Abab'deh (a fine race frequenting the great Eastern desert between the Nile and the Red Sea), diversified by a case of theft and a sentence of condign punishment (banishment for life), if the authoress had not begged for its remission; afterwards, in the midst of sickness when she was doctor, nurse, and all; the murrain; and the insurrection' that ended so bloodily. The bill of health for Saturday, April the 23rd, is worth preserving :—

6

The

Happily the sickness is going off. I have just heard Suleyman's report as follows:-Hasan Aboo-Ahmad kisses the Emeereh's feet, and the bullets have cleaned his stomach, and he has said the Fat'hal for the lady. The two little girls who had diarrhoea are well. The Christian dyer has vomited his powder, and wants another. mother of the Christian cook who married the priest's sister has got dysentery. The Hareem of Mustafa Aboo-Obeyd has two children with bad eyes. The Bishop had a quarrel, and scolded and fell down, and cannot speak or move; I must go to him. The young deacon's jaundice is better. The slave girl of Khursheed Agha is siek, and Khursheed is sitting at her head, in tears; the women say I must go to her too. Khursheed is a fine young Circassian, and very good to his hareem.' (P. 263.)

Invalids may note that while the climate of Thebes was found, as we have said, healthful in the cooler months, it was, during the summer, distressingly dry, with frequent parching winds, and almost insupportable dust. It is not likely, however, that many would try so formidable an experiment as spending a summer, alone and out of health, five hundred miles from the outpost of European society, Cairo.

But the authoress did not stay all her time at Thebes, where we have lingered with her perhaps too long. Some of her sketches of Cairo and the Cairenes we are much tempted to extract, were it only for the gratification of those of our readers who know that wonderful city well. They read like Lewis's pictures done into words, and, like those marvellous works, make it difficult to realise the squalor of the poor, and the ruinous state of the city. Cairo looks beautiful even in its melancholy decay, and the people picturesque though clad in rags; but, truth to say, the authoress must have seen both under favourable circumstances:

'Our street and our neighbours would divert you. Opposite lives a Christian dyer, who must be a seventh brother of the admirable Barber; he has the same impertinence, loquacity, and love of med dling with everybody's business. I long to see him thrashed, though he is a constant comedy. The Arabs next door, and the Levantines opposite, are quiet enough; but how do they eat all the cucumbers they buy of the man who cries them every morning as "fruit "gathered by sweet girls in the garden with the early dew"?

'As to the beauty of Cairo, that no words can describe: the oldest European towns are tame and regular in comparison; and the people are so pleasant. If you smile at anything that amuses you, you get the kindest, brightest smiles in return; they give hospitality with their faces, and if one brings out a few words, "Máshá-alláh! what "Arabic the Sitt Inkeleezeeyeh speaks!"

'If you have any power over any artist, send him to paint here; no words can describe either the picturesque beauty of Cairo or the splendid forms of the people in Upper Egypt, and, above all, in Nubia. I was in raptures at seeing how superb an animal (man and woman) really is; my donkey-girl at Thebes, dressed like a Greek statue, "Ward esh-Shám" (the rose of Syria) was a feast to the eyes. And here too, what grace and sweetness! and how good is a drink of Nile water out of an amphora held to your lips by a woman as graceful as she is kindly! May it benefit thee!" she says, smiling with her beautiful teeth and eyes.

66

The days of the beauty of Cairo are numbered: the superb mosques are falling to decay, the exquisite lattice windows are rotting away and replaced by European glass and jalousies; only the people and the government remain unchanged.' (Pp. 83–7.)

'There is a quarrel now in the street; how they talk and gesticulate, and everybody puts in a word! A boy has upset a cakeseller's tray. "Nál-abook!" (curse your father!) he claims six piastres damages, and every one gives an opinion, pro or contra. We all look out of the windows. My opposite neighbour, the pretty Armenian woman, leans out (baby sucking all the time), and her diamond head-ornaments and earrings glitter as she laughs like a child. The Christian dyer is also very active in the row, which, like all Arab rows, ends in nothing,-it evaporates in fine theatrical gestures and lots of talk. Curious! in the street they are so noisy; and set the same men down in a coffee-shop, or anywhere, and they are the quietest of mankind. Only one man speaks at a time, the rest listen and never interrupt; twenty men do not make the noise of three Europeans.' (Pp. 102, 103.)

Lady Duff Gordon's popularity with the Copts enabled her to obtain many glimpses of a people who are singularly shy of contact with Europeans, and of whom little is known even by those who are learned in all the wisdom of Egypt. We must refer the curious in such matters to her book. She has also much to say about the relations between the sexes, polygamy, concubinage, and divorce; embracing subjects that would require too long treatment for this article. What she says, coinciding as it does in main points with the opinions of those best able to judge, is well worthy of consideration by any one wishful to form a just estimate of all Moslem nations. Until such an estimate is formed, it is impossible to properly understand the whole system of Oriental life and government.

6

These Letters represent, as in a mirror, her daily thoughts. I regret,' she says, that so many of my letters have been lost, but I can't replace them; I tried, but it felt like committing a forgery.' Here we have the key-note of the book. Nothing she says but she feels it, and says just what is passing at the moment through her mind. The freedom I shall use in this manner of thinking aloud (as somebody calls it) or talking upon paper,' once said a less ingenuous writer, may indeed prove me a fool, but it will prove me one of the best 'sort of fools, the honest ones.' We can imagine the authoress of these letters saying as much of herself, and unlike Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (for we can scarcely accord such a measure of belief to that vivacious lady) meaning it. Doubtless, she has seen the golden side of the Egyptian's shield. Throughout her writings, it is easy to perceive that she is an optimist, and if it be foolish to count all men honest till you find them knaves, she must plead guilty. Notwithstanding, the book may be commended even to the tender mercies of the cynics, who may learn something from its large-hearted charity. It will be very welcome to those who have tasted the water of the Nile, and long to taste it again. And it shows, to a remarkable degree, how effectually genuine sympathy with human beings of whatever race or clime, may obliterate the distinctions of rank, religion, and even intellect.

ART. X. Titi Lucreti Cari de Rerum Natura Libri Sex. With a Translation and Notes. By H. A. J. MUNRO, M.A. 2 vols. 8vo. Cambridge and London: 1864.

ELEV

LEVEN years ago the appearance of an article on Lucretius by Mr. Munro in a classical periodical led us to express a confident hope that the great Latin poet would ere long find an English editor not unworthy to follow in the steps of Lachmann. That hope has at last been fulfilled. In 1860 Mr. Munro gave to the world a new recension of the text of his author, with a critical preface in Latin; and he has now published a revision of that recension, with an English prose translation of the poem at the foot of the page, and a volume of English commentary, consisting of two sets of notes, the one critical, the other explanatory. To say that nothing of the same importance has ever been done for Lucretius in England is unfortunately to say but little. But we shall be greatly

* Edinburgh Review, No. cciii. p. 80.

surprised if it is not welcomed by the scholars of the Continent as an accession of singular value to Lucretian literature. As regards the text, indeed, Mr. Munro, like Dr. Bernays, must rank as a follower of Lachmann. That great man performed so much that subsequent critics, for a long time to come, are likely to be spoken of simply as disciples in his school. But to find an explanatory commentary on Lucretius equal in importance, in relation to its own period, to Mr. Munro's, we must go back exactly three hundred years, to the edition of Lambinus, in 1564. There is simply nothing in the intervening time, either at home or abroad, which will bear to be named along with it. For that class of readers, again, which is interested not so much in the criticism or interpretation of Lucretius as in the Latin language and literature in general, it possesses unusual attractions. No English work within our recollection, of at all a recent date, contains so much of genuine yet not trite learning, so much of ingenious yet sober speculation on questions connected with Latin philology and the mechanism of Latin poetry. Altogether we think we may safely say that it is the most valuable contribution to Latin scholarship made by any Englishman in the present century. To justify our opinion in detail would require an exhibition of particulars far beyond our own means and opportunities, and not likely, we suspect, to be gratefully received by any large number of our readers. We can only afford to venture a few cursory remarks on the several features of Mr. Munro's edition before we proceed to say something of the author whom he has edited. In speaking of Lucretius, however, we shall have occasion not unfrequently to mention his editor; and even when we do not discuss Mr. Munro's views we shall gladly avail ourselves of his information.

When we speak of the critical part of Mr. Munro's commentary as less important than the explanatory part, we by no means intend any disparagement of the former. No conscientious student of Lucretius can afford to dispense with either of them. The critical notes, so far as we are able to judge of them, are marked by the same accuracy, sobriety, and, to sum up many merits in one word, thoroughness, as the rest of the book. The omissions of Lachmann are supplied, his occasional inaccuracies corrected, his opinions reviewed. There is also a most elaborate introduction of twenty-eight closely-printed pages on the formation of the text, much more copious than Lachmann's, yet without being in any way redundant, at the same time that it includes a sketch of the history and a discussion of the principles of Latin orthography. Perhaps the

point on which labour and ingenuity have been least successfully bestowed is the emendation of corrupt passages. Yet this is no more than may be said of Lachmann's own performances. One whose conceptions of the remedial powers of emendatory criticism have been formed on a study of the brilliant restorations which it has effected in the text of the Greek poets will be surprised to find how many of the conjectures of this second Bentley' fail to carry absolute conviction. This inferiority we incline to ascribe not so much to the critic himself as to the subject-matter on which he was engaged. No scholar, so far as we are aware, for the last two centuries at least, has done for any Latin poet what Bentley did for the fragments of Greek poetry, what Porson did for the Greek drama. Bentley himself was far more occupied with Roman authors than with Greek, but his reputation as a restorer of classical texts rests mainly on his epistle to Mill and his emendations of Menander. It is not, as his biographer thinks*, that his knowledge and perception of the latter language were incomparably better than of the former.' No one who reads. his notes to Horace can doubt the completeness of his acquaintance with Latin poetry, or his power of suggesting words not unworthy of his author. Nor is it, we think, wholly or principally that he chose to correct passages which did not need correction. Whether, as in Horace, he substitutes a good word for a good, or, as in Manilius, a good word for a bad, the critical reader equally fails to find the substitution which criticism requires, the substitution of a true word for a false. Where Bentley has failed, no subsequent Latin scholar has succeeded. It would be difficult to name a Greek poet who presents a fairer field for conjectural skill than Catullus, Propertius, and Lucretius himself. There are manuscripts of each enough to stimulate critical ingenuity, not enough to supersede it; and, as might be expected, there are corrupt passages enough in the text of each to make the fortune of any scholar who should be able successfully to restore them. Lachmann has edited all three, and his editions show abundant marks of sagacity and really high ability. Each of the three poets is now made to say a great deal which he probably might have said, in place of a great deal which he never could have said. But conjectures where probability rises into demonstrative certainty-conjectures which, in restoring the words of the author, establish at the same time the truth of the method of conjectural restoration-are comparatively few.

* Monk's Life, 8vo ed., vol. i. p. 158.

Into the