might find a Goddess to smile on him, and turn his melancholy to a rapture. Oh! what a faith were this, if human life indeed were but a summer's dream, and sin and sorrow but a beldame's tale, and death the fading of a rainbow, or the sinking of a breeze into quiet air: if all mankind were lovers and poets, and there were no truer pain than the first sigh of love, or the yearning after ideal beauty; if there were no dark misgivings, no obstinate questionings, no age to freeze the springs of life, and no remorse to taint them! The Grecian genius turned every thing to poetry, as the touch of Midas converted all to gold, and man can no more be sustained on the one than on the other. Yet was this poetry a fair body, ready to receive any soul which will, or passion, or imagination might breathe into it. Like that umbrageous elm which Virgil has placed in the kingdom of shades, it sheltered all manner of dreams, the loveliest and the wildest, and the fellest and foulest; perhaps a few of prophetic import, that darkly told of better things to come. The world, as the life of man, has its several ages. The Grecian age was hot fantastic youth. Strong and beautiful, ardent in enterprize, bold in purpose, resolute in execution, subtle and disputatious, averse to rest alike of soul and body, impatient of constraint, passionate and fickle, not yet weaned from matter and sense, but refining material to ideal, and subliming sensual to spiritual, as fire invests with its own brightness the grosser aliment that feeds it. We That youth is flown for ever. are grown up to serious manhood, and are wedded to reality. Truths which the wisest ancients sought after as precious jewels, to us are household stuff. The moral being has gained a religion, and the imagination has lost one. The sage of antiquity was like a child, who thinks there are many moons within his reach. We know, that there is but one, high above our heads, whose face is mirrored in a hundred streams. Yet the shadow remains not the less because it is known to be a shadow. That shaping spirit of man, which set up Gods on every hill, and under every green tree, is degraded from its usurped functions, but it is not dead, nor will its workmanship, though condemned, be readily forgotten. Centuries have passed since the classic deities received their latest worship, and yet they still survive, to fancy and to memory, green with immortal youth, "in form as palpable" as when mightiest nations adored them, Even when temple and altar were overthrown; when pagan worship no longer lingered in the hamlets, from which it derived its appellation; and only a few prohibited superstitions remained of all that gay religion, full of pomp and gold;-the mystical genius of the dark ages received the old deities in their exile, and divesting them, in some measure, of their beautiful distinctness, changed them into obscure powers, and stellar predominances, the workers of marvels, and the arbiters of destiny. The alchemist discovered them in his crucible, and the astrologer beheld them in the stars. Ecclesiastics have anathe matized them as demons, and critics. as exploded impertinences, yet neither have been able to consign them to oblivion. This can hardly be accounted for merely from the excellence of the writers who have celebrated, or the fame of the people who adored them. Man is not so utterly changed as to discern no truth or fitness in that beautiful pile of representative fiction, which Greece built up in the years of her pride and energy. An instinct, like that which impels and enables the testaceous fishes to fashion their shells to the projections and declivities of their own bodies, induced the nations that were left bare of revelation to weave a fabric of fables, accommodated to the wants and yearnings of their own minds. These wants and yearnings are many and various; some heavenly, and many earthly; and a few that are neither of earth nor heaven. The mythology of the Greeks bears witness to their diversity; it is a "mingled yarn," in which the poetry of human nature is intertwined with its homelier affections, and darker passions. It had forms of ideal beauty, and impersonations of heroic energies. It had household Gods, to sanctify the 6 feeling of hearth and home; and funereal rites, that spake of immortality; tutelary deities, whose common worship united nations; and store of tales, that hallowed and endeared each common act and usage of life. But it had also bloody sacrifices, and unutterable abominations, and superstitions that confounded guilt and misfortune, and Gods that authorized the passions by which they were made Gods. Nor was the ancient system untainted by that spirit of slavish fear, which is the fertile root of cruelty and madness: far unlike the holy fear which seeks no defence but humility and purity. Such mixture of good and evil proclaims that this religion was the work of man; deeply sullied with his vices, yet not wholly unredeemed by reflections from his better part. The tendency of the Greek imagination was to the finite rather than to the infinite; to physical and visible strength, rather than to obscure and magical power. The simplicity of primitive Gentile faith everywhere beheld the semblance of human agency, And purposes akin to those of man, But wrought with mightier arm than now prevails. Wordsworth's Excursion, b. 3. Far unlike that mechanical philosophy which represents nature as inert, and passive; and scarce less at variance with that vague pantheism, which gives her indeed a soul, but a soul without mind, a force that is spent in its own product, a spirit everywhere diffused, and nowhere concentrated;-the shaping and vivifying genius of the Greeks attributed a conscious, individual, intelligent life to each and all of her forms, her motions, and her many voices ; and even in her still andchangeless masses, her mountains, and rocks, and chasms, it recognized the workings of energies now stunned or in slumber. In the return of seasons, the increase and decrease of tides, and the cycles of the heavens, it discovered a likeness to will, fore-thought, and recollection, and an image of human love and hate in the sympathies and antipathies of bodies. Even now, when the religion of Grecian bards is only remembered in their songs, there are some excursive minds who delight to range in its unchecked liberty; some playful fancies, that take pleasure in repeating the illusions from which it arose ; and some of tenderer natures, that find solace in adopting its forms and phrases, as a guise for thoughts too subtle, and feelings too delicate, to venture forth unveiled. It is a soothing dream, (and who can prove it but a dream?) that the emotions of our hearts, the imaginations that come we know not whence, the whispers that console or awaken, flow from a higher fountain than the dark well of our own individuality; and yet the instinct of humanity would persuade us, that they proceed from beings that partake enough of human frailty to afford it an understanding and experienced sympathy. True it is, that these conceits will not bear reasoning upon. Like glow-worms or fireflies, they should be looked at by no light but their own. They bear a closer resemblance to flowers than to pot-herbs; but their roots are deep in our nature, and their fragrance is "redolent of spring." As articles of faith they cannot be commended; but yet, they are beautiful fancies: and if they were ever pernicious, they now have lost their venom, and may serve to show how much, and how little, the unaided intellect can effect for itself; as sometimes the dim outline of the moon appears by day, to inform us how the night is preserved from darkness. The intelligible forms of ancient poets, mountain, Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms, and watery depths; all these have vanish'd: They live no longer in the faith of reason; But still the heart doth need a language; still Doth the old instinct bring back the old names; And even at this day, "Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great, And Venus who brings every thing that's fair. Schiller's Wallenstein. Part I. THERSITES. " SPECIMEN OF A TRANSLATION OF VAI ERIUS FLACCUS. able testimony in his favour: "Mul- The French, in this instance, as in some others, have been more industrious, than ourselves; and it is not one of the instances to which what Burke once said of them can justly be applied: "Malo meorum negligentiam, quam istorum obscuram diligentiam." They have a translation of Valerius Flaccus by Adolphe Dareau de la Malle, begun before the translator, had attained the age of twenty, and continued by him for thirteen years. The version, I be lieve, is less esteemed than the notes he has added to it.... 43 1 The following specimen will not have been given in vain, if it shall encourage any of our young writers to supply the deficiency which I have mentioned., 29 isdier, murine dig og VALERIUS FLACCUS, B. f. I sing the bark that bore across the main, 4 Herself prophetic. Heeding not the shocks 124 Apollo, aid the song; if worthy thee I nurse thy much-loved laurel's sacred tree, Own'd midst her wintry depths a Roman lord, to sana na sam en Raise above earth and earth's polluting cloud; to The deeds illustrious, favouring, crown the verse. VOL. V. Downward shalt look on Rome with partial eyes. Or Cynosure for Tyrians, gilds the night, L 122 Than thou from Sidon, or from Nile shalt guide Through many a year had Pelias held the reins, His each fair stream that to the Ionian sea Black Hamus his; and Othrys, tipt with snow; Thou knowst how Phrixus, overwhelm'd with dread, Him fell Æetes, Scythian Colchis' lord, 'Mid the full bowls, and at the shuddering board, (Be veil'd, O sun, while I the fact record,) Pierced through the heart. Nor only rumour bears But oft, when slumber binds my weary limbs, Go then, our champion: go, adventurous prince; Be thine the Nephelæan fleece to bring To Græcia home; nor spare the caitiff king." He ended thus; and, though the words were bland, Nor spake he of the dragon, that debarr'd Roll'd forth his burnish'd folds and flamy breast, The deadly wiles the stripling soon discern'd; Or shall he face the perils, sure of aid From favouring Juno and the blue-eyed maid? Thou, Glory, winn'st the day. He sees thee stand And beckon to her shores with radiant hand. The bright award Religion ratifies, Stills every doubt, and points him to the skies. Then stretching forth his arms, he prays aloud: "Great queen of heaven," he cries, "whom, when the cloud Pour'd down from Jove a desolating storm, Had from its basis swept thy hallow'd form, Secure to land across Euripus' tide I bore; and dash'd the surging wave aside; Nor knew thee, goddess, till aloft thy frame By thy great spouse was rapt in lightning-flame; Then, struck with shuddering horror, awed I stood: O, grant me now to reach the Scythian flood. And thou, unblemish'd maid, thy succour lend; So on thy rafters shall these hands suspend And, gay with fillets and with chaplets crown'd, There on her favourite Argus straight she calls; All, raptured, own the summons; all, who claim |