"No, not for me, mine honored mother, pour
The luscious wine, lest thou unnerve my limbs
And make me all my wonted prowess lose.
The ruddy wine I dare not pour to Jove
With hands unwashed; nor to the cloud-girt son
Of Saturn may the voice of prayer ascend
From one with blood bespattered and defiled."
We close our extracts with a few lines from book third. Priam, sitting with "the sage chiefs and councillors of Troy" at the Scaean gate watching the hostile armies, thus addresses Helen:
"'Come here, my child, and sitting by my side,
From whence thou canst discern thy former lord,
His kindred and his friends (not thee I blame,
But to the gods I owe this woful war),
Tell me the name of yonder mighty chief
Among the Greeks a warrior brave and strong:
Others in height surpass him; but my eyes
A form so noble never yet beheld,
Nor so august; he moves, a king indeed.'
To whom in answer, Helen, heav'nly fair:
'With rev'rence, dearest father, and with shame
I look on thee: oh, would that I had died
That day when hither with thy son I came,
And left my husband, friends, and darling child,
And all the loved companions of my youth:
That I died not, with grief I pine away.
But to thy question; I will tell thee true;
Yon chief is Agamemnon, Atreus' son,
Wide-reigning, mighty monarch, ruler good,
And valiant warrior; in my husband's name,
Lost as I am, I called him brother once.'"
LIFE OF MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO. By William Forsyth, M.A., Q.C., author of "Hortensius," "Napoleon at St. Helena and Sir Hudson Lowe," "History of Trial by Jury," etc., and late fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Two volumes, 8vo., pp. 364 and 341. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.
Mr. Forsyth has a very correct notion of the business of a biographer. His object has been not only to tell Cicero's history but to describe his private life—to make us acquainted with minute details of his domestic habits, and to represent him as far as possible in the same manner as he would a man of the present generation. "The more we accustom ourselves," he says, "to regard the ancients as persons of like passions as ourselves, and familiarize ourselves with the idea of them as fathers, husbands, friends, and gentlemen, the better we shall understand them." He has therefore carefully gathered up from the letters and other writings of the Roman orator those little bits of personal allusion, domestic history, and unconsidered trifles which indicate, more clearly sometimes than important actions, the bent of one's mind or the inmost character of one's heart; and he has arranged them with great skill, and a good eye for effect. He shows but slight literary polish; his style is not elegant, nor always clear, nor even dignified; but he has a logical way of putting things, a happy knack of arrangement, and a habit of keeping to the point and throwing aside superfluous matter, for which we dare say he is indebted to his training as a pleader in the courts. As a lawyer, too, he is specially qualified to give the history of the causes in which Cicero's orations were delivered; and this he does better than we have ever seen it done before, explaining the narrative by copious illustrations from modern jurisprudence. But if in some respects he writes like a lawyer, in another very important point his practice as an advocate seems not to have affected him. He is thoroughly impartial. He sums up Cicero's character more like a judge than a queen's counsel. He admires him but not blindly; holding the safe middle path between the excessive veneration shown by Middleton and Niebuhr and the unreasonable animosity of Drumann and Mommsen. He admits that Cicero was weak, timid, and irresolute; but these defects were counter-balanced by the display, at critical periods of his life, of the very opposite qualities. In the contest with Catiline and the final struggle with Antony he was as firm and brave as a man need be. One principal cause of his irresolution was an anxiety to do what was right. If he knew that he had acted wrongly, he instantly felt all the agony of remorse. His standard of morality was as high as it was perhaps possible to elevate it by the mere light of nature. The chief fault of his moral character was a want of sincerity. In a different sense of the words from that expressed by St. Paul, he wished to become all things to all men, if by any means he might win some. His private correspondence and [{574}] his public speeches were often in direct contradiction with each other as to the opinions he expressed of his contemporaries. His foible was vanity. He was never tired of speaking of himself. As a philosopher he had no pretensions to originality, but he was the first to make known to his countrymen the philosophy of Greece, which until he appeared may be said to have spoken to the Romans in an unknown tongue. He adhered to no particular sect, but affected chiefly the school of the new academy. He was a firm believer in a providence and a future state. As an orator his faults are coarseness in invective, exaggeration in matter, and prolixity in style. "Many of his sentences are intolerably long, and he dwells upon a topic with an exhaustive fulness which leaves nothing to the imagination. The pure gold of his eloquence is beaten out too thin, and what is gained in surface is lost in solidity and depth."
The position of Cicero with respect to the political parties into which the republic was divided in his time is not so well described as his personal character. While Mr. Forsyth displays industry and good judgment in collecting and arranging the little traits which go to make up a life-like portrait, he lacks the comprehensive and philosophical view with which Merivale has recently surveyed the same period of history. Forsyth writes as one who, having mingled with the busy crowd in the forum, should come away and tell us what he had seen and heard, and describe the men with whom he had talked. Merivale surveys the scene from a distance; and though his perception of individual objects is less distinct than Forsyth's, his view is broader and takes in better the relative situations and proportions of the various features spread out before him. Both are excellent in their kind: the historian is the more instructive, the biographer the more entertaining.
BEATRICE. By Julia Kavanagh, author of "Nathalie," "Adele," "Queen Mab," etc., etc. Three volumes in one. 12mo., pp. 520. New York: D. Appleton & Company.
The readers of "Adele" and "Nathalie" will hardly be prepared for what awaits them in the novel now upon our table. Miss Kavanagh has won a high reputation by her delicate pictures of quiet home life, and thorough analyses of female character. But lately the prevailing thirst for sensational stories appears to have enticed her away from the old path, and led her to attempt a style of novel which will no doubt please the majority of readers better than her earlier efforts, though as a work of art it is inferior to them. It is by no means however a merely sensation story. The heroine is painted with all Miss Kavanagh's accustomed clearness and skill; although the uninterrupted series of plots and counterplots, the dramatic terseness of the dialogue, and the effectiveness of the situations, tempt one to forget sometimes, in the absorbing interest of the narrative, the higher merit of vivid and truthful drawing of character. That of Beatrice is charmingly conceived, and admirably worked out, recalling those delightful heroines who first gave Miss Kavanagh a hold upon the popular heart. Beatrice is a spirited, proud, natural, warm-hearted girl, born in poverty and fallen heiress unexpectedly to great wealth. Her guardian and step-father, Mr. Gervoise, subjects her to innumerable wrongs in order that he may get possession of the property. Poison even and a mad-house are hinted at. The book is principally a narrative of battle between the defenceless girl and this villain. Our readers who may wish to know how the struggle ends are referred to the book itself; they will have no reason to regret the time they may spend in reading it.
GRACE MORTON; OR, THE INHERITANCE. A Catholic Tale. By M.L.M. 12mo., pp. 324.
THE CONFESSORS OF CONNAUGHT; OR, THE TENANTS OF A LORD BISHOP. A Tale of our Times. By M. L. M., author of Grace Morton, etc. 12mo., pp.319. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Company.