The hardness of porphyry makes it very difficult to 'work; it requires more than a year to cut the figure out of the block, and upwards of another year to fhape it. The artift ftrikes fire at every ftroke, and is obliged to wear fpectacles to preferve his eyes. Breccia. Breccia is another Egyptian ftone, the true etymology of which (not understood by the Crufca or Baldinucci) I take to be from the German word brechen, to break, because it is compofed of the broken bits of other ftones. An attentive obferver of nature would be much delighted with the mixture of the colours; the principal of them is a fine green, far fuperior to any ever produced by the painter or dyer. Unluckily there is only the trunk of one ftatue remaining, which, with other leffer works of the fame ftone, is carefully preserved by Cardinal Albani. Marble. The Egyptians had certainly marble quarries. There is only one little figure made of the plafm of emerald. The most confiderable monuments in bronze Bronze. are the famous Ifac table, a facrifical vafe, called Situla by the ancient writers, the Ifis with a young Orus fitting on her knees, defcribed by Count Caylus, and feveral leffer figures at Herculaneum, and in the Hamilton Collection. There is a bronze bafe pedeftal at Herculaneum, on the principal front of which is a long Egyptian boat made of bulrushes, in the midst of which is a large bird; at one end is a figure fitting, and at the other an anubis, with the head of a dog, steering; at the fides are feveral women with wings, like the figures on the medals of Malta, or thofe of the famous Ifiac Table. Mr. Jablonski conjectures this Ifiac Table to have been a calendar of the Egyptian feftivals adapted to the Roman year, but whatever elfe it might be, it was certainly a monument in honour of Ifis, who is the prin'cipal figure. * The immortal Count Caylus has anticipated. Painting. all that was to be faid of the manner in which 6 *Heyne, in his eloge of Winckelman, tells us, that a genius of the fame kind had arifen in France at the fame time. This was Count Caylus, the Egyptians painted their mummies. We know from him that they made use of water-colours. There were fix of thefe, white, black, blue, red, yellow, and green. The blue and red, which are thofe that are most common, are very ill mixed. The white, made of a kind of ordinary cerufs, is the ground of the cloth of the muminy, and makes what our painters call the impreffion, on which they lay their colours. This however is but a very inferior fort of painting, when compared with what Norden tells us he faw in Upper Egypt: imagine palaces with columns thirtytwo French feet in circumference, and all covered within and without with paintings reprefenting all kinds of fubjects; imagine fome of thefe paintings eighty feet high, and proportionably broad, divided into two ranges of figures in bas-reliefs, and covered with moft exquifite colours, fuited to the drapery and naked parts of the figure; and what is ftill more wonderful, the azure, the yellow, the green, and the other colours made ufe of, are as well prepared as if they had been laid on yesterday, and fo ftrongly fixed to the ftone, that he never could feparate them. As there are no Egyptian coins or medals known prior to the time of Alexander, we can get no affiftance from them as to the ftate of the arts; though the mouth of many a good mummy has been spoiled by the attempts of ignorant people to find the obolus, which the Egyptians used to put into the mouths of their dead. Pocock, indeed, mentions three Egyptian coins, but they do not feem to be older than the Perfian conqueft. Upon the whole, the arts of Egypt, and those of Etruria and Greece partake of the nature of the countries. The one is an extenfive flat defart, in which there is an eminence or two from which you may fee all that is Caylus, who understood more of the mechanical part of the fine arts (feveral of which he was a great proficient in himfelf) than Winckelman did, but was not fo good a fcholar. In the 7th volume of hi Antiquities, there is a plate of the Ifiae Table (the greatest monument of Egyptian art that exists) and a very good defcription of it. ン to to be feen; the others are interfected by very high mountains, which do not allow of the eye going a great way at one time. W ART. IV. Ricardi Dawes Mifcellanea Critica. Iterum edita. Curavit et appendicem adnotationis addidit Thomas Burgess, A.B. e C.C.C. Oxonii, a Typographeo Clarendoniano. I HAVE attempted to give this very imperfect idea of Mr. Burgefs's work, vatibus addere calcar, and to fhew, that there is as much acutenefs and accuracy in thefe difquifitions as in the moft fubtle problem ever invented; but by no means to prevent, the ftudy of the book, in which will be found a great deal of entertainment, and much, very much, information indeed. The merit of the first edition of this book is fufficiently known. The prefent editor informs us, in his Preface, that the author was born in 1703, and educated under the celebrated Dr. Blackwall; from thence, in 1725, he removed to Emanuel College, Cambridge, and eleven years afterwards published a Specimen of a Greek Tranflation of Paradife Loft; of which, in his Preface to the Mifcellanea Critica, he had candour enough to point out the imperfections himself. The blet of his life was taking part against Bentley, whom the prefent father of Greek literature in this country, Mr. Toup, acknowledges to have learnt more from, than from all the critics of all the ages before. Mr. Dawes died in 1766, and left fome Manufcripts, to which the prefent author had accefs. There are fome others in Dr. Afkew's collection, who bought Mr. Dawes's library. The work, of which this a fecond edition, and to the merit of which, Valckenarius, Pierfon, Kœnius, and the great Keo-pasig Reifke, have borne the am pleft pleft teftimony, is made up for the moft part of materials which the author had prepared for an edition of the Attic Poets, to whom he meant to have added Homer and Pindar. As his defign led him to correct the metrical errors of former editors, he began, not improperly, with obfervations on Terentianus Maurus. But though the obfervations are chiefly metrical, there are many things in them which relate to the genius of the Greek language, and are abfolutely neceffary for understanding the first principles of it: of this kind are his obfervations on the different ufes of the optative and fubjunctive moods, on the analogy of the Ionic future tenfes, on the reafon of the difference between the lonic and Attic futures, on the first and third perfon of the Attic perfect, &c. &c. but principally on the Æolic digamma or lonic vau. The editor, meaning to publifh a new edition of the work, and to make fome obfervations upon it in an appendix, has performed it with the help of Dawes's MSS. which he had from Dr. Farmer and Mr. Salter (fon of the late Dr. Salter), who has likewife favoured him with a fpecimen of his father's of the firft bundred lines of Homer, with the digamma reftored; and with fome very material affiftance from Mr. Tyrwhit. To these he has added due diligence of his own. He con cludes the Preface with apologizing for any thing that may have fallen from him, not dildainfully, not infolently, for thefe admit of no apology, but haftily, inaccurately, or in oppofition to the fentiments of far more learned men. Excufe, if youth hath err'd, I will I will now give a fpecimen or two of the manner in which he has performed his talk, not with the expectation of doing him juftice, ftill lefs to fupply the abfence of the book. In his Introduction to his Obfervations on Callimachus, Dawes had touched lightly on the difpute about accents, the use of which he disapproved. Mr. Burgefs will not fay much of this, which he leaves to Dr. Edwards, who has promised to difcufs it in his Mifcellanea Critica. He only refers us, in the mean time, to Fofter, Primatt, lord Monboddo on the Origin of Language, p. 2. b. 2. ch. IV. and a Differtation of Gefner's, published at Gottingen in 1755, very curious, and which Fofter feems not to have known. If he has any fentiments of his own about it, they are the fame as Foster's, who thinks that Dawes took up the matter too haftily, and did not spend fufficient time about it; fomething like a foolish editor of Callimachus, who asks whether it is better to fpeak Greek by accent or quantity? He inight as well have afked, whether it was better to run with the right-foot or the left. "Mr. Dawes had enquired how it happened, that "the Ionic futures λow, σTop:ow, &c. were changed "into eλw, olopw, by the Attic writers. The reafon he "had affigned for it was the different metres the two people delighted in, to which these two different for"mations were adapted, viz. the Ionians in the heroic "and dactylic, and the Athenians in the iambic or "trochaic. From all this he had confuted the abfurdity "of the critics who pretend that the Athenians are al"ways ufing the prefent for the future." Mr. Burgefs has very ingenioufly fet befide this Lennep's Observations, published by Villoifon in his edition of Longus; and the refult of the two is, that there are in Greek no fecond futures, or fecond indefinites, or fu ture middles, or paulo poft futura. This is exceedingly ingeni |