sweetness and the splendour of that internal illumination. The Longinus of history is as noble in character as this work is admirable in its precepts. Nevertheless it should not be concealed that his claim to the authorship of this characteristic performance has of late been questioned though not disproved. The remains of his writings however are so extremely scanty that the question thus raised must probably remain for ever in abeyance. A solitary manuscript has preserved to us this immortal fragment, but the profane hand of Time, like Diomede wounding the gods, has been able to impair although not to destroy it. In two or three places the M.S. fails altogether; in three or four others its readings seem to warrant the hazardous attempt at emendation. In one or two isolated instances the author illustrates his own maxim that absolute exemption from faults is not an attribute of the highest genius. As a translator I owe my acknowledgments to the Latin Version by N. Morus, and in an ampler degree to the copious and learned notes of Ruhnken and others, laboriously compiled and revised by Benjamin Weiske, who appears to have died, pen in hand, while engaged in the task of arranging them. In revising my own performance, I have read with pleasure the elegant French translation by Boileau, and have further compared it with an English rendering by a Rev. William Smith, dated 1739. In the illustrative notes which I have with some diffidence, and, I fear, with some presumption, appended, I have thought it proper, with regard to an English translation, to confine myself almost entirely to English literature. From a wider range, both within that circle and without it, to gather illustrations more apt and more noble, may be offered as an exercise to the student, or an amusement to the learned. By this means some may find in the vacant margin the most useful part of the volume; and, however unworthy that volume may be, all who are dissatisfied with the taste of the translator will at least be able to enrich it, if they please, from the choicer resources of their own. THOMAS R. R. STEBBING. Worcester College, Oxford, May 30, 1867. |