suspended rancour of Tiberius, (Tacit. Annal. i. 69,) for display in proper time and place. But this practice, which has in its favour the high recommendation of Lord Brougham, however useful to public speakers, as the loci communes were to the old rhetoricians, or introductory to a general literary subject, is wholly irreconcileable with the termination of a great work, retrospective in its purpose and contents to a foregone relation, which supplied its materials and formed its basis. Conclusions should not forestall premises; and to no mind or habit was so preposterous and illogical a proceeding less congenial than to Gibbon's.

We may, truly, yield implicit credence to Gibbon's assurance, that his disclaimer was not dictated by flattery; for the ill-fated Louis was then a prisoner in the Temple, whence he was shortly after led to execution; the advertence to the monarch's situation being obviously referable to that period. And we may, likewise, easily believe, that the similitude to the imperial incapacities of the successors of Theodosius rather embraced the junior or more southern branches of his race than Louis himself, or applied retrospectively to his predecessor Louis XV. and this ground of disavowal would have been quite plain and sufficient. Sympathy, however, for fallen greatness urged Gibbon to go further, and to prove, not only that the offence was not meditated, but that it was impossible in relation to Louis, who had not then ascended, and consequently could not have slumbered on the throne. With this view, he probably overlooked the opposing dates, and committed an error of memory-a μvημovíкov aμáρтημа—as Cicero (ad Atticum, xiv. 5) accuses himself of; for I do not arraign him, like Goldsmith, (Gentleman's Magazine for July 1837,) of fabrication, but oblivion. But if, in this respect, the advantage is on the side of Gibbon, he, on the other hand, is far, indeed, from possessing the clearness and simplicity of my countryman's style "liquidus, puroque similimus am

ni," (Hor. Epist. ii. 2,) as the ambiguity of this disavowal, which he substantially makes, while declaring that he will not do so, amply shews, and as it would be easy to illustrate by abundant quotations. Thus, in his Memoirs, p. 48, the love of antithesis betrays him into something bordering on a blunder, when he says, "I have never possessed or abused the insolence of health; "—but how he could abuse what he did not possess, is not very intelligible. The opening paragraph of his History presents, 1 observe, the same thought, but free in construction from the hibernian point involved in the former phrase. "Their (the subject nations) peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury; " and, in his Memoirs, p. 303, he repeats that he never knew "the madness of superfluous health.”

No English writer, at the same time, abounds with more pregnant evidence of the power and copiousness of our tongue-none more eloquent, more condensed or energetic in its use. He is peculiarly felicitous in his translations; for there, as has been said of the Italian interpreters of the classics, his imagination is coerced, without impairing the riches and command of his language. His occasional versions of Tacitus are admirable, as may be seen in chapter 9 of the "Decline and Fall;" and it would be difficult, indeed, to produce anything superior to his translation of Montesquieu's beautiful illustration of the power of religion"Un prince, qui aime la religion, et qui la craint, est un lion qui céde à la main qui le flatte, et à la voix qui l'appaise." (Esprit des Lois, liv. 24, ch. 2.) This passage, which forms part of a more extended parallel, has been applied by Gibbon (chapter 28) to Theodosius, bowed in submission to St. Ambrose's repulse, after the massacre of Thessalonica, and is thus exquisitely rendered. Prince who is actuated by the hopes and fears of religion may be compared to a lion, docile only to the voice and tractable to the hand of his keeper.'

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cannot refrain from some observations suggested by Lord Brougham's recent second volume of Statesmen, where, at page 218, he maintains, that, save his Confessions, the citizen of Geneva wrote in inferior French. With all due respect for his lordship, I cannot hesitate to express my surprize at such an opinion, or to qualify it as one utterly unwarranted by any native authority, and hazardous, indeed, on the part of a foreigner, whose opportunities of acquiring a right to pronounce so depreciatory a judgment on, with the single exception of Voltaire, the most popular author in France, must have been very limited. No one can deplore, more than I do, Rousseau's abuse of his power of language; but his possession of it, in the highest degree and purest style, is undeniable. A few provincialisms may be traced, with some antiquated idioms from Montaigne and Amyot, which were the adoptions of his choice, as more infusive of strength, and surely not the indications of an inferior or exhausted vocabulary. And, when his lordship appeals to the Nouvelle Heloise, in support of his sentiments, he forgets that the personages of this romance are made to use the language suited to their position; for Rousseau anticipates the objection, in express 'Quiconque," says he, in the preface, "veut se résoudre à lire ces lettres, doit s'armer d'avance de patience sur les fautes de langue: il doit se dire que ceux qui les écrivent ne sont pas des François, des beaux esprits, des académiciens

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des provinciaux, des étrangers.' He claims indulgence for simple, unsophisticated inhabitants of remote Switzerland, though the book still teems with passages of splendid eloquence. But has the learned Peer never read Rousseau's "Discours sur l'Inégalité des Conditions," with its unrivalled dedication; or "L'Emile ;" or again, "Le Devin du Village ;" all, in their kind, compositions which place him in the foremost rank of French writers, and forbid the pretension to superiority by any other? I might challenge the concurrent eulogies of almost every French critic, even of La Harpe, his bitter enemy, in disproof of Lord Brougham's undervaluing opinion; but it would be a superfluous appeal; and I need only add the pre-eminence attributed to Rousseau by Buffon-" ce que nous recommendons, Rousseau commande." And Buffon's own majestic style authorised him to pronounce decisively on the subject, which, singularly enough for a great naturalist, he chose for his discourse of admission into the French Academy, and to which he assigned such power as to make it the criterion of the human character-"Le style, c'est l'homme," was his definition. “Ἕκαστος δὲ κρίνει καλῶς ὁ γίνωσκει, (Aristot. Eth. Nic. 11-31,) I am emboldened, on such an occasion, to observe to his lordship, who well knows, "how dangerous a thing it is for the artist most expert in his own line to pronounce an opinion on matters beyond it." The text is in his lordship's Statesmen, first se

ries, page 404; and he can best tell where, as Junius (letter 25) expresses it, to look for the commentary.

Resuming my observations on Gibbon's French style, I have to add, that his long disuse of the language, while resident in England, did not impair his mastery of the idiom, as his "Mémoire Justificatif," or manifesto on the war with France, and his correspondence with his friend Deyverdun, demonstrate; and he was well warranted in maintaining, (Life, page 147,) that, after a long and laborious exercise of his own language, he was conscious that his French style had been ripened and matured. It was thus that the Jesuit Mariana wrote, with equal purity, in Latin and Spanish, the history of his country.

Gibbon passingly adverts to the few Englishmen who had attempted both languages, to whom Mr. Milman annexes the names of Mr. Beckford and Mr. Hope, whose Vathek and Anastasius were originally written in French; but I am always rather suspicious, I confess, of the potency and appliance of wealth in the acquirement of literary laurels. When, however, the Rev. Editor represents the translation of Hudibras by Mr. Townley as the most extraordinary effort of composition in a foreign language by an Englishman, I am bound to say, that he metes its value more by the difficulty than the merit of the performance. It never answered its purpose, for it was seldom read, and was little calculated to convey a competent impression of the original to our neighbours. (See Gentleman's Magazine for April 1838.) Mr. Townley, who died in 1782, had long served in the French Army. (Burke's Cómmoners, vol. ii. p. 265.) It was similarly that the proscribed Huguenots, under Louis XIV. adopted the language of the land that gave them refuge. "La patrie est aux lieux où l'âme est enchainée," and amongst them we may name Boyer, the author of the Dictionary-the Life of King William III. (which contains a fair narrative of the massacre of Glencoe,) &c. with Des Maiseaux, one of the compilers of the General Historical Dictionary, and many others: Psalmanazzar, though no Huguenot, was

a Frenchman by birth, who acquired the perfect use of our language; and, of more recent times, we have the Count de Noé, Peer of France, but educated, as the companion of his father's emigration, in England, and author of the History of the Expedition under Sir David Baird, to join our army in Egypt, in 1801. He speaks and writes the English, as I can from personal knowledge assert, with equal purity. I might add the Spaniard Trueba, and several more.

But great as, doubtless, was the command in composition of Gibbon over a foreign tongue, and it was not less so in colloquial use, the first intonation of his voice betrayed his alien accent, as I had an opportunity of witnessing in an accidental meeting at Schaffhausen in 1793, on his return to England under the terrors of the French Revolution. I was, indeed, rather surprised at the circumstance, as he had been removed to Lausanne at so early an age; but it has been remarked, that the English organs of speech are by no means so pliant, or prompt in appropriating the native pronounciation of other people, as the Irish. The late George the Fourth, however, was a signal exception; for he was perfectly undistinguishable from a Frenchman, as I have heard several French noblemen observe; one of whom related to me a little anecdote, which shewed the point and elegance of the Prince's expression in the language. Among the guests whom, on a particular occasion, he entertained at his table when Prince of Wales, was the emigrant archbishop of Narbonne, Dillon, of Irish origin, but little acquainted with our tongue. The late King William, then Duke of Clarence, was also there, and, regardless of the presence, as might be supposed in a blunt sailor, of the prelate, as well of the art which can veil and array in delicacy of form and decorum of words almost any topic of conversation, indulged in language unsuited, it would appear, to ecclesiastical ears, until gently checked by his royal elder. trop, mon frère, sur la surdité de M. l'archevêque," was the elegant and appropriate reproof, not unworthy, it must be allowed, of the first gentleman in Europe." The Count de Dur

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