SELECTIONS FOR COMPOSITION. WEDNESDAY, February 4. Into Latin Elegiacs. Ar Mary's tomb, sad sacred place, Shall bless her name, and sigh her fate. And gives the Saint her full reward.—Prior. FRIDAY, February 6. Into Latin Hexameters. Through the large convex of the azure sky, Rules not his actions by capricious will; Man knows his course, and thence adores his light. MONDAY, February 9. Into Latin Prose. The birth of Marius was obscure, though some call it equestrian, and his education wholly in camps; where he learnt the first rudiments of war, under the greatest master of that age, the younger Scipio, who destroyed Carthage; till by long service, distinguished valour, and a peculiar hardiness and patience of discipline, he advanced himself gradually through all the steps of military honour, with the reputation of a brave and complete soldier. The obscurity of his extraction, which depressed him with the nobility, made him the greater favourite of the people, who, on all occasions of danger, thought him the only man fit to be trusted with their lives and fortunes; or to have the command of a difficult and desperate war: and in truth he twice delivered them from the most desperate with which they had ever been threatened by a foreign enemy. Scipio, from the observation of his martial talents, while he had yet but an inferior command in the army, gave a kind of prophetic testimony of his future glory; for being asked by some of his officers who were supping with him at Numantia, what general the republic would have, in case of any accident to himself? That man," replied he, pointing to Marius at the bottom of the table.-Middleton. WEDNESDAY, February 11. Into Greek Iambics. PHŒDRA. Now all the spirits of my godlike race Oh! you shall have it; thou Minos shalt applaud it; And shoots himself through all my kindling blood. Doom'st her to death;-Thou too shalt see her bleed. FRIDAY, February 13. Into Greek Prose (Demosthenes). But he begs me to believe that he measures the integrity of men by their conduct, not by their professions. Sure this man must imagine his readers as void of understanding as he is of modesty! Where shall we find the standard of his integrity? By what are we to measure the conduct of this lurking assassin ? And he says this to me, whose conduct has been as direct, and open, and public as my words. I have not, like him, concealed myself in my chamber, to shoot my arrows out of the window; nor contented myself to view the battle from afar; but publicly mixed in the engagement, and shared the danger. In the infinite variety of business in which I have been concerned, where it is not so easy to be faultless, which of my actions can he arraign? To what danger has any man been exposed, which I have not faced? Letters of Junius. MONDAY, February 16. Into Latin Elegiacs. But let the King dismiss his woes, If he, whose hand sustained them, droops, The Belgic darts will wound no more. Embattled princes wait the chief, Whose voice should rule, whose arm should lead; And in kind murmurs chide that grief, Which hinders Europe being freed. The great example they demand, WEDNESDAY, February 18. Into Latin Hexameters. The Fury heard, while on Cocytus' brink The gliding lightning, or descending star, Pope.-A Translation. FRIDAY, February 20. Into Latin Prose. Who has sent me into the world I know not; what the world is I know not, nor what I am myself. I am under an astonishing and terrifying ignorance of all things. I know not what my body is, what my senses, or my soul. This very part of me which thinks what I speak, which reflects upon every thing else, and even upon itself, yet is as a mere stranger to its own nature. I behold these spaces of the universe with which I am encompassed, and I find myself chained to one little corner of the vast extent, without understanding why I am placed in this seat rather than in any other; or why this moment of time given me to live in was assigned rather at such a point than at any other of the whole eternity which was before me, or of all that which is to come after me. The sum of my knowledge is, that I must shortly die; but that which I am most ignorant of is this very death, which I feel unable to decline.-Pascal.-Thoughts. |