minds a cloud of sceptical inquietude, which, by making us doubt the wisdom or the goodness of the divine administra-, tion, may repress these energetic exertions which we should. otherwise make in the service of humanity. The present Dissertations have induced us to make these strictures on Mr. Malthus's celebrated essay; because we are convinced, that as far as it has made any impression on the public mind, that impression has been adverse to the happiness of mankind. It has diminished the sensibility of the benevolent, and increased the apathy of the selfish. It has taught many to consider vice and misery as necessary ingredients in the present constitution of the world, and appointed as the corrective of those laws which Omniscience established. Instead of the gay colouring of hope and joy, it casts the funereal hue of sorrow and despair over the future prospects of man. It tends to excite the belief that we are living in a world in which evil will keep perpetually accumulating, because it is connected with the increase of population, of which he represents the inordinate exertions, as incapable of being restrained without the salutary interposition of vice and misery. We have been taught to cherish the hope, which the arguments of Mr. Malthus will not readily induce us to abandon, that the sufferings of mankind are not a necessarily increas ing quantity, but are susceptible of a considerable diminution. We do not indeed anticipate any thing like a state of pure and unmixed happiness in this probationary sphere; but we do look for a degree of enjoyment greater than the present; when vice will be less prevalent and misery less diffused. We do not assent to any chimerical supposition of the perfectibility of man; but not only the voice of revelation but of reason and experience teach us that man may keep indefinitely improving in virtue and in happiness. To the increase of civilization no limits can be assigned; and though the perfection of virtue is far beyond our reach, yet there are many points below perfection, yet far above our present point of moral degradation, to which we may safely aspire; and which, as the Christian doctrine becomes more operative in our souls, we shall certainly attain. It is this doctrine, in which alone we confide as the best means of improving the state of man, the precepts of which, in proportion as they are practised, will render subsistence more abundant by making industry more active and benevolence more diffusive. It will heighten and refine the passion of love by mingling it more largely with the spirit of virtue and of piety. It will oppose no unnatural check to population, but will encourage it to proceed within those limits, and subject to those restrictions, which modesty prescribes and

the Creator designed. And when that principle is thus exercised, the population of the world never can go beyond the possibilities of subsistence; nor can the earth present the mournful spectacle, which the fancy of Mr. Malthus pourtrays, of starving millions. On the contrary, the increase of subsistence, favoured by the providential arrangements of God, will be more than adequate to all the wants of the peopled world.

In the present work of Dr. Jarrold we have found many just and pertinent observations, some of which Mr. Malthus will find it difficult to refute. We have perused his Dissertations with considerable satisfaction, and we think that they may be read with advantage by those who have unwarily been led to think that the arguments of Mr. Malthus, which are so formidably invested in the armour of arithmetic, may safely defy the hostility of every assailant.

ART. II.--The Works of Sallust; to which are prefixed two Essays on the Life, Literary Character, and Writings of the Historian; with Notes, historical, biographical, and critical. By Henry Steuart, L.L.D. F.R.S., &c. 2 vols. Royal 4to. 41. 12s. Baldwin. 1806.

TRANSLATION has, until within these few years, been very undeservedly regarded by the literati of this country rather in a contemptuous light. Dr. Jortin seems to have thought little better of it than Cervantes. But this error seems to arise from misapprehending the principal object of translation, which is not to furnish the unlearned with a substitute for the originals, so much as to accommodate the half-learned with a sort of perpetual commentary in its most pleasing and illustrative form. A regular annotation, by drawing off the attention of the reader to detached parts, prevents his perception of the united effect of the whole. At least in poetry and oratory this is the case, and accordingly we remember that Spence in his Polymetis confesses that he never apprehended the full scope and beauty of some of Horace's satires and epistles, arising from the connection of the several parts, until he read Pope's imitations of them. Again, a commentator, if he meet with an obscure passage, can slur it over with the affectation of perceiving no difficulty, or (which is worse) he may talk about it and about it till by pouring forth a vast mass of irrelevant quotation he has rendered confusion worse confounded. But a translator must make some sense of his original, if it be only to saye appear

ances. Such then is the importance and utility of transla tion. But unfortunately the fame of success in this branch of literature has rarely risen to such a height as to prove sufficient either as a recompense for past or a stimulus to farther exertions.

It may not be amiss briefly to consider the different orders of translators that have sprung up among us. The first set were the doers into English, the mere verbal translators, like Hobbes, Littlebury, and Philemon Holland. These were perfectly satisfied with rendering the words of one language into the words of another,never dreaming of the propriety of tranfusing idioms. In their poetical translations also they followed the same law, exemplifying the old Italian proverb which terms translators tradittori, or traitors. In both kinds, as Wakefield observes of Hobbes's Homer, their versions bore the same resemblance to the originals as a dead carcase bears to a vigorous living body. Meanwhile our continental neighbours were commencing a series of elegant and easy versions from the classics, and this gave rise to a second class of translators in England, namely those who worked for hire and copied after their French predecessors. Thus translation by degrees dwindled down to a mere bookseller's job, and many a Grub-street'garretteer, no doubt, was obliged to repel the cravings of hunger or the claims of his creditors until he had rendered the appointed sheetfull of letterpress, and sweat to earn his cream-bowl duly set. Hence the press groaned under such translations as that of Tacitus by Dryden and Co., of Plato's Dialogues from Dacier, &c. almost all furbished out of French translations (themselves no doubt imperfect), and consequently exhibiting little more resemblance of the originals than the shadow of a shade. Since this, translation has gradually been extending her territories and asserting her rights. During the last half-century, and even within the last twenty years, this degraded branch of literary labour has risen sensibly in the public estimation, and men of real learning, taste, and leisure are beginning to employ their talents in producing such copies of the ancients as need not be ashamed to be confronted with them, and in such English as an Englishman can read with plea

sure.

Nevertheless, perhaps, as formerly our translations were too meagre and verbal, so they now threaten to be too licentious and decorated. To avoid stiffness and servility we run into the opposite extreme of superinduced ornament. If a metaphor occurs, we catch up the bauble, turn it round and round, and stick it all over with spangles. If a strong or pointed expression meets-us, we give it a cumbrous strength.

In a word, in search of grace, we forget simplicity, and 'o'erstep the modesty of nature.' Melmoth's Cato, Major, and Lælius are compositions of great merit for originality and elegance. But to a reader of taste who compares him with his model, there will appear a luxuriance and finery in those essays foreign from the neat Attic style of Cicero. Mr. Murphy's Tacitus is a work which Dr. Steuart loads with deserved praises, and seems to look up to as a model of translation. Yet even in him a little less dilatation and amplification of style would have been an improvement. Observe, we are far from recommending the old mumpsimus instead of the modern sumpsimus; we wish not to see the hum-drum verbal fashion of translating renewed; but we do wish translators to recollect, first, that all superfluous decoration is apt to weaken; secondly, that the original writer is more likely to know the proper limits within which he may expatiate than a translator; lastly, that though it is easy enough to attain the appearance of originality and ease by entirely new-casting a sentence, and as it were transplanting it into a rich compost of our own, yet if a little of the native mould be not kept about the roots, these full grown plants rarely fail to degenerate in a foreign soil, or, to drop the metaphor, a sentence can hardly be wholly varied in its form and texture without more or less mutilating and infringing the sense. Of these positions we shall shortly have occasion to offer a few examples from the work under consideration: not that Dr. S. is often guilty of misrepresenting his author: but if in so perspicuous a writer as Sallust this is occasionally the case, it may serve as a warning to free translators of other authors, who are more obscure.

The first sentiment which must strike every one on a sight of the present work is-How is it possible that Sallust can furnish matter sufficient to fill two thick volumes in quarto, price four pounds twelve shillings? To account for this we must briefly state the contents: the first volume contains a dedication and preface,two long dissertations with copious notes treating not only of the subjects mentioned in the title-page, but of the times in general in which Sallust lived; the progress of historical composition among the Romans; in short, of every thing which had any connection with the subject of the historian. Dr. S. is not a writer of the Catonic cast (qui multa paucis absolvunt,) and in the notes particularly, though mixed with much substantial information and judicious remark, is no small portion of that literary tittle-tattle which is become so fashionable, and to which we should make less objection if we were not obliged. to pay so dear for it. Next follow the two letters or political

discourses addressed (as is supposed) by Sallust to Cæsar on the reformation of the government,* with notes. The second volume containstheCatilinarian and Jugurthine wars, with copious illustrations to each.

On the character of Sallust, Dr. S. is a staunch advocate. He fairly shews that most of the commentators have followed too implicitly the common notion of his scandalous'debauchery, founded principally on a passage in Horace, in which it is far from certain that it is the historian who is attacked. Le Clerc he thinks (and in our judgment justly thinks) guilty of malignant prejudice against his author. At the same time perhaps, in some points he lays himself open to a charge of partiality almost as inexcusable. It is cer tain that Sallust in the government of his province exercised a degree of oppression and extortion, which was offensive in an age when even a Brutus was not ashamed of the practice, as may be seen in Cicero's letters. At the same time there is not a writer of antiquity who preaches up the virtues of justice; integrity, and moderation, and inveighs with more warmth against the opposite vices of avarice, luxury, and peculation. At this Le Clerc is justly indignant, and stigmatizes him for a hypocrite. Dr. Steuart calls this indignation striking at the root of morality,' and attributes the moralizing vein of Sallust to the contritions of repentance, willing to compensate by words for the villainy of past crimes. But we may ask-was not Sallust,at the time of his railing against avarice and luxury with sucha show of integrity,enjoying in princely grandeur the fruits of his exorbitance? And is not the sincerity of his repentance under such circumstances extremely problematical? and are not the same rigid principles enforc ed in his two letters to Cæsar, which, according to Dr. S.'s own account were composed in an earlier part of the historian's life? lastly is that man likely to reform the world by his lectures who is obliged to add-do as I say and not as I have myself done; or rather is he not doing serious mischief by inducing an opinion that all strictness of precept is equally insincere?

Dr. S. admires the prefaces of Sallust. They have always appeared to us stiff and formal common-place, wholly inapposite to the compositions to which they are prefixed. The want of connection indeed may be somewhat excused by the well known practice of Cicero, who kept an assortment of these scraps by him with which he could top and tail his treatises as occasion required. Yet Livy soon after

De republica ordinandâ ; not very accurately rendered by our translator, On the administration of the government.