Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/681

671 HANNIBAL'S PASSAGE OVER THE ALPS. 1 HE celebrated question of HannibaPs passage across the Alps has now for some years been suffered to sleep in this country, and it appears to be a pretty general persuasion that it has been finally set at rest. The result of General Melville's personal observations, illustrated by De Luc's learning, and confirmed by the investigations of an English traveller (the author of the Oxford Dissertation on the Passage of Han- nibal across the Alps), was in 1825 repeated in the Edinburgh Review, and by the last writer (p. 182) is supposed to be placed beyond the reach of controversy. It is probable that the Reviewer, though he has certainly contributed less of argu- ment to the cause than any of his predecessors, has produced more effect on the mind of the public than all of them put together, and that he has the chief merit in establishing the general conviction which seems at present to prevail, that Hannibal crossed the Alps by the passage of the little St Bernard. If the repose into which the controversy has sub- sided had been merely the result of weariness on the part of the disputants or of the public, we should have scrupled to add even a scrap to the enormous mass of literature which has been already piled upon this theme. But as those who have taken an interest in the question, and who are not wedded to the opinion they may have embraced, may like to know on what grounds arguments which to themselves had appeared decisive have not satisfied others, and by what means later inquirers have attempted to remove objections which they had thought fatal to a different view of the subject, we make no apology for reviving the discussion. Our design however is not to pursue the history of the controversy through the various works in which it has been carried on abroad since it has been dropped at home : an attempt for which we have neither space, means, nor inclination : we shall confine ourselves to a brief notice