subject; and it may be proper briefly to refer to them:[8] in truth, a knowledge of the usual extent of such errors, and of the sources of them, tends decisively to strengthen a reasonable confidence in the general trustworthiness of the literary remains of remote times. So much of human frailty attaches to these, as to all other labours of the human head and hand, as should exclude a fond or superstitious regard to them;—yet the amount of error is far from being enough to shake our confidence in the genuineness and integrity of these precious relics of antiquity—taken as a whole.

Some considerable portions of the original copy have, in the lapse of ages, been torn away, or lost from it;—or in some way they have perished:—as to the deficiency at the end, the wanting books may perhaps never have been added:—these are the concluding portions of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the three Pastoral epistles, and the Apocalypse. These chasms have, however, been supplied by copyists of a later age. The errors of the original copyist are such as must attach to labours of this kind, in which the writer either trusts to his eye, in looking to his exemplar; or to his ear, in listening to a reader. Each mode has its disadvantages; in the one case, words of similar appearance are easily taken, the one for the other, even when the substitution may have been productive of an absurd reading;—for the mind of the writer may have gone for a moment—like the fool’s eyes—to the ends of the earth. In this mode also a clause may easily have been omitted, or even an entire line dropped out of its place. In the latter mode—when a reader dictates, word by word—to the writer, the same mischances may have had place; and in addition to these, there will be the mishearings of the scribe, and the faulty enunciations of the reader. On the whole, the errors are such as indicate, what man at the best is liable to—momentary lapses of attention, notwithstanding even a high rate of habitual accuracy, and of conscientious care; they are not more than may thus be accounted for; and as to the damage thence arising, it is quite inconsiderable; for while one copyist nods, another is awake; and as to the Scriptures, the abundance of manuscripts, and of quotations, and of ancient versions, is such as to reduce the instances of really ambiguous and important readings to a very small number; and of these—few as they are—very few affect at all any article of our belief, or any moral precept. The general inference is this—that, while the aids of erudite criticism are indispensable, for securing to us the possession of a text—the best that may now be possible—no text which it is possible at this time to obtain, can deserve that sort of superstitious regard with which some religious persons would fain look at the Bible in their hand. The most faulty text in existence may safely be regarded as a true and trustworthy conveyance of the message of eternal life; and also as a true and a trustworthy expression of that moral code according to which all actions will be judged. Souls will not perish, nor even be endangered, through erroneous readings; nor in any single instance will it appear that the conduct and temper that are becoming to a Christian will have been tarnished, or in any manner made less ornamental, because an ancient transcriber of the Gospels or Epistles has written ἡμεῖς, where he ought to have written ὑμεῖς.

The history and description of several noted ancient manuscripts of the Scriptures, similar to that of this Vatican Manuscript, might here be brought forward, if it were useful to do so; but, in regard to our present purpose, it may be more serviceable to fix the reader’s attention upon this one instance, and to insist, for a moment, upon the value of the facts, of which it is a sample.

We have then before us—let us suppose it—now on our table—five bulky quarto volumes, printed at Rome about fourteen years ago, but just now brought forward. These volumes contain the Greek version of the Old Testament—the Septuagint—and the Greek of the New Testament—and the editor informs us that they are printed from a manuscript which has long been stored in the Vatican library. This manuscript has in fact been seen, and in part examined, by a succession of European scholars, during the course of three centuries past; and a portion of it was long ago given to the world in a printed edition. At what time, or in what manner, this manuscript came to be where now it is found, is not known, nor are these facts of much consequence; for when it is examined by those whose studies and habits have made them familiar with literary antiquarian relics—those who “by reason of use have their senses exercised” to judge of things that differ, such persons, in narrowly inspecting the material—the vellum—the ink—the form and disposition of the colours—the character of the letters—the juxta-position of words—the species of sectional division, as compared with the sectional divisions prevalent at different times:—these and other minute characteristics being considered—these skilled persons differ little in their judgment as to the date of the manuscript, and agree in fixing a time about the middle of the fourth century, when it passed from under the hand of an assiduous, and, on the whole, a careful copyist. We are landed, therefore, let us say—in the mid years of that century when Christianity had everywhere got the ascendancy; or some time during the reigns of Constans and Constantius.

Now the possession of so large a quantity of very costly material—the finest vellum, and the command of so much time as must have been employed in executing a careful and uniform copy, in uncial letters, of the Old and New Testament, are evidence of the fact that the copyist was in a position favourable for accomplishing his task in an efficient manner; nor can it be doubted that he would take proportionate care to select a manuscript—as his exemplar—the best he could find. Probably he would provide himself with several such manuscripts for purposes of collation, in doubtful instances; he would seek for the oldest manuscripts that might be then obtainable. In supposing so much as this, we assume only what it is reasonable to assume. But a manuscript which, in the middle of the fourth century, would be accounted ancient—we are now thinking of the New Testament—must have been, at the least—a hundred and fifty, or two hundred years old. We have now in our hands a great number of MSS. that are undoubtedly more than a thousand years old—two hundred years therefore comes far within the range of the ordinary longevity of books on vellum.

Take it as probable that the copyist whose labours are before us in the Vatican Manuscript, had on his table manuscripts that were two hundred years old, and then these will have been executed during the reign of Antoninus Pius, and in Egypt probably. But now I have on my table what may enable me to form an opinion of the value of the manuscripts which the transcriber of the Vatican Manuscript had then his table; for I have before me the voluminous works of the Christian writers of that very time—such as Justin Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras, Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, Hermias, Origen, and others:—not to come down to a later time. These works have reached modern times through various and independent channels; they have come abroad, drawn forth from hiding-places, widely apart. But now these various writings abound with quotations from the canonical books; and although these quotations are not always exact in the wording, they are mainly identical with the text of the Vatican Manuscript. I turn to one of the above-named writers—Clemens Alexandrinus. The passages in the Old Testament which he either refers to explicitly, or quotes verbatim, are so many, that they make a list which fills not fewer than twelve folio pages, double columns. Now, in turning to the places where these citations occur, and in comparing them with the Vatican Septuagint, I find them to correspond, word for word, in a large proportion of instances. Clement, it is evident, had before him a Greek version of the Old Testament, which was mainly the same as the manuscript from which the Vatican MS. was derived. But now, if it might be imagined that a modern editor of Clement had made alterations in the text, with the view of bringing these quotations into conformity with the Vatican Septuagint, any such supposition as this is excluded by the fact that, in frequent instances, there are variations in the wording of quotations; it hence appears that the editor has not done what I might conjecture that he would do. Besides, it is not one ancient writer, but very many that quote the Old Testament freely, and frequently; sometimes they do so with perfect accuracy, sometimes with less care; but yet they do it so as to furnish over-abundant evidence of the fact that the Greek version of the Old Testament, such as we now find it in the Vatican Manuscript, was familiarly known to, and was in the hands of, the Christian community at that early time;—as it had been for centuries before that time.

We have thus adduced a few instances in which the history of particular manuscripts may be traced up from the present time to a remote age—some a thousand—some fourteen hundred years. Many similar instances might be brought forward, if it were thought necessary, or even useful, so to do; but the reader, if indeed he wishes to acquaint himself more fully with facts of this class, may easily do so by looking into the catalogues that have been published of the manuscripts contained in the principal libraries of Europe; or, not to travel far—the Bodleian, Oxford; or that of the British Museum. The manuscripts in the Museum are the Cottonian, the Harleian, those of the King’s Library, Ayscough’s, Hargrave’s, and the Lansdowne MSS., of all which collections separate catalogues have been published. There are, besides, in the Museum, several collections of Oriental manuscripts, and many recent additions, such, for instance, as those that have lately been obtained from the Nitrian monasteries, and which have been mentioned above.