The Victory of Trafalgar, a Naval Ode, in Commemoration of British Heroifm. By Samuel Maxey, Efq. 2S. A Funeral Ode, in two Parts, on the Death of Lord Nelfon. By Edward Atkyns Bray, F. A. S. of the Middle Temple. 4to. 25. 61. Original Sonnets, and other final Pieces. By Anna Maria Smallpiece. is. 55. Verfes on the Death of Lord Nelfon. By the Earl of Carlisle. Trafalgar; a Rhapfody on the Death of Lord Nelfon. By Robert Bellew, Efq. 2s. 6d. The Death of the Hero.-Verfes to the Memory of Lord Vif count Neifon. IS. The Harper, and other Poems. By Quintin Froft, Efq. 5s. Poems, chiefly defcriptive of the fofter and more delicate Senfations and Emotions of the Heart; original and tranflated, or imitated from the Works of Gefner. By Robert Fellows, A. M. Oxon. 45. 6d. The Remonftrancer remonftrated with; or fome Obfervations fuggefted by the Perufal of a Couplet, and the Note attached to it, in Mr. Shee's Rhymes on Art. By W. H. Watts. is. 6d. The Poetical Works of Arthur Bligh, Efq. 5s. MISCELLANIES. The Chriftmas Firefide; or Juvenile Critics. By Sarah Wheatley. 35. Ceremony to be obferved on the Public Funeral Proceffion of the late Lord Viscount Nelfon. 6d. A Lift of the Irregular Preterites; or Præterperfects of the Supines, and also of the Paft Participles of Deponent Verbs, showing from what Verbs they are derived. By Edmund Philip Pridel, LL.D. IS. Commercial Phrafeology, in French and English. By William Keegan. 35. 6d. Hiftorical Dialogues for Young People. 3s. 6d. New Annual Regifter for 1804. 14S. The Spirit of the French Anas. 3 vols. 155. A Meteorological Journal of the Year 1805, kept in Pater nofter-Row, London. By W. Bent. 8vo. Is. 6d. LIBRARIES SOLD IN JANUARY. The Library of the Marquis of Lanfdowne. By Leigh and Sotheby, Jan. 6, and thirty fucceffive Days. ACKNOW. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TO CORRESPONDENTS. Quæ regio in terris noftri non plena laboris !-We have received a very pleasant invitation from a friend in the remote regions of the North, offering us hofpitality if we fhould direct our horfes heads that way. Alas, we have no horfes, but have been pedeftrians all our lives, and fhall probably remain fo. We return, however, grateful thanks to our new correfpondent, and will make a point of attending to the publication he mentions. It is not our custom to dilate much on novels, but we think Mr. D. may well be fatisfied with what is faid on Aubrey. Neither was any thing harfhly faid or intended with refpect to his other publication; but, in the present lax ftate of public morals, it becomes us to be vigilant in reprobating whatever has, even in appearance, a tendency towards indelicacy. He alludes to a former letter, which does not appear ever to have come to our hands; but we are not confcious of intending in his, or any other cafe, either to "damn with faint praife," or to cenfure with injuftice. LITERARY INTELLIGENCE. Mr. Bowyer, of Pall-Mall, is preparing to publish, under the fanction of Royal Patronage, a Life of Lord Neljon, accompanied with fplendid illuftrations, of the more remarkable engagements in which his Lordfhip was diftin-. guished. Mr. Derrick, of the Navy Office, will publifh in the fpring, Memoirs of the Rife and Progress of the Royal Navy, from the reign of Henry the Seventh to the year laft paft. The pofthumous works of the late Dr. Holmes, Dean of Winchester, are immediately to be prepared for the press. Sir William Forbes is employed in an elaborate account of the Life of Dr. Beattie. An edition of The Proverbs of Ali, with a Latin tranflation and notes, by Cornelius Van Waener, is printing at the Clarendon prefs, in a quarto volume. Mr. Moufley, of . Baliol College, is the editor. Mr. Vanmildert is printing his Sermons at Boyle's Lecture. The work will appear in the course of the fpring. Dr. Harrison intends fhortly to publish a Pamphlet on the imperfect State of the Practice of Phyfic in Great Britain; to which will be added, Hints for its Improvement. THE BRITISH CRITIC, For FEBRUARY, 1806. Οὐ παύσομαι τὰς Χάριτας ταῖς Μέσαις EURIP. apud Stobæum. Still in delightful fympathy be join'd, Second. ART. I. The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea. Part the Containing an Account of the Navigation of the Ancients, from the Gulph of Elana in the Red Sea to the Ifland of Ceylon. With Differtations. By William Vincent, b.D. 4to. 642 pp. 11. Is. Cadell and Davies. 1805. WE return, with particular pleafure, to the review of this learned and elaborate work; not only because a publication of peculiar intereft to the oriental hiftorian and geographer, is here brought to a conclufion, but because the diftinguished author, who has merited fo much from his country, in many important refpects, has in the interval obtained fomething of that otium cum dignitate, that well-earned reward of a life of unwearied exertion, which good men and good scholars fo univerfally wifhed for him. These pages are the firft-fruits of that learned leifure, that tranquility, and that health, which in a former preface were declared neceffary to the completion of an undertaking, arduous in the extreme, upon ground little trodden, and abounding with few flowers to alleviate the toil of investigators. The Dedication to his Majefty modeftly and gratefully expreffes the author's fenfe of the royal favours conferred on toiling literature; and notwithstanding the H BRIT. CRIT. VOL. XXVII. FEB. 1806. cogent cogent reafon urged in the preface, that at fixty-fix it is time to drop the purfuits of literary curiofity, we ftill indulge a hope that this will not abfolutely close the researches of this difcerning writer. The field of ancient geography is ftill vaft, and very inadequately explored; and the plains of Thebes and of Perfepolis afford ample fcope for the exertions of a genius which, as it appears, no labour can daunt, and no difficulties retard. The literati, not of England only, but of Europe, when they reflect upon what has already been done, amid the diftractions of a high public ftation, will naturally expect fome further exertions from "leifure, tranquillity, and health," continued, as we hope they will be. In the portion of the Periplus, which has already paffed under confideration, whatever had relation to commerce and ancient difcoveries in Egypt, and on the coaft of Africa, was extensively detailed; the fame line of inveftigation is here purfued refpecting ARABIA and INDIA. Dr. Vincent, appealing to the authority of that most ancient and facred book, (too little regarded by fome modern geographers in their inveftigation of oriental antiquities) which exprefsly mentions, feventeen centuries before Christ, the Ifhmaelites trading to Egypt with the fpices of India, and the balfam and myrrh of their own country, contends for .the Arabians being the earlieft traders and navigators in the eastern feas: for, with refpect to the Egyptians he observes, they not only abhorred the fea, but all thofe connected with it. The ancient Indians were prohibited by their religious code, from paffing the Attock, or forbidden river; the more ancient Perfians, the worfhippers equally of fire and water, were alfo reftrained, by the code of Zerdufht, from becoming a nation skilled in naval concerns; and with vaft engines had even dammed up the mouths of their great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, opened afterwards, with great labour, by Alexander; while, at this day, their defcendants, the Guebres, who build the fineft fhips in the world at Bombay, dare not navigate them. On the contrary, the Arabians, in their maritime purfuits, had neither religious nor civil difficulties to contend with; they received from Egypt, from Perfia, and India, the rich produce and manufactures of those countries, and were the carriers of them to the Tyrians and Sidonians, the firft merchants and navigators of the western world. LEUKE KOME, or the white village, diftant from Myos Hormus, on the oppofite Egyptian coaft, about three days fail, was the port of this ancient traffic, the point of immediate communication with PETRA, the capital of the country, called thence Arabia Petræa, whofe 5 whose king, at the period when the Periplus was written, was named Malichas, a tributary of the Romans. From this capital, the treasures of the east were difperfed in all directions by caravans; and the author thinks that it continued to flourish in this diftinguished manner till the fleets of the Ptolemies appeared upon the Red Sea, and the exertions of that illuftrious dynafty gave at once new vigour and a new channel to commerce. On this fubject, the difputed fituation of OPHIR naturally coming under difcuffion, the Dean of W. gives his reasons, which are very forcible, for differing from Bruce and D'Anville with refpect to it, and coincides with Prideaux and Goffelin in opinion that it need not be fought for further than the fhore of Arabia Felix, p. 239. A fhort history of Idumea is fubjoined, with a catalogue of its princes, who reigned at Petra, as far as by diligent refearch into Jofephus, Strabo, and other authors, it could be made out, with at view to illuftrate this important head, on which confiderable pains have evidently been beftowed. 1 Under the next general head, we find fome interefting obfervations relative to the COMPASS, referring alfo to an im portant paper in the Appendix, by Lord Macartney, containing his reafons for concluding that the inftrument of that kind in ufe among the Chinefe, is not derived to them from Europeans, p. 257. In confidering the WEALTH OF ARABIA, the fixth object of the author's attention, the care of that people to avoid all oftentatious display of the treafures acquired by their amazing commerce is remarked upon, and accounted for. It is obferved that, while immenfe edifices were conftructed in Perfia, Chaldæa, and Egypt, from the fame fource, no remarkable monuments of national grandeur and profperity could well be expected among a people whofe proud fpirit of independence ever revolted at monarchical fway, by means of which those monuments have been generally erected. A nation of merchants and marauders, as they continue to this day, not firmly united among themfelves, but individually influenced by jarring interefts and views, devoted to private luxury and gratification that wealth which in Egypt covered the Thebaid with magnificent temples, and in Affyria raised the fuperb palaces of Nineve and Babylon. Of habits and manners wholly different from his neighbours, the crouded city had no charms for the Arabian; the grove and the tent were his delight, if affluent; if not, to fecure that affluence, he adventuroufly fpread the fail of commerce on the fhores of India, of Perfia, and of Egypt. H& The |