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known the orthography of one of the rivers of the Troad, has frequently transgressed this rule, it was very generally observed by the Greek poets; and by the poets of what has been called the silver age of Roman composition, it has not, as far as I can discover, been ever violated. It would seem that to a Greek or a Roman ear the immediate sequence of the strong consonants in question suspended the voice on the preceding short vowel; but not in that degree as to make inattention to its effect an unpardonable offence against the harmony of the verse. I have occasionally hinted that Milton's Latin prose-composition is not altogether faultless; but its faults are few and trivial; and to dwell on them would expend time for an insufficient object. On his Greck composition, of which the errors are more numerous, and perhaps of greater magnitude, I have purposely forborne to offer any remarks, as that accomplished scholar and very acute critic, the Reverend Doctor Charles Burney, has completely exhausted the subject. When the almost infinite niceties of the Greek language are considered, and it is recollected that the great Sir William Jones, and even Dawes, the most accurate Grecian perhaps whom this island, till the present day, has ever produced, have not in every instance been able to observe them, the lapses in Milton's Greek composition will possibly be regarded as venial, and not to be admitted in diminution of the fame of his Greek erudition. pp. 58, 62.

Anguiferos rictus is certainly an inaccurate expression.

Vipereos rictus, if the verse had permitted it, would have been unexceptionable. Calumnia is, I fear, the property of prose rather than of poetry. It occurs frequently in Cicero, and sometimes as a forensic word; but never in Virgil, nor, as I believe, in any of the Augustan poets. Many of Milton's expressions in his Latin poems are not supported by high classical authority.

p. 94.

In their scazons the Greeks use a spondee in the fifth place, but the Latins always an iambic. In the poem before us, (verses addressed to Salsilli,) Milton has violated this rule of Roman prosody in no less than twenty-one instances, by inserting either a spondee, or an anapest in the place in question. This is to be guilty, not of false quantity, but of an erroneous fabric of verse.

p. 138. I am afraid that our poet has been guilty, in this place, of a false quantity. The first syllable of Hylas is unquestionably short.

"His adjungit Hylan nautæ quo fonte relictum
"Clamassent; ut littus Hyla, Hyla omne sonaret."

[blocks in formation]

Virg. Ecl. vi.

Id. Geor. III.

Apoll. Arg. lib. 1.

Τῷ χαρίεντος Ὕλα, τῶ τὰν πλοκαμῖδα φορεῦντος. Theocr. Id. XIII. This, however, was only a slip of Milton's pen: in his seventh elegy the quantity of Hylas is right:

"Thiodamantæus Naiade raptus Hylas."

pp. 175,6.

"Et callebat avium linguas, et sidera Mopsus." Epit. Damonis. Avium cannot, with any authorised license, be contracted into a dissyllable. p. 179.

"Nil me, si quid adest, movet, aut spes ulla futuri." Ep. Dam.

Doctor Parr has suggested to me, (and his suggestions on subjects of philological disquisition are always of moment) that "futurum," without an adjunct, never means future time, but a future event; and that Milton, in this place, is consequently wrong in his latinity. p. 180.

When he constructed this ode to Rouse, which is now a wild chaos of verses and no-verses heaped together confusedly and licentiously, Milton must be regarded as imprudent for not having taken any one model of acknowledged authority, by a perfect assimilation to which, in the construction and combination of his metres, he might have secured himself from error and reprehension. Inattentive or lawless he must certainly be deemed, either for not noticing, or for not following, the rule of systematising, which the moderation of the Latin poets chose to affect, rather than to indulge in that inexhaustible variety, that rapid interchange of numbers, which enchants and astonishes in the tragic solemnity of the chorus of the Grecian muse, or in the wild roll of her dithyrambic. This preference of a system may be observed amongst all, even the latest of the Roman poets; though exceptions to it will be found in two or three choruses in Seneca's plays, (Agam. 590. 810. Edip.. 403.) which at the same time exhibit transgressions of every rule of metre and of rhythm. To disapprove then of the general plan and construction of this ode is only to admit that, in matters of this nature, innovation is dangerous and to be avoided: for, in compositions in the classical languages, what is without precedent may be contrary to principle; and in every department of knowledge the vague surmises of probability, which are doubtful, must not be balanced against the conclusions of necessity, which are certain.

Next in order to be regarded is the execution of the ode, which need not have followed the licentiousness of the plan; and it would have been more becoming in our poet to adhere to authority in the former, than it was censurable to depart from it in the latter; for to deviate from authority in the former was to produce new fabrics of verse, and thus to indulge in a violence of innovation at which sound judgment must necessarily revolt. It was to be expected

therefore that Milton would fortify each of his lines with example, or, in defect of example, would at least advance for his deed the plea of reason, and would attempt to conciliate criticism with the effect of harmony: but to neither of these dictates.of prudence has he invariably attended. For some of his verses individual example will be sought for in vain, while in others, not strictly conformable to those models which they most nearly resemble, the less severe and fastidious will admit the principle of construction not to be wholly contrary to the genius of the Latin language, and will acknowledge that the rhythm distinguishes them from the asperity of their neighbours. With lines of this description may be classed the following:

"Quæstorque gazæ nobilioris.
"Optat peculi, numeroque justo.
"Sibi pollicitum queritur abesse.
"Eternorum operum custos fidelis.
"Et tutela dabit solers Rousi."

(The two last verses are not Phaleucians, whatever Milton may call them)

"Auctorum Grai simul ac Latinæ,

"Phineamque abigat pestem procul amne Pegaseo.

Quo neque lingua procax vulgi penetrabit atque longe."

The five last lines are too cumbrous with spondees, but they are constructed after the manner of Pindar, the most beautiful and the most frequent of whose verses are formed by prefixing or postfixing trochaics to dactylics—e. g.

Πρωτεσίλα τὸ τεὸν δ ̓ ἀνδρῶν ̓Αχαιῶν

Εμπυρα χαλκοαρᾶν ἔκτω θανόντων.

So Seneca

"Ut quondam Herculeâ cecidit pharetrâ,
"Motam barbaricis equitum catervis."

These lines, though not very strictly formed on any model, and indefensible by example, may be admitted as not deficient in rhythm: but others are to be found in this composition of Milton, not only unprotected by the strong bulwark of authority, but unrecommended also by the wily influence of harmony; monsters, such as Seneca, or whoever was the author of Edipus and Agamemnon, scarcely ever begot, or Georgius Fabricius christened. To reject disdainfully such specimens, as are contained in the following list, requires not the "superbum aurium judicium." King Midas would have disapproved of them; and we may decide dogmatically, and may animadvert severely, without caution and without delicacy, on a fact which is so obvious, and on uncouthness which is so barbarous.

"Insons populi, barbitoque devius.
"Modo quis Deus, aut editus Deo.
"Pristinam gentis miseratus indolem.
"Orbi notus per immensos.
"Almaque revocet studia sanctus.
"Fugere Lethen, vehique superam.
"Sedula tamen haud nimii poetæ.
"Callo tereris institoris insulsi.
"Quis te, parve liber, quis te fratribus.
"Munditieque nitens non operosâ.

Quicquid hoc sterile fudit ingenium.
"Jam serò placidam sperare jubeo.

"Dum vagus Ausonias nunc per umbras."

As Antispastics, (a measure, though difficult and obscure, yet not lawless and licentious,) are in use only among the Greeks, and were rejected by the Latins, as unpleasant to their ears and repugnant to their accent, it would be in vain to justify the preceding lines by referring them to that metre, to which they may perhaps bear some shadowy resemblance: with any degree of resemblance, they could not be permitted to avail themselves of such far-fetched and foreign authority-citra mare nati.

Of the remaining lines of this ode, it will be sufficient to say that they are good, and that most of them are well-known and wellauthorised, without entering into a tedious detail of the names of dactylics, iambics, trochaics, asclepiadeans, &c. &c. The dactylic Clarus Erectheides, would sound fuller and better, if the diphthong ei were resolved puncto dialyseos. Dawes has well observed that these words 'Tusions. Argeions, etc., never occur in Homer where they must be trisyllables, but only where they may be quadrisyllables. Add to this the words of Eustathius, not far from the beginning of his Παρεκβολαὶ εἰς τὴν ̔Ομήρου ποίησιν. Οἱ Αἰολεις πολλάκις ἐν ταῖς διφθόγγοις οὐκ ἀποβάλλουσιν, ἀλλ ̓ ἀρκοῦνται μόνῃ διαστάσει, ὡς ἐν τῷ Ατρείδης, Αἰγεΐδης, Αργείος.

Pindar sometimes uses the dialysis, and sometimes not.
Γεφύρωσε δ' Ατρείδαισι νοστόν.

Δόντες Οἰκλείδα γυναῖκα.

In the scolion to Harmodius and Aristogeiton,
Τυδείδην τε ἐσθλὸν Διομηδέα.

"Si quid méremur sana posteritas sciet."

I cannot help admiring that Seneca should so studiously affect an anapest in the fifth place of a senarius, to the almost entire exclusion of a tribrach and an iambus. pp. 281,5.

TENTAMEN DE POETIS ROMANIS

ELEGIACIS;

AUCTORE JOSEPHO ADDISONO.

WE doubt not that our readers will be very glad to see a specimen of Addison's Latin style, that they may be able to contrast his English with his Latin. By the activity and researches of a friend, we are enabled to lay before them the following Essay upon the Roman Elegiac Poets. It is copied from a small 12mo. printed at London in the year 1721. with an English Translation by Major Pack, and is called the third Edition. It is not inserted in the Edition of Addison's Works published at Birmingham in 1761, 4to., nor in Tickell's edition as published at Edinb. 1769. 12mo. and we believe that Bishop Hurd's Edition does not contain either this, or any other specimen of Addison's Latin style. Under such circumstances our readers cannot fail to regard it as a great literary curiosity.

TENTAMEN DE POETIS ROMANIS ELEGIACIS.

Sæpe mecum ipse mirari soleo, ex tot tantisque viris in antiqua Classicorum Poetarum pagina transferenda, vel operose, vel commode jucundeque versatis, tam paucos extitisse, qui Elegiarum Scriptores, vel dignos opera sua judicaverint, vel quidem suo otio dignos. Haud ego quidem possum credere, quin hi in propria scribendi norma perinde feliciter successerint, atque alii; ac proinde cum non minori emolumento, quam cum voluptate legantur. Ad me quod attinet, affirmare possum, eam fuisse semper animi temperationem mei, ut eandem vel casui proterve fortuito, vel difficultati rerum procaciter obliquæ stomachantem, longe facilius lenire me, atque mulcere potuisse senserim, dulcem optando comitem Tibullum, quam vel philosophorum lectiones, vel præcepta theologorum consulendo. Quicquid enim est solenne valde, id omne, aliquam, nescio quam, prohibitoriam coactionis faciem, præ se ferre atque ostentare videtur. Adeoque est poene semper inauspicata aut discentis cujuslibet aut docentis indoles, ut, ex quovis severioris disciplinæ genere, nostræ potius poena voluntatis, quam mentis emendatio nascatur. Verbis enim ita strenue contendere, ut munus esse rectæ rationis, hoc vel illud agere, mens hominum convicta fateatur, non est res duri forsitan plena negotii; at vero, ad illud idem munus obeundum, aliquem fortiter et suaviter im

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