No More Learning

"The Germany"
of Tacitus is a document, that has been much discussed; and these
discussions may be numbered among the most flagrant examples of literary
intemperance: but this will not surprise us, when we allow for the
structure of mind, the language, and the usual productions of those,
to whom the treatise is naturally of the greatest importance. In the
description of the Germans, Tacitus goes out of his way to laugh at the
"licentia vetustatis," "the debauches of pedants and antiquarians;"
as though he suspected the fortunes of his volume, and the future
distinctions of the Teutonic genius. For sane readers, it will be enough
to remark, that the Germany of Tacitus was limited, upon the west, by
the natural and proper boundary of the Rhine; that it embraced a portion
of the Low Countries; and that, although he says it was confined within
the Danube, yet the separation is not clear between the true Germans and
those obscurer tribes, whose descendants furnish a long enumeration
of titles to the present melancholy sovereign of the House of Austria.
Gibbon remarks, with his usual sense, "In their primitive state of
simplicity and independence, the Germans were surveyed by the discerning
eye, and delineated by the masterly pencil of Tacitus, the first
historian who supplied the science of philosophy to the study of facts.
The expressive conciseness of his descriptions has deserved to exercise
the diligence of innumerable antiquarians, and to excite the genius and
penetration of the philosophic historians of our own time. " Upon a
few sentences out of the "Germania"; which relate to the kings, to the
holding of land, to the public assemblies, and to the army; an imposing
structure of English constitutional history has been erected: our modern
historians look upon this treatise with singular approval; because
it shows them, they say, the habits of their own forefathers in their
native settlements. They profess to be enchanted with all they read;
and, in their works, they betray their descent from the ancestors they
admire. Gibbon says, prettily, "Whenever Tacitus indulges himself in
those beautiful episodes, in which he relates some domestic transaction
of the Germans or of the Parthians, his principal object is to relieve
the attention of the reader from an uniform scene of vice and misery. "
Whether he succeeds, I must leave my readers to decide. Tacitus
describes the quarrels of the Germans; fought, then with weapons; now,
with words: their gambling, their sloth, their drunkenness. "Strong
beer, a liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley,
and _corrupted_ (as it is strongly expressed by Tacitus) into a certain
semblance of wine, was sufficient for the gross purposes of German
debauchery. " Tacitus informs us, too, "that they sleep far into the day;
that on rising they take a bath, usually of warm water; then they eat. "
To pass an entire day and night in drinking, disgraces no one: "Dediti
somno ciboque," he says; a people handed over to sloth and gluttony.
Some of these customs are now almost obsolete; the baths, for instance.
In others, there has been little alteration since the Age of Tacitus;
and the Germans have adhered, with obstinate fidelity, to their
primitive habits.
Tacitus thought less of their capacity, upon the
whole, than it is usual to think now: "The Chatti," he says, "for
Germans, have much intelligence;" "Leur intelligence et leur finesse
étonnent, dans des Germains. " But let us forget these "Tedeschi lurchi,
non ragionam di lor;" and pass on to those manly virtues, which Tacitus
records: To abandon your shield, is the basest of crimes, "relicta non
bene parmula;" nor may a man thus disgraced be present at their sacred
rites, nor enter their council; many, indeed, after escaping from
battle, have ended their infamy with the halter. And to more shameful
crimes, they awarded a sterner punishment:

_Behind flock'd wrangling up a piteous crew
Greeted of none, disfeatured and forlorn:
Cowards, who were in sloughs interr'd alive;
And round them still the wattled hurdles hung
Wherewith they stamp'd them down, and trod them deep,
To hide their shameful memory from men. _

Having now surveyed the compositions in this volume, it is proper that
we should at length devote some of our notice to Gordon himself, and to
his manner of presenting Tacitus. Thomas Gordon was born in Scotland;
the date has not yet been ascertained. He is thought to have been
educated at a northern university, and to have become an Advocate.
Later, he went to London; and taught languages. Two pamphlets on
the Bangorian controversy brought him into notice; and he wrote
many religious and political dissertations. "A Defence of Primitive
Christianity, against the Exhorbitant Claims of Fanatical and
Dissaffected Clergymen;" "Tracts on Religion, and on the Jacobite
Rebellion of '45;" "The Pillars of Priestcraft and Orthodoxy Shaken;" "A
Cordial for Low Spirits;" are the titles of some of his compositions.
In politics, and in theology, he was a republican and free-thinker: he
translated and edited "The Spirit of Ecclesiastics in All Ages;" he
was a contributor to "The Independent Whig;" and in a series of "Cato's
Letters," he discoursed at ease upon his usual topics. The Tacitus was
published in 1728, in two volumes folio: long dissertations are inserted
in either volume; the literature in them excellent, the politics not so
good: the volumes, as well as the several parts of them, are dedicated
to some Royal and many Noble Patrons. Gordon has also turned Sallust
into English: the book was published in 1744, in one handsome quarto;
"with Political Discourses upon that Author and Translations of
Cicero's Four Orations against Cataline. " Walpole made Gordon the first
commissioner of wine licences. It is handed down, that Gordon was a
burly person, "large and corpulent. " It is believed, that he found his
way into "The Dunciad," and that he is immortalised there among the
"Canaille Écrivante;" the line

_Where Tindal dictates and Silenus snores_,

is taken to be Pope's description of him. Gordon died in 1750; at the
same time as Dr.