noticed and quoted in other periodical works, we shall pass on to his last Messenienne on the death of Lord Byron, which seems scarcely yet to have reached this country. It commences with allusions to the well-known attempt of the Northern Review to crush him, and the noble Lord's vengeance: "Par de lâches clameurs quel génie insulté Dans son obscurité première, Changea plus promptement et sa nuit en lumière, Et son siècle en posterité ?" In continuing to celebrate the foibles and the misfortunes of the bard, he takes an opportunity to offer a piece of very necessary advice to his brethren; Poëtes, respectez les prêtres et les femmes, Ces terrestres Divinités! Comme dans les cèlestes âmes, L'outrage est immortel dans leurs cœurs irrités. He then addresses Byron in verses of great truth and force: Entouré de debris qui racontaient des crimes, Rebelle à son malheur, ton ame indépendante Comme lui tu rêvas l'enfer." M. Delavigne seems to imagine, with that obliquity that always seems to haunt the minds of party-poets, that England persecuted Lord Byron, that she banished him, used him very cruelly, &c. But this is merely an excuse to scold. After a very beautiful paraphrase of Byron's celebrated comparison between Greece and a dead female; he follows it up: "C'est la Grèce, as tu dit, c'est la Grèce opprimée, La Grèce belle encore, mais froide, inanimée ; Se rouvre à la clarté des cieux. Ce pur sang, que le fer a tant de fois versé Pour se répandre encore bouillonne dans ses veines ; Son front qui reprend sa fierté, Pâle d'un long trépas, menace et se relève, Son bras s'allonge, et cherche une glaive; Elle vit, elle parle, elle a dit. Liberté!" We shall conclude our notice of M. Delavigne with his concluding stanzas to our lost poet: "Il n'est plus ! il n'est plus! toi qui fut sa patrie, Tyrans, pleurez; vos nuits, qui vengent l'innocence, "Les Grecs le vengeront, ils l'ont juré ; la gloire Qu'ils vont offrir à sa mémoire ; Qu'ils marchent, que son cœur repose au milieu d'eux, Alors avec le fer du croissant abattu Ils graveront sur son dernier asile: "O mort! que ne l'espargnais-tu ? Il chantait comme Homère, il fut mort comme Achille." Pressez vous, rois, place au grand homme!" BATRACHOMYOMACHIA, AND HYMN TO PAN. SOMEBODY blaming metrical translations, I believe Cowper, says that translating in verse is like dancing in fetters; and that therefore the looser the links are made, the more graceful is the motion. This was said to recommend blank verse translations. differ altogether; if I must dance in fetters, let them jingle. I But putting this pun out of the question, and a poor pun it is, it has always struck me that blank verse translations are apt, from the comparative easiness of their metre, to fall into something like plain prose; and that the necessity of rhyme makes the translation, when well done, so much more carefully done, as to resemble better an original poem, than otherwise. Moved by these considerations, and others which there is no need of mentioning, I have done into Spenserian (the most rhyme-demanding of all our stanzas,) the pleasant little mock Homeric poem of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice;' and with it the Homeric hymn to Pan, (it is not worth any body's while on this occasion to squabble about authenticity,) treated in a similar fashion. In the Batrachomyomachia I have retained the Grecian names of the warriors, though I know Goldsmith's objection to it; viz., that we lose the burlesque effect arising from the significancy of their humble denominations. I think, however, that we gain another piece of burlesque comicality in the imposing grandeur of the sound applied to such tiny combatants. Potempter may be droller than Embasichytros, but the latter is more magnificent in sound; and the drollery of the former is, to our ears at least, more like that of Æsop's Fables, than of an epic poem. I agree with Southey's remark to the same effect in his preface to Amadis, where he assigns as a reason for retaining Beltenebros in his text untranslated, that nobody ever thinks of calling St. Peter, Stone the apostle, though the name was avowedly significant. Lord Thurlow, not the present, but the chancellor, has translated the names in his version of the Battle of the Frogs and Mice. In giving the Greek names, I trust I have escaped the barbarous unprosodaical pronunciation of Parnell. I do not recollect ever having seen any part of Homer in Spenserian verse, except a fragment of the fourteenth book of the Iliad in Blackwood's Magazine,' about four years ago; nor indeed in any other stanza, except the hymn to Mercury, so admirably translated by Shelley; and a few detached passages of the Iliad, by a youg writer, who has since realized all the promises of his boyhood, as a poet and a scholar. BATRACHOMYOMACHIA. I. INTO my soul, * fair Heliconian train, That mock'd the achievements of the giant brood:- II. A thirsty mouse, escaping from a cat, Dipp'd his soft whisker in a neighbouring lake; Him, while upon its verdant marge he sat, With its sweet stream his panting thirst to slake, A croaking native of the pool bespake, "Who art thou? what thy race? whence hast thou come, Reply with truth, no fraudful answer make, For I shall lead thee to my royal dome, If worthy of my love-and make my house thy home." III. "I am the king Physignathus, whose sway Is own'd through all these waters, high and low; Me, as their rightful lord, the frogs obey, And to my sceptre long have loved to bow. A sceptre-bearing chief, and warrior tried declare." Euov nrog. Lungs, I believe, would express what the poet meant; but I am afraid that in these days we cannot ask the muses there. IV. So spake the frog. Psicharpax answered “Why Who in a darksome cavern bore me to her spouse. V. "She nursed me up with fond maternal care, "To me no dainty morsel is unknown, Not thrice-baked bread in rounded platter laidNot wide spread cake with sesamé bestrownNot livers rich in snow-white fat array'dNot slice from gammon cut with trenchant bladeNot pudding, food for gods immortal fitNor new-pressed cheese from milk delicious made, Nor aught sage cooks prepare, whose learned wit Lines the capacious pot with many a luscious bit. VII. "Nor from the slaughterous combat do I flee, And seize with nibbling tooth his heel or toe; |