he has not the advantage of access to any of the great public libraries of Europe, and that he feels very sensibly the want of such an instrument. What would he say if he shared our privations in that respect? Yet much as we regret the not having had an opportunity of reading a work, to which he often refers, and of which we have so often seen honorable mention made, we are the more reconciled to be without it by the reflection that this branch of knowledge has made great progress since it was published, and by the confession of the author that he feels the necessity of recasting it with a view to that progress. Indeed, the work before us is a preparation for the projected improvement in the first, and contains a collection of the materials out of which it is to be reformed and completed.

one.

M. Becker is a devotee to his subject, if there ever was He assures us that since the year '91, when a dissertation of his to prove that the Oration on the Letter of Philip was spurious, was shown to F. A. Wolf, and honored with the approbation of that admirable critic, he has never lost sight of the orators. At the end of half a century his zeal seems nowise abated. He collects with a tender care and repeats with fond complacency whatever has been uttered in any time or tongue, of praise to his author, or in extenuation of faults which, until recently, none was found bold enough to deny. Some of these Testimonia auctorum are really very striking and eloquent, and did our space permit us, we would willingly translate one or two of them for the benefit of our readers. They show that M. Becker's enthusiasm for Demosthenes, not only as an orator, but as a man and a patriot, is the common feeling of most of his contemporaries in Germany. Dionysius of Halicarnassus himself, who sacrifices. not only Isocrates, but even Plato and his favorite Lysias to the prince of the art, does not indulge in a more lively and rapturous strain of encomium, than is almost universal among these quiet students of climes so much nearer the pole than Greece. But it is not in these times only that Germany has confirmed the vote by which the Demus of Athens crowned the immortal champion of Ctesiphon. Among the bibliographical notices with which this volume of M. Becker is filled, are those of two scholars, scarcely known but to men devoted

*See Vorrede to Th. 2, s. vi.

+ Especially a portrait of Demosthenes by Zell, p. 276, and some remarks of Raumer, p. 141.

to the same studies, Jérome Wolf and Jo. Jac. Reiske; who are instances of that enthusiasm remarkable enough to be cited here. To the first of these editors the modern world is under greater obligations for the advantage of reading Demosthenes in a correct form than to any other individual whatever. He lived in the sixteenth century, a century during which no less than seven different editions of the whole works of the orator were published, beginning with the Aldine in 1515, and ending with Wolf's last; not to mention an incredible number of the Philippics and of single orations, and a great many translations into various tongues. Becker observes that, in this respect, the "literature" of no other writer is to be compared to that of Demosthenes. Thousands upon thousands of copies were rapidly spread through the schools and universities of Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France and Italy, Poland, Spain, and even England. Wolf's third, it seems, and celebrated edition of the speeches of Demosthenes and Eschines, was published in 1572. This remarkable man as remarkable in his humble way for patience and heroic martyrdom as his sublime subject himself-devoted his whole life to the thankless task of an editor, amidst every sort of difficulty and discouragement. It is really touching to read the accounts he gives in his various prefaces and epistles, of what he was doomed to suffer, in his obscure labors for the sake of philology.* Yet he consoles himself, like the famous Strasburg goose in the Almanach des Gourmands, with the idea, that albeit his life was not the most enviable, and he had been treated with but little favor by some of his countrymen, yet foreign nations had heard of Wolfius, and posterity and studious youth and the learned of all ages would honor the "consuls and senate of Augsburg" for protecting him. In one of these prefaces, written in Greek, the devoted scholar speaks with a complacency akin to that of Gibbon on the completion of the "Decline and Fall," of the services which he had rendered to the "great and heroical orator," and hopes that the name of Wolf will be for ever identified with that of Demosthenes. And, in very deed, if his disembodied spirit can content itself with the admiration of a fit audience, though few, it may well be reconciled to its long agony of injured merit and

*Pref. to Fugger, sub. init.

+ Ad nobiles et magnificos viros, etc. H. W. in D. et E. Græco-latinos præfat.

struggling ambition while in the flesh, by the acknowledgments now made to him by the learned in Germany. We have seldom read a more beautiful tribute than that offered by Vömel (1828) to his memory, and republished in this volume by M. Becker, (p. 94.) We would be glad if it were possible to lay it before our readers, together with an extract to be found in a note (p. 95) from the rhapsodies of the poet Kosegarten, prefixed to his German translation of Wolf's autobiography.

After the lapse of two centuries, (1770,) the labors and sufferings of Jérome Wolf, for the sake of Demosthenes, were repeated in the person of another German (whose estimate of the moral character of his author was not a flattering one, however,) Jo. Jac. Reiske. It would almost seem that the contagious bad luck of the ill-starred orator, with which Æschines taunted him, and which Juvenal has handed down in his famous satire on all human aspirations

Dis ille adversis genitus fatoque sinistro,

was destined to pursue his friends to the end of time. In reading Reiske's own account of his life and labors, from which M. Becker furnishes an extract, we find that he undertook the printing of his edition of Demosthenes at his own expense. "The work," says he, " is begun in the name of God. Whether I shall live to see it finished, depends on Him. If I had to rely on man, I should most certainly fall a sacrifice to my own good will and their ingratitude and cruelty." It deserves to be mentioned, as an instance of woman's self-devoted generosity, that his wife, who assisted him in his literary labors, pawned her jewels in order to have the printing begun. Becker assures us, that this auto-biography exhibits the character of that worthy scholar in a most estimable light; and adds, that his correspondence with Lessing,* (which we regret we have not the time even to look into,) completes the picture of "a great man." We are glad to find that Schäfer has defended Reiske against the unmeasured reproaches which it was once so fashionable to heap upon him, and without denying his defects, has vindicated his incontestible claims upon the gratitude of scholars.

But whatever was in other respects the ill luck of Demos

Lessing's Werke, XXVI. S. 275.

+ See, for instance, Payne Knight's contemptuous language in note to Il. H. 127-8, of his own Homer, (1820.)

thenes, it did not reach the MSS. charged with the preservation of his master-pieces for posterity. His speeches have been as fortunate in this respect, as they were in the delivery. Not only are all his most celebrated orations, (with one or two exceptions, probably of extemporaneous, or at least unwritten harangues,*) come down to us, but if the acumen of modern criticism may be relied on, his name has saved from oblivion many more than his own. Of sixty speeches published in the usual collections, only forty-two are admitted into the canon of German scholars. Becker expresses with naiveté, a fond wish that no more may be thought to deserve a place in the Index Expurgatorius, and ventures even to hope that some of those now suspected may be reintegrated in their former rights. We will just permit ourselves to say, by the way, that we heartily rejoice to see the mark of the beast set upon one at least of those not doubted by the ancients, we mean the atrocious attack upon Timotheus, which, disgusting as every thing in their literature shows the morals and manners of the Greeks to have been, we still found especially revolting as a low libel uttered by the greatest orator against the greatest captain of Athens. This singular preservation of the works of Demosthenes, shows that there is more of design and discrimination than is commonly imagined, even in the ruins which time and barbarism deal about them. If we are to believe Payne Knight, Homer is in the same way overloaded with the interpolations of rhapsodists; and, with comparatively few exceptions, the works of genius, celebrated by the ancients themselves, have been saved for us by amateurs whom they found even amid the darkness of Gothic, Saracenic and Mongolian invasion. But in the case before us, M. Becker suggests an idea not unplausible, to say the least. He thinks Demosthenes owed something to the favor which he found with the fathers of the Greek Church. The Basils, the Gregories and the Chrysostoms, whatever might be the austerity of their aversion to the mythology of ancient Greece, still labored to emulate her eloquence, and nothing seems more natural than that the pupils of Libanius, that men educated in the schools of Athens and of Antioch, should share the admiration of their masters for the most perfect model of speech and reasoning.

The sixty-one, or more properly speaking, sixty speeches

*The speech at Thebes, for instance; why have we not that?

now extant and vulgarly ascribed to Demosthenes, are divided into three leading classes. 1st. Those delivered in the popular assembly, and falling under the head of deliberative eloquence. 2d. Those addressed to courts of justice, or judicial pleadings. 3d. Panegyrical orations. Of the first class there are seventeen in all, of which the principal are the Philippics, the Olynthiacs, that de Chersoneso, etc. Four of them, however, have been rejected as spurious. The speech de Haloneso, and the two de Republica ordinanda, and de Fœdere Alexandrino, were excluded from the canon by the ancient critics; the first has been shown to be the work of Hegesippus, a contemporary of Demosthenes. The 4th Philippic, though admitted by the Greek critics, is considered supposititious by most recent German writers, beginning with Valenaer and F. A. Wolf, whose opinions have been adopted and confirmed by Böckh, Becker, Bekker, Westermann, etc. The speech ad Epistolam Philippi, is treated by them in the same way. We recommend this remark to the attention of our readers, for when we come, as we presently shall, to examine Lord Brougham's Dissertation, we shall find him taking his examples of the peculiarities of Demosthenes almost invariably from these spurious or suspected works, and sometimes treating as perfections the very blemishes by which their authenticity is disproved.

The judicial speeches, or arguments, as many of them ought rather to be called, are divided, again, into two very distinct classes. The first comprehends those of a public character, and as Demosthenes was of a stern and morose temper the reverse of Cicero, who was so much given to the melting mood that the peroration was always assigned to him by his associate counsel-we shall not be surprised to find them almost without exception, accusations, (xarnyopia.) Under this head Jerome Wolf classes the famous harangues de Corona, and on the Embassy, as well as those less known, though not less deserving to be known, against Leptines, against Androtio, against Timocrates, against Aristocrates, and against Midias. The speeches against Aristogeiton, which belong to this category, although quoted with honor by Pliny the younger,† are most certainly not the work of

* Orat. 37.

+ Epist. IX. 26. We challenge the whole array of Roman critics of that age in regard to Greek eloquence. What could be expected of the author of the "Panegyric," and a man accustomed to address another as domine, sitting in judgment on the democratic art par excellence?