CURRENT LITERATURE.
SCHOOL BOOKS, ETC.—Livy, Books X XI. and XXII., Hannibal's First Campaign in Italy. Edited, with Introduction, Notes, Appendices, and Maps, by the Rev. W. W. Capes. (Macmillan.) Mr. Capes's strong point in this edition—and it is very strong—is the historical informa- tion which he supplies. The first and second introductions, dealing re- spectively with " The Early History of Carthage, and the Antecedents of the Second Punic War," and "The Authorities for the History of the Second Punic War," will be specially valuable to the student ; while in the first appendix, the vexata quaestio of Hannibal's route is discussed anew. Mr. Capes's conclusions—stated, however, with a cer- tain reserve—are that Livy believed Hannibal to have crossed by the Mont Genevre, while Polybius supposed his route to have been by the Little St. Bernard, and that Polybius was probably right. The notes on the text are excellent, as far as they go ; we could have wished them to have been a little more copious. In xxii. 1, lunae inter imbrem cadentis seems to require a note ; and we have noted one or two other cases, in the few chapters which we have been able carefully to examine. Space, we know, is the difficulty. As it is, the editor devotes more pages to the notes (apart from the disser- tations) than to the text, and more can hardly be asked.---Dr. Wilhelm Wagner, whose contributions to Plautine scholarship are well known, has brought out an edition of the Menaechmei, with Notes, critical and exegetical, and an Introduction. (Deighton and Bell; Bell and Sons.) The plot of the Afenaechmei is made familiar to English readers by Shake- speare's famous adaptation of it in the Comedy of Errors, and the play is generally an eligible subject for study. Dr. Wagner's notes are not above the reach of a learner fairly advanced in Latin scholarship, while at the same time they are not too easily grasped. The most useful function of the ordinary teacher is to guide his pupil into the proper use of an apparatus criticus which he cannot himself furnish, and which he will be glad to have supplied by the hands of so competent a scholar as Dr. Wagner. The editor discusses the variations of the text at more length than is common in books of this class, and is probably right in saying that teachers may make good use of this kind of annotation —The Frogs of Aristophanes. A Revised Text, with English Notes and a Preface. By F. A. Paley. (Deighton and Bell; Bell and Sons.) We have long thought that something more convenient, less diffuse and unwieldy, than Mr. Mitchell's edition of the Frogs would be very' welcome, and Mr. Paley has furnished exactly what was wanted. The Frogs is an excellent play for a learner's first introduction to Aristo- phanes. In humour it at least equals any. Witness the scene in which Alacus tests the claims to deity of Dionysus and Xanthias; and its bearing on Attic literature gives it an additional interest and value. Mr. Paley's annotations will furnish an excellent guide. His preface dis- cusses satisfactorily the occasion and purpose of the play. He appreci- ates the comedian's motives, but he does not think it necessary, as Mr. Mitchell seems to have done, to depreciate Euripides, Porson's opinion of whom, as compared with Sophocles, he quotes with apparent approval:- " Ric [Sophocles] fortasse meliores tragcedias scripsit, sad ills dulciora poemata. Hunt magis probare solemus, ilium magi's amaro ; hum laudamus, ilium legimus." We observe that Mr. Paley explains iEschylus's, reason for not wishing to contend,— "OT, 97 irofncrts CLIVTEOP7pC' CIAO), 7011Tql Si CrUPTEOIMKEP, retT8' EtEt as meaning that his plays had not died with him, while those of Euripides had, so that the latter could quote, while the former could not, and not as a concession, intended indeed to disparage Iophon and the younger poets rather than to glorify Euripides, that the " art of poetry" had died with Euripides, and that the latter could make this boast. Mr. A. Sidgwick has edited Cicero's Laelius de Amicitia, (Rivington.) No one knows better what a schoolboy wants, and is able to give it in more useful and available form. No editor can, of course, bring himself quite " down to the level of an average English boy's intelligence. He must have the teacher as a sort of wpo.pur•fis between him and the learner, but Mr. Sidgwick does all that is possible in this way, while he supplies all the materials that a teacher can want for the class of pupils for whom this edition is chiefly intended,—students preparing for the University Local Examinations, and for matriculation at Oxford or Cambridge. A useful summary is supplied ; we have found the following of the argument to be quite a considerable difficulty. In the Pedigree of the Scipios we notice two misprints. lEmilius Paullus (Macedonicus), the victor of Pydna (here, "Pydua") was Consul in B.C. 168, not 158. He died in 160.—Cicero's Orations against Catiline, against l'erres, and in Defence of Archias, with Introduction, Analysis, and Notes, Explana- tory, and Critical, by the Rev. T. H. Lindsay Leary. (Crosby Lockwood and Co.) The help given by this edition is scarcely sufficient. The space given to Notes—thirty-five pages, as compared with ninety-six of text—is clearly insufficient. Full of allusions, historical and political, and not by any means free from difficulties in the text, those orations require, for their full elucidation, a more copious annota- tion. Nor is Dr. Leary al ways as careful as he should be. It is somewhat misleading, to put without qualification "equidem—I, for my part—(Pyarye)." The young scholar, if he is told anything, should be told that the word is used with each person, and with both numbers. The force of tam, in " Nulla res tam patria cujusdam aut avita fuit," is not given in " There was no property inherited by any man from father or grandfather," &e. Tam expresses that the property was notoriously hereditary, and therefore, it was to be presumed, beyond the reach of such decisions. Sometimes space is given to notes which might be spared. Every boy with a Latin primer should know that "Art does not stand for Marcus, but for Manilius.—Stories in Attic Greek, by Francis David Morris (Rivingtons), is an easy reading-book, in- tended to lead boys on to the study of Xenophon and the regular routine of Attic authors. Mr. Morris has adapted more or less of his materials, being careful not to introduce the learner to any non-Attic forms. A vocabulary has been added, and a moderate amount of notes.— Aditus Faciliores Grad, by the Rev. W. Potts, M.A., and the Rev. C. Daniels, M.A. (Blackwood), has much the same object. The Aditus Facili- oris Latini of the same authors is an undoubted success, and this promises to be the same.—We have received several volumes of the Cambridge Bible for Schools, under the general editorship of Dr. Perowne, now Dean of Peterborough. These are the books of Joshua and Jonah, in the Old Testament, the former edited by G. F. Maclear, D.D., and the latter by Archdeacon T. T. Perowne ; and in the New Testament, St. Matthew edited by the Rev. A. Carr • the First Epistle to the Corinthians, by Professor Lias, and the General Epistle of St. James, by E. H. Plumptre, D.D. The plan is an excellent one. Whatever the theological value of tho maxim," The Bible without note or comment" (strictly speak- ing, this should be interpreted to exclude punctuation, which is a per- petual commentary of a very effective kind), educationally it is naught. Tho names of the general editor and of the contributors give promise of efficient execution, a promise which, as far as we are able to judge, seems likely to be carried out. We should recommend these volumes (without of course pledging ourselves to agreement in details) to readers who want the help of a commentator who is loyal to the text of his original, without being slavish. Mr. Carr, for instance, dealing with St. Matthew, refuses to be tied by the fetters of tbe Harmonisers, but will certainly not leave any reader less impressed than before by the veracity of the narrative. Though not written with an expressly devotional object, these volumes will be found not inappropriate for this purpose, as well as for that which their title indicates.—A Grammar and Analytical Vocabulary of the Words in the Greek Testament, Part IL, by the Rev. a H. Waller (S. Low and Co.), contains the "Analytical Vocabulary," the words being grammatically arranged.—A Class Book of Geography, by C. B. Clarke, F.L.S. (Macmillan), is an admirable little volume. It seems to us to give exactly what is wanted. We should certainly put it—and we speak not without actual trial—before any geography of at all the same class or pretensions which we have hitherto come across. We take, for instance, "Ireland." The information is arranged in sixteen sections,—Extent, Capes, Attached Islands, Estuaries and Harbours, Climate, Mountains and Plains, Rivers, Lakes, Communications, Races of Men, Historic Sketch, Religion, Language, Industry, Divisions, and it concludes with this significant sentence :—"There is no town of 20,000 inhabitants in Ireland away from the coast." Mr. Clarke has a happy art of saying this kind of thing.—First Principles of Grammar, by T. S. Taylor (Relfe), is well intended, but scarcely fulfils its inten- tion. Mr. Taylor seeks to make grammar plain, and he does so, as far as he goes,—perhaps we might say, as far as he knows. But then his knowledge is somewhat hazy, or be has a very obscure way of express- ing it. It is, to say the least, an unusual way of putting it, to say that " wo get the word ' transitive ' from two Latin words, trans and in/ ;" and why should the Latin word pluralis be said to " mean in English more ?'" Pluralis is a late Latin grammatical word, and means exactly the same as its English derivative. And why is it said that "any word which denotes a person spoken to, is said to be of a second person ?" But Mr. Taylor is intelligible, whether he is right or wrong ; and that is something, in the compiler of a grammar.—The Civil Service History of England, by F. A. White, B.C., revised throughout and enlarged by H. A. Dobson (Crosby Lock- wood), has reached a third edition, which has been "corrected and enlarged."—A Genealogical, Constitutional, and Chronological Chart of English History, by J. P. A. Long (Longmans), strikes us as being a very useful educational instrument. The centre of the chart is occu- pied by the direct line of descent from Egbert to Queen Victoria (thirty-six generations, in ten of which the descent passed in the female line). In this line the Sovereigns are marked by capitals. The chief collateral branches are given at the side, with their corrections, and every wearer of the crown is accounted for. On the left- hand side, the actual succession of Sovereigns is given, with their dates, each dynasty being distinguished by its colour. On the right-hand side, with corresponding division of colour, stands a list of the chief events in the constitutional history of the country (where ten boys know the date of Cressy, how many know the dates of the Statutes of Treason or of Praemunire?) Any one who knew this chart thoroughly, would be not badly equipped to begin a serious study of English history. The chart is printed as a wall map, and also as a handbook.--In " Collins's School and College Classics," we have the Essays (1.--XXX I.) of Francis, Lord Verulam, with in- troduction and notes by Henry Lewis, M.A.; and Shakespeare's King John, with introduction and notes by the Rev. G. F. Fleay, M.A. (Collins.) Mr. Lewis's Life of Lord Bacon is very scanty ; his intro- duction occupies less than a page. More pains seem to have been taken with the notes. Mr. Fleay's is not an ordinary school-book. If it is made to subserve that purpose, its chief object is something different. It is, as the editor tells us in his preface, "a sample of an edition of the whole of Shakespeare's works," which he has been pre- paring for some time. And it is really a very elaborate and criti- cal work, to which we at present can only call the attention of our readers.—In " Laure's Class-Books of Literature," we have Parnell's Hermit, with biographical notice, introduction, and copious explanatory notes. (Central School D6ptit.)—We have also to notice An Elemen- tary Indian Reader, compiled by Arthur N. Wollaston (W. H. Allen and Co.); and A Manual of Book-keeping Simplified, by John D. Nichol. (Central School Ddpot.)—Of French grammars, we have French Accidence and Minor Rules of Syntax, by Professor Lion Delbos, M.A. (Williams and Norgate); The English Student's French Examiner, by F. Julien (Sampson Low and Co.), a book of useful testing-papers of questions; The Pictorial French Grammar for Children, by Marie de la Voye (Griffith and Ferran.) French Idioms and Grammatical Pecu- liarities, being Part IV. of the French Language Simplified, by L. Nottelle, B.A. (Simpkin and Marshall), and The Principles and Rules of. French Genders, by Charles Cassel, LL.D. (Longmans), an elaborate explanation and, we may say, apology, for the gender system of the French language. M. Cassel maintains that this is strictly logical, that "there are few or no eccentricities." But it takes a hundred and sixty pages to set forth this system, which must, therefore, however correct, be extremely complicated. M. Cassel may sse, in the " Public School Latin Primer," six pages which, if thoroughly learnt, leave nothing in the way of Latin genders unaccounted for.—In German, we have
Goethe's Prosa : Selections from Goethe's Prose Works, with introduc- tions and English notes, by C. A. Buchheim, Ph.D. (Sampson Low and Co.) ; and belonging to the series of " German Classics," Lessing's Laokoon, edited, with English notes, dec., by A. Hermann, Ph.D. (Clarendon Press, Oxford.)
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