Though we have been led into a longer train of remarks, than we had intended, we are not willing, while expressing our respect for the learned Professor, to whom we owe this edition of the Collectanea Majora, to forego so good an opportunity of noticing in our Journal a European scholar, who through a long course of years stood first among the philologians of his time.

It is now nearly two years since Frederic Augustus Wolf died at an advanced age in the South of France, while travelling in the hope of finding, under a milder sky, some relief from the infirmities of years. This most celebrated scholar of our times was born of humble parents in 1757, at Hainrode, in the county of Hohenstein. Hardly was he seven years old, before he was entered at the Gymnasium in Nordhausen; and at seventeen, he repaired to the University of Göttingen. He brought with him the reputation of having already acquired, by private research, an extraordinary acquaintance with the works of the ancients. The love of his favorite study led him at once to Heyne, who questioned him on his plans of life. When he declared his intention of devoting himself to classical philology, Heyne, who had himself in the early part of his life suffered extremely from the want of pecuniary means, endeavored to dissuade him from it by explaining to him, how poor a prospect was opened to a man of learning. There are but three Professorships of Eloquence in all Germany,' said he. ' And one of those three I am determined to have,' replied the young aspirant; and, in in fact, before he was twentyseven he had gained his object. While at the university, Wolf was very capricious in his attendance on lectures, superciliously asserting, that little was to be learnt from them; and indeed throughout all his life, he was consistent in maintaining, that he had never derived any benefit from the instructions of Heyne. In 1777, Wolf, at Heyne's instance, received an appointment as a teacher in the Gymnasium of Ilfeld, a most retired and beautifully situated cloister in the vicinity of the Harz mountains. In the following year he was made Rector of the Latin school of Osterrode, a city in the district of the Harz mountains. In 1783, he accepted an invitation to become Professor of Eloquence in the University of Halle, where he pursued his high literary career with boldness, ardor, and, we believe, with prodigious, though irregular industry. The title of Privy Counsellor was given him in 1805, and when Halle was annexed to the kingdom of Westphalia, Wolf was transferred to Berlin; and though he did not take an active

part in the new University, which was then establishing in that city, he still professed to read lectures, and to devote himself to literary occupations. But here was the trial of his character. Where a man is forced to labor by his very situation, and has his time filled up with duties that cannot be avoided, almost any one succeeds well enough in maintaining respectability. But it is the use which a man makes of his leisure, that shows the spirit he is of; and if prosperity is in general the great trial of character, it is the opportunity to be indolent, which is the true touchstone of the scholar. Wolf, when he found himself possessed of leisure and a pension, became idle and set up for a fine gentleman. But it would not do. With all his efforts the man, who had spent his youth among the mountains, and his manhood among books, never could get the air of a courtier; and, for the most part, the men of the world and of diplomatic celebrity cared very little about him. Some few were fond of his intercourse, but it was the Professor's erudition which they coveted, and not the society of the Privy Counsellor. Wolf was a man of profound and accurate learning, of most rare sagacity, and admirable genius; but he allowed base propensities to grow strong within him, and did not even keep clear of vulgar dissipation and lowlived profligacy.

The stranger that would see him, might expect to find him on a sunny morning in the park between eleven and one, or at the best restaurateur's about three, or an hour or two later at his own rooms, yielding to the listlessness that attends the digestion of a large dinner. If joined on his walks, and he preferred society, he would, with delightful garrulity, tell the story of his early life, repeat his good sayings, especially his severe ones, fight his battles with Heyne over again, or express his utter contempt for others by whom he had been assailed. He would, with equal liveliness, recount the persons of rank, by whom he had been treated with civility, and make mention of any good servants he might chance to have employed, and especially of the good dishes they used to prepare; and now and then he would speak of the poetry he admired, and the examples of ancient or of modern worth to which his kindly heart offered a willing tribute of respect. For he retained to the last something of the lofty spirit of a scholar; if he loved good cheer, he loved a good book also; and the charms of the modern opera, and the admirable talents of the Berlin stage, never made him faithless to his Grecian favorites. If he knew the most exquisite airs in the last work of Rossini, he did not give up his knowledge of the most delightful strains in the Greek choruses, and could point out the sweetest cadences of the polished verse of Aristophanes; and though he could give you the statistics of all the pastry shops in Berlin, and tell you even at what time of day you must call in to get the good things as they came hot from the oven, he yet retained a soul for the unearthly sublimity of Plato.

He prided himself also on his knowledge of the English, which he could speak pretty well; and truth compels us to add, though it may make against his taste and his morality in letters, that Fielding's Tom Jones was his favorite work. His pronunciation of the French was not good, yet he held himself perfectly competent to judge of the delicacies and rules of that language. His conversation was most various, and often most instructive. Sometimes he would repeat the newest tale of scandal, and sometimes he would take up a volume of some Greek bard, and with his clear voice, which was melody itself, read aloud the perfect hexameters of Homer, or run through the mazes of a Pindaric strophe, or follow the rapid anapests of the comic Muse.

To give the character of Wolf in a few words, we should only have to say, that in his moral and physical characteristics, he was an illustrious example of the sanguineous temperament. He was fond of believing himself like Bentley, and was pleased to have an analogy traced between his own character and reputation and those of the English critic. Yet were we to look into history for another like him, however strange and far fetched it may seem to compare a warrior and a philologian, we should hardly know whom to select but the son of Antigonus, the intrepid, the ardent, the licentious, and, finally, the indolent Demetrius. Indeed Wolf was the very Poliorcetes among critics, laying siege to many an opinion, which seemed strongly and impregnably garrisoned by the authority of ancient names. Had the Teian bard for centuries been extolled for grace and sweetness? Wolf threw out the assertion (which Brunck and Hermann have likewise made, and endeavored to prove from the laws of metre), that the poems now cited as Anacreon's are not genuine, and that the world has been cheated into an admiration of paltry imitations. Had every schoolboy learnt to extol the rhetoric and the epistolary elegance of Cicero? Wolf cast a suspicion on the collection of epistles

which we possess, as containing many that are not Tully's, and positively denied the authenticity of four of the orations, that for Marcellus among the number. Or had the student of letters, when he made his pilgrimage to the fountain of epic song, been accustomed to pay homage to the genius of one blind minstrel? Wolf was prepared to demonstrate, so that the blind might see, that the Iliad and Odyssey are but admirable pieces of Mosaic; a set of rhapsodies, naturally unconnected, but fastened together in the dovetail way by some fortunate and ingenious workman.

Wolf was not only a sagacious critic of the works of others; he knew also himself how to use language well. There was, however, a ridiculous affectation about him as to his own tongue. In a most ingenious essay on the Science of Antiquity, he apologizes for employing the German, and has the impudence to say, it is less familiar to him than the Latin. His style in German is artificial, yet skilful, and distinguished by a rare degree of accuracy in the choice of expressions. But his greatest performance in the German is his Translation of the Clouds of Aristophanes, which may be read with all the interest that the Greek play can excite. The translation is exact, line for line, throughout the whole, and the measure of the original is preserved in all its varieties. A dispute had taken place in Germany about the use of the trochee in German hexameters. Klopstock had used it freely; and Voss had not abstained from it. Wolf ridiculed the idea, and to show with what fidelity Homer might be translated, he began a version of the Odyssey, strictly literal, exhausting the meaning of the Greek words, and adding nothing; and all the while giving not merely line for line, but foot for foot, and cæsura for cæsura. When he had finished exactly one hundred lines in this manner, he stopped in the midst of a period, declaring that there lived not the man in all Germany who could go on and finish the sentence. Another proof of his arrogance we have in his version of one of Plato's dialogues. Cicero had, in one of his works, translated a long passage from the Euthyphron; Wolf translated the whole of the dialogue into Latin, in a most masterly manner, and on purpose, as he has been heard to say, that he might strive with Cicero himself for the first honors in this exercise in the Roman dialect.

But we need not accumulate more facts to illustrate his character. He owes his high reputation to his having actually possessed genius. There is the air of a man of rare intellect about all that he did. His great faults were an excessive vanity, and an entire want of religious principle, in respect to which he was a very heathen. Of the great works on which his reputation rests, we have now no time to enlarge.

We take leave of him, and of the subject of Greek learning in our country, with the hope of being able hereafter to treat the question relating to classical learning historically. By tracing the field of ancient learning from the subjugation of Greece to the present time, it will appear, that the study of the classical writers has advanced with the prosperity and practical industry of each nation; that it has declined where the spirit of free inquiry, and the enterprise of men, have been checked, and the thraldom of superstition asserted; that it has flourished best in the busiest and freest times, and that it assisted mankind to break the chains of authority in matters of religion and philosophy; from all which it might be lawful to make some inferences as to its tendency, its power, its value, and its adaptation to the present state of our society.

W. H. Gardiner.

ART. IX.-1. The Pioneers, or the Sources of the Susquehanna; a Descriptive Tale. By THE AUTHOR OF 'PRECAUTION.' New York. Charles Wiley. 1823. 2 vols. 12mo. 2. The Last of the Mohicans; a Narrative of 1757. By THE AUTHOR OF 'THE PIONEERS.' Philadelphia. H. C. Carey & I. Lea. 1826. 2 vols. 12mo.

THE experiment of adapting American scenes, events, and characters to historical romance, was suggested but a few years ago. It has since been abundantly tried, and is still going on to such an extent, that we should have ample cause to regret the little countenance we may have given it, did we feel ourselves called upon to review, or even to read, half the trash which appears daily under this disguise. Mr Cooper, however, has the almost singular merit of writing American novels which everybody reads, and which we are of course bound to review now and then. For these last five or six years he has supplied the reading public annually with a repast of five or six hundred pages of such matter; so that we have a right to consider him