It sublime, have rendered him more beautiful; while of Ruhnken's letters to Ernesti, it may be said, that to the recondite learning of the scholar they add the fertile fancy of the poet and the severe judgment of the man of taste. But for Bentley's dissertation on Phalaris, we should probably have missed Porson's letters to Travis; the only two perfect specimens of controversial criticism, which, in the opinion of Gibbon, the world has ever seen; and while every page of the "Miscellanea Critica" proves how deeply Dawes had drunk of the intellectual stream that flowed from the high ground of Bentley's mind, it is clear that in Bentley's collection of the fragments of Callimachus, Taylor found a model for his own fragments of Lysias; which Valckenaer said were the two most finished pieces of their kind; nor, till his own Diatribe appeared, would there have been a similar collection of Euripidean fragments fit, if not to wrest the palm from both, to be put on an equality with either. Nor are these the only services done by Bentley to antient literature. was he who first put into the hands of critics a test to try the villainous compounds that pass under the names of wines of the choicest vintage. By following the process he laid down, Markland and Tunstall were enabled to detect a mimic Cicero, and Valckenaer to tear the mask from the Tpayiкomioŋkos, who had assumed the name of Euripides. It is true that two chivalrous youths of Germany have entered the lists to defend the genuineness of the writings attributed to the Roman orator and the Athenian dramatist; but the attempt has ended, like the aerial ship, in smoke! Scarcely, however, had Bentley set the fashion of detecting forgeries, when it was carried to a ridiculous excess; nor is it easy to say where it will stop; unless, like the great fire of London, it dies out for the want of fuel to feed it. After Markland had commenced by rejecting some of the speeches and letters attributed to Cicero, Dawes followed by repudiating an ode of Pindar. Taylor next attempted to fasten upon Phæax an oration commonly attributed to Andocides; who, however, found two powerful defenders in Ruhnken and Valckenaer; the last of whom was the first to obelize some of the minor pieces commonly attributed to Xenophon; from whose Cyropedia he has torn away the last chapter, as unworthy of that capitale ingenium; while, in the case of Plato, if we are to believe the school of Schleiermacher, not a third part of what passes under the name of the Homer of prose, really belongs to him. In like manner, an oration or two of Lysias, and not a few of Demosthenes, have been branded as forgeries, together with portions of Aristotle, some treatises of Plutarch and a chapter of Thucydides; and not only has the concluding scene of the Iphigenia in Aulis been obelized by Porson, but even a portion of the first Chorus by Hermann, on no better grounds than those which led Dobree to doubt the genuineness of the Trachiniæ of Sophocles. For such a misuse of his principles Bentley cannot of course be answerable. He merely put into the hands of scholars a weapon of the finest edge. But if, as in the case of Payne Knight+ with the Bentleian digamma, critical anatomists will attempt to cut out a cancer carelessly, they must not repine if they are thought to verify the sentiment of Butler— "Ah! me, what perils doth environ The man who meddles with keen iron." Since, then, in every form of sound and sagacious criticism connected with the language, metre, facts, and logic of a passage, Bentley has not only pointed out the road, but led the way in studies that require the rarest union of conflicting intellectual powers, it is not too much to assert that the country, where such studies cease to be valued, has given unequivocal proof of its having retrograded in the march of intellect, despite all its literary and scientific associations, that appear like fungi on the tree of knowledge, only when the sap of thought has ceased to circulate in the vigor of rude health. The wondrous influence which Bentley's writings had on the study of the dead languages, over which his towering talents threw a splendour that Porson in aftertimes failed to do, is best illustrated by the fact, that the whole of the first edition of his Emendations on Menander was sold in three weeks. It was, in truth, only necessary for him to appear on the stage, when all *This, however, has been well defended by Arnold; while the objection taken to the word wálos has been obviated by the emendation of Burges, in "Poppo's Prolegomena,"p. 174. + Respecting Knight's Homer, of which no scholar even in Germany but Thiersch, has made the slightest use, we have to tell the following anecdote. Shortly after the publication of the volume, he was congratulated by the writer of this article on the completion of his labours. Oh! said he, rather condole with me. I am at last severed from a friend, whose society has been a source of never-failing pleasure, and for whom in return I have willingly sacrificed time, trouble, and expence. I am now seventy-three years old; and unless I can find something to arrest my attention-to interest me equally is impossible-life will present no charm to the useless trunk of a fruitless tree. eyes were rivetted upon him; and we might apply to him what the Chorus say to Ajax *Αλλοτε Κρὴς δὴ τὸ σὸν ὄμμ ̓ ἀποδράς, σιγῇ πτήξει ἂν ἄφωνος. With this feeling of conscious superiority Bentley could, of course, "Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne;" and hence, when his former friend Bishop Hare presumed to edit Terence on the metrical principles first promulgated by Gabriel Faernus, and where Bentley conceived himself to be, like Robinson Crusoe, "the monarch of all he surveyed," he determined to verify the sentiment of Horace "Ille urit fulgore suo, qui prægravat artes by publishing the very author, whom Hare had stated that Bentley had given up all thoughts of editing, without so much as mentioning the name of Hare, and whose edition he put down so completely as to be hailed by Hermann himself the unicus Terentii sospitator. Having thus beaten out of the ring every opponent, no matter whether he appeared as a stripling knight, like Boyle, or the heavy-armed soldan, like Collins; or with the renown of a veteran, like Le Clerc; or with the ambition of a brother-inarms, like Hare-to say nothing of the Millers and Middletons, &c. hostes acerrimos profligare contentus ab impari prælio recessit indignabundus, exclaiming, no doubt, with Entellus in Virgil, "Hic cestus artemque repono." Cotemporary with Bentley were men who, though nothing, as critical scholars, were still not useless in their own small way. Such was Potter,* afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, who, * A charge has been made by Mr. Kidd, in the "Classical Journal," No. 33, p. 10. against Archbishop Potter, for passing off some of Bent ley's discourses as his own. But as no evidence has been produced, we are unwilling to return a verdict of guilty. From the known accuracy, however, of Kidd upon such points, we are equally unwilling to consider Potter perfectly innocent, although we confess we do not know where the Archbishop could have been guilty of pilfering from the Master of Trinity. at the age of nineteen, saw himself in print, as the editor of a treatise of "Plutarch," and one of Basil: and in the preface to which he states that he was then occupied upon Lycophron. By the time, however, that his second work was finished, he had determined to give up all profane reading, in which he confesses he had made but little progress, and to confine himself to sacred literature. Accordingly, he published his splendid edition of "Clemens Alexandrinus," reprinted in Italy in 1745. In his maiden work, Potter did nothing but reprint the treatises which Grotius had prefixed to his selections from Stobæus; while to his choice of Lycophron he was probably led by knowing that Scaliger had translated into Latin Iambics that mass of highsounding words and unmeaning jargon, when he was only nineteen years old, the very age when the late Lord Royston put it into English blank verse. Potter's talents were, however, of too small a calibre to warrant his firing away like Mercerus, Grotius, and Delrius; who published respectively Nonius Marcellus, Martianus Capella, and the fragments of Latin Tragedy, before they were twenty; nor did he fail in his Lycophron and Clemens Alexandrinust to prove that the boy is the father of the man; for though the range of his reading had extended, it produced no expansion in the range of his mind. Of scarcely greater powers, though with much better taste, was Hudson; to whom we are indebted for editions of Thucydides, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the minor Greek Geographers, Longinus, sop, Moris, and Josephus, which last, however, he did not live to finish. In the early part of his career, he had, like Alsop, a fellow editor of Esop, sided with the party at Oxford opposed to Bentley, to whom he sneeringly To the list of juvenile editors, or rather editors in petto, must be added one mentioned by Creuzer; who, in his notes to Plotinus, speaks of a "Jacobus Leopardi, Comes Florentinus, qui necdum septendecim annos natus, neque in Græcis literis ullo magistro usus, ad editionis modum concinnavit librum hoc titulo," Porphyrii de Vita Plotini et ordine librorum ejus Commentarius Græce et Latine ex Versione Marsilii Ficini emendata. Græca illustravit et Latina emendavit Jacobus Leopardi 1814." But what became of the projected edition we have not heard. Wasse's copy of this work was purchased by Burney at Askew's sale, and is now in the British Museum. It contains a good many notes, but none, as might be expected, of great value. It will, however, repay a future editor of Clemens the trouble of inspecting them, and selecting the best. There is also in the same library a copy of Sylburgius's edition, with a few remarks of Bentley, but nothing of the least consequence. alludes in one of his notes upon Æsop, published anonymously. But he seems to have made his peace with the conqueror. At least we find that Bentley lent him a copy of Josephus, with the MSS. notes of Casaubon. In his Thucydides we first meet with a regular collation of MSS., by the aid of which the critics of our own day have been able to get at the very words of an author, more difficult than, and almost as corrupt as, Eschylus,* and who had therefore deterred every preceding scholar from attempting an emendation, except such, as in the case of Stephens and Tusanus, were obtained from the Greek Scholia or the Latin version of Valla. But with the exception of his collations of MSS., Hudson did nothing. His notes are merely the re-print of H. Stephens, or contain a reference to scholars, who, like Stephens, paid greater attention to the scholiast, whom they could construe, than to the author, whom they could not. (To be continued.) ART. VII.-Second Annual Report of the Protestant Association. Exeter Hall, 1838. VERY few societies among the very large number now existing have struggled through greater difficulties and against stronger prejudices than those which the Protestant Association has encountered from the very first moment of its establishment in 1836. Yet, on looking to its annual report, it will be seen, that by Of the extreme difficulty of Thucydides no better proof can be given than the following. On three different occasions, Dr. Davy, the Master of Caius and Gonville College, Cambridge, put the same passage before Porson; who furnished him each time with a different interpretation. So utterly hopeless did Porson conceive the attempt to make out that author satisfactorily, that he rarely, if ever, selected any of the Peloponnesian war for University examinations. Since his time, however, and more especially during the professorship of Scholefield, Thucydides has been set so frequently, that any fresh-man of the least classical attainments would think himself insulted by having a crack passage put before him, and told not to translate it, but to shew why it is untranslateable. On the continent, Duker was the first to doubt the integrity of the vulgate; whom Valckenaer followed, and asserted that he could correct it in numerous passages. Judging from the few but first-rate specimens of his powers in print, we can feel only too acutely the irreparable loss of his papers by the blowing up of Luzac's house at Leyden. To those, however, who are desirous of seeing how much has been, and still remains to be, done for Thucydides, we would earnestly recommend the perusal of Burges's translation of Poppo's Prolegomena. |