SCHOOL-BOOKS.
Essentials of New Testament Greek. By John H. Huddilston. (Macmillan and Co.)—This is an attempt to find a royal road to the learning of Greek,—at least, of so much Greek as may suffice for "the earnest Sunday-school worker or other Bible student to acquire a reading knowledge of New Testament Greek." The condition is that the learner must "devote a substantial part of his time for a few months" to the task. The grammar is administered in small doses, and the vocabulary gradually acquired. Our own idea of this method, which has been often applied before, is that not much time is actually gained, but that persons are willing to try it who would not otherwise be induced to undertake the task. To put a Greek grammar before a grown man who has to work for his living is probably to drive him away. Making him feel that he is actually acquiring a working knowledge of the language encourages him. From this point of view, Mr. Huddilston's manual will be ser- viceable.—Introduction to the Study of New Testament Greek. By J. H. Moulton, M.A. (Kelly.)—Mr. Moulton follows the orthodox course. He teaches grammar as the necessary introduction to the study of the language. Only he is careful that the grammar shoald be that of New Testament, not of Attic, Greek.—The Orestes of Euripides. Edited, with Introduction, Notes, and Metrical Appendix, by N. Wedd, M A. (Cambridge University Press.)—Mr. Wedd's prolegomena are good ; on the classification of the play—its happy ending has been considered to take it, as the same characteristic takes the Alcestis, out of the class of tragedies proper—on the poet's treatment of the legend, on its references to contemporary events, there is much that is interesting. The notes seem sufficiently full and generally adequate.— The Retreat from Syracuse. By W. H. D. Rouse, MA. (Rivington, Percival, and Co.)—Mr. Rouse's text extends to about thirty pages ; some of the more difficult passages are omitted ; the text is simplified by stops, which indeed might be more largely used than they are, being, for the most part, modern additions. Whether the book so adapted is fitted for the use of a fifth form is a point on which there will be a difference of opinion. Our own view is that the subject is a little over their heads. — We have received a fifth edition of one of the very best school-books of the day, whether we regard the subject or its treatment,—The CEconomicus of Xenophon, with Introduction, Summaries, Critical and Explanatory Notes, and Full Indexes, by Hubert Ashton Holden, M.A. (Macmillan and Co.)— Horace, Ode I. With Introduction and Notes by James Gow, Litt.D. (Cambridge University Press.)—We have before us this and a similar edition of Book III. Dr. Gow prefixes an introduc- tion with the usual matter,—a "Life of Horace," essays on the "Chronology of the Odes," "Some Characteri-tics of Horace's Poetry," "Characteristics of Horace's Latinity," "Metres of the Odes," "Order of the Odes," and "Text." A few emendations are suggested or discussed in foot-notes. In i. 2, 39, he reads " Mauri" (surely " peditis " can hardly mean " unhorsed,"— an unhorsed soldier, especially if not disciplined, is not for- midable), in xxiii. 5, " vepris " for " veris," alleging with force that the rustling of the leaves with the spring breeze would hardly startle the fawn. Generally his readings seem well selected. We cannot see what he means when he says of the "0 matre pulchra filia pulchrior" that "the lines 22-25 seem to show that Horace is not now retracting any poem of his youth, such as the Epodes were." What else is the obvious meaning of— "Me (potpie pectoris
tentavit in dulfn i,,venta fervor et in eeleres iambos misit furenteui"
It seems strange that Horace should, by way of apologising for a recent offence, say that in his youth he had done the very same thing. Very probably the Odes (I. III.), though published together, were the work of a long period.—Readings in Horace. By the Rev. J. C. Elgood. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co.)—Some of Mr. Elgood's suggestions are ingenious, but they have, for the most part, an air of paradox. "Duce fraudulento," means, he thinks, "injury-inflicting Hector." "How could Paris turn into dust Laomedon and his subjects, who had been dead many years before the Siege of Troy, and long before Paris was born ? " "Turn into dust," is not the meaning of " Vertit in pulvereus," which signifies "overthrow into the dust." Paris brought about the carrying out of the doom pronounced long before on Troy, its people, and its faithless King. " Novisque rebus infidelis Allo- brox," is to be read " novisque rebus in fidelis Allobrox," the pre- position "in" being put after the case it governs. This is in- tolerable. " Ridentem malls alienis " is "laughing at the woes of others," very poor Latin in our judgment. Surely it answers exactly to the xetherca laxorptoLs of Homer (speaking of the suitors when the doom was on them). They "laughed with alien lips." — The Story of fEneas. Compiled, with Notes, Introduction, and Vocabulary, by A. Hadrian Allcroft, MA. (Blackie and Son.)—Mr. Allcroft has taken sundry passages from the first six books of the }Eneid, supplying with a prose summary the place of those which he omits. He thus gives the story of Eneas from the sack of Troy down to his return to the upper world from his visit to Hades. A second part will give the story of his wars in Italy. The purpose is, of course, to interest the scholar in the subject which he is reading,—the most difficult of things, partly because his progress is so slow. In this respect the book will be useful. But how long will the scholar be in getting through even this abbre- viated foam of the story ? There will be, we reckon, about two thousand five hundred lines, equivalent to nearly three books. Mr. Allcroft's notes seem useful, and if they err, It is commonly on the side of omission and brevity. " Duplicem gemmis auroque " means, we think, a double necklace, not "of jewels and gold com- bined." " Swamped " is hardly admissible for " proluit " (pleno 3C proluit auro),—" drenched" would be better. The con- struction of " tonsis mantelia villis " should have had a note. In "facto, silentia tectis " we do not take " tectis " as a dative. Surely it is an ablative of place.—From the same publishers we have Stories from Cicero, edited by A. C. Liddell, M.A., a useful book, with plenty of interesting matter. It might have been as well to warn the young reader that Cicero's "stories," when he is speaking as an orator, are to be taken cum grano.—Another class-book which may be recom- mended without hesitation is Cornelius Nepos: Hannibal, Cato, Atticus, by E. C. Shuckburgh, M.A. (Cambridge University Press). It might have been as well to explain that "se nunquam cum matre in gratiam redisse " means that "he [never quarrelled and therefore] never had to be reconciled to his mother."—A Short Historical Latin Grammar, by W. M. Lindsay, M.A. (Clarendon Press), is an epitome of the author's standard work on the same subject.—Easy Continuous Latin Prose. By Frank Ritchie, M.A. (Longmans and Co.)—The Gallic War of Julius Cesar, V. Edited by John Brown, RA. (Blackie and Son.)— Mr. Brown continues his excellent edition of the" Commentaries." His notes are just what is wanted, and his supplementary exer- cises are likely to be very useful. To work Latin-English and English. Latin together is a practice for which too much cannot be said.—Cmsar's Gallic War, III.-V., by M. T. Tatham, MA. (E. Arnold), is a painstaking piece of work, but scarcely equal to that mentioned above. The notes are less full, and sometimes wanting in other ways. In Book V., for instance, the first note to the effect that January 1st, B.C. 54, the nominal date on which the Consuls entered on office, "probably ought to have been some date in November, B.C. 55," will not be understood by the average boy, who can hardly be expected to know about the disturbance of the Roman Calendar. A little further on " modum formamque [navium] is incorrectly translated by "character and build." " Modum " means "size," an adaptation of its common sense of " limit."— Cwsar's Gallic War, V.-VI., by J. F. Davis (Hachette), is a useful text-book, with a vocabulary for each book, a convenient arrangement, but involving some waste of space and labour. We do not find under "modus" the sense of size. Vocabularies are seldom satisfactory, and we are not sure that the extensive introduction of them, sometimes in editions of authors not read by beginners, is a good thing.—Hints and Helps in Continuous Latin Prose, by W. C. Flamstead Walters, M.A. (Blackie and Son), has a modest aim, which it seems likely to attain. It contains eighty exercises, graduated in difficulty, but none of them involving those essentially modern ideas which it takes all the ingenuity and knowledge of the practised scholar to represent by Latin equivalents. Various suggestions are made for the help of the pupil.—Of editions of Shakespeare, all of them continuations of series which have been already noticed in these columns, we have received Henry V. in the" Warwick Shakespeare" (Blackie and Son), a series which makes it its special aim to dwell on the literary aspect of the dramas.—From the same pub- lishers we have also in the "Junior School Shakespeare," Macbeth. —In "Arnold's School Shakespeare" (E. Arnold), brought out under the general superintenden ze of J. Churton Collins, M.A., As You Like It, edited by S. E. Winbolt, MA.; and The Merchant of Venice, edited by C. H. Gibson, M.A. —In the "Pitt Press Shakespeare" (Cambridge University Press), Julius Omar, edited by A. Wilson Verity. It may be noted that the prolegomena are particularly good. — German Dramatic Scenes, by C. Abel- Musgrave (E. Arnold), contain twelve dialogues supposed to ha held at a restaurant, at a bank, at a hairdresser's, and in various other places more or less familiar. The aim, as expressed by the editor in a lively preface, is to teach modern languages in some- thing of the same way as they are taught by travel.—Short German Military Readings, edited by A. Weiss, Ph.D. (Whittaker), has an especial fitness for the needs of candidates for Army examinations, and have the advantage of teaching something of their subject, while they furnish an exercise in the language. The subject of this first part of the projected series is "The Siege of Gibraltar," as related by General David von Scharnhorst.— The title of French Tales for Beginners, by Marguerite Ninet (Blackie and Son), sufficiently indicates its object. Its vocabu- laries are carefully arranged, each exercise having one of its own, while one of a general kind follows at the end. It is illustrated by some simple pictures, which will doubtless be useful in their way. —From the same publishers we have also received Historical Sketch of French Literature, by Marcel Rosey, and A First German. Course, by A. R Lechner, comprising "Translation into English," "Parallel Pieces for Translation into English," "Conversation, Grammar, and Vocabularies."—We have also received The Tutorial French Grammar, by Ernest Weekley, M A., and A J. Wyatt, MA. (W. B. Clive), a volume in the" University Tutorial Series ; " A Handbook of German Literature, by Mary S Phillips, revised, with Introduction, by A. Weiss, Ph.D. (G. Bell and Sons) ; and in the "Parallel Grammar Series" (Swan Sonnen- schein and Co.), a Dano-Norwegian Reader, by J. G. Sargent..
Previous page
