"And thou, Persephona! my spouse receive
Mightier than I, since to thy chamber drear
All bloom of beauty falls: but I must grieve
Unceasingly. I have a jealous fear

Of thee, and weep for him. My dearest dear!
Art dead indeed? away my love did fly

E'en as a dream. At home my widowed cheer
Keeps the loves idle; with thy latest sigh

My Cestus perished too; thou rash one; why, oh why,

"Did'st hunt? so fair, contend with monsters grim?'
Thus Cypris wailed; but dead Adonis lies;
For every gout of blood that fell from him,

She drops a tear; sweet flowers each dew supplies-
Roses his blood, her tears anemonies.

Cypris no longer in the thickets weep;
The couch is furnished! there in loving guise
Upon thy proper bed, that odorous heap,

The lovely body lies-how lovely! as in sleep.

"Come! in those softest vestments now array him,
In which he slept the live-long night with thee;
And in the golden settle gently lay him-

A sad yet lovely sight; and let him be

High heaped with flowers; tho' withered all when he
Surceased. With essences him sprinkle o'er

And ointments; let them perish utterly,
Since he, who was thy sweetest, is no more.
He lies in purple; him the weeping loves deplore.

"Their curls are shorn: one breaks his bow: another
His arrows and the quiver; this unstrings,
And takes Adonis' sandal off: his brother
In golden urn the fountain water brings :

This bathes his thighs. that fans him with his wings.
The loves," alas for Cypris!" weeping say:
Hymen hath quenched his torches: shreds and flings
The marriage wreath away and for the lay.
Of love is only heard the doleful "weal away."

We take this opportunity to express our high admiration of Mr. Chapman's versions of the Greek Pastorals. A diligent student of the old masters of English song, an accomplished scho

lar, above all himself possessed of" the vision and the faculty divine." He has produced the best version that has been, or, we would say, is ever likely to be presented to the English reader.

Book iii, canto 1.

Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus. Done into English, by M. J. Chapman. London. 1836.

Fraser.

THE DEATH OF ADONIS.

Cypris when she saw Adonis
Cold and dead as any stone is,
All his dark hair out of trim,
And his fair cheek deadly dim,
Thither charged the Loves to lead
The cruel boar that did the deed.
And they, swiftly overflying
All the wood where he was lying,
Soon the hapless creature found,
One the captive dragged along,
And with cords securely bound.
Holding at its end the thong;

While the press sends forth such trans- of Ben Jonson's best imitations of the lations as this, such beautiful sentiment Greek Anthologistsand criticism as Landor's Pericles and Aspasia, we do not fear, even in this age of persiflage and flippancy, that the classical spirit can ever perish-a spirit very different indeed from the (to use a witty phrase of Arbuthnot's) "miserable haberdashery of points and particles," which has but too often usurped the name. We may be permitted to mention also two editions of classical authors, by members of our own University, executed in the true spiritKennedy's Homer, and Stanford's Plato. Both the works of men possessed of intimate acquaintance with modern literature, sound scholarship, and, what is of more consequence than either, refined taste. We can conceive nothing more likely to injure the minds of boys, than the wretched compilations made by men destitute of judgment or refinement, from every extravagant commentary, which a German professor-driven by their vicious system of fitting the professors against each other, in quest of novelty chooses to send forth. Colonel Napier has most truly said, that, though the dullest nation on the face of the earth, the Germans are the most wild and ex

travagant in their imaginations. This extravagance has vitiated their classical learning with absurd and unfounded theories, their literature with an overstrained effort after originality, and their biblical criticism with scepticism to an awful degree. As the Irish press has lately aroused itself to great activity in this department of literature, we feel our readers will pardon this brief digression, though in truth we do not expect any benefit to flow from advice or censure, so long as works of this nature are undertaken, solely as a bookseller's speculation, in haste for the market, and consequently consisting only of Latin commentaries translated, a few extracts from Dawes and Viger, always under the passages noticed and quoted by those writers, which the student could easily find for himself alia deinceps hujus notæ, quæ sive contineas, nihil tacitam conscientiam juvant : sive proferas non doctior videberis, sed molestior.*

To return from commentators to poets. As a sequel to the former extract, we shall give another, which will show Mr. Chapman's power in a different style. It might be taken for one

VOL. X.

While another with his bow
Struck behind and made him go.
Path of fear they made him tread-
Aphrodite was his dread.

"Him the goddess thus addrest :
Of all beasts thou wickedest !
Thou didst thou this white thigh tear?
Didst thou smite my husband dear?'
Fearfully, then, answered he :

Cypris! I do swear to thee
By thyself and husband dear,
By the very bonds I wear,
By these huntsmen, never I
Meant to tear thy husband's thigh;
Thinking there a statue stood,
In the fever of my blood,
I was mad a kiss to press
On the naked loveliness;
But my long tusk pierced the boy :
Punish these, and these destroy,
Tusks that worse than useless prove-
And if this suffice not, pray,
What had they to do with love?
Cypris! cut my
lips away

What had they to do with kissing?"
Cypris, then, her wrath dismissing,
Pitied him that knew no better;
And she bade them loose his fetter.
The boar from that time of her train,
Went not to the wood again;
But, approaching to the fire,
Fairly burned out his desire."

"There is," says Heyne, "scarcely any kind of verse, about whose nature and origin so much difference of opinion exists, as the pastoral. Nor will any one be surprised at this," continues this acute writer," who reflects how widely this department of poetry extends, and how prone its cultivators and critics are to bound and circumscribe it, each according to the measure of his own sentiments and genius!' In truth, there could scarcely ever have been a period, in which there did not exist some form of poetry, which might have

* Seneca. de brev. vit.

G

been classed under the comprehensive
term Pastoral.* In every age and
every clime, the human heart must
have felt

The power, the beauty, and the majesty,
That have their haunts in dale or piny mountain-

In every age, and under every variety
of custom and manners, have loved, and
sorrowed, and hoped, and through the
medium of verse revealed its aims and
sentiments. Nor, as relates to Greece,
are we left to mere a priori specula-
tions: Homer bas introduced shep-
herds solacing themselves with the
Syrinx, in one of the pictures on
Achilles' shield, and Paris is generally
described as a shepherd and a lover of
the muse, when the goddesses visited
him on Ida. But the peculiar form of
bucolic poetry, such as it existed in the
hands of Theocritus, we believe to
have taken its rise from the drama.†
The transition from the rude comedy
and the satyric plays to the pastorals
in a dramatic form is gradual and evi-
dent. One satyric play only has been
preserved the Cyclops of Euripides.
Its chief interest certainly consists in
its being the only specimen of a singu-
lar and remarkable form of theatrical
entertainment. It has been translated
with great spirit by Shelley. The
translations of this author are, we think,
amongst his most valuable works. None
of his contemporaries possessed more
harmony of versification or greater co-
piousness and variety of language; to
considerable attainments as a scholar,
he united a refined perception of beauty
and quick apprehension of the meaning
of an author. Nor could his un-
bridled imagination, when employed on
the thoughts of another, so easily lead
him into those deviations from good
taste and judgment, which disfigure
his original works.

The following passage bears some resemblance to many in Theocritus, and will show how he was imbued with the spirit of this style of poetry. The satyrs address "the father of the flock" thus

"Where has he of race divine
Wandered in the winding rocks?
Here the air is calm and fine,
For the father of the flocks-
Here the grass is soft and sweet,
And the river-eddies meet
In the trough beside the cave
Bright as in their fountain-wave-
Neither here nor on the dew
Of the lawny uplands feeding,
Oh you come !a stone at you
Will I throw to mend your breeding.
Get along you horned thing,
Wild, seditious, rambling!"

Nor does the speech of the cyclops, though in a different style, less resemble the genuine bucolic. The dry wit and humour-the shrewdness and terseness of it, might almost be taken for one of the best specimens of the Idylls of Theocritus

"Wealth, my good fellow, is the wise
man's god,

All other things are a pretence and boast.
What are my father's ocean promontories,
The sacred rocks whereon he dwells to me?

Stranger, I laugh to scorn Jove's thunder

bolt;

I know not that his strength is more than
mine.

As to the rest I care not-when he pours
Rain from above, I have a close pavilion
Under this rock, in which I lie supine,
Feasting on a roast calf, or some wild
beast,

And drinking pans of milk, and gloriously
Emulating the thunder of high heaven.
And when the Thracian wind pours
the snow,

down

I wrap my body in the skins of beasts,

• Et Zephyri cava per calamorum sibila primum,
Agrestes docuêre cavas inflare cicutas.
Inde minutatim dulces didicêre querelas,
Tibia quas fundit, digitis pulsata canentum
Avia per nemora ac silvas saltusque reperta,
Per loca pastorum deserta, atque otia dia.

Lucretius, v. 1379,

See the remainder of this beautiful passage; one of the best of a poet, who had more of the mens divinior in his conceptions, and came nearer in his diction to the pomp and prodigality of Greek genius, than any other of his nation.

This opinion has been supported by Voss, Heinsius, and Warton. It is remarkable that comedy arose in Sicily, afterwards the country of Theocritus. Ecquid si bucolica primitus quasi mimi, interponerentur actibus comædia? says Warton, and there are many arguments to support this conjecture. The expression IXOV Bargo, occurs in the now neglected and certainly tiresome romance of Heliodorus. Perhaps the truth is, that pastoral poetry was so modified and altered by its connection with the theatre, as to have become totally different from its original form.

The wise man's only Jupiter is this,
To eat and drink during his little day,
And give himself no care, and as for those
Who complicate with laws the life of man,
I freely give them tears for their reward.
I will not cheat my soul of its delight,
Or hesitate in dining upon you-
And that I may not quit of all demands,
These are my hospitable gifts-fierce fire
And yon ancestral cauldron, which o'er-
bubbling,

Shall finely cook your miserable flesh.
Step in-

Whoever may have been the original inventor, to Theocritus must be given the praise of new-modelling and perfecting Greek pastoral poetry. Whether and what improvements Stesichorus, (for according to Elian he also cultivated this field,) Sicelidas, Lycidas or Philetas made, cannot now be known. Their fame does not appear ever to have been great, or whatever brief vitality it did possess, wholly decayed beneath the overshadowing glory of him, who was pre-eminently called "the bucolic poet." After his own time, all compositions of any merit in this style were attributed to him.

maintained respecting their merits, we shall not enter.t Suffice it, that to the latter must be given the praise of being the inventor of greater originality, strength, and vigour the former was the most skilled in the proprieties of the greatest master of versification, language, and possessed the most refined taste of any poet that ever lived.

:

Much of the charm of Theocritus

lies in the beautiful language in which he wrote. Nothing can in him be low or vulgar, nothing wearisome or uninteresting, for all is rendered graceful and pleasing by the musical dactylic verse, and the inimitable dialect. His pictures of life are relieved by descriptions of scenery, and few of the poets of antiquity seem to have had an eye more quick to appreciate natural beauty. and the habits and manners of a rural It is, however, in describing rural life, population, that he especially succeeds. He has nothing of the unsuitable refinement of modern writers-he has not forgotten that there is one lanthe vulgar a different train of assoguage for the court, and another for ciations and thoughts for the refined and the illiterate. like reality, and exquisite humour, For vividness, lifenothing can excel the Sicilian gossips. By-the-by, we recommend to the wives of the present day, the extract we are about to give; it canceedingly to find, that as long as the not but edify and delight them exworld has been a world, the husbands were always in the wrong :

ADONIAZUSE.

Wild," says the Greek Anthologist; "roved the pastoral muses, but they are now one flock under one shepherd." The period at which Theocritus lived may be gathered from his Panegyricon Ptolemy Philadelphus, the king of Egypt, under whose auspices Is Praxinoa at home? was produced the Septuagint version of the Old Testament.

None of the succeeding Greek poets ever ventured even to imitate his peculiar style. The Latin literature produced him but one rival, (for we do not dignify with this title Calphurnius and Nemesian,) the author of the most finished didactic poem the world has ever seen, and of an epic which disputes the supremacy with Homer. Into the controversy which the admirers of Virgil and Theocritus have

GORGO.

PRAXINOA.
Dear Gorgo, yes!
How late you are! I wonder, I confess,
That you are come e'en now. Quick, brazen-front
[TO EUNOA
A chair there-stupid! lay a cushion on't.

GORGO.

Thank you, 'tis very well.
PRAXINOA.

Be seated, pray.
GORGO.

My untamed soul! what dangers on the way!
I scarce could get alive here; such a crowd!
So many soldiers with their trappings proud!
A weary way it is-you live so far.

Shelly's Translation.

+ Heyne has in rather too depreciating a spirit spoken of Virgil's Eclogues, when he says that had he written nothing else, he should not rank him in the first class of poets. Surely the author of the Pollio, and the First Eclogue, could scarcely have been considered worthy of any lower place.

This is the poem which Dawes, in the true spirit of the word-weighing and canon-making commentators, pronounces the work of "some paltry fellow, alike ignorant of the Greek tongue, and Greek prosody." When he and such men venture to speak on subjects like these, they forget

The critic eye, that microscope of wit,

Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit.
How parts relate to parts, and they to whole,

The body's harmony, the beaming soul,

Are things which Burman, Kuster, Wasse, shall see,
When man's whole frame is obvious to a flea,