perhaps have been betrayed into dangerous concessions, or misguided into logical consequences altogether unforeseen. But for the other heads of the indictment there is no similar apology to be suggested. Meanwhile, the question of most immediate interest to critics is the truth and historic value of the document. Possibly it may be impugned. We can hardly doubt in these days that the most consummate ingenuity and learning will be brought to bear on its authenticity, authority, authorship; but to our present judgment it opens a page of history, new, original, and, with due allowance of course for the character and position of the writer -though of course a witness so unexpected must be submitted to the severest cross-examination-ingenuous, truthful, and credible. We as yet see no reason whatever to suspect that the writer appears under a misnomer, that he is not the real Origen, and that Origen was not himself present, and personally and busily engaged in the transactions of which M. Miller assigns to him the only record. ART. VII.—ΕΥΡΙΠΙΔΟΥ ΙΦΙΓΕΝΕΙΑ Η ΕΝ ΤΑΥΡΟΙΣ. EAENH. Textum emendavit et notulas subjecit Carolus Badham, A.M. Londini. MDCCCLI. WE 8vo. E have always regretted that the philological studies of our Universities should have swerved so widely from the old direction in which they were impelled by the great English scholars at the beginning of this century. Much progress has doubtless been made since that time in the study of things Greek and Roman-law, customs, arts, and domestic life: in a word, of everything belonging to either people, except their speech. Since the death of Dobree, it has been the growing fashion to consider the old languages as the shell, and the other antiquities as the kernel-as if language if language were not among the most characteristic properties by which a people can be distinguished. This fashion has told upon the text of classics; the efforts which were beginning to rescue them from the innumerable errors and absurdities gathered by continual transcription, came to a halt; nay, a curious reactionary ingenuity by and bye emerged which did battle in defence of every corruption-even the grossest. Thus, barbarous inflexions were explained to be forms adopted from the speech of the vulgar; intolerable constructions were accounted for by the writer's forgetting the commencement of his sentence while he was inditing the end; words, used contrary to all pro priety, were justified by a comparison with the vagueness of modern modern language, or by an appeal to etymologies sometimes arbitrary, always inconclusive. Lately the current of opinion has, we fear, been setting in against classical studies altogether. From a signal and grievous misconception as to the true source of recent mischiefs produced in one of our Universities, from which her supposed mathematical sister has been comparatively exempt, certain ominous challenges of the real use and effect of this same study of antiquity have been heard. The best answer that Oxford can make to such objections is, to revive that old textual philology—that classical scholarship, as Elmsley understood it; revive it, by making it an indispensable attainment—and, above all, promoting and encouraging conjectural criticism, by which alone it can be kept active and useful. We scruple not to declare that the decay of this branch of philology is chiefly to be deplored in our Universities, because in those bodies a pursuit of this kind is absolutely necessary to counteract the otherwise mischievous tendency of the studies distinctively academic. The over-refining ingenuity which dialectic and formal sciences are sure to produce, if cultivated to the exclusion of matters of fact, is no argument, most assuredly, against the cultivation of them within their proper limits; but that these limits are absolutely necessary was never more plainly shown than by the recent examples of dialectical acumen driving understandings pre-eminently endued with it into the most irrational bondage. The only faculty that we can oppose to an over subtle intellect is common sense-and this common sense is in no study more imperiously demanded or more severely trained than in criticism. When a youth is set down to read, not the book, but the author— to learn what was his peculiar mode of thought as well as what the condition of the language was in his day; when, having acquired a certain tact in discerning his sentiment and style, he reapplies this knowledge to particular passages, and demands whether or not they are genuine or correct-common sense is the faculty which is called into play. His whole business is the weighing of evidence: the evidence for or against the author being himself in fault, if anything is found in his work that is obscure, or extravagant, or contradictory. And when, having duly allowed for bold strokes of diction, intentional vagueness, or natural mistakes, he still persists in condemning any phrase as impossible either in form or in sense; if by chance a careful consideration of what the author would naturally say under such or such circumstances hints to him some word or phrase, which when written down scarcely differs in outward shape from the object of his suspicions, the coincidence between what he would expect to read, and and what the letters before him suggest, amounts in many cases to such conclusive proof that it is impossible for moral certainty to advance further. Mr. Badham's work is a professed endeavour to revive among us the now much-neglected art of emendation. It appears that he owes his convictions of the importance of this pursuit to Professor Cobet of Leyden. We remember to have seen an inaugural discourse of that scholar, which struck us as especially useful, because it contained the most brilliant examples of the very art which he desired to see once more based on the sure ground of palæography. Professor Cobet, having to illustrate the principle that there is a ground of certainty in conjecture, carefully abstained from any examples of uncertain guesses. We wish Mr. Badham, though, in dealing with a single author, he was more liable to the temptation of mixing certain and uncertain conjectures together, had scrupulously followed the pattern which was before him. But although he has not done this, he has shown how much may yet be done for the text of Euripides by careful and critical study. Rejoicing in a début of such promise, we propose to lay before our readers a few specimens of what seem to us corrections of the true sort. In the early part of the Iphigenia in Tauris, Orestes and Pylades are introduced conferring together as to the possibility of penetrating the temple wherein is enshrined the statue of Artemis, which Orestes has been commanded by the oracle to take back with him into Greece. The difficulties which present themselves are thus set forth by Orestes: τί δρῶμεν ; ἀμφίβληστρα γὰρ τοίχων ὁρᾷς αν ἢ χαλκότευκτα κλήθρα λύσαντες μόχλοις 96 &c. We agree with the new editor in the necessity for adopting in the third of these lines the reading of one excellent codex å g for the first vand also Reiske's correction λabour. Instead οἱ ὧν οὐδὲν ἴσμεν, which no commentator has ever been able to explain with the least approach to probability, Mr. Badham, happily, we think, gives us d'oudov μer. His reason for the alteration is, that there can be but two ways of entering the temple; both of which must be mentioned by Orestes in order that he may show the difficulties of the case. How can we escape notice? is the natural objection to climbing up and getting in between the triglyphs; but to what is the other remark an ob jection? jection? If we are found opening the gates, we shall be put to death. This applies obviously to a proposal of entering the building in the usual way. The same consideration of natural circumstances has enabled Mr. Badham to get rid of a most ridiculous interpolation of a passage in the speech of the messenger, where he is describing the attempted escape of Orestes and his companions : χ ̓ ᾧ μέν τις εἰς θάλασσαν ὡρμήθη ποσὶν, ἄλλοι δὲ πλεκτὰς ἐξανῆπτον ἀγκύλας.-1374, 5. The rushing into the sea, and the endeavour to cast nooses over the prominences of the ship, are the efforts of the barbarians desiring to secure the fugitive crew. No one, when once told of this, can doubt the truth of it; but it is not a little singular that in the Cambridge edition, and in that of Hermann, great pains are taken to show why the crew of Orestes threw themselves out of the ship, or endeavoured to fasten it by nooses to the rock! We e agree with the editor that the very troublesome line ἁ μναστευθεῖσ ̓ ἐξ Ελλάνων.—200. in the first choric part of the play ought not to be cancelled, but merely placed after the following line, so that it may be understood of Clytemnestra. We also are disposed to take χιλιο ναύτα (140) as a genitive, and to change μυριοτεύχοις into χους, not into χεῖ: but we do not accept either στράτου or στρατίας as the lost noun. In the description of the Fury (279) ἡ δ ̓ ἐκ χιτωνων πῦρ πνέουσα καὶ φόνον Mr. Badham's conjecture xéλvvv is ingenious enough, but, in our humble opinion, he had no business whatever to place it in the text; indeed, we should be very glad to know if there is any authority for xéλuva in the plural, except that of Hesychius. Hermann's reading, which makes the Fury breathe fire from her jewel-boxes (for χλιδών must signify the place wherein χλιδή is put) seems even more absurd than Twvwv. In the lines which follow (282, &c.) :— παρῆν δ' ὁρᾷν οὐ ταὐτὰ μορφῆς σχήματ ̓, ἀλλ ̓ ἠλλάσσετο we cordially accept the simple emendation a'paox'. On the other hand, the alteration in line 334 we reject as rash and unwarrantable; nothing appears to us more certain than Reiske's reading τὰ δ' ἐνθάδ' ἡμεις ὅσια φροντιούμεθα: the example of Sophocles is rarely sufficient to account for unusual inflexion of the middle voice in a word so middle in its signification signification as povorie; but Mr. Badham atones for this fault by defending with spirit and success the lines immediately following against the attacks of the Cambridge editor. The note on line 361 will, we think, convince any reader that ὅν μοι προσείπας πόσιν is quite inadmissible; but it seems very doubtful whether of the two very similar corrections proposed by the editor he has not in GOTE vas chosen the less probable. There appears to us to be no force in the objection that the other is unpoetical: on the contrary, it is by far the more figurative expression, and we, on the whole, take the liberty of believing that Euripides wrote ὄν μοι προσείσας πόσιν, ἐν ἁρμάτων ὄχοις εἰς αἱματηρὸν γάμον ἐπόρθμευσας δόλῳ. We regret to observe that there has been no certain rule followed in assigning places to emendations, according to their probability. A more impartial and less arbitrary principle would have placed such a bare possibility as pέTour' (437) in the margin or amongst the notes, and wov (461) in the text; in the former context we much like the reading ὁμαίμοσιν ἐμβαίην δόμοις—but how is it to be reconciled with the antistrophic passage? In verse 543, ὡς οὐ καλὸν δίκαιον ἐξεπράξατο seems to us a very happy emendation for ὡς εὖ κακὸν δίκαιον ἐξεπράξατο. In verse 564, on the contrary, the sense of Mr. Badham's ε Úvoʊv—×. T.λ. is decidedly inferior to that of the ordinary text. The reflection which we naturally expect is, that agreement of plans and intentions secures common prosperity; the quotation therefore from the Phonissæ does not bear upon the question, because there the other sentiment is more appropriate, namely, that discordancy of ideas is a fruitful source of strife. Still we do not pretend to justify youтw, nor even y'de. Perhaps Euripides wrote τὸ δ ̓ εὖ μάλιστα γίγνεσθαι φιλεῖ. In line 750 we are much struck with the improvement introduced by reading τὸ σῶμα σώσας τοὺς λόγους σώσεις ὁμοῦ, which last word is substituted for a languid and ungrammatical ἐμοί. éuoi. The common text gives (878, 879) σοφῶν γὰρ ἀνδρῶν ταῦτα μὴ ἐκβάντας τύχης καιρὸν λαβόντας ήδονας άλλας λαβεῖν. Here Mr. Badham happily reads ἡδονῆς, ἀλλως:—but we cannot approve his μή 'μβαντας τυχῃ:—μὴ κβάντας Tux ought to have been let alone :-' deserting the vantage ground of fortune' is surely a sense upon which no one need seek to improve. We agree with Mr. Badham in considering the word oɛyx Tov, line 922, as violating the analogy of |