SPECTATOR'S LIBR ARY.

CLasarcer. Lrrsnaertrax.

Bibliotheca Scriptornm Gnecorum. Vol. XI. Fragments Ilistorirontm Grarcorum. Hecataei, fee. Auxerunt, uotis et Prolegomenis illustrarunt. indice pleuissimo

in-

struxerunt Car. et Theod. Mullen. Accedunt Marmora Path= et llosettauum, hoc sum Letronii. Riad cum C. Mullen commentanis. Parisiis, editor° Ambrosio

Firruha Bidet Didot. Paris sad London. Fir-non,

Anne Boleyn: an Historical Romance. By Mrs. A. T. Thomson. Author of "Con- stance." "The Life and Times of Ileury the Eighth," &e. &c. In throe volumes.

RELIGIOUS PoLrrr, Coltscre. Congregationalism ; or the Polity of Independent Churches, viewed in relation to

the State and Tendencies of Modern Society Jackson and Watford.

DIDOT'S GREEK LIBRARY.

Tins is the eleventh volume of what when completed will be the most valuable work of its kind that has issued in modern times

even from the press of its enterprising publisher. M. DIDOT pro-

poses to give to the world, in sixty not unwieldy volumes, distin- guished by typographical beauty, and at a price varying from 16s. to 1/. 4s. per volume, a complete collection of the classical Greek writers. Each volume may be had separately, and the complete collection will contain what in other editions would make four hundred volumes and sell at four times the price.

The cheapness and typographical beauty constitute, however, a very subordinate part of the merit of this edition. M. DLDOT, wishing, apparently, to rest his fame upon this publication, has en- gaged the assistance of many of the most eminent Hellenists of France and Germany. The most correct editions have been se- lected as the groundwork of the text ; and those have in many in- stances been collated with manuscripts in the Royal Library of

Paris, and in the libraries of the Vatican and Florence. The nu- merous fragments of the Greek classics, which have been recovered of late years by the enthusiastic industry of ANGELO MAI and others, are inserted in this edition ; which is distinguished in con- sequence by important additions, as well as by emendations in the text. A Latin translation in parallel columns accompanies the text of each author ; and though we rather incline to question the dictum of the publisher that this language is better qualified than any other to follow the turn of almost every phrase and render the Greek verbatim, there is no doubt that the fixity of its character as a dead language, and the universality of its use throughout Europe, render it preferable for this purpose to any modern lan- guage. The translations appear to great advantage when collated with those appended to earlier editions ; and for extent and accu- racy, the indexes have never been surpassed, and rarely equalled by any that have preceded them.

This praise is justly due—it is no exaggeration : a regard to truth, however, obliges us to hint a wish that in future more attention

might be paid to the literal accuracy of the text than appears to have been done in some parts of the volume now before us. In general it is most respectably executed in this as in every other re-

spect, but one or two pages look as if the "reader" had got drowsy.

Some idea of the importance of this publication may be formed from a brief enumeration of its contents. Ten volumes of the poets embrace the great epic, the tragic and comic dramatists ; the mythological, didactic, lyric, and other poets ; and the flowers of the anthology. Fifty volumes of prose writers contain all the works of the Greek historians, biographers, geographers, orators, philosophers, (including moralists,) naturalists, rhetoricians, phy- sicians, writers of fables, romances, and letters, which have come down to us. These sixty volumes are the history of Greece. The works generally so called are essays upon the history of Greece—statements of the views of the history of Greece taken by their authors i • but this body of prose and poetry is the history of Greece told by the Greeks themselves, with more of frankness than they were aware of. Their narratives may be coloured and partial ; but the prejudices of this age differ so much from the prejudices of theirs, that the very lies of their vanity, by painting them as they wished to be thought, give us a deeper insight into their feelings than even their actions could do. And if their stories be apocry- phal, the struggles of ambition revealed by the strifes of their orators and statesmen, the glimpses of domestic habits afforded by allusions of their poets, and incidental illustrations or discussions of their moralists, bring back the men and society of Greece as they lived and breathed. He who would know the Greeks as they were must read himself into the knowledge in their own writings. And this task has been rendered materially easier by the labours of commentators on the arts and antiquities of Greece.

Such studies are something more than mere gratification of taste. When we attempt to analyze our opinions, we are struck at every step by the large amount of them which have been, and must continue to be taken upon trust—the formidable proportion which consists of formulas of words which we have only partially succeeded in understanding, or translating into ideas. This is the case with the illiterate as with the learned. If the most ignorant man among us could be brought to perform this analytical process,

he would find that a large proportion of what he has been accus- tomed to think his thoughts, are mere parrot-like repetitions of what he has been accustomed to hear said by those around him. Study, literary pursuits, add to a man's real knowledge; but they mutually add in a still greater ratio to the number of imperfectly- apprehended propositions with which his mind is stored. Lan- guage, like some other of man's creations, is in one sense greater than the being who creates it. The inanimate domes of St. Peter'a and St. Paul's impress us with a mightier sense of power and beauty than the majority of living men ; and they thus impressed even the minds which projected them. The colossal organization of the British empire, though produced by the cooperation of human minds, takes prisoner, and hurries along with it in its onward course, myriads of minds as powerful as those who wove the net in which they are enmeshed. And so with language : its subtile and flexible adaptations—its colossal generalizations—its capability of suggestingpassionate emotion—enthral the very minds strengthened by obtaining it as an auxiliary instrument. There is a demoniac power in the creations of human intellect ; - they are, as it were, informed with a portion of the life which gave them birth, and assert an equality of power. One of the most important tasks of the thinker is to ascertain as far as he can the nature and extent of this influence exercised over him by language. And to do this with success, he must accustom himself to trace back its logical formulas to their origin. In this sense, (and in others also,) the chain of intellectual history is unbroken. As sure as the words which our mothers addressed to us when apprehension was first awakening within us had their share in giving form and direction to our individual thoughts, so sure has the language of every nation which has bad political, commercial, or literary intercourse with us or with our ancestors, had its share in giving character to the lan- guage now spoken in our land. The language of the age of SEAR- sraitz determined to a certain extent the character of the language we speak and think in ; the Roman authors directly influenced its structure ; and the Greek authors influenced it both immediately and mediately through the Romans. To know man as he is, we must know man as he has been : the thinkers of Greece and Rome are our ancestors in a truer and nearer sense than the half-dumb votaries of the Druids, of whom we know little more than the name.

Two circumstances have contributed to lead many of those who profess to take utility as their standard to undervalue the study of the dead languages. They have in the first place confounded the exclusion of other studies with the cultivation of this one. They have in the second place been repelled by the paltry pride in an acquaintance with the mere technicals of these languages dis- played by the majority of those who studied them, and with the disproportionate length of time supposed to be necessary to acquire them. There is a rich kernel in these languages, although pedants content themselves with mumbling the dry husk. In them lies the key to the identity of the character of all European languages. The radical words, the vocal inflections of many European languages, are entirely dissimilar ; but the logical structure of all of them is so exactly identical as to admit (except in the case of the cant phrases of daily small-talk) a literal translation from any one of them into any other being perfectly intelligible. And the civiliza- tion, the moral theory and practice of all of them, vary only by slight shades of difference. The language and thoughts of all are cast in one mould—the Greco-Latin ; and whoever is tolerably conversant with these languages and their principal writers, has a key to the thoughts and words of all Europe. As to the time spent in acquiring them, the Germans, by adopting the same rational mode of tuition which prevails in respect to modern languages, have greatly shortened it ; and yet Germany can boast at present of an array of classical scholars, whom our Oxonians think them- selves distinguished by translating. It is to be wished that classical scholarship, instead of being banished from popular education, were made to occupy its proper place. There is no necessity for making it compulsory. Let its importance not only to the professional theologian, physician, and lawyer, but to every one who would study history aright, be made apparent, and it may be safely left to the option of pupils or those who direct their studies. A more rational process of instruction might render it possible to teach it without engrossing one hour which it may be desirable to devote to other studies. The best teacher can do little more than enable his pupil to master the ele- ments—perhaps inoculate him with a taste for the study. The rest must be his own work. But by the means of collections like that now before us, and the multiplication of school and district libraries, the means of rendering his knowledge of the classical lan- guages available for the general cultivation of his mind, may be easily placed within reach of every one.

The volume which has given rise to this train of thought pos- sesses a peculiar value for all who wish to know the Greeks as they really were. It is a collection of the surviving fragments of those historians whose works have been lost, collected from every author who is known to have quoted them, and arranged, as nearly as what is known of the form and structure of their works permits, in the order they may be presumed to have stood in originally. A col- lection of this kind is the best method of analyzing the amount and nature of the evidence we possess relative to the transactions of Greece, and more especially of early Greece. We see at one view upon what authority certain statements rest, and in what form they have been conveyed. We are enabled to discriminate between what is stated as a fact, and what is merely repeated as legendary lore. We are enabled to estimate the amount of the probability that the narrator was well or ill-informed. It is an anatomical preparation of Greek history, indispensable to a thorough know- ledge of its form and constitution. It is the outline of the history of that versatile and ingenious people, who, whether struggling for independence in their native seats, or for dominion in Asia and Africa—whether freemen, masters, or slaves, have amid all varieties of circumstance been true to their character—ever marked by a high degree of intellectual gracefulness. This outline must be filled up from the narratives of professed historians, the works of their poets and orators, and the remains of ancient art. Two very valuable contributions of the latter class are bound up with the

present volume—the fac-similes of the marble of Pesos and the Rosetta stone, with a commentary on the former by Mum.= and on the latter by LETRONNE. The last-mentioned s an ingenious and valuable contribution to the history of the Ptolemies—we might almost say of the Alexandrian school—the channel to which we are mainly indebted for what we possess of Grecian literature— the connecting link between Heathen and Christian Greek.

The mention of the Alexandrian school suggests what seems to us an omission to be regretted in the Greek Library of M. DIDOT. It does not appear that he proposes to give any of the Greek Mathematicians : a reprint of them would, however, not only render his Library more complete, it would be an inestimable service con- ferred upon the scientific world. If he hesitate to do this on the plea of there being no public sufficiently large to afford the most distant prospect of remuneration, at least be might add the Geo- graphy of PTOLEMY IO his list. STRABO PAUSANIAS, and the minor geographers, though a valuable gift, Will be incomplete with- out it. Besides, an improved edition of that work is a desidera- tum. The Abbe DU HALMA has done justice to ProLzmy's Astro- nomical works • but, so far as we can learn, the Abbe's projected edition of the Geography has not yet appeared.

We were about to close, when accidentally turning over the leaves of the volume a passage among the fragments of %ANIMUS caught our eye ; which, however little bearing it have upon the preceding remarks, we cannot refrain from quoting, it is so glaringly and outrageously grotesque. It will startle such readers as have formed their notion of Greek legends exclusively on the statuesque beauties of the orators and dramatists. " Xanthus," says that good gossip ATHEN/EUS, "relates bow Kambles, King of the Ly- diens, was a terrible eater and drinker, and belly-slave. He records that this King one night cut up and devoured his own wife; and that next morning, finding the hand of his wife still sticking in his mouth, he killed himself, the report of his voracity having gone abroad." What a boa-constrictor of a fellow be must have been! Not one of the ogres of our nursery lore @Mies near him.