poetry tiresome, the Europeans should have been so long in possession of a style, in which harmony, perspicuity, simplicity, and elegance, are so happily united. That the Romans and modern Europeans had it from the Greeks, is well known ; but whence those fathers of literature derived it, is not so apparent, and would furnish matter for too long a digression, if we were here to inquire.-In a word, the Greeks and Romans àre our masters in all polite literature; a consideration, which of itself ought to inspire reverence for their writings and genius.

Good translations are very useful; but the best of them will not render the study of the original authors either unnecessary or unprofitable. This might be proved by many arguments.

All living languages are liable to change. The Greek and Latin, though composed of more durable materials than ours, were subject to perpetual vicissitude, till they ceased to be spoken. The former is with reason believed to have been more stationary than any other; and indeed a very particular attention was paid to the preservation of it: yet between Spenser and Pope, Hooker and Sherlock, Raleigh and Smollet, a difference of dialect is not more perceptible, than between Homer and Apollonius, Xenophon and Plutarch, Aristotle and Antoninus. In the Roman authors the change of language is still more remarkable. How different, in this respect, is Ennius from Virgil, Lucilius from Horace, Cato from Columella, and even Catullus from Ovid! The laws of the twelve tables, though studied by every Roman of condition, were not perfectly understood even by antiquarians, in the time of Cicero, when they were not quite four hundred years old. Cicero himself, as well as Lucretius, made seve ral improvements in the Latin tongue; Virgil introduced some new words; and Horace asserts his right to the same privilege; and from his remarks upon it,* appears to have considered the immutability of living language as an impossible thing. It were vain then to flatter ourselves with the hope of permanency to any of the modern tongues of Europe; which, being more ungrammatical than the Latin and Greek, are exposed to more dangerous, because less discernible innovations. Our want of tenses and cases makes a multitude of auxiliary words necessary; and to these the unlearned are

*Hor. Ar. Poet. vers. 46.-72.

not attentive, because they look upon them as the least important parts of language; and hence they come to be omitted or misapplied in conversation, and afterwards in writing. Besides, the spirit of commerce, manufacture, and naval enterprize, so honourable to modern Europe, and to Great Britain in particular, and the free circulation of arts, sciences, and opinions, owing in part to the use of printing, and to our improvements in navigation, cannot fail to render the modern tongues, and especially the English, more variable than the Greek or Latin. Much indeed has been done of late to ascertain and fix the English tongue. Johnson's dictionary is a most important, and, considered as the work of one man, a most wonderful performance. It does honour to England, and to human genius; and proves, that there is still left among us a force of mind equal to that which formerly distinguished a Stephanus or a Varro. Its influence in diffusing the knowledge of the language, and retarding its decline, is already observable :

Si Pergama dextra

Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent.

And yet, within the last twenty years, and since this great work was published, a multitude of new words have found their way into the English tongue, and, though both unautho rised and unnecessary, seem likely to remain in it.

in this fluctuating state of the modern languages, and of our own in particular, what could we expect from translations, if the study of Greek and Latin were to be discontinued? Suppose all the good books of antiquity translated into English, and the originals destroyed, or, which is nearly the same thing, neglected. That English grows obsolete in one century; and, in two, that translation must be retranslated. If there were faults in the first, and I never heard of a faultless translation, they must be multiplied tenfold in the second. So that, within a few centuries, there is reason to fear, that all the old authors would be either lost, or so mangled as to be hardly worth preserving.-A system of geometry, one would think, must lose less in a tolerable translation, than any other science. Political ideas are somewhat variable; moral notions are ambiguous in their names at least, if not in themselves; the abstruser sciences speak a language still more indefinite but ideas of number and quantity must for ever

remain distinct. And yet some late authors have thrown light upon geometry, by reviving the study of the Greek geometricians. Let any man read a translation of Cicero and Livy, and then study the author in his own tongue; and he shall find himself not only more delighted with the manner, but also more fully instructed in the matter.

Beauty of style, and harmony of verse, would decay at the first translation, and at the second or third be quite lost. It is not possible for one who is ignorant of Latin to have any adequate notion of Virgil; the choice of his words, and the modulation of his numbers, have never been copied with tolerable success in any other tongue. Homer has been of all poets the most fortunate in a translator; his fable, descriptions, and pathos, and, for the most part, his characters, we find in Pope but we find not his simplicity, nor his impetuosity, nor that majestick inattention to the more trivial niceties of style, which is so graceful in him, but which no other poet dares imitate. Homer in Greek seems to sing extempore, and from immediate inspiration, or enthusiasm ;* but in English his phraseology and numbers are not a little elaborate : which I mention, not with any view to detract from the translator, who truly deserves the highest praise, but to show the insufficiency of modern language to convey a just idea of ancient writing. I need not enlarge on this subject it is well known, that few of the great authors of antiquity have ever been adequately translated. No man who understands Plato, Demosthenes, or Xenophon, in the Greek, or Livy, Cicero, and Virgil, in the Latin, would willingly peruse even the best translations of those authors.

If one mode of composition be better than another, which will scarce be denied, it is surely worth while to preserve a standard of that which is best. This cannot be done, but by preserving the original authors; and they cannot be said to be preserved, unless they be studied and understood. Translations are like portraits. They may give some idea of the lineaments and colour, but the life and the motion they cannot

"His poems (says a very learned writer) were made to be recited, or sung to a company; and not read in private, or perused in a book, which few were then capable of doing and I will venture to affirm, that whoever reads not Homer in this view, loses a great part of the delight he might receive from the poet." Blackwell's Inquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, p. 122.

copy; and too often, instead of exhibiting the air of the original, they present us with that only which is most agreeable to the taste of the painter. Abolish the originals, and you will soon see the copies degenerate.

There are in England two excellent styles of poetical composition. Milton is our model in the one ; Dryden and Pope in the other. Milton formed himself on the ancients, and on the modern Italians who imitated their ancestors of old Rome. Dryden and Pope took the French poets for their pattern, particularly Boileau, who followed the ancients (of whom he was a passionate admirer) as far as the prosaick genius of the French tongue would permit. If we reject the old authors, and take these great moderns for our standard, we do nothing more than copy after a copy. If we reject both, and set about framing new modes of composition, our success will probably be no better, than that of the projectors whom Gulliver visited in the metropolis of Balnibarbi.

SILVA, No. 65.

Fuit aurea silva,

Divitiisque graves, et fulvo germine rami.

Lucan ix. 360.

ABORIGINAL WIT.

Ат a conference held a few years since with some Indian tribes for the purpose of forming a treaty, an old chief related to the commissioners from our government a very remarkable adventure of his son in a hunting excursion. The circumstances were so astonishing as to excite a doubt of their truth in the mind of one of the civilized part of the assembly, who impudently asked the Sachem, if he himself believed what he had related. "Certainly," replied the Indian "for my son told it to me himself, and my son never saw a white man."

OLD ENGLISH.

THE following passage is from Ascham's schole master, and some idea of the progress of the English language may be formed from comparing Pope's translation with the one here praised. Although sensible of the beauty of Horace, as well

as Homer, the author was not struck with the barbarity of his own language, because he had never seen it in a more improved state.

"Which verse, (the 3d line 1st book of the Odyssey) because, in mine opinion, it was not made at the first more naturally in Greke by Homere, nor after turned more aptelie into Latin by Horace, than it was a good while ago, in Cambridge, translated into English, both plainlie for the sense, and roundlie for the verse, by one of the best scholars that ever St. John's college bred, M. Watson, myne old friend, sometime Bishop of Lincolne; therefore, for our sake that have lust to see how our English tonge, in avoidyng barbarous rhyming, may as well receive right quantitie of sillables, and trewe order of versifying, (of which matter more at large hereafter) as either Greke or Latin, if a cunning man have it in handling; I will set forth that one verse in all three tonges, for an example to good wittes that shall delite in the learned exercise."

Πολλων δ' ανθρωπων ἴδεν 'άσεα, και νέον ἔγνω.

HOMER.

Qui mores hominum multorum vidit, et urbes.

HORACE.

All travellers do gladly report great prayse of Ulysses,

For that he knew many mens manners and saw many cities.

Pope's, is

WATSON.

Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray'd,

Their manners noted, and their states survey'd.

Even in this last translation, two lines are given to convey what Homer and Horace more strongly expressed in one.

SHAKSPEARE WELL QUOTED.

A SINGULAR Story is told about the purchase of a fine copy of the first edition of Shakspeare. A friend was bidding for the Duke of Roxburgh, who had retired to a distance to view the issue of the contest. Twenty guineas and more were offered from various quarters for the book; when a slip of paper was handed to the Duke, in which he was requested to inform his friend, whether he was "to go on bidding." His Grace wrote underneath for answer:

Lay on, Macduff!

And damn'd be he who first cries, "Hold, enough."