"To the highly-famed MR. PORSON,

C. G. HEYNE wishes the greatest health.

"As it is inconsistent alike with my disposition and practice to decline to do any service or kindness requested of me, especially when such request proceeds from a highly deserving person, you will, I hope, excuse me if I seem rather obtrusively to trespass on your occupation or your leisure. You have received from one of the most learned of my countrymen a book on the metres of the ancients, with a letter which he wrote to accompany it. That gentleman is deceived in supposing that I have so much influence with you as to prevail on you to grant to my entreaties what he so anxiously desires. He will more easily obtain his object by addressing himself to your kindness, provided there be but a possibility of accomplishing that which he has in view.

"You will see by the book that the learned writer has attached himself with great devotion to Plautus, and is eager to bring to effect what many, and especially the great Bentley, have conceived or attempted in regard to that author. As Bentley's papers are deposited somewhere with you, he is very anxious to be allowed the privilege of inspecting them. As to the attainment of his object, I know not whether you have any friendship or connexion with those gentlemen from whom permission for that purpose is to be obtained; but I am sure that you will not be wanting in inclination or zeal for the promotion of literature, and especially for the furtherance of a design to settle the text of Plautus, an author whose metres scarcely one mind in a century has sufficient learning, power, or will, to restore.

"So much for Hermann. For myself, be assured that I have availed myself, with so much the more eagerness, of this opportunity of addressing you by letter, as my sincere regard for you, and my high admiration of your recondite learning and exquisite judgment, are perpetually growing stronger; and to express these feelings to you, though but by a word or two, seemed to be to lighten myself of a great burden. Such indeed is human nature, that we delight to

open our thoughts to any one to whom we are drawn by strong affection. It shall be my constant object to prove myself not unworthy of your kindness.

"Gottingen, Dec. 21st, 1796."

Whether Porson returned any answer to these letters is not known. It is not likely that he answered Hermann; but, with all his dislike to letter-writing, he may have favoured Heyne with a reply.

CHAP. XV.

PUBLICATION OF THE ORESTES.-ALLUSIONS TO WAKEFIELD IN THE NOTES;

TO INVERNIZIUS, AMMON, AND REISKE.— SOME REMARKS ON A PASSAGE IN HOMER.

IN the following year, 1798, appeared the Orestes. Wakefield, at the end of his Diatribe, had recommended Porson, if he continued to edit Euripides, not to make his notes so dry and formal, but to render them more entertaining by the interspersion of amoenitates and lepores, and disquisitions on any matters that might occur to him in the course of his reading; to produce, in fact, such annotations as Wakefield himself attached to his Lucretius, where everything suitable or unsuitable is seized upon for discussion, and the tail of a comment has no more relation to the head of it than the tail of a fish to the head of a woman. Porson gave a hint or two, in his notes on the Orestes, that he remembered this advice, but was little induced to follow it. Having occasion, in his remarks on the fifth verse, to speak of the discrepancies of the poets as to the punishment of Tantalus, he concludes with saying, "I know not, gentle reader, whether you have found your patience exhausted in reading this note; I have entirely exhausted mine in writing it. But if you are not yet satisfied with these criticas delicia, these delicacies of criticism, read

what Guellius and Cerdanus have collected," &c. In remarking, ver. 631, on σy óyou xpsioσwv, that one manuscript has xpsíoσov, which perhaps some commentator, paulo calidior, may add to his store of such expressions, defending its elegance by the recondite Dulce satis humor, he makes an evident allusion to Wakefield, who was calidus enough, and who was fond of loading his pages with such illustrations. And when he published the Medea, he observed that he "had intimated, in his note on the fifth verse of the Orestes, that he could have written long, nay very long, notes, having no connexion with his subjects; but that he had hitherto so endeavoured to use his power as not to abuse it."

There are other allusions to Wakefield in the notes on the Orestes. Speaking of neuter verbs which assume an active signification, he mentions èxτýσσ and peĩv, in Hec. 181, 532, as examples of this assumption, and says that it would be the act of a madman to disturb the reading in those passages; but Wakefield had sought to disturb it in both passages. Another allusion to him is made, in reference to the same subject, on verse 1428, where it is said that Tepa Tóda, in Hec. 53, is a much better reading than spa Todí, which Wakefield had wished to introduce. In ver. 435 of the Hecuba, Wakefield had taken under his patronage, in his Diatribe, a conjecture of Jacobs, ὄμμα for ὄνομα, on which Porson, at ver. 1081 of the Orestes, comments thus:

"As either of these two words is easily changed for the other by transcribers, it is sometimes difficult to determine, when manuscripts differ, which is the proper word; but, when manuscripts agree, I would make no alteration. I, therefore, in my note on Hec. 435, προσειπεῖν γὰρ σὸν ὄνομ

6

ἐξεστί μοι, EoTi μo, omitted to notice the conjecture of Frederic Jacobs, oupa for ovopa, as a useless alteration; but, as another opportunity of adverting to it now offers, I will give it a brief consideration. First, I would ask, what is wrong in the common reading? Is it wrong to say πpooεiπεîv ovoμa? If so, why? Because,' it may be answered, 'it occurs nowhere else.' Whether it occurs anywhere else or not, I do not know; but why do you not produce passages where your προσειπεῖν ὄμμα occurs ? If you answer that this expression is nowhere to be found, I ask you again how it is reasonable to eject an expression of which there is one example in order to substitute another of which there is no example? However, to say the truth, πpoσavdâv õμμa seems to present itself in Eschylus, Choeph. ver. 236; though there indeed Valckenaer reads ὄνομα: while concerning ὄμμαTOS, in the 415th verse of the Phoenissæ, which is his own conjecture, he does not speak decidedly. To me it appears that in all these passages the received reading should be retained. Jacobs is a man not deficient either in ability or learning, but he often abuses both these qualifications to disturb sound readings. Why, when the ignorance and audacity of transcribers have introduced so many solecisms and barbarisms, which nobody need hesitate to attack,

'Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos?'

why should he engage in enterprises that can bring him no honour?"

Jacobs and Wakefield are not the only commentators that are attacked in the notes on the Orestes.

the various readings in verse 245, "

Out of

may be con

Καὶ μὴ μόνον φρόνει, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρᾶσσε τάδε,

a most elegant line, which Le Clerc, Reiske, and Triller would adopt, I am sure, if they were alive; and which