ABT. III.-Q. Horatii Flacci Poemata. Textum, ad præstantissimas editiones recognitum, et præcipua lectionis varietate nec non vv. dd. conjecturis instructum, prolegomenis et excursibus, varii argumenti, donavit, notisque perpetuis, patria lingua exaratis, et ad æstheticen, historiam, geographiam, mythologiam, archæologiam, remque botanicam spectantibus, illustravit CAROLUS ANTHON, in Collegio Columbiano, Neo-Eboracensi, Litt. Græc. et Lat. nec non Geog. Antiq. et Archæol. Professor Jaiius. Novi Eboraci. Impensis G. & C. & H. Carvill. MDCCcxxx. 8vo. pp. xcv. & 954.

A CRITICAL edition of a classic author, elaborated in America, by an American, and for American consumption, is a new thing under the sun. The attention of our editors has hitherto been restricted to the preparation of mere school-books. We are glad, that an ascending step has at length been taken, and by a foot so sure and practised as Professor Anthon's. The amount of labour, which has been expended on the work before us, must have been immense; for we know how apt the superficial reader is to underrate the difficulty of performances, which he finds it so easy to skim over or neglect. The slow business of amassing fit materials; the still more tedious process of comparison, selection, and arrangement; the exercise of tact and patience necessary to adjust the whole, without disproportion of the parts; and last of all, the limæ labor, without which a work of philology or criticism is as unfit to see the light as an oration or a poem-all these are burdens, of which it is impossible to estimate the weight, without some snatches of experience. It is unfortunately true, however, that this long and intense application to such subjects, however necessary to the preparation of learned works, often injures them essentially, by occasioning a plethora of matter. Pope somewhere says (in prose) that one of the most indispensable qualifications of a good writer, is "the power of rejecting his own thoughts." No less important in an editor is the corresponding power of rejecting his materials. A man who, by the sweat of his brow, has hoarded up the stuff for a new book, is as reluctant to abandon any of his gains as Harpagon himself. It is sacrificing so much of his intellectual travail, as well as of his handy work. It will commonly be found, therefore, that the bias, in such cases, is to lose as little as possible. What will not stand in one place, is accommodated in another. What the text refuses, the appendix, notes, or prolegomena, are forced to entertain. And if, after all this stuffing, there be yet a remnant, it is well if it does not come forth by

piecemeal, in the pages of periodicals, or in the daily conversation of the editor, either as "gobbets raw" of undigested learning, or in the milder form of a pedantic unction. The Germans are the cleverest book-makers in existence. They have now brought the art as near to perfection as we can hope to see it; yet even their march has been tediously progressive. Their earlier compilations are entirely spoiled by the defect which we have mentioned. Time and practice have taught them wisdom; and we defy the rest of the world to show finer models of this valuable craft than have been produced in the laboratories of Göttingen and Leipzig. Such master-workmen as the younger Rosenmüller, and a score of others whom we might enumerate, appear to have acquired the art of measuring with the eye, the vastest chaos of materials, and of determining, with unerring accuracy, how much shall be rejected altogether, how much boiled down into apothegm, how much sublimated into eloquence, how much hammered into text, how much melted into commentary. With all this beforehand in the mind's eye, they think nothing of the labour. With their habits of abstraction, and their sixteen hours of daily application, they can accomplish any thing. Elsewhere, this art, in its true form, is only nascent. In Germany, it has become a giant.

Those who are at all familiar with our modus operandi, will readily believe, that we have said all this, rather because it came into our head, than because it is particularly apropos. We should be far indeed from intending any special application of terms in any way contemptuous to one whose character and talents place. him far above the rank of a mere book-maker. Still we are afraid, that the "studium acerrimum," to which Professor Anthon modestly pleads guilty in his preface, while it has eminently qualified him for his task, has also led him a few steps into the error we have ventured to condemn. The volume has too much the aspect of a book designed to say every thing that could be said; and in some passages, the solicitude to leave out nothing, has evidently given to the writer's disquisitions, a hurried, desultory, and embarrassed character, detracting largely from their merits. In other cases, he betrays a fondness for generalities, a little ludicrous, and which would have been not a little burdensome, had it been more indulged. In several of the articles, which compose the prolegomena, not content with what was necessary to elucidate his author, he goes back to first principles, and overwhelms us with elaborate discussions of the thing in genere, apart from its application to the subject. The places in which this solicitude to say all that can be said, is especially betrayed, are the article on Metres, which the writer thinks it necessary to commence, by explaining "a few of the

leading principles of metre in general;" page xliii*-and that on the manuscripts of Horace, at the close of which, after giving all necessary information, he deems it not amiss to state some further facts with regard to ancient MSS. generally;" page lxxi. Now we think this amiss. The facts, though interesting and important, are much more at home in their native nest, the Dictionnaire Bibliographique. Here, they are mere cuckoo's eggs. Books of this kind are most agreeable, as well as useful, when the process of amputation and exclusion has been most severe. That nothing is lost by such a method, is most clear; for the same mind that is capable of pruning ably, is also capable of masterly condensation, so that all which might seem to be lost by the curtailment, may be saved by additional compactness of the parts. Every piece of composition is a porous substance, and the facility of diminishing its bulk depends upon the character of the operator's mind.

Another fault, and not the slightest that we have to mention, is some want of taste, or neglect of its suggestions, in the getting up of this edition. And of this opportunity we shall avail ourselves, to give our brethren of Nieuw-Amsterdam a friendly hint. There seems to be a jealous rivalry between New-York and Boston, with respect to school-books. We infer this from the fact, that large editions of some elementary books have been published in both cities, almost simultaneously. In this strife, the Bostonians have, on one important point, an unambiguous advantage. They print better. It has long been admitted, both in England and this country, that even ordinary school-books, of a handsome form, are cheaper, in the end, than those printed upon wrapping paper, in the style of almanacs. Gould's Boston edition of Adams's Latin Grammar, (parvula, nam exemplo est, formica,) and Patterson's New-York edition of the same work, may be safely taken, we presume, as samples of the respective styles; and a single glance, we think, would be sufficient to decide the question of expediency. But mere school-books are not the subject of our story. Here is a work which has, no doubt, been many years in preparation, and which lays claim to a higher character than any former cis-Atlantie publication in the same department. A better opportunity could not have occurred for retrieving the reputation of the New-York press. We are sorry to find that it has been suffered to escape. The finer copies,

We should have viewed these little matters in another light, had we been satisfied that the work before us was intended for a school-book. But coming as it does in such a questionable shape, we are left to conjecture, which conducts us to a different conclusion. We need not say, that the same things which would be highly proper in a class-book, may be absurd in a critical edition, and vice

versa.

it is true, are quite respectable, but something more was wanted. The type, in the first part or volume, is, we suspect, none of the newest, and we are sure none of the finest, having the same plump, embonpoint appearance, so familiar to the readers of old books of Dutch divinity adorned with fleshy cherubim. The latter half appears to have been wrought with other apparatus, and is better. But we are not satisfied, in this case, with mere decency of dress. A little decoration might have been forgiven. We are loath, that the first American attempt, of any note, in this branch of authorship, and one so successful and respectable withal, should come forth in any but the best apparel.

One more criticism, on the score of taste, we must presume to offer, though with fear and trembling at the imminent deadly risk which we incur. For we can hardly escape being branded as inveterate hyper-critics, when we venture to object to the Latin article, with which the volume opens. We do object to it, however, not only because it puts the English articles, which follow, out of countenance, but because it is little fitted to increase the reputation of the writer, or to recommend the book. This circumstance is not at all surprising, nor does it in the least detract from our preconceived opinion of Professor Anthon's scholarship. In classical literature, public sentiment has justly ranked him very high; and in some quarters of that extensive field, he is probably without a rival. But, we fear, that the day has not arrived when an American, however learned as we count learning, can with perfect safety come before the world, with Latin on his lips. We have heard men wonder, that so few, if any, of our ripest scholars, educated here, write Latin with facility and elegance. The reason is a plain one-because they never learned. Such as have tried the experiment, and only such, can fully understand how distinct the ability to read a foreign language is from the ability to write or speak it. The difference, indeed, is nothing more nor less than that between analysis and synthesis. The exercise given to the powers, in the two processes, is totally dissimilar, and the aid which they directly give each other, very inconsiderable. A teacher, after thoroughly indoctrinating his disciple in the rules for translating and grammatically analyzing the best authors, can no more expect him to compose correctly, without further discipline, than a watchmaker can require his apprentice to construct a watch, after learning merely to disjoin its parts adroitly. So long, therefore, as our system of instruction continues as it is, we can only

* What Grecian can help wishing, that Mr. Dean had been supplied with some succedaneum for the Greek type employed in the Prolegomena? Its deformity is aggravated by its contrast with the neatness of the small type in the notes.

expect our youth to do what they have learned to do, that is, to render equivalents in English, for the Greek and Latin which is laid before them. Before they can express their own thoughts well in either, they must learn-we repeat it, they must learn. We have before* protested against this defect in the grammarschools of America-a defect which does not terminate in the mere want of an accomplishment, but hangs as a weight upon our scholarship in more important points. We have scarcely seen or heard a sample of American latinity, exempt from solecisms. In some, of humble pretensions, (such as medical dissertations, &c.) there has been a mere conversion of terms, leaving the English idiom untouched. In others, the Latin has been unexceptionable, and the idiom of the detached parts sound, but the whole taken together has an English air. This, we cannot help thinking, is a just description of the specimen before us. The composition is elaborately and scrupulously correct, but the tout ensemble is not classical. It looks as if each clause had been wrought by itself, and then soldered to its neighbours. There is a want of lubricity in the joints, and of that unity in the sentences, however complicated and involved, which is the surest indication of a native, or a duly practised hand. In Cicero's longest periods, there is an intertwining of the first and last and intermediate members, a system of wheels within wheels, harmonious and regular, though complex, that renders it impossible to sever them mechanically, without destroying their significancy. In English Latin, on the contrary, the style is coupé or staccato, the clauses are too independent of each other, and admit too readily of separation-and this too, in cases where the grammatical and even the idiomatical correctness are above reproach. We would that this were otherwise, and are well persuaded, that a course of instruction, accommodated to the views we have expressed, and designed to exercise the pupil in synthetical, as well as analytic, study, would richly repay the additional labour which might be bestowed upon it. On this point, we cheerfully adopt the language of Professor Anthon: Faxit Deus, ut ad saniora et feliciora consilia quamprimum veniamus!

The work now before us contains above a thousand pages, and consists of three principal parts-Prolegomena-Text-Commentary.

The Prolegomena consist of eleven distinct articles, mostly very brief. The first, on the life of Horace, contains nothing, we believe, which was not before accessible, at least to scholars. The second, on the Tiburtine villa and the Sabine farm, relates to a question in topography, not very interesting, we apprehend,

See A. Q. R., No. XII. Art. III.