civilisation may produce fruits which, at a certain stage of growth, resemble the fruits of two thousand years ago; but they are of a different stock, and, as their root is different, so will be their distinctive development. When Kingsley sought to show us "old friends with new faces" in the Roman Empire of the fourth century, he created one of the most powerful characters in fiction, Raphael ben Ezra; and as surely as Raphael ben Ezra is an intelligent sceptic of the nineteenth century in ancient costume, so surely are the men of Cæsar's age, even when they come upon the stage amid scenic accessories of a modern cast, widely separated in mind and heart from our own. We are not, of course, questioning the analogy which Mr Froude has traced with such vivid effect; but we think that it is important to guard more carefully than he has done against supposing the analogy to be something more. A literal interpretation of the infelicitous platitude that "history repeats itself" has often set students of the past on a false track, and has sometimes lent colour to political sophistries—never more signally than in our own time, and never more audaciously than when the alleged precedent has been drawn from the life of Cæsar. In Cæsar's character there is this special attraction for the modern historian or essayist, that it furnishes him with a magnificent outline which he can fill up very much as he pleases. In a conjectural biography of Shakespeare it would be desirable to avoid representing him as morosely ascetic, or as consumed by a restless solicitude
Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/312
