Notes Upon Thucydides

From the Preface. THE present publication was suggested by Mr. Dawson Turner's "Notes on Herodotus," and is intended to supply those wants, the existence of which the very large sale of that useful volume seems to indicate. It is perhaps well to state thus much lest the reader should misunderstand the character of the work, and be induced to estimate it by a standard which it does not affect to reach. It does not, for instance, deal in conjectural emendation, it does not contain a digest of various readings, or anything like an apparatus criticus for Thucydides, and it leaves untouched, or only briefly notices many matters, which a perfect edition of an historical writer ought to discuss. "What it attempts is something more humble, but at the same time, we trust, not altogether useless; for it endeavors to furnish University Students with that amount of information which their second examination may be regarded as likely to require. What this amount exactly is, under present circumstances, cannot very easily be estimated. The period usually devoted to the preparation for a University degree, when compared with the immensely increased requirements of the various examinations, will, to the student at any rate, appear but brief; and the arrangement of the relative claims of different authors upon his time, is perhaps one of the greatest difficulties with which he has to contend. If, for instance, he desires to raise himself to the standard of philosophical acquirement proposed by Mr. Pattison, * and of historical knowledge by Mr. Froude, how is he to find leisure for that careful and critical study of the classical authors which Prof. Conington has so truly described as the only useful way of practicing such study at all? We do not presume to answer a question which must in some measure perplex those much more competent to enter upon it than ourselves; but we venture to say that thus much at any rate is clear. The very conditions of the case render the examination, under such circumstances, of what commentators have written in various languages upon the text of Thucydides, nothing less than a physical impossibility. And yet, unless we are prepared to surrender much of what hitherto has been included under the 'idea' of scholarship, an acquaintance to some extent with the labours of the great scholars of this and other ages, and a practical imitation of their 'method, ' is surely necessary to anyone who aspires to be called by that once respected name. One help towards overcoming the difficulty might perhaps be found, if competent persons were to collect, within moderate compass, so much matter bearing upon the various works, or portions of works taken up for examination, as would afford a reasonable amount of incidental information, and at the same time convey an adequate notion of the way in which these subjects have been treated by the great masters of classical criticism. This accordingly is what we have tried to do here: imperfectly, perhaps, but to the best of a judgment tolerably instructed by experience. If these notes do not contain much less than what candidates for the second University examination will require, they may perhaps fairly deprecate criticism for not containing more....