The Press.
London, England, 1855-09-08 00:00:00

THE WAR.

Accounts have been received, via Trieste, from Con-
stantinople to the 29th ult. Several English agents
have left for Circassia in order to bring about a diver-
sion on the part of the mountaineers on the rear of
the Russian army. The greater part of the troops
assembled at Maslak have been sent to the Crimea.

It is thought the Russians will again assume the
offensive. The town of Kadikeni, on the Sea of
Marmora, has been entirely destroyed by fire.
France, England, and Austria will undertake in com-
mon the construction of the canal of the Danube.

An imperial ukase was issued in St. Petersburg
on the sth inst., abolishing, on the proposal of Prince
Paskiewitch, the Field Commissariat of the army on
active service; Commissioner General Annenkoff
resuming his former charge.
Count Nesselrode has received " permission to
travel."

Gsneral de Berg, who commands at Sweaborg, has
been decorated with the Order of St. Andrew.

At Moscow, on the 18th, a great fire broke out,
which lasted 24 hours.

From Rome, we learn that the French police was
informed, some time ago, of an intended landing of
about fifty Italian refugees from London, which was
to have taken place at Porto d'Anzio, a small arbour
now being enlarged, as the Pope intends to make it
the port of the capital. Measures were taken to
arrest these refugees, who were supposed to have
formed a plan against the Pope's life or personal
liberty, as he often visits that port; but, from the
latest accounts, it would seem that they have eluded
the vigilance of the Roman police, and are now
concealed in the forests in the vicinity of Porto
d'Anzio.

According to a late letter from Vienna, all the
financial plans of M. de Bruck have been rejected by
the Council of the Empire, to the great consterna-
tion of the moneyed interest. Nevertheless, the
Emperor may insist on their adoption, if he thinks
fit. It, is believed at Berlin that Austria is intent
upon negotiating a new loan of from 250 to 300
millions of florins. Councillor de Hock is to proceed
to Paris for the purpose ; but the possibility of
Austria raising such an amount of money in France
is much doubted.

A Madrid despatch of the sth states that the sub-
scriptions to the loan of 250 millions amount to 115
millions.

The reform of tke tariff is being compiled. It is
proposed to reduce the duty on cotton goods. The
duty on paper and on wood is to be suppressed.

A useful addition is about (says the Globe) to be
made to the army in the shape of a new corps of
"Instructors of Musketry," which is to be imme-
diately organised on a permanent footing. Its head-
quarters will be at Hythe, where there will be always
stationed a commandant, with pay as staff•colonel, a
captain, with an allowance of 1501. a year, a
subaltern, with 100/. in addition to their ordinary
regimental pay, a paymaster and quartermaster, and
a surgeon, with a sergeant-major, five first-class in-
structors, a clerk, an armourer, and twelve privates
as fatigue men. There will also be present, in the
first instance, nine captains, nine subalterns, 100
first-class instructors, and 100 second-class instruc-
tors, who as soon as they are sufficiently experienced
will be distributed among depot battalions and regi-
ments as the Commander-in-Chief may direct. The
officers may be employed in inspecting and reporting
for the inf.rmation of the authorities. The 205 in
structors are to be chosen from sergeants and
corporals, or occasionally privates specially recom-
mended by their commanding officers ; they must be
intelligent, unmarried, not exceeding five years' ser-
♦ice, of active habits, able to write from dictation,
and with a competent knowledge of arithmetic. They

THE PRESS.

will, after their probation at Hythe, be sent to regi-
ments for the sole purpose of instructing the regi-
ment in musketry, will be exempt from regimental or
barrack duties, and will act specially under the orders
of the regimental officer instructor, who will be
responsible that the system, as taught at Hythe, is
efficiently carried out in the regiment to which he
belongs.

SIR C. NAPIER AND SIR J. GRAHAM.
A VOLUMINOUS series of correspondence which passed
between the late naval commander-in-chief in the
Baltic, and the ex First Lord of the Admiralty during
the course of the campaign of 1851, has been com-
municated to the public by Sir Cbarles Napier. This
revelation of passages which were ostensibly designed
as official mysteries, is justified by the Admiral on the
ground that his professional conduct has been cen-
sured, and himself subjected to obloquy, by Sir James
Graham, who endeavoured to shelter his own remiss-
ness or incompetency from public criticism, by making
a scape-goat of the commander in chief. To refute
the assertion of the right hon. member for Carlisle,
Sir Charles publishes the letters, which prove that
every step and proceeding in last year's naval cam-
paign in the Baltic was either prompted by definite
instructions from the Admiralty, or received at the
time their full concurrence. The pith of the corre-
spondence, to which a multitude of corroboratory
letters and despatches are cited, is contained in
letter from Sir C. Napier, from which, and the sub-
sequent rejoinders, we quote the paragraphs of chief
interest. The Admiral's letter, which is dated " Kiel,
October 27," was written in reply to a missive from
Sir J. Graham containing the following remarks :
You refer to my letters at the end of August, as con-
templating then the early termination of active operations
in the Baltic for this year. I was not prepared, even at
that time, for the immediate departure of the French army
after the capture of Bomarteand, and I pointed out to you
Abo, Sweaborg, and Revel as points which, with military
aid, were open to attack. Much less was I prepared for
the withdrawal of the French squadron from the com-
bined naval operations almost instantaneously with the
departure of the army, so soon as Bomarsund had been
destroyed.
These decisions were taken on the spot, I believe, with
your consent, but without any reference to the English
Government. But in August we had not seen the report
of General Jones on Sweaborg, which you forwarded to us
from Ledsund on the 29th of August, and which was in
your hands before either the French army or the French
fleet had left the Aland Islands. That report is entitled
to respect. It made a great impression here and raised a
strong presumption that, with the aid of the military force
then present with the fleet, in seven or eight days the
works at Swcaborg might be destroyed, and that the month
of September afforded ample time for the operation.
No doubt, at the time of the equinox, there are heavy
gales of wind in the Baltic ; it is a narrow sea, and there
is danger to large ships in maintaining the blockade, even
when at anchor. But war is not conducted without risks
and dangers; and prudence consists in weighing them,
and firmness in encountering them ; and nothing great by
sea or land can be achieved without considerable peril, as
your own experience and example have demonstrated.
Sir C. Napier replied as follows :

My dear Sir James,—So far back as August 29 T an-
nounced to you the intention of the French general to
withdraw the troops. I agreed with the French general
and admiral that Sweaborg could not be attacked at this
season of the year, and I have no hesitation in saying,
had we moved the troops and ships up to Miolo Roads,
and landed 5,000 men, we should not have brought off
one man, and how many ships we should have lost I
cannot say.
After the capture and destruction of Bomarsund till I
left Nargen, there have not been three days fit for opera-
tions that required seven or eight ; and then the ships and
transports must have lain amongst the rocks and shoals of
Miolo Roads—a position that might have done for a gene-
ral, but certainly not for an admiral.
Shortly after the troops sailed I communicated to you
that the French admiral had received orders to go to
Cherbourg—that they were dated the 30th of August ; so
that the decision was not taken on the spot, as you sup-
pose. General Jones's report made no change whatever
in our opinions.

The truth is, the troops came too late—too many for
Bomarsund, and too few for Sweaborg. The cholera got
amongst them. General Jones made a proposal which
the generals declined acting on. The people in England
were dissatisfied, and, as some one must be blamed,
the Government want to throw it on me; but I will not
accept it-
I ask you. Sir James, to examine the chart of Swea-
borg, and ask yourself if any man in his senses, at this
season of the year, would anchor his ships in Miolo
Roads, and commence operations that would require
seven or eight days to finish, which was General Jones's
proposal ; and I ask you whether any admiral would
attack Sweaborg with his ships alone, contrary to his own
judgment and the opinion of the admirals whom he was
ordered to consult, because an engineer thought it could
be done.

You were angry with me when I made use of the word
" mad," bat on my conscience I believe it the only word
applicable to such an operation.
You say General Jones's report made a great impression.
I have no doubt it did. It is very easy to make a report.
General Jones knew that the French general would not
land a man. We all knew it ; and I. am quite certain,
after the continuation of bad weather General Jones saw

859

on board the Duke of Wellington, he himself would not
have landed a man. Had people considered one moment,
they would have seen the impracticability of the attempt;
but they thought Sebastopol was taken, and I must take
Sweaborg, Revel, and Cronstailt.
After the French generals had reconnoitred Sweaborg,
I examined it again, and sent home my opinion as to how
it ought to be attacked—by ships, batteries, gun-boats,
mortar-boats, SA.—at great length; and the Admiralty, as
if anxious to get up a case against me, take it into their
heads that I meant to attack it with the fleet alone, and
were going to send back the French squadron and Admiral
Plumridge's ships ; and, though I have remonstrated, they
persist in still thinking so, and you, Sir James, seem to
have fallen into the same error.

Had I seen the smallest chance of success, I should
have attacked without the French, but 1 did not ; and
surely my opinion is worth more than a general of engi-
neers ; but the Admiralty seem to think diffeient. The
general talked of destroying Sweaborg in two hours. It is
much more likely the ships would have been set fire to by
red•hot shot and shells, and some of them on shore by that
time. Be assured it is a most difficult place to attack, and
whoever dues it, will have a hard nut to crack. No admiral
hcs, as yet, ventured to attack such a fortress, defended as
it is by art and nature. The sunken rocks alone, combined
with the smoke from the guns and steamers, is no bad
defence.

You observed, Sir James, that the month of September
gave ample time for the operation; all the month of Sep-
tember it was blowing a gale of wind, and it was all that
Captain NVatson could do to keep his station. I did not
wonder at the people of England expecting impossibilities,
but I am surprised at the Government countenancing them
at my cost. . . . . .

I am quite aware that the Baltic is a dangerous sea, and
that even blockading at anchor at this season is dangerous ;
and I know that war is not conducted without risks and
dangers, and I am as ready to encounter them as any man ;
but I will not be driven by clamour to act contrary to my
own judgment.
All summer, Sir James, you were cautioning me, and so
were the Government, not to risk my ships against stone
walls, for which yon had a great respect, and praising me
for the manner I had conducted the fleet; now winter is
come you are dissatisfied at my not doing impossibilities ;
and as the people are not satisfied, the Government are
preparing to abandon me, because I will not follow the
advice of a general, contrary to that of my own admirals,
and diametrically opposite to the opinion of the French
general of engineers, and attack a fortress at a season of
the year when it is more than probable 1 should have lost
half my fleet.
I have gone into this explanation at great length ; it has
given me much pain. lam conscious of having done my
duty, and if you are dissatisfied, you can bring me to a
court-martial, or remove me, as 1 before mentioned to the
Admiralty.

To this despatch a rejoinder was transmitted by
the First Lord, addressed "My dear Admiral," in
which he says :

I am very unwilling to be involved in a written contro-
versy with you, hut you have brought it on yourself,
by your report of the 25th of September, after your second
reconnaissance of Sweaborg. That report appeared to me
to be entirely at variance with the opinions previous 4
expressed by you, and I certainly understood you then to
say, that if you had mortars, rockets, and Lancaster guns,
you considered Sweaborg assailable by sea. In May you
declared it to be unassailable by sea or land, and the Ad-
miralty did not send to you the appliances which, in Sept.,
you declared to be wanting, because they believed, from
your account, they would be useless against a place which
in the first instance you pronounced to be impregnable.
I could not bring myself to believe that the want of Lan-
caster guns, or even of mortars, rendered a sea attack, on
your plan of the 25th Sept., impossible, if you had twenty-
five sail of the line assembled before the place, with all
their means of vertical fire.

Sir Charles Napier responded in the subjoined
letter, the last, in point of date, in the whole series
now published :
Duke of Wellington, Kiel, Nov. 6, 1854.
1 can assure you, Sir James, it is far from my wish to
enter into a controversy with you, but I will not admit
that I have brought it on myself; there is not a word in
either my public or private letters that justifies the con-
struction that you and the Admiralty have thought proper
to put on them. My letter in answer to their lordship'
last despatch is plain enough ; but if their lordships think
proper to deliberate on one part of my letter, and ignore
another part, I can only protest against it ; and I am quite
prepared to defend myself against any unjust attacks that
are made against me. I have documents enough in my
possession to justify my conduct. Enough has not been
done to satisfy an impatient public, as you called them—
some one must be blamed, and I am the chosen one; but
I will not allow myself to be crushed, because I could not
do impossibilities.
All this stir has been caused by the reports of two engi-
neers (one French and the other English), diametrically
opposed to each other ; in addition to which was the report
of the capture of Sebastopol, not yet taken, though the
fleet there is assisted by an army of 70,000 men, in a fine
climate ; and I have been expected to take places much
stronger with a fleet alone ; and the same reople who so
often warned me against unnecessarily rising my fleet, are
now dissatisfied because I did not expose them to certain
destruction.
I have gone through the world with honour and credit to
myself; andjust as I am about to leave it, unworthy attempts
are being made to ruin my reputation ; but they will fail,
and recoil on themselves.—] remain, yours, very truly,
CHABLZII Nan's.
The Right Hon. Sir James Graham,
Bert., G.C.8., Admiralty.

860

yittraturt.

OLD AND NEW GREEK LEXICOGRAPHY.
1, &ilia Lexicon. Post Ludolphum Kuste-
ruin, ad Codices Manuseriptos recensuit
Thomas Gaisford, S.T.P., /Edis Christi
Deoanus, neonon Grteem Linguae Professor
Regius, Oxonii, a Typographeo Academico,
MDCCCXXXIV.
2. Liddell and Scott's New Lexicon of the] Greek
Language. Various Editions and Abridg-
ments up to 1855. 4to. and Bvo.
IN reviewing the question of lexicography,
we are struck by the circumstance of two sue-
oeisive, and those the highest, dignitaries a
one college having so highly distinguished
themselves as representatives of the old and
new schools of lexicography. Equal, probably,
in sound learning, though different in some of
their views, the names of the late and the
present Deans of Christ Church must be
spoken of by all scholars with feelings of high
regard.
If we look back to the days of our best
English (and most English) grumbler, Dr.
Johnson, we shall find that lexicography has
ever been esteemed a painful, laborious, and
but half-rewarding occupation. The imagina-
tion kept at a total, a dead rest—the memory
yet taxed to the utmost—the feelings of taste
forced into a collapse of tact—above all, an
unwearied hunting after words to which you
are to affix thoughts—a ceaseless toil in
reconciling contradictory views of meanings,
or still more contradictory derivations—such
are but a few of the difficulties which the
lexicographer has to encounter.
But, as every question must have its limit,
let us keep to the question of Greek lexico-
graphy, and take a brief review of the efforts
of past and present scholars ; and it will not,
perhaps, be too much to assert that iu no
department of literature, at all times, has so
much patient industry, so much scholastic
self-denial, so much true gentleness of taste
or brilliancy of judgment, been displayed. If
Byron sought to raise Greece into her once
political existence, our universities have at
least sought to restore and reproduce her
literature, her language, pure and unsullied.
Lexicography must lie at the bottom of our
knowledge of any language. We can no more
understand sentences without knowing the
meaning of the words that compose them, than
we can make a woolsack into a Prime
Minister. But there are other far more
delicate points connected with the use of
words. We have to consider not only their
direct, but their indirect, their figurative and
metaphorical, meanings ; we have to carefully
and painfully investigate their provincial or
urbane character ; to sift cautiously, and
through much hard reading, " what is in good
taste ;" to find out, with wearisome discrimina-
tion, the differences between " eld,'i "now,"
and " middle" " Attic," and then to puxale
ourselves, and, better still, to work ourselves
into the power of appreciating the differences
of dialect which make Herodotus so soft and
gentle a writer, Theacritns so Burns-like a
poet, Sappho (in her few Longinus-saved
poems) so mysteriously beautiful.
Great and good have been the patient
labours of our English and German scholars
for years past; but, as a practical matter, we
nay, perhaps, put forward the above men-
tioned works as the best specimens of recent
lexicographical efforts as regards our favorite
language. It may be well to take a review of
the earlier state of Greek lexicography berme
venturing on a review of what may be fairly
considered its best representative up to the
present time. " Quis Suidas, aut quando
" vixerit, frustra (pia qtuesiverit," are the
quaint but emphatic words in which Ludolph
Raster was forced to speak of our beet Greek
lexicographer, of whom, probably, we have re-
ceived the best edition from the hands of the
late regretted Dean of Christ Church.
Suidas, as 4 POpflPilPr of an uncertain
ea, we have preserved to us many of the
most valuable fragments both of ancient
authors, and Of'the`seholiasts on those authors,
Who, at the rOivarbt +4OOO literature in
•• . • • • •

THE PRESS.

Italy, lent a zest of refinement and infused a
clearsightedness into our views of the great
dead of past ages.
Although &titles appears before us as the
choicest interpreter of the grandest wit of an-
tiquity—of Aristophanes, the Sydney Smith in
his refinement, the Swift in his unhappy ten-
dency to coarseness—although he preserves
to us some of the most important interpreta-
tions of such writers as Thuoydides and Poly-
bius, he must still rest his merits on his claims
as a valuable and painstaking lexicographer,
or rather encyclopaedist. Throughout the
middle ages a passion for collecting particulars
de omni scibili sprang up, a taste as much
exemplified in the varied and wondrous sculp-
tures at Chartres as in the miscellaneous work
of Vincent de Beauvais. Such were the early
Greek lexicons. Philology had not yet dis-
criminated between what belonged to one age
and another. Taste had not led scholars to
distinguish between Xenophon and Zonaras
(a clover imitator, it may be fairly admittel);
and our knowledge of Greek was, we might
say, filtered through ages of care and reading
ere it reached us in the state in which it
appears before us though such scholars as
Gaisford and Liddell.
Let us briefly run through the history of
Suidas, as far as we can gather anything
touching this " Wandering Jew " of Greek
literature, from the careful and elegantly
written prefaces of Kiister and Gaisford.
That Kiister laboured under many difficulties
from which his successor was happily exempt
cannot he doubted, any more than that the real
edge of the labour was taken of by his efforts.
Our readers will hardly thank us, now-a-
days, for a minute enumeration of the editions
of Suidas dating from the curious Italian
edition of 1499, but they will probably be will-
ing to hear, briefly, the chief characteristics
of the noble edition which forms one of our
chief points of notice in the present article.
The first place in the first volume is given
to the preface of Kiister. Then follows the
elaborate dissertation of Fabricius (perhaps
the most indefatigable scholar since the days of
Meursius). A useful preface of Ernesti on the
"glossae same," or explanations of words found in
Scripture (of which he published a useful and
judicious volume), is followed by the prefaces
of M. C G. Muller and John Toup. IVe may
now notice the introduction of the recent editor.
The late regretted Dr. Gaisford has diligently
re-examined the same manuscripts to which
Kiister had, from various circumstances, been
enabled to give a less finished attention at the
same time devotieg much care to indicating
the sources from which Suidas drew both his in
formation and his quotations. In this task
much had been done by Porius, by Ruhnken,
Toup, Porson, and a host of scholars, and we
feat that the contribution to skis department of
the edition reflects more credit on the late
editor as a compiler of other men's labours
than as an original investigator. At the same
time we must bear in mind the fact that almost
every practicable source (excel,t a few Grieco-
Byzantine coilectuttea, themselves taken at
second-hand) had been well nigh exhausted by
a mass of scholars, especially by the deep.
Dutch school of Homsterhuis, Valckenaer,
Pearson, and the like, which narrowed the field,
and left the ears of critical wheat still more dis-
persed, still more scanty, and still more diffi-
cult to be gathered, even by the veteran Greek
professor.
As to the vast body of notes accompanying
the text, we can only marvel at the patient
and honoftrable industry which has reduced
so vast a mass of scattered materials—in some
cases involving important manueartpt matter—
into so clear, so practical, and so elegant a
form. While every valuable note of previous
editors has been scrupulously retithied, dili-
gent search appears to have been made after
everything, however far remote, that could
shed further illustration upon Greek lexico-
graphy, as exemplified in this curious miscel-
leeea of men, things, and words. Innumerable
remarks (we may exemplify the one on the
peculiar use of 'OT, among the later Greeks, at
vol. i., pp. 7.8) have been brought forward
and reclaimed front oblivion, all proving the
temperate and patient spirit of investigation
in which our late professor of Greek worked.
Eituth is his !fp*, and sash id OA Work co-
4-

S ATURDAY,

panion, the noble edition of the " litymologi-
con Magnum" (to which we may perhaps
have the chance of referring in a future re-
view). Such is, perhaps, the best proof that a
Greek professorship in his hands has been no
sinecure---that, though silent in the lecture-
room, his hands have been telling more per-
manent truths—that, though young minds
were not stimulated by his personal cheerings,
older heads may look for valued materials
amid the labours to which his quiet and re-
tiring habits gave birth—such were labours,
not meant to gather the many, but to enchain
the few. No one will speak of our late Dean
of Christ Church as a mere sinecurist, when
we think of the wear and tear of mind and
body consumed, one way or another, over well-
nigh five thousand folio columns of close Greek
type in one work, to say nothing of editions,
and oft-repeated ones, of other authors.
At the same time we cannot (with our best
feelings) accord this eminent scholar the
praise of much critical sagacity. Timidity
oftentimes overcame judgment; of conjectural
criticism (which, with all its mad extra-
vagances, is yet a necessary element in
the true scholar) he possessed but little ;
still less was he gifted with apprecia-

tiou of poetic beauty or of the manifold
minutia) of graceful expression. But here let
our blame—or rather our qualification of
praise—end ; and from our hearty and sin-
cerely-meant eulogium of one now gone from
us let us turn to the more cheerful specula-
tion as to what man we are likely to find in
the present successor at once to the same
ecclesiastical honours and to a no less ie-
sponsible position, as representative of the
more modern school of lexicography.

We may observe, in iimine,thet the e present
lexicon is a Beaumont and Fletcher produc-
tion, being the joint work of the present Dean
and of the Rev. Robert Scott, whose name is
honourably divided between Christ Church
and Balliol. Their co-operation in the de-
sign, if not in the commencement, of this
elaborate work, commenced, we believe, during
their undergraduate days: nor did the pre-
sent Dean, amidst his manifold labours as
college tutor, censor, lecturer, examiner, pro-
fessor of moral philosophy, proctor, and finally
head master of Westminster School, ever relax
I his attention from what had evidently been
the favorite scheme of his ambition—the con-
stant improvement of the best practical Greek
and English lexicon that has yet appeared.
Grounded as the work was on the German one
of Passow (who in turn had availed himself of
the admirable labours of Schneider), still there
were thousands of omissions to be supplied,
thousands of the delicate shades of meaning
(in which Greek stands so pre-eminently ileh)
to be developed and set forth : above all, the
barbarous but almost fixed conventional
system of translating word by word, rather than
meaning by meaning, had to be set aside, and
this, not only despite a very hydra of difficul-
ties, and a boundless necessity for the investi-
gation of every passage either quoted or
referred to, but in the face of a host of preju-
dices from those who, themselves trained
under the now obsolete system, looked with
pedantic contempt at a mode of construing
which sought to display the meaning, do
honour to the thoughts of the author, rather
than treat him as a collective mass of verbs,
nouns, and their auxiliaries—an animal merely
to be parsed !
Truly may it be said that the present taste
for spirited and elegant, rather than crude and
merely literal, translations of Greek authors,
which has become universal even among
tyros of any promise, has been warmed and
strengthened, if not created, by the now con•
stant use of this lexicon. Recollecting, as we
do, the strict and stern accuracy of Dr. Liddell.
in his tutorial Icapacity—his insistence upon
the use of pure Saxon-English as opposed to
the derivative elaborateness of Dr. Johnson—
remembering, with fond gratitude, how no
flaw in meaning was suffered to stand, how
no bad expression was permitted when a
better one could be found, and how richly be
proved that knowing Greek is no reason fur a
man's murdering his own language—we can
over call to our minds, es we look into its
Pages, the careful, early cultivation of a nut
tyle, a Am and won, elopsnigt VANO

I

Ili