ART. II.-1. Arundines Cami, sive Musarum Cantabrigiensiu Lusus Canori. Collegit atque Edidit HENRICUS DRURY, A.M Fourth Edition. 1851. 2. Anthologia Oxoniensis. Decerpsit GUL. LINWOOD. Longman 1846. 3. Sabrina Corolla. In hortulis Regia Schola Salopiensis con texuerunt tres viri floribus legendis. G. Bell. 1850. 4. Sacred History, in sense for Latin Verses. By the Rev. F HODGSON, Archdeacon of Derby, &c. Third Edition. Taylo and Walton. 1839. 5. Excerpta è Testamento Veteri, &c. Key to the above. J. Tay lor. 1828. 6. Mythology for Versification. By the Rev. F. HODGSON, Pr vost of Eton College. Fifth Edition. Taylor, Walton, an Maberly. 1851. 7. Mythologia Versibus Latinis Accommodata. Key to the abov Taylor, Walton, and Maberly. 1850. 8. Sacred Lyrics for Versification. By the Rev. F. HODGSON Provost of Eton College. Taylor and Walton. 1842. 9. Lyricorum Sacrorum Clavis Metrica. Scriptore F. HODGSON Coll. Regal., Eton. Præposito. Taylor, Walton, and Maberly 1850. SOME forty years ago, the determined and brilliant onslaughts our great Northern contemporary produced a very general mis giving throughout the educated and educating portion of mankin in this country, that they had been proceeding upon erroneou principles in the important work of training the young for th coming battle of life. The system of education pursued in ou public schools and universities was unsparingly attacked; it wa urged that much was taught which it was useless to know, an much unknown which ought to be taught; that the amount Latin and Greek there learnt was out of all proportion to th advantage to be derived by such learning; and that much tim which might have been expended in acquiring a considerabl knowledge of history, sciences, and the affairs of serious life, wa wasted in obtaining a comparatively fruitless triumph in the aren of what were termed frivolous and fanciful accomplishments. Upon no part of the despised "curriculum" of our youth were the inkhorns of the ridicule of the immortal Sidney Smith' more lavishly poured forth than upon the time-honoured discipline of longs and shorts." The practice of them was trifling; perfection in them was imbecility; and the folly of training up youth to the attainment of such perfection, was the most glaring evil of our school and college education. 66 Now we are not about to deny that at the time of these denunciations great and manifest abuses existed; we are not so ungrateful for the vast improvements since introduced as to shut our eyes to the imperfections which they have displaced. On the contrary, we are convinced that our schools and colleges have since made, and are daily making, gigantic but steady strides in advance, and are daily approaching nearer and nearer towards the accomplishment of real education in the highest sense of that word. We moreover believe that these improvements are in a great measure owing to the very attacks to which we have alluded, and to the public attention thereby drawn to the subject; for we cannot deny that a spirit of antiquity haunts the chosen abodes of learning, somewhat too jealous of novelty and change to conform itself readily to the expansion of knowledge in the world without. Those therefore who on due occasion point out. existing errors, and suggest timely alterations to meet the advanced requirements of society, do good service, and command our thanks. So also do those who, shaking off the predilections and prejudices of former times, and the partiality we are too apt to feel for those pursuits wherein we have ourselves excelled "when George the Third was King," have not scrupled to open wider the gates of knowledge, and, like the members of Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, have resolved to give to their successors opportunities of distinction in branches of knowledge in which they were never called upon or allowed to excel. More than all are we grateful to those who by their private munificence and public spirit have been led to throw down for competition at our universities and schools those prizes which are to lead our young men to bestow on other equally useful and perhaps more congenial studies those talents which have hitherto been spent upon classical and mathematical learning alone, and which are to induce our boys to construe their Dante and Sismondi as fluently as they now translate Thucydides and Virgil. All these things we accept with gladness; we fully believe them to be very good; and as the world increases in knowledge and 1 Works, vol. i. wisdom, more good things of a like kind will be required, and done. But while these salutary changes have been in progress, it does undoubtedly happen that some parts of the old system, in spite o all attacks, remain but little altered, and, having borne the brun of ridicule and grave hostility, still flourish in our colleges and schools. One of these standing features of English education is the practice which still prevails of teaching the art of writing Latin verses. We shall not discuss at length the arguments or both sides of the once much-vexed question, whether this be custom more honoured in the breach than the observance; but shall assume for the present that a practice which has beer so vigorously assailed, and so fully and ably discussed, and to excel in which is at least not inconsistent with excellence in al the most exalted qualities that can belong to man, still continues to exist, not owing to mere reverence for antiquity, but because it has been well tested, and found to be an useful process in the business of producing men for the highest purposes of life. 66 If we are right in making this assumption, it may be a no unprofitable task to call attention to the present condition of the science of Latin versification; to point out the changes for better or worse which have been introduced in the methods of acquiring and employing this kind of accomplishment; and to recommend that which seems the best mode of smoothing the access to a really sound and useful prosecution of this species of learning during the few years which, we venture to think, are not now to largely devoted to it. The manifest tendency of modern methods of instruction lies in the direction of accuracy and precision. The influence o abstract science upon the less exact branches of education has been sensible, gradual, and steady. A few books of Euclid have entered into the course of instruction at almost all our larger schools; and even that little leaven has leavened the whole lump The mathematics have, lately, been introduced at Eton, as a com pulsory part of education. The same has been the case at Harrow, for a longer period. The ruthless edict said to have been issued at the commencement of his career of office by the excellent and amiable master of Eton against that con venient combination "amplius haud," is a type of the wa which modern accuracy is waging against the unmeaning, the common-place, and the slipshod in education. In the prac tice of original composition in the dead languages which a one time prevailed, one evil undoubtedly existed in the diffuse and desultory style of writing and thinking which it encou raged. Extreme vigilance on the part of the teacher might check this tendency to some extent, but this was more than could always be looked for; while the student himself was almost sure to mistake facility for merit and quantity for quality. This evil required to be checked and controlled, not by the rude method occasionally adopted of passing the pen abruptly through the superfluous half of the cherished composition, but by the constant presence of a model to which he was constrained to conform himself by an invisible pressure. His The substitution of translation to a great extent for original composition, has had, we believe, a most salutary effect in this respect. The very aptness for imitation natural to the boy tends, in the first instance, to confine him with the utmost closeness to the very words and measure that are placed before him. first impulse in translation is to render line for line, if not word for word; and he feels from the first the pleasure "which poets only know" of overcoming difficulties; he lends himself unconsciously to the mysterious fascination which submission to rule exercises over the human mind, the same which gives a zest to the games of the school field and the discipline of the camp. While the power of imitation is all but universal in the young, that of invention is extremely rare; and nearly in the same proportion is the faculty of translation within the scope of the abilities of more, than that of original composition; and we conceive that it is much more agreeable to almost all. If the principal object of enforcing composition, whether in verse or prose, is to ensure close attention to the words and style of the authors studied for that collateral purpose, and to exercise tact in seizing the analogies of language, it is obvious that more students will secure this advantage by the practice of translation than by that of original composition. There is also much greater variety in the necessary requirements of the one than of the other; the ear will not be allowed to acquiesce in the recurrence of an uniform system of cadences, or the critical acumen be blunted by resort to conventional and trivial expedients. The matter and the form of a well-chosen passage from an English poet will demand, and at the same time suggest manifold experiments in language, in rhythm, and in thought; every fresh perusal of the model will bring out the perception of fresh beauties to be hit off, and of fresh difficulties to be overcome; the writer will not be allowed to rest satisfied with the perfection of his own performance, but will be constantly endeavouring to attain the unattainable in fidelity and elegance. Thus he will be trained to precision both of thought and language; he will be subjected to the discipline, most severe to the youthful poetaster, of setting clearly before himself the idea to be expressed, and the means by which his end is to be accom plished'. The old comparison of rhetoric and logic to the ex tended palm and the closed fist, is at least equally applicable t the different characters of original composition and translation. Such being our deliberate opinion, it will be an agreeable tas to point, as we may with triumph, to some convincing proofs o the great excellence to which our young scholars attain in wha we have ventured to consider not only as an elegant accomplish ment, but as a sterling part of the education of men for the highe walks of useful life. In the three works which we have placed first at the head o this article, Mr. Drury, Mr. Linwood, and Dr. Kennedy hav collected, partly from the leaves of their own portfolios, partly from the contributions of their friends, a varied assortment o translations into Greek and Latin verse from some of the mos elegant passages of English poetry. These compositions have in many instances, been school and college exercises, often exe cuted under stress of examination and the excitement of com petition, and sometimes no doubt subsequently re-touched and revised at leisure. Some are the deliberate exercitations o maturer scholars thrown off for their amusement, or as a trial o their powers, to balance the loss and the gain of advancing years Mr. Drury's volume, the "Arundines Cami," has reached a fourth edition, and it would be beside our purpose to enter into an minute criticism of a work which has already had its thousand of readers, and which has evidently become a favourite with th cultivated public. The merits of the work and of its compiler himself its principal and perhaps its most felicitous contributor are proved not only by the admiration, but by the emulation whic they have excited in other classical scholars, from whom, in thi respect, at all events, Mr. Drury deserves to bear away the palm that his is the original conception, that he has the credit (in thes days a rare one) of having carved out what may be called a littl arrondissement of his own in the department of classical literature Mr. Linwood and Dr. Kennedy, who have given us similar volumes have closely followed the original model, even in size, and shape and type, and decoration; as far as they have deviated from it, i mixing original compositions with the translations, they have bu 2 It is difficult to say in how great a degree the mind of the boy must have bee educated by the practice of Latin versification who, in the sixth form at Rugb produced the following exquisite version from Cibber's "Blind Boy, ". "My day or night myself I make "Namque diem ludi faciunt mihi, somnia noctem, |