Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/262

 252 Journal of Philology. of Pergamus, and the author whom Pliny had by him, is a ques- tion not of conjecture but of fact : fact too, the importance of which is great indeed, when we remember that it is the school of Pergamus which furnished the key-note and the starting point, from which the sculpture of the so-called Roman aera took its tone and its rise : and I cannot feel that any apology is neces- sary for having arrested the attention of Pliny's readers on a name, which they might otherwise have passed over in silence, as too insignificant to deserve, or too obscure to repay enquiry. Well has Quintilian said : " in studiis nihil parvum." I am fully prepared to expect that my readers always sup- posing I have any readers will lavish their censures on the foregoing pages in no scanty measure. Rambling, uncritical, inconclusive, such are the epithets I hear by anticipation. I plead guilty to all the counts of the indictment, but I am sure the verdict will be accompanied by a recommendation to mercy. For I would urge in my defence that although the conjectures here advanced may seem somewhat crazy and ricketty when taken by themselves, they will be found to bear a totally differ- ent aspect, when they are fitted each of them into their proper place in the history of art taken as a whole*. C. K. Watson. [2b be continued."] VII. On a point in the Doctrine of the ancient Atomists. In a paper on Lucretius in the first number of this Journal I discussed at some length a passage (i. 529 634) which had suffered grievously from the uncalled for alterations of all the editors, and I endeavoured to show its connexion with and its bearing upon the rest of Lucretius' Atomic Theory. There can I think be no reasonable doubt of the poet's meaning. He wished at one and the same time to maintain in its integrity that cardinal point in the Epicurean physics that matter con- sisted of atoms impenetrable and indestructible, yet possessed of shape, extension and weight, and to obviate the apparent See Note, p. 264.