KING AND MUNRO'S HORACE.* THE work of editing the great

classical authors is being carried on nowadays with great activity. Even the thankless labour of translating them finds numerous devotees. But books intended

for scholars, in the technical sense of that word which distinguishes it from students, appear less frequently than they did half a century ago. The beautiful volume before us is all the more welcome. Horace seems doubly enjoyable when we can get him free from the suggestion of examinations.

The edition with which we naturally compare the present is the richly illustrated volume which appeared some twenty years ago under the care of the late Dean of St. Paul's, and which has attained a very considerable popularity. We have no wish to speak depreciatingly of that work. It will probably continue to hold, as indeed it deserves to hold, its place as the "illustrated Horace." The very numerous designs with which it is adorned are generally well chosen and almost invariably well executed. Of the life of the poet it is sufficient to say that it is worthy of its author, who indeed found in it a subject singularly well suited to his genius. The work of Messrs. King and Munro appeals less strongly to popular tastes. It is a handsome volume, and admirably printed, but of a studied simplicity of appearance. But its great charm to the eyes of those who are best qualified to judge is its genuine and workmanlike aspect. It is seldom, indeed, that two such workmen as the two editors can be found to unite their labours. England contains no finer Latin scholar than Mr. Munro ; and Mr. King, in the branch of knowledge which he has made peculiarly his own, the history of gems, can scarcely be said to have a rival. Between them they have produced a valuable and thoroughly trustworthy book, a text which in all probability more nearly resembles what Horace actually wrote than anything that has before been given to the world, and a series of illustrations which are really authentic representations of ancient life.

These illustrations Mr. King takes exclusively from gems. He says in his preface

"I boldly undertake, in good hope of success, to illustrate my author's ideas by precisely the same pictorial renderings of them as ho would himself have selected, had such a method of enhancing the attractions of a book been fashionable in his day. And this assertion, presumptuous as it may appear to the uninitiated, may be substantiated with little difficulty. All persons conversant with ancient art are aware that engraved gems filled exactly the same place in the Roman world as prints on paper do in the modern : all subjects,

Quidquid agunt horniees, return, ire, rolujaat,'

being embodied in their medium, and by means of impressions circulated all over tho Empire. No theme was too high or too low for their scope, the profoundest mysteries of religion and the broadest caricature. imperial majesty and the puffs of a quack doctor, with every other expression of the various feelings of our nature, claimed gems for their exponents."

And, as he remarks,

"Gems have a peculiar claim to be enlisted in the service of that Poet who was the favourite and intimate friend 'Quern vocal "dllecte," Mrecanaz,'

of one himself the most enthusiastic amateur in them, and the warmest patron of gem engravers. The unfading immortality of those vehicles of art tempts one to indulge the pleasing illusion, truly an ' amabilis insania,' that among the numerous intagli decorating these pages, some one or two may actually have charmed the eye and stimulated the imagination of the tasteful poet."

The illustrations may be divided into two classes, the first consisting of portraits and historical memorials, the second of mythological subjects. The first of these seems to us to be of peculiar value, a value which is much enhanced by the notes which Mr. King supplies, stating as they do with the utmost precision and candour the claims to acceptance which each object possesses. It may be observed that he very seldom admits anything of the genuine antiquity of which he is not convinced, but that he more frequently follows generally received opinion or probable conjecture in assigning names to several portrait gems of which the nomenclature is uncertain. The portraits, indeed, are many of them singularly characteristic, and their force and individuality are well preserved by the process of wood-engraving, which has been here used to reproduce them. Any one who will compare the three heads, Maecenas, Augustus, and M. Agrippa, which illustrate the first, second, and sixth odes of the first book, with the same three subjects as they appear in the same places in Dean it Wu:Ian's Horace, cannot fail to be struck with the great superiority in individuality and genuine portrait-like character which the gem appears to possess over the bust. Among other interesting subjects of this class may be mentioned the heads of Juba, King of Numidia, exhibiting the elaborately curled hair which made Cicero speak of him as an adolescens bene capillatus; of M. Antonius, a face marked with some power, but of a heavy and sensual coarseness ; of Julius Caesar, a very characteristic portrait, which Mr. King considers to be indubitably genuine ; a Persian king of the Sassaniau dynasty, a very interesting and beautiful subject, though, as Mr. King thinks, later than the time of Horace by three centuries ; Perseus, the last of the Macedonian kings; the younger Pompey, who exhibits in his bearded face a characteristic difference from the Roman fashion of the day ; and a very beautiful portrait of Tiberius in his youth. We notice, also, a very striking head of Epicurus, and another of Ariatippus, which certainly exhibits him as " in cute curanda plus sequo operates." The satyr-like look which is commonly ascribed to Socrates is far more marked iu the face of Democritus. A doubtful portrait of Horace on the title-page displays in its smooth almost sensual features what Mr. Matthew Arnold would call the poet's want of "adequacy." A drawing in Dean Milman's edition from a coin, we know not of what claims to authority, represents a far more vigorous face. Sometimes indeed we are inclined to regret that Mr. King's design has not included the illustrations which might be taken from coins, furnishing as they do some of our most authentic instances of ancient portraiture. Dean Miltuan gives us from this source some heads, among which we may instance those of Sappho, Alemus, Philip of Macedon, and of Regulus, which every one must be at least willing to believe in. In the representation of scenes again, the limited space of the gem did not afford the same opportunities as were given by mural decorations, vase painting, and the like, and Mr. King's illustrations of this kind, excellent as they are, are from the nature of the case less satisfactory than his portraits. Compositions of two or more figures are rare, and therefore such important subjects as sports, sacrifices, and battles cannot be adequately represented. We must notice one ingenious interpretation by which Mr. King makes into a "Death of Cato" what has been commonly represented as the "Suicide of Ajax." But is it likely that the figure in this case would have been nude?

Mr. Munro's labours ou the text have been chiefly devoted to restoring it to what may be supposed to have been its pristine condition from the corruptions with which the carelessness or perversity of ages has disfigured it. Ile has, wisely we think, discarded the innovation of the division into stanzas, and he has restored, probably to as great an extent as modern knowledge admits, the genuine spelling. " Dammae," umerus, uequiquatn, raeda, paelex, for &mac, humerus, nequidquam, rhoda, pellex, will seem novelties to many readers, but are, without a question, a return to ancient practice. In his dealing with the text in the more important matter of readings Mr. Munro is very cautious. Every one, indeed, as he justly remarks, " must introduce conjectures into his text ;" for the reading of the MSS. is occasionally slicer nonsense ; but the modern practice of criticism has been to resort to them only in the last extremity, and Mr. Munro adheres faithfully to it, even when he is able to make out a strong case for alteration. Ile says : " Though I have carefully avoided admitting any correction into the text, except whoro opinion is nearly unanimous that some correction must be made, I feel sure that many passages yet need alteration, though I am not satisfied with any that has been proposed : indeed, utter so many centuries of criticism, it is not easy to got a now hearing on any passage ; and very many of us prefer from long habit our own ununpsimus to the most brilliant stunpsimus."

And he then proceeds to give us, in some pages of which we can only complain that they are too few, some very shrewd criticism. For instance, in Carm. i., 23, for

"Nam sou mobilibus veris inhorruit

Adventus foliis, sou virides rubum Dimovere lacortae,

Et cordo et genibus tremit,"

he suggests,— Mobilibus vepria inhorruit Ad venture justly remarking that "the zephyr blowing steadily for days together would be the last thing to startle a fawn," and nothing leas can be meant by the adventm veris. It may be doubted, too, we think, whether the abstract subject adventus ' is quite Latin.

Nothing in Mr. Munro'a introduction is better than his remarks on the genuineness of the Horatian poems. Ile says with much force :—

"His style throughout is his own, borrowed from none who preceded him, successfully imitated by none who came after him. The Virgilian heroic was appropriated by successive generations of poets, and

adapted to their purpose with signal success ; the hendecasyllable and scazon became part and parcel of the poetical heritage of Rome ; and of Catalina employs them, only less happily than their matchless creator. But the moulds in which Horace cast big lyrical and satirical thoughts were broken at his death. The style neither of Persius nor of Jnvenal has the faintest resemblance to that of their common master. Stating, whose hendecasyllablea are passable enough, has given us one alcaic and one sapphio ode, which recall the bald and constrained efforts of a modern schoolboy. I sin sure that he could not have written any two consecutive stanzas of Horace ; and, if he could not who could? And then to suppose that forgeries of whole poems or portions of poems should have taken place, and yet left no trace of the fact behind them, during the ages when he was in every public and private library !"

He proceeds to speak with well merited censure of the reckless and tasteless attacks which some of the most distinguished German scholars have made on the genuineness of the poems. " Why," he pertinently asks,

"Why, when any difficulty or apparent incongruity strikes us, should we lay it on the shoulders of a forger in the days of Tiberius or Nero, who would have striven rather to make rough places smooth than needlessly to increase a reader's perplexities ? He would have known the grammar and prosody of the language as well as Horace, and would have abhorred a false quantity as much as he."

We welcome the protest of so distinguished a scholar against the audacity, now grown intolerable, with which critics pronounce on the strength of internal evidence their verdicts of " genuine " and "spurious." The lesson may well be taken to heart in the matter of other books besides Horace.