tem deturbare, et tormentis machinisque bellicis propellere 'hostem non omiserunt. Mire narratur premi uterque exercitus, 'penuria frumenti, ac commeatûs reliqui; sed majori Gallus quam Hyspanus, cum Hyspano Sicilia ac quod est a tergo residuum Regni subveniat.

'Cum hæc scribebam, allatum est nuncium Gallos qui obsi"debant oppidum et arcem Salst quod est inter Narbonam et Perpinianum, ad duo milia cæsos ab Hyspanis fuisse, et vallum Gallorum [fractum] et dirutum esse, tormentaque aliquot 'bellica adempta eis fuisse.

Volui quæ hic narrantur quæ [que] scriptu digna puto, ' vestræ Majestati significare. Creditur [hâc] hieme parum exercitus ipsos profecturos, sed in c [astris] se collocaturos ac proximo vere, nisi pax [vel] induciæ fiant extrema molituros. In quâ pace compone [ndâ] Sanctissimus dominus noster quibus poterit modis operari non cessabit. [Deu]s illam ad optatum 'finem perducat.

' [Dec. 1503.]'

To make what little is known of the writer of this letter more intelligible we may just add, for the information of such as do not know his history, that he had been sent by Innocent VIII. into Scotland in 1488 to compose the feuds of that kingdom. Finding that James III. had been slain, he remained in London, and attracted the notice of the celebrated Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, who brought him to the king's notice. All affairs at the court of Rome were committed to his charge, and he was rewarded by the king by promotion, first to the see of Hereford, and then to that of Bath and Wells; secondly by the Pope, by being made Cardinal of S. Chrysosgonus. In these capacities he accumulated so much money, that Alexander VI. determined to poison him. He escaped by the accidental circumstance of the cup being offered to the Pope and his son, instead of to himself. He was afterwards detected in a conspiracy to poison Leo X. But Leo was content to execute the principal contriver of the scheme, and let off Cardinal Hadrian and all the other conspirators, on condition of their confessing their

crime.

He was deprived in 1518, and succeeded in his bishopric by Wolsey. He was ashamed or afraid to show his face after his crime became notorious; and he entirely disappears from history from that time forward. We wish we could throw a little light upon the dark history of this foul conspiracy. It is certain (see Brewer, vol. i. 3443) that Hadrian would have been glad to succeed to the chair of S. Peter, and that the emperor furthered his designs. Whether this was at the bottom of the attempt to

poison Leo X. must for ever remain a mystery. The few letters and extracts that relate to this subject, and which appear more or less abridged in Mr. Brewer's second volume, only seem to blacken the character of Hadrian. From these it appears that he at first perjured himself, denying any knowledge of the conspiracy, and that upon being urged to confess, after he had been implicated in it by the confession of the cardinals Sauli and Sienna, he fell at the Pope's feet and confessed his crime with tears in his eyes. The same letter from the bishop of Worcester which relates this, adds, that Hadrian had the assurance to request a breve from the Pope to the king, attesting his innocence. This may be the representation of an enemy. There was another report prevalent that he had got into trouble for merely overhearing and not divulging the conspiracy. In another letter written by the same bishop of Worcester (Mr. Brewer has erroneously printed it Winchester) we are told that Cardinal Hadrian had reached Venice, having left Rome, disguised as a fool. His being received at Venice was very displeasing to his successor, Wolsey, who said, that if Venice persevered in favouring this rebel prisoner,' who is said also to have poisoned Pope Alexander, the king and himself would be most hostile to them.' The last we hear of him is in a letter from Spinelly to Wolsey, stating his opinion that the Pope will restore Hadrian to his dignity. Whether or not the story is true that he had heard a prophecy that the successor to the popedom after the decease of Leo X. should be a man named Hadrian, born in an obscure place, or whether this story was invented to account for the singular fact that Hadrian VI. was, like Cardinal Hadrian, born in obscurity, and reached, without any intrigues of his own, the highest dignity of the Church, which the other failed to attain by fraud and perjury, and the attempt to murder, we cannot tell. The story is too like the story of Macbeth and others to be believed on anything short of the best contemporary evidence.

295

ART. III.-Platonis Euthydemus et Laches. Præfixa est Epistola ad Senatum Lugdunensem Batavorum. Auctore CAROLO BADHAM.

1865.

THE Public Schools Commissioners have ended their labours, and issued their Report; and the conclusion at which they have arrived as the result of their investigations is a very simple one-that, however desirable it may be to modify the old system of education by the introduction of fresh branches of study, and the redistribution of time allotted to each several subject, still, for the perfection of moral and intellectual training, and for the thorough development of all the powers of the human mind, the accurate study of the classical writers of antiquity must be pronounced to be of paramount importance. No other branch of study can hold an equal place with it; none can be substituted for it; none can compensate for the want of it.

The conclusion is one which all old Oxford men will bail with pleasure. Our neighbours the French, who, however they may fall short of us in practical detail, are confessedly ahead of us in inventive faculty, had made the same discovery some time before. And when we in England, a few years ago, were beginning to fear that, from the general outcry against them, classical studies might fall from their high estate in this country, a much wider and fuller acquaintance with classical literature was made imperative on all who aspired to the highest honours bestowed by the University of Paris. Taken in connexion with the Report of our Public Schools Commission, the fact is a significant one. The great characteristic of the present age will be generally admitted to be freedom of thought. The tendency to emancipate the mind from the thraldom of all intellectual shackles, appears to recur in certain well-defined cycles; and through that phase of intellectual liberty we are confessedly passing at the present time. And no sooner do we pass into this stage of intellectual progress, no sooner are we determined to be

"Nullius addicti jurare in verba magistri,'

than, throwing off the restraints of one philosophical system, we take our stand on the vantage ground of the present advanced state of science; and instead of studying and submitting ourselves to the rule of one system, we set about obtaining a com

prehensive view of all systems, and take a wide sweeping view of philosophy generally, regarded as a historical whole.

For a thorough acquaintance with the facts necessary for the acquisition of this enlarged view, the study of classical antiquity is necessarily indispensable; and therefore, in the prosecution of this intellectual emancipation, the extension of thought and the mastery of the philosophical systems of ancient Greece mutually react upon each other. And, as a natural result, the study of the books of Plato especially has always been coincident with the eager yearnings and aspirations of the mind after intellectual freedom. The fact is sufficiently familiar to all scholars.

As a single instance of its truth, we need only refer to the days of our own Charles II. The iron fetters of Puritanism had weighed heavily on the nation, and the reaction in intellectual, political, and social life was seen in the full, free, and vigorous development of all the latent powers and energies of human thought. The shackles of the most narrowing system that ever weighed down the mind of free England were joyously shaken off with an elasticity that only showed how great had been the weight of the superincumbent despotism, religious and political; the minds of men bounded, as it were, into freedom of thought and speech and action. Along with the profession of a purer, of a more liberal and enlightened faith, they cultivated the principles of a philosophy and a truth' that should make them free.' The teaching of Socrates, the great precursor of all free thinkers, absorbed the attention of all who pined after the liberty of expression of thought. Platonism and an enlarged and charitable and comprehensive study of Christianity went hand in hand, and by the side of Taylor we find the honoured name of Cudworth.

In the present day, also, 'everything,' as has been well remarked, both in the world of sense and in the world of intellect, betokens life, energy, and movement.' At no time, perhaps, in the history of the world, has the impatience of all external restraint, whether political, social, or philosophical, been more strongly evinced. Of social and political enfranchisement it is not for us to speak here. The facts, in truth, are too patent to require comment. In philosophy, however, it is no less apparent. For a long time the students in our universities had been trained within the leading-strings of the Aristotelian Philosophy, and outside that pale the minds of all cultivators of philosophy had been 'cabined, cribbed, confined' by the dogmas of the Scotch metaphysicians. But the reaction has taken place; men's minds have been gradually quickening to a feeling of the necessity of a more enlarged

view of the study of psychology, and we therefore look to find a gradually increasing attention bestowed on the writings of Plato. Nor do we look in vain. From the point of view we are now taking, we are not going, evidently, to take into consideration the labours of Continental scholars in this field. It is quite sufficient for our purpose to glance at what has been recently put forth by our own scholars. We need only refer to Mr. Campbell's edition of the Thætetus, to Mr. Cope's laborious and very meritorious edition of the Gorgias; to the editions of the Philebus which have appeared under the auspices of both Dr. Badham and Mr. Poste; to Mr. Grote's three elaborated volumes on 'Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates;' to the long-promised edition of the Phædrus and Gorgias by Mr. Thompson; and last, not least, the long-expected and earnestly looked-for Republic of Mr. Jowett; as evidences of the daily increasing attention which the works of Plato are receiving. Under these circumstances it is with no little pleasure that we welcome anything that may enable us more readily and completely to master the works of the great author.

For certainly, if ever, it is now most desirable that we should be enabled if possible to read his genuine productions; in other words, to have an edition of Plato which shall be Plato, and not a mere repetition of the errors of transcribers. In the book whose title stands at the head of this notice we have a valuable contribution towards this consummation, an instalment merely, we hope, of what will be done to clear away from the pure text the manifold errors which, like noxious weeds, have grown around and choked it. Dr. Badham's edition of the text of the Euthydemus and the Laches is, to use the language of the present day, a step in the right direction. Its object is to invite the student's attention to a scholar-like consideration of the text itself; to see, in fact, what Plato said, before he begins to argue about what Plato thought, and, therefore, as intended for classical students, it is in a great measure philological rather than philosophical.

The same may be said of his previous contributions towards the same object, if we except his preface to the Philebus, and his brief but pregnant remarks prefixed to the Phædrus. Of the present work we should say that it is eminently calculated to recall the attention of students to that accurate and critical scholarship which was once the boast and the glory of Oxford, but which we fear the recent breaking up of the class-list into its manifold subdivisions, has tended greatly to discourage, if not to destroy. To this point Dr. Badham refers in his preface in the following pithy sentence:- Cujus consilii capiendi causam ' vos facile divinaturos esse arbitror, quippe qui non modo