his name. But it certainly is one of the inconveniences of the system of classification adopted, that the order of chronology is sadly disarranged-for Epicurus and Menander were born in the same year, Olymp. 109, 3. They were avveon Bo; they grew up together in intimate friendship; and the doctrines of the philosopher may be traced in the sentences of the poet. Yet we have parted with Menander before we have arrived at the end of the first period, and we have made some progress in the third before we meet with Epicurus.

How highly Menander thought of him may be seen by the epigram in which he addresses him and Themistocles as the two great liberators of their country-the one having freed it from personal, the other from intellectual subjection.*

Doctor Donaldson has not, in our opinion, done justice to Epicurus. We estimate Epicurus as he was estimated by Lucretius, Atticus, Seneca, Lucian, and many others among the most illustrious names under the later Republic and earlier Empire of Rome.t Seneca says, his precepts were just, righteous, even severe;' the passages which he has cited from Epicurus alone are more numerous than those which he has cited from Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno together, and would make by themselves a code of morals not surpassed if even equalled by any which could be compiled from the maxims of other philosophers. We content ourselves with expressing our opinion; the matter is too great for discussion in this place; but we must correct one statement which imputes to Epicurus a puerile ambition altogether foreign to his character. Epicurus

and Chrysippus vied with one another in writing, for writing's sake.' (Vol. iii. p. 5.) Chrysippus aimed at

375

writing as much as Epicurus, and was therefore called his parasite; but Epicurus wrote without any reference to Chrysippus. This will be apparent to the reader who will carefully weigh the words of Diogenes Laertius.

What further remarks our space will permit us to make, we must offer somewhat in the form of what the commentators on Horace call lanx satura, but in the order of the work before us.

Vol. iii. p. 65.-'Polybius intended his history as a sequel to that of Timaeus. . . . Just in the same way, Smollett and other continuers of English history were content to take Hume as the basis of their labours because he had carried his annals down to a certain point, and was at that time the latest and most esteemed historian.' The analogy is not correct. Hume's History was published in four divisions-in 1754, 1756, 1759, and 1761. Smollett's Complete History of England from the Descent of Julius Casar to the Treaty of Aix-laChapelle in 1748, was published in 1758, and was afterwards continued to the death of George II. in 1760. When the popularity of Hume's History had extinguished the corresponding portion of Smollett's, the latter's last volumes were published separately, with the words in the title-page, designed as a continuation of Mr. Hume's History;' but the design was an after-thought of the bookseller, not an original purpose of the author.

P. 97.-The account of the fabulist Babrius is an extract from a paper by Sir G. C. Lewis in the Philological Museum, in which it is stated, that a few fables out of the whole ten books have alone been preserved.' But the last number of the Philological Museum was published in 1833; and about seven years later

Χαῖρε, Νεοκλείδα δίδυμον γένος, ὧν ὁ μὲν ὑμῶν
Πατρίδα δουλοσύνας ῥύσαθ', ὁ δ ̓ ἀφροσύνας.

Anthol. Palat. vii. 72. Meineke: Menandri et
Philemonis Reliquiæ, pp. xxv. xxvi. 299.

In ea quidem ipse sententia sum, sancta Epicurum et recta præcipere, et, si propius accesseris, tristia.-De Vita Beata, c. 13.

He amuses himself by saying that wisdom is public property, and he takes it where he finds it. Potest fieri, ut me interroges, quare ab Epicuro tam multa bene dicta referam potius quam nostrorum. Quid est tamen, quare tu istas Epicuri voces putes esse, non publicas?-Ep. viii. But he found more of this public property in Epicurus's garden than in any other enclosure.

a MS. of Babrius was found in the Laura of Mount Athos, by which more than half of the whole fables were recovered. Several editions from this MS. were published in 1844 and subsequent years; one by Sir G. C. Lewis. It seems strange that Doctor Donaldson should not have been aware of this discovery, especially as he speaks of Sir G. C. Lewis having published an edition of Babrius; or that, having been aware of it, he should have passed it over in silence.

Page 214.-There is much justice in the comparison of Lucian and Voltaire. The view is not only just, it is also eminently liberal. That the results of the efforts of both against false religion and false philosophy were merely negative;' that they had nothing tangible to substitute for what they destroyed,' is open to observation. To clear the ground of falsehood is to leave room for the introduction of truth. Lucian decidedly held that moral certainty, a complete code of duty founded on reason, existed in the writings of Epicurus; and Voltaire's theism, the belief in a pervading spirit of good, was clear and consistent throughout. The main object of both was, by sweeping away false dogmas, to teach toleration. Voltaire warred against opinions which sustained themselves by persecution. The case of Calas alone sufficiently attests with what self-forgetting earnestness he followed up this, the main purpose of his life.

The account of Lucian's works is unexceptionably good, and we fully concur in the concluding remarks:

As a writer of pure and elegant Greek, which was neither vernacular with him, nor spoken and written by the most highly educated men of the day-as a humorist whose gaiety and

fancy are inexhaustible-as an honest hater of shams and dishonest bigotryas an educational reformer, whose exertions were not the less praiseworthy because they were not perfectly successful-Lucian of Samosata stands forth in favourable contrast to all the so-called sophists of his age, and we are among the number of those who think that his merits can hardly be over-estimated.v. iii. p. 229.

་

Omitting many subjects on which we would gladly dwell, especially Plutarch, Athenæus, the Emperor Julian, the writers on music, and the Greek romances, we pass on to the last light of Greek poetryNonnus and his followers. M. le Comte de Marcellus, the enthusiastic editor and translator of this poet, insists,' says Doctor Donaldson, on his being called Nonnus, not Nonnos.' This is an evident lapsus calami. The Count insists on his being called Nonnos, not Nonnus. 'It is,' as Doctor Donaldson observes, not a point of much importance.'

Nonnus has always appeared to us the setting sun of Grecian literature. It is, in our opinion, a very brilliant sunset. There is no poet who has been so contradictorily judged as Nonnus. placed him on a par with Homer, Some have ciently warm to express their admiand have found no language suffiration. Others have treated him with the opposite extreme of disparagement. His poem, the Dionysiaca, in forty-eight books, is equal half the Odyssey. It is on a clear, in length to about all the Iliad and systematical plan. He traces the events which preceded the birth of Thebes, from Cadmus to Semele; Bacchus, chiefly in relation to thence his infancy and maturity; his loves and triumphs; his creation

*Ex codice laurac Montis Atho, says Lachmann; which Weise has changed into In montis Atho monasterio quodam ad Lauram dicto; from which we infer that he thought the monastery was dedicated to Saint Laura. There is no such saint in the Roman Church: we do not know what there may be in the Greek but this monastery is dedicated to Saint Athanasius, and was built by another saint of the same name in the tenth century. Aaupa is a narrow way: thence the narrow way that leads to life: thence a monastic cell: thence a cluster of monastic cells: thence a monastery. There are many monasteries in Mount Athos; but this is the Laura, the Laura κατ' ἐξοχὴν, the Λαῦρα ἱερὰ. This Laura is frequently mentioned in Cantacuzenus. See especially 1. 1, c. 31, and the note of Pontanus. See also Rutgersius, Var. Lect., 1. ii. c 11: who gives a list of the Monasteries in Mount Athos. The first of these is Λαῦρα Τοῦ ἁγίου Αθανασίου. No other is called

Λαῦρα.

of the vine, by the metamorphosis of Ampelus; his conquest of India ; and his final ascent to Olympus. All this is interspersed with episodes of great variety, mythical, pastoral, tragical; abounding with sentiments, descriptions, images, comprising every form and colour of poetical beauty; the whole conveyed in verses of singular harmony and elegance, hexameters of which he had reconstructed the measure to meet the exigencies of the changes which had taken place in the structure of the Greek language. This form of verse became the norma of succeeding poets, the principal of whom were Museus and Quintus Smyrnæus. Museus's little poem, the Loves of Hero and Leander, is well described by Doctor Donaldson, The Posthomerica of Quintus Smyrnæus, which carry on the events of the Siege of Troy from the death of Hector to the burning of the city, are also well judged by him, with perhaps one exception. The passages in which Paris, wounded by Philoctetes, is repulsed by his first wife, Enone, whom he had deserted for Helen, and who alone could cure him; his death, her remorse, and her burning herself on his funeral pile, strike us as eminently poetical and pathetic, which last quality Doctor Donaldson denies to them.

From the age of Nonnus to the fall of Constantinople is a period of nearly a thousand years.* Doctor Donaldson comprises it in one chapter, which perhaps is as much as it deserves. It belongs entirely to the Byzantine writers. Their brightest labours are the Anthologies, or col

377

lections of the shorter poems of their
predecessors. But even in their
gradual decline, and it would not be
original writings there is a slow and
an uninstructive task to develop the
causes by which, beginning with
and exposition, this last stage of
some power of thought, narration,
Greek letters gradually sank, like
the last stage of the life of man,
into second childishness and mere
oblivion.'

The passages of this History, to
which we have stated some objec-
tions of detail, are few in comparison
with the great number which de-
respect to its main purpose, that
mand unqualified approbation. With
of enabling the student to under-
stand the chain of connexion in the
several stages of Greek literature,
clearly as this is indicated in Doctor
Donaldson's summary, we think it
is not so clearly developed in the
progress of the work. The system
of classification, originally adopted
by Müller, and necessarily retained
by Doctor Donaldson, rather shows
the progress of each great branch
of literature-epic, elegiac, lyric,
losophical-separately considered in
dramatic, historical, rhetorical, phi-
three great epochs into which the
their several recurrences, within the
work is divided-than the complete
character of the ages, in which they
co-existed and reciprocally influenced
each other. Even the summary,
supply this one deficiency, though,
excellent as it is, does not fully
with the addition of the chronolo-
gical table, it gives great assistance
to the student in supplying it for
himself.

T. L. PEACOCK.

* From the end of the fifth to the middle of the fifteenth centuries.

ERSI

WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT.

En Memoriam.

Athenæum, Saturday, 19th February, 1859.

Homes of American Authors. By R. Griswold. 8vo. New York. 1853. Page 129. The notice contains much information about Mr. Prescott's houses and his habits.

§ Speech of Mr. Bancroft at the New York Historical Society.-New York Times, Thursday, February 3rd, 1859.