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231.: WILSON’S HISTORY OF ROME EXAMINER, 19 JAN., 1834, P. 36 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II [1831]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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231.

WILSON’S HISTORY OF ROME

EXAMINER, 19 JAN., 1834, P. 36

The History of Rome was one of an eventual 133 volumes in the popular Cabinet Cyclopaedia, initiated in 1829 by Dionysius Lardner (1793-1859), a prolific writer on science, who had been elected Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at the University of London in 1827. The anonymous work has been attributed to Robert Bell (1800-67), an associate of Lardner’s, but there is little reason to doubt Mill’s attribution of it to his friend, John Wilson, Secretary to the Factory Commission in 1833 and Editor of the Globe and Traveller in 1834, called by Mill “a most valuable man” (EL, CW, Vol. XII, p. 211). Mill’s childhood fascination with Roman history (see CW, Vol. I, pp. 17, 583-4) led to little mature writing; see, however, in addition to this review, CW, Vol. I, pp. 523-32 and in Vol. XIII, pp. 498-551, the letters from the early 1840s indicating an abortive plan to write a major article on the subject for the Edinburgh. The review, which heads the “Literary Examiner,” is headed: “The Cabinet Cyclopaedia, conducted by Dr. Lardner; History of Rome. In two volumes; Vol. I. [London: Longman, et al., 1834.]” It is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A review of (John Wilson’s) History of Rome in Lardner’s Cyclopaedia, vol. 1, in the Examiner of 19th January 1834” (MacMinn, p. 37). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Review of the History of Rome (Wilson’s) in Lardner’s Cyclopaedia.”

we recommend this work very strongly to the English reader, as being the first compendium of Roman history yet published in England, in which the early ages of the Roman state have been exhibited in the new and striking light thrown upon them by the researches and speculations of Niebuhr, Wachsmuth, and other recent German writers of eminence.1 Such a work has long been much wanted, and we trust it will be as extensively read as it deserves to be.

The author disclaims any pretension to originality in his remarks on the Roman character, and the structure of Roman society; which he says are mostly drawn from the great historical work of Professor Schlosser, of Heidelberg, on the Civilization of the Ancient World.2 To whomsoever these remarks belong, they are such as are to be found in no English book with which we are acquainted; and are generally ingenious, often strikingly just, and always the very reverse of common place. They should induce all who can read German to study Professor Schlosser’s work; and all who cannot, should read the present volume; which, departing so widely from the beaten track, will suggest to all who reflect upon history, even if they do not agree in the writer’s opinions, many trains of valuable reflection.

A work of this character cannot be expected to form a complete treatise on the philosophy of Roman history; that would require far greater labour and even to the highest powers of intellectual combination would be a task of years. But it is much to find in a work of so little pretension all that we find in this.

We are averse to point out particular chapters as peculiarly deserving of notice, when all merit the most attentive perusal; but when we have so recently read in an accredited Tory periodical the astounding assertion, that the senseless measures of the Gracchi, by destroying the Roman aristocracy, occasioned the fall of the republic,3 it is not, perhaps, useless to direct the attention of those whom our judgment may influence to the chapter on the Gracchi, (Bk. III, Chap. ii of this work,) and to the description of the Roman aristocracy in the ninth chapter of the same book.4 Truly the notions, even as to mere matters of fact, which are poured into the long ears of our higher classes, and thence infiltrated into their brains, are of an absurdity which, the longer we live, appears to us the more portentous.

[1 ]Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831), German historian, best known for his path-breaking Römische Geschichte (1811-12), trans. in 3 vols. by Julius Charles Hare, et al., as History of Rome (London: Taylor and Walton, 1828-42). Ernst Wilhelm Gottlieb Wachsmuth (1787-1866), German archeologist and historian, author of Die ältere Geschichte der römischen Staates untersucht (Halle: Reugerschen Buchhandlung, 1819).

[2 ]The disclaimer and acknowledgment appear on the unnumbered Advertisement page preceding the table of contents. He cites Friedrich Christoph Schlosser (1776-1861), Universalhistorische Uebersicht der Geschichte der alten Welt und ihrer Cultur, 3 pts. (Frankfurt am Main: Varrentrapp, 1826-34).

[3 ]Archibald Alison (1792-1867), historian, “France in 1833 (No. II),” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, XXXIV (Dec. 1833), 914. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (163-133 ) and his brother Gaius (153-122 ) were Roman tribunes who implemented agrarian reforms.

[4 ]Vol. I, pp. 268-85 (Bk. III, Chap. ii) and pp. 347-60 (Bk. III, Chap. ix).