forth, has a very bad effect upon the younger part of an audience; and that continual lying and deceit in the first characters of the piece, which is necessary for conducting the plot, has a most pernicious one." We cannot shut up these volumes, from which we have received so much instruction and delight, without lamenting that their pages should so frequently be stained with oaths and exclamations very useless as adjuncts of the glowing passages to which they are annexed, and very shocking to minds in which at just reverence for the awful name of the Creator prevails. We can assure Miss Baillie that this remark is not dictated by puritanism or affectation. If we did not highly value her works, and respect her character, nay, if she had not made a solemn and interesting declaration of her religious impressions, we should not have stopped to make this remonstrance. We have no doubt that the instances have arisen from the impetuosity of her feelings in the ardour of composition. We refer her to Vol. i. pp.391, 407. Vol. ii. p. 86. But many other instances occur. There are a great many passages in the comedies, on the vulgarity of which we should have strongly commented, if we had more time and room. We must be content with making a general appeal from Miss Baillie to Miss Baillie;-from her partial and occasional improprieties, to the clear and correct standard of her general taste.. ART. ΧΙ. ΕΥΡΙΠΙΔΟΥ ΙΠΠΟΛΥΤΟΣ ΣΤΕΦΑΝΗΦΟΡΟΣ. Euripidis Hippolytus Coronifer. Ad Fidem Manuscriptorum ac veterum Editionum emendavit et annotationibus instruxit Jacobus Henricus Monk, A. M. SS. Trinitatis Collegii Socius, et Græcarum Literarum apud Cantabrigienses Professor Regius. Cantabrigiæ: Typis ac sumptibus Academicis excudit J. Smith; Veneunt Londini, apud T. Payne, &c. 1811. 8vo. pp. 176. FROM the opening of the last century, till within a very few years past, the Cambridge University press had appeared sunk in a kind of listless inactivity. Not a single work of importance had issued from it during the whole of that period. Its funds had been employed in committing to print little else but pamphlets and school-books; in a manner totally inconsistent with its former typographical celebrity. There was a time, when it could put into the hands of the literary world such works as Kuster's Suidas, Taylor's Demosthenes, and Barnes's Euripides. The resources of the Clarendon press, it must be allowed, are much more copious; and this may help to account for the superiority which Oxford has in this respect acquired over the sister University. Of late years, however, it should seem that Cambridge has felt sensible of her inferiority; and ashamed of her past neglect, has on a sudden risen up to dispute the palm in neatness, at least, of Greek typography. Excited by the example of her late Professor Porson, she has given to the public within the space of two years, two of the most beautiful specimens of Greek type ever exhibited by any press; Mr. Blomfield's edition of the Prometheus Vinctus, and Mr. Professor Monk's Hippolytus Coronifer. Mr. Porson, as we have been told, some little time before his death, had it in contemplation to form models of each Greek character as nearly consistent as possible with the fashion of the letters in the earliest Greek MSS. Comparing these with Greek inscriptions of the earlier ages, he has been able to reduce the formation of the Greek character to a regular system. And we see the result of this minute attention in the perfection of his Greek transcriptions, superior in neatness and elegance to those of the ancient copyists. His zeal carried him a step further; and in order that the models of each letter, which were afterwards to become the standard Greek type of the Cambridge University press, might be minutely correct, we have been told that he put into the hands of the Syndics a complete Greek alphabet, with the form of each letter, as he conceived it should be represented, drawn upon black flints with pieces of copper wire. The types of Bodoni, and those in which Auger's Demosthenes has been printed, have ceased to merit the applause of the scholar. The letters are disgustingly luxuriant, and, we will venture to say, very different from any thing ever written by the Greeks themselves. By a British press however has this vitiated taste been corrected; and the eye of the scholar now peruses, with a satisfaction bordering on delight, the PORSONIC TYPE. It has been a general complaint amongst scholars that what has been left to us by the late Professor, bears a great disproportion, in point of quantity, to what might have been expected from the talents and acquirements of so great a critic. But these are general conclusions, made without a sufficient consideration of the sources from which they are drawn. Porson's life was comparatively short; ne was a man eminently conversant in almost every species of polite learning, though it was his study of the Greek that engrossed the greater part of his attention. When therefore, throwing for a moment all other pursuits out of consideration, we take into our view the immensity of matter connected with Greek literature, over which his mind must have expanded itself, to have performed what he has done, we cannot feel justified in accusing him of idleness and neglect. To have amassed materials sufficient to have enabled him to edit four plays of Euripides in the way that he did edit them, would have taken any man of ordinary abilities double the time that he lived.-And it is to be remembered that to him belongs the glory of having pointed out a new system of criticism, superior to all others, and to have thus rendered the path of the scholar secure and pleasant. The Hippolytus of Euripides, which, it should seem, in general arrangement, has always been placed next to the Medea, has been taken up by Mr. Porson's successor, Mr. Professor Monk; who has certainly displayed a degree of learning and ability which it would be invidious to bring into comparison with those of his eminent predecessor. It is to be regretted that he was not possessed of an opportunity of referring to more MSS.; for in the list which he has prefixed to the play, it appears that he has merely given us the lections of MSS. already consulted by Musgrave and Valckenaer, and that they are all extracted from printed books. To make some amends, however, he has enriched his edition of the play with several observations of Professor Porson, which he has carefully collected, as well from the papers of that great critic, now lodged in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, as from the contributions of several learned men of the age. In the arrangement of the choric parts he has shewn so much metrical skill, that we hesitate not to class him among the greatest in that department. In his notes on the four first plays of Euripides, Mr. Porson presents himself in the characters of critic and grammarian, almost to the exclusion of that of commentator; he has given the various lections of MSS. and early editions, compared them, sifted them, and communicated the reasons for his preferences among the various readings. Mr. Monk has combined the offices of the grammarian, the critic, and the commentator, so that his notes, at times, savour strongly of German prolixity. It seems to us that he would have done better if he had followed Mr. Blomfield's plan, and separated the critical from the explanatory matter. In his quotations from Valckenaer he is too profuse: and for this he merits reprehension, as the notes of Porson on the Phoenissæ, which also has been edited by Valckenaer, are not so long, when taken collectively, as those upon any other of the three plays. We are sorry too to see that Mr. Monk has not scrupled, once, twice, or even thrice, to borrow from Valckenaer without acknowledging it. This we are willing to impute rather to inadvertency, than design. But to forget obligations, is only less faulty than to remember them, without confessing them. In imitating Mr. Porson in the style of his notes, he has approached at times almost to parody; and in the close of his preface he, as well as Mr. Blomfield in the preface to the Prometheus Vinctus, has copied not only the thought, but also the greatest part of the words, which form the concluding sentence in Porson's supplement to his preface to the Hecuba. We are willing, however, to give Mr. Monk our humble praise for the manner in which he has executed this performance. He has been industrious in the extreme; and the chief. fault which we venture to find in him, is a propensity to surcharge his notes with a multiplicity of observations. In the second edition of the Hippolytus, we hope to see them somewhat abridged; otherwise we shall begin to suspect that he has been giving us à variorum edition under another name. For the convenience of our readers, we shall arrange our observations on the play in regular order, that they may be able with greater readiness to refer to the several parts, on which we are disposed to comment. V. 2." xexual," says the professor, "significat sum, quo sensa apud Tragicos non infrequens est.' Of the truth of this assertion, which is evidently deduced from the remark of Porson appended to the note, we are thoroughly convinced. At the same time, upon more minute consideration, it should seem that its import is in general more emphatic than may at first sight appear; and we strongly suspect that of the parallel instances. quoted in the note on this passage, all, except that from the Trachiniæ, are foreign to the purpose. In the line from the Persæ, ου τινος δοῦλοι κέκληνται φωτός, οὐδ ̓ ὑπήκοοι. xxλra is meant to express more than siel could have done; as common feeling and the spirit of the passage clearly shew. To have asserted merely the fact, that "they are the slaves of no man," would have been cold indeed, compared with what we conceive to have been the full force of the passage. The precise meaning we take to be this; "the Persians are known by the title of the subjects of the great king; but they [the Greeks] are by fame and character known to be the slaves of no man." VOL. III. NO. V. Generally speaking, the word has reference to fame, character, good or bad;-of the former class are the following instances: ὁ δ ̓ ἐν πολίταις τίμιος κεκλημένος. "Hecub. 629. Here we should render the word xxλnμaι by I am known in character as, and so of the rest. If therefore in these cases the words xixanai, &c. answer to sum, &c. all idea of fame and distinction is excluded, which it is evident from the context ought not to be the case. t 66 versum 1 The remainder of the note is taken from Valckenaer, which the Professor has not thought fit to acknowledge; ascribing however with some condescension one part out of four to that learned critic. We will give Valckenaer's words; et 2, ad vocem ow pro vdov positam, excitat Grammaticus de solecismo, p. 200; eosdem rapwde Luciani Podagra, T. 111, p. 665.-In Tragoedia quæ dicitur Xploròs Tάσxwv matri," &c. V. 3. Πόντου τερμόνων τ' Ατλαντικών, we should conceive to be equivalent to ποντίων τερμόνων Ατλαντικών, by the well-known figure termed by grammarians ἑνδιαδὶς, h. e. ἓν διὰ δυοῖν. Virg. Georg. ii. 192. "Qualem pateris libamus et auro." Horat. Carm. iii. 29, 15. "Sine aulais et ostro." How Musgrave could suppose that by Tovrou was meant the Euxine sea, we cannot comprehend; Mr. Monk says, "Tóvrou malè intelligit πόντου Musgravius post Scholiastam de ponto Euxino." The Scholiast's words are; τερμόνων δὲ ̓Ατλαντικῶν περὶ τὸ ̓Ατλαντικὸν πέλαγορη κουσαν· ἔνιοι δὲ τα Γάδειρα, ἔνθα ἐστὶν ὄρος, ο Ατλας, ὅπερ ἐστὶ δυ τικόν· ὁ δὲ πόντος, ανατολικόν. Here is no mention whatever of the Euxine sea; why then impute the blunders of Musgrave to the Scholiast, who surely has enough to do to fight his own battles? The error lies with Musgrave; ille habeat secum, servetque sepulchro. ̓Ατλαντικὰ πελάγη· Εσπέριος Ωκεανός, και 'ENOE, says Suidas; and from this idea arose the mistake of the Scholiast, which is much more reasonable than that of Mus • Thus we conceive this line, which has long puzzled the editors of Euripides, (see Barnes on the passage) should be corrected. We refer our readers to Cycl. 353. άλλως νομίζει, Ζεύ, ΤΟ ΜΗΔΕΝ ὤν, θεός. The common reading of the line in the lon is μηδὲν καὶ οὐδὲν ἐν π. κα |