The Portland daily press., 1876-06-24
Recent Publications.

ARNOLD AND ANDRE; an Historical Drama. By
George N. Calvert. A New Edition. Published
by Lee g. Shepard. Boston. For sale by Loring,
Short s. Harmon.
In this centennial year it is natural that
new edition of Mr. Calvert's carefully written
and thoughtful drama should be Issued; and
at this time it will be read with appreciation
and interest, as tending to make more clear
and forcible notable episode of the Revolu-
ton. The authors theories of dramatic COM
position are given elaborstely and at length in
the preface to the work; and evidence, as does
the drama itself, much thought-at times some
what vague and even impracticably heavy
together with familiarity with fine models and
conscientious acceptance of historic truth
Mr.. Calvert's prose is better than his poetry
that is to say his prsse in the drama itself, not
the preface which shares the defects of his
verse. In the opening scene, and indeed
wherever the movement and language of the
drama are natural. and unconstrained, the evil
dent truth and genuine spirit of the dialogue
are exceedingly well defined. 1t is in the
more ambitious passages, which however con-
tain some fue lines, that one feels the effort
and the insuperable difficulties which surround
the task of translating into conventional ar
tistic medium of expression the deeds ard
thoughts of times and places removed from US
| by little space and few years. Much of the
blank verse is good, not especially harmonious
or rhythmic; it contains striking expressions
and is dignified and earnest-but the general
effect is cold, heavy and uninteresting. The
undeniable talent of Mr.. Calvert has not been
able to conquer difficulties which are complex
| and manifold and which require phenomenal
impulse and poetic power of the rarest order to
| lift them to the pedestal which years build for
history that it may be crowned of poetry
| HoMERIc SYNoHRoNIsM. An Enquiry into the
Time and Place of Homer. By the Right Hon. W.
e. Gladstone. New York: Harper & Brothers.
| For sale by Loring, Short & Harmon.
| Mr.. Gladstone is one of the most profound as
| well as most enthusiastic of Helensts; more
| over he has made special study of the HON.
| eric poems and of the vast literature concern
ing them which he aggregates under the name
"Homerology," and his conclusions are en-
titled to great weight and respect. To those
at all interested in classical literature and hav-
| ing tolerable knowledge of the Homeric
| poems this volume will have great interest and
value. The work has for its nucleus two papers
published in the Contemporary Review. Its
composition is due to belief that the time has
come for serious efforts to correct the poems of
Homer, by means of the internal evidence
which they supply, with events and personages
which are we'll known from other sources to
belong to periods, already approximately de.
fined, of the primeval history Of our race. The
author has endeavored to guard himself against
the irrational excesses and vagaries of skepti-
cism on the one hand, and o n the other against
the opinions too freely accepted from lazy
and incomplete tradition. The first part of the
volume is given to discussion of the discov-
cries of Cesnola in Cyprus and Schliemann in
the Troad, and the hypothesis OF the latter in
regard to the site of Troy is accepted. In the
second part Mr.. Gladstone treats of the results
of the recent researches in Egyptian and Assy.
rian chronology. The authors conclusions are
that the poems of Homer. are in the highest
sense historical, as a record of manners and
characters. feelings and tastes, races and coun-
tries, principles and institutions" that there
was a solid nucleus of fact In his account oil
the Trojan war; that he was not an AsiatiC
Greek, but q native of Hellas proper, that
there is strong reason to believe that he flour
ished before the Dorian conquest of the Pei