Page:The last days of Pompeii - Bulwer-Lytton - King.djvu/15

Rh classical writers. It is an error as absurd to make Romans in common life talk in the periods of Cicero, as it would be in a novelist to endow his English personages with the long-drawn sentences of Johnson or Burke. The fault is the greater, because while it pretends to learning, it betrays in reality the ignorance of just criticism—it fatigues, it wearies, it revolts—and we have not the satisfaction, in yawning, to think that we yawn eruditely. To impart anything like fidelity to the dialogues of classic actors, we must beware (to use a university phrase) how we " cram " for the occasion! Nothing can give to a writer a more stiff and uneasy gait than the sudden and hasty adoption of the toga. We must bring to our task the familiarized knowledge of many years ; the allusions, the phraseology, the language generally must flow from a stream that has long been full ; the flowers must be transplanted from a living soil, and net bought second-hand at the nearest market-place. This advantage—which is, in fact, only that of familiarity with our subject—is one derived rather from accident than merit, and depends upon the degree in which the classics have entered into the education of our youth and the studies of our maturity. Yet, even did a writer possess the utmost advantage of this nature which education and study can bestow, it might be scarcely possible so entirely to transport himself to an age so different from his own, but that he would incur some inaccuracies, some errors of inadvertence or forgetfulness. And when, in works upon the manners of the Ancients—works even of the gravest character, composed by the profoundest scholars—some such imperfections will often be discovered, even by a