Isaac Taylor, whose "Natural History of Enthusiasm," has been much read in this country, has in press Wesley and Methodism.
Not long ago it was stated that a Mr. Simonides had discovered at the foot of Mount Athos a great number of important Greek MSS. We ventured to express some doubts on the subject, and we now perceive that Mr. Rhangabe, Professor of Archaiology in the University of Athens, has published a critical examination of these pretended discoveries, in which he proves very satisfactorily that every manuscript of an ancient work which Mr. Simonides has allowed others to examine, and every work which he has published, has turned out to be a modern fabrication. A more real discovery has been made by persons engaged in removing the earth for the foundations of a house near the Acropolis. Fragments of inscriptions, and several relics of sculpture and architecture, have been dug up, and it is thought they prove that the senate house, metroon, and other buildings in which the Athenian archives were preserved, stood in the vicinity. Apropos of M. Simonides, in a letter from Constantinople it is alleged that from the examination of ancient manuscripts in different Greek convents, he has discovered an indication that the original of the Acts of the Apostles is buried in an island in the Sea of Marmora, and that he has caused an application to be made to the Turkish government for leave to search after it, which, it is said, is opposed by the Greek Patriarch, from fear that the discovery of the important document may lead to new schisms in the church!
We mentioned in a recent number of the International the discovery and publication of a supposed MS. work by Origen. In the June number of the Quarterly it is carefully reviewed, and in several of the theological journals it has received the attention due to a work of its pretensions. We see now that the Chevalier Bunsen has in the press of the Longmans Five Letters to Archdeacon Hare, on Hypolitus, Presbyter of the Church of Rome, author of the recently discovered book ascribed to Origen, and the bearing of this work on the leading Questions of Ecclesiastical History and Polity.
Dr. Croly has just published a new volume of poems, under the title of Scenes from Scripture. The greater part of them had previously appeared in annuals, &c. C. B. Cayley has given to the world a new version of the Divine Comedy, in the original terza rhyme; Edmund Peel, a poet of Mr. Robert Montgomery's class, has published The Fair Island, descriptive of the Isle of Wight; Robert Montgomery himself has nearly ready his some-time promised Poetical Works, for the first time collected into one volume, similar to the octavo editions of Southey, Wordsworth, &c., including some original minor poems, and a general preface, (only the printing being in the style of Wordsworth.)
The first of the old historians to be edited in the light of the modern discoveries in Assyria, is Herodotus, to appear in a new English version, translated from the text of Gaisford, and edited by Rev. George Rawlinson, assisted by Col. Rawlinson and Sir J. G. Wilkinson, with copious notes, illustrating the history and geography by Herodotus, from the most recent sources of information, and embodying the chief results, historical and ethnographical, which have been arrived at in the progress of cuneiform and hieroglyphical discovery. This edition will be printed for Mr. Murray in four octavo volumes. The translation has been undertaken from a conviction of the inadequacy of any existing version to the wants of the time. The unfaithfulness of Beloe, and the unpleasantness of his style, render his version insufficient in an age which dislikes affectation and requires accuracy; while the only others which exist are at once too close to the original to be perused with pleasure by the general reader, and defective in respect of scholarship.