house adjourned with an impression, that his argument against Catholic emancipation was very strong, and had not been answered. A greater effect it could not have produced. Compared with it, a division of ten more votes in favour of the minister would have been trifling. -No one admired this speech or lamented its effects more than the Reminiscent. But,-in the course of the debates on the catholic petition in the year 1821, the Reminiscent had the unspeakable pleasure of witnessing the complete immolation of this justly celebrated oration, by Mr. Plunkett. In a speech, which, by the universal testimony of all who heard it, has been seldom equalled, he raised the question of catholic emancipation, to an height far above the reach either of the arguments or the eloquence of its adversaries: there he placed it, and held the temple*. * "Templumque tenebit," (Georgic. III. 16). The Reminiscent here begs leave to suggest an observation which has frequently occurred to him, in perusing the beginning of this book of the Georgics, and which leads him to suspect that some verses in it have been transposed. In the three first lines of it, Virgil proposes his subject, "Hactenus Arvorum cultus, et sidera cali; "Nunc te Bacche canam, nec non silvestria tecum The five verses which follow these, contain an invocation to Bacchus, the founder, if he may be so called, of the poet's theme: "Huc pater, O Lence! tuis hic omnia plena In the debate on the catholic question, in the last session of parliament, their adversary again "Floret ager, spumat plenis vindemia labris: Huc pater, O Lence, veni! nudataque musto "Tinge novo mecum dereptis crura cothurnis. This brings the poet to the ninth verse. There he enters upon his subject; and treats it in a simple and didactic style, till the thirty-ninth; when, quite on a sudden, and without any connection with what precedes or follows, he apostrophizes his great patron; 66 Tuque ades, inceptumque und decurre laborem, 66 Atque per ambages et longa exorsa tenebo.” The poet then returns to the didactic strain. Now, is there not some reason to suppose, that the whole of this apostrophe is transposed; and should have immediately followed the invocation of Bacchus? Is not this more natural? Do not the verses, as they now stand, interrupt the flow of the passage? This conjecture appears to be countenanced, in some measure, by the beginning of the first Georgic. There, immediately after the invocation of the deities, Cæsar is apostrophized, and the didactic strain is, for the first time, then assumed. In the third Georgic also, the Reminiscent suspects that the text has been tampered with. He requests his readers to peruse from the forty-eighth to the one hundred and twentythird verse, and then consider whether the three last verses in the passage, "Quamvis sæpe fugâ versos ille egerit hostes, "Et patriam Epirum referat, fortisque Mycenas, broke a lance both of skill and power against them: but Mr. Canning was their champion,-he produced in their defence whatever a complete view of the subject, taste, genius, a kind and honourable mind, or an enlarged understanding could supply, and triumphed.-While a British catholic shall exist, Mr. Canning's name will be pronounced with gratitude; while classical eloquence shall be duly appreciated, his speech will be read with admiration. be not spurious, or should not be interpolated between the sixty-second and sixty-third verses. The Reminiscent would ask, to what, if they are not thus interpolated, the word Quamvis can be referred ? The Reminiscent having communicated the preceding observations to Dr. Parr, a correspondence between them followed. With the Doctor's permission, an extract from one of his letters is inserted in the Appendix*; and will, assuredly, be highly gratifying to the reader. It should be added, that, in the letter to which Dr. Parr's is an answer, the Reminiscent had intimated an opinion suggested by him in a former part of this publication, that Virgil's language had sometimes an extreme of polish †. 鲁 Appendix, note 1. + Ant. p. 17. XIV. HORE BIBLICÆ. THE Hora Biblice was the next publication of the Reminiscent. It is divided into two parts; the first contains " An historical and literary ac"count of the original text, early versions and printed editions of the Old and New Testament; "or the sacred books of the Jews and Christians :" -The second contains "An historical and literary "account of the Koran, Zend-Avesta, Kings, and "Edda; or the works accounted sacred by the Mahometans, the Parsees, the Hindus, the Chi"nese and the Scandinavian nations." 66 1. The composition of the first part of this publication afforded the Reminiscent great pleasure. Every thing on the subject of it was new, curious, interesting and instructive. It unfolded to him something of the mystery of collating manuscripts, and of the relative values of various readings; it occasionally led him to many other new sources of literary amusement and information:-all tending to impress upon him a just notion of the text of the sacred writings. His occupations did not enable him to extend his inquiries far into the text of the Old Testament: and the little which he has said upon it, renders the work, in this respect, imperfect. We owe the first of the Greek printed editions of the New Testament, to Erasmus; his edition was successively followed by those of Robert Stephens, Beza, and the Elzevirs. By the last of these, the text, which had fluctuated in the preceding editions, acquired a consistency; and, being generally followed in all the subsequent editions, this edition became the received exemplar of the text: it is remarkable that the editor of it is unknown. In 1707, the celebrated edition of the reverend Dr. John Mill was published at Oxford: he inserted in it all the collections of various readings, which had been published before his time; and collated several manuscripts, not previously collated the whole of the various readings collected by him is said, without any improbability, to amount to 30,000. His edition was followed by those of Bengel and Wetstein. The last is particularly important on account of the mass of rabbinical matter, which is contained in the annotations, and which serves to explain, in numerous instances, the hebraizing expressions and allusions of the text: it is a kind of perpetual commentary, replete with learning at once recondite and useful. In other respects, this edition has been superseded, in some measure, by the less bulky edition of Griesbach. From this, Dr. White has formed his Diatesseron, or four gospels in one; an excellent work, and likely to become the school-book of every place of |