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catalogue of them given in Prof. Campbell's Preface. Perhaps he inclines to attribute to the inferior MSS. rather more weight than the results justify; but on the other hand, to reject them all as simply worthless, with Cobet,' seems a somewhat rash and hasty proceeding. Of the Scholia I myself entertain a generally high opinion. They are epitomized from Alexandrine commentaries (úñоμvημoveúμaтa) by a learned hand, and they not only generally give the right explanation, but they often confirm or help to restore passages upon which doubts reasonably exist. In editing the four plays in this Volume I have been very carefully through the whole of them, and like E. Wunder in his edition, I have often quoted them as forming the simplest and most appropriate comment.

The translation of the words and phrases of Sophocles into anything like equivalent English, is a task so excessively difficult as to be in many cases well-nigh impossible. Of course, the Author's general meaning,--what he intended to express,is sometimes clear, or tolerably clear, when the mode in which he has expressed it has no parallel at all in our language. Hence literal translations often read very awkwardly (deterring some, perhaps, by their apparent harshness, from the study of Sophocles), and a more lax rendering must be given, if elegance of idiom is, as it ever should be, in justice to a great poet, an object to be held in regard. Our use of a very large number of Latin words is in itself a drawback in the rendering of Attic Greek. I have taken the greatest pains in this edition to render every phrase as accurately as possible, and have in very many instances attempted to improve on the renderings given in other editions, which, I must say, are often extremely unsatisfactory.

The language of Sophocles has been analyzed and explained by Prof. Campbell in an Introductory Essay so complete and so elaborate that it may well be called and even used as a Commentary to every difficult passage in the extant Plays of the Poet, aided by

2 Var. Lect. p. xxiv. " Aeschyli et Sophoclis Codex Mediceus est unicus testis, unde pendent caeteri omnes, et sunt propterea omnes perinde inutiles." Mr. Blaydes on the other hand calls "an accurate verbal collation of these MSS. a great desideratum" (Pref. p. xxvi).

the full index to the passages explained given at the end of the volume. "Some such review of the language of Sophocles" (the Author says in p. 106) "as that which has been imperfectly attempted in this Essay, appears to be necessary in order to interpret him with an approach to certainty." Sophocles, so to say, should be his own grammar; a grammar sui generis, because his language is of a kind in which "the government of one word by another is often suggested rather than actually determined,” and “the order and coherence of words and clauses are natural rather than grammatical" (p. 5). I entirely agree with Professor Campbell, that "many places would never have been suspected of corruption, if the unfixed, growing, and transitional nature of the language had been fully recognized" (p. 106).

Mr. Blaydes on the other hand lays it down as a principle of editing, that "if we are ever to appreciate the genius of former ages, we must surely relinquish the pertinacious adherence to the letter of MSS." He thinks that in Sophocles alone "thousands of passages still remain to be restored to their pristine integrity." In the Antigone alone, he has called in question the readings in upwards of sixty passages in the first two hundred lines. On this principle, a poem has almost to be reconstructed, and ancient literature would derive its chief value from being a good exercise for critical ingenuity.

In conclusion, I have only to express my confident hope that Mr. Blaydes will not be offended at the remarks I have made on his edition. He will find that I have made constant and thoughtful use of it, though I have so often differed from him. We are both alike lovers and students of one of the greatest of Greek Poets, and we have an equal desire to advance sound scholarship by teaching it, at all events, on strictly logical principles.

3 Preface to Sophocles, vol. i. (Bibl. Cl.), p. xxvii.

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