touches it with her magick hand and it instantly sparkles with unusual brilliancy, and though we have known it long before, it acquires new properties, and every thing favours the fascination. Unhappily the genius that could have taught every breath of the zephyr to whisper morality, was the slave of his own passions and disciplined to the tyranny of lust. In this lurks the danger of his page; nature animate and inanimate is made to administer to gross and criminal enjoyment. A delicate refinement silvers over the surface, and all the noxious qualities are hidden. Happy is the mind that can at once admire and condemn such elegant depravity. It has been the misfortune of great geniuses in all ages to confer celebrity on trifles. When we censure men who had the boldness to project, and the persevering hardihood to achieve such great designs as have extorted the admiration of succeeding ages, we feel humbled by a sense of our comparative insignificance. We incline to believe, that our minds are incapable of comprehending the passage where we cannot discover a beauty, and in deference to the fame of the author rather admire than criticise. This consecration of trifles ultimately tends to the corruption of publick taste, and as long as such delusion holds, makes all attempts at reformation abortive. Great men often do things unworthy of themselves, and those have a more tender regard for their glory who censure in such cases with freedom, than they who attempt its defence on such equivocal evidence. Milton may be compared to an eagle; when he attempts to skim the surface of the ground, he is sluggish and inert, and he beats not a flower with the delicate touch of a butterfly's wing. As he rises into his proper element, he gains strength and security, and finally in the neighbourhood of the sun, finds his home amongst beams too dazzling for mortals. R. INGRATITUDE. Pope Urban VIII. having received ill treatment, as he thought, from some considerable persons at Rome, said: "How ungrateful is this family! To oblige them, I canonized an ancestor of theirs, who did not deserve it." ST. PAUL'S QUOTATIONS. It is well known that there are several quotations from heathen poets to be found in the writings of the apostle Paul, and some fragments of hexameters which have not yet been discovered in any of the Greek poets which have come down to us. But it is not so generally known that the 14th verse of the 5th chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians, which seems to be quoted from some unknown writer, consists of three Anacreontick verses. Έγειραι ο καθεύδων Awake thou that sleepest, Και ένας εκ των νεκρων, Επιφαύσει σοι ο Χριςος. Christ shall give thee light. It has always been a great difficulty with commentators to find this quotation; for though it is introduced with the common formula which the apostle uses, when he quotes from the O. T. these words are not to be found in any of the canonical writings. It has been supposed, and with great probability, that these three verses are a portion of one of the spiritual songs which the apostle mentions in a subsequent verse, and with which he advises the Ephesians to make melody. It is certain that what we call alternate, or, in more correct language, antiphonal musick, was in use among the Jews and early christians, as it is now in all cathedral churches, and among the methodists. If this is a fragment of one of those early hymns, the form of quotation, the metrical character, and the parallelism of the sentiments, are all well accounted for. There is in the first chapter of James, 17th v. one hexameter verse, and with a little alteration another. Πασα δοσις αγαθής και παν δώρημα τέλειον Ες απο των φωτων πατρος καταβαινον ανωθεν. Is from above and cometh down from the father of lights. FINE WRITING. A SCHOLAR, who was very penurious, and wrote a small hand to save paper, lent a manuscript of his to a friend, who returned it unread with this compliment: "If you reason as closely as you write, you are invincible." REMARKS ON ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE ROMAN POETS. No. 11. PERSIUS. "Perse en ses vers obscurs, mais serrez et pressans, Or that distinguished triumvirate of Roman satirists, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, Persius, the second in the order of succession, has commonly been considered the last in eminence. He did not live in the very best days of Rome. Instead of Augustus for a patron, he had Nero for an adversary; not a rival, for, though the Emperor wrote verses, they were quoted by Persius only to be ridiculed. Nero was a mark, at which the satirist frequently aimed; but he was shielded so effectually by ignorance and vice, and the arrows were so distant, that they either missed the object, or wounded but slightly. The satires of Persius are the productions of a youth, who died in the thirtieth year of his age, A. D. 62. He is said to have acquired a relish for satire upon reading the tenth book. of Lucilius.* He was educated in the philosophy of the stoicks, and was an exemplary disciple of the founder of the sect. * Suetonius, Persii ivita. Op. 4th. Delph. p. 661. Lucilius appears to have been read with avidity by the satirists, who succeeded him. Horace frequently mentions him, and mentions him generally with respect. Lucili ritu. Me pedibus delectat claudere verba Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim The praise, which Horace bestows on him, is not always unmixed. He sometimes uses diminutive appellations in speaking of his verse. He was "garrulus," and wrote "versiculos euntes molliùs," &c. but, though a flowing writer, the stream was not always pure. "Flueret lutulentus," says Horace; and the same writer certainly places him in a ridiculous attitude, when he relates, that this same poet often dictated in an hour two hundred verses, standing on one foot. He speaks also of his fondness for mixing Greek words with his Latin compositions. Another peculiarity, remarked by Macrobius in his saturnalia, but which does not appear in what remains of Lucilius, is the separation of two syllables of the same word by an intervening word. Unfortunately the fragments only of this author remain, and those so broken, that we can scarcely estimate the value of the entire work. If Persius were superiour to Horace and Juvenal in learning, which has been contended, he was inferiour to both, as a poet and satirist. This seems to be conceded in effect even by Casaubon, his most able advocate and commentator ;* for, though he nowhere acknowledges, that his favourite author falls below them en masse, yet he grants, that he is often obscure, and sometimes an unhappy imitator of his predecessor, Horace. It was the object of Persius to write with sententious brevity, and in lofty numbers. Aware that wit was. not his province, he aimed with grave severity to recommend virtue and integrity. This he has sometimes done almost Lucilius has been called the father of satire. Ennius and Pacuvius did indeed precede him, but Quintilian decides for us, that Lucilius was the first, who arrived at any considerable excellence in that species of composition. “In satyra primus insignem laudem adeptus est Lucilius." The rhetorician is also extremely tenacious of its Roman origin. "Satyra quidem tota nostra est." Dryden has entered into a long discussion of the origin and progress of satire, in the dedication, prefixed to the translation of Juvenal and Persius. It contains also an ingenious parallel between Horace, Persius, and Juvenal; and, excepting a most gross and distorted effusion of praise, bestowed on the earl of Dorset and Middlesex, which occupies about twelve pages, the whole dedication, addressed to that nobleman, must delight the classical reader. Dryden gives Casaubon the credit of having "understood Persius particularly well, and better, than all the former commentators, and Stelluti, who succeeded him." But, says the same writer, "the best commentators can but guess his meaning in many passages, and none can be certain, that he has divined rightly." Casaubon published a very correct text of Persius from an ancient manuscript, accompanied with a copious and critical commentary; of which Scaliger remarks,—La sauce vant mieux que le poisson. The third edition, printed in 1647, is in the library of Harvard College, and contains on a blank leaf the following in manuscript: "The satires of Persius are here collated with the finest and oldest MS. of that author, now probably extant. It is in the Bodley-Library No. 2455, joined with Boetius de Consol: Philos: which at the end of it has this remarkable inscription: "Hunc codice dedit Leofricus Episc: Ecclesiae B: Petri Apostoli in Exonia, ad utilitatē successoru suorū; siquis illū illinc abstulerit, eternae subjaceat maledictioni. "FIAT, FIAT, FIAT. "Leofric was Bishop of Exeter and Cornwall about the year 1050, "W. HARTE." (Probably Walter Harte, an English poet and historian, author of the history of Gustavus Adolphus, &c.) with a spirit and wisdom, which would become a christian. He attacked with a boldness approaching temerity, the writings of the emperour and nobility; the levity exhibited in prayers and vows to the gods; and the vices of idleness and luxury and ambition and voluptuousness in the great and the wealthy. The veil of obscurity, which conceals the beauty and grandeur of Persius, can be withdrawn by no ordinary hand. The whole of him can never be exhibited. If he had taken a middle course between that strained, majestick diction, by which he is distinguished, and the "sermo pedestris" of Horace's satires, it would have deducted nothing from his excellence, and would have added many to the list of his admi rers. I know of but one attempt to render Persius literally into English poetry: Barton Holyday was the author of the undertaking. But Holyday was by no means a poet; and, if he had been, he would not have rendered his version interesting, or even intelligible; for he was ignorant of the art of translating. He laboured for verbal exactness, for compression, and for rhyme; and, in defiance of all rules of interpretation, he studied to render line for line.* "Holiday had nothing in view but to show, that he understood his author, with so little regard to the grandeur of his diction, or the volubility of his numbers, that his metres can hardly be called verses; they cannot be read without reluctance, nor will the labour always be rewarded by understanding them." Dryden, with several coadjutors, having translated the satires of Juvenal, undertook alone the translation of Persius to be published in the same volume. Dr. Johnson has given his opinion of this version in a single paragraph; and, though *The writer hazards these remarks chiefly on the authority of Dryden, for he has not been able to obtain Holyday's translation of Juvenal and Persius. Dryden allows, that he possessed a good knowledge of Persius, and commented on many passages with ingenuity and correctness; but his version "cannot be understood without as large a commentary, as that, which he makes on his author." Holyday was humble enough to think there might be defects in his work; but the expression of it is singular. "To have committed no faults," says he, “in this translation would have been to translate myself, and put off man," Wood calls this contemptible pun "an elegant turn.” Johnson's Life of Dryden, |