The Press.
London, England, 1857-12-12 00:00:00

TH E PRESS, DECEMBER 12, 1857.

classical authors edited for the most part by
the freshest and best of the scholars of our
two Universities. As the learned works of
German and other foreign commentators have
been fully consulted, and a variety of MSS.
compared, expressly for these volumes, we
might naturally expect that they would con-
tain the most recent suggestions and emenda-
tions of continental editors. Nor are we mis-
taken. We are bound to say that the series,
as far as it has gone, has realised our expecta-
tions. We must own that the iEsehylus of
Mr. Paley, the Herodotus of Mr. Blakesley,
the Horace of Mr. Macleane, and the Cicero of
Mr. Long, which have been already published
at intervals, are a vast improvement on the old
Delphins, with their Latin notes full of
pedantic trifling, which we used to thumb
years ago under the playosus orbilius of our
early )outh. A question may possibly he
raised, whether, more especially for the use of
schools, the English notes given in the
" Bibliotheca Classica " might not have been
better placed by themselves at the end of the
respective volumes; and critics will differ, of
course, as to the propriety of printing at full
length a variety of certain passages in the
Satires of Juvenal and the Epodes and Satires
of Horace which are conspicuous for their
utter indecency. The present editors have
judged it best to lot these passages stand, and
have touched them with a delicate hand, coin-
' menting on them only so far as has been found
necessary to illustrate the context; and for a
defence of the plan we must refer our readers
to the prefatory remarks of Mr. Macleane to
his Juvenal. _ _ _

1. Mr. Macleane, in his Juvenal and Persius,
we think has done right in not servilely tying
himself down to the text or judgment of any
cne preceding editor, but in following Hein-
rich in the main ; whilst admitting the opinions
of Ctsaubon, Lubinus, Koenig, and others of '
the best known commentators. As might be
expected, his references to Dr. Smith's well-
known Dictionaries of Antiquities, Biography,
and Geography are not only many and fre-
quent, but well chosen, and throw a consider-
able light on passages which in our schooldays
were hopelessly obscure. In his treatment of
Persius—the most difficult perhaps of all
Latin classical authors—he has borrowed
largely from the notes of Jahn. The life of
Juvenal prefixed to the volume contributes to
add materially to its value, being almost
wholly drawn from what we had hitherto
believed (in Juvenal's case at least) to be a
very scanty source of information,—the allu-
sions of the poet to his own circumstances
and affairs. Mr. Macleane, at all events, has
proved that Horace is not the only ancient
writer whose works reflect their author. The
life of Persius is translated from an old biogra-
phy ascribed to Suetonius. Here and there a
hypercritical student might, we think. find
some ground of complaint against Mr. Macleane
for the absence of illustrations by way of
parallel passages in such places as the allusion
to the tombs along the highways in the sub-
urbs of Rome (Sat. i. 171), and the absence of
nearly all note and comment on a passage so
difficult and probably so corrupt as Sat. xiv.
227-30. And again, we may fairly object to
the substitution of " Late titans " for " Dania-
sippus " in Sat. viii. 147, 141, and 167, on what
we cannot but consider insufficient grounds.
Surely we can see in England that the same
man may ruin himself with horseraeing, and
also take to the stage consumptis opibus, like
our old friend Damasippus—" the tamer of
horses "—most appropriate title. An uncom-
monly positive, not to say arrogant, mode of
expressing himself towards previous critics,
who are sometimes more correct than himself;
might also fairly lay him open to censure.
2. On Mr. Paley's Euripides we shall have
more to say when the second volume appears
The .present volume gives us plays—the
Rhesus, Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis, Herne-
lithe, Troades, and Suppliants,—most of them
plays in which most of his materials lay ready
to hand. The labours of Porson and of Monk
on these portions of the works of Euripides
have not been neglected by Mr. Paley, who,
however, in his carefully-written introductions
to each separate play, gives us what we never
had before,—the " argument " or plot. briefly
sad yet completely set before us. Ills notes