the animal, according to this theory, was, even on his own showing, more sensible than the prophet himself, we think the learned professor had better have left such an evidence of Balaat's astuteness alone.

More than this, Mr. Bush has a high sense of what is due to morality, and meets the objections to Rahab, Samson, etc., with openness and impartiality. We cannot say, however, that we approve his idea of supposing the faith of Samson and others, mentioned with such high distinction in the eleventh of Hebrews, as an intellectual faith in testimony, and not religious confidence in God; and we were less pleased with his management of Jephthah's case, than with his construction of any capital difficulty in the books of his present comment. Better perhaps let this go, as an unlearned mind would read it, and let it stand as a melancholy beacon of integrity alloyed by rashness, (one of those strange mixtures we often see,) than try to evade the obvious tendency of the narrative. Better certainly, we think, than to suppose Jephthah's faith (like Samson's) not evangelical, (see p. 311,) and yet esteem him scrupulous about the fulfilment of his vow!

*

It would have pleased us to see the ability of Professor Bush expended upon his text, as well as upon the sentiment of it. We find him (for example, on p. 22) recommending a parenthesis. Surely a matter like this might have been inserted, and also many other articles of punctuation. We hope, in another edition, he will take the text into consideration; at least, so far as to make it uniform in some particulars, which, though minute in themselves, are blemishes in these days of typographical perfection. When, for instance, we mount our proof-reading spectacles, it seems a little odd to see Red sea" in the text, and "Red Sea" in the notes; and so, the "spirit of God" and the "Spirit of God," etc.

4. Notes, Explanatory and Critical, on the first Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. By ALBERT BARNES. New York: William Robinson. 1838. 12mo. pp. 357.

MR. BARNES's book savors more of certain peculiarities than Professor Bush's; it is often beaten out into somewhat tenuous paraphrase, and at the natural expense of a little tautology. And then, too, we have an occasional cavalcade of practical reflections,

*Not, however, the unlearned only. See Lightfoot's Works, vii. 155, who quotes Josephus and the Fathers generally, as of his opinion, that the daughter was sacrificed. Indeed, Mr. Bush admits, p. 312, that the balance of authority is that 48

way.

NO. VI.-VOL. III.

*

extending on Chapter iii. to a twenty-fourthly-one more than the actual number of verses in the chapter. An old but most reverend authority tells us, we should not press the grapes too hard to obtain the purest and finest wine. We have also a due sprinkling of certain "new views," so called, when we enter the debateable land of technical theology. Mr. Barnes cannot help finding his own notions about original sin, justification, imputation, etc., as prominent in the Epistle, as to his own mind's eye. We do not fancy commentary which smacks of what has been pretty expressively styled, "dogmatic theology." The writer is too apt to become "the chief speaker," rather than Paul or Christ; and his best periods, perhaps, to be but silver plating covering up the gold of the scriptures. A common reader might, perchance, become a little bewildered in the "lengthy" mazes of some of Mr. Barnes's comments, and find himself, with an overladen text, like youthful David reeling under the armor of gigantic Saul. But far from us be hypercriticism, for many may take up this volume who cannot afford others more expensive; and, to them, every word may have its value: even expansions and iterations amounting to nothing but "line upon line, and precept upon precept." One thing such a reader will certainly find- -an examination, and, in most instances, a full and satisfactory examination, of all the difficulties which St. Paul is, we know, a trying writer for one aiming at terse comments. He embraces a multitude of "the seeds of things;" his style is parenthetical, and, to one who does not feel as deeply as himself, apparently involved; exuberance of thought prompts him to diverge continually; and, to sum up all, he handles not a few subjects "hard to be understood," as even Peter admitted, prince of apostles as he is in the ecclesiastical nomenclature of our Roman Catholic brethren. To do such a man justice, were a task requiring scarcely less than his own learning and inspiration; and Mr. Barnes must not suppose we like his commentary less, if, with some alterations, we might have liked it more. At times, he certainly does infuse into his readers a portion of the spirit of his author; and his concluding remarks on the fifteenth chapter do equal honor to his head and heart.

occur.

* Obiter, is it not a little curious, that the New School should be so scared by "imputation"? They do not hesitate to admit the imputation (though not indeed the actual transfer-for which, however, no one contends) of our guilt to Christ, when he atoned for it. Why then can they not admit the imputation (in a similar sense) of his righteousness to us? See this point ably argued in Faber's book on Justification, p. 133, etc.

5. A Grammar of the Greek Language, for the use of Schools and Colleges. By CHARLES ANTHON, LL.D. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1838. 12mo. pp. 292.

To make good school books requires the exertion of a high degree of intellect, and that, too, of a very rare and peculiar kind; while, at the same time, so small in proportion to the labor is the display, and so disproportionate the reward of reputation, that few men of eminence are willing to expend their time and talents on works, which, when complete, are looked upon by the many as mere school books. The consequence of this fact is, that the composition of this most valuable class of works has fallen, for the most part, into the hands of men utterly unfitted to the task; and hence the cart loads of miserable trash with which our country is inundated-every half taught alumnus of a second and third rate college, thinking himself, forsooth, qualified to teach and to publish his crudities, under the cover of a diploma, and finding no difficulty in obtaining testimonials of his own merits and the excellence of his books, from men whose real and merited reputation ought to deter them from lavishing, with such undue facility, their commendation on what they probably have never even qualified themselves to judge by a perusal. We have said, that the composition of school books requires the exercise of a very high and rare degree of intellect and for this reason, that, in addition to a full and deep acquaintance with the subject in all its accidents, it undoubtedly needs a mind of a peculiar and unusual complexion, to convey this acquaintance to others, with that clearness and simplicity, which alone can render it available to feeble understandings; and it is further to be observed, that it is precisely in this point that the most erudite and profound scholars are usually wanting. The whole subject being to them as light as day, they cannot realize to themselves the fact, that it is exactly the reverse to others; and hence they are too apt, in teaching, to jump to the conclusion, neglecting the necessity of pointing out the several steps by which they have themselves attained it, and which to them appear too obvious to be overlooked by any. The author of the work before us is possessed-as all who are acquainted with his name well knowof the first requisite, a full and deep acquaintance with his subject; and we believe that we do no injustice to many able scholars, throughout the country, in assuming that no other native of this land is more thoroughly imbued with all the niceties, all the delicate and minute distinctions, of the magnificent and stately tongue, to which he now puts forth the key; -but highly as we have always reckoned of him as a teacher, we were ignorant, until the appearance of the work before us, of the pre-eminent degree in which he is endowed with the rare tact of conveying his own knowledge to

the minds of others. It is by the exercise of this tact, even more than by his unusual skill in the language itself, that Professor Anthon has rendered his Greek Grammar the best, in our opinion, which ever has been published, either in this country or abroad. Omitting nothing that is contained in the most voluminous and cumbrous works of the German school, it is so clear in its arrangements, so perfectly simple and comprehensible in its explanations, that we have no hesitation in saying, that, by the use of this little volume, almost as much might be acquired of the Greek tongue, without the aid of oral exposition, as from any other work in circulation, assisted by an able and experienced tutor. On its peculiar excellences, our limits prohibit us from enlarging to the extent we could desire; but in a few words, we can touch upon its most marked points of superiority, which we conceive to befirst, the great simplification and plainness of its rules, whether for verbal formations, or for syntactical arrangement-secondly, the full and extended manner in which the declensions and conjugations are carried out, leaving nothing to be guessed at, or misapprehended-and lastly, though not leastly, the cutting down of those redundant and embarrassing superfluities with which all previous books of this nature abound. It is emphatically an cellent school book! Indeed, we do not see how it could be improved; and anxious as we are to see a high degree of education and general literary habits diffused through the vast territories of our country, we trust that-as one of the most probable steps toward this result-this work may be universally adopted in every school and college of America.

ex

6. A System of Greek Prosody and Metre, for the Use of Schools and Colleges: together with the Choral Scanning of the Prometheus Vinctus of Eschylus, and the Ajax and Edipus Tyrannus of Sophocles; to which are appended Remarks on Indo-Germanic Analogies. By CHARLES ANTHON, LL.D. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1838. 12mo.

To attempt any thing like a review, or complete analysis, of the work before us, on a scale such as should be compatible with the very limited space to which our purely literary notices are of necessity confined, would be absurd, no less than impossible; while at the same time, to pass over a subject of so much deep importance to the right comprehension of the noblest language the world has ever heard, would be unjust, alike to ourselves, to our readers, and to the able scholar whose labors call for our attention. The utility of a complete, and at the same time simple, prosody of the

Greek language, is indeed incalculable-for, apart from the consideration that no person can be considered even a tenth rate scholar, who is not versed in this too much neglected branch of learning, one of the great aims of reading Greek at all, is frustrated by the neglect of prosody, inasmuch as the exquisite poetry of the masters of the ancient lyre must be entirely shut up from all but the expert prosodian. We are not aware that there exists any Prosody of the Greek tongue, comprised within such limits, and professing even to be arranged on principles of facility and simplicity, similar to those of the volume now before us-we are certain that there exists not any comparable to it, either for the mass of erudition it contains, or the easy, unaffected, and explanatory mode in which that erudition is conveyed. The best treatises on this most interesting topic are either voluminous, or, as is most generally the case, too laconic in style, too much deficient in example, and too often couched in the epigrammatic brevity of the Latin language, to be of real use to learners; indeed, the only perfect knowledge of Greek Prosody, is to be attained by a careful perusal of all the annotations, excursions, prefaces, etc., of all the best editions, of all the standard Grecian poets. The length of time necessary for even a partial acquisition of this science was of consequence enormous; and, not only has Professor Anthon merited the thanks of every student, for the immense saving of labor he has brought about by the compression of all that we have above alluded to, into the space, and under the form, of (comparatively speaking) a few judicious rules; but still more for the excellence of the arrangement of these rules, and the great ease with which they can be comprehended and committed permanently to the "tablets of the mind."

After a brief exposition of the meaning of the term Prosody, as used by the ancients, and an expression of his intention to confine himself in this treatise "to the consideration of quantity and metre," the author proceeds to expound the great principles, and GENERAL RULE of this science, and thence to a number of admirable rules, with copious examples and exceptions first for the qualities of the long vowels as affected by nature, or position-thence to those for the short vowels, with exceptions, for the lengthening of these in the different parts of words.-He then states simply and most truly, that "the chief object of Greek Prosody is to reduce to rule the quantity of the doubtful or arbitrary vowels, a, i, v," and proceeds to reduce their quantity to rule in a manner so easy, clear, and concise, that absolutely nothing is left that could be desired. And here we must pause to express our opinion, that the great merit of this work, as of its predecessor the Greek Grammar, is the wonderful simplicity-the great tact shown in disencumbering the subject from useless and bewildering technicalities, and the completeness of the explanations; which last, by leaving nothing to be