Arnold's Latin Prose Composition. New Edition. Edited and Re- vised
by G. G. Bradley, MA., Master of University College, Oxford. (Rivingtons.)—The association of the Dean of Westminster and Balbus (who was always building a wall, when he was not engaged in lifting up his bands), is perhaps a little incongruous. But the former Master of Marlborough College and excellent lecturer on Latin Prose at Oxford has done good service to coming generations in thus re-editing Arnold. Balbus, indeed, will build no more wane, for the confusion of young and pleasant reminiscence of old boys. He is gone, even as the King of the Scythians with that "pain in his lower jaw" is gone from the corresponding Greek Arnold, edited by Mr. Abbott. But the new Latin Arnold has an introduction, "containing three parts, two of which are new, the other much modi- fied ;" and the real worth of the first two must reconcile the most conservative teacher to the change in the exercises which are the inevitable consequence. Dean Bradley thinks that "the order in which the various subjects treated in the difficult exercises are arranged" may be objected to, as wanting in "scientific method, and apparently definite principle." His defence of his own procedure was really not needed, but it must be convincing to any one qualified
to judge. As one looks through the book, and notes the clearness and delicacy with which the Latin way of thought is explained to boys, it seems wonderful how, on the one hand, the old rule-of-thumb ever produced good scholarship ; on the other, why better scholarship is not found among the examinandi of to-day.
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