Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu 1
Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale,

The Italian translation of 1770 adheres still more closely to the text of the bard of Verona.

Molti mari ebbi a scorrere, nassai tra molte genti, ⠀⠀
Fratello, e venni a' tuoi funerali dolenti,

Che alla tua morte un ultimo volli arrecar tributo,
E parlar, benchè, indarno, volli al tuo cener muto.
Giacchè il destin contrario mi t' ha rapito e morto.
Ahi meschin mio Fratello! et t'ha rapito a torto.
Or come il rito insegnaci de più antichi parenti
Offro io pur doni a' tuoi funerali dolenti.

Deh tu gli accetta, e mirali cosparsi ancor del mio
Fraterno pianto. Addio. Fratel per sempre addio.

We may justly praise the style in which Mr. Lamb has rendered the other beautiful piece, in which the poet commemorates his deceased brother. We mean that addressed to his friend Hortalus with the hair of Berenice, translated from Callimachus.

Though grief, my Hortalus, that wastes my heart,
Forbids the culture of the learned Nine;

Nor can the Muses with their sweetest art
Inspire a bosom worn with grief like mine;

For Lethe laves my brother's clay-cold foot,
His spirit lingers o'er its lazy wave;
The Trojan earth at high Rhetæum's root
O'erwhelms his relics in a distant grave!

Shall I then never, in no future year,

Oh brother, dearer far than vital breath!
See thee again? yet will I hold thee dear,
And in sad strains for ever mourn thy death.

Such as the Daulian bird so sadly pours;

As, in some gloomy grove, whose branches crost
Inweave their shade, she still at night deplores
The hapless destinies of Itys lost.

Yet not forgetting thy request, my friend,
My love awhile can anguish disregard;
And, though opprest by heaviest woe, I send
These lines, the chosen of Cyrene's bard.

Lest, vainly borne upon the zephyrs swift,

Thou deem'st thy wishes fled my thought and care;

As the dear apple, love's clandestine gift,
Falls from the bosom of the virgin fair;

Which she forgetting in her vest conceal'd, umg
Springs her returning mother's kiss to claim,

It falls, and as it rolls to view reveal'd,

Her blushes own, like me, neglect and shame.
(Vol. II. p. 49, 50.)

Our author, however, has not caught the exquisite simplicity and tenderness of the following lines, which we cannot refrain from quoting.

Alloquer? audierone unquam tua verba loquentem?
Nunquam ego te, vitâ frater amabilior,

Aspiciam posthac ? at certe semper amabo,

Semper moesta tuâ carmine morte canam.

The following lines, being part of the complaint of Ariadne from the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis, are a favourable specimen of Mr. Lamb's powers in rhyme.

༞ ་ 、。་

"And hast thou, Theseus, on this desert strand 1
Left her, who fled for thee my native land;

And has thy double perfidy beguiled

The trusting father to betray the child?

Darest thou, in scorn of heaven's attested host,

Bear fated perjury to thy native coast?

Could nothing check the deed thy soul design'd; A
Did rising pity never touch thy mind;

Nor e'er thy bosom to itself pourtray

Those burning pangs that now make mine their prey?
Not these thy promises so fondly vow'd,
When all affections to thine accent bow'd:
Thou never bad'st me hope a fate like this,
But festive spousals and connubial bliss.
The oaths thy passion urged thee then to swear
Are now all scatter'd to the senseless air.
Then let no woman hence in man believe,
Or think a lover speaks but to deceive.
He, while ungratified desire is high,
Shrinks from no oath, no promise will deny;
Soon as his lust is satiate with its prize,

He spurns his vows, and perjury's curse defies.

I snatch'd thee, lost, from death's engulfing wave;
I rather doom'd my brother to the grave,

500 Than fail in peril's desperate hour to aidoille ta mull Thee, hard and false; and I am thus repaid; Lu, 2991 Am giv'n to beasts a prey; nor shall remorse. hosta 0 Heap e'en the rudest grave upon my corse.

mom gha nut to be Vol. II. p. 28-30.) To sum up our opinion upon the merits of Mr. Lamb's work, we have little hesitation in declaring that it is exe cuted throughout with much fluency and elegance of versifica.

.

tion. The preface is written with considerable vivacity, and the
criticisms contained in the notes display much taste and erudi-
tion, but they are sometimes expressed with a levity not far re-
moved from
moved from flippancy. They are not always remarkable for
critical acuteness, and we were surprised at finding Mr. Lamb
perplexing himself in the mazes of the idle controversy, raised by
Barthius, Silvius, and other commentators of the same rank of
understanding, concerning the epithet of "learned," which
Tibullus, Ovid, and Marshal attribute to him. Surely Aulus
Gellius is a decisive authority on such a question, when he
remarks upon the word "deprecor" as being doctiuscule positum,
in his epigram on Lesbia. He exclusively applies it to the eru-
dite choice of Latin expressions which the poet had probably
derived from his intimate knowledge of Greek,-a species of
learning which is every where apparent in his writings. Perhaps
our own Milton, who perpetually affected a latinized diction,
and used words in their learned, rather than their customary
acceptation, would best illustrate the epithet. Thus, in the se-
venth book of Paradise Lost, we have,

Wave rolling after wave, where way they found,
If steep, with torrent rapture.

And, in the same book,

The humble shrub

And bush with frizzled hair implicit,

So in Comus (in obvious imitation of the Greek tragedians),

Within the navel of this hideous wood,

Immured, &c.

And, in the same poem, where he directly uses the pastoral phrase of Virgil:

Rapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy

To meditate my rural minstrelsy.

In Lycidas also,

And strictly meditate the thankless muse,

To the work is prefixed a biographical and critical preface. But the biography of this poet must still remain imperfect, and the few notices that time has vouchsafed to spare us, are only the materials of ingenious comment and skilful conjecture. For the character of the man, and the portraiture of his mind, we must be content to refer to the only monuments from which any accurate inferences can be derived,—and these are, the works themselves, which his genius and fancy have bequeathed to use thi cong như tiên uk boto

ART. XIIL-Commentaries on the Laws of Moses. By the late Sir John David Michaelis, K.P.S.-F.R.S. Professor of Philosophy in the University of Gottingen. Translated from the German by Alexander Staith, D. D. Minister of the Chapel of Garioch, Aberdeenshire. 4 vols. 8vo. Rivington,

1814.

Our readers may perhaps be surprised at our calling their attention to a work that has been published nearly eight years, and we are happy to acknowledge that we have not the customary plea of a second edition.

The plain state of the case is this: although the work has been so long published, it has not, as far as we know, until lately obtained much notice, and, as long as it had not, we were unwilling to be the means of making it known; but the second edition of Mr. Horne's Introduction, to which we have already called the attention of our readers, still retaining his unqualified approbation of the work, and that approbation having been already circulated in a bookseller's catalogue as a recommendation of it, we really feel ourselves bound to say something, if not by way of reviewing the work of Michaelis, at least by way of caution to the public against it.

Mr. Horne says, (vol. i. p. 614, n.) "Commentaries on the Law of Moses, 4 vols. 8vo. translated by the (late) Rev. Dr. Smith, to whom the student is deeply indebted for this valuable accession to biblical literature." And we confess that it is this passage in his work which principally leads us to notice the Commentaries. It will probably occur to some of our readers (as it did in the first instance to ourselves), that we might have been satisfied with making some remarks on Michaelis in our article on Mr. Horne's work; but, upon consideration, it appeared to us a matter of so much importance, that we chose rather to devote a few pages to the subject than to confine ourselves to a brief and incidental notice of it.

Considering this then as an appendix to our article on Mr. Horne's work in our last Number, we shall at once state that it is not our intention to review the Commentaries of Michaelis, but to protest against them. We may perhaps find (if they do not fall into the neglect which we really think they deserve) some better opportunity to examine them, and to give our opinion on some of his critical and physiological speculations, and more particularly on the liberties which he takes with the text of Scripture: but all these, bold and arrogant as they are, we pass over, because we think that a few remarks on the general spirit and style of the book, illustrated by some extracts from it, will

convince most of our readers, that, whatever its pretensions may be in respect of information, or critical acumen, it is not ❝a valuable accession to biblical literature," not even a book to be tolerated by Christian society.

To this then we shall confine ourselves; and that we may not be accused of injustice, we will explicitly state that we do not mean to blame the Professor of Philosophy, because his Commentaries are not practical, critical, or, in any sense, theolo gical. We We agree with him, that the laws given to the Israelites "are well worthy of our attention, considered only as the laws of a very remote country, and as relics of the most ancient legislative wisdom." This, indeed (if it be true that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is," and will continue to the end of time, "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness"), is not the only, or the principal light in which a Christian is bound to regard "the law which came by Moses;" but it is a light in which he may fairly and properly view it, and far be it from us to discourage his researches.

But we make some conditions. The limited nature of our present object requires that we should mention three, and in them we think all Christians will agree: first, if he professes to be a believer in Revelation, let him (not only here and there, in a few words, extorted perhaps by his inability to explain some law, but generally, and as a principle pervading his whole work) recognise the God of Israel as the legislator of his people, and not give his glory to Moses; secondly, if he deems it necessary to discuss them at all, let him discuss those parts which he would not explain to females, in a dead language, and as concisely and technically as possible; and, thirdly, let the whole spirit and tenour of his work be such as to give no countenance, directly or indirectly, to scepticism, immorality, or irreligion. We by no means assert that these are all the requisites for an able commentator on the Laws of Moses; but these are all that it is necessary to mention: they are, in our view, indispensable, and with them we have no fear that a commentator will do any harm, if he should not be happy enough to do any good. To us it appears, however, that Michaelis was eminently deficient in all these respects. This we shall endeavour to show by extracts from the work, which will enable our readers to form their own opinions, and to judge whether we are not called upon, without entering into any detail of critieism, to protest altogether against the book.

In the first place, we certainly do not mean to assert that Michaelis denies the divine legation of Moses, or that he does not, in unqualified terms, admit that God was the author of the