scholars through whose hands it has come down to us, the learned Mgr. Bayardi, devoted no fewer than five quarto volumes to preliminaries connected with the name and history of the city! The catalogue of Herculanean antiquities which he drew up by order of the king is a curious monument of erudite trivialities; and a witty epigram which was composed on the occasion of its publication, can hardly be said to exaggerate the learned obscurity in which, by excessive detail and endless digression, he has contrived to bury the very facts which he desired to illustrate : 'Herculea urbs quondam sævis oppressa ruinis, Et terræ vastis abdita visceribus, Magnanimi Regis jussu jam prodit in auras, A Royal Academy was founded in 1756, expressly for the illustration of the Herculanean antiquities, and the publication of its literary remains; but although almost all the eminent academicians, Rosini, Mazzocchi, Ignarra, Baffi, and Federici, had a share in the preparation of the first volume of the series, nearly forty years elapsed before it made its appearance in 1793. The Dissertatio Isagogica' of Rosini, which was to have ushered in the collection, was not published till four years later. The second volume did not appear till 1809; and it is separated by a still wider interval from the third, which dates so late as 1827. This third volume had actually been published prior to the notice of the collection which appeared in this Journal in December, 1828; but, owing to the precariousness and irregularity of literary intercourse with Naples at that period, it had not come into our hands at the time of the publication of the article, which, in consequence, comprehends only the first and second volumes of the Volumina Herculanensia.' Although separated so far from the first volume, the third likewise was published under the editorial superintendence of Carlo Rosini. Soon afterwards, however, Rosini was succeeded in the post which he had so long occupied, as head of the Papyrus Commission, by his pupil, Angelo Scotti, a native of the island of Procida, who had been professor of Palæography in the University of Naples, and preceptor of the Duke of Calabria, afterwards Ferdinand II. He was assisted in his labours as editor and commentator by several of his fellow academicians, and especially by Antonio Ottaviani, the translator and commentator of Polystratus's treatise 'De temerario Contemptu,' in the fourth volume, which was printed in 1832. The fifth was divided into two parts. The first appeared in 1835; but, owing to some difficulties which arose in the progress of the printing or deciphering of the second part, its publication was delayed until 1843; so that this portion of the fifth volume is posterior in date to the sixth volume, which appeared in 1839. For a similar reason the seventh volume, although the fac-simile plates have long been engraved, and the translation and commentary in great part completed, still remains unpublished. The rest, as far as the eleventh, have appeared in regular order; the eighth in 1844, the ninth in 1848, the tenth in 1850, and the eleventh in 1855; since which date no addition had been made to the series until the recent change in the government of Southern Italy. The new Minister of Public Instruction issued a commission, under the presidency of the Prince di Sangiorgio, and including the eminent antiquarians and scholars Cavaliere Minervini and Signor Fiorelli, one of whose first duties was to examine and report upon the condition and prospects of an undertaking which had so long engaged and interested the literary world. The report of this Commission was such as to lead to a total change in the plan of publishing the papyri. It was found that the prepa rations for the continuation of the work under the late government were in a very forward state, and that in one department especially that of the engraved fac-simile plates - no fewer than two thousand columns were already ready for press; but that in very few cases had the accompanying translation and commentary been completed; even that of the long-delayed seventh volume being still in an unfinished state. Hence, to continue the work with translation and commentary, as originally projected, would be to delay, almost indefinitely, the appearance of the long-expected volumes. The Commission, therefore, advised that, relinquishing the ambitious and erudite plan in which the work was originally undertaken, the government should follow the more humble example which was set by the University of Oxford in 1824-5, and should be content with giving to the public the mere fac-similes of the papyri, leaving to the learned throughout Europe the labour, as well as the honour, of translating, interpreting, and criticising the text. After some consideration this suggestion was adopted. The present issue, therefore, of the 'Herculanensia Volumina' appears in a new series, the first volume of which has just been completed. It is entirely independent of the earlier collection: but as that collection is at present imperfect (the seventh volume, as we saw, being still unpublished), the new editors have charged themselves with the duty of supplying this hiatus. The seventh volume of the old series was to have contained the celebrated treatise Περὶ Εὐσεβείας, with a translation and commentary by the Cavaliere Quaranta; and as the advanced years and enfeebled health of this gentleman preclude all hope of its early completion, the editors have resolved to substitute another work for the Περὶ Εὐσεβείας, as the seventh volume of the original collection. The work selected for this purpose is a further portion of Philodemus's Treatise on Rhetoric,' some books of which treatise had already appeared. Another volume of it had been left by the old editors in a state of complete preparation for the press, the translation and commentary having been executed with great care by the late Salvatore Cirillo, exactly on the same plan with that of the earlier volumes. This work, accordingly, will be issued in a short time as the seventh volume of the first series; and, should the Пɛpì EvσɛBelas of Cavaliere Quaranta be hereafter completed, it will be printed as a twelfth and concluding volume of the same series. We shall speak in detail hereafter of the contents of these several volumes. For the present it will be enough to say that, with the exception of a fragment of a Latin hexameter poem on the battle of Actium, the works recovered are entirely Greek, and comprise fragments, more or less extensive, of several authors, all of the Epicurean school, including some portions of one of the works of the great master himself. The other Epicurean writers are Metrodorus, Phædrus, Polystratus, and, above all, Philodemus, who is by far the most voluminous of the entire, as well as the most miscellaneous in the selection of his subjects. 6 Very few words must suffice for the volume of the new series just issued. It consists mainly of fragments of the same Philodemus so many of whose works had already turned up in the earlier publication. The greater part of the new volume is occupied with what evidently formed a portion of Philodemus's work Пlepi Kaniwv; viz. fragments of a Treatise on Anger,' and of another On Flattery.' These are followed by scraps from his work entitled IIpayparsial, and from two other works, of which the authors, and even the titles, are unknown. The volume consists barely of the fac-simile engraving of the papyrus, without translation or notes, and even without a reprint of the text in ordinary Greek characters; and we must confess that, whether we consider the dreary nature of its contents, or the absence of the extrinsic graces which a learned and ingenious editor can lend even to an unpromising subject, we fear it is not likely to render the study of the papyri more popular. At the same time we cannot, under all the circumstances, doubt the wisdom of the course which, as we learn from the preface of the learned editor, Cav. Minervini, the editors have resolved to pursue. The plates being already prepared for the press, it is plain that the course most advantageous for the general interests of literature is to throw them open to the inspection and criticism of the learned world, and to leave to individuals the selection of such portions among them as may appear to deserve more special editorial care. The general scholar must await the leisure or the enterprise of those patient and industrious critics, who like Petermann, Schömann, Sauppe, and Gros, will find time and means to throw this raw material into a form better suited to the general capacity, even if they cannot hope to render it perfectly attractive to the general taste. Such is a summary of nearly a century's work at Naples. In the original publication of the papyri nothing whatever has been done elsewhere, with the exception of a single papyrus, De Natura Deorum,' inserted in Mr. Drummond's Hercula'nensia,' and the two octavo volumes of lithographed facsimiles printed at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, and already noticed in this journal. But a considerable amount of criticism has been bestowed, especially in Germany, on the texts of the Neapolitan and Oxford editors; and several of the works contained in the general collection have been republished in France and Germany, with special commentaries and dissertations. In Germany, indeed, the progress of the work has been observed with more interest than in any other country. One of the very earliest of European scholars who called attention to the value of the discovery was John Winkelmann. The first to submit its results to the critical scrutiny of the general world of letters by separate republication, was Christian Gottlieb von Murr, of Nuremberg; and we shall see that the most learned and industrious of the more recent critics and editors of the papyri have been of the same country. For a time, it is true, our own country yielded to no other in activity and zeal for the furtherance of the undertaking, and especially for the prosecution of the various experiments to which the papyri have been submitted for decipherment. Soon after the publication of the first volume at Naples, an offer was made to the Neapolitan Government by the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., to take upon himself the expense of deciphering and publishing a certain proportion of the papyri. It would be out of place to re-open in detail the history of this transaction, which led to many misunderstandings, and is still involved in some mystery. The results alone are of real importance; and it will be enough to say that in the year 1800, the Prince's chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Hayter, was appointed to the work, and entered upon it with vigour at Naples in the end of the following year. Under the impulse given by him the work proceeded vigorously. Up to the time of his arrival but eighteen manuscripts had been deciphered. Before 1806 nearly two hundred were, wholly or in part, unrolled under his auspices. 、 But on the occupation of Naples by the French in this year, when the Bourbon Court withdrew to Palermo, Mr. Hayter was compelled to share their flight. By some unexplained misarrangement, the papyri were all left behind at Naples, and the facsimile copies of those which had been unrolled remained in the hands of the Neapolitan Government in Palermo. A serious misunderstanding seems to have arisen as to the right of property in these copies; but after some time they were placed in the charge of the British Legation, and were ultimately forwarded to the Prince of Wales for publication in England. The fragment De Natura Deorum,' printed, as the first fruit of the enterprise, in the Herculanensia' (1810) of Sir William Drummond and Mr. Walpole, is one of these manuscripts. They were ultimately presented to the University of Oxford. Meanwhile the Prince of Wales was induced, by the confident representations of a German palæographer, Dr. Sickler, of Hildburghausen, to submit to his experiments some of the papyri which had been presented by the Neapolitan Government. Dr. Sickler proved to be an incapable pretender; and the result of this ill-considered proceeding was, not merely a loss of many hundred pounds, but the complete destruction of some of the best preserved and most promising among the papyri. Another attempt, based upon a different view of the chemical condition of the papyri from that which had before prevailed, was made in 1818, when Sir Humphry Davy, having first submitted to a lengthened examination the rolls which were within reach in England, was commissioned by the Prince of Wales to proceed to Naples for the purpose of obtaining a wider field for the completion of his experiments. Regarding as entirely erroneous the popular notion which ascribed the charred appearance of the rolls to the action of fire, Sir Humphry was of opinion that the condition in which they are now found, but which is by no means uniform in them all, is attributable solely to a gradual process of decomposition, more or less complete. His researches and experi VOL. CXVI. NO. CCXXXVI. Ꮓ |