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as expressive of mournful feeling, and more especially the beginning of a line with a spondaic dissyllable, and a pause after it, a commencement generally avoided as ungraceful by Virgil. Respice et has lacrymas, memori quas ictus amore Fundo; quod possum, juxta lugere sepulcrum Dum juvat, et mutæ vana hæc jactare favillæ.

(Nec minus interea Misenum in littore Teucri Flebant, et cineri ingrato suprema ferebant.

Æn. vi. 212.)

Are we fanciful in tracing here another Virgilian artifice, namely a mixture of sluggish and prosaic construction, for the same purpose? "Respice et hus lacrymas."

Æneas moesto defixus lumina vultu

Ingreditur, linquens antrum.-E. VI. 156.
Spargitur et tellus lacrymis, sparguntur et arma.

Ib. xi. 191. P. 389, art. 6, alliteration. The Romans appear to have considered the alliteration with as an exception to the general rule, judging from the frequency of its occurrence.

P. 391, 1. ult. (of Elegiac verse.) "It is preferable when the sense is terminated at the end of a distich which is followed by a full stop, or at least by a colon." Rather, this was the practice of the writers of the Augustan and following ages. The difference is the same as that between the couplets of the age of Elizabeth, (revived by some of the best poets of the present age,) and of Anne. Which construction is preferable in either of the two cases, is a different question. For our own parts, we doubt whether so much beauty as Catullus bas enclosed in his elegiac verse could by any possibility have been embodied in the Ovidian.1

P. 392, art. 4. There is only one instance in Ovid of a pentameter terminating with a trisyllable. The quadrisyllabic termination occurs in him about, or nearly as often as the spondaic in Virgil; and generally with good effect.

P. 393, art. 5. Single rhymes, such as "Instant officio nomina bina tuo," are no fault at all.

P. 395, Observation 1. " In Catullus-the second foot [of a hendecas.] is sometimes a spondee :" only in Carm. LV.

II. The following fragment, relative to a transaction unrecorded in history, deserves preservation for its mock-heroic so

norousness.

On the structure of the Ovidian distich, see an excellent paper in this Journal, vol. xxII. p. 221-224.

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Bella per Oxonios plusquam civilia campos,
Fœmineosque estus, magnique inflata Mathonis
Pectora, commissasque in mutua prælia linguas,
Calliopea, refer. Tuque, o Caducifer, adsis,
Atlantis facunde nepos: tu causidicorum
Præsidium atque decus ; tu per certamina rauca
Suppeditas animos, et vocibus instruis ora.
Tu nobis idem faveas, pater, et vice Phobi
Advenias, spiresque sacram per pectora flammam.
III. English renderings of Classical words and phrases.

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In this matter it is amusing to observe with what pertinacity we hold by ancient and established solecisms. We still persist in translating litera by letters; we might as well render inducia by truces, or nuptia by marriages. Litera means properly, not letters in the sense of epistles, but a collection of letters or written characters, sent to a person at a distance for the purpose of conveying our wishes to him; so yрáμμaτa, Thuc. 1. 130, ταῦτα λαβὼν ὁ Παυσανίας τὰ γράμματα, synonymous with ἐπιστολήν. How the singular form came in modern languages to be substituted for the plural, is of no consequence. Again, in rendering the Greek vocative we retain the original, as if it possessed the same force in both languages; "O Socrates,' "O Alcibiades," "O Athenians," where no exclamation, nor any peculiar solemnity of address is intended. "Great are the virtues of great O," says the Laureat. Were our histories, our orations, and our newspaper reports interlarded as plentifully with this kind of embellishment as our translations from the classics, the absurdity would be evident. Such mistranslations, like other misdoings, may sometimes by a happy chance produce a beauty; but it will be a beauty out of place.--We translate ἄδικος, ἀδικεῖν, ἀδικία, &c. invariably by the one stiff and "to act unjustly,' general term "unjust," injustice," &c. whereas the true English varies according to the context, as in the case of several other verbs. Φαίνεσθαι is usually translated "to appear," although this is seldom its meaning; it usually signifies "to prove or turn out," or "to show one's self." Ti after an adjective is generally translated "some," "a certain," &c.; whereas in most cases it ought not to be translated at all. So Te in the construction TE-xa-, at least in many instances. We are also much in the habit of rendering the aorist participle, when followed by the verb, literally, as, diaxóavtes tòv μoxλòv, ἐξῆλθον, 0ov, "having cut through the bolt, they escaped," where the true English rendering would be," they effected their escape by cutting through the bolt."

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Hom. II. e. 478.

σέθεν δ ̓ ἐγὼ οὐκ ἀλεγίζω

χωομένης, οὐδ ̓ εἴ κε τὰ νείατα πείραθ ̓ ἵκηαι

γαίης καὶ πόντοιο, ἵν ̓ Ιαπετός τε Κρόνος τε
ἥμενοι, οὔτ ̓ αὐγῆς ὑπερίονος ήελίοιο

τέρποντ', οὔτ ̓ ἀνέμοισι· βαθὺς δέ τε Τάρταρος ἀμφίς

Thus translated by Chapman :

I weigh not thy displeased spleene, though to th' extremest bounds

Of earth and seas it carry thee, where endlesse night confounds

Japet, and my dejected sire, who sit so far beneath

They never see the flying sun, nor hear the winds that breathe,
Neare to profoundest Tartarus-

These few words may perhaps have suggested the admirable description of Saturn's place of exile, in the Hyperion of John Keats:

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat grey-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head,

Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day

Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass;
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.

Keats, we believe, was ignorant of Greek; but it appears, from a sonnet by him, that he had read with delight the translation of Chapman. Our readers will pardon an additional citation from this excellent and most genuine poet.

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been,
Which bards in fealty to Apollo held.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told,
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet never did I breathe its pure serene,
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold :
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies,
When a new planet swims into his ken:
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific-and his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Virg. Æn. VIII. 670. Secretosque pios: his dantem jura Catonem. "The critics and commentators seem to agree that Virgil does not mean Cato Uticensis, but Cato the Censor; and they all give the same reasons for their conjecture. First, they allege that, &c.—and, secondly, as Cato was guilty of suicide, he could not be admitted into the Elysian fields. As to his suicide, which the Romans esteemed the noblest of all his actions, that could be no bar to his future happiness: the commentators forget that Æneas met Dido in the Elysian fields." Dr. King's Anecdotes of his Own Times, second edition, 1819, p. 91. There is however a passage in the sixth book, which, as commonly interpreted, implies a condemnation of suicide; v. 434. Proxima deinde tenent mosti loca, qui sibi letum Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi

Projecere animas. Quam vellent æthere in alto, &c. If Virgil meant to express his disapprobation of suicide in the abstract, he contradicts himself immediately after, by introducing Dido (and others similarly situated, Phædra, Evadne, and Laodamia) not indeed, as Dr. King says, in the Elysian fields, but in a place which cannot properly be styled unhappy;

conjux ubi pristinus illi

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Respondet curis, æquatque Sichæus amorem. And even supposing that he excluded from his general condemnation such suicides as were committed from supposed virtuous principle, as that of Cato, or from honorable affection, as of Laodamia, still we have to account for the appearance of Phædra and Dido in the "lugentes campi." In truth, however, there is not a word in the whole passage which necessarily implies moral censure. Virgil speaks of suicide as, in the gentle phrase of our newspapers, a rash act," but not as incurring punishment. The words "Quam vellent," &c. are, as is well known, copied from the reply of Achilles to Ulysses in the eleventh Odyssey, where morality is out of the question. With regard to Cato, we are rather inclined to suppose that the Censor was intended, because his reputation was of longer standing, and he had already become ranked in popular estimation with the canonized worthies of Rome; especially as he is mentioned simply by his name, without any kind of distinctive designation. So VI. 842.

Quis te, magne Cato, tacitum, aut te, Cosse, relinquat? where it seems to be agreed that the elder Cato is intended; from which we may presume that he is spoken of here also. After all, however, we are far from positive as to the application of the passage.

NOTICE OF

NUGÆ HEBRAICE, or an Inquiry into the Elementary Principles of the Structure of the Hebrew Language. By a member of the Royal Irish Academy. London.-Rivington, 1825-4to. pp. 67. price 7s. 6d.

Ir is very remarkable, when we consider the quantity of mind continually employed on ancient literature, how few philological principles, unknown before, have been established in modern times, and how little progress has consequently been made, in facilitating the acquisition, or developing the systems of these venerable tongues. The fact seems to be, that the disposition for acquirement, and the talent for discovery, are seldom possessed in any high degree by the same individual. To wrangle about the comparative merits of dè and Tɛ, or insert as many digammas as possible in a given passage of Homer, seems to be the whole employment of the majority of those whom the world venerates as savans.

What masses of undigested facts have been accumulated by German "illustrissimi," and the "magnanimi Heroes" of English Universities! what curious and labored erudition has been wasted on commas, and accents, and Babylonian bricks, aud Masoretic pointing! But the spirit of philosophic generalization has seldom moved on the face of these muddy waters. Horne Tooke in English, Hemsterhuys in Greek, and some very able German writers on other tongues, have indeed done a good deal towards simplifying the etymologies of languages; but there is still much remaining to be performed—a rich harvest that awaits the sickle, and will repay the toil of the reaper. The subject would probably have long ago received a stronger degree of illumination, but, in the niemorable words of Bacon,

no one has yet been found of so constant and severe a mind, as to have determined and tasked himself utterly to abolish theories and common notions, and to apply his intellect, altogether smoothed and even to particulars anew. Accordingly that human reason, which we have, is a kind of medley and unsorted collection, from much trust and much accident, and the childish notions which we first drank in. Whereas if one of ripe age and sound senses, and a mind thoroughly cleared,

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