The Old Love and the New : a Tale of
Athens. By Sir Edward Creasy. Three vols. (Bentley.)—The Tale of Athens is a story of the loves of Leon, Athenian general, and Atalanta, companion of Aspasia, and actually ono of the two ladies whose capture by the men of Blegara was, according to Aristophanes, the cause of the Peloponnesian war. Not, the reader must understand, that she at all answers to the very uncomplimentary description which the comedian gives of the ladies in question. Her character is of the most spotless ; so, we are' told, was that of Aspasia. The chief interest of the story lies in the siege of Plats's, in which town Leon is shut up with an Athenian contingent, and from which ho makes his escape in the way described in Thucydides' famous chapters. All this is done with spirit, and is better, we think, than the more romantic part of the tale, the expedition, for instance, which Atalanta, who turns, by the way, into a most wonderful Amazon, in com- pany with the Megarian Diphilus, makes to Sinope. Then we are taken to Athens, and meet with all sorts of famous people, old acquaintances of the days when we used to read Aristophanes and Thucydides. There is Cloon, taking bribes in most unblushing fashion, and the gentlemanly Nicias, and Lamachus ; there is Aristippus of Cyrene, with his daughter Arete ; Socrates we catch a glimpse of and no more, Leon having a judicious fear of the "cross-examining elenchus," and Sir E. Creasy avoiding the opus periculosum of such a description. That these people are really made to live as we read of them is more than we can Bay ; but then how rare is that gift when a writer deals with a bygone age ! It is but once a generation that we get a book like Romola, which makes us feel as if we were actually in the Florence of Savonarola. Sir E. Creasy has not this art ; but he tells his tale with spirit, and studies his accessories with care. Still we think that whatever precedent of other writers of historical romances he may plead (as he does plead it in his preface), a little loss licence in chronology might have sufficed. There were famous people enough at Athena in the early part of the Peloponnesian war to satisfy any reasonable man, without compelling him to gross anachronisms, such as making Leon newly escaped from Plata (B.C., 428), see a young man called Plato from the breadth' of his brow (born 430 or, as some say, 428). And is not za,c6O.YrE; or xsamparsc, not aEz1.643.57s;, the right word for the dead (de/tine/0e NEW EDITIONS AND REPAINTS.—From Messrs. Nimmo we have two handsome octavo volumes ; The Canterbury Tales and Fairie Quene, with notes by D. Laing Purves, which contains also certain of the minor productions of the two poets. The contents of this volume will already have been within the reach of most readers ; not so those of the other, the Works of the British Dramatists, edited by John S. Vettie. The most famous plays of Green, Marlowe, Ban Jenson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and others, almost all of them mare names, though, it is true, well-known names to the majority of Englishmen, are given us here. The selection is made on the right principle; fragments of dramas give little notion of the dramatist's power ; but one whole play will do so. And one is about as much as in this busy age most readers can manage. And there is another very obvious reason for selection. A complete edition of the British Dramatists would have to bo kept under lock
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