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elucidate the subject: De Pauw affirms that, owing to a wise economy, the magistrates, whose office it was to superintend the coinage of silver, employed none but inferior artists in making the design, as well as in other branches of the process, an hypothesis wholly inconsistent with the characteristic magnificence of the republic. Pinkerton asserts, that it can only be accounted for from the excellence of the artists being such as to occasion all the good to be called into other countries, and none but the bad left at home: It would be somewhat difficult to explain how Athens came to be so long honoured both by the presence and the works of Phidias and Praxiteles, Zeuxis and Apelles.'*

The Attic silver was of acknowledged purity, and circulated very extensively the Athenian merchants, particularly in their commercial dealings with the more distant and barbarous nations, appear frequently to have made their payments in it. The barbarians being once impressed with these notions of its purity, the government of Athens, in all probability, was afraid materially to change that style and appearance by which their money was known and valued among these people. A similar proceeding in the state of Venice throws the strongest light on the practice of the Athenians. The Venetian sechin is perhaps the most unseemly of the coins of modern Europe: it has long been the current gold of the Turkish empire, in which its purity is universally and justly esteemed; any change in its appearance on the part of the Venetian government would have tended to create distrust."

We agree with the editor in considering these remarks of the Earl of Aberdeen, as affording a more satisfactory explanation of the difficulty in question, than any which has hitherto been offered. We cannot help adducing a testimony in favour of his lordship's hypothesis, from a quarter, where one would not expect to meet with any thing bearing upon a question of this kind. Sir W. D'Avenant, in his Prologue to The Wits,' says that there are

some

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who would the world persuade

That gold is better, when the stamp is bad,
And that an ugly, ragged piece of eight,
Is ever true in mettal and in weight.

As if a guinny and louis had less

Intrinsick value for their handsomeness.'

If merit depended, in poetry as well as numismatics, upon ugliness' and raggedness,' these verses of Sir William would be, in their way, perfect Attic tetradrachms. The present volume has also been enriched by the same accurate and learned nobleman with an account of two very curious and interesting marbles, found at Amycle, in Laconia, which is the place where the Abbé Fourmont pretended to have found his celebrated inscriptions, the spu riousness of which has been so ably demonstrated by Mr. R. P. Knight. Of the two pieces of sculpture described by the Earl of Qu.-How long was Athens honoured by the presence of either Zeuxis or Apelles? Aberdeen,

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Aberdeen, and copied in an engraving at p. 446, each represents a hand-basin, surrounded with the various implements of a female toilet, combs, pins, a needle or bodkin, perfume-boxes and bottles, mirrors, paint-boxes, curling-irons, rollers, toothpicks, and reticules (or perhaps night-caps). What we believe to be hand-basins the Earl of Aberdeen calls pateræ. In one of them is the following inscription, ΑΝΘΟΥΣΗ ΔΑΜΑΙΝΕΤΟΥ ΥΠΟΣΤΑΤΡΙΑ; and in the other, ΛΑΥΑΓΗΤΑ ΑΝΤΙΠΑΤΡΟΥ ΙΕΡΕΙΑ. The first remark which suggests itself, upon inspecting these inscriptions, is, that they are not in the Laconic dialect. The only Doric form in the first, is the first A in AAMAINETOT. In the second, Lord Aberdeen considers AAYATHTA to be for AAOATHTA. But AAOATHTA assuredly was not a Greek proper name. We suspect some error in the transcript. Mr. Walpole supposes the marbles to have been offerings made by the priestesses Anthusa and Laoageta; or as consecrated during the priesthood of those women; in which case they may have been presented by the KOZMHTPIAI or ornatrices of some deity. Caylus considers the word TПOZTATPIA to signify sous-prêtresse. Lord Aberdeen thinks that it may have some allusion to distribution or regulated measure. The fact is that the word means nothing more nor less than under-dresser. Erárpia was one appellation of a female hair-dresser. Hesych. Στάτρια. ἐμπλέκτρια. Now ἐμπλέκτρια was the same as xorgia, a tire-woman, one who dressed and depilated the ladies; as an old grammarian explains it. The name zoμμárgia is derived from xóμui, a sort of gum, used by females to make the plaits of their hair retain the form which was given them: the profession itself was called τέχνη κομμωτική. This is the account given by a scholiast on Plato; to which, if it were necessary, we could add much more, illustrative of the subject.

Στάτρια

Amongst the articles, represented upon each of these marbles, are two pair of slippers. We have an epigram of Antipater of Sidon, which mentions the dedication to Venus of sandals, amongst other articles of dress.

Σάνδαλα μεν τὰ ποδῶν θαλπτήρια ταῦτα Βίτιννα, κ. τ. λ. And we may observe, by the way, that a peculiar kind of sandals were used at Amycle, where these marbles were found, and were thence called Αμύκλαι οι Αμυκλαΐδες, for withholding a dissertation upon which, our readers will probably thank us; as also for the suppression of a page or two of observations on the Caryatides of ancient architecture, of which no satisfactory account has hitherto been given, nor is the matter cleared up by Mr. Walpole in his remarks at p. 602. Mr. Wilkins conjectures, that these Caryatides, who are called Kopa in a very ancient inscription, were no other than the Canephora.

Several

Several inscriptions are published for the first time in this volume; they are generally well explained by the learned editor, but not always. For instance, in p. 457. we have the following, from the journals of Mr. Hawkins

:

ΓΑΙΟΣ ΙΟΥΛΙΟΣ ΚΕΛΕΡ ΕΚ
ΤΩΝ ΙΔΙΩΝ ΚΑΤΕΣΚΕΥΑ
ΣΕΝ ΔΗΜΩ ΤΩ ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝΙ

ΑΤΩΝ ΤΗΝ ΥΠΟΧΩΡΗΣΙΝ

ΚΑΙ ΓΑΙΟΣ ΙΟΥΛΙΟΣ ΕΡΜΑΣ Ο

ΚΑΙ ΜΕΡΚΟΥΠΟΣ ΕΣΤΡΩΣΕΝ ΕΚ

ΤΩΝ ΙΔΙΩΝ ΤΗΝ ΠΛΑΤΕΙΑΝ ΑΠΟ

ΤΟΥ ΖΥΓΟΣΤΑΣΙΟΥ ΜΕΧΡΙ

ΤΗΣ ΥΠΟΧΩΡΗΣΕΩΣ.

Caius Julius Celer built, at his own expense, for the people of Apollonia, the recess or passage; and Caius Julias Hermas, who is called also Mercupus, paved at his own cost the broad court leading from the zygostasium as far as the recess.'

Mercupus! a pretty name! what can be clearer than that the true reading is MEPKOTPIOZ, Mercurius? The ὑποχώρησις was a recess by the side of the street, resembling, we suppose, those on Westminster Bridge; for what purpose we need not say. Zuyoσráσov should have been translated, the weighing place, or public steelyards, which, in every city of the Roman empire, were superintended by an officer, called præfectus ponderibus. Lastly, the concluding words should be rendered, ' paved at his own cost the street from the steelyards to the recess;' not 'leading from the zygostasium, which would have been τὴν πλατεῖαν τὴν ἀπὸ TOU . with the article repeated.

The volume concludes with a valuable dissertation of Mr. Wilkins upon a Greek inscription, six years older than the date of Euclid's archonship, at which era the Ionic letters began to be used at Athens in public documents. But we observe some inaccuracies, both in the copy of the inscription, which is given as divested of its archaisms, and also in the translation of it; none, however, of material consequence.

Amongst other symptoms of the haste with which this volume has been put together, is the circumstance, that some of the plates are in one part and the descriptions of them in another. Thus, at p. 321. we have the representation of a lecythus, which is described in p. 539. This cruse, which presents the figures of two horses and their grooms, is entitled ΛΗΚΥΘΟΣ ΑΤΤΙΚΟΣ. Now as the book is an English one, we do not see the propriety of giving Greek titles to the plates; which, to our minds, savours of pedantry. An English inscription would at all events have avoided the false concord of λήκυθος Αττικός for λήκυθος Αττική.

The editor's notes upon the various communications display extensive reading; but we wish he had bestowed a little more attention upon the correction of the press; it is pity that so handsome a volume should be disfigured by so many typographical

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ART. XI.-Woman: a Poem. By the Author of The Heroine.' 12mo. pp. 121. 1818.

THE preface to this little volume is written with peculiar candour

and modesty. Mr. Barrett, it informs us, published, some time since, a poem on the same subject, and felt all the irritation, common in such cases, at finding it universally condemned by the critics. After the lapse of a few years, however, he himself began to discover, that his favourite performance' was written in a false taste; and as, when we begin to hate, we generally hate that most which we had before loved best, so Mr. Barrett, it seems, managed to coutract a most unqualified abhorrence for his quondam Dalilah. The consequence was, that he drew his pen, with a vindictive resolution to exterminate it from every earthly library. We know not where to look in the annals of literature for a similar instance of an author, who professedly sets up himself against himself, and assiduously endeavours to run down his own production. At the same time, we trust he has not acted in a dishonourable manner towards his earlier love, and resorted to the contemptible expedient of injuring it by invidious attacks in the periodical journals. As, on this occasion, he lies entirely at the mercy of himself, he is bound, we think, to exercise his power with moderation, and not to take an ungenerous advantage of his own acrimony against his own work.

But while we indulge a smile at the suicidal hostility of Mr. Barrett, we are far from wishing to leave any ultimate impression of ridicule upon it. On the contrary, as critics, whose suggestions are almost always taken in ill part by authors, we feel interested in recommending to their imitation the ingenuous example of this poet, and in calling their especial attention to the following extract from his preface. After acquainting us with his mortifying discovery of the defects in his former work, he adds,

'But, at least, the discovery contained a moral. It shewed that we should listen with deference to those critics whose taste differs from our own, since even our own, in process of time, may differ from itself.'

We may, therefore, suppose him quite sincere, when he says, Indeed, I had formed so erroneous an estimate of my former work, that I am almost afraid to hope any thing from this, and. I can most conscientiously add, that my chief feelings on the subject are doubt and apprehension.'

We

We now come to the work itself. However Mr. Barrett may pique himself upon the subject which he has chosen, we must take leave to dissent from his opinion of its peculiar happiness.' In the first place, we consider the question with respect to the station which the female sex should hold in society, as long since settled in theory, and as pretty generally reduced to practice. In times immediately previous to the commencement of chivalry, when women were really degraded and despised, his vindication of their claims would have acquired an importance which it is not so likely to enjoy in the present age. For what sympathy can he now hope to extract from his male readers, when the greater part of them will probably peruse his work in a drawing-room, the very seat of female despotism, where a thousand ceremonials of homage give the lie direct' to the predominance of the lordly sex'? and where the finest couplet is liable to be broken off by the polite indispensibility of getting up to hand a chair?

Of all this, however, the author himself seems so well aware, that he has dedicated but a very small portion of his poem to the statement of the grievances of woman-much the greater part being occupied in describing her attractions. And here again we must beg permission to say, that however beautiful each individual attraction may appear, there is the same sort of monotony in a professed catalogue and collection of them, that we should experience in a sculptor's exhibition-room, where the Graces and Muses and Virtues were crouded around us, and where the only distinction between them was in the drapery, attitude and symbols. We might, indeed, acknowledge that each statue was charming in itself, but on viewing the whole series together, we should wish for some combination of action, or at least for the interposition of a Hercules or a Laocoon, to give contrast and animation to the group.

In fact, there remains so little doubt now-a-days, that a due elevation of females in society bestows full as much dignity and comfort on ourselves as on them, that a poem which goes only to prove it, cannot pretend to the popular advantages which result from a disputed theory. We might add too, that the theme itself is already sufficiently hacknied, for we have innumerable prose disquisitions on it. And, although it may not till now, perhaps, have been professedly treated in English poetry, we can scarcely open one tuneful page in which the praises of woman are not introduced by way of subsidiary ornaments.

The poem opens with an elegiac tribute to the memory of the lamented Princess Charlotte, to whom, it appears, the author was in the act of dedicating the work, when intelligence of the fatal catastrophe reached him. Of this circumstance he has taken advan

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