Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/115

 105 Reviews. Aeschylos* Die Ermordung Agamemnon's. Griechisch mit met- rischer Uebersetzung und priifenden und erklarenden An- merkungen von J. A. Hartung (jEschylus' Agamemnon. The Greek text, with metrical translation and critical and explanatory notes by J. A. Hartung). Leipzig, 1853. If external indications may be trusted, iEschylean criticism in Germany has not been advancing satisfactorily for the last few years. To find anything really valuable on any considerable scale, we must go back to the days of K. O. Miiller and Klausen. Neither of those scholars was distinguished as a verbal critic, but both had that deep and thoughtful appreciation of their author's meaning, that habit of patient examination, "looking before and after," which go far to supply the want of textual acumen. At any rate, the verbal critics cannot be said to have been successful on their own ground. The only exception of which we are aware is Bamberger's Choephori, a work of great merit, and one too, which, though generally critical, does not altogether disdain the task of explanation. The Oresteia of Franz is full of clever guesses where no guessing is required ; but the instances in which real light is thrown on a passage, either by the editor himself or by his mentor, H. L. Ahrens, are far from numerous. Dindorf's second edition, for which Oxford, we fear, must be held partially responsible, quite negatives the merit of his first, abounding in rash and unauthorized alterations, without any marked improvement except perhaps in the arrangement of the metres. Last of all, Hermann, who for years had been complaining that "jEschylus was becoming more unlike himself the oftener he was edited," has left behind him a work of which all that can be said is that it certainly redeems his promise of "delivering his author from the many conjectures of many critics 1 ' into the uncontrolled power of a single ruthless inno- vator. That it should excite great attention, especially among his own countrymen, was only to be expected. Accordingly we observe that Meineke has published cheap editions of the Pro- metheus and the Persce, with the Medicean Scholia and Hermann's