Germanæ et Italæ pro nobis faciunt, sed fortasse Græcæ oves olim non balabant sed velabant."'-p. 305.

Now, surely, Ascham and his biographer are a little too hasty here. In the first place, the B and the V are merely different expressions, with greater or less force, of the common digammate power, of which F is the strongest exponent; and, accordingly, the B and the V are a hundred times over interchanged in Greek and Latin: Boλoμas = volo—Bóoxw = vescor, &c., on the one hand; and Servius Σéfßios-Varro = Báppwv, &c., on the other. The modern Greeks pronounce Boiλquai = voulomai, Babus = vathys, &c.; and we are much inclined to agree with Mitford, that for the pronunciation of the ancient Greek language we should take no evidence against the practice of the modern Greeks, but the evidence of their forefathers, or of the contemporary Latin authors.'* In the ordinary speech of a Castilian, the B and the V are almost indistinguishable. No one can suppose that the old Greeks pronounced Varro as Barron in English; they could surely have had as little difficulty in saying Varron as their modern descendants in saying voulomai. And as to the test supposed to be afforded by the 6 Bǹ of Cratinus, as cited by Eustathius, the point of that quotation was to prove the sound of the eta, the vowel sound, and not the quality of the mere aspirate and prefix. Yet the instance, after all, does not establish the sound of the eta: for different nations frequently differ in their perception and expression of the same natural sound; as a German (and perhaps citing the xoxxù of Aristophanes in the Birds) will tell you that a cuckoo's note is 'gookoo." And in the particular example adduced by Ascham, we English represent the bleating of a sheep by the word bah, like ah, a sound which, we venture to say, has never been ascribed to the eta.

In 1548, Ascham became tutor to the Princess Elizabeth'He found her a most agreeable pupil, and the diligence, docility, modest affection, and self-respecting deference of the royal maiden endeared an office which the shy scholar had not undertaken without fears and misgivings. "I teach her words," said he, "and she teaches me things. I teach her the tongues to speak, and her modest and maidenly looks teach me works to do; for I think she is the best disposed of any in Europe." In several of his Latin epistles, and also in his " Schoolmaster," he explains and recommends his mode of instructing the princess with evident exultation at his success. It was the same method of double translation pursued with such distinguished results by Sir John Cheke, from whom Ascham adopted it; and, indeed, like many of the best discoveries, it seems so simple that we wonder how it ever could be missed, and so excelInquiry into the Principles of Harmony in Language, &c., p. 195.

lent,

lent, that we know not why it is so little practised. It had, indeed, been suggested by the younger Pliny, in an epistle to Fuscus, and by Cicero, in his Dialogue de Oratore. "Pliny," saith Roger, "expresses many good ways for order in study, but beginneth with translation, and preferreth it to all the rest. But a better and nearer example herein may be our noble Queen Elizabeth, who never yet took Greek nor Latin grammar in her hand after the first declining of a noun and a verb; but only by this double translating of Demosthenes and Isocrates daily without missing, every forenoon, and likewise some part of Tully every afternoon, for the space of a year or two, hath attained to such perfect understanding in both the tongues, and to such a ready utterance in the Latin, and that with such a judgment, as they be few in number in both universities, or elsewhere in England, that be in both tongues comparable to her Majesty." We may well allow a teacher to be a little rapturous about the proficiency of a lady, a queen, and his own pupil; but, after all due abatements, the testimony remains unshaken, both to the talent of the learner and the efficiency of the system of instruction.'—p. 307.

In 1550 Ascham accompanied Sir Richard Morisine to Germany on an embassy to the Emperor Charles. The extracts from his correspondence given by our biographer are very amusing; e. g.

England need fear no outward enemies. The lusty lads verily be in England. I have seen on a Sunday more likely men walking in St. Paul's Church than I ever yet saw in Augusta [Augsburgh], where lieth an emperor with a garrison, three kings, a queen, three princes, a number of dukes, &c. I study Greek apace, but no other tongue; for I cannot. ....I think I shall forget all tongues but the Greek afore I come home. I have read to my lord since I came to Augusta whole Herodotus, five tragedies, three orations of Isocrates, seventeen orations of Demosthenes. For understanding of the Italian I am meet well; but surely I drink Dutch, better than I speak Dutch. Tell Mr. D. Maden, I will drink with him now a carouse of wine; and would to God he had a vessel of Rhenish wine, on condition that I paid 40s, for it; and, perchance, when I come to Cambridge, I will so provide here, that every year I will have a little piece of Rhenish wine...... The Rhenish wine is so gentle a drink, that I cannot tell how to do when I come home,'p. 317.

Ascham was jovial, we see; he also drew a good bow, and dearly loved a main of cocks. His 'Toxophilus' might, we think, be reprinted in these days of pic-nic archery. He projected a treatise on cock-fighting, but did not publish it. But there is no ground for calling him a gamester in the bad sense of the word, and we are by no means sure that his love for alectryomachy proves anything at all against his gentleness. Mr. H. Coleridge says

Hence it appears, but too clearly as many would say, that Roger was a cock-fighter. Had he been a contemporary of Hogarth, his

features

features would have been preserved in that wonderful man's living representation of the cock-pit. It is also evident, that certain curious persons were scandalized at the propensity-not, however, as tenderhearted folks unacquainted with ancient manners may suppose, on account of the inhumanity or vulgarity of the amusement-but because it was not deemed compatible with the severity of the scholastic character. Few, if any, in the sixteenth century condemned any sport because it involved the pain or destruction of animals, and none would call the pastime of monarchs low... ... Angling is, doubtless, much fitter recreation for a "contemplative man," besides being much cheaper for a poor man, than cock-fighting; but it is equally opposed to the poet's rule, which bids us

"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."

If animal suffering be computed, the sod is an altar of mercy compared to the chace; for the excitement of the combat is an instinctive pleasure to the pugnacious fowls, who, could they give an opinion on the subject, would infallibly prefer dying in glorious battle, to having their necks ignominiously wrung for the spit, or enduring the miseries of superannuation. Roger never lived to publish, or probably to compose, his Apology for the Cock-pit; but we know not whether it was in pursuance of his recommendation that a yearly cock-fight was, till lately, a part of the annual routine of the northern free-schools. The master's perquisites are still called cock-pennies.'-p. 326.

But we must hasten to a conclusion with Ascham. He died in 1568, aged fifty-three. Dr. Alexander Nowell, Dean of St. Paul's, who preached his funeral sermon, declared, that he never knew man live more honestly, nor die more Christianly and Queen Elizabeth said, that she had rather have thrown ten thousand pounds into the sea than have lost her Ascham.'

The Life of Roscoe is remarkably well written; but it seems to us as if the author had been in duty bound to write it. We frankly acknowledge that we think the commendation bestowed altogether out of proportion to the real merits of the subject.

Towards the conclusion of the Life of Sir Richard Arkwright, we find a passage, which, both for its eloquence and its profound insight into the truth, we must quote :

And here the question occurs,-Ought Arkwright, and others such as he, who, by multiplying the powers of production, have so greatly increased the public and private wealth of Britain, to be considered as benefactors or not?-Or, to state the question more strongly and more truly, was it in wrath or in mercy, that mankind were led to the modern improvements in machinery? Should we merely take a survey of the present state of the country-especially as far as the labouring classes are concerned-we should be apt to denominate these inventions the self-inflicted scourges of avarice. They have indeed increased wealth, but they have tremendously in

creased

creased poverty; not that willing poverty which weans the soul from earth, and fixes the desires on high-not that poverty which was heretofore to be found in mountain villages, in solitary dwellings midway up the bleak fell-side, where one green speck, one garden plot, a hive of bees, and a few sheep, would keep a family content-not that poverty which is the nurse of temperance and thoughtful piety; but squalid, ever-murmuring poverty, cooped in mephitic dens and sunless alleys-hopeless, purposeless, wasteful in the midst of wanta poverty which dwarfs and disfeatures body and soul; makes the capacities, and even the acquirements of intellect, useless and pernicious: and multiplies a race of men without the virtues which beasts oft-times display-without fidelity, gratitude, or natural affection.

"The moral degradation of this caste may not be greater in England than elsewhere, but their physical sufferings are more constant than in the southern climates, and their tendency to increase much stronger than in the northern latitudes. But has machinery occasioned the existence or growth (?) of this class? Certainly not; for it has always existed since society assumed its present shape, and is to be found in countries like Spain and Naples, where pride and indolence are too powerful even for the desire of wealth to overcome.

a

'But the artificial wealth which manufactures have assisted to produce has generated or aggregated a factitious population, dependent for employment and subsistence on a state of things exceedingly and incalculably precarious, and seldom able to practise more than one department of a trade in which labour is minutely divided; a population naturally improvident in prosperity and impatient in distress, whom the first interruption of trade converts into paupers, and whom continance of bad times is sure to fix in that permanent pauperism from which there is no redemption. Times may mend, but man, once prostrate, never recovers his upright posture-once a vagabond and always a vagabond-once accustomed to eat the bread of idleness, the operative seldom takes pains to procure employment; and having been paid something for doing nothing, thinks ever after that he is paid too little for toil, and seizes every pretext to throw up his work again. Character has little influence on a man whom the world considers, and teaches to consider himself, but as a portion of a mass. To be sensible of character, man must feel himself a responsible individual; aud to individualize the human being, not only must the reflective powers be evoked and disciplined by education, but there must be property, or profession, or political privilege, or something equivalent, a certain sphere of free-agency, to make the man revere himself as man, and respect the opinions of his fellow-men. Now it is the tendency of wealth to increase the number of those who have no property but the strength or skill which they must sell to the highest bidder-who, either by labour or without labour, must live upon the property of others-and who, having no permanent mooring, are liable by every wind of circumstance to slip their cables and drift away with the idle sea-weed and the rotting wrecks of long-past

tempests..

tempests. Thus, to vary the metaphor, the sediment of the common. wealth is augmented with continual fresh depositions, till the stream of society is nigh choked up, and our gallant vessels stranded on the flats and shallows. Without metaphor-so many of the people drop into the mob, that the mob is like to be too many for the people, and wealth itself to be swallowed up by the poverty itself has begotten!'p. 477.

We exceedingly regret that our limits do not permit us to bestow that particular notice on the lives of Mason and Congreve which they deserve. In these lives, Mr. Hartley Coleridge has poured forth the treasures of his mind on poetical and more especially on dramatic criticism.

Among the peculiar difficulties of dramatic composition,' says the author, in commencing a criticism on Mason's Elfrida,' what is called the opening of the plot is one of the most formidable; and I know very few plays in which it has been skilfully surmounted. But this difficulty is materially augmented, if the unities of place and time are to be kept inviolate; for, in that case, it is impossible to represent a series of actions from their commencement: the play must begin just before the crisis, and the auditor must be put in possession of the previous occurrences as soon as possible; for if they be left in obscu rity till they are naturally developed by the incidents and passions of the action itself, half the play will pass over before any one knows what is going forward, or where is the scene, or who are the dramatis persona. In written or printed plays, to be sure, we may be informed of these particulars by lists of characters, stage-directions, &c.; but no play can be regarded as a legitimate work of art which would not be intelligible in representation. The ancient dramas, so long as the genuine Greek tragedy flourished, were, with few exceptions, taken from the storehouse of mythology, which was familiar to every Greek from his childhood; and consequently the Athenian audiences were never at a loss to understand the subject of a new production. But this, though it was a great convenience, did not exonerate the poet from his duty; he was not to take it for granted that his story was known, but was to make his plot unfold itself. The chorus was of great use in this business, their odes consisting for the most part of references to the past and forebodings of the future. Prophecies and oracles to be fulfilled, old crimes to be expiated, mysterious circumstances to be cleared up, a fearful future involved in a fearful past, were the main ingredients in the choral strains, in which nothing is told-everything is assumed or hinted at, in accordance with the religious nature of Greek tragedy. But as some more straightforward exposition was deemed necessary in many instances, Euripides in particular had recourse to the very inartificial expedient of a retrospective soliloquy, sometimes spoken by a ghost, in which the history was brought down to the point at which it was convenient that the scene should open. This is but a clumsy device; but perhaps it is better than occupying the first act