John S. C. Abbott, Pastor of the First Congregational Church in Nantucket. Boston: Crocker & Brewster. 8vo. pp. 16. The Claims of Jesus. By Robert Turnbull, Pastor of the Boylston Church, Boston. Boston: Gould, Kendall, & Lincoln. 32mo. pp. 120. The Sermon, before the Bishops, Clergy, and Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, in General Convention, at the Consecration of Reverend Alfred Lee, D. D. to the Episcopate of the Diocese of Delaware, in St. Paul's Chapel, New York, on Tuesday, October 12th, A. D. 1841. By the Right Reverend Charles P. McIlvaine, D. D., Bishop of the Diocese of Ohio. Published by order of the Convention. New York: Swords, Stanford, & Co. 8vo. pp. 24. Themes for the Pulpit; Being a Collection of Nearly Three Thousand Topics, with Texts, Suitable for Public Discources in the Pulpit and Lecture Room. Mostly compiled from the Published Works of Ancient and Modern Divines. By Abraham C. Baldwin. New York: M. W. Dodd. 12mo. pp. 324. The Coming of Christ. A Sermon Delivered before the Evangelical Missionary Society, in the Federal Street Church, Boston, on Sunday Evening, April 25th, 1841. By Reverend A. P. Peabody. Boston: Christian Register Office. 8vo. pp. 23. Scripture and Tradition. A Sermon Preached at the Ordination of the Candidates for the Diaconate, in St. Paul's Chapel, New York, on the Third Sunday after Trinity, June 27th, 1841. By John H. Hopkins, D. D., Bishop of the Diocese of Vermont. Published by Request. New York: Dean & Trevett. 8vo. pp. 24. A Brief Examination of the Proofs by which the Reverend Mr. Boardman attempts to sustain his Charge that "a Large and Learned Body of the Church (of England) have Returned to some of the Worst Errors of Popery," - with a Word or Two, as to his Attempt, without Proof, to Cast the Suspicion of Popery on the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. By the Right Reverend George W. Doane, LL. D., Bishop of New Jersey. Burlington, N. J.: J. S. Powell. 8vo. pp. 230. A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy, and Other Members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. From the Bishops of said Church, assembled in General Convention, in the City of New York, October 6th, 1841. New York: Swords, Stanford, & Co. 8vo. pp. 21. A Dialogue on Restricted Church Communion; Designed as a Complete Manual on the Subject. By Charles H. Pendleton. Boston: Gould, Kendall, & Lincoln. 16mo. pp. 30. Sacramental Guide; or, Hints to the Communicant. By E. Smalley, Pastor of the Union Church, Worcester, Mass. Worcester: Dorr, Howland, & Co. 32mo. pp. 112. Man a Soul; or, The Inward, and the Experimental, Evidences of Christianity. By A. B. Mussey. Boston: William Crosby & Co. 16mo. pp. 159. Two Sermons on the Death of Reverend Ezra Ripley, D. D. One preached at the Funeral, by Rev. Barzillai Frost, of Concord; the other on the Following Sabbath, by Rev. Convers Francis, of Watertown. Boston J. Munroe & Co. 8vo. pp. 44. Two Discourses on the Nature and Province of Natural, Revealed and Experimental Religion. By Orville Dewey, Pastor of the Church of the Messiah, in New York. New York: David Felt & Co. 8vo. pp. 32. Christian Union. A Discourse delivered in Clarkson Hall, Sunday, September 12th, 1841. By Frederick A. Eustis, Philadelphia. 8vo. pp. 16. A Sermon Preached at West Cambridge, August 1st, 1841, the Sabbath after the Death of Philip Augustus Whittemore, oldest son of Philip and Sarah Whittemore. By Rev. David Damon. Published by Request of the Parents and Friends of the Deceased. Boston. 12mo. pp. 16. The Church. A Discourse, delivered in the First Congregational Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, Sunday, May 30th, 1841. By William E. Channing. Printed by Request of the Society. Philadelphia: J. Crissy, Printer. 8vo. pp. 57. VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. Incidents of a Whaling Voyage. To which are added Observations on the Scenery, Manners, and Customs, and Missionary Stations, of the Sandwich and Society Islands, accompanied by numerous Lithographic Prints. By Francis Allyn Olmsted. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 360. Visit to Northern Europe; or Sketches Descriptive, Historical, Political and Moral, of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and the Free Cities of Hamburg and Lubeck, containing Notices of the Manners and Customs, Commerce and Manufactures, Arts and Sciences, Education, Literature, and Religion, of those Countries and Cities. By Robert Baird. With Maps and Numerous Engravings. New York: John S. Taylor & Co. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 347 and 350. The Glory and the Shame of England. By C. Edwards Lester. New York: Harper & Brothers. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 253 and 293, ERRATUM.- Page 90, line 8, for Jay read Say. NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. No. CXV. APRIL, 1842. ART. I.Arundines Cami, sive Musarum Cantabrigiensium Lusus Canori. Collegit atque edidit HENRICUS DRURY, A. M. Cantabrigiæ. 1841. 8vo. pp. 261. THIS is not only one of the handsomest, but one of the most entertaining volumes that we have lately received from England. Among the contributors to its pages are some of the best scholars of the old University of Cambridge. It consists of Greek and Latin translations, chiefly from the English poets, most of which are executed with much classical elegance. Many of them are humorous trifles, but the whole collection shows the exquisite skill possessed by members of the University in composition in the two principal languages of antiquity. The nicety and accuracy of English scholarship have always been famous; its comprehensiveness less so. A very exact verbal knowledge of Greek and Latin, and especially of the laws of metrical composition, has been considered indispensable to the education of an English gentleman. Hence we have seen eminent professional men filling up the intervals of their daily occupations by writing Latin and Greek verses, or translating into those tongues favorite passages from English authors. Illustrious statesmen console themselves under defeat, or speed the hours of retirement from political life, by constructing hexameters and pentameters. At the schools, boys are most laboriously trained in this discipline; prizes and honors are obtained by it at the University; and the high places of the church are brilliant objects in the scholar's perspective, the steps to which are trochees, spondees, and anapæsts. Classical learning is thus preeminently esteemed in England. But it has rarely taken the comprehensive range over all the fields of antiquarian research, for which German scholarship, since the days of Wolf and Heyne, has been distinguished. The philologists of England have been too much inclined to spend their strength on minute points, and the mechanical structure of sentences and verses. Mr. Porson was a striking example, both of the excellences and defects of his learned countrymen. His knowledge was profound, and ever ready to his hand. He had a memory that grasped every thing within its reach, and let nothing go. But he failed to enter as deeply as his German rivals into the poetical spirit of the great works he criticized, and contented himself with acute investigations of words and feet. He had at his command the mechanical principles of metrical structure, but failed to master the higher laws of rhythm. In his famous preface to Hecuba, he laid down a series of metrical rules, which were drawn from a limited number of examples; but it frequently happened, that a dogged line of Eschylus or Sophocles contradicted the canon point-blank. Porson and his school got over such difficulties by altering the line, and not the canon; as if the old poets never wrote without having a complicated system of prosodiacal rules at their fingers' ends, like the candidate hammering out his Sapphics for a college prize. And when Hermann, the greatest philologist and metrician of modern times, in his preface to Hecuba, pointed out, with many compliments to the learned Englishman, the limited and exclusive character of his system, and demonstrated its errors beyond any reasonable cavil or question, the gruff Professor replied with a doggrel version of a Greek Epigram, by an Etonian. The epigram is an imitation of these lines of Phocylides; Καὶ τόδε Φωκυλίδεω Λέριοι κακοί· οὐχ ὁ μὲν, ὃς δ ̓ οὔ· It runs thus ; Νήϊδες ἐστὲ μέτρων, ὦ Τεύτονες· οὐχ ὁ μὲν, ὃς δ ̓ οὔ· Πάντες, πλὴν ̔Ερμάννος· ὁ δ ̓ Ερμάννος σφόδρα Τεύτων. |