THE CLASSICAL MUSEUM, A JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY, AND OF ANCIENT HISTORY AND LITERATURE. VOLUME THE FIRST. LONDON: JOHN W. PARKER, WEST STRAND. M.DCCC.XLIV. PREFACE. FOR some years past it has been the cause of much regret among our own scholars, as well as among those of foreign countries, that there has existed no organ for the discussion and illustration of the knowledge of antiquity. Latterly our scholars have had no public means of communicating with one another, or of becoming acquainted with one another's labours. The great Reviews, for obvious reasons, seldom notice works relating to classical antiquity; and the consequence has been that works of acknowledged merit in this department of literature have rarely received that share of public attention which they deserve, and have sometimes remained unknown to the great body of classical students. The same has been the case, but to a much greater extent, with the productions of continental scholars. Foreign countries have had still fewer opportunities of learning how classical studies were faring with us, and a pretty general belief has arisen on the continent that classical studies here were decaying or nearly extinct. Now although it cannot be denied, that at a recent period of our literary history there was a falling off in classical studies, or perhaps, more correctly speaking, in the production of standard works, yet it is at the same time an indisputable fact, that within the last twelve or fifteen years the study of classical antiquity has been reviving among us, and that its importance in education and in the cultivation of the mind and of taste in general, has been more universally recognised. |