Art. II. Sketches of the Domestic Manners and Institutions of the Romans. 12mo. pp. x, 348. Price 7s. London. 1821. EVERAL of the most favourite articles of our historical faith have been disturbed by the sceptical spirit of modern literature. The Roman history, so dear to our earliest recollections and our warmest feelings, has most particularly suffered from this race of cold-hearted sophists, who have in a great measure destroyed its efficacy as a course of institution for the youthful mind, by lowering down its examples of elevated virtue and heroic sentiment to a vulgar and hoinely standard. They deny, that Curtius leaped into the gulf, or that Regulus kept his faith with the Carthaginians; thus paring and clipping the greatness of ancient days to a dull level with that of our own. But these were facts religiously believed by the Romans themselves, and at a time when authentic monuments that should either establish or disprove them, might have been referred to. And when we contemplate the Roman story as a living image of the progressive stages of human civilization, it would be worse than extravagance, to suppose that it had been dressed up by human invention or imagination. In truth, all its events hang together with an exact, we had almost said a dramatic conformity. We profess ourselves, therefore, of that sect which still adheres to the classical creed of our early years, when we arose from the perusal of Roman history glowing with the contemplation of excellence, and animated with the love of virtue. It is obvious, however, that to those who survey this wonderful people through the regular vista of general history, the fine shades and minute strokes of character must be wholly lost. The personages seem dressed as if to appear on a theatre: great warriors, stern republicans, and inflexible patriots, pass in stately march before us. But history, by reason of its generalities, rarely descends to those domestic retirements where every disguise is laid aside, and nature exhibits her unfettered attitudes. It is from their poets, their satirists, but, above all, from their dramatic writers, that views of the social and private manners of a people can be formed. They are the historians of society, and it is only by collecting and arranging their incidental hints and rapid sketches, that we can arrive at any luminous or correct inferences on a subject so interesting and pleasing. With regard to Roman customs, indeed, one of these sources of authority is wanting to us, the Roman drama being unfortunately a mirror of the humours and customs of Greece rather than of Rome. Excepting the Oscan or Atellan fables, Rome had never a drama of her own; and of these not a fragment has survived. Yet, allusions to existing manners are so frequent in Roman poetry, that these memorials are far from being scanty or insuf ficient. If classical tutors would point out in the lecture room, the illustrations with which it abounds of the social and private economy of ancient life, they would render the study of Horace, Juvenal, Martial, and Ovid, infinitely more pleasing and instruc tive. This service, the absurd diligence of the scholiasts and commentators into whose hands they have hitherto fallen, has by no means superseded; for the Cnequiuses, the Torrentiuses, and the Lambinuses have scarcely attempted to elucidate the text of those ill-fated authors, without betraying the Batavian dulness of their taste, or the wild extravagance of their conjectures. For instance, (and we have merely selected it at random,) what literary relic exbibits more varied and distinct views of Roman manners, than the satire in which Horace describes his journey to Brundusium? Not to mention the decisive answer which a passage in it furnishes to the elaborate contentions of antiquaries and critics as to the use of chimneys among the Romans, it enables us, with a little aid from geography, to settle a more important question of ordinary life, for it furnishes us with a mode of computing the rate of travelling from Rome to the distant provinces, when the object was jointly that of business and amusement; a computation which Gibbon has satisfactorily deduced from a critical and geographical examination of the satire. This seems to have been about twenty miles a day; for having reached Forum Appii only on the second night, a distance considerably less than fifty miles, it is evident that they did not proceed at a quicker rate, though it might have been done in one day, had their business been of a nature that would have suffered from the delay. We have mentioned this circumstance because it appears to have escaped the ingenious writer of the volume now before us. Much of this journey was by the inland navigation which then existed through a tract of country where there is at present no trace of a canal or river; and amidst a moving succession of portraitures, the rough manners and characteristic humours of the bargemen of that day, are slightly but pleasingly shadowed in this most exquisite magic lantern, if we may so call it, of antique manners. If the exhuination of Pompeii by laying open to us the interior of a Roman town, miraculously recovered from the slumber of ages, and displaying to the eye the internal economy of its houses, triclinea, baths, lamps, candelabra, culinary utensils, and all the machinery of daily life,-shops so perfect that, to use the somewhat hyperbolical expression of a modern traveller, one instinctively looks behind the counter for the master or his journeyman;' if the wonderful memorials thus unveiled to us, have power to trans *Posthumous Works, Vol. II. Journal des mes Etudes. port us over the gulf of time, and to plant us in the midst of a people who lived two thousand years ago;-the cabinet pictures of this poem, representing the humours and character of the lower classes of that people in all their plebeian roughness, and preserving that slang or vernacular discourse into which the flavour and strength of national character seems often to subside, must be considered by the antiquary and the scholar as by no means of inferior value. Similar sketches are wanting to complete the early outlines of our own national history. Chaucer's humour is general, not national. His tales, being chiefly taken from foreign romances, give us scarcely more than faint sketches of the state of society in the reign of the second and third Henrys; and even the Canterbury Tale is a picture that represents the manners of France or of Italy nearly as vividly as those of England. At a later period, indeed, the French have been more fortunate in Rabelais, who has preserved the native energy and vernacular license of that tongue fresh and unimpaired in its original and unhewn roughness. This also has been done by Horace, in the intellectual gladiatorship, as Johnson calls it, between Sarmentus and Messius, a contest of horse-play raillery, half humour and half abuse (dicteria), the peculiar pungency of which, though almost lost to our more fastidious notions of humour, seems to have been acutely relished by the enlightened guests who reclined at the table of Cocceius. A still more valuable monument is preserved to us in the charming epithalamium of Catullus on the marriage of Manlius and Julia. It is a minute detail of the nuptial ceremonies practised by the Romans, and borrowed from the Greeks. But the Bard of Verona has scarcely surpassed in correctness and strength of colouring, Homer's exquisite description of the same rite in his shield of Achilles. Neither of them seems to have mentioned a single circumstance that does not still take place at the wedding of a modern Greek, making a few requisite allowances for the change of religion. The nuptial torches carried before the bride, when she is summoned at break of day, the decent coyness that delays her steps, the tears that gush from her eyes as if the fate of Iphigenia awaited her, are still prac tised among the other symbolical usages of this ceremonial. Claustra pandite januæ. Virgo adest; viden' ut faces Quæ tamen magis audiens Unbar the door, the gates unfold! Lamb's Translation. Nor are the nuts forgotten, which are thrown about as the bridegroom proceeds; a custom allegorical of his renunciation of loose amours and childish frolics. On the arrival of the ⚫ wife at her future abode, she is supported,' says an intelligent Traveller, by her father and mother, that she may not touch the threshold, though, in some parts of Greece, the honour of the husband obliges her to tread upon a sieve of leather. Should it not yield to the pressure, no explanation will induce him to receive as his wife, one whose previous misconduct bas been proved by so infallible a test.' The former of these customs is thus alluded to by Catullus. Transfer omine cum bono Let not the threshold (omen blest!) We have claimed the indulgence of these citations, for the purpose of pointing out the multifarious and widely scattered authorities, from which all our knowledge of ancient manners must be deduced; and as a familiar acquaintance with these authorities implies various and extensive reading, and the dili gent consultation of books not always accessible to the mere general reader, it is evident, that judicious compilations are absolutely necessary to an accurate idea of Roman manners. The Author of the volume under our consideration has stated his own views with much good sense and modesty. It, therefore, occurred to the Author, that a concise account of the state of society in ancient Rome, clothed in plain language, divested, as far as possible, of Latin terms, and pruned of all subjects which offend against delicacy, could not fail to be serviceable to young persons of both sexes who are completing their education; and might, perhaps, not prove unacceptable to some of riper years. He claims no other merit in the execution of the task he has under "Essay on the Resemblance of the Ancient and Modern Greeks." By the Hon. Fred. Douglas. p. 112. taken, than that of having attentively compared various authorities, and of having recorded such facts, only, as are either incontestably established, or generally received. The learned reader will, indeed, discover some on which a difference of opinion exists among the best informed commentators; but as it was not the Author's object to enter into any discussion respecting them, he has adopted, without remark, that which appeared to him the most entitled to preference. It may also be objected, that many of the instances he has adduced are trite; that the quotations from the poets are too numerous; and, that he has omitted some prominent features in the Roman character. But, an historical work must necessarily contain allusions to facts already known; the poets have only been introduced when the author conceived that they would elucidate the subject with more advantage than he could himself; and, for the omission of scenes, often disgusting in themselves, and from which neither valuable information could be derived, nor any moral inference deduced, no apology is deemed necessary. The chief matter has been extracted from a French work of longstanding reputation, the production of Professor d'Arnay, a gentleman well known to the literary world in the department of the belles lettres. The other modern works to which the Author is the most indebted, are," Kennet," "Potter," and "Dr. Alexander Adam, on Roman Antiquities;" the splendid publication of Count Caylus on the same subject; and the various commentators on Pliny, Juvenal, and Persius, amongst whom he feels bound to distinguish Mr. Gifford : his other obligations are generally acknowledged in the notes. How far the Author has succeeded in the object he had in contemplation, it remains for the Public to determine. He is, himself, conscious of too many defects in the work, not to have just reason to apprehend the test of criticism: but he will not deprecate its censure by misplaced apologies, or by a detail of difficulties in the execution of so trifling a production, although they who have experienced the labour of compilation will no doubt admit, that they are neither few nor easily surmounted; and he only trusts it may be recollected, that he professes to present but a mere outline, which may yet be filled up by some abler hand.' We are by no ineans indisposed to accord to him the praise of having executed his task with taste and judgement. Our animadversions will apply to the unskilful arrangement of his materials, (a defect which may be removed in a future impression,) rather than to any intrinsic error in the substance of the work, which we unhesitatingly recommend as highly useful and subsidiary to the classical student. For instance, Chapter IV. comprehends the following discordant topics: On the City of Rome-Medical Practice-and Money; topics which, not hanging together by an unbroken chain of association, betray great unskilfulness in their arrangement. Again; Chapter V. is appropriated to Villas and Gardens; but three chapters upon distinct subjects intervene between this and Chapters IX. and X. on Galleries and Libraries, Aque |