450 Monthlj/ Rcvicfv of Literature. [^Oct. 



bells, a fifth a shepherd, &c. These he tells them are all nouns. Where will 

 you have your cottage ? Near the brook — above, helow, &c. 'i'hese are jn-epo- 

 sUions. But what kind of a cottage shall it be ? Large, smalt, wliite, &c. 

 These are adjectives. Well, but now to give things a little life, motion, &c. — 

 what shall the bells do ? Rimj. — The trees f Wave. — The shepherd ? Siny. — 

 These are verhs. But again, how shall the brook flow ? Swiftly, merrily, &c. These 

 are adverbs. Well, but now, how does the cottage look ? It looks beautiful, &c. 

 That is a pronoun. And so on, tilf the whole nine, not the muses, are embraced, 

 and thoroughly comprehended. 



FfRST Lines of Zoology by Question and Answer, in Seven Parts — 

 Mammalia, Birds, Fishes, Reptiles, Insects, Mollusca, Crusta- 

 cea, &c., BY Robert Mudie. 



Mr. Mudie's catechism, among the thousand and one publications of this 

 nature, is fairly and deservedly distinguishable by a steady adherence to the 

 useful — to the inculcation of principle, instead of indulging in mere description, 

 or matters of detail. Works of natural history for young persons consist too 

 generally, he assures us, of mere scraps of description, often exaggerated, and of 

 little use if they were true ; or they present the technicalities of an artificial 

 system in an unknown tongue — making thus the real knowledge of the subject 

 appear twice as difficult as it actually is, by adding an unexplained name to an 

 undescribed reality. Mr. Mudie, of course, implies that he has reformed all 

 this moderately, if not altogether ; and we willingly bear our testimony to the 

 general and particular intelligence visible in his book, and the complete success 

 with which he has executed his purpose. 



A Synopsis of the Origin and Progress of Architecture ; to •which is 

 added, a Dictionary of general Terms ; by William J. Smith. 



The very title is untoward — the writer knows the meaning neither of synopsis, 

 nor of general. The latter occurs eight or ten times in a preface of a few lines. 

 Mr. Smith professes to give a " general" view of the history of architecture, 

 first, to the period of its highest perfection in Greece, to which he attaches an 

 enumeration of the more remarkable specimens of antiquity in Syria, Asia 

 Minor, Persia, India, Greece, and Sicily. In a second division of his book, the 

 general history is continued to the Fall of the Western Empire, with a sort of 

 catalogue raisonne of the chief antiquities of Italy, France, and Spain. Tables 

 also are given of the dimensions of many or most of the buildings. The general 

 history is finally continued onwards to the days of the Gothic ; and some notices 

 follow of our English cathedrals, with a guess or two for solving the eternal 

 question of the origin of the said Gothic. We do not wish to throw any doubt 

 either on the completeness of the enumerations, or on the accuracy of the details, 

 but nothing in this world ever exceeded the " general" meagreness of the whole 

 concern. It is much drier and more costive than any thing we have had the 

 fortune to meet with in these loquacious and copious times, and the wonder in 

 consequence with us is, how any man who had so little to say, good or bad, 

 should attempt to say any Mng. 



Translations of the Oxford Latin Phiee Poems, First Series, (!) 

 BY Nicholas Lee Torre. 



This strange scheme must have suggested itself to sheer indolence — a fond- 

 ness for literary dawdling, without the power of starting original conceptions, 

 or of combining old materials — a morbid or imbecile desire to be doing, with 

 nothing to do. The merit of the original pieces lies wholly in the latinity ; and 

 the latinity itself is but an evidence of some facility, and occasionally of some 

 felicity, in dove-tailing incongruous phrases. In the Latin the reader knows of 

 course there exists little or no discrimination, for the sources of the language 

 are all precisely the same ; and as to the Translations, he may be sure they ex- 

 hibit still less — for they are all " done" by the same person — in the same metre 



