The Press. — London, England, 1853-11-05 00:00:00

NOVEMBER 5, 1853. tiered Huguenots which lay about in all direc tions. This incident would be hardly credible were it not related by a host of contemporary writers, and among others by llrantotue, devoted courtier and a warm partisan of the Queen Mother. In the midst of these scenes it will hardly be believed, but it is nevertheless true, that Catherine still professed the character of mediatrix between the rival parties. She even carried her dissimulation so far as to avoid receiving the Papal Legate, who arrived in Paris immediately after the massacre, although she hail addressed a letter to the Pontiff in her own hand, congratulating him in the warmest terms upon the destruc tion of so many of his enemies. Our limits will not allow us to follow the subsequent progress of events ; nor to trace the strangely-chequered career of Henry IN'. in his heroic struggle with the great Catholic League. Suffice it to say, that this work will materially add to the reputation of M. Itanke. He is dehcient, indeed, in that narrative and descriptive power without which no historian can acquire extensive populaiity, ; but he ex hibits great research, au impartial spirit, and R clear perception of the character both of persons and events. Pindari Carmina, according to the Text of Doeekh Part the Second. Containing the Pythiau Odes. With English Notes by W. G. Cookesley, MLA. Second Edition. Eton : Williams. Mn. CooxiestEv has various claims to a literary reputation, but certain of these constitute an indisputable title, and are connected with the performance of his duties as assistant twister in the noblest educational institution of the world. To his position at Eton he is himself indebted for the gratification of a scholar's tastes, and hence, wherever the love of twin) lairship is extant, he prefers a claim to its sym pathy as the accomplished editor of Pindar. Mr. Cookesley possesses the double qualification for his task of a genial as well as a critical ap preciation of the Theban bard, and, as distin guished from a more speculative but looser type, may be classed in that robust and truly English school which includes the names of Person, Monk, and Schofield. It is true he condescends to English notes without defer ring to the qualification of Messrs. Liddell and Scott in the preface to their Lexicon. He says ingenuously, " It would be mere affeeta " tion in me to say that it would not have " given me more trouble to write my notes in " Latin ; but I hope that I shall gain credit " for sincerity when I state that it was no de " sire to save myself trouble which induced '" me to write these notes in the one language " rather than the other." In these days it may be doubted whether an apology is re (pared for declining to expound to students the difficulties of a foreign idiom through a third language; and Mr. Cookesley will be applauded by most persons for coinciding with Dr. Arnold that for the purposes both of lexicography and criticism English is the proper language of an Englishman. To this second part of his new edition of the Pythian Odes Mr. Cookesley has appended an admirable essay "On the Moral, Religious, and Political Character of Pinditr":— In order (he says) to understand and appreciate the poetry of it is necessary to contemplate it as a •chcle ; for Pindar is always the same in d, purpose, and thought. Ile is so perfect a lover of sincerity and truth, that he seems incapable of assi 111 l ing a fictitious character. The business of the Islet, in his judgment, is that of a moral. religious, and political teacher. To utter what is not virtuous and true would be, in his estimation, to dishonour the high o ffice and to betray the sacred duty of the poet : he speaks therefore with much of the sole and awful grandeur of an ancient Jewish prophet. His piety is like his style,--simple and sublime. In treating of divine subjects he has none of the daring spirit of his contemporary /Eschylus; and he is equally five from the somewhat puerile superstition of lien lotus. Ills religion is reasonable, manly, reverential, holy; be regards the gods as the great authors of all things good and useful; and he uniformly inculcates the absolute de pendence of man on the gods for every blessing that he can enjoy : he abhors the idea of the gods being guilty of crime. In the first t dympie ode he expresses this feting; with tv marlutble earnestness and power ,v.:15, seg. ),—" It is good," says he, " for wan to speak good things of the gods ; for so he incurs feu blame ;" as if there were some thing blameable in speaking familiarly of the gods at all; but the greater blame of speaking evil of thew mutt at all THE PRESS. emits be avoided ;--and then he proceeds to give the true version of the story of Tantalus, which he lams had been corrupted and misrepresented by fable mid trwditi lie repeatedly etnumemomtes the great I torieut hero Hercules but dimwit his labours had been imposed by the hatred MO spite of .1 ono, yet Milo: only iblasti tions this cause t Kent. i. 1 ,1 ); and then he dismisses the subject, without dwelling on it. lle would have regarded it as impious to dwelliut i nu itiea o f a deity. To finder " the fear of the Lord was truly " the beginning of wisdom." Some ten years ago. in the examination for the Ireland scholarship at Oxford, the subject proposed for the Latin essay was " Qualls et unde deducts sit months Philosophia in Car minibus Homerieis visa." Waiving comment on the pretence of requiring so suggestive a thesis to be treated in Latin prose within the three hours usually allowed for that paper, we may ob serve that the morality inculcated by the poems of Homer is not of the highest stan dard. It is the ethics of the prairie and the desert. The epithets woXvioixec, 14430 s I:Li s ic, and the like, so htvishly bestowed by the titther of Poetry on his heroes, might suit a red Indian on the trail. or a Kaffir lifting bullocks, but they are scarcely rerun citable with the notions of a Christian Univer sity. Again, to adopt the words of Mr. Cookes ley. " Homer represents even the gods as the " slaves of every human passion and vice, and " by his sweet verse disfigured truth, and " secured for the deceitful Ulysses a greater " reputation than the honest Ajax." While the moral tendency of Homer may, therefore, be questioned, the raltAsi so profusely seat tered through the works of the Theban, not inaptly compared by Mr. Cookesley to those of Theognis, are not unworthy to be investi gated by the light of revelation. Indeed our editor thinks that the most learned of the apostles, in his celebrated speech at Athens, referred to the magnificent idea of Pindar, that " men and gods are the children of the " sante mother ; but they are widely sera " rated, for the human mee is nothing ; but " the gods are imperishable and eternal."— (Nem. vi. 1.1 Mr. Cookesley thus elaboritt es his illustration of the manner in which Pindar deals with the ancient myths which attributed to the gods human passions and infirmities : Ile cannot bear the thought of the gods quamelling; very different in this particular front Ihnuer,who describes (Applies UN a seem of perpetutd disagreement and dim. cord, occasionally of open violence and war, amongst the utembers of Jupiter's family. There WAS a fable that Her. :Wes had opposed Neptune and Pluto by open viol ence: it is worth while to observe the horror with which this story fills the mind of l'itobir. After alluding to it (01. ix. he txelaiuts, "I•tter no such story, 0 any gismo': to speak evil of the gods is to make a hateful of poetry; and to use such offensive boastful language, as if a demi psi could resist the gods, is mere madness. Let us not speak such vain things ;—let us nut suppose the gods capable of lighting." Pinder speaks, indeed, of the love with which the gills were inspired by Qtr beauty of mortal women : but it is no vulgar, sensual passion. The poet treats so thinellit subject with exquisite delicacy and grace. Whitt Call be more delicate and graceful than the description in Pyth. ix. N ? When a god falls in love with a mortal, it is not for the mere purpose of gratifying passion, but for some great and ofttis holy object. Apollo loved Evailue (01. vi. ); but lamas their child was to be a great prophet, as well as the founder of a glorious prophetic fatuity, destined to minister to the most high Jupiter, at the must magnifi cent of all assemblies dedicated to his honour 4,v.64, r eq.), Apollo fell in love with Cyrene : but their son Aristiens was to be a groat benefactor to man ; and Cyrene 114T/Wif we. IA) become the tutelar protectress of a famous city in th. ix. 59, meg.) .Ittpiter became enamoured of the daughter of Opus; bill the result and object of hie love was that Locrus, who had hitherto been childless, shmudd be blessed with aU. ,1.14. and mighty son.—(f )1. ix. mob) In short. finder uniformly represents the pas sious of the gods as buncticial to mankind. On the other hand, from his belief in the equally e hint. origin of man, Pimlar "assumes " the human s'lo'e to be capable of excellence " in virtue," and he is therefore the " patriot, " philosopher, and preacher," to whom the great games of Greece were at solemn opportu nity for inculcating the cultivation of what ever was good and noble. We may re mark with Mr. Cookesley au admirable ex ample of this. The amur Write of a Greek would on must occasions induce hint to refer to that glorious struggle during whose contintutuee Euripides was born, in the thanksgiving for which Sophoeles was a performer, in which fEsehylus manfully bore his part, which Thueydides and Herodotua have detailed ; but it was the highest love of political virtue which could introduce such a theme with reference to Meru of Syracuse. It is true that Gahm, the R redecessor of Hieru, had contemplated rendering ausistaueo to the Greeks against their invaders, but Micro was a tyrant, and his panegyrist took occasion, am this blender ground, to celebrate the praises of freedom anal order, to address bun with the dignity and superiority of a monitor, and to remind lab audieuee that constitutional liberty is the only foundation on which the happiness of a State can be based. Such a remarkable instance bears out Mr. Cookesley iu his esti mate of the spirit in which Pinder performed his part, and of the noble use to which he could turn a great Ilenettle festival. Mr. Cookesley, in opposition to Thiersch, Boeekb, MO Burney—the last the earliest ex ponent of the theory. and whose family mane would appear to give it additional weight— denies with much elaboration that Pintlar's poems were written for adaptation to musk. But, in our present btato of ignonmee con cerning the extent of musical acience inuouget the Greeks, it is impossible to pronounce a decided opinion on this earota questio. For the text of Pinder, us we aro informed by the titlepage, Bovekh has been followed. That editor, with true German talent and pertint , eity, has been a careful pioneer for his suc cessors, Nissen and Sehneidewin. Their labours have effected all that could be done with the scanty materials ut haunt, leaving nothing to be done by those who caste after them. Pindar appears not to have been a favourite with the monastic scribes. All the MSS. !AVM to have been transcribed front ono original. There are but few different readings, and the text is not iu a very satis factory state. Mr. Cookesley, unlike Bent ley or Wakefield, has laudably refrained front t.oiktectural emendations, and does not hesitate to say wheu necessary, "There "is only a choice of difficulties in the " interpretations of this passage." A distin guishing characteristic of Mr. Cookesley's notes is their perfect simplieity and clearness and we are not sorry to see that they ignore the interpellationa of Sauserit which are to be found sates superfine in the works of another English editor of Pinder. There has been, in short, at fashion in Greek etymology, as in many other human arrangements. etymology , Datum, and Ilematerbuis, reversing the natural order of things, referred sit words to certain imaginary verbs as the original ruota of the language. Bryant conceived that. Cireek was Hebrew in disguise ; and for at time scho lars wore content with his perverse milkmen le to tied the taries. It is cow the primi tives in Sanaterit end others of the great family of Indo-European tongues. But the legacy of Colonel Nolen must be turned to better aceount before the connection between Greek anal Sanscrit can be accurately defined; and in the meantime we are for the most itart compelled to take at second hand the labours of German philologists whose fancy blinds their judgment. Nlr. Cookesley has been labouring in a soberer and better aehool ; he is clear, sound, anal prat•tical; and his labours will survive. Moryoret ; or, Prejraliee at Mane. An Auto biligniphy. London : Bentley. _ opened this novel with feelings of more than ordinary curiosity, as it is the first of those published under Mr. Bentley's new system to whirl' we recently adverted. If " Jane Erre" had never been written Ivo would hail the authoress of " Margaret" as an original writer : but " Brambletye House," by llorsee Smith, does not scar it queer literary relationship to the Waverley novels than the history of the fortunes of Margaret Mar pies does to the records of ".lane Eyre." We must hold the gifted authoress of the latter work responsible for all the dismal stories of unfortunate governesses who, since the publi cation of that striking work, have appealed to the sympathies of novel-readers, in hopes of alleviating the vicissitudes of their lot. Hut, tl 1111 l " Margaret " belongs to thu school of " .lane Eyre," its writer is no servile imitator. Of the literary ability shown in her volumes we can speak decidedly. Always fluent, and often very graphic, she wields nor only the pen of a ready, but of an eloquent,