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

also are scholarlike, and show considerable
research. The essay on the character and
opinions of Euripides, in which Mr. Paley
endeavours to disprove the atheistical tone of
his writing and teaching, though able and
plausible, strikes us as rather a piece of special
pleading. It gives us pain to differ from so
able a scholar as Mr. Paley, and we wish we
could indeed persuade ourselves with him that
in his sneers against the gods and religious
philosophy of his day Euripides was only
'• anxiously wishing to elevate his hearers
" above the low standard of popular theology."
We, as Christians, can treat the vulgar
Athenian notions about Zeus, Apollo, and the
rest of the heathen divinities, with contempt
and ridicule, because we have a revelation
which teaches us that " as for all the gods of
" the heathen, they are but idols, but it is the
" Lord that made the heavens ;" but surely
the poet who taught his warmhearted country-
men that those deities were silly phantoms,
while he could give them nothing better in
their stead for Athenian faith to repose upon,
could have exercised no wholesome influence
upou the religious practice and the morality
of a country whose inhabitants, while they
were gay, free, and thoughtless as the pure air
they breathed, were still, even at a later age,
aliTthtitAGYiTTliOt—" inclined to reverence the
deities "—if we may believe St. Paul. With
all duo deference, we believe that the accusa-
tions of Aristophanes against Euripides on
this head were just; and we cannot but ob-
serve with regret that even whilst drawing
attention to an expression in the " Hecuba"
to the effect that "chance is the disposer of
" all events," and admitting the possibility of
the charge of pantheism against him being
true, Mr. Paley still maintains that Euripides
was ."no atheist " according to Greek notions.
Perhaps the best remarks on this much de-
bated subject are to be found in Mr. Walford's
" Handbook of tho Greek Drama ":

In the days of Euripides men were beginning to look
at every question through the medium of metaphysics.
He seems to a certain extent to have caught the jargon of
the school without the deeper meaning ; but at the same
time he had his own peculiar views on the subject of the
dealings of God with man. He appears to have thought
that whatever was was right, but that at the same time it
was impossible to fathom the ways of the Deity. This
theory would seem to show itself in many of those half-
sneering, half-desponding apophthegms for which Euri-
pides is famous Unfortunately, the mind
which has once drifted away from the sure anchorage of
traditional and hereditary religion, is but too prone to WI
into worse errors than even the disparagement of intel•
lee:nal exertions. Such a man is ever apt to surrender
himself to the illusions of a heated imagination, and,
having deserted the wisdom of ages, is driven to lay
heavier stress upon the wisdom of the moralist.
3. We confess that of the three volumes
before us we like best the Terence of Mr Parry,
who was one of Dr. Arnold's most promising
scholars at Rugby, and who, as we observe whilst
these sheets are passing through the press,
has just been appointed to the Leadship of
Leamington College. His introduction com-
prises a sketch of the life and literary position
of Terence, and a treatise on his language and
metres, either of which, taken singly, would
Le sufficient to stamp him as a first-rate
scholar. The latter we have perused most
carefully, and we own it has fully convinced
us that his theory of Terentiau synizesis, or
syllabic contraction, is correct, and that
Bentley and other critics were wrong in ex-
plaining it away on the principle of an hiatus
wh !re the final syllable was shortened before
an initial vcwel, as in Virgil's well-known line,
" Credemus, an qui amant," &c As Mr.
Parry justly observes, Cicero helps us, by a
story which he tells of Crassus, to settle
the question as to whether Terence means to
write "dive sis" or "cave sis." He writes, as
our readers will remember, in his 2nd Book
1)e Divin., chap. 40,—" Quum M. Crassus exer-
cituin Brundisii imponeret, quidam in portu,
" caritas Cauno advectas vendens, Cauneas
" clamitabat. Dicamus, si placet, monitum ab
"eo Crassum, eaveret ne iret." The story is
intelligible enough on Mr. Parry's theory, while
that of Bentley makes it simply unmeaning and
unintelligible. Of course what is true of
" cave" is true also of such words a: modo,
sibi, tibi, milli, novas, storm., tace : and no
doubt this is the true explanation of the
abbreviation of owl words as " duce," - dice,"
face," "fere," into " doo," ° clic," " fat.," nail