We hope that a book of such slight 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.

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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,” so far as his general propositions are concerned.  But when he comes to apply his criticisms, he instinctively feels the want of an absolute standard of judgment in aesthetic matters, and accordingly appeals to the verdict of “scholars,”—­a somewhat vague term, to be sure, but by which he evidently understands men not merely of learning, but of taste.  Of course, his reasoning is all a posteriori, and from the narrowest premises,—­namely, from an unpleasant effect on his own nerves, to an efficient cause in the badness of Mr. Newman’s translation.