868 HUGH ANDREW JOHNSTONE MUNRO. 



his learning, the firm grasp which he held on it, and the peculiar sub- 

 tlety of his penetration, reminding one of Goldsmith's description of 

 Burke, " winding into the heart of a subject like a serpent." He would 

 have been terrible to encounter as an antagonist, were it not for a 

 singularly courteous suavity which disarmed all resentment. There 

 are passages in his works which, as we read them, savor of a pretty 

 positive dogmatism ; but one who knew the author can well conceive 

 that from his lips they would have sounded even gentle. To a still 

 more intimate circle, his counsel, his heart, and, if necessary, his purse, 

 were open ; and, as he never hesitated to lay before the learned world 

 whatever he felt could be understood in its real meaning, so we are as- 

 sured by those who knew him best that nothing in his great nature was 

 not freely given where it would be valued. 



He was unquestionably a very great scholar. He was a master in 

 his honored art, — the art of criticising and expounding the treasures 

 of the two great languages of the Mediterranean nations ; the greatest 

 Latin scholar of the century in England, and second to none of her clas- 

 sical giants since Porson ; like him, a worthy descendant of Bentley, the 

 great Master of what even the dry pages of the " Cambridge Calendar " 

 cannot help calling a "noble and magnificent college." 



Munro's fame will rest on his Lucretius, a monumental work ; unlike 

 many monuments, not a mere tombstone, but the perpetuator of a life as 

 lively as that which breathes from Michael Angelo's statue of Lorenzo. 

 Lucretius is a very great author, well deserving an editor of consum- 

 mate ability. Scholars of the very highest erudition and taste, Marul- 

 lus, Lambinus, Isaac Vossius, Gassendi, Bentley, Madvig, and Lachmann, 

 have all stamped on his criticism and interpretation the impress of their 

 peculiar genius. It is unfortunate that, in the intervals of their labors, 

 many less worthy handled him ; — Pius and Gifanius, Nardi and Haver- 

 camp, Wakefield and Forbiger, besides such moderate contributors to 

 his elucidation as Le Febvre and Creech. To all this line of editors — a 

 line beginning, says tradition, with no less a person than Cicero himself 

 — Munro contributed a comprehensive erudition, a brilliant acuteness, 

 an unwearied patience, which the greatest of them might envy. He 

 added also a candor which recognized worth everywhere, and would 

 submit over and over again his most cherished views to every test in 

 order to arrive at the real truth, sacrificing them, if need be, without 

 a murmur. A peculiar fastidious delicacy, the direct result of that 

 practice in classical verse composition which German and American 

 scholarship rejects to its irreparable loss, gave him a discriminating 

 tact as to text and interpretation which Lachmann at the summit of his 



