The Press.
London, England, 1858-09-04 00:00:00

animadversion, and the more so because we fear
that they are not strictly shortcomings, but rather
deliberate misdeeds.

Early Ancient History ; or, the Ante-Greek
Period, as it appears to us since the most
Ancient Discoveries in Egypt and Assyria ;
with References to Wilkinson, Layard, and
other Authorities. By henry Menzies. Lon-
don : Chapman and Hall.
BooKs on history, says Mr. Menzies in his
preface, are all either voluminous works like
Grote and Gibbon, or dry compendiums like
those which vex the souls of unhappy schoolboys
with their multitudinous array of closely-packed
names, dates, and events. This is not altogether
untrue ; but it is a statement which demands
more qualification than Mr. Menzies has given
to it. To mention, for instance, the first books
that occur to our recollection, we have, for a
great part at least of ancient history, Dean
Liddell's Rome," which in the compass of two
volumes combines scholarship and research with
an agreeable and vigorous style ; while for the
whole of modern history there is Mr. White's
"Eighteen Christian Centuries," which we have
already had occasion to commend to our readers
for its entertaining character and happy selection
of topics. Then Mr. Menzies's ground has to
some extent been preoccupied by Mr. Van;
whose "Nineveh and Babylon," though not free
from inaccuracies, was a neat and popular state-
ment of some of the early discoveries of Layard
and Rawlinson. Still it is true that the peculiar
class of works which Mr. Menzies desiderates,which,
instead of including every fact that can possibly
be squeezed into the limit of their pages, select the
leading ones and tell the story of these in a read-
able and interesting way, is a small one, and
capable of judicious enlargement. This is a task,
however, which must not be undertaken by the
ordinary hack compiler. Short cuts of any kind
are proverbially treacherous, and the man who
offers to be our guide by a path which is to be
brief but not obscure, and popular without being
inaccurate, ought to enjoy rather special powers
of mind. lie ought to have—in a minor degree—
s, giant's strength, but without the will to use it
as a giant. lie ought to have somewhat of the
grasp and power of the regular voluminous
historian, the sense of historic perspective iden-
tical in kind with that possessed by a Hume or a
Macaulay, a telling style, and something of
original research, to lend freshness and piquancy
to his pages. With all this he must have the
moderate ambition which contents itself with the
production of one volume instead of a dozen, and
abandons the composition of the "monumental"
work to which he might perchance have aspired,
for that of a book which all who have time to read
monumental works will consider only the first
round of their ladder, and, perhaps, unkindly
sneer at as superficial directly they have got a
step or two beyond it. The qualifications we have
demanded may seem rather inordinate, but it is
certain that they are rarely found united, and
this probably is the reason of the scarcity of the
kind of books in question ; for there can be no
doubt that they are always popular enough even if
only moderately well executed. Mr. Menzies
does not quite conic up to the standard we should
adopt for such writers, but he is in many respects
not at all ill-fitted for the work. lie has common
sense, and a habit of independent thought. His
reading, though perhaps not very wide or deep,
seems to have been sufficiently miscellaneous to
make him sensitive to the different kinds of
historic evidence, and he shows a certain skill in
making little stray bits of knowledge bear upon
the subject in hand. Though perhaps not a very
young man, we should infer that the pre-cunei-
form period of his intellect was not so distant,
but that he can remember what it felt like to be
hazy about Semiramis or Sesostris, or his first
thrill of intellectual pleasure at learning that the
verse about " every shepherd" being " an abomi-
nation to the Egyptians," contains an allusion to
the hated rule of the Ilyksos. Hence he is
qualified to sympathize with the " masses" at
whose instruction he aims, and who, he tells us
in his preface, include " everybody who knows
" just a little of history—who has dipped into
"Wilkinson and Layard, and heard perhaps that
" Bunsen is an opponent of the received chro-
" nology ; but, at. the Dome. time, ha 4 no clear