every one of which there was ample room for the display of criticism of the highest order,—yet has he done Greek literature signal service, by being the first to make the learned world acquainted with the Sancroft MS. of Herodotus; which is by far the best of all that have been preserved, and of which Gaisford made, at the suggestion of Porson, a fresh collation, and published its various readings in a way that Valckenaer, who complained of Wesseling's unwillingness to communicate his collations of MSS., would have been delighted with; although he would have said, that the Dean of Christ-Church might have done the father of history still greater service, had he been disposed to put in practice the advice given by Timotheus to Alexander "Take the good the gods provide thee; We know, indeed, that the German Baehr, the English Long, (ex-Professor of Greek in the London University, and the present Editor of the Penny Cyclopædia,) together with the half-Attic half-Celtic Negris, have considered the Emanuel MS. the corrupter rather than the preserver of the genuine text. But to this trio of giant Grecians we will venture to oppose the single annis retro non adeo multis, exorti sunt homines, qui veterem istam emortuamque fabulam reponere gestiunt. Hi novos mundos condunt [as the Geologists now do] animos e corporibus, ut Magi e sepulchris, eliciunt [like the modern Materialists]: hi Deo Summo, ne se forte beatum existimet, suum quoque corpus circumponunt. Horum scripta si lego, continuo agnosco juratos superstitionis hostes; progredienti phasmate, certissimos omnis religionis inimicos deprehendo. Multa apud eos video acute dicta; multa subtiliter excogitata; multa periculose, multa capitaliter. Ob hæc tamen nemo nisi ouans istos admirabitur. Ipsi enim suorum librorum pars quantula sunt. Græci olim Verrem repetundis postulabant. Si Græci iterum pallium vetustum repeterent, ita isti reperirentur post litem contestatam et docti et locupletes Philosophi, quemadmodum Siculus ille prædo repertus fuit et vir bonus et quæstor modestus et diligens pater-familias. Quis tandem, cedo, istorum scriptorum fructus? Haud scio an alias unquam post natos homines ubereor exstiterit Atheismi proventus. Thoas impiissimam gentem ab Orco rediisse dicas. Exiguum semper fuit intervallum inter Regum carceres et sepulchra. Divina quoque Majestas corpus simul credi cæpit et eviluit. Nimirum ut honorare id, quod non putamus esse, est impossibile, ita nec diuturnus esse potest ejus rei honos, quam non omnium esse optimam existimabis."-With regard, however, to Gale's editorial talents, although he has not exhibited much critical sagacity, he has shown a thorough acquaintance with a mass of writers, whose very names are scarcely known to modern scholars; nor would Bentley, we think, have called him an homuncio, had he not discovered a fragment of the Edoni of Eschylus quoted with all its imperfections on its head, even after Scaliger had set it to rights in his notes on Catullus. shield of the pigmy Porson, whose estimate of that MS. was not made upon slight grounds, nor will it be overturned by all the defenders of anomalies in sense and absurdities in syntax; who have, in like manner, found fault with Bekker, for pinning his faith upon a favourite MS. in Thucydides, Plato, Isocrates, and Demosthenes; although it must be confessed, that he has occasionally adopted the worst reading found in an old MS. instead of a better in a recent one-witness his rejection of the angelic (v.) of Plato, the counterpart of the Flor. (x) in Stalbaum's list, and his preference of the Clarkian (A); which, said Buttman truly, has not fulfilled the expectations once formed of it.* To return, then, to the third of our "Heroes," whom even Bentley would have permitted to enter the magic circle of intellectual critics, for he has spoken of him in no niggard terms of praise; we allude to Thomas Stanley,† who, with Jeremy Markland, Thomas Tyrwhitt, and, in our own days, Mr. Fynes Clinton, form nearly the whole list of English gentlemen, who, possessing the means of passing through life like the suitors of Penelope, 'fruges consumere nati," have chosen to handle the pen instead of the dice-box, and to pore over musty MSS. than to play a pool at ombre with a dowagerduchess, or to romp down a country-dance-for quadrilles and waltzes were then unknown-with a young lady, when she had just come out at Bath. The works by which Stanley is best known have so little affinity with each other, as to excite some surprise that the same person, who could feel an interest in the one, should not shrink from the other. He, who was so enamoured of Æschylus as not to be deterred from editing the most difficult, because most corrupt, of ancient authors, could surely find little to arrest his attention in the pages of Diogenes Laertius; a work quite to the taste of a Menage, who could see far more to admire in the chitchat of the Plutarchiana, than in the sober talk of the son of Olorus. Such, however, was the favourable reception given to Stanley's "History of Philosophy," that it went through four editions in this country, and was translated in part by Le Clerc, and the remainder by Olearius, into Latin, for the benefit of * So, too, in the Philippic of Demosthenes, Bekker's favourite Paris MS. (S.) is inferior to the Harleian and the family to which it belongs. The truth is, that the same MS. which is sometimes instar omnium, and at others of only an inferior character, as shown by the Vatican MS. (B.) of Thucydides; which in the last book stands alone, while in the others, and especially the three first, it frequently coincides with the worst. Bentley's words are, "the learned Mr. Stanley, in his noble edition of Eschylus." foreigners, as ignorant of English as the Quarterly Reviewer is of Dutch. To the chopp'd hay, as Gray called it, of metaphysics, Stanley was probably led by the perusal of the writings of that wondrous creature, Picus Mirandola; whose "Platonic Discourse on Love" formed the groundwork of one of Stanley's poems,* and whose collection of Chaldean oraclest he inserted in the last * Stanley's poems, original and translations, were published in 1651, and reprinted by Sir Egerton Brydges in 1815, where the typographical beauty of the volume is sadly disfigured by the numberless errors in the Greek quotations, with which the notes are studded. In the same volume is to be found quite a curiosity in its way,-the poetical version of one of the prose letters of Aristænetus; an attempt to which Stanley was probably led by knowing that Ben Jonson's "Drink to me only with thine eyes," &c. was obtained from different fragments of Philostratus, another writer of letters in prose; and still more, by his knowing that some of Shakspeare's speeches are only a poetical resetting of English prose translations from Plutarch. In the same way it were easy to give a poetical representation of the story of Acontium and Cydippe, from the prose Greek of Alciphron, and thus approximate to the very verses of Callimachus, which Alciphron merely prosified. From the same volume we have discovered that Garth's celebrated couplet "As diamonds take their lustre from their foyle, So 'tis to Bentley that we owe a Boyle❞— was suggested by Sir Edward Sherburne's poetical address to his friend Stanley; to whom, in allusion to the young poet's translations from various languages, Sherburne said— "The foreign wealth transferred, improved by thine, With regard to the passage of Philostratus (Lett. 24) which Ben Jonson translated, it is evident that in the proseἘμοὶ δὲ μόνοις πρόπινε τοῖς ὄμμασιν εἰ δὲ βούλει τοῖς χείλεσι προσφέρουσα πλήρου φιλημάτων τὸ ἔκπωμα χοὕτως μοι δίδου-we have a fragment of Menander Μόνοις δ' ἐμοὶ πρόπινε τοῖσιν ὄμμασιν· Εἰ δ' αὖ θέλεις, τοῖς χείλεσι προσφέρουσα σοῖς The fullest collection of the Chaldean and other oracles is to be found in the Classical Journal, in some articles furnished by the late Thomas Taylor; whose zeal in the cause of ancient philosophy we are as ready to admire, as to reprobate his dishonesty in passing off Spens's English translation of the Republic of Plato for his own, without so much as saying a single word about the real author; who, we suspect, merely put into English the French version of Dacier, just as Thomas Taylor, in the case of his translation of Maximus Tyrius, looked only to the Latin of Daniel Heinsius, instead of turning to the Greek original, as portion of the "History of Philosophy." It was not long, however, before Stanley became dissatisfied with the mince-meat of metaphysics; and after paying some attention to the μupióßißlos Callimachus, who seems, like the master-spirits of the Penny Magazine, to have read books only to make extracts from them, Stanley wisely devoted himself to an original author; and, with the consciousness of intellectual strength, the result of a mastery over the language, he determined to grapple with the father of tragedy; of whom, during a century, no edition had appeared since the time of Canter; who, in his "Syntagma Criticum," first showed how much the knowledge of Palæography would do for the restoration of passages, in the hands of a sagacious critic. Of the success which attended the labours of Stanley on Æschylus, the best proof is furnished by the fact, that his edition still holds an honourable place, while the Euripides of Barnes is almost forgotten. It is true that, from the lighthouses subsequently erected near the rocks and quicksands in the sea of Criticism, a few have been able to guide their single vessels with greater ease into the desired port; yet, as regards the whole fleet of seven sail, and their frail cargo of broken vases, it may be said of Stanley in the case of the Greek stage, what was said of Pitt in the case of the French Revolution,—that “he was the pilot who weathered the storm." The sciolist De-Pauw, however, whose vaunted knowledge of Chinese was, we suspect, on a par with his real knowledge of Greek, presumed to insult over the manes of Stanley. But the simpleton only got laughed at for his pains; nor was he shown by Kidd in the British Critic. It is by such half-scholars, whose vanity outruns their discretion, that irreparable mischief is done to the cause of sound learning. Had Taylor been content to make himself thoroughly master of the syntax, instead of despising verbal criticism, and to read Plato with the view of understanding Proclus and Plotinus, and not contrariwise; and if, while comparing one with the other, and confronting both with the Stagirite and his numerous commentators, he had always by his side Ruhnkens's edition of Timæus, as the compass to direct his course through a sea of Greek philosophy,—which, if not unexplored, like the Terra del Fuego, is at least known only to a Creuzer, the Cook of classical voyagers,—the self-taught polytheist of Walworth would have done himself greater credit and the world a better service, than by translating what he did not understand himself, and could not, of course, make intelligible to others; and who, when affecting to be singularly close, was as wide of the mark, as are the faithless fabricators of French versions. That Taylor, when not misled by the Neo-Platonists, could express himself in language at once simple and terse, and frequently eloquent, a mere inspection of his numerous publications will abundantly testify; while his "Vindicia Antiquæ," inserted in the Classical Journal, are quite enough to disprove the vaunted boast of the modern school, that, in the case of intellectual science, "God said, Let Bacon be, and all was light." worth the powder and shot that Heath expended on him. Time, that generally sifts all literary pretensions, until the charlatans settle in the mud of oblivion, has shown long since that Stanley's name is never mentioned but with the respect due to a man of taste and learning; while De-Pauw's, if mentioned at all, is connected only with the recollection of the peacock, whose feathers D'Orville plucked so unmercifully. Parr, indeed, whose sympathies were ever on the side of floggee,-unless when he was wielding a rod himself over Bishop Hurd,-speaks of "the illiberal and savage language adopted in the Vannus Critica;'" but as he confesses that "the coarseness and petulance of De-Pauw were quite insufferable," we should like to know what D'Orville could have done better than, in the words of Emilia applied to honest Iago, "To whip the rascal naked through the world." But our article has got, perhaps, to too great a length: in all probability we shall continue the subject in our next Number. ART. VI. - Germany; the Spirit of her History, Literature, Social Condition, and National Economy; illustrated by reference to her Physical, Moral and Political Statistics, and by Comparison with other Countries. By BISSET HAWKINS, M.D. Oxon. F.R.S. Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, late Professor at King's College, &c. 8vo. London: J. W. Parker. 1838. GERMANY is so interesting a country to every Englishman, from the numerous bonds of association which exist between it and his native land, in affinity of race and of language, in laws, institutions, customs, habits, and manners, that we are naturally led to hail with satisfaction the appearance of any new work treating of this country. The one before us differs in many points from its predecessors, and occupies a new and more enlarged field of observation. Dr. Hawkins, instead of presenting us with a volume of travels devoted to the description of any particular part, or even of the whole of Germany, has produced a work which combines at the same time the features of a book of travels, and a political, (taking that term in the most extended sense,) literary and scientific history. Very considerable labour and research, and a very judicious habit of selection, must have been employed, in order to collect together and arrange in so clear and comprehensive a form, the numerous and important facts which are to be found in the pages of this work. The statistical details which it contains are very valuable. Indeed the author appears to have paid particular |