Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/376

 :j)i; Journal of Philology* be able to turn to a text which furnishes such valuable data for forming a judgment. Considering the advanced state of natural history in this country, the energy shewn in its pursuit, the eminence enjoyed by its professors, I think it is matter for regret that on this new text as a foundation some worthy superstructure be not raised by way of illustrating such portions of Pliny's voluminous works as treat of the Natural Sciences. Still more do I regret that the concluding books of the " Historia Naturalis " do not meet with a competent editor, one who to an adequate capacity for surmounting the philological difficulties of the task should add that wide archaeological erudition, the place of which nothing can supply. But I pass on to the more speoial subject of Pliny's value as an historian of ancient art. This it would be madness to deny, and I cannot but regret that some of the censures which critics have cast on the earlier books should have touched the last five, which treat indirectly treat on the history of art. I say indi- rectly, because Pliny, be it remembered, only enters incidentally into the question of ancient sculpture, statuary, and painting: his subject-matter is mineralogy ; and from this, as a trunk-line, he branches off into details on art and artists. Precious details in truth they are: a fact to which it has been my humble endeavour to give some additional prominence, by indicating, as far as might be, the general bearings and probable value of those works out of which Pliny compiled his information. With the interpretation of these concluding books, much, very much remains to be done; and I must reiterate the wish that they may ere long meet with a competent editor. The most im- portant part of his task would be the filling up the fragmentary notices in Pliny, so as to give them some organic connexion with the history of ancient art taken as a whole. For this end, rare and precious rcsourees are at his command, if he can only use them as he ought. None more precious than that internal law of development on which, as on a silver cord, the student of Hellenic art is able to string his facts. This law he will dis- cover partly by the study of extant remains of sculpture, partly by investigating the class of subjects assigned in the pages of Pliny and Pausanias to the more famous epochal artists, and partly by a careful comparison of the history of art with that