THE NEW GIBBON.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 10763, 17 September 1900, Page 4

THE NEW GIBBON.

A little over a year ago there appeared in a well-known English magazine a short paper which, thong" unsigned, created a deep impression upon all who took the trouble to appreciate it. These pages from the "New Uibbon" revealed unusual powers of observation, a keen sense of humour, and a remarkable capacity for polished, yet mordant satire. The unmistakable style, of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was imitated with scrupulous care, and with astonishing success. " 'The Recessional' of the sublime Kipling, and the economic speculations of the inquisitive, but censorious, Mallock, fell alike unheeded on the ears of those who were content to argue that the condition of the lower orders, though insufficient to their own appetence, was luxurious compared to that of their fellows abroad, while the easy splendour of the rich inflamed the emulation of all mankind." There is more here than a fine sense of the fitness of words, and a subtle felicity in their choice. There is something in the peculiar mannerism of Gibbon—in his carefully balanced epithets and antithetical epigrams—that lend itself witn mysterious force to an imaginative, a realistic, and, above all, a humorous genius. " The Englishman of the beginning of ths 19t!l centtiry was accustomed to demand that his policy should be glorious, the accessories of his daily life unsurpassed in quality—the objects of his asthetic admiration beautiful. The Englishman of the end of that period of decadence was content if they were cheap." It is sometimes hard to remember in glancing over these pages thafc one is not reading the famous indictment of the follies, the vices, and the splendours of Imperial Rome in its day of "gigantic opulenoe and Titanic sin." And the sense of reminiscences is especially strong when the "New Gibbon," treading closely in his masters steps, employs in personal description the irony which in the great historian's hands was so trenchant a weapon. "A Palmerston and a Disraeli had been the spokesman of the earlier Imperialism; the later found its mouthpiece in a Chamberlain. The masterful truculence of the British gentleman and the opulent imagination of the Anglicised Jew this generation cheerfully exchanged for the ambitions of a manufacturer fostered by the arts of a demagogue." We may doubt if a purely academic and literary conservatism ever expressed its "scorn, of scorns" more keenly than in this pungent epigram.

But there is much meaning behind the brilliancy of this satire. Spaoe faile us to quote the forceful periods in -which the ■writer urges against the life around him his charge of degeneracy and decay. In commerce, in sport, in war, in social life, tihe race has been gradually vitiated, its fibre weakened, its energy impaired; ite glorious past is largely forgotten, its future almost hopelessly compromised! Perhaps the bit; terest onslaught of all is directed against the literature of the day. But in every aspect of social and civic life there are manifest symptoms of this same spiritual disintegration. "With the proud spirit of Empire sunk into the narrow greed of shareholders; with physical force at ita ebb, sports corrupted and martial spirit tamed— •with elegant manners and polite letters a tasteless echo of the half-forgotten past— decline was already accomplished and irremediable, and fall was but too surely impending." The satirist has forgotten his delight in his own. literary skill. "Doest thou well to be angry?" the question has come to him; and he answers "I do weJL" Through the overtones of irony we can almost catch the echo of those inspired words in which our last, great prophet of Nature and Beauty bade- his country think upon the fall of Venice and of Tyre, and see to it that she be not brought down from loftier eminence to less pitied destruction.

We do not propose to estimate the historic value of this literary document. The interest that now attaches to it is mainly personal. The publication of "Things Seen" has revealed the author of the "New Gibbon" as G. W. Steevens,, and even those .who irncw him best and surrendered most willingly to the fascination of hia work.

may be amazed at the intensity of feeling which he ]»s breathed into this brief satire, and, the fervour of prophecy in which at times he seems to be borne away.