Now this makes a very pleasant measure, according to our British ear; and what is more curious, will sing to many a Scotch air with eight quavers in the bar most aptly, for every line in fact consists of two such bars, thus ене And it is impossibe for one who considers how much of the ancient versification has passed into the modern (as the political verses, the ecclesiastical chants, and much of the Romaic poetry (28), sufficiently prove), to overlook the striking similarity between the cadence of this Horatian verse, pronounced with these five spoken accents, and that of the great modern Epopæist, who sung pious arms and the captain: Che il gran sepolcro liberò di Christo." "the This, indeed, is not the division which our metrical books teach us to make of the Sapphic stanza: they tell us that it is composed of a Trochee, a Spondee, a Dactyl, and two Trochees, thus Jam saltis terris nivis | atque dira. And if it be meant by this division, that the Sapphic verse is essentially Trochaic, (which the two bars of Trochaic Dipods in its construction seem to indicate,) and was sung by the ancients to triple, not to common time, thus 6 8 Then to this, as a matter of rhythmical theory, I have no objections; but I doubt much in the first place whether the Prosodians, who hand us down these divisions of the verses, knew anything at all of the rhythm to which the odes were actually set by the ¿vůμowotós; and in the next place, practically for the purposes of modern reading and recitation, this division is of no use, as it forces us to put an accent on the final syllable of two words in 28 See an interesting little tract by Thiersch, Ueber die neugriechische Poesie besonders über ihr rhythmisches und dichterisches Verhältniss zur altgriechischen. München. 1828. every verse, that, according to the division I propose, are allowed to retain their proper accent, while the quantity is not violated. It was not my purpose, however, in the present paper to make any inquiry into the proper metrical divisions that belong to any particular stanzas of ancient poetry. This, so far as it admits of being settled, would require a separate dissertation: the only matter I insist on at present is, read the verses according to the spoken accent and the full metrical quantity both; and from these authentic elements let the practical ear work out a rhythm to please itself. Some kind of rhythm there certainly lies there, or the ancient ear-drums were strangely cracked. In conclusion, I hope I may be pardoned for insisting strongly on the great importance of paying a strict and consistent regard to accent and quantity, but especially fo quantity in the practical teaching of the learned languages. It is a gross and most pernicious mistake in many of our grammars to remit these matters to the end of the book, or perhaps to a separate treatise altogether. It is a mistake which our learned brothers the Germans, with that grand consistency and sound scholarship which characterises them, are everywhere beginning to correct". The details indeed of prosody and metres, their philosophical principles, and historical basis, can only be treated of in a separate work, and cannot be properly understood till after the student has made considerable progress. But the main points he ought to be made familiar with from the very first lesson; he ought not to be allowed to open his mouth without learning, in the way of practice, either a rule of prosody or an exception to a rule. It is in this way that little boys and girls learn the prosody of our own most capricious and irregular tongue. Languages are learned by imitation. The avenue through which sounds come to the tongue is the ear. It is the business of a master of languages to pronounce every word properly as it occurs, and not allowing a vicious pronunciation to grow up in the first place, set the child down in the second place preposterously to commit to memory a set of barbarous rules, commanding his memory habitually to give his tongue and his ear the lie. There is no more frequent blunder in the teaching of languages than leaving every thing to abstract rules and to the understanding. Living practice and the living ear are the proper organs and instru 29 See particularly Lateinische Schul-grammatik. Von W. H. Blume. Potsdam. 1839. ments of language in dead tongues no less than in the living. It is in vain to expect that by the mere repeating of— "As produc: ternæ pluralem corripe casum," peeping through a Prosody, or fingering a Gradus, we expect sympathetically to understand the movement of an Horatian stanza or a Pindaric strophe. We must recite them sonorously and hear them recited. We must also know something of the principles of music. Instead of committing jaw-breaking rules to memory, and doggrel Latin to paper, in such excess as some of us do, we should have a public Mainzer in every great school and university, and teach our learned youth to sing the Psalms of David and the Odes of Pindar scientifically, one hour at least every day. Without a master of English elocution and of English music at his right-hand, the classical teacher will ever be in danger of pedantry; and Accent, Quantity, and Metres, while they may continue to be learnedly talked of, will neither be vitally experienced nor philosophically understood. JOHN S. BLACKIE. XXVIII. D. IUNII IUVENALIS SATIRE cum Commentariis CAROLI FRID. HEINRICHII. Accedunt Scholia Vetera eiusdem Heinrichii et Ludovici Schopeni Annotationibus criticis instructa. 2 Vols. 8vo. Bonn. 1839. THE Latin preface to this edition, which is by the editor's son, Charles Berthold Heinrich, informs us that Heinrich commenced his labours on Juvenal in the year 1804, when he was invited from Breslau to Kiel, and after leaving Kiel he continued them at the university of Bonn. His Commentaries on the Satires and the ancient Scholia were written in the form in which they now appear, in 1811 and the three following years. He intended to publish a complete edition of Juvenal, for which he had made great preparation, but he died before he could accomplish it, and his son has performed the pious office of publishing what his father left. He states, that there is evidence that his father would not have published the commentary exactly in its present form, which from internal indications seems very likely; and that he would have written it in Latin, instead of German, in which language it now is. Heinrich, according to the preface, was the first who made any use of certain MSS. for the establishment of the text. These MSS. are seven. Six of these are Copenhagen MSS., which were collated for Heinrich by A. G. Cramer, a jurisconsult of Kiel; but he derived more use from a MS. belonging to the library of the school of Husum, which is also accompanied by glosses of a better character than usual. The editor however has printed the text from Ruperti's edition, from which he has only deviated in cases where his father had approved of a different punctuation, or a different orthography, or when his father or Ruperti had pointed out some different reading as the true one. The first volume of this edition contains the text of the Satires, with brief Latin summaries prefixed, and the Scholia Vetera in Juvenalem, which are followed by the critical notes of Heinrich and Schopen on the Scholia. These scholia consist of those which Pithou originally published, and of additional scholia, which are marked with an asterisk. These additional scholia were taken by Cramer from a MS. of St. Gallen, which was subsequently examined by J. C. Orelli (In D. Junii Juvenalis Satira veteres Commentarii vetusti. Post P. Pithoei curas auxit virorum doctorum suisque notis instruxit, A. G. Cramer, Hamburg, 1832; Scholiasta Juvenalis Suppletus et emendatus e Cod. Sangallensi, a J. C. Orellio, Zürich, 1838). While this edition was passing through the press, Schopen supplied the editor with a great number of corrections for these scholia, and we thus have them in a better shape than they ever yet appeared. The second volume contains the author's brief introduction on Satire, and a short Essay on Juvenal: the rest of the volume is occupied with the Commentary. That Juvenal is a valuable writer for aiding us in forming an estimate of the Roman character of his period, cannot be disputed; whatever difference of opinion there may be about him in other respects. But he is a very difficult writer, and those who are not sufficiently aware of this fact, and of what yet remains to be done to illustrate him, may be convinced by turning to Heinrich's Commentary. Heinrich has often succeeded in explaining what previous commentators have misunderstood, and if we do not always acquiesce in his conclusions, we must admit that he had well studied his author, and was a sound scholar. It is not possible in a limited space to do more than to select a few instances from his Com mentary by way of sample, and as one satire is as good as another for this purpose, we shall begin with the first. Quum pars Niliaca plebis, quum verna Canopi Sat. 1. 26. Ruperti gives the explanation of Britannicus and others of the words "Ventilet æstivum," which is this: 'he takes from his fingers his golden rings, the insignia of Equestrian rank, and tosses them up, and thus as it were cools them.' The commentary of Heinrich on this absurd explanation is pithy enough “lächerlich" (ridiculous); and he proceeds to give the right explanation, as to which indeed there is no difficulty: he waves his hands backwards and forwards, apparently on account of the heat, but in fact to shew his fine rings,' an explanation which Ruperti proposes as the true one, though with some doubt. One might collect from Heinrich's note' that Ruperti had adopted the ridiculous explanation, which he probably did in the first edition: we have only consulted the second. It is singular that the expression "Tyrias humero revocante lacernas" should have caused so much difficulty. Ruperti after giving various explanations, which it is unnecessary to mention, adopts that of Heinecke: 'the effeminate shoulder, now that warm weather is coming on, recalls (revocat), that is, resumes its summer vests.' Heinrich considers this an ingenious explanation, and says that it agrees with the usage of the language, but he doubts if it will accord with the grammar, that is, with the present tense "revocante." We should have thought better of his judgement in this instance if he had simply said "lächerlich.” Heinrich gives the true interpretation, though with less simplicity than he might have done, and with more labouring at the result than is necessary. Juvenal simply means to represent the upstart as wearing a cloak of Tyrian purple which floated in the wind as he walked, and conformably to a mode of expression which is common enough in his Satires, he represents the shoulder as pulling or drawing back the cloak, which is floating loose in the wind as the wearer walks. 1 Heinrich must have used the first edition of Ruperti's Commentary, Leipzig, 1802. Ruperti in his second edition, Leipzig, 1819-20, availed himself of many of Heinrich's remarks; which were published while Heinrich was at Kiel in 1806, 1810, 1811, as hereafter observed. |