BOOKS.

JOHN CONINGTON.* [SECOND NOTICE.] FEW readers of the volume of Essays on a Liberal Education whisk appeared about five years ago will have failed to notice the singu- larly able and temperate review of it which Professor Conington contributed to the Contemporary Review. We have found great pleasure in renewing our acquaintance with it ; nor indeed do we know, among all the apologies that have been made for a classical training, one on- which we would sooner rest the cause. Many men with the strong personal predilections for the pursuits of scholarship which were so manifest in Professor Conington would have been inclined to be dogmatic and intolerant in arguing for e favourite study so violently assailed. It was one of the many debts that we owe to him that he taught us a wiser and more efficient advocacy. In no man had " commerce with the ancients "` —to apply the admirable words which he has himself quoted from Mr.

Matthew Arnold—produced a more "steadying and composing. effect." The reasonableness and modesty of the man, his willingness to appreciate at their full value attainments which he did not himself possess, his liberal readiness to admit among the methods of edu- cation studies to which he was personally disinclined, are eminently noteworthy. Nor is there anything more interesting in the review than the notices, which we can only wish were more copious, of his own mental history and of his experience as a teacher. What- a curious fact, for instance, it is that he tells us of himself, that he- preferred to read a Greek author with the help of a Latin trans- lation. Greek, it must be remembered, had been the favourite study of his early manhood, till circumstances called upon him to- devote himself to Latin ; and it was to Greek, as we have heard, that, by one of those pathetio returns to early Metes which am- mo often recorded of the dying, his thoughts recurred in the deliri- ous utterances of his last hours. Were we to select what seems to us the ablest paper of these volumes we should choose this-

review, but to pass even cursorily over the topics which it suggests would be more than our space will permit. Less familiar to our readers will be the inaugural lecture which Professor Conington

delivered on his appointment to the Chair of Latin, which he occupied till his death. Its subject is "The Academical Study of Latin." Among other things, it contains a very able and interest- ing statement of the place which he conceived to belong to Wia literature in the mental history of the world. The value of such a statement, coming as it does from a competent judge who knew well both sides of the question which he was discussing, is mani- fest. The matchless beauty and richness of the language and+ literature of Greece, contrasted as they are with a certain hardness and =loveliness in Roman life and thought, are apt to fascinate and dazzle us. Such passages as the following should be nodal m- a corrective :--

"Perfect as it is in its own symmetry, the literature of Greece was not only subject to critical changes, but itself formed a stage in a pro- cess yet unfinished, and that not as a golden age, followed by a succes- sion of baser metals, but rather as a heroic fore-time, ushering in periods of historical life which, though constantly looking back to it as the source of light and inspiration, base yet a purpose and a being of their own. Few, indeed, are disposed to deny the originality of much of the literature which they see daily living around them ; but it is not gene- rally felt that what appears so fresh and new is in large measure due to modifications introduced by the great writers of the later Republic and the Empire. In spite of the various causes which tended to assimilate the literary character of the two nations-causes each of which would. well bear the burden of a separate discussion-the animating principle of kindred though not identical mythologies, the influence of like con- ceptions of politics and society, the common peculiarities of a bearing as opposed to a reading age, as seen in their effects on the form of compo- sition, the similarity of pronunciation, leading the Latin poets to discoid any attempts at originality in their metres, there were features in the intellectual culture of Rome which might fairly be called national, if a- more careful observation did not lead us to regard them not as charac- teristic of this or that people, but as making the general progress of letters. One of the most noticeable facts in literature is the gradual encroachment of prose upon poetry-a change which has been going on from the first, and of which evidently we do not yet see the end. In later times it has received a mighty impulse from the invention of printing, as it probably did before from the discovery of the art of writing ; but its process has not been less certain, mechanical appliances remaining the same, and it may fairly be accepted as a test of literary development. That Rome affords an instance of it may be inferred at once from the. fact, which most would admit, that its prose writers are, on the whole,. superior in excellence to its poets. Epistolary composition, which is Greece appears scarcely to have been studied at all as an art, except by the Sophists and forgers of the later schools, in Rome is cultivated by the moat accomplished men of the best ages. Satire, the one kind of poetry to which Quintilian could point as the indigenous growth of him • Miscellaneous Writings of John Conington, late Corpus Professor of Latin be the University of Oxford. Edited by J. A. Symonds, M.A. With a Memoir by H. J. & Smith, MA. 2 vols. London: Longman. 1872. country, is seen, in the hands of its most finished artist, to be closely allied to prose ; just as under the altered circumstances of the present day it finds its representative in the pamphlet, the article, or the moral essay. The same advance in the power of adapting the form to the matter may be seen in the Roman treatment of history. Thucydides knew no better way of exhibiting his consummate knowledge of character, than by inventing long speeches such as his historical personages might have spoken—in other words, by confounding history with the drama. In Tacitus, on the other hand, the analysis of human actions and motives is carried on much more directly ; the two elements, the narrative and the philosophical, were felt each to have its proper place ; and the same scheme embraces both as such in their individual distinctness."

From the claims of Latin literature the lecturer passed by a

natural transition to an argument in which indeed was found the raison d'être of his own position, the claims of the study of litera-

ture itself as an educational method. It is possible that he will seem to some to dwell too much on the literary side of the study of language. This, as we have said on another occasion, was the aide to which Professor Conington's own tastes inclined him. Such an inclination it would be ungracious to criticise. There is one part certainly of the Professor's work, his business of inter- preting the thoughts of the past, which cannot be done in

perfection without it. But perhaps we may be allowed

to regret that Professor Conington's exquisite appreciation of literary skill led him in a measure away from the study of what, though artistically less perfect, has a linguistic importance which cannot be exaggerated. An interesting paper on Ennius shows that he did not neglect the study of early Latinity, but it is strange to see among the collected works of a Professor of Latin no formal notice of Plautus, the richest treasure-house of Latin scholarship. But for the study of language, as regarded from his own point of view, this lecture is an eloquent apology. Here, for instance, is a fine passage :-

" I know not how it may be in the case of other sciences, but I can testify to the genuine intellectual satisfaction which the mind receives when some discovery, in itself, perhaps, of quite minor importance, a latent metaphor, a concealed imitation, the substitution of one insigni- ficant word or inflection of a word for another, or even the mere position of a word, hitherto overlooked, and now noticed accidentally, lies flashed light on an entire passage, and a vague sense of dispro- portion has given place to a clear perception of harmonious symmetry. Or again. where the lighting-up has been not sudden, but gradual, it is not the less reassuring to recall the first aspect of a sentence, seemingly complete in itself, and sufficient to the eye of the ordinary reader, and compare it with the full appreciation which is gained at last, when every point has been accurately scrutinised, and the student once more comes to survey it as a whole. Thus the exegetical study of the classics, as it appears to me, fulfils the two great conditions of an educational instrument : it gives at once a general and a special discipline : it encourages exuberant variety of interest along with severe precision of aim. I do not say that it has always had this effect on the mind of the student, but I believe that where it has failed to do so, the fault has not been in the method, and that if even really great scholars have some- times been narrow and one-sided, they have been so far less complete, not only as men, but as scholars. I believe also that, like all methods, it has a salutary tendency to equalise human capacities, so that though the greatest reward will always fall to his lot who, having the greatest natural powers, economises them most prudently and disposes them to the best advantage, there will yet be an abundant harvest which inferior minds are certain to reap, by the mere fact of their honest compliance with prescribed rules ; while those who go out in their own strength, dis- daining all labour that appears uncongenial, find for the most part barrenness and comparative scarcity."

The other essays we must be content with enumerating. Bearing on classical literature we have, besides those already mentioned, a ." Review of Munro's Lucretius," a lecture on " The Style of Lucretius and Catullus," in which was, in fact, a rejoinder to Mr. Munro (nothing can be more refreshing than the courtesy with which this controversy is conducted), " The Later Roman Epic —Statius " (reprinted from the North British Review), "The

Later Roman Tragedy—Seneca," a " Professorial Lecture," "The

Fables of Babrius," reprinted from the Edinburgh Review, " Criti- cal Notes," and a " Review of Mr. Paley's Select Epigrams of Martial." In " English Literature," we have an essay on Pope which appeared in Oxford Essays, 1858, and lectures on King Lear and Hamlet. With these is classed an article on "The English Translators of Virgil." It is characteristic of the man that, know-

ing, as he did, thoroughly what a translation ought to be, his judgment is so uniformly lenient and kindly. One is reminded of the judge who, when some one said "This wine is bad," answered, " No wine is bad ; some wine is better than other, but all wine is good." Almost every translation of the author whom he admired so much—he began, strange to say, with a disposition t3 depreciate him—seemed to Conington to have some merit. But we cannot .dwell on the article, having to pass on at once to the prose trans- lation of Virgil (now published for the first time, though portions were from time to time read at public lectures), which occupies nearly the whole of the second of these two volumes. Already, in the article just mentioned, he had expressed a preference for prose

under certain conditions as an instrument of translation. He thought it " beyond comparison better " than blank verse, though here we cannot affect to agree with him. Of the value of his own work in this line we cannot pretend to form anything like a complete estimate. The editor tells us " it is clear, from the rapidity with which the MS. is written, as well as from the minute alterations which have been made in the more studied passages, that this portion of his work suffers severely from posthumous publications." But its use to every student of Virgil will be very great. Taken, indeed, together with the commentary of the edition, and with the poetical translation, it completes such a service as it may almost be said no classical author has received from the hands of an editor in modern times. We shall give a specimen, adding, for the sake of comparison, the parallel passages from a version of no mean merit, that of Messrs. Lonsdale and Lee, and subjoining, for convenience of comparison, the original :— CONINGTON.

" Alas, my son ! ask not of the heavy grief that those of your blood must bear. Of him the fates shall give but a glimpse to earth, nor suffer him to continue longer. Yes, powers of the sky ! Rome's race would have been in your eyes too strong, had a boon like this been its own for ever. What groanings of the brave shall be wafted from Mara' broad field to Mars' mighty town! What a funeral, father Tiber, shall thine eyes behold, as thou fewest past that new-built sepulchre! No child of the stock of Ilion shall raise his Latian ancestors to such heights of hope; never while time lasts shall the land of Romulus take such pride in any that she has reared. Woe for the piety, for the ancient faith, for the arm unconquered in battle! Never would foeman have met that armed presence unscathed, marched he on foot into the field or tore with bloody spur the flank of his foaming steed. Child of a nation's sorrow ! were there hope of thy breaking the tyranny of fate, thou shalt be Marcellus. Bring me handfuls of lilies, that I may strew the grave with their dazzling hues, and crown, if only with these gifts, my young descendant's shade, and perform the vain service of sorrow.'" LONSDALE AND LEE.

"My son seeks not to learn your people's boundless woe; him, fate shall but show to the world, nor suffer him longer to exist. Too mighty had the Roman race appeared to you, aye, gods of heaven, had these blessings become its own for ever ? How deep the groans of men that famous plain shall send up to the mighty town of Mayors ! or what sad obsequies shalt thou, 0 Tiber ! see when thou glidest past his new-built sepulchre. And no other youth of Trojan blood shall raise to such a height of hope his Latin forefathers ; nor shall the land of Romulus vaunt herself so high in any other of her children. Alas, his piety, alas ! his antique honour, and his hand invincible in war! No one would, with impunity, have advanced to meet him in arms, either when he marched on foot against the foe, or struck his spurs into the sides of his foaming steed. Alas, hapless boy ! If it may be that you break through your hard fate, you shall be a Marceline. Give me handfuls of lilies ; I would strew bright flowers, and plenteously, with these gifts, at least honour the spirit of my descendant, and discharge an unavailing duty."

AEN. vi., 868-886.

"0 gnats ! ingentem luctum ne quaere tuorum ; Ostendet terris hunt tantum fats ; neque ultra Ease sinent. Nimium vobis Romana propago Visa potens, Superi, propria baec si done fuissent. Quantos ille virum magnam Mavortis ad urbem Campus aget gemitus ! vol quae, Tiberine, videbis Funera, cum tumulum praeterlabere recentem. Nee puer Iliaca quisquam de genre Latinos In tantum spa toilet ayes, nec Romula quondam Ullo se tantum tellus jactabit alumno. Heu pietas, hen prisca fides, invictaque belle Dextera ! non illi quisquam se impune tulisset Obvius armato, seu cum pedes iret in beaten], Seu spumantis equi foderot calcaribus armee. Hen, miserande puer! si qua fate. aspera rumpas, Tu Marcellus or's. Manibus date tills plaids; Purpureos apargam fibres, animamque nepotis His saltem adcumulem donis, et fungar inani Munere."