HUGH ANDREW JOHNSTONE MUNRO. 369 



powers never knew. He possessed one quality coming directly to him 

 from the matchless Bentley, the power of making his notes interesting. 

 His Lucretius is a book that one enjoys reading. His conspectus of 

 the manuscripts and editions, though avowedly a recasting of Lach- 

 mann's preface, is as charming an improvement over the Prussian's 

 austere Latin as Livy's versions over Polybius. If one wished to 

 lead the ordinary Latin student, filled with a schoolboy's knowledge 

 of Virgil, Coesar, and Cicero, and a sophomore's taste of Horace, 

 Livy, Tacitus, and Terence, into a real love and thirst for true scholar- 

 ship, the wisest course would be to set him down to Munro's two 

 prefaces. 



It must be allowed that Munro's intense study and acuteness some- 

 times deceived him ; he would occasionally work so long and thought- 

 fully over a passage, that, like Dante, he got past the point of attraction, 

 and, on the other side of the centre, saw the object with feet reversed, 

 actually declaring a view unmistakable which to other men was simply 

 an ingenious impossibility. 



To the full he appreciated, he comprehended, he absorbed, his author. 

 The antique purity of the diction of Lucretius, the stern melody of his 

 verse, the vivid fertility of his imagination, the keen sweep of his ob- 

 servation, the close texture of his reasoning, the passionate force of his 

 convictions, the undaunted loftiness of his aim, appealed to Munro, as 

 they had to the greatest scholars before him, — to Scaliger and to 

 Goethe, — with irresistible power. Even those of us who cannot sur- 

 render our love for the richer harmony, the more individual humanity, 

 the more confiding faith, the more historical imagery of Virgil, will 

 feel our admiration for that poet who was Virgil's immediate master, 

 scarcely less than was Homer, deepened, strengthened, and widened by 

 the work of his last — and why not his best ? — editor. 



This notice may seem too long ; but it could not be shortened. 

 That line of study which Munro made his own has to struggle in this 

 country against the claims of what are considered more truly the arts 

 of progress. When, then, a man, whose mind was fully capable of 

 winning brilliant triumphs as an explorer in the realms of science or 

 philosophy or history, devotes himself to criticism and interpretation 

 so perfectly that all hi3 work sparkles with the lustre of genius, it 

 becomes the votaries of every science to admit in their journals an 

 unstinted tribute to their brother. 



" Carmina quin etiam divini pectoris ejus 

 Vociferantur et exponunt praeclara reperta 

 Ut vix humana videatur stirpe creatus." 

 vol xxiii. (k. s. xv.) 24 



