Page images
PDF
EPUB

probably, that any person the least conversant with Homer, would immediately remember the celebrated tristich (IX. B. 577.) in which Nireus and his rgeis vñas étoas, to which the Tpinpn alludes, are mentioned once by Homer, and then both man and masts are dismissed from the recollection of the writer and reader. Still, however, a difficulty remains in the expression, TрIŃρY TETTάρWY Sπy, which, if correct, demands support from a similar collocation of words, but, if not correct, may be easily emended by reading, τριήρη ὑποπτέρων ἐπῶν; where the expression ὑποπτέρων ἐπῶν may be compared with the Homeric ἔπεα πτερόεν Ta, and the connexion of ideas conveyed by the words pinpn ὑποπτέρων is similar to that presented by the Æschylean Λινόπτερα ναυτίλων ὀχήματα.

But it is time to bring this article to a close. In our next number, however, we mean to continue a subject, which is too gratifying to our feelings to be lightly taken up and as lightly laid down; and all we can at present do, is to express our unbounded admiration of a critic who possesses three conspicuous virtues: first, in the good faith, with which in these degenerate days of dishonesty he gives honor to whom honor is due, by attributing emendations and illustrations to their original promulgators; secondly, in his good sense, in making himself perfectly acquainted with his author, and of his author's models or copies;

[ocr errors]

and thirdly, in his still more extraordinary zeal in behalf of Grecian letters, unremittingly pursued for more than 20 years, with no other reward than the consciousness of acting as the friend of intellectual man, and with some of the evils to which every friend to the improvement of man is doomed to be exposed.

NOTICE OF

THE DEATH OF DEMOSTHENES. A Tragedy in four Acts;-in prose. Translated from the modern Greek by GREGORIOS PALEOLOGUS, of Constantinople. Cambridge: 1824. Cambridge: 1824. Pr. 3s. 6d.

WHEN we first commenced a Journal, whose pages were to be devoted to the cultivation of Classical Literature, we certainly anticipated the possibility of having our attention directed occa

sionally to translations from Greek and Latin authors done by Scholars, who felt the wish and fancied the power to transplant into their native tongue the productions of foreign climes. In the course, however, of fourteen years these anticipations have been seldom realised; since only few attempts have been made in this country to imitate the energetic Dryden or polished Pope, in their respective versions of Classical Poetry, while the prose productions of ancient Greece and Italy have been left to the speculations of booksellers, who know, as men of unerring tact, that a cheap reprint from old translations has all the advantages such works can boast of, in their useful office of cribs for boys at school and gentlemen at the Universities, and who, as the great Mæcenates of letters, a titlé in which Samuel Johnson loved to invest the fraternity of the Row, would be guilty of a species of felo-de-se, fitted rather for the wards of St. Luke's than the warehouses near St. Paul's, to encourage any new translation of an ancient author; and thus, as in the absence of the utile to the indigent writer, the dulce to the indigenous reader must be witheld, little has been accomplished in the shape of translations, and an English Pindar, Sophocles and Aristophanes must exist only in embryo amidst the papers of a Bayley, Dale or Mitchell; while the beauties of Euripides and Eschylus alone are to be enjoyed by the fortunate readers of a literal version, done by that giant in taste and learning, Thomas Edwards, of whom it may be said, as of Homer himself, When shall we look upon his like again?

But though our fairy-built anticipations on this interesting point have, with the exception of Edwards, the ó Távu of English translators, dissolved, like the witches in Macbeth, 'into thin air,'-still, to console us for our disappointment, we have had put into our hands what, if we had not seen done, we should have deemed a miracle-and that is a translation of a Greek tragedy written by a modern Greek, and put into English by a modern Greek also, on a subject the dearest to every man's heart, (whose heart is fit to be cased in man's flesh, and to feel something more than bipeds feel, whose only happiness is to be fed and grow fat,) we mean the anticipated emancipation from domestic slavery produced by knaves, who love the stranger's gold, and cowards, who fear the stranger's steel, on both of whom he who loves his fellow-beings most, will be the first to imprecate the charitable curse, that the gold so got may burn, like molten lead, the soul of the traitor, and the fear of death haunt, like the furies of old, the deserter of a cause, which gives the best promise of success only, when it has

been saturated in the blood of its defenders. To exemplify this doctrine, the subject chosen by the author of the tragedy is the death of Demosthenes: of whom, and of his Roman imitator, Tullius, it has been truly said, that if their actions had been of the same powerful character as their language,

Athens and Rome had ne'er been doom'd to know

How vain are wars of words-without the blow.

Of the manner, in which the subject is treated, we confess ourselves unwilling to say a word, from our incapability of comparing the original with the translation. For, ever since we read Sir Wm. Jones' Commentary on Asiatic Poetry, we have felt more and more the truth of his remark, that scarcely any translation can convey a correct idea of any original work. As a specimen, however, of the capability of Gregorios Palæologus to convey to an English reader some idea of the poetry of Modern Greece, we subjoin the following hymn to Greece, with its accompanying translation, and at the same time express our best wishes for the restoration of the liberties of that country, to which the world owes all that is amusing in fiction, true in history, and profound in philosophy, and whose sons, though bred in the very atmosphere of Turkish despotism, can still support the cold and comfortless cabin of pennyless freedom, and,

Despite the frowns of Fortune, strike the strain
Of Greece from fetters freed to live again.

[blocks in formation]

Subjects for Themes, Essays, Declamations, and Verses, adapted for general use in Schools and the Universities.

No. I.

AMONG the various works, which almost daily proceed from the press for the avowed purpose of facilitating the propagation and acquisition of classical learning, it is matter of surprise to many, who have been engaged in the education of youth, that no collection of subjects for exercises in composition has ever made its appearance. We have almost an endless variety of Greek and Latin Exercise books both for prose and verse; so that the teacher is obliged to pause in his choice of those, which he recommends to the notice of his pupils: but in original composition, for want of external assistance he is driven to the necessity of trusting to his own invention at the moment, or, which is not uncommonly the case, of recurring periodically to the same subjects. On the former supposition, he will often give a thesis not adapted to the capacity and attainments of the youthful candidates for distinction in such a species of composition in the latter, the abilities will not be called forth and duly exerted, since it is notorious that in most, it might be said in all, the great and other schools, themes and verses which have many times performed their important office, descend like heir-looms to the successors in each particular form. Thus the task becomes one of mere transcription, and the object proposed is intirely defeated. At the Universities too, where declamations in Latin and English are required, and prizes adjudged to the most meritorious composition in almost every college, the student stands in need of some assistance in determining his selection of a subject, on the judicious choice of which his success will materially depend. The same remarks will apply with some modification to subjects for Essays and Verses.

If therefore, Mr. Editor, you conceive that any benefit would result to teachers or students from the publication of the subjoined list of subjects which have been actually given by the writer of this to his own pupils, and that their insertion in your valuable Journal does not materially interfere with your plan, you will oblige, by an early notice of them,

Dec. 8th, 1824.

SUBJECTS FOR THEMES.

1. Sera nunquam est ad bonos mores via.

2.

Nil sine magno

Vita labore dedit mortalibus.

B. D.

3. Avaritia fidem, justitiam bonasque artes subvertit.
4. Magni animi est injurias despicere.
5. In sese tentat descendere nemo,

Sed præcedenti spectatur mantica tergo.
6. Non est sapientis dicere, cras bene vivam.
7. Possum contentus vivere parvo.

8. Vive memor mortis.

9. Compescere linguam prima est virtus.

10. Proba vita est via in cœlum.

11. Omnes oderunt immemorem beneficii.

12. Quod satis est cui contigit, hic nihil amplius optet.

13. Φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρήσθ ̓ ὁμίλιαι κακαί.

14. Usus est optimus magister.

15. Est profecto Deus, qui, quæ gerimus et sentimus, penitus perspicit et æstimat.

16. Ingratus unus miseris omnibus nocet.

17. Nemo malus vere felix est.

18. Cave ne nimium tibi confidas.

19. Μέμνησο νέος ὢν, ὡς γέρων ἔσει ποτέ.

20. Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam, Multa tulit fecitque puer.

[ocr errors]

21. Et genus et proavos et quæ non fecimus ipsi, Vix ea nostra voco.

22. Benignitate nihil hominis naturæ accommodatius est. 23. Quid leges sine moribus

Vanæ proficiunt?

24. In seligendis amicis maxima est cura adhibenda.

25. Vitanda est improba Siren

Desidia.

26. Ne patefaciamus aures assentatoribus.

[To be continued in the next No., when will also be given Subjects for VERSES, DECLAMATIONS, &C.]

LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.

LATELY PUBLISHED.

Stephens' Greek Thesaurus, No. XXXI. The work will be certainly comprised in 39 Nos. or all above given gratis, and will be completed within the year 1825. The copies of some deceased Subscribers may still be had at 17. 5s. Small, and 21. 12s. 6d. Large Paper; but the Prices will be raised to 1. 7s. Small, and 21. 15s. Large. Subscribers always remain at the price at which they originally enter. Nos. I. to XXXI. contain above 14,000 words omitted by STEPHENS. Total Subscribers, Large and Small paper, 1086. The copies printed

« PreviousContinue »