dered repeated and valuable services: and he had good reason to think so; for he lost his life by him. There are two lines in Virgil, at the beginning of the fourth Æneid, where Dido, being desperately in love with Æneas, is introduced with the following words in her mouth : Quis novus hic nostris successit sedibus hospes? The sense is obvious enough :-valiant in arms and courageous. But a company of wits once persuaded an eminent French critic, that all former commentators and translators had misunderstood Virgil; and that the true interpretation of the queen's meaning was, Do look at his port ! what a fine stout fellow he is! Forti pectore, they positively insisted, could refer to nothing but square building, broad chest, and a more than ordinary proportion of shoulder. Nothing settles a classical question so soon as a parallel passage; they therefore fortified their critical discovery by quoting from Virgil himself: Os humerosque deo similis. Horace delivers the following precept, which Dr. Kitchener must duly appreciate : Fecundæ leporis sapiens sectabitur armos. Here are three important informations couched in five words: one but just recovered in the recent editions. The wrong reading of the older copies, Fecundi, had thrown a wet blanket over a third part of our author's wisdom and experience: for he means to tell us by his epithet, and it is not always epithets have so much meaning, that the prolific nature of the female hare gives a peculiar zest to her wings. Besides; what becomes of our grammar? Hic lepus is not fecundus, unless we suppose the poet to use the adjective for the participle active. Furthermore, there is an amphibology in the word sapiens, bearing as it does two meanings, a man of good taste, and a man of good sense. The moral here meant to be enforced is clear the wise man is he who always dines as well as he can. Sectabitur enforces the authentic doctrine, that a hunted hare is best. A further inference is perhaps to be derived, that the emphasis on armos of the female is designed to recommend by an implied antithesis the lumbi of the male. It has been made a question whether armus, clearly derived from aguòs, is not to be confined to brutes. The statement in Ainsworth is, that it means a shoulder or arm; more rarely, though anciently, of a man: but that in the Augustan age it began to be used only of beasts. That however rarely, it was applied. to man in the Augustan age, is proved by the quotation from Virgil, and by another from Manilius. Ovid and Virgil are quoted for its bestial application. But there is a further proof that it was also understood as of man, in the word armilla, ab armis, i. e. brachiis, a bracelet or jewel, worn on the left arm, or waist, and given to the foot soldiers by their general. They were worn likewise by the women. To this head may be referred the whimsical derivation of Argumentum, argule inventum as a compound, not from the simple arguo. Again, Cicero, a cicere; Lentulus, a lente; Agrippa, ab agro partu; Martius, a Martio mense; Mantus, mane editus; Servius, servatus in utero matre mortua: and many others of equal probability. But with respect to these fancies in etymology, founded on imaginary allusions in names, "Inde pravis ingeniis ad fœdissima usque ludibria dilabuntur," says Quinctilian. Louis XI. was quite alive to the practical humour of an amphibology. Philip de Comines relates the pleasant manner in which he wheedled the Constable de St. Paul:-"Le Roy nomma une lettre au dit Connestable; et lui mandoit qu'il avoit bien à besoigner d'une telle teste comme la sienne." But he explained himself candidly and confidentially to M. de Contay:-"Je n'entends point que nous eussions le corps, mais j'entends que nous eussions la teste, et que le corps fût demeuré là." This pious equivoque took effect, and the constable was ultimately surrendered and sent to his trial before the parliament of Paris, who passed on him the sentence of death and confiscation. One of the commissioners into whose hands he was delivered was M. de Saint Pierre. It was said on that occasion, that there was war in paradise between St. Peter and St. Paul. ACROSTICS. So. THIS species of cleverness, not very difficult, is very much despised, and, I believe, very deservedly But it had many examples among the Latins, in particular the arguments to the comedies of Plautus, which were all of them made out after that fashion. A specimen may be given in that of Amphitryon, which stands first in the editions, and is selected for no other reason. There is neither more nor less of merit in any of the others: — Amore captus Alcumenas Juppiter, Pro patria Amphitruo dum cernit cum hostibus, Is advenienteis, servum ad dominum, frustra habet. Omnem rem noscunt geminos Alcmena enititur. ECHO. Sex etiam, aut septem, loca vidi reddere voces. LUCRETIUS. THERE is an account of two remarkable echos in Pausanias : one near Corinth : - Τοῦ δὲ τῆς Χθονίας ἐςὶν ἱεροῦ, ςοὰ κατὰ τὴν δεξιὰν Ἠχοῦς ὑπὸ τῶν ἐπιχωρίων καλουμένη· φθεγξαμένῳ δὲ ἀνδρὶ τὰ ὀλίγισα ἐς τρεῖς ἀντιβοῆσαι πέφυκεν. The other was in Elis: — Εἰσὶ δ ̓ οἳ τὴν ςοὰν ταύτην καὶ Ἠχοῦς ὀνομάζουσι· βοήσαντι δὲ ἀνδρὶ ἑπτάκις ὑπὸ τῆς ἠχοῦς ἡ φωνὴ ἐπὶ τάδε, καὶ ἐπὶ πλέον ἔτι ἀποδίδοται. Plutarch, in his treatise Περὶ 'Αδολεσχίας, mentions a third: —Τὴν μὲν γὰρ ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ ςοὰν ἀπὸ μιᾶς φωνῆς πολλὰς ἀντανακλάσεις ποιοῦσαν, ἑπτάφωνον καλοῦσι τῆς δ ̓ ̓Αδολεσχίας ἄν ἐλάχιςος ἅψηλαι λόγος, εὐθὺς ἀντιπεριηχεῖ, Κινοῦσα χορδὰς τὰς ἀκινήτους φρενών. The poetical fiction of Narcissus and the Nymph, and the compassion of the gods in transforming disappointed flesh and blood into a last syllable, could not possibly escape the prevailing taste of Ovid, and an ample description in his Metamorphoses. |