from his close connection with Harrow, of which he was a Governor for many years, as from other circumstances. Alluding to "the comparative merits of public and private education," the Editor, after enumerating some of the disadvantages of private education, says :-"It is to be feared, on the other hand, that no amount of secular advantages can compensate for the moral risk to be encountered in the public schools. It seems to be a feature in the constitution of human nature, that evils multiply in something more than arithmetical progression. . . It is certain that in manufactories vices have been found to multiply with terrible rapidity. Nor do our public schools seem, for a long period at least, to supply any exception to the rule. They must be regarded as having been, in many instances, the very hot-beds of immorality. Among no bodies of responsible agents was there less zeal to inculcate holiness, or less disposition to practise it. The annals of these institutions are pregnant with examples equally of misrule and misconduct. The boys were bad, and, very often, the masters no better. Even at a later period, the courts of justice supply an example of a tutor leading a pupil into the hands of defilement; and, in other cases, the scholars, if they listened to their instructors, were likely to learn little but habits of sensuality, expense, and gambling.... Neither in their passage through the schools, nor in after life, were there to be found many who could be regarded as converted servants of God. In fact, conversion during the school progress would have been next to a miracle; and the habits there formed were among the last to promise future advancement in the things of God. Admitting all this to be true, the conclusion at which we should necessarily arrive would be one of a very painful nature. As long as the constitution of English society is what it is, the majority of boys of a certain rank will be sent to public schools.

...

The first person who had the honour of striking a blow to be felt, at the corrupt system of public education as it had been, was Dr. Arnold, a person every way qualified for the office... He felt himself called not merely to give instructions in classics, but to educate souls for eternity. Although some of the public schools are slow in casting their skins, and both Eton and Winchester are said not to have wholly escaped the Tractarian follies of the day, even these are much improved. . . . The instructions now given are, for the most part, of a more religious cast; some other God is proclaimed to the scholars besides Jupiter and Mercury; the discipline is improved, and, with it, the habits of the boys. And the improvement will, we trust, under the Divine blessing, go on. Let parents strongly and honestly protest against the folly and crime of corrupting places of Protestant education into semi

naries for Popery, and public schools may soon become, under the mercy of God, the nurseries of all that is good and great in the national character. . . . We have long felt that the apostasies of the day, both complete and partial, from Protestant truth, have to a great extent originated in the defective religious instruction given to the youth of the country. When of old the Bible began to be really known, the voice of the 'Sybil' was silenced. And now, the voice of Scripture, well read and understood, will silence the nonsense of Tractarianism. Boys educated on Scriptural principles are at least less likely to yield themselves captive to the extravagances of the Romanizing party. They may, perhaps, among their other readings, cast their eyes on the Stultitia Laus' of Erasmusand will feel with him, that a 'hundred tongues and a brazen · voice' would not suffice to recount the absurdities in faith and practice which learned clerks and more learned ladies desire to substitute for the scriptural creed, and the simple ritual and ordinances of the Church of our country." Worthing.

GEO. POYNDER.

PEROWNE'S COMMENTARY ON THE PSALMS.

The Book of Psalms. A new Translation, with Introduction and Notes, Explanatory and Critical. By J. J. Stewart Perowne, B.D. Bell and Daldy. 1864.

Mr. PEROWNE'S Commentary on the Psalms, of which in the present volume we have the first instalment, reaching to the seventy-second, is of importance in various ways. It is the first critical commentary which has appeared in the present day; that is, since the nature and structure of Hebrew poetry has been better understood, since the researches of modern travellers have thrown light upon the customs, the people, the plants and animals, and the ruins of the East; since the history, the chronology, the language, and the races of the ancient world have been winnowed with the fan of modern criticism. Of each and all of these subjects Mr. Perowne is the man from whom we may expect a clear and full account. While yet at Cambridge, he was Tyrwhitt Hebrew scholar; and ever since he took his degree, learning has been his occupation and pursuit. He had the advantage of an early training in the contents of the English Bible; a thorough knowledge of the languages in which the Scriptures are written, an extensive acquaintance with German writers, among whom certainly the most able critics, especially in Hebrew and Rabbinical literature, are found. All that is required seems to be the mind to grasp and to handle freely all these advantages, the power to

use them as instruments for a good work, and the grace to hallow them for spiritual service in the Church of God. We have full right to expect, too, that the faith of Christianity, as to all its great and fundamental doctrines, would be safe in Mr. Perowne's hands. All his antecedents would warrant this expectation. He was born in India, where his father was labouring for the Church Missionary Society. He was curate to Mr. Carus, at Great St. Mary's, Cambridge; he won his place at King's College and at Lampeter as a champion for orthodoxy against the views of Dr. Donaldson, Mr. Maurice, and Dr. Williams; and among the testimonials he received on that occasion, were strong commendations from the Bishop of Norwich, to whom he is examining chaplain, from the Archbishop of York, Dr. Jelf, Dr. McCaul, and others. Of Mr. Perowne's devotion to his work as a minister of Christ, and as a theological student and lecturer, no doubt can be entertained; his scrupulous care over any work he has to execute can scarcely be exceeded. The proof sheets of this very work seem to have been read over by Mr. Plumptre, so long ago as February, 1862, and nearly all of it has been examined by Dr. Aldis Wright, the librarian of Trinity College. On all hands, therefore, we are warranted to expect very much from this commentary, and it is equally clear that the responsibility of the writer must more or less devolve upon every critic of his work.

The author's design is to give (1), A new translation of the book; (2) A true idea of the meaning and scope of each Psalm; (3) Some critical notes discussing the difficulties of the text, the grammar, and other matters, more interesting to the scholar than to the general reader.

We must confess at the outset to a feeling of disappointment in the work, both as to its character and execution. The writer may be wholly unconscious of the fact, but there seems to us a curious resemblance in tone and style between it and Dr. Stanley's Commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians, as if the one writer had served as a model for the other. They have the same excellencies and the same defects; the same deep seriousness and earnestness of spirit, chastened rather with sadness than cheerfulness; the same desire to combine the free criticisms of Germany with the language and feelings of orthodox English churchmen; the same habit of "making a fire-screen of the friends of truth," to shelter themselves in coming into close contact with doubtful opinions; and the same power to neutralize and make to disappear much that is most spiritual and evangelical in the Word of God, in the very process of manipulating it. There is, moreover, in both, a great deal of word painting, and picturesque description. Here, however, the resemblance exists with a difference. Mr. Perowne is not, like Dr. Stanley, a facile writer; there is in him

no exuberance of fancy, and no spontaneous and lavish outflow of vivid and natural imagery. The more ornamented portion of the style has been obviously gained by an effort, and with an author's liking for what has cost him most labour, its value is overestimated by him accordingly. We should not have alluded to this circumstance, had it not been necessary to account for what we conceive to be the comparative failure of—

1. The new Translation. Of this translation, and of the critical notes elucidating it, it would be hard to speak in too extravagant terms of praise. We have no doubt that, as a lecturer on the Hebrew Scriptures, Mr. Perowne may claim a rank as high as any man in England. No pains have been spared in making this translation as correct and faithful as it can be; and no criticism, however minute, has been passed over, which would throw light upon any of its obscurities, or assist in balancing between several possible and doubtful meanings. To Hebrew students it will prove invaluable; if they watch its collocation of words, and its variations from the authorised version, they will find it full of suggestions, even where no word is spoken. After all this is said—and much more praise than this might be honestly given-it would be altogether a mistake to suppose that such a version could ever be of general use, or that it would, save in a very few instances, be an improvement upon either of those we so highly value. Most strange it is, that after speaking in terms of severe condemnation of the new translations of the New Testament, complaining of their servile adherence to the idiom of the Greek, and of the crudity and baldness, and want of system and harmony, which make them intolerable to the ear, Mr. Perowne should have fallen so completely into the same error. quite impossible, we are all aware, to lay down any rule on this question of translation. Everyone who has a perfect mastery of two languages, knows how hard it is to determine between what he honestly believes the author would have said had he written in English, and what a literal translator reminds us he has actually said in his own tongue. In the case of Holy Scripture, the question is complicated with still greater difficulties. The sacredness of the subject forbids all liberty. The translation, to a far greater extent than in any human composition, must be literal, otherwise it offensively occupies the place of an exposition. Fortunately for us, we have in this case, if not a rule, at least a pattern for our guidance. Our English version has prescribed a path, certainly not erring on the side of too much freedom; and it has had the advantage of long prescription to soften down and hallow such idioms of another tongue, as were necessarily retained, and which have now become both familiar and intelligible to our ears. Mr. Perowne, however, has kept closer to the original in more ways than one.

It is

For instance, in the substitution of the name Jehovah for the translation whenever it occurs; in the inversion of the order of the words, wherever the emphasis, or the poetical structure of the clause, seems to require it, in the substitution of many new words of frequent occurrence more exactly translating the Hebrew. The complaint to be made is not of any one, or all of these things, but of the result of the whole. The gain which is acquired by the greater accuracy of the version, by no means compensates for the loss of harmony and rhythm and sweetness, both of sound and of association. An English reader would understand the Psalms no better, and he could not enjoy them half so well. Strange to say, the alterations are many of them in direct opposition to existing standards of public taste and feeling. The tendency of modern poetry is to get rid of all inverted sentences, of all stiff and unnatural construction, and to speak in smooth and flowing language, in the natural order of discourse. To put verbs before their nominative cases, and nouns before their adjectives, under the idea that beauty and harmony, or poetical or oratorical power, is gained, is simply to undo the work of such men as Wordsworth and Tennyson. this awkwardness be avoided as a fault and blemish in an original poem, there is no good reason why it should be resorted to in a translation; or what is worse, that it should be substituted for a more easy and natural method already in use. Admitted that force is sometimes given to a word by putting it in the last place in a sentence, or that an alliteration or antithesis is disclosed which could not otherwise be felt or known, the answer will apply which may be given to all attempts to show the structure of an original sentence in a translation,— In the original, the paranomasia or alliteration amounts only to a delicate hint, which may pass unnoticed except to an ob servant eye; in the translation, it obtrudes itself as a prominent feature of the style. Looking at Mr. Perowne's translation as a whole, it seems to be such an one as could not have passed the nice discrimination of a poet's ear, and which would have been far richer in harmonious words and sentences, had there been a vein of genuine ore in the author's fancy. Of the variations from the authorised version, we should be sorry to see even one-tenth adopted. The translation may be more

Let the peoples give thanks to
Thee, O God;

Let the peoples give thanks to Thee,
all of them!

Let the nations rejoice and shout for joy,

For Thou judgest the people in uprightness,

And the nations upon earth Thou leadest them. (Psalm lxvii.)

If

† And they gave me as my food gall. Hide thy face from my sins, and all my iniquities blot out; A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew in me. (Psalm li)

In pastures of grass He maketh me lie down,

Beside waters of rest doth He guide me. (Psalm xxiii.)