GREAT-BRITAIN.

Amidst the various contefts and divifions of the continent, the prefent fituation of our country is no doubt highly respectable, Europe exhibits a belligerent appearance beyond any thing which is to be found in her history for the last twenty-five years; powers are roused to war which have flept in fupiness and inaction from the commencement of the century. Turkey, Auftria, Ruffia, Sweden, Denmark, Pruffia, are all of them engaged in actual war, or prefent to us an hoftile and menacing fpectacle. Spain, Portugal, Holland, Poland, are internally much too weak to have any influence in this awful crifis. GreatBritain ftands confpicuous the arbiter, or the mediator, of a contending world; and for this fhe is partly indebted to the temporary imbecility of France, and partly to the character of her prefent administration.

The first feature of Mr. Pitt from the point of fight at which, he is beheld by foreign nations is ftability and permanence. There cannot be a circumftance of greater importance than this. An adminiftration of moderate abilities firmly feated at the helm of power is more beneficial to a nation than the talents of the greateft geniufes could be in the midst of political weakness, fluctuation, and inconftancy. A ftable adminiftration grafps ftrongly the rudder of the political veffel, and guides it with a gentle but refiftlefs force through contrary currents, and in the face of adverfe gales. Whatever motives we may impute to the premier, certain it is that he gained, in a confpicuous degree, the advantage of which we fpeak; and taught men to feel his importance, by his late conduct, his victory over the chancellor in the cafe of Arden, and his feating his brother at the head of the admiralty board.

Another circumftance for which Mr. Pitt is refpected in neighbouring countries is that very circumftance, which has not seldom been made a topic of invective against him at home. We allude to his youth. His political rivals may tell us that he owes his elevation to prejudice, to intrigue, or to a fortuitous concourfe of events. Foreign nations fee nothing of this. Placed in fuch a manner as to view the picture in its best point of light, they obferve nothing more than his elevation itself. They conclude, by inevitable inference, that fo unprecedented an elevation, in a free and an enlightened country, can only be the result of abilities. They hear of the wonders of his eloquence; and they will not be perfuaded that an eloquent man is not alfo a man of genius and refources. They recollect the years he has paffed in his prefent fituation; and they are convinced that wisdom is the refult of experience.

Such

Such are the advantages that England poffeffes in the opinion of other countries; and the advantages would be in a certain degree real, even if their bafis were wholly imaginary. But it is time that we should confefs that Mr. Pitt's reputation is not the child of prejudice, born without father. How far, indeed, he would prove a good war minister a wary politician would be flow to pronoun e. Long may the better genius of Britain fpare us the pain of the experiment. He poffeffes a good quality in the firmnefs, we had almost faid the ftubbornness, of his character. He poffeffes a ftill better in the flexibility, the readiness to learn what he knows not, and to correct what is amifs, which he has found the happy art to blend with this firmnefs. Politics is not an intuitive science; it is therefore well for a ftatefman to correct and revife. We have feen inftances, in late years, of plans generoufly adopted, fpiritedly pursued, and at laft maturely abandoned; which should convince us that the human fide of the minifter's character is not without its falutary confequences.

In the mean time there is fomething elfe to be confidered, previously to our involving ourselves in the broils of Europe, befide the character of the minifter. We fhould recollect the calamities of the American war, the enormous amount of the national debt, the heavy weight of intereft and taxes under which we labour. We fhould learn an useful example from the prefent deplorable ftate of the French finances. If we were to engage in war, we fhould only provide for ourselves a store of repentance, regret, and mortification. As mediators and umpires, we may affert to ourselves a dignity and a character which France may envy, but which no nation in Europe can wreft from us.

ERRATA in our REVIEW for AUGUST.

Page 116, line 25, for allies read alleys

Ibid, 34, repeat the fame correction.

To CORRESPONDENTS.

Correfpondents who are prompted by spleen or disappointment, to write to us, fhould at leaft defray the expences of poftage; it is a fufficient labour for us to be obliged to perufe their effufions.

To the authors of liberal communications we hold a very different language, and earnestly folicit their aid and obfervations; to which we shall always pay a respectable deference.

Communications for THE ENGLISH REVIEW are requested to be fent to Mr. MURRAY, No. 32, Fleet-ftreet, London; where Subfcribers for this Monthly Performance are refpectfully defired to give in their Names.

THE

ENGLISH REVIEW,

For OCTOBER 1788.

ART. I. The Hiftory of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Em pire. By Edward Gibbon, Efq. Volumes IV, V, and VI. 4to. 31. 3s. boards. Cadell. London, 1788.

IN

N the first rude ftate of hiftorical compofition it is a mere intimation of the greater facts. It notes the battles of contending nations; but it goes no farther. It points out no political causes that led to this decifion by the fword. It indicates no political confequences that refulted from the victory or the defeat; and it even gives no other circumftances of facts than to tell which of the parties won the day. This is the very skeleton of hiftory; appearing at present in the Saxon Chronicles among 'ourselves, and once appearing probably in those first chroniclers of Rome, Fabius Pictor and others, who have fince funk away in the meagerness of their own wretched annals, and in the plenitude of the fucceeding hiftories.

The next grand ftage of improvement is to dwell upon all the principal events of hiftory; to draw out the train of caufes preceding; and to link together the chain of confequences following. It particularly loves to rest upon those fplendid incidents of hiftory, battles. It defcribes them with a fulness and a circumftantiality that faften upon the mind, and give it a kind of fanguinary fatisfaction. Such was the work of Cœlius among the Romans, we fuppofe; a writer to whom Livy ocENG. REV. VOL. XII. OCT. 1788.

cafionally

cafionally refers, and one of the later chroniclers from whom he compiled his hiftory. And fuch is Baker's Chronicle among ourfelves; that ftanding mirror of hiftory to our fathers, and now remembered with fondnefs by us as the delight of our childhood. This is the skeleton clothed with mufcles, fupported by finews, and exhibiting the form and figure of history to the

eye.

But this fpecies of writing, by a regular gradation of improvement, afterwards affumes a higher part; it takes the incidents of the first stage, and the circumftances of the second; it combines causes, facts, and confequences, in one regular order of fucceffion; it throws an illumination over the whole by the clearness of its narration, the judiciousness of its arrangement, and the elegance of its language; and it gives the reader an interest in the scenes before him by the liveliness with which it prefents them to his mind, and by the reflections with which it points them to his heart. Such is the hiftory of Livy among the Romans, and fuch are fome of cur beft hiftories written by the last generation. This is the skeleton not merely clothed with flesh, but actuated with nerves, animated with blood, and bearing the bloom of health upon its cheek.

Here had hiftorical compofition refted, it would have anfwered all the useful, and all the elegant purposes of life. But the activity of the human mind is always on the wing; the fpirit of improvement is ever pushing forward; and there is a degree of improvement beyond this which may fhed a greater warmth of colouring over the piece, give it a deeper intereft with the affections of the furveyor, and fo reach the full point of hiftorical perfection. But, alas! man can eafily imagine, what he can never execute. The fancy can fee a perfection, and the judgment can recommend it; but the hand cannot attain to it. Whether this be the cafe with the present idea of hiftorical perfection, we know not; but it is certain, we think, that it has never been attained hitherto. Hiftory, indeed, having once advanced to the third ftage of improvement, cannot but strain to reach the fourth and laft. Then it lays itself out in à fplendour of imagery, a frequency of reflections, and a refinement of language; and thus makes the narrative more ftriking by its additional vivacity and vigour. But it is melancholy to obferve, that, in proportion as we thus advance in the ornamental parts of hiftorical writing, we are receding from the folid and the neceffary; we lofe in veracity what we gain in embellishments; and the authenticity of the narration fades and finks away in the luftre of the philofophy furrounding it. The mind of the writer, bent upon the beautiful and fublime in hiftory, does not condescend to perform the task of accuracy,

and

and to ftoop to the drudgery of faithfulness. The mirror is finely polished and elegantly decorated; but it no longer reflects the real features of the times. The fun fhines out, indeed, with a ftriking effulgence; but it is an effulgence of glare, and not a radiation of ufefulness. Such hiftorians as these, we may venture to pronounce, are Tacitus among the ancients, most of our beft hiftorians in the prefent generation, and Mr. Gibbon at the head of them. And these present us with the skeleton of hiftory, not merely clothed with muscles, animated with life, and bearing the bloom of health upon its cheek; but, instead of carrying a higher flush of health upon its cheek, and fhewing a brighter beam of life in its eyes, rubbed with Spanish wool, painted with French fard, and exhibiting the fire of falsehood and wantonness in its eyes.

That we should thus rank Tacitus may furprise those who have lately been fo much in the habit of admiring and applauding him as the first of all human hiftorians; and who may fuppofe he ftands, like the other hiftorians of the ancients, invefted with oracular confequence for facts, and incapable of being convicted of unfaithfulness from any cotemporary records. That he has been lately rated beyond his merit, taken out of the real line in which he ought to stand, and transferred from the rank of affected and fantastical hiftorians to that of the judicious and manly, has been long our perfuafion. But we have lately met with an evidence that fhews him to us in a new light as an hiftorian, careless and unfaithful in his reprefentations. This evidence has never yet been given to the world; but it is a very decifive In 1528 were found, within the earth at Lyons in France two brafs plates that had a speech of the Emperor Claudius engraven upon them, and are now fet up against the wall, in the veftibule of the Hotel de Ville of Lyons. Thefe form a very fingular object of curiofity for the antiquary; but they are still more curious to the hiftorian; for this very speech is pretended to be given by Tacitus; yet the speech in the history is very different from that upon the plates. And, as fuch an opportunity of collating an ancient historian with a cotemporary monument can feldom occur at all, and perhaps occurs only in this fingle inftance; as this opportunity has never yet been used by any writer; and as it fhews the inaccuracy and unfaithfulness of Tacitus in a ftrong point of view; we doubt not but our readers will be pleafed to fee the collation here:

one.

mae rerum noftr . . . . . fii . . . . . . equidem primum omnium, illam cogitationem hominum quám maximé primum occurfuram mihi provideo. Deprecor ne quafi novam iftam rem introduci enhorrefcatis ;

Q 2