position of the writer, in respect of time, being thus carried forward to that object, the future tense necessarily gives place to the present. The result is the same when the copulative is immediately followed, as it often is, by a particle, which itself expresses the succession in time, or, as in the case of, indicates that there is no succession. See this more fully illustrated and explained in pp. 329-332 of your 8th Number.

(2.) TP TP 7p. On the views just stated, the explanation of this formula, representing the use of the tenses in the description of future events, is not less simple. The object of which the writer speaks is, as usual, looked on as a present object; but the action affirmed of that object is yet to be done, therefore the future tense is employed. If, however, another action or series of actions follows the first, closely connected with it, then the present tense, in union with 1, is employed to denote this close connection and dependence; but if some other object be brought into prominent view, and therefore placed at the beginning of the clause, or if some particle be necessarily joined with the initial copulative, in such cases the time previously fixed is lost by the introduction of this new object or idea, and therefore the futurity of the series must be indicated anew by the employment of the future tense. See No. VIII., pp. 332-334.

Let me notice the other explanations of this formula. According to Dr. Murphy, the spectator, having observed or described the initial event, glances in imagination along the line of action to its close, and standing there contemplates the reverse event of the series as before the point of view, and therefore describes it by the anterior tense with the conjunction prefixed.' As an example, Dr. Murphy cites Joshua vi. 26, who goes to arise and has built,' as he renders the passage. I cannot but think this view sadly wanting in simplicity and naturalness. I wish to describe a series of future events. I fix my mind on the initial event, and describe it as yet to be. This is natural; but then to add that, in order to describe the other events of the series, I must suddenly change my position from its commencement to its close, and thus look at these subsequent events from a point of view opposite to that from which I viewed the first event of the series-this does seem a strange and unnatural device; and yet this explanation, or something like it, we must have recourse to, so long as the TPD form is supposed to involve the idea of past time, whether we call it the past, or the perfect, or the anterior tense.

Dr. Lee, indeed, seems to explain the formula in a manner somewhat different. He says that the Hebrews, in common with some other nations of the East, often represent events, of the future occurrence of which they have no doubt, as having already taken place.' But I cannot imagine that Dr. Lee himself is satisfied with this explanation. Every one must see it does not meet the case. Were the form employed only occasionally and emphatically, when a future event is more than usually certain, then Dr. Lee's explanation might be sufficient; but the fact is that this tense is invariably employed in certain positions, without any regard to the certainty or uncertainty of the event described

by

by it: and, on the other hand, it is never employed in other positions, however certain the event to be described. It were waste of time adducing examples of this. In describing a series of future events, the initial event is usually put in what Dr. Lee calls the present tense; those which immediately follow, in the past. Will Dr. Lee affirm that the subsequent events in such a series are more certain than the first? And again, when this order is broken in upon, and the p' form resumed, will Dr. Lee affirm that this change of form is intended to indicate a lesser degree of certainty? I must again say of this, as I have already said of another part of Dr. Lee's system, that he has given no explanation whatever of the real facts of the case.'

On the theory which I have ventured to propose, every difficulty disappears. The future tense, with which the writer commences, indicates the futurity of the whole series; the present, with 1, indicates the connection of its parts. This arrangement is broken only when some new object is brought prominently before the mind of the writer, in which case the futurity of the event connected with that object must be distinctly expressed.

Manchester, August, 1850.

DUN. H. WEIR.

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

The Interpretation attempted of the Phoenician Verses found in the Panulus of Plautus. By WILLIAM BEESTON, of the Hon. Society of Lincoln's Inn, and sometime of Queen's College, Cambridge. London, Cox, 1850.

As it is probable that but few persons in this country devote any special attention to the study of Phoenician remains; and as it is certain that an adequate acquaintance with Hebrew is the most indispensable, although not by any means the only linguistic requisite for their philological interpretation; it will not appear at all irrelevant if we first inquire into Mr. Beeston's attainments as a Hebraist: and the rather, as by so doing, the main question will be brought before a much wider, as well as more competent, tribunal.

Fortunately Mr. Beeston has himself supplied ample means for this preliminary inquiry. He published, in the year 1843, Hieronymian Hebrew; or, a Grammar of the Sacred Language on the System disclosed by the Writings of Saint Jerome, 8vo. pp. 68. No title more attractive to our individual taste could have been easily devised. For, what could be more interesting, even in a merely historical point of view, than a systematic representation of the aspects under which the very greatest, and all but the only Hebraist in the whole range of the Fathers regarded the manifold grammatical phenomena of that lan

guage

guage so long ago as the fourth century? In the sanguine expectation of finding in Hieronymian Hebrew' a grammar of the language exactly as Jerome apprehended it—a kind of counterpart to Thiersch's Grammar of the Homeric idiom-we ordered the work, on seeing its first announcement. We leave the reader to imagine our disappointment on discovering that this promising title was only the fraudulent disguise of one of the very sorriest and commonest sketches of the Hebrew rudiments. The Hieronymian part of the bait turned out to be nothing whatever more than this passage, which we cite entire :—

It [the Masoretic system] is recognised by St. Jerome in two passages of his writings. The first occurs in the commencement of his treatise De nominibus Hebraicis: Non statim ubicunque ex A, litera quæ apud Hebræos dicitur Aleph, &c. The other will be found in one of his epistles to Evagrius: Nec refert utrum Salem, an Salim nominetur,' &c.

Two passages, indeed! Jerome's mere name is mentioned on three other occasions; but the work has not a rag of pretension to exhibit the grammatical system disclosed in his writings; or, at any rate, not a whit more claim to do so than every other rudimentary Hebrew Grammar which follows the Masoretic punctuation. Further-as those who have only read Mr. Bosworth's article, in the sixth Number of this Journal, must be aware-it would be a very ignorant presumption to suppose that the vocalisation of Hebrew, as it appears in any of the editions of Jerome's works, is exactly and in all particulars conformable to the Masoretic punctuation; and even if it were, or could be made so, Mr. Beeston does not adhere to it, even when it does agree with it for, at p. 23, he decides that Kametz, in a compound syllable, should not have the sound of short o; and he therefore calls that Haphal which other men call Hophal—when yet there is no doubt that Jerome, for example, pronounced kol, as we do.

But as a mere rudimentary Hebrew Grammar also-apart from any Hieronymian pretensions-this is a wretched production, whose only novelties are egregious blunders, and blunders on points too, which might have been found more correctly stated in almost any one of the five hundred Hebrew Grammars which are said to be extant. Let us take a hurried glance at some of his doctrines. At p. 6 we read :

Shewaw (:) is nothing but the marks, placed vertically, by which we intimate the pronunciation of vowels drawn asunder by diæresis, as in Aëra. Put under or over a letter, it directs that such letter must be separated in pronunciation from that which follows it. Thus !??! (Yi-r-m-yah), Jeremiah; Diby (Am-os) Amos,' &c.

Now to say the least of it, it is evident from this that Mr. Beeston does not recognise the distinction between silent and vocal Sheva ; that he is ignorant of the elementary laws of the Hebrew syllable (e. g. that each syllable must begin with a consonant, and that the length of the vowel exercises a definite effect on simple and compound syllables); and that, with regard to his theory of Sheva being placed over the letter-which, as far as we are aware, is perfectly original-he has only mistaken the accent Zaqef-qaton for Sheva! In the very next paragraph we learn that

'When

'When a vowel-point and a shewaw are added to a letter, they exert their influence on the pronunciation separately. Thus D'♫ (E-lo him), &c. Shewaw, when applied to the letter kheth, will frequently divide it: thus (W-lak-ho-shech).'

The first remark is so curiously contrary to the received notions of the nature of the Chatef vowels, that it can only be original; and the absurdity of the separate influence of each element in those compounds may be almost termed ingenious. As to the other remark about Cheth, Mr. B. has only had the misfortune to use an indistinctly printed edition of Genesis; for what he conceives to be a Sheva under that letter is only the accent Tifcha! to say nothing of the laws of the syllable again. The next paragraph informs us that it is dagesh which removes the point of from the right to the left horn, thus, when the letter is called sin.' (!) All these Hieronymian novelties are on one and the same page of this work; and it would be an endless task, as well as a sheer waste of time and space, to pursue this inquiry any further. But, lest it should be supposed that we have only noticed the theoretical portions of this Grammar (as some may consider them), it may suffice to add one example that comes most fairly within the region of facts. In the table of nominal suffixes he gives as the suffix of the first person to a singular noun: there can be no question whether that is a mistake.

If the reader admits the justice of the preceding remarks, and if he has formed anything like an adequate appreciation of the manifold difficulties which beset the interpreter of these Punic verses, he cannot but form a most unfavourable augury of Mr. Beeston's success. As the geologist who attempts, from a few bones of some extinct antediluvian animal, to reconstruct the lost portions of its frame, and to define the precise place to which the creature belonged in the series of its living congeners, ought to be profoundly versed in the structural peculiarities which distinguish each type of animals; so the interpreter of Phoenician remains-for, notwithstanding the disparity of matter, there is no little analogy between the cases-ought to possess so sound and comprehensive a knowledge of the whole genius of Semitism, as to be able, from these scanty documents, to revive the lost language in its living proportions, and, at the same time that he allowed it to display peculiarities enough for an idiom, should be careful to preserve its essential harmony with its other sisters. Mr. Beeston, however, neither entertains our views of the difficulties of this task, nor of the attainments requisite to accomplish it. He mentions no other names of his predecessors in this inquiry than those of Bochart and Gesenius, and does not seem aware that Wex, Von Ewald, Movers, and Judas have each published their lucubrations on these difficult lines since the date of Gesenius's great work. He is also content to adopt the text as he finds it in one single edition (that of 1472), although so much has been done by Gesenius, and especially by Wex, to collect the readings of all the MSS. in one conspectus. Thus he has evidently been as little indebted to his predecessors in this walk, as we have shown him to have been in his Hebrew Grammar; and the consequences are the same in both cases. The man who cannot compile a meagre outline

of

of the Hebrew accidence with even tolerable accuracy, is of course led, by the very difficulties and conjectural nature of this attempt, to break the Semitic Priscian's head with the most reckless audacity. He shows the quality of his scholarship in his interpretation of the very first line. For he reads nyth, and resolves it into ; although even Gesenius had justly remarked that the Hebrew syntax cannot allow to occupy that place, as it is only an enclitic. Then

a-עליונים although Bochart saw that that should be אלונים he reads

form of the common —and all the best moderns have followed him. But these are only trifles to what comes next. He discovers, namely, that sicorathi consists of 'a verb in the conjugation shaphel or shiphel,' and of ' (a pronoun of the first person singular, invented by him, which he also recognises in two other places of these lines); and he writes this in Hebrew thus: p. Now, to say nothing about the causative force of this conjugation, nor of its existence in Phoenician, it is enough to observe that, if p is a verb in Shafel, it is in the third person singular of the perfect so that we have here the absolutely monstrous combination of discordant persons in the verb and its subject and that subject a pronoun! We have, in fact, a concord like an! It is useless, after this, to mention that he sometimes even transposes the two nouns belonging together in state construct, or to enumerate any of his other freaks. We regret, however, that we have no space to give his translation of these lines, together with the Latin version found in Plautus, and the version lately given by Von Ewald. He would be a grave man, indeed, who could preserve his gravity when he compared them. We also regret being obliged to leave unnoticed some of the merely incidental general statements which this tract contains. Let it suffice to warn the reader who is curious in such things, that we have here but gathered a few grapes of the vintage.

Brief Outline of the Study of Theology. By Dr. FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER. Translated from the German by WILLIAM FARRER, LL.B. Edinburgh: T. T. Clark, 12mo., 220 pp. 1850. The translator of the above-mentioned work dedicates the result of his labours to Dr. Pye Smith. When we saw that respected name in connection with that of Schleiermacher, we exclaimed, What fellowship is there between English congregationalism and German theology? between the orthodoxy of Homerton and the enterprising thought of Berlin University?' It is true, as the translator remarks, that no adherence to the system of the author is implied either on the part of the translator or his venerable friend to whom he dedicates the work. We wonder, nevertheless, whether the authorities at Homerton wish their disciples to tread in the footsteps of the great German divine; whether they are desirous that some of the churches and congregations' should be indulged with Schleiermacher's elaborated thoughts. But we proceed to answer the inquiry, Are we to thank

Mr.