ever more happily executed, as well as more boldly conceived, than the change of sex, by the use of the feminine inflexion; a transition which the idiom of our own language renders impracticable. The address of Atys in the momentary calm of exhausted frenzy, to her native shores, those shores which her strained eye-balls traced amid the obscure mists of the ocean, is unequalled for its pathos. That which comes nearest to it in point of feeling, is the exquisite apostrophe of Alcestis to her nuptial couch in the beautiful tragedy of Euripides. They can best feel and best appreciate the tenderness of the passage, who have been widely severed from their native country, the country of their charities and affections, and have solaced themselves by imaging amid the misty solitudes of the waters, the beloved spot which the heart incessantly pants to revisit. Who is there that will hesitate to allow the interrogatory of Atys to be the unadulterated eloquence of Nature? Ubinam, aut quibus locis te positam, patria, rear ?' 1 There is another class of his compositions, in which Catullus displays a rare and unrivalled excellence. He is emphatically the poet of friendship.. This is a strain,' Mr. Lamb justly remarks, in which only a genins originally pure, however polluted by the immorality of its era, could descant with appropriate sentiment; which speaks with all the kindly warmth of love, while it refrains from its unreasoning rage; that adopts all its delicacy, without any tinge of its grossness. p. xli. It is pleasing to repose upon these delicious these delicious spots of poetry. And assuredly, if verses ever breathed the soul of friendship, the lines to Hortalus, the epistle to Manlius, and the affecting invocation at the tomb of his brother- the meed of the melodious tear'--will abundantly testify how sensitively alive he was to that generous impulse. The latter piece is a faithful tablet of natural and unexaggerated grief, transcending the studied sorrows of Tibullus and Hammond, and reflecting more the mind and temper of the man, than the studied and artificial sorrows of the poet. There are, moreover, other poems, which give back an equally faithful reflection of his feelings. If it were our purpose to supply the imperfect accounts of Catullus which have reached us, by traits of his personal and domestic character, they would be found strongly impressed in the verses .to his Farm; but, above all, in the inimitable and unimitated address to Sirmio. It is in this delightful piece, that he has depictured his mind worn and sated with the round of foreign pleasures, panting for its home with an ardour encreased by esstrangement, and sighing for that little circle of home-felt com forts which have been the fondest fellowships of his soul. Such is his joy on regaining his beloved peninsula, that he seems almost incredulous of his own happiness. Vix mi ipse credens, Thyniam atque Bithynos There is nothing strained, or forced, or unnatural in this delicious expression of feeling. Upon this, as well as upon similar occasions, it is the peculiar happiness of Catullus, that the best and most appropriate words start up in obedience to his summons. He is all ease and nature, repose and softness; and while we hang over his elegant versification, we are conscious of that delightful calm, in which the wearied heart seeks a refuge from the stormy agitations and tossings of life. It is the ⚫ soft green of the soul,' upon which we gladly recline in a temporary oblivion of care and inquietude. But while we have been thus detained by the recapitulation of the principal charms of Catullus, we have been unmindful of our duty to Mr. Lamb. It is time, therefore, to consider the merits of his translation. Having already enumerated some of the difficulties inseparable from a translation of such an author; candour and even justice require, that the work should be examined with an indulgent reference to those difficulties. To have surmounted them in some instances, and to have eluded them with great skill in others, is no slight praise; and we willingly award it to Mr. Lamb. But that he has effectively translated this hitherto untranslated poet, would be a concession which we could not make conscientiously. In many respects, he is superior to the Translator of 1794; but he frequently falls below him in those qualities of terseness and simplicity, which are indispensable in a translation of Catullus. So reluctant and coy, as it were, are these beauties, so inaccessible to an English versifier, that it is only in a small proportion of the shorter effusions, that we can compliment Mr. Lamb upon his success. We have hinted our opinion as to the greater comparative facility of imitating the more solemn or heroic pieces. In conformity with our theory, we find Mr. Lamb more happy in the Atys, the Peleus and Thetis, &c. than in Acme and Septimius, and the rest of those exquisite miniatures, where the slightest aberration of the pencil is fatal to the copy. In the Atys, he has adopted a metre which, though not generally applied to elevated subjects, is, we incline to think, adapted to convey the hurry and impetuosity of the original more felicitously than, perhaps, any other. But our commendation of Mr. Lamb's version must not be unqualified. The poem, short VOL. XVII. N. S. 2 R as it is, is remarkable for two distinct characters; the utmost vehemence and frenzy of passion in the commencement, which afterwards subsides, by a scarcely perceptible transition, to those plaintive and sorrowing accents in which she retraces the recollections of all that she had once been, and all that she had once loved. For this reason, it has struck us, that the ejaculation beginning with Patria o mea creatrix ! patria o mea genetrix !'— required a much sedater and more dignified measure. In the exquisite and fascinating epigrams which Martial evidently copied as his models, Mr. Lamb has not uniformly succeeded. He is too periphrastic, and inserts Ovidian graces, which but ill accord with the terseness and purity of his original. For instance, he has expanded into several couplets, the lines which begin thus: Nulla potest mulier tantum se dicere amatam, Vere, quantum a me, Lesbia, amata, mea, es.' &c. &c. The anonymous Translator of 1795 has thus skilfully rendered We take the following specimen, not as the happiest, but as one which best suits our purpose. THE RITES AT HIS BROTHER'S GRAVE. "Brother, I come o'er many seas and lands And now ere fate our souls shall re-unite, To shades departed still was wont to pay; Mr. Lamb's version is unequal: in detached pieces, he is Occasionally excellent, and then, as if wearied and worn out with his effort, sinks into tameness and insipidity. Art. V. Elements of Thought; or First Lessons in the Knowledge of the Mind including Familiar Explanations of the Terms employed on Subjects relating to the Intellectual Powers. By Isaac Taylor, junior. 12mo. pp. viii, 208. Price 4s. 6d. London. 1822. THIS is a work for which we should have been very thankful in our school days. Many persons, we think, without having any distinct idea of what sort of book was needed, must, at some period of their life, have felt their want of just such an introduction as this to metaphysical inquiries. The dry and frequently enigmatical definitions scattered through an English dictionary, supply but little assistance to the novice. The technical rules of logic, and even those general directions for the improvement of the mind, which are of far greater practical utility, contribute but little to remove the embarrassment and perplexity which are experienced on first encountering the mysterious language of philosophy. That the difficulty consists chiefly in the terms employed, is evident, since the abstruse problems in the higher branches of Arithmetic, which are mastered with ease by boys of ordinary quickness of faculty, do not require a less arduous effort of attention, than a metaphysical proposition. Figures, however, have a definite power: words have not. The axioms of Euclid, the principles of all mathematical reasoning, are little more than arithmetic in words: they are almost as definite, and the rules as certain, as the language and the laws of figures, because they are conversant only with simple abstract ideas. The notions conveyed by a meta physical proposition consist, for the most part, of complex abstractions, which, in order to be explained, must be analysed, but refuse to be defined. Hence, a definition of an abstract term of this description, has almost always the effect of obscuring the subject, and is generally less intelligible than the original term. The recent disputes about the proper definition of wealth or riches, and that of value, carried on by our political economists, is an illustration in point. The meaning of metaphysical terms can be explained to a learner, only by il. lustrations: he arrives at a knowledge of their meaning in the same way as he first acquires a knowledge of words at all, by seeing how they are used. By an illustration, an abstract notion is translated into the language of simple signs; whereas a definition only substitutes for one abstract term an abstraction still more refined or complex. Were the terms of metaphysical reasoning understood, there would be little difficulty in embracing its most intricate propositions. A communication Being once opened between this department of thought, and the student's previous knowledge, he would readily penetrate into the mysteries of the science; for all the difficulty of acquiring new ideas, depends on the remoteness or slenderness of their connexion with our previous ideas. There must be some link between what we know and what we do not know, in order to our extending our knowledge. Abstract inquiries are, from their very nature, remote from our ordinary associations and modes of thinking; but not more so than many of the researches connected with the physical sciences. Let once a few distinct ideas on these subjects make good their lodgement in the mind, they will serve as hooks and eyes for all ideas of the same class; and the facility of pursuing such investigations will increase at every step, as the phraseology becomes more and more familiar to us, and the subject becomes more intimately related to our antecedent acquirements. Mr. Taylor's volume combines the advantages of an Introduction to the Study of Mind, a Grammar of First Principles, and a Vocabulary of Terms. He has not, indeed, aimed, he tells us, at producing regular Elements either of Metaphysics or of Logic; believing that the first book which is put into the hands of a young person with the view of inviting his at⚫tention to subjects purely intellectual, should be select rather than comprehensive in its topics, and desultory in its form rather than rigidly logical.' But if Metaphysics be taken to signify correct thinking, and logic, correct reasoning, which is Dr. Watts's view of the matter, the Elements of both sciences will be found substantially, though not formally and methodically contained in this little volume, together with the happiest specimens of their application. The introduction,' remarks Dr. Watts, of so many subtilties, nice distinctions, and in⚫ significant terms without clear ideas, has brought a great part of the Logic and Metaphysics of the schools into just contempt. Their Logic has appeared the mere art of wrangling, and their Metaphysics the skill of splitting a hair, of distinguishing without a difference, and of putting long hard names upon common things, and sometimes upon a confused jumble of things which have no clear ideas belonging to them. It is certain that an unknown heap of trifles and impertinences have been intermingled with these useful parts of learning, upon which account, many persons in this polite age have made it a part of their breeding to throw a jest upon them; and to rally them well has been esteemed a more valuable |