bridge, and two Venetian MSS.*) but from an examination of all the editions of Eschylus, with the exception of that which was edited at Leipsic in 1805 by Bothe, a book of no authority. (See our Review, Vol. 52. N. S., page 515. Appendix.) We have the hitherto inedited conjectures also of several learned men, of which Askew boasts in his specimen, except where Stanley had anticipated their use in his revisal; and we have the complete notes of all the editors before Stanley, with a selection from the notes of all after him: a selection so made, that every thing explanatory of Aschylus is retained, generally in the very words of each individual commentator, and nothing is omitted but superfluous and irrelevant matter. Amid this ample collection of notes, Mr. B. has introduced his own; and we bear ready testimony to the good sense and the learning which his comments display. His candour must conciliate every liberal mind.

However he may have discharged his own duty,' he assures his readers, he has not intentionally said any thing of other commentators with acrimony or asperity.' He has endeavoured to keep in view those excellent observations of Markland, (prefixed to his edition of the Supplices of Euripides,) which he quotes; and which we shall translate, as deserving the notice of every scholar, and (we are sorry to add) scarcely ever more worthy of that notice than in our own times :

"To what purpose do we vaunt our erudition, if we retain the spirit of savages? Why this false assumption of an excellent quality, if we in truth have no such virtue? What avails our study of literature, if that which according to its promises ought to render us gentle, good, simple, ingenuous, modest, and well-disposed towards all men, renders us in reality ferocious, malignant, and implacable to all who dare to differ from us even in trifles? I would rather be ignorant of the letters of the alphabet, than be a learned man of such a description since no learning can compensate for this corruption of manners, not even if we embraced every science, and spoke with the tongues of men and angels. Erudition, in fact, is an absurdity, if it be destitute of morals; and since in morals diffidence and urbanity hold a high place, if any man neglects these qualities, and is puffed up with his vain erudition, that man, whoever he may be, has made a preposterous and foolish choice, and is blinded by utter ignorance."

Following this most admirable advice, Mr. Butler has omitted, in the notes of Pauw and Heath, all their gladiatorial exhibitions, and all the abuse which was showered by Pauw on

Mr. Butler's defence of this assertion, in his letter to Mr. Blomfield, (with many other points of which discussion we do not interfere) appears to us satisfactory.

Stanley

Stanley and other learned men; except where that abuse is so closely incorporated with his elucidations of Eschylus, that it could not wholly be expunged. Whatever, in short, he has regarded as useful, Mr. B. has sedulously preserved; even in some instances rather from deference to the learned commentator's general authority, than from his own opinion of the particular utility of the comment in question. From the whole body of commentators and editors, and finally from all passages in philological works which, as scattered illustrations of his author, he could collect into one focus, he has compiled his very useful edition. His quotation from Cicero's Proemium to the second book on Invention appositely concludes his preface; summing up the character of his work as it has been detailed above; and avowing his willingness to correct any error of which he may be convinced for, as Cicero nobly says, " it is not the want of knowlege, but the perseverance in error, which is shameful: because the first failing is to be attributed to the common infirmity of mankind, and the last to the peculiar depravity of each individual."

From this comprehensive outline of Mr. B.'s labours, we are now called to a more minute survey of the parts of his work.

The present volumes contain, first, the text of the Prome theus Vinctus, according to Stanley's edition; of which text we have spoken above. This is followed by the fragments of the two plays which have perished, intitled Prometheus Ignifer, and Prometheus Solutus; as those fragments have been preserved by quotations in various authors. Three collections of Scholia succeed; and then the corrected Latin translation of Stanley.His enlarged and improved commentary on the entire play, and then on the fragments, takes the next place. The explanation of abbreviated marks used in the Variorum Commentaries follows: then the critical division of those Commentaries, intermixed with Mr. B.'s remarks; with the various readings, and with an exposition of the metres used in the choruses. To this compartment is subjoined the philological division of the Variorum Commentaries; also interspersed with the present editor's observations.

This arrangement might, perhaps, have been simplified, and the trouble of referring to different parts of the volume might have been lessened, either by throwing the Scholia and Stanley's

* On this subject we shall defer any observations or extracts, (with one exception,) to the opportunity which will be shortly afforded us by a consideration of Dr. Burney's Tentamen de Metris Æschyli, lately published.

commentary together; (af union, however unusual, at least not indefensible ;) or, if the beauty of the page (to use the language of the printing-office) would not have suffered too much from a plan so unworthy of our present refined taste in typography, by printing Stanley's corrected Latin translation at the bottom of his Greek text. We are at the same time aware that objections might be started against both these expedients; and that the ingenuity of experienced editors might suggest more plausible means of improvement.

As to the nature of Stanley's increased commentary, it may be necessary to say that his additional illustrations of Eschylus are of the same general and miscellaneous kind as the former; displaying his character as a scholar of extensive reading and good taste, but certainly not as a scholar possessing the verbal accuracy and metrical omniscience of a Bentley or a Porson ;and we may indeed add, not even boasting the strophic and an-tistrophic attainments of some of the disciples of the school, founded, though not perhaps endowed, by the last most eminent scholar, in conjunction with some other illustrious philologists in our own times. We decline giving any more than this general account of the additions to Stanley's commentary at present; both because we are desirous of leaving room for some specimens of Mr. Butler's own annotations; and because we shall have farther opportunity in our review of the remaining part of this work, whenever it appears, if we should see occasion for any detail of the kind.

We are not disposed to censure Mr. B. for avoiding the accumulation of citations in his philological commentary. His materials, as he has himself reasonably urged, were so ample as to demand compression; and, as it is obvious that he could not adequately illustrate a single page of Eschylus without an implied reference to his collections, whether in memory or in manuscript, during a long course of various study, he has wisely declined the unnecessary labour of rendering this assurance doubly sure, by multiplying extracts from antient authors. Various readings indeed require to be supported by the autho-· rity of quotations; and this support Mr. B. has in some cases not sufficiently afforded them. Having separated the verbal from the more general criticism, he should have stated (in all instances in which Stanley or any other commentator has not stated) those passages which confirm the old or justify the new reading. It would indeed have been occasionally advisable, for the sake of clearness, even at the expence of a little repetition, to remind the reader of former citations; so that he might have been enabled, with more facility than is furnished to him at present, to form proper notions of the merits or the de

fects

fects of the received text. The comparative survey of various readings, however tedious or minute may be the labour which it entails, is, of all a classical editor's duties, perhaps the most important; because the proper discharge of that duty renders a service which is most useful to every scholar. - With these exceptions, we see little of consequence to which we object in the plan of the work. Consistently with the design of the University, adopted by Mr. Butler, to render the first honour to Stanley in this publication, it was necessary to give him the place which he holds; and as to the separation of the verbal criticism from the more general philological illustration of Mr. Butler and the Variorum, we think that it is natural and useful. Surely it is better to be guided by distinct titles to that division of a commentary in which we are to find any particular explanation, than to pursue a catchword from page to page, till we are led miles from the starting-place in the text, which is the necessary consequence of subjoining the notes to the passages demanding explanation.

In the apparatus to the Supplices, the same arrangement is observed as in the appendix to the Prometheus; and the philological comment on this play concludes the volume.-We proceed now to make some extracts from Mr. Butler's notes; and, with such observations as may arise from that survey, we shall finish our critique.

On that passage in the Prometheus, line 88. in which the suffering hero first breaks his indignant silence, the editor thus remarks;

V. 88. N AIOE AIOHP. Prometheus splendidè jam tandem altum illud, quod præsenti Jovis satellitio servaverat, rumpit silentium; omnemque naturam invocat, ac testatur quam indignis a Jove sit acceptus modis. Sic Eurip. Med. v 57.

μερος μὲ ὑπῆλθε γῇ τε κ ̓ ἐξανῷ

Λέξαι, μολύσῃ δεύρο, Μηδείας τύχας

Quem locum sic vertit Ennius, apud Cic. Tusc. Quæst. III.

Cupido capit miseram nunc me

proloqui

Calo atque terra Medeaï miserias.

Plautus, Merc. Prol. v. 3.

Non ego idem facio, ut alios in comœdiis

Vidi facere amatores, qui aut Nocte, aut Die,

Aut Soli, aut Lunæ, miserias narrant suas.

Quos pol ego credo humanas querimonias

Non tanti facere, quid velint, quid non velint,
Vobis narrabo potius meas nunc miserias.

Parcius excurrendum est in tanta notarum suppellectile, nequeo tamen mihi.

temperare, quin moneam hinc infirmari nobilem illam Marklandi conjectu

ram

ram ad En. VII. 593. ubi pro Multa Deos aurasque pater testatus inanes reponi voluit arasque. S. BUTLER'

The selection of parallel passages, (one of the principal parts, in our opinion, of a commentator's duty,) in the above note,. appears to us judicious and amusing; and the concluding remark on Markland's conjectural emendation of Virgil is a proof that Mr. B. possesses a good memory, or a well-arranged Common-Place-Book..

Referring to the critical comment on the same passage in the Prometheus, (Var, Lec. cum not. Var. et Butleri Critt. *} we find the following just censure of a proposed alteration of Pauw, verse 90.-Eschylus, in language which defies translation, talks of the ποντίων κυμάτων-Ανήριθμον γέλασμα: (marinorum fluctuum crispatio innumerabilis, as Stanley's version renders it,

or

"The many dimpled Ocean's waving swell,"

as we scarcely venture to express it,) and the editor remarks on the word γέλασμα

- Suprascriptum xp in Cod. Guelph. quod est tantùm glossa in terlinearis. Imagines pulcherrimam fadavit Pauw, ex merá conjectura νεροnens ανήριθμόν γ' έλασμα, quod ab ἑλάω deducit ut à γελάω γέλασμα, atque undarum ductus aptè exprimere offirmat. Nobis tamen tùm ob conjectura licentiam, tum ob otiosum ye, tum ob exilitatem imaginis, nec Gracum videtur esse nec poeticum?

Good taste is manifested in this criticism; and, as Mr. B. seems to be displeased with any exilitas imaginis, we wish him a better reward for his Eschylus, hederis et imagine macrâ.

In a critical note to line 213. of the Supplices, occurs the following reproof of the disingenuousness of Schütz?' a reproof which is duly qualified in expression, while the justice of it is clearly substantiated by fact. We think that it is a very creditable specimen of the manner in which the editor discharges the unpleasing duty of pointing out the delinquencies of preceding commentators:

· ΜΕΜΝΗΣΘΑΙ. Stanleii emendationem μνησθεῖσαι veripiendam arbitror. Ita Schutz 2. Ecquis non videt multas Stanleii in curis secundis, jam demum a me editis, et Pearsoni conjecturas, Schutzio in editione secunda receptas esse. Unde igitur nata est illa cum Stanleio et Pearsono in hac una fabula MIRA sed TACITA CONSENSIO? Crediderim eum quadam e schedis Askevianis, ubi notantur ha varietates, ad marginem forte cujusdam editionis adscripta in usum suum convertisse. Cf. Dram. Pers. v. 8. 51.74 182-202. 215. 204 315. 528. 605. 696. 766. 781.

of

* We must here observe that the separate numbers to the pages the different Commentaries create much confusion in references. The work will want ample indices.