P. Ovidii Nasonis Heroicles XIV. Edited by Arthur Palmer, MA-
(Longmans.)—We welcome this careful and scholarly edition of the Heroides the more gladly, because it comes from Trinity College, Dub- lin, and helps to do away the reproach that the scholars of that University are apt to enjoy their knowledge rather than to make it avail- able for others. Mr. Palmer prefixes a preface in which he expands his views about the authenticity of the poems attributed under the title of the Heroicks to Ovid, views which follow a middle course between the scepticism which rejects without sufficient reason, and the uncritical laxity which formerly accepted poems undoubtedly spurious. Lech- mama, for instance, rejects the Epistle of Briseis to Achilles, on the ground that the lines,
"Nam Metal Earybates me Talthybiusque vocartutt, Earybal data sum Taithybioque comes."
are unworthy of the poet. Mr. Palmer very properly stigmatises such a reason as trivial in the extreme. The lines need not be defended, but Ovid is not the only poet in whom we find unworthy lines that are, nevertheless, undoubtedly genuine. Mr. Palmer himself, however, can be bolder on occasion than British critics commonly venture to be. In the "Hermione," for instance, he disposes of Lachmann's objection to the metrical construction of two lines by boldly ohelising some eight lines, and obelising them just on the grounds which are generally so unsatisfactory, the supposed want of poetic taste. For our part, we do not see why the line " Castori Amycheo et Amyclmo Polluci" should not have been written by Ovid. It was the regular fashion of Roman poets so to treat Greek names, and even the more careful elegiac writers might use it on occasion. Lachmann's generalisations about the rules which Ovid observed in allowing these hiatuses are certainly hasty, and made from an insufficient number of instances. The speci- mens of textual criticism in the preface, mostly introduced a propos of Madvig's emendations, are judicious, and the running commentary is satisfactory.
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