For this, my Lord, I am, as I have reason to be, especially thankful. A prejudice of which in itself I complain not, but still at this day, and in its operation, a prejudice in our Universities, is so strongly in favour of Latin Notes, as almost to preclude strictly English Editors from claiming kindred with those Fathers of our British School of Critics and Philologists, of whom I certainly call myself a humble follower, and by whom (beginning with your Lordship, as one that ranks not least among them) I could wish above all things to have such claim allowed. Now, my Lord, although, in opposing myself to the full shock of this feeling, I cannot perhaps expect much sympathy from your Lordship, or from those who with your Lordship have contributed to the formation of that classical taste and spirit, of which it is but the harmless and allowable effervescence-yet thus much your Lordship's well-known candour will believe (and this, once for all, is my answer to objectors), that my Notes, such as they are, are not, as has been hastily assumed, lengthy, because in English, but contrariwise in English, because from the very plan and purpose of my undertaking they must of necessity be lengthy.

In projecting a new edition of the Orestean Trilogy -"certainly one of the sublimest poems that ever Man's imagination soared to, and probably the ripest and most finished of all the productions of Eschylus" " -my design was not merely from MSS. and from Marginal Readings to collect the disjecti membra poëtæ, and, if possible, put them together with nearer approxima

So Schlegel, on the Dramatic Art and Literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans, Lect. iv. p. 354. Theatre of the Greeks, ed. 4.

tion than had yet been made to their original strength and symmetry; nor was it any part of my plan, either to attempt a blank-verse translation on which any portion of the spirit of Eschylus should be expected to descend, or so to handle his hallowed remains that, like some whose plastic touch has proclaimed their own exact perception of "the art unteachable, untaught," I might all but divide men's admiration between his editor and himself.

No! my main object-thus far common to me with the Author of a contemporary publication,' but pursued (as may readily be seen) by a very different track

-was to contribute what I could to a more accurate knowledge, not of Eschylus nor of the Greek Dramatists only, but of the language in which they wrote. With this view, I deemed it expedient to try to divest my Notes of that severe, scholastic dress by which so many are scared, who aspire not, as they say, to be critics or philologers, and so very gladly escape from an effort which they are indisposed to make, by pleading an impossibility which no one, it must be owned, can venture to dispute! Nay, my Lord, this is not all. That pithy, Porsonian style of annotation which Elmsley found occasion to abandon, preferring (as I have done) to write a running Commentary-or, in his own words, "commentarios quos vocant perpetuos"-and claiming for himself that license which I too have used -"ut occasione dicendi a poëtæ verbis sumta, alia vel ejus vel aliorum loca emendare aut explicare conarer, regulas grammaticas novas proponerem aut antiquas confirmarem, quicquid vellem denique dicerem, quod

1 The New Cratylus, or Contributions towards a more accurate knowledge of the Greek Language, by J. W. Donaldson, M.A., Fellow of Trin. Coll. Camb.

A

ad hanc artem pertineret, neque nimis longe a proposito abesset"—is it too much, I ask, to assert of Porson's editing, that, justly dear as it is to Scholars, it does nothing for the great mass of those who are troubled rather about the construction and interpretation, than about the right reading and right modulation of the text? And as regards the élite of our Universities, men who are not afraid to think and investigate for themselves, was no further analysis of Greek words and phrases to be attempted, than might be obtained from muttering those mystic terms-Abstractum pro concreto, Antiptosis, Catachresis, Pleonasmus and Ellipsis, Schema Colophonium and Sicelicum-which, pavävta ovveTOTOI no doubt, are so many ῥήμαθ ̓ ἱπποβάμονα to the unpractised eye and ear; and which too often, it is to be feared, have been made stalking-horses indeed, to mask a precipitate retreat at once from explanation and enquiry?

Once more then, my Lord, it seemed expedient, if possible, to invite a nearer and more familiar approach to what-with all due deference to Bos, and Hoogeveen, and Viger-a more frequent recurrence to first principles might prove to be less unattainable, and certainly less anomalous when attained, than (if it must be said) the very multiplication of pro re nata rules and explanations has conspired with our own infirmity to make the science of Greek appear in the eyes of our general students. And a convenient point to select for this purpose appeared to be that earlier stage of the Middle Attic, wherein, though not yet arrived at the full vigour of its manhood, as displayed in its after years of Poetry

Preface to Medea, published A.D. 1818.

and Philosophy, of History, and of Oratory, the Greek Language had so far developed itself, as well-nigh to have out-grown every peculiar feature that had marked its Epic infancy. Eschylus (as we now fondly see him in his book) stands, as it were, between the living and the dead portions of his country's literature, and in a certain sense may be said to lay his hand upon them both—on the one side, preserving alive both words and things which else were waxing old and ready to vanish away; on the other, himself not proof against the contagion of that decay, on the extreme verge of which, it may well be thought a special providence, that he yet survives. Here then, at the feet of Eschylus, might I sit and gather wisdom for those who, with me, would seek it less from Grammarians and Etymologists, than from the first Fathers of Epic and Attic Poetry-not unmindful, indeed, of the more immediate province of an editor of Greek Plays, yet looking to him throughout as a Teacher rather of Greek, than of mere Dramatic fable, and never rejoicing more in my task, than if incidentally I might throw light upon the Greek of the New Testament, or point out any true witness that Reason has borne to Revelation and to God. For thus, not to the Mosaic only, but to the Moral Law, written upon the hearts of Heathens, might we apply the Apostle's expressive metaphor, and say that in every age it has been our School-master (aidaywyós) unto Truth.

This, my Lord, was my design. How it has been fulfilled, time and the test of public opinion will determine most truly. Of this only I am sure, that, whereinsoever I have failed, the fault has not been because, as a writer in the Quarterly Review will have it,

"English is as unfit for Notes, as Latin is for Lexicography." With one or other, indeed, of these assumptions, thus bound to stand or fall together, I might do battle here; and with your Lordship to look on, prepared (or I mistake the case of Latin Lexicographers) to take up the quarrel, if need should so require, the smart surcoat of my opponent must conceal a knight of

1 Quarterly Review, No. cxxviii. Art. v. p. 378.-The writer, whoever he may be, is an ardent admirer of Æschylus, and among Grecians, ołoɩ vûv ßpotoí ẻσμev— of Klausen; and with neither of these predilections is the present Editor at all inclined to quarrel. He bears a little too hardly, however, upon his own countrymen, and ought in common justice to have remembered, that to invite especial attention to what may be, as he says (p. 375), "ridiculous passages" in the Notes, would be no less likely to " give an utterly false impression of the value" of the English than of the German edition which, ostensibly, he was reviewing.

He has an indignant horror, moreover, of vulgar, by which it is hoped (as when he speaks of "the vulgar belief in ghosts") he means only common language-the language of ordinary life, in short-being supposed ever to supply an equivalent, much less a literal and exact substitute, for the original word or idiom employed by a Tragic Poet! Yet Horace (de Arte Poëtica, vv. 112-18.) declares, much must needs depend upon who is speaking; and, despite of the great Comedian's utmost efforts to dethrone him, the Poet who long sat nearest to the hearts of the "no vulgar Democracy" of Athens, was not he who taught them magnumque loqui, nitique cothurno, but he who striking more home (and so τραγικώτατος τῶν ποιητῶν) was distinguished from his High-Tragic predecessors on the stage, in that (as it has been said) he made men as they are. See further on vv. 165. 287. of this Play.

Nevertheless, the Editor would not be thought to defend a certain burlesque translation of Ag. 546, εὖτε πόντος ἐν μεσημβριναῖς κοίταις ἀκύμων νηνέμοις εὕδοι πεσών, which-unwittingly, he believes-has been put forth by authority as actually his translation, and which (if it be, as from the Reviewer's twice calling attention to it it might seem to be, the weakest and most vulnerable point in the book) it is fortunate that a few words of explanation will suffice to set right.

The Editor must plead guilty to having in this instance "taken care only of the word" EUTE- -on which the Reviewer ovde ypû—and to have left the inimitable sentence that follows to "take care of itself." Further than this, he admits that with the undignified expression of turning or tumbling into bed he had nothing whatever to do; nay, he cannot tell how it came into his head, unless indeed he was thinking of Soph. (Ed. Τ. 1262, ἔκλινε κοῖλα κλῇθρα, κἀμπίπτει στέγῃ, or of that beautiful chorus in the Hecuba where it is said ἐπιδέμνιος ὡς πέσοιμ' ἐς εὐνάν (v. 927)—which surely was ovde πрòs Alσxúλov. The translation (or paraphrase, rather, of what almost defies translation) which he would now first submit, and which may perhaps provide both for the poetry, and for the matter-of-fact eûre which must not be overlooked, is as when the Sea might be slumbering, fallen motionless, in the still lap of Noon; or, with nearer approach to μeonμßpival kolтaι (mid-day lying-down time; see note on this Play, v. 279.), in the drowsy stillness of Noon.