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ture-room, and paints the effects of the lecturing:-all this Dr. Vaughan has done. Such is not Dr. Böhringer's way. But he has given us the substance of the Trialogus, well arranged, so that the student who reads German can find a careful rendering of the very words of Wycliffe on every theological point, without exploring the Latin original itself. And those who have ever seen that wilderness of scholastic Latinity, wretchedly punctuated, abounding in errors, and full of the most barbarous words and phrases, will perceive at once how much loss of time and patience has been spared them by the Doctor's toil. The section devoted to Wycliffe as Theologian' gives us (on the plan above adverted to) his opinions (1), on the Being of God, the Trinity, Attributes, &c.; (2), on Cosmology and Anthropology-Creation-Angels-Man, &c.; (3), Soteriology-Person and Work of Christ; (4), Eschatology; (5), Ethics. His doctrine concerning Sacraments and the Church is given in the section which treats of Wycliffe as Reformer.'

6

The account given by Dr. Böhringer of the trial at Lambeth before the clergy, in 1378, is curiously characteristic. We get the leading points in certain articles of accusation and reply, with here and there indications of certain verbal differences. But as for any representation of the remarkable scene there enacted, not a touch. The whole affair might have been little more than the publication of a pair of hostile pamphlets, written by one of either party at leisure, and no trial, no hand-to-hand struggle at all, for anything the author shows us. We cannot realise a life-and-death wrestle between fellow-creatures-between the champion of light and the instruments of darkness. Lambeth might be in the moon. Certain bags of parchments tilt at each other, and that is all. The documents displace the human nature of the crisis. The actors themselves are driven out by their own pens, and buried under their own papers.

The Protestant Theological and Historical Encyclopædia. Being a condensed Translation of Herzog's Real Encyclopedia, with Additions from other sources. By Rev. J. H. BOMBERGER, D.D. Assisted by distinguished Theologians of various denominations. Parts I., II. T. and T. Clark; Hamilton and Adams; Lindsay and Blakiston (Philadelphia).-We have read a number of the articles in the parts which have been sent us, and compared them with the original. We have not found that anything of importance in the German Encyclopædia has been sacrificed for the sake of condensation. Thestrong point of Herzog's Encyclopædia lies in its contributions to hitorical theology and symbolism. In these departments it is a work of great value. Some of its defects as a dictionary of biblical topography and antiquities have been judiciously supplied by Dr. Bomberger from Winer and other sources. The article on Adam gives a full and lucid account of the theories and the controversies which in Germany and elsewhere have gathered about this portion of the Mosaic narrative, at the same time maintaining decidedly the historic reality of the incidents recorded. That on the Apostolic Age states fairly the

curiously perverse hypothesis of Baur and the Tübingen school, while rejecting it as irreconcileable with the fundamental laws of historical inquiry. Indeed, we trust the publication of this Encyclopædia will contribute not a little to do away with that indiscriminate denunciation of German scholarship which is most loud or most envenomed where ignorance is most profound. It is now that Germany has confuted Germany, and opposed to her own destructive criticism a broader and more constructive spirit of inquiry, that more than ever she deserves a hearing. Surely her repentance merits the merciful consideration of the most rigid orthodoxy. Thinking men among us, whether German scholars or not, will get at the results of German thought; and our divines who would be equal to their high office must make themselves acquainted, in some way, with that audacity and that failure among our free-thinking Teutonic neighbours which has awakened such curiosity in England. It is true that the sceptical enterprise of the Strausses, the Baurs, and the Schweglers has ended in pitiable discomfiture-that these would-be Titans have been found to owe their apparent magnitude to the refraction of a fog; but it is at the same time true that the exposure of their weakness is owing to German erudition, the ruin of their structures to German orthodoxy. From the same quarter comes both the bane and its antidote. Those alone are entitled to exult in the victory who possess some acquaintance with the nature of the quarrel. Those who pretend to lead public opinion, and yet anathematize wholesale both the good and the evil in German literature, can be rescued from the contempt of the next generation only by a merciful and condign oblivion.

This Encyclopædia is Protestant, as its name indicates, while exhibiting the results of extensive inquiry into the development, the ritual, and the economics of Romanism. The article on the Acta Sanctorum does full justice to the historic researches of the Bollandists, so patient, so extended, and (for Rome) so courageously critical. At the same time, the notice of Maria d'Agreda does not fail to indicate the damnatory evidence afforded by the story of her book concerning the real spirit and working of the Romish system. The writer of the German article should have added a reference to the Abbé Dufresnoy's Traité Historique et Dogmatique sur les Apparitions, les Visions et les Révélations particulières, the second volume of which contains so impartial an account of the controversy. The article, Abraham, is in many respects praiseworthy, conveying much informa tion in a compressed form. In an interesting and erudite article on Antitrinitarianism, the translator has rendered a phrase familiar to every student of German philosophy so as to convey a meaning precisely the opposite of that intended. At p. 191, instead of from without ourselves,' he should have written from within ourselves.' The last sentence of the paragraph, too, is meaningless, and we had to consult the German to discover a sense. There may have been a misprint. The insertion of an of' would make it comprehensible, though awkward, English. At p. 40, Dypticha is written by mistake for Diptycha. As a whole, however, a very creditable accuracy has been

Tischendorf's Fragmenta Sacra Palimpsesta.

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obtained. Into so large a work, on which so many hands are employed, errors will be sure to creep, which must be corrected from time to time as they are discovered. The design and execution, so far, are such as render the work worthy to form the basis of many successive editions.

Fragmenta Sacra Palimpsesta (Fragments of Sacred Palimpsests; or, Fragments of both the Old and New Testaments'). Lately brought to light and edited by A. F. CONSTANTIUS TISCHENDORF. One Vol. Folio. 1855. Leipsic: Heinrichs. London: Nutt.-The name of Professor Tischendorf is known and honoured wherever biblical studies are cultivated. Taking up the important work so diligently and successfully prosecuted by Bentley, Porson, Mill, Wetstein, Griesbach, Lachmann, and others, he has devoted himself to the service of textual criticism with singular diligence and marked success. The results, indeed, of his endeavours are scarcely to be compared with those of Griesbach;for literary labour once performed, is performed for ever, and when the harvest has been reaped only gleanings can remain. Yet by no means inconsiderable are the fruits of Tischendorf's labours. In what may be termed the philosophy of textual criticism, he has indeed a distinction which is more especially his own, for to him belongs the merit of not only discovering, but acting on the discovery, that the basis of a good Greek text of the Sacred Writings should be not any edition which chance may have made prominent, nor any manuscripts which may have first come to hand on the application of printing to the Scriptures, but the most ancient authorities only-the text such as it is presented in manuscripts and Fathers extending back from the sixth to the fourth century. The recognition of this important truth involved the duty of searching for documents belonging to the most ancient periods of Church history. Here again our editor had been anticipated, and here again the harvest was already housed. The greater need was there for patient and minute investigation. The libraries of Europe had been industriously ransacked. Egypt and Assyria, however, remained open to critical enterprise; and they were the more inviting to biblical scholars because they had already rewarded their labours with ample and priceless treasures. Accordingly, in the year 1844, Tischendorf, encouraged and supported by distinguished patronage, set off on a voyage of critical discovery in Western Asia. Of his journey he has given a pleasing and instructive account in his two small volumes of travels in the East (Reise in den Orient, 1846). A second journey for the same worthy purpose was accomplished in 1853. The work whose title stands above presents to the learned world a series of publications (to be in all six volumes), containing copies or specimens of manuscripts thus discovered and obtained. These precious documents, with six others published in the year 1846, are to be classed with the oldest Scriptural manuscripts known to exist, and are judged by their discoverer to range between the seventh and the fourth century. The contents of the present volume are described as Palimpsests, because most of them are

printed from manuscripts which had served a double purpose. It is at present not unusual for cheap publishers to print announcements of their works on sheets already printed with other (but useless) matter. Something of this kind is a Palimpsest. Cicero's long-lost treatise, De Republica, was discovered by Cardinal Mai, librarian of the Vatican, on a Palimpsest. The monks having no taste for Cicero's speculations, and thinking a commentary of Augustin on the Psalms far more valuable, wrote the latter on the page occupied by the former, after having done what they could to obliterate the letters. The obliteration, however, was not entire; and so the banished work re-appeared to the keen eyes of modern criticism. This perspicacity Tischendorf aided by the resources of chemistry, and was thus enabled to restore the sacred word, all but blotted out by ignorant and venal transcribers. The learning, labour, patience, and dexterity required for these operations are something almost superhuman, and proportional should be the support and favour accorded to scholars whose lives are devoted to the dry and unremunerative, yet very important studies of textual criticism. The documents presented in this volume are eight. 1. Palimpsest fragments of the New Testament. 2. Palimpsest fragments of the Book of Numbers. 3. Palimpsest fragments of Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges. 4. Palimpsest fragments of the Second Book of Samuel and the First Book of Kings. 5. Palimpsest fragments of the Prophecies of Isaiah. 6. Venetian fragments of a Palimpsest Evangelistary, with specimens of the Evangelistary of the Barberini Palimpsest. 7. A fragment of the manuscript Frederico-Augustan, containing parts of Isaiah and Jeremiah. 8. Fragments of Psalms, written on paper, preserved in the British Museum The value of the volume will, from this statement of its contents, appear at once to the biblical scholar. Already, indeed, these, with his other collections, have been turned to good account by their editor in the critical editions of the Septuagint and New Testament, by which he has laid the lovers of these studies under great obligations. We cannot, indeed, deny that there are points on which exception might be taken or explanation asked, but our present object will be answered if this notice shall make more generally known the meritorious labours of the first biblical critic in the world, and in any way lend him aid to carry to completion the series of volumes thus commenced. The execution of the work is admirable; nor must it remain unsaid that the possibility, in a mercantile point of view, of issuing a work of the kind, honourably attests the value attached in Germany to critical studies. Would that in this particular England were not so far in the rear!

The Articles in this Number have swollen so much beyond our intended limits, as to have obliged us to omit notices of many good books in the present Epilogue.

THE BRITISH

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

APRIL 1, 1857.

ART. I.-(1.) The Works of Ben Jonson, in nine volumes, with Notes, critical and explanatory, and a Biographical Memoir. By WILLIAM GIFFORD. 1816.

(2.) Poetical Works of Ben Jonson. Edited by ROBERT BELL. 1856.

WHO knows not 'rare Ben Jonson,' and his epitaph, so laconic, yet so laudatory?-Ben Jonson, the joyous reveller at the Mermaid and the Apollo, to whom Fletcher, Randolph, Herrick, offered their gayest anacreontics, and whose 'wit-combats' with Shakespere Fuller has celebrated? There is scarcely a writer in the whole range of our literature better known to popular fame than he, and yet by how few is he read! Although the phrase, our two great dramatic poets, Shakespere and Jonson,' is so common that it might be stereotyped, very little is known of the marked difference between them. The case is, the finest works of Jonson are unknown to the general reader, for who among them has read his Epigrams, his Forest, his Underwoods, and how very few his beautiful Masques? We therefore thank Mr. Bell for his little volume, which brings Jonson the poet before the public.

A long literary career was Ben Jonson's, stretching out over forty years. He was contemporary of Greene and Marlowe, and of Killigrew and Davenant, the link between the two schoolshow widely different!-of our dramatic literature; he was the friend of men who had rejoiced in the destruction of the Armada, and of those who hailed the Restoration. A chequered career too, was his, illustrating, in many curious traits, the literary life of his day. We will glance at it, in connexion with his writings, and thus endeavour to bring Ben Jonson and his works pleasantly before our readers.