Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 93, No. 571, May, 1863Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 93, No. 571, May, 1863
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
This combination of the knowledge of the antiquarian with the
observations of the traveller has a singular charm for us: but there is
another combination which is still more attractive; it is where the
philosophical historian, familiar with the myths of antiquity, traces in
the living barbarians around him the same play of fancy, or the same
curious development of thought, that he has been accustomed to study in
the obscure records of a dead language. Mr Wilson is an historian as
well as an archæologist, and is in both capacities an enlightened
student of such _living antiquity_ as may still exist in that continent,
where the earliest and the latest forms of civilisation were destined to
meet and to recognise each other.
Our author might, we think, have put his materials together in a more
compact form, and arranged them more carefully. The headings of the
several chapters lead us to expect a more definite arrangement than we
find in the book itself: and this must be partly our excuse if our own
observations should seem to be of a miscellaneous character. It must be
confessed, also, that there is sometimes a want of precision and
accuracy of language on just those occasions where precision is most
needed, and that this is not compensated by a rather too lavish display
of a florid species of eloquence, better fitted for the lecture-room
than the written composition. It is good of its kind, but there is too
much of it. We presume that a large portion of the book was written
originally for the lecture-room. But notwithstanding these minor
defects, we confidently recommend these volumes as replete with
information on a variety of interesting topics, and suggestive of many
trains of reflection. They will assuredly repay an attentive perusal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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