light assumption and such solid merit, a
model of clear arrangement and popular treatment, may be widely read in
this country, where the ignorance, carelessness, or dishonest good-nature
even of journals professedly literary is apt to turn over the unlearned
reader to such blind guides as Swinton's "Rambles among Words," compounds
of plagiarism and pretension. Philology as a science is but just beginning
to assert its claims in America, though we may already point with
satisfaction to several distinguished workers in the field. The names of
Professor Sophocles, at Cambridge, and Professor Whitney, at New Haven,
rank with those of European scholars; and we have already borne the
warmest testimony in these pages to the value of Mr. Marsh's contributions
to the study of English, a judgment which we are glad to see confirmed by
the weighty authority of Mr, Mueller.

* * * * *

1. _On Translating Homer_. Three Lectures given at Oxford by
MATTHEW ARNOLD, M.A., Professor of Poetry in the University of
Oxford, and formerly Fellow of Oriel College. London: Longmans.
1861. pp. 104.

2. _Homeric Translation in Theory and Practice_. A Reply to
Matthew Arnold, Esq., Professor of Poetry at Oxford. By FRANCIS W.
NEWMAN, a Translator of the Iliad. London: Williams & Norgate.
1801. pp. 104.

MR. F.W. NEWMAN, Professor of Latin in the University of London, probably
without much hope of satisfying himself, and certain to dissatisfy every
one who could read, or pretend to read, the original, did nevertheless
complete and publish a translation of the "Iliad." And now, unmindful of
Bentley's _dictum_, that no man was ever written down but by himself, he
has published an answer to Mr. Arnold's criticism of his work. Thackeray
has said that it is of no use pretending not to care if your book is cut
up by the "Times"; and it is not surprising that Mr. Newman should be
uneasy at being first held up as an awful example to the youth of Oxford
in academical lectures, and then to the public of England in a printed
monograph, by a man of so much reputation for scholarship and taste as the
present incumbent of Thomas Warton's chair.

Mr. Arnold's little book is, we need scarcely say, full of delicate
criticism and suggestion. He treats his subject with great cleverness, and
on many points carries the reader along with him. Especially good is all
that he says about the "grand style," s