Amazon.com description: Product Description: This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1908. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XL. ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Dr Parr, who died in 1825, writes thus in his Diary:-- 'In the reign of Ptolemy Greece boasted of her Pleiad; England, in my day, may boast of a Decad of literary luminaries, Dr Samuel Butler, Dr Edward Maltby, bishop Blomfield, dean Monk, Mr E. H. Barker, Mr Kidd, Mr Burges, professor Dobree, professor Gaisford, and Dr Elmsley. They are professed critics: but in learning and taste Dr Routh of Oxford is inferior to none'1. The last of these, Martin Joseph Routh (1755--1854), died in the hundredth year of his age, after having been President of Magdalen for three and sixty years. He edited the Euthydemus and Gorgias of Plato in 1784, lived to produce the fifth volume of his Relliquiae Sacrae in 1848, and, at the age of 92, summed up his long experience in the precept:-- 'I think, sir, ...you will find it a very good practice always to verify your references'13. Edward Maltby (1770--1859), of Winchester and of Pembroke, Cambridge, successively bishop of Chichester and of Durham, was the author of a useful Kiddby Lexicon Graecoprosodiacum (1815)3. Thomas Kidd (1770--1850), of Trinity, Cambridge, head-master of Lynn, Wymondham and Norwich, edited the philological and critical works of Ruhnken, the 'Tracts' of Porson, and the 'Miscellanea Critica' of Dawes. 'It was amusing', says Maltby, 'to see Kidd in Porson's company; he bowed down before Porson with the veneration due to some being of a superior nature'4. 1 Memoirs, i 753 n. 2 Burgon's Twelve Good Men, i 73. 3 Founded on Morell's Thesaurus (1762). In supplementing that work Maltby, the pupil of Parr and the friend of Porson, received valuable assistance from both. 4 Rogers, Table Talk, Porsoniana, 325. The Porsonian tradition passed for a time from Cambridge to Oxfor...