CURRENT LITERATURE.
Bentley on the Epistles of Phalaris. Edited by the late Wilhelm Wagner, PhD. (Bell and Sons.)—Dr. Wagner's edition has now been added to "Bohn's Classical Library." Most readers know something of Bentley, and how he demolished the Epistles of Phalaris, and with them the reputation of their Oxford champion, from having read about the subject in Macaulay. The book itself is probably known to very few, yet few more valuable contributions to Classical literature have been made in England. The great scholar shows at his best in the admirable criticism which it contains. After- wards, he seemed to be spoilt by the sense of mastery which his use of this powerful weapon had given him. He did some good work for Homer, but he certainly carried the licence of conjecture beyond all reasonable bounds, and there is positive absurdity in his edition of Milton. But the Phalaris is admirable. Besides doing its work so - thoroughly that there never could be any need of doing it again, it is a prodigious storehouse of learning, and it is readable in a way that perhaps no other book of the kind ever was readable. Besides Phalaris, the Doctor demolished equally apocryphal Letters of Them istocles and Letters of Socrates (his dealing with the story of the two wives of Socrates is a capital example of his manner), and he did nearly as much for one Dr. Barnes, Professor of Greek in his day at Cambridge, who had the ill-fortune to excite his wrath. Barnes had emended the Scholiast who tells the story how Agamemnon asked the judgment of a Trojan captive when Ajax and Ulyssez contended for the arms of Achilles. The Greek ran 2or2) 6:rori P. 2x .--AA _pou T-e /A-XAOY —11...,-110)21/• This the Professor altered to w, oz Tpie'es, a. 4. Bentley simply alters the Tau into Eta, and makes Tpicav into 'HpWcev. But the culmination of his scorn is when Dr. Barnes, writing a Greek epigram, makes the second syllable of ebwpayta short.
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