The learned Gentleman would, perhaps, be as well employed in searching for mistakes in his own productions as in mine. He reproves the Abbé Barthélemy for citing Suidas, as one of those authors, who place Maimacterion after Pyanepsion. When he thus quarrels with those, who are on the same side with him, and accuses them of mistakes, where they have made none, what are his opponents to expect? Suidas, says Mr. S., has said nothing about the matter. Has he not indeed? Why then, what are the following words—Μαιμακτηριών, ὁ πέμπτος μὴν παρ' ̓Αθηναίοις, ὁ 'Ixvovágios? When Hecatombaon, according to the Macedonian regulation, was made to coincide with September, Maimacterion, if it followed Pyanepsion, would be the 5th month, and would necessarily coincide with January. The testimony of Suidas upon this subject of the Attic months is certainly of no avail. He states Posideon to be the same with December, aud how could this be, if Maimacterion corresponded with January? But though the testimony of Suidas upon this subject be of little value, yet such as it is, there can be no doubt of its being rightly referred to by the Abbé Barthélemy; and then comes this accurate critic, Mr. S., who never speaks upon a subject without examining the evidence, and tells us, that Suidas has said nothing about the matter! I am glad to see, in your last Number, (XVII.) that this writer is at his Coptic exercises again. I should never have disturbed his lucubrations, if I had not been so repeatedly, and, I must add, in most instances so unjustly attacked by him. I have, however, been much entertained by some of his etymological novelties. I have only time at present to take notice of one example of his ingenuity. The Greeks and Romans denominated cotton byssus. Mr. S. undertakes to show, that this word byssus is derived from the Egyptian; and the process, by which he obtains this result, is curious enough. The raw material was called by the Greeks époquλov, lana lignea, (probably because it was the produce of a shrub, or tree,) and sometimes, (apparently for the sake of brevity,) Exov, lignum. But the learned Gentleman thinks that the Greeks might have heard, that the Egyptians called this material by a name which signified wood-viz. boos, from which he derives the Greek Burros. He admits, that there is no such word in Coptic as bos, or boos, signifying wood; but Bo, and Bw, bear that meaning. Let us observe then the felicity, with which the etymology is made out. Bw, in the Saidic, should be pronounced like boo in boot. Now if we only add an s to boo, we shall have boos; and if we suppose that the Greeks added sos to boos, we shall obtain a word very like in sound to Burgos! What can be more satisfactory than this etymology? Some objectors may tell us, that there is no such word as boos, lignum, in Coptic; and that we have no right to coin words for the sake of an etymological hypothesis. But what does all this signify? Why, when it favors our etymology, should we doubt, that boo was once (perhaps a long time ago) written and pronounced boos? Besides, it is certain, that Bo, lignum, and the Greek word for cotton, Búooos, begin with the same letter; and, therefore, we are fully entitled to come to our conclusion. This is not all, however. The Coptic word hboos signifies a garment; and why should we not suppose with Mr. S., that this word is compounded of hebs, to cover, and boos, wood? The objectors will perhaps call out again, that there is no such word as boos, lignum-that hboos, vestimentum, comes from hebs, operire -that it literally signifies a covering-and that boos, lignum, a word which does not exist, can have nothing to do with the matter. Here, however, we will tell them, that our supposed word, boos, means cotton, as well as wood; and surely, as we have coined the word ourselves, we may make it mean just what we please. We, therefore, insist, that hebs, to cover, and our supposed word boos, wood, alias cotton, are the elements of hboos, a garment. To this the objectors may indeed auswer, that if hboos mean a cotton covering, which it must do if our etymology he right, there can be no other way of translating the words, &BUIC HINY, in the 20th chapter of St. John, than by rendering them thusa cotton covering of linen; and it must be admitted, that this would be a covering rather of a singular texture. W. DRUMMOND. 28th April, 1814. OBSERVATIONS ON MILTON'S LATIN POETRY. By DR. C. SYMMONS. WE E are happy to have it in our power, by the obliging permission of Dr. Charles Symmons, to lay before our readers some remarks on Milton's Latin poetry contained in his Life of J. Milton, 2d Ed. London, 1810. Sve. Some of them are from the pen of Dr. Parr, as appears from the following acknowledgment in the Preface to the second edition: "Doctor Parr must forgive me if I here state that the benefit, which this edition of my work has derived from the assistance of his judgment, has been so considerable as to give him a just claim to the thanks of my readers and myself. In a correspondence, which has passed between us, his deep and accurate erudition has supplied me with so many curious observations on the subject of Milton's Latin poetry, that, if I could consent to arrogate the possessions of a friend for my own, and to shine with the wealth of another, I could now make a splendid figure; and appear to be great beyond the design of my nature, or the indulgence of my fortune. The high reputation of Dr. Parr for learning and for talents cannot acquire a line of additional elevation from my panegyric; and when I affirm that his virtues as a man are equal to his merits as a scholar and a writer, I say only what his friends know to be true, and what his enemies have not the confidence to deny. I speak of him on this occasion only to gratify myself, and he must pardon my justifiable vanity-for "Nec Phobo gratior ulla Quam sibi quæ Vari præscripsit pagina nomen." Preface, p. 23. Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiisse penates. Eleg. I. addressed to C. Deodati. Our author seems in this place to be guilty of a false quantity, and to begin his hexameter very unwarrantably with a cretic. Terentianus Maurus accuses Virgil of the same inaccuracy in the line" solus hic inflexit sensus," &c. affirming with the old grammarians, that hic and hoc were formerly written with two c's, hicc, hocc, being contracted from hicce and hocce, and were always long. Vossius on the contrary asserts that these pronouns were long only when they were written with the double cc « Ad quantitatem hujus pronominis quod attinet, producebant et hic et hoc veteres quando per duplex c scribebant hicc vel hocc, abjecto e; corripiebant cum e simplex scripsere. Art. Gram. 29. Of a short hic more than one instance may be produced: "Hic vir hic est, tibi quem promitti sæpius audis; but not one, as far as my recollection is accurate, of a short hoc. "Hōc illud, germana, fuit," "Hic labor hoc opus est." "Hoc erat, alma parens" "Hoc erat experto frustra Varrone."-" Hoc erat in votis." My friend, Dr. Parr, however, has suggested that hoc is to be found short in the comic poets; and has referred me to two places, one in Plautus, and one in Terence, where it certainly occurs with this quantity. If this authority, from poetry neither epic, elegiac, nor lyric, can save Milton in this instance, it will be well; and one sin against prosody will be struck from his account Salmasius, in his abusive reply to "The Defence of the people of England," charges our author's Latin verse with many of these violations of quantity, and the accusation is repeated, as I shall remark in the proper place, by N. Heinsius. Though Milton's Latin metre be not proof against rigorous inquisition, yet are its offences against quantity very few-not more, perhaps, (if the Scazons, addressed to Salsilli, which seem to be constructed on a false principle, and some of the lines in the ode to Rouse, which appear to have been formed in defiance of every principle, be thrown out of the question,) than four, or, at the most, five, of a nature not to be disputed. Of these I shall notice two in the Damon, one of them evidently a slip of the pen, as in a former instance he had observed the right quantity, and the other an unwarrantable licence rather than a fault of this specific description. In the Idea Platonicá, he is guilty of shortening the second syllable of sempiternus, which beyond all controversy is long; and in his poem to his Father he makes the last syllable of ego long, when it is unquestionably short; though here perhaps he might be justified in lengthening it, as the ictus of the verse falls on it. Of Academia, in the second Elegy, he shortens the penult in opposition to the uniform practice of the Greeks, and not sanctioned by any authorities, though countenanced, as Dr. Parr has acutely discriminated, by some examples among the Latins; and lastly, in the Alcaic ode on the death of Dr. Goslyn, he has left the interjective, O, open in a situation, in which it is never found open in the Roman classics. When, contrary to the usage of Virgil, Horace, &c., he lengthens the first syllable of Britonicum, in the Damon, he is supported by the authority of Lucretius, V. 1104. Nam quid Britannis cælum differre putamus; and when he makes the final syllable of temere short in Quid temerě violas, etc., he is justified not only by analogy, but by the sole authority which can be produced on the occasion, and as such to be admitted, the authority of Seneca, who in two places uses it as shortSic temerě jacta colla perfundant comae. Hippo. 392. Pondusque et artus temere congestos date." Id. 1244. For these instances I am indebted to Dr. Parr. By Gray this syllable of temere is improperly made long-Hospiti ramis temerē jacentem. I have omitted to state that, in the iambics on the death of Felton, Bishop of Ely, Neobolen is substituted without authority for Neobulen. This I believe to be an accurate and full statement of Milton's real and imputed transgressions of Latin prosody in all its just severity, and this will vindicate me for saying that his offences of this description are few, and not sufficient to support in its full extent the charge, which has been brought against him. I am aware, however, though the circumstance was not in the contemplation either of Salmasius, or of Heinsius, that Milton has fre quently sinned against the celebrated metrical canon, advanced by "Testis erit magnis virtutibus undă Scamandri." Catull. If this last instance, as brought from a work, the authenticity of which has been suspected by Broukhusius and others, should be thrown out of the question, examples enough have been adduced, (and their number might easily be increased,) to vindicate Milton, when, with many of the first-rate scholars of the age just past, he disregards a rule of prosody, which, whatever may be advanced in its support by the great scholars of our own times, must be considered as possessing, at the most, only doubtful authority. Though Homer, if he may be allowed to have written his Iliad, or to have In the first No. of the Classical Journal we recorded all the instances, which we could recollect of a short vowel, remaining short or lengthened be. fore a word beginning with sc, sp, sq, st, from Classical writers;--and in the second No. we collected instances from the best modern Latin Poets. To those articles we may, we hope, refer our readers for a full account. In the preface to his Poems, De Bosch has introduced a defence of the short letter in that position. The article is curious enough to induce us to lay it before our readers in some future No. EDIT. CI. JI. No. XVIII. VOL. IX. Z |