did not die in the year of Salamis; he lived to celebrate that victory and the battle of Platæa, in the year 474,—

'Αρέομαι
πάρ μεν Σαλαμίνος Αθαναίων χάριν
μισθόν, εν Σπάρτα δ' ερέων προ Κιθαιρώνος μάχαν

S ταΐσι Μήδειοι κάμον αγκυλότοξοι, --and died in a good old age, about B.C. 438, eighteen years after the the death of Æschylus. After this it excites our indignation to hear the author depreciate the historical merits of Herodotus and Thucydides, as he does, pp. 162, 183.

Perhaps our author may be stronger in modern history. Let us see.

“ Johannes [Scotus Erigena], especially, seems to have been a wonderful man,the miracle of his age, the friend and counsellor of Charles the Great of France, and of Alfred of England.”—p. xvii. The connexion of Erigena with Alfred, although long believed, has been satisfactorily disproved. There is no doubt that the belief arose from a confusion between John Erigena, and John the Old-Saxon, mentioned by Asser. But who is « Charles the Great of France”? If the Archdeacon means Charlemagne, the expression strikes one as a rather inadequate account of the first Frank Emperor of the West. However, we suppose that this is his meaning. Charlemagne died in 814; Erigena was alive in 872, and can hardly have been his “friend and counsellor.” He was the friend, not of Charlemagne, but of Charles the Bald, as every school-boy can tell who knows the “ difference between a Scot and a sot."

“An Anglican monk named Beda.”-p. 1. A strange way of introducing and describing the Venerable Bede. What is meant by “ Anglican” ? Qu.“ Anglian”?

In the year A.D. 736, all the inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland were, at least nominally, Christian.

The people of Germanic origin owed their conversion in the South of England to a mission sent from Rome by Pope Gregory the Seventh, who imposed the creed of Papal Rome as then held, upon the first converts and their descendants.”—p. 5. Our first impression, upon reading the last sentence, was that the Archdeacon believed that all the native monarchs of England had lived in heathenesse, and the Conqueror himself had been converted by Archbishop Lanfranc. But the previous sentence clearly militates against that supposition. Accordingly we are reduced to the inference that he conceives Pope Gregory the Seventh to have been living in the

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Finally, let us examine the Archdeacon in classical scholarship. A first-class man of Oxford, engaged for nearly forty years in the work of education, will hardly be expected to be grossly deficient in this respect. And yet what will our readers say to the following specimen ?

a

“ In a chorus of his [Æschylus'] 'Choephoræ,' (and young scholars should be reminded that in the earlier stage of the Athenian drama, nothing could be introduced into a chorus which was not familiar to the public mind,) the Coryphæus thus speaks :

O child, you speak of things more excellent and greater than the gold and great prosperity of the Hyperboreans.'

“ The wealth and supposed prosperity of the Hyperboreans must have been proverbial topics, before this allusion could have been made before the Athenian audience."-pp. 159, 160. The parenthetic warning to “ young scholars” is admirable: they must be very young scholars indeed who could tolerate such a translation as the Archdeacon has given. The lines run thus (Cho. 372– 374) :

Ταύτα μεν, ώ παί, κρείσσονα χρυσού,
μεγάλης δε τύχης και υπερβoρέου

μείζονα φωνείς-
“ These things that thou speakest, О maiden, were better than gold,

“ And greater than great and Hyperborean luck." Not a word, please to observe, about the gold or wealth of the Hyperboreans, the existence of which, as the Archdeacon infers from this passage, must have been familiar to an Athenian audience.1

This is a gross blunder, and we might give many instances of loose and unscholarlike translation, from which we forbear, out of compliment to our readers' patience. But we must notice the following passages :-

“A long hymn, which was evidently to be sung as a 'Prosodos' on approaching the holy spot in procession.”-p. 11. Πρόσοδος is not used in this sense: the word is προσόδιον.

“Matter,' a name borrowed from the Greek · Marne,' through the Latin materia.'

This terminology belongs to the Italian school of philosophers.”

-p.

ioo. Does the Archdeacon really suppose that the Italian school of philosophers introduced the word “ materia” straight out of Greek into the Latin language? Why ignore the Latin “mater," which certainly is not derived from the Greek? and why spell the Greek word in other than the usual way?

Many of our readers may think it puerile to notice so small a matter as Greek accents. We know how hard it is to keep a printer in order

in this respect.
Still a good scholar will try to do so.

We could just forgive a man who dispensed with them altogether. Tom Warton, in the last century, published an edition of Theocritus without a single accent. But it is unpardonable to disfigure the pages of a book with such monstrous abortions as Todè ti, which is repeated twice in the same page (137). And then, after every conceivable variety of false accentuation, or absolute omission of the accent, we find the following solitary Erratum :“Page 49, line 5 from bottom, for olos read élos."!!! 2

The Archdeacon does not shine in modern languages. In p. 9 we are told that Hercules is called “ Ercolo” in Italian: it should be “Ercole." And in p. 200 Kirch is said to signify a church in High Dutch : the word is Kirche. But, above all, in the very same place, we learn that the cognate word in "Helvetian and Swedish” is Kilch. What can the Archdeacon mean by “Helvetian”? The Helvetians were a Celtic race, who may possibly have spoken very good Welsh, and whose descendants at the present day certainly speak very bad French. A part of their territory is occupied by Swabians, who may perhaps say Kilch, but who are only Helvetians in the sense in which a Kentish man is a true Briton.

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A word or two about our author's comparative philology, and we have done. And here it will be sufficient to transcribe two or three passages, and leave them, without comment, to the judgment of our readers, requesting them particularly to observe the logic of the last:

“ We also find ' Apis' under the suggestive form of Ap-Is, the son of Isis.”—p.9. “Pwyaw,' to beat. Greek Taiw.' English,' pay.'”-p. 55. “' Frwyth,' 'fruit,''fructus'

the English* ' fruit' was derived immediately from the Cymric, not the Latin word.”—p. 57. "Cant,' a circle

Hence also a round number,' centum.'”—p. 63. “Mâl,' the old word for a mill, corresponding with the Latin malæ,' cheeks, where the molar teeth are set.”—p. 64.

“ The more prevalent name for a star is 'seren,' singular,— sêr,' plural. Star is the root form of the Greek ' a-otep-os,' and of the Latin 'a-str-um,' better seen in the diminutive 'stella. The Cymric tongue dropped the dental, as in many other cases, thus" saiv' for ' stabit.'

From 'ser,' came 'seron' and 'seronydd,' an astronomer

whence the Greeks seem to have formed their 'saronidæ.' We read in a triad

« The three happy saronidæ' of the Island Britain. Idris the Mighty

and so great was their knowledge concerning the stars

that they would foretell whatever men wished to know.' It is worthy of observation that the Arab in the East, as well as the Cymro in the West recognized a great astronoiner by the name · Idris'

although the Arab would have him to be the Patriarch Enoch. The Homeric word · Iòpıs' is applied to a skilful sailor, whose vocation required a knowledge of the stars."-p. 109.

It is a grave moral delinquency, and one which deserves the sharpest censure of the critic, when an author gives the world the

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benefit of his opinions without condescending to examine the best and latest authorities on the subject which he is treating. It is plain that Mr. Archdeacon Williams has not kept pace with his age in philosophy, in philology and in archæology; and yet he has ventured to publish a diatribe on an extremely difficult question, the discussion of which should involve a thorough acquaintance with the three, and with the present state of opinions on them all. For example, he has produced a very long letter, containing very confident expressions of opinion, concerning the original use of the Cromlech. In this he quotes a remark of “Worsæ" [sic] “from Wilson's Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, as accessible to the general reader.” Before the publication of Dr. Wilson's work, a translation of that by M. Worsaae, a quarter the price, and a sixth of the size, of the former, was before the public. The Archdeacon had never taken the trouble to inquire about it. However, he had Dr. Wilson's work before him. Either he had read it, or he had not. If he had read it, he had no right to ignore the views so ably supported in it, in his discussion of the Cromlech question; if he had not read it, he had no right to discuss the Cromlech question at all. We give him the benefit

We give him the benefit of the alternative. And now we hope the Archdeacon of Cardigan will hesitate a second time before he charges those who preceded him " in the study of the Cymraeg,”—meaning, as we infer from p. 45, Dr. John Davies and Dr. Owen Pughe,-with being “neither adequately prepared nor intellectually furnished for the work.” The Archdeacon censures with justice the respective procedures of these two lexicographers; but whatever may have been the case with the latter, the former does not appear to have been at all in the rear of his age. Far less so was Edward Lhuyd, the greatest Celtic philologist before Professor Zeuss, and whom the Archdeacon absolutely ignores. Should the latter venture to accuse him of not having been intellectually furnished” for his task, his manes might safely retort in the words of the Satirist,

Alphabetiral Inder of Conteuts.

VOL. V. NEW SERIES.