edition. Horace is, indeed, the poet of English predilection, and scarcely less in continental favour; for I well remember my foreign professor's exhortation to his pupils, urged in Horace's own words,

.........." Vos exemplaria Flacci Nocturnâ versate manu, versate diurna." (De Arte Poet. 268).

But, in the literary holocaust and wholesale immolations of Hardouin, while a reserve, as we have seen, was made on behalf of the Satires and Epistles of Horace, his Odes, not only the most poetical portion of his works, but a felicitous novelty on their appearance in Rome, were doomed to proscription. This damnatory judgment of the learned visionary was long, however, held in total disregard; nor did any editor, not even the slashing Bentley proceed beyond the elision of an occasional word or line, until the Leyden professor, in the volume just cited, ventured to eject not less than 644 of 3,845 verses, which constitute the collective sum of the Odes. Mr. Peerlkamp, in a prefatory letter to a friend, conspicuous, at once, for elegance of diction, depth of learning, and waywardness of fancy, as remarked by one of his reviewers, states that the poet had been the object of his special devotion from the earliest age, and that he had thus acquired an intuitive and almost unerring faculty of discriminating the genuine and interpolated lines. This, however, was the fruit of tedious study; for, at first, the more he read the more numerous appeared the arising difficulties. "Carmen centies fortasse lectum, in omnes partes versatum et excussum fuit;"

until, at length, he determined on severing the knot which he could not disentangle, by boldly eliminating whatever was not plain to his understanding or opposite to his taste. This certainly is an accommodating expedient-an easy mode of solution, too frequently, we must regret, resorted to on higher grounds; for we daily witness its abuse in sacred criticism.

In classical literature, however, not only, we may allow, from the character and object of the pursuit, is a less rigid canon of criticism, or a wider sphere of conjecture, authorizable, but we have far less aid from manuscripts than we possess for defining the sacred text. Except, perhaps, the calcined fragments of Herculaneum, or, possibly, the lately discovered palimpsests of Italy, there is no extant manuscript, not even the Vatican, Medicean, or Palatine Virgils, noticed in Heyne's edition of that poet,† that is not posterior, by centuries, to the author's; and even the contemporary copies, as we are assured by Cicero, were deplorably incorrect. Commissioned by his brother Quintus to form a library for him, Cicero promises his best exertions, but adds "De Latinis vero libris quò me vestam nescio, ita mendose et scribuntur et veneunt." (Ad Quintum Fratrem, Epp. 4 et 5, lib. iii.) That the present classical texts should, therefore, be occasionally corrupt, so as to warrant the censure of Markland, (Epist. Critic.), "si isti auctores reviviscerent, in multis sua scripta non agnoscerent," can be no matter of surprise; and it is only marvellous, that so much has been effected for

Hanc, si mobilium turba Quiritium
Certat tergeminis tollere honoribus:
Illum, si proprio condidit horreo,
Quidquid de Lybicis verritur areis."

Now, the critic's alleged motive for repudiating this last distich is, that the verb verritur is too unpoetical for the delicate ear, and too vulgar for the courtly habits of his author; and this, I imagine, is a sufficient specimen of Mr. Peerlkamp's fastidious taste and reasoning powers. From the second ode he banishes twenty-four lines; and several others are condemned altogether-such as the whole of

"

Quid bellicosus Cantaber," (lib. ii. Ode 11.)-" Jam pauca aratro jugera," (lib. ii. 15.)-" Herculis ritu," (iii. 14.) and "Æli vetusto nobilis," (iii. 17.) with many more, the charm and admiration of each succeeding age; which we are now called upon, like the reputed parents of suppositious and longcherished offspring, to discard as adulterine. Vain, indeed, would thus become Horace's fond anticipation, "Exegi monumentum ære perennius," if that monument is subjected to the capricious mutilations of every editor.

The learned Neerlander, to whose countrymen, generally, the ancient authors are so much indebted, has not applied his incisive criticism to those lines of impurity which too frequently offend the eye in Horace, and which,

as in the Editiones Expurgate of the Jesuits, the instructor of youth might well have suppressed. He, no doubt, felt that it would be unseemly to impute such compositions to the cenobites, whom he and Hardouin are so anxious to vindicate, at the cost indeed of their literary honesty, from the charge of ignorance and laziness so long urged against them.

Like the valued editions of Jani, (1778,) and of Mitscherlich, (1800,) that of Mr. Peerlkamp is confined to the lyrics; but, should he extend his critical cares to the satires and epistles, he will do well to bear in recollection the advice of one, hardly less cognizant of the moral than the physical man, “Τὰ κρίνομένα ἀρτίως μὴ κινεέιν,” (Hippocratis Aphoris. 11.) An edition of a still later date: "Q. Horatius Flaccus, &c. recensuit Jah. Casp. Orellius," (Zürich, 1837, 8vo.) has been received with considerable favour on the continent; but the first volume only has appeared, and is described by M. De Xivrey, the reviewer of Peerlkamp, as a discreet and judicious publication, though inferior, perhaps, in erudition and ingenuity, to its Dutch predecessor. M. Struve, of Strasburg, has also, in a recent pamphlet, ably discussed the suspicious lines of Horace, and reduces to the limited number of six the probably

obtrusive.

Trespassing a little further on your indulgence, I shall notice a paradox, variant in character from the preceding, but not less in defiant opposition to universal feeling, and still more interesting from the object it contemplates. Perhaps the annals of time do not offer a more harmonious ex

Lucan. i. 331.

pression of accord than in assigning the highest attributes of genius to the late Emperor of the French; and if a predominant quality could, in the estimate of his faculties, be named, it doubtless was his military superiority. "Æquis, iniquisque persuasum erat, tantum bello virum neminem usquam eâ tempestate esse," is the language of Livy (lib. v. 45) in respect to Camillus, and not less applicable to Napoleon. Yet a recent author, and he too a soldier, rebukes the world for entertaining so erroneous an opinion, and reduces to the humblest standard the mightiest spirit of modern times, "la volonté la plus énergique des temps modernes," as emphatically distinguished by Madame de Stael. In his Life of Wallenstein, page 273, Lieut.-Colonel Mitchel thus writes:

"A ruthless conscription placed hundreds of thousands of brave and intelligent men at Napoleon's command, and the victories which he purchased with their blood dazzled the world, who, in their ready admiration of imperial sway, willingly mistook the meanness of his character, and the insignificance of his talents." Again, at page 340, he adds, -" And if posterity will judge of Napoleon by the histories yet written of him and his time, they will believe this weak and vain toy of fortune to have been a man of the highest genius."

Without appealing to the unanimous suffrage of Europe, in reproof of this solitary and exceptional depreciation of Napoleon's capacity, the gallant writer's own countryman should have taught him better. Sir Walter Scott's epigraph from Lucan ranks his hero on a parallel with Cæsar; nor does his portraiture by Colonel Napier, or Mr. Alison, place him in a lower scale; and these gentlemen are, I apprehend, quite as competent judges of intellectual pre-eminence, in all its appliances, as Colonel Mitchel. I am, at the same time, fully aware, that the exploits of great captains, however they may fill the trumpet of Fame, or influence the fate of nations, are not generally classed in the first line of genius. Euripides said of old (Fragm. agm. in Palamede) : “ Στρατηλάται δ ̓ ἂν μυρίοι γενοίμεθα. Σοφός δ ̓ ἂν εἰς τίς, ἢ δὔ, ἐν μακρῷ χρόνῳ,”

and Barnes, in his commentary on the sententious poet's observation, refers to the corroborative sentiments of Montaigne (liv. ii. ch. 36), and Sir W. Temple (essay iii). The former gives to Homer the foremost rank among men; and the latter remarks, "After all that has been said of conquerors or conquests, this must be confessed to hold but the second rank in the pretensions to heroic virtue." Dr. Channing, in his Essays, Châteaubriand in his Memoirs, and many other writers, hold similar language, and pointedly note how few there are who, to military talents of the highest order, joined any other eminence of mind; but, in history, we should look in vain, with the single exception of Cæsar, for that mighty grasp which could seize and apply, in expansive comprehension, or minute detail, every branch of administration and every element of human rule. A volume has just appeared at Paris-" Opinions, Jugemens, &c. sur Napoleon," very impartially im collected by M. Damas Hinard, which, after recapitulating his marvellous information on all the departments of state, adds, "Les vieux jurisconsultes, dans les discussions sur le Code Civil (the most perfect of existing codes, as acknowledged by Lord Brougham), ne furent pas peu surpris, lorsqu'ils virent le grand politique, et l'heureux guerrier, donner son avis motivé ...sur le bail à rente et les formes des actes;" and this derives ample confirmation from the publications of Thibeaudeau, and Pelet de la Lozère, on the deliberations of the Council of State. An application to detail, so likely to narrow an inferior mind, accumulated for his the materials of thought and action, as the microscope, in unfolding to our view the minutest particles of the objects suhmitted to its power, enlarges our general comprehension of Nature."Connaître en gros équivaut presque à ne rien connaître," is the observation of a great naturalist, M. Geoffroi de Saint-Hilaire, the successor of Cuvier as Secretary to the Academy of Sciences, in his work, "Sur la Lactation des Cétacées." It is, in fact, the inductive principle of Bacon which forbids generalisation, or hypothesis, except on ascertained particulars. Cæsar, too, could descend to subordi

that of Louis XIV. "L'Etat, c'est moi;" but Napoleon was not less energetic in limiting the source of government to his individual person, and identifying himself with the State, of which he, too, assumed to be the type, the spirit, and the concentration. In the Mémorial de Sainte Héléne, (vol. i. part 2, page 274, Lond. 1823,) Las Cases states, "Il (l'Empereur) disoit qu'il eût pu, à lui seul, être considéré comme la véritable constitution de l'Empire." And again (p. 345), when assured by an English colonel (now Sir W. S. Keating, as I learned from that officer), of the unimpaired attachment of the inhabitants of the Isle of France, he observed, "Cela prouve que les habitans de l'Isle de France sont demeurés Français: je suis la patrie.... ils l'aiment, et on l'a blessée en moi."

In pursuing this very imperfect sketch of so pregnant a subject, one so susceptible of a larger scale and deeper inquiry, I could not fail to reflect how often the averments of his torians, the recital of travellers, the inventions of industry and speculations of philosophers, have been branded as mendacious, derided as visionary, or spurned as illusive, of which time has evinced the truth, and experience testified the utility. Herodotus, though defended, rather strangely indeed, by H. Estienne (Apologie d'Hérodote,

1566, 8vo.), was long reputed the father of fable; and the wonders of Archimedes, until verified by Buffon, pronounced impracticable. Without stopping to examine how far Friar Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Copernicus, Kepler, or Galileo, with many others, lay under similar impeachments or worse, or to estimate the amount of truth or paradox in the theories of Mandeville, Malthus, and McCulloch, we may say, that nearly all the conquests of art and improvements of science that have signalised modern times, have had to contend against distrust or ridicule. But too wide a field of descant would here open for us; and I shall, therefore, conclude with one corroborative and pointed instance :-In a letter dated 29th Aug. 1748, to Colonel, afterwards Marshal Conway, from Horace Walpole, this shrewd observer of man, after some humorous anticipations of future discoveries, adds, "I have seen a little book of a Marquis of Worcester, which he calls a Century of Inventions, where he has set down a hundred machines to do impossibilities with:" and yet this little book of the Marquis (the renowned Glamorgan of Irish history), exhibits the germ, or, at least, a traceable adumbration of the most important of modern discoveries-the steam-engine!