An

has confirmed a suspicion, which we have for some time entertained, of the declining state of the English bar. There are doubtless men of powerful minds and extensive reading found in the English courts; but judging from the arguments and decisions contained in the printed reports, it is rare to witness, at the present time, the display of either great talents or profound learning. The profession of law in England holds out so many inducements to ambition, that it must always attract the most active and energetic minds. The want of talent, therefore, at the bar, if such be the case at present, must be entirely accidental. The cause of the decline we have mentioned must be traced to other circumstances. One of the most obvious of these is the great increase of business, which allows no time to the bar for argument, nor to the court for examination and study. argument, as it is called by courtesy, at the bar, is nothing more than a dry citation of adjudged cases; and the opinion pronounced by the court is seldom founded on general principles or fortified by reason. It is enough for the case if it can be sustained by the practice of former years. Another cause, and one of the most effective, is the illiberal policy which has confined the studies of the profession to their own jurisprudence, and prevented them from deriving assistance from the institutions of other nations. So far has this prejudice been carried, that those great lawyers, who have in fact availed themselves of this secret source of wisdom, have not dared to avow it. It is now well known, that many of the most celebrated opinions of Lord Mansfield are derived almost literally from passages in the civil law; yet he never refers to it by name. And in the case of Omichund vs Barker, Lord Chief Justice Willes, while bringing all his learning in aid of his argument, and citing freely the Scriptures, the writings of the Fathers, the Greek poets, and foreign jurists, was constrained to make an apology for referring to the civil law. The origin of this prejudice is well known to professional readers, but it would take up too much of our remaining time to explain it. Happily for our country it does not exist with us. In our courts of justice, the writings of civilians and foreign jurists are referred to freely and fearlessly. The Institutes of Justinian, and the commercial treatises of Pothier, Emerigon, and Roccus, are naturalised among us;

and in many libraries, Bynkershoek, Heineccius, and Valin, have taken their place by the side of Blackstone and Coke. Our printed reports show the fruits of this liberal study. They are not filled with technical subtilties, nor are they merely libelli de stillicidiorum ac de parietûm jure. That they are not read in England, and quoted in her courts of justice, is another proof of the prejudice we have just mentioned; and it is a prejudice, which we should be the last to imitate in our own conduct. We should rejoice to find English lawbooks in our courts of justice, as we do to see English machinery in our manufactories. We have little doubt that we shall improve upon both.

ART. VI.-Orpheus Poetarum Græcorum Antiquissimus. AUCTORE GEORGIO HENRICO BODE. Commentatio Praemio regio Ornata. Gottinga, 1824. 4to. pp. 185.

THREE poems of considerable extent, with many fragments, have descended to us from antiquity, under the name of Orpheus. It has been found impossible, at the present day, and with all the certainty resulting from the art of printing, to ascertain the authorship even of many works in popular circulation. To say nothing of such instances as Junius; the cases of Rowley and Ossian prove how easy it is to fabricate a work, which shall pass for genuine even with sagacious professional critics. The case of Eikon Basilike is still more memorable. That work was more rapidly circulated, probably, than any book ever written. Fifty editions of it were published in the course of a year. All the industry, stimulated by all the virulence of party, was exercised to detect the true author. The controversy was keenly agitated, during the lifetime of the eye witnesses to its composition and publication; and yet, says Hume, the proofs, brought to evince that this work is or is not the king's, are so convincing, that if an impartial reader peruses any one side apart, he will think it impossible, that arguments could be produced to counterbalance so strong an evidence.' Some of the plays of Shakspeare are further cases in point; and in

the instance of Gil Blas, we see a most popular work disputed, not between two authors but between two languages ;the Spanish version of that work purports to be a retranslation of it into its original idiom.

It is therefore not strange, that the classical writings of antiquity, works which had their origin at the grey dawn of intellectual day, which were circulated only in single written copies, which perhaps were transmitted for some generations only in the chant of the minstrels, and which again, after the decline of the arts of the classical age, were exposed to all the casualties of the dark and ignorant ages, and have come down to us at last in many cases, in a single manuscript,-it is not strange, we say, that writings like these should be the subject of perpetual controversy as to their authorship. These controversies are indeed, as to main points, rapidly clearing up. That a large class of compositions, ascribed to certain renowned primeval poets, are not genuine, has for some time been not so much matter of demonstration, as of critical intuition; and nothing has been left, but to settle in what age and by what grammarian, the fabrication was made.

With respect to the Poems, under the name of Orpheus, the Argonautica, the Hymns, the Lithica, and several of the fragments, critics, second to none of the last generation, are inclined to ascribe them to a very early period. We need name only such scholars as Gessner and Ruhnken. On the other hand, Mr Tyrwhit, one of the most learned and sagacious of the English Hellenists, Schneider, and Hermann, the latest and acutest editor of these Orphic Poems, bring them down even to the third or fourth century of the christian era. In conducting the inquiry into the age of these remains, the preceding critics had generally confined themselves to external probabilities, to geographical and historical tests, to the style and language as matters of taste, from which an indication of the period when they were produced might be drawn. Thus Gessner, in the prolegomena to his edition, which at the time it was published (1764) was the best, argues from the geographical details in the Argonautica, that the author of that poem must have lived at a very early period; while (so precarious are these speculations) Schneider, by a far more accurate and masterly examination of the same geographical hints, draws the opposite inference. Ruhnken says, that, on VOL. XXI.-No. 49.

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a careful perusal of these poems, he is struck with nothing, which betrays the taste of a modern age.

It was plain, in this almost ridiculous diversity of judgment, on the part of the first critics, that some new test, of more searching efficacy, or less liable to error in the application, must be resorted to, or the question given up as insoluble. Such a test was found out and applied by Hermann, whose unrivalled skill in the Greek Grammar and Greek Metres abundantly qualified him for the task ;-a test, which must be allowed to be far more sure and safe than any general feeling, by which we may suppose that we recognise, in a certain style and manner, the taste, or in a few vague, geographical, and historical data, the knowledge, of a particular age. In his Dissertatio de Etate Scriptoris Argonauticorum, subjoined to his edition of the Orphica, after giving a brief account of the state of the controversy, he examines the structure of the Orphic verse. He first indicates the progressive modification of the hexameter verse, through the series of the epic and didactic hexameter writers, pointing out the gradual changes which it underwent from the time of Homer, till it was wholly remodelled by Nonnus, who lived in the fifth century, and who wrote a poem in fortyeight books on the exploits of Bacchus, and a paraphrase on the Gospel of Saint John; a choice of subjects, taking them together, which has been matter of scandal. It would take us widely out of our limits to follow Hermann into the minutia of this inquiry; nor is it in any degree necessary for our present purpose, which is to prepare our readers for a few remarks on Mr Bode's Dissertation. It will be sufficient to observe here, that Hermann detects, in the hexameters of the Orphic poems, those peculiarities, which show that their author must have lived in the fourth century of the christian era, just before the hexameter verse received its last considerable modification, under the hands of Nonnus. To show, that in conducting this investigation, Hermann has not fallen into the error of his predecessors, in building too much on points of mere taste, which are disputable, we will only further remark, that, with singular acuteness and learning, he pursues the inquiry, under the heads of the trochaic cæsura in the fourth foot; the lengthening of the doubtful vowels on account of the cæsura; of the hiatus; of the shortening of long vowels by the Attic poets; of

the use of the pronouns of and opiv; and lastly, of the general diction and choice of words in these Orphic remains. It appears to us, we confess, impossible, that any one should rise. from the perusal of this masterly dissertation, with any doubt on his mind, that these poems are the production of a comparatively recent age of Grecian metrical art.

With respect to the Argonautica, the oldest period, which has been assigned to this poem, is that of Onomacritus, under the princes of the house of Pisistratus. This priest had been appointed conservator of the oracles of Orpheus and Musæus, relics of the ancient national religion, which were preserved with superstitious veneration at Athens. Having been detected by Lasus, a lyric poet, (Herodot. VII, 6,) in interpolating these oracles, he was displaced and banished by Hipparchus, and took refuge at the Persian court. To this person, Tatian (adv. Græcos. p. 138,) ascribes the composition of the Argonautica and other poems bearing the name of Orpheus; and in this he has been followed by a multitude of ancient and modern writers. It is the opinion of Gessner, borrowed from some of the ancient grammarians, that Onomacritus did not write these poems, but that he transfused them, out of the ancient form and dialect, in which they previously existed, into a more modern dress, with additions and refinements of his own. This opinion is treated with great but not undeserved severity by Mr Bode, (Dissertat. p. 92,) and the probable origin of it suggested. Ruhnken is willing to ascribe the Argonautica and other Orphic poems to a person as old at least as Onomacritus; and Wolf (Prolegomena, p. 247) uses the expression, de vetusto auctore Argonauticorum Orphicorum. But the result of the examination made by Hermann of the structure of the verse, brings down the poem too decisively to the late period already mentioned, to admit a longer doubt. We will only add, that it is quoted or referred to by no ancient author, not even those in pari materia, as Apollonius Rhodius.

The Lithica is placed by Mr Tyrwhit about the year 357, under the emperor Constantius. He infers this from a couple of lines, 74, 75, in which the fate of the bard is intimated to have been the consequence of an accusation of magic. The first law, making magic capital, dates from the time just mentioned; but as under Domitian edicts were issued for the ex