ScsooL Booss. — The lphigeneia among the Tauri of Euripides. Edited by
E. D. England, M.A. (Macmillan.)—The characteristic of Mr. England's edition is the unusual amount of space which he has devoted to critical annotations. There is, we think, much force in his contention that all deviations from the MSS, should be given. Not one student out of a hundred has probably any idea of the real state of the text, and of how much it owes to editors. In the first three lines, for instance, we have viirear, when Tiger is evidently meant, and 'Avp‘ivt l scar, which must be wrong, as it is followed by the two names, MeviAaos kyaidiugorrf, and for which has been con- jectured 'ATp4es aro. In 237-8, again, we have two typical correc- tions of the MSS. which the young scholars will find instructive :—
"$otaPop83s /set, crnyavi:w (rot
Where enuav&a, has been conjectured for aniuuraw, and Alap.‘uvoyffs Ts Kal KAVTailAriKTp0.1 TIMMY, where TE has been substituted for the absurd sal of the copyists. The explanatory notes seem satisfactorily full without being overgrown in balk. We cannot, by the way, quite follow Mr. England when he sees a want of "tragical situation" in the play. The eituation of the two friends, contending who should suffer for the other, is as tragical as can be conceived,—has grown, in fact, into a proverbial instance.—Xschyli Agamemno. Emen- davit David S. Margoliouth. (Prostat apud Macmillan et Socc.)—We may allow that there is a certain audacity about Mr. Margoliouth's manner of proceeding, as there is, we should say, an affectation in his writing " Agamemno." But we deprecate the unmannerly attack, recalling the worst days of literary controversy, which a well- known journal has seen fit to make upon him. To imply that a scholar who has gained the very highest distinctions which Oxford can bestow wants "an .elementary acquaintance with Greek," is nothing more or less than silly. We certainly think that some of Mr. Ilargoliouth's suggestions are a contribution of value to the restoration of a true text.—We welcome heartily the Syntax of Attic Greek. By F. E. Thompson, M.L. (Rivingtons.)—Mr. Thomp- son is a teacher of large experience at one of the most suc- cessful and highly reputed of our public schools, and his book is the outcome of much work and practical experience. We re- gard it as a distinct advance, as far as usefulness is concerned, on anything that has preceded it. Mr. Thompson knows, what many great scholars do not know—and, indeed, never get the opportunity of learning—what boys want when they go astray, and what sort of explanation is most suitable to them. He divides his book into three parts, which are headed respectively, "The Syntax of the Simple Sentence," "The Syntax of the Compound Sentence," and" Proposi- tions, Negatives, Oratio Oblique, and Figures." We can unreservedly recommend this volume to teachers and learners.—T. Marci Plauti Trinummus, with Notes and Introductions by C. C. Freeman, MA., and the Rev. A. Sloman, M.A. (The Clarendon Press.)—The copious Prolegomena contribute the main difference between this edition and that which has, we believe, obtained considerable aocept- ance in this country, by the late Professor Wagner. Much of the substance of the Prolegomena, however, is drawn, as the editors very properly acknowledge in their preface, from this same editor's introduc- tion to the Ai/Maria. A more distinctive merit, and this, though not of the first importance, certainly has its value, is the insertion of stage directions, &AI., as suggested by the practical experiences of the play as it has been acted at Westminster, a school to which both of the editors belong. A play is never quite understood till it has been acted, and we have here, therefore, a decided gain. The annotation seems satis- factory enough. We may note an omission on p. 695, where attention should have been called to dictatorem. All the Roman phrases that found their way into Plautus's adaptations from the Greek have a peculiar importance.—The second volume of The Greater Poems of Virgil, edited by J. B. Greenough (Ginn, Heath, and Co., Boston, U.S.), contains Books YIL-ICIL of the Aeneid and the Georgics, a curious arrangement on which we commented when we noticed the first volume of this edition. The space given to the notes 48 somewhat narrowly limited. Difficulties are scarcely discussed, though they are commonly noticed, and alternative renderings are not by any means invariably given ; but the book is convenient and useful.— Mr. Andrew P. Peabody's Translation of Cicero de Officiis, (Little, Brown, and Co., Boston, U.S.), is somewhat cumbrous occasionally in style. We should have been inclined, if Bet to this teak, to break up Cicero's sentences a little more than Mr. Peabody has done. We may give an instance from iii., 20 "When Camas Marius had no -near prospect of the Consultable, and still remained in obscurity the seventh year after he had been praetor, nor gave any token that he was ever going to offer himself as a candidate for the Consulship, having been sent to Rome by his commander, Quintus Metellus, a man and citizen of the highest eminence, whose lieutenant he was, he charged Metellas before the Roman people with needlessly protracting the war, inti- mating that if they had made him Consul, he would in a short time have given Jugurtha either living or dead into the power of the Roman people." Now this is a good example of the periodic style of Latin prose, and it might be conveniently broken up in English into two or three sentences. Teachers are always insisting on the radical difference between English and Latin style, and telling their pupils to turn the short, co-ordinated clauses- in which English delights into the elaborately constructed periods of Latin. But they often fail to insist with equal force on the converse principle, the necessity of breaking up the Latin, if we are to get a really idiomatic translation. Mr. Peabody's version seems correct, wherever we have compared it with the original. In iii. 3, however, he seems to have neglected the somewhat difficult word opinicrne :— cobaereatia ,lanie4e chsaaxissent." and the right, which are oonjoined by "Thus we have that Socrates used to
nature."
when opinione would seem to mean, as Dr. Holden has it, "by an error of judgment."—We have also received Racine's Les Plaideurs,* edited by Leon Delbos, M.A. (Williams and Norgate)t ; Maria Stuart von Schiller, edited by C. Sheldon, D.Lit. (Macmillan and Co.) ; Sybel's Prinz Engen, edited by Dr. C. A. Buchheim,- a second edition, but much altered from the first, which appeared, as we learn from the preface, several years ago. The histori- cal matter of the book has been amply illustrated, and gram- matical notes have been added, drawn from the editor's large experience as a teacher ; A Grammar of Colloquial French, by J. F. P. Mass4 (Relfe Brothers), the outcome of the very large ex- periences of a practical teacher, which students of the language in this aspect will doubtless find of much use; A Concise System of English Parsing, by Lionel Ernest Adams (Bell and Sons) ; Spanish Readings, by Wiliam L. Knapp (Ginn and Heath, Boston, U.S.); Ass Explanatory Arithmetic, by G. Eastcott Spickernell (Simpkin, Mar. shall, and Co.) ; and a second edition, simplified in some of its details, of a text-book of acknowledged merit, Elementary Text-Book of Physics, by J. D. Everett (Blackie and Son).
• Corneille's Horace. t Volumes of "French Classics for English Readers."
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