Lady Hamilton still divided with his country the empire of his heart. While ploughing his way onwards to victory and his doom, his time was variously employed in giving plans of battle and assurances of triumph; in composing madrigal sonnets to the praise of his absent mistress, and in uttering impotent imprecations upon the wronged and widowed woman, whose blameless existence prevented the licensed elevation of her rival to the bed which she dishonoured. Even in the rude shock of conflicting "ammirals," " a he often turned an anxious glance from the beckoning hand of victory, back to

"the bowers

Where Pleasure lay carelessly smiling at Fame." The death-shot which probed his heart, only proved the tenacity with which it clung to its object even in the agony of its last pulsation. The sound of triumph for a moment diffused over his rigid features a preternatural lustre, the twilight of setting mortality and dawn of an opening eternal day. But the laurel and the cypress were again regarded with equal indifference. That great spirit poured forth its last gasp in aspirating the name of his Emma, and in vainly commending her to the gratitude of his country.

Let a tear of sympathy and pity "brighten with verdure the grave" of departed merit, and obliterate the recollection of its errors. Let not, however, the author of those errors expect to descend into her tomb in peace or with honour. The sorrows and the injuries which she had heaped upon an injured and forlorn lady, recoiled upon Lady Hamilton with a tenfold measure of retribution. Of that meteor, which had culminated in splendour, and admiration, and disastrous influence, the setting was amid clouds, and darkness, and tempests. The last years of Lady Hamilton's life were embittered by neglect, imprisonment, desertion, and distress. Let us humbly hope that her late repentance may have been accepted. Light be the earth on her ashes!

But in the numerous instances of female genius and influence perverted from domestic life, their legitimate sphere, to public or masculine pursuits, however women may have become admirable, they have seldom been amiable; and in general it seems, that in abandoning their feminine avocations, they cannot "unsex" themselves, but carry with them into public business, the little jealousies, personal vanity, and causeless timidity, which, in private, men censure and delight in; but which, thus misplaced, expose the fair trespasser to derision, or tempt her to guilt.

SCRIBLERUS FŒMINILIS.b

Milton.

a ..... the mast of some great ammiral. b The classical orthography of this word is fœminalis. But Queen Elizabeth, in her Latin oration to the university of Cambridge, having thought pro

ART. VI.—Thesaurus Græcæ Linguæ ab H. Stephano constructus. Editio nova, auctior et emendatior. Vol. I. Partes I—IV. Londini, in ædibus Valpianis, 1815-1818.

HENRY STEPHENS complained, in a bad epigram, that his Thesaurus, which was a great treasure to others, was none to himself; in other words, that the expenses of his Treasury had impoverished his exchequer. That illustrious, but somewhat fretful, scholar, did not possess the inestimable advantage, which modern authors and editors enjoy, of living in a subscribing age. The art of puffing was then but little understood or practised. Such a thing as a Prospectus was never heard of; there were none of those convenient vehicles of literary information, which Mr. Murray and his brethren append to the covers of their periodical publications, by which the intelligence of forthcoming works is dispersed, with incredible swiftness, over every part of the reading world. Of these advantages the publisher of the present edition of the Thesaurus' has availed himself with great success. Indeed, without a certain prospect of liberal support, it would have been an act of the greatest imprudence to undertake a work of such vast labour and expense. The list of subscribers to this republication (if indeed it deserves the name) amounts to nearly eleven hundred; a number almost, if not altogether, unprecedented in the annals of literature.

Stephens lamented that his Thesaurus, when printed, did not sell; Mr. Valpy's is sold before it is printed: this is surely a great improvement in the condition of those, who labour in the mines of learning, and who have too frequently brought up the precious ore for the use of others, without enriching themselves. The great facility, with which subscriptions are now obtained by the publishers of expensive classical works, seems to indicate two things; an increase of national wealth, and a growing taste for ancient literature. The enormous sums of money which are annually expended, not only in projects of public utility, or of Christian benevolence, but upon the luxuries of learning, and the elegancies of art, bespeak an abundance of the means of life, greatly at variance with the picture which is commonly drawn of our national prosperity. And if we are to estimate the present state of ancient learning in this country by the gross and tangible arithmetic of the pounds, shillings, and pence, subscribed for Delphin,a Regent, and Varioper to pronounce it fœminilis, as l'Avocat des Femmes, I am bound to vindicate and adopt this latter reading. Her majesty's oration commenced—Etsi fœminilis pudor, &c.

a We allude to a precious scheme of Mr. Valpy's, now in progress, of repubTishing the very worst edition of the Latin Classics. This indefatigable and zealous printer does not seem to have had the remotest idea, that the value of the original Delphin editions consisted almost entirely in their scarcity; a merit

rum Classics, we shall be led to form a very exalted notion of the erudition of the age in which we live. Eleven hundred of the nobility, gentry, and clergy, eagerly subscribing their guinea a number (and some their two guineas) for a Greek Thesaurus, and feasting upon each livraison as it comes out, compose a phalanx of philology, which may be expected to defend the interests of classical literature against all the anti-Hellenists of the day. Our readers perceive that we take it for granted, that all subscribers can and do read the books for which they subscribe. Since, however, it is within the limits of possibility, that some of the proprietors of Mr. Valpy's Thesaurus may have been hitherto prevented by sickness, or occupation, or some other cause, from contracting an intimate acquaintance with the work to which they have set their names; we shall perhaps be rendering them an acceptable service, if we institute an examination of the first four numbers of the Thesaurus, and inquire how far they will justify us in looking for a complete or, at least, a useful Greek lexicon. An investigation of this kind, we apprehend, falls more peculiarly within our jurisdiction, as literary censors, and protectors-general of the reading world. The editor, who puts forth proposals for publishing by subscription an expensive work, makes a large demand upon the confidence of his subscribers, and pledges his faith to a full and accurate performance of the conditions upon which their support is obtained.

[The reviewer proceeds to give an account of 'Greek Lexicography,' and 'of the celebrated scholar, upon the basis of whose extraordinary work the present publication is constructed'—the latter of which we select.]

Henri Etienne, whose name being latinized, according to the custom of that age, into Stephanus, has amongst English scholars degenerated into Stephens, was the son of Robert Etienne, and the grandson of Henri, one of the earliest French printers, and, by the mother's side, of Josse Bade of Asc, better known to book collectors by the name of Badius Ascensius. He was born at Paris, in the year 1528, and grew enamoured of Greek at a very early age, in consequence of seeing some boys act the Medea of Euripides. His father caused him to be instructed in Greek before he had learned Latin; a plan of teaching which Henry Stephens himself always recommended, and which ought, in our opinion, to be generally adopted. While yet a boy, his skill in calligraphy was so remarkable, that he was thought to rival the Greek writing of Angelo Vegezio, the Cretan, who gave the models for the beautiful types, which were at that time used in the King's printing-office which his own publication of course cannot possess. The Regent Classics are minute volumes, with short prefaces in bad Latin by a Mr. Carolus Coote,

at Paris. Having spent some time, and not a little money, in visiting the scholars and the libraries of Italy, and in collecting manuscripts, he paid a visit to England in the year 1550, and at London went to see the lions in the Tower, one of whom danced a jig while a man fiddled; an incident which he afterwards employed to justify the well-known story of Arion and the dolphin. He began his typographical career in 1554, in the 26th year of his age; and continued it for the space of more than forty years; during which time he printed a prodigious number of ancient authors, many of them from manuscripts, exercising at the same time the office of a learned and ingenious, though somewhat bold critic. His claim to the title of the most learned of printers, no one pretends to dispute; few scholars, since the revival of letters, have succeeded in contracting so great a familiarity with the Greek language as Henry Stephens. Subsequent critics have discovered and pointed out many of its beauties and peculiarities, with which he was perhaps unacquainted; but for a general and comprehensive knowledge of its construction, and for an almost vernacular intimacy with it, Stephens is nearly unrivalled. The only person, perhaps, who can be put in competition with him in this respect, was his son-in-law, the celebrated and excellent Isaac Casaubon. His editions of the classical authors, when compared with those of former printers, are highly valuable for their accuracy, and from the circumstance of their having been, in most instances, either printed from, or collated with, manuscripts. In the year 1572, he published his Thesaurus Græcæ Linguæ, a work which had been planned, and in part executed, many years before, by his father, but the completion of which was reserved for the son'; and it may be doubted whether there exists a more stupendous monument of human industry and learning. It appears to have been eleven years in printing; the same time which Robert Stephens had employed in the publication of his Latin Thesaurus. In the following year he printed, in a separate volume, two glossaries, which, although not a part of the Thesaurus, are to be considered, together with his Animadversions and the Treatise on the Attic dialect, as an Appendix and completion of the work. A second edition was published, probably about the year 1580. To this eminent man belongs the praise of having been the first to point out, however imperfectly, the roots of the Greek language; and to reduce them to their derivatives and compounds.

The profit to which Stephens might justly look, as a well-deserved remuneration for the labour of so many years, is said to have been intercepted by the treachery of one Joannes Scapula (Jean Epaule, we suppose) who published an Epitome of the Thesaurus in the year 1579. The account commonly given of this transaction is, that Scapula, being employed by Stephens as a corrector of the

press, during the publication of his Thesaurus, extracted the most important words and explanations, comprised them in one volume, and published them under his own name. In consequence of this notion, the memory of poor Scapula has been loaded with reproach. It does not, however, appear, from any complaint of Stephens himself, that Scapula was guilty of a breach of trust; since it is probable that he had quitted his employment, long before the completion of the Thesaurus; and as his Lexicon was not published till seven years after it, we see no reason to doubt the fact of his having epitomized the Thesaurus itself. This is all which is laid to his charge by Stephens; an act indeed of ingratitude, and to a certain degree of dishonesty, but not quite so bad as to deserve the appellation of gross disingenuity and fraud.' Scapula himself declares, that he had been for several years occupied about his plan, when he met with the Thesaurus. If this work was reprinted about the year 1580, we may fairly doubt, whether the effect of Scapula's Epitome was so ruinous to Stephens as it is represented to have been. At all events, it did not produce the immediate consequence of bankruptcy, which is stated, in the biographical dictionaries, to have followed the publication of the Thesaurus; for, not to mention that he received, in 1578, a douceur of 3000 livres, and an order for a pension of 300 livres, from Henri III., it appears that in 1579 he obtained a privilege for the exclusive publication of the Greek and Latin historians; and that he possessed a country house, which was burnt down in 1585. The real causes of the confusion into which his affairs fell, were the civil wars which followed the death of Henri III. Whatever may have been the occasion of his distress, the melancholy fact is, that this indefatigable printer and eminent scholar died in a hospital at Lyons in 1598, in a state of poverty and mental imbecility.

With regard to the Thesaurus itself, there are three things to be remarked. First, that the examples of words were collected by the various contributors to the work, some from printed editions of authors, some from MSS. some from memory, some from conjectural correction. Secondly, that several Greek authors, especially grammarians, have been published since the compilation of the Thesaurus, containing many words of which the existence was not then known. Thirdly, the science of etymology, which H. Stephens took for his guide in the arrangement of his lexicon, was then in its infancy; and indeed the genius of the language itself, was but imperfectly understood. These considerations will point out to us the nature and cause of the leading defects, conspicuous in this great work; viz. inaccurate or falsified quotations, the deficiency of several thousand words, and a wrong classification, both of primitives and derivatives. It was not till the age of Hemsterhuys, that the analogies of the Greek language were developed