p. 76, l. 21.

Week with despair, slow tottering with toil.

A happier instance of imitative harmony it would be difficult to adduce. The preceding couplet teems with a pair of sturdy Hybernicisms.

p. 77, 1. 9.

Long may the laurel to the ermine yield.

This line is a translation of Cicero's celebrated verse. Though the Roman orator, in comparison with Virgil, was but a sorry poet, I cannot help thinking that his translations, particularly some passages in his translation of Sophocles's Trachiniæ, so far as he translated that noble tragedy, are at least as good, as any of Mr. Fox's verses.

A PASTORAL.

Our language, though poor in Pastorals, can boast of one, divided, like this, into Morning, Noon and Evening, which has seldom been equalled. Cunningham's day is rich in rural scenery. His colours are of the tenderest delicacy, and every object is touched from nature.

p. 78, l. 9.

The morn, with pearly feet advancing, leads

Now morn, her rosy steps in th' eastern clime
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl.

p. 79. 1. 15. sqq.

Now the fierce coursers of the sultry day.

Milton.

In this and the five following lines one may trace Ovid, Claudian and the Epitaphium Damonis as well, as Virgil. How suffocating is the heat described in these verses.

Jum rapidus torrens sitientes Sirius Indos

Ardebat; cœlo et medium sol igneus orbem
Hauserat: arebant herbæ, et cava flumina siccis
Faucibus ad limum radii tepefacta coquebant.

444

NOTES TO THE COLLEGE EXERCISES.

p. 80, 1. 18.

And slow in solemn brown brings on the even.

From Addison. The first lines of Cato are perhaps the greatest effort of his muse. Mr. Paine was never very careful to avoid the opening of vowels on each other. There is none of his poems,that is not deformed by the Hiatus.

p. 81, 1. 11, sqq.

A nightingale, who, from a neighbouring spray.

These verses contain in a compressed form a translation of Strada's nightingale.

p. 86, l. 27.

From his keen eyes the livid lightnings dart.

The sense requires the substitution of vivid for livid. The fire of that mind, which fulmined over Greece, was far from a pale and sickly flash. Demosthenes, as he took Pericles for his model, may certainly share in the praises, lavished on his great exemplar. Dr. Parr applies the verse, to which I allude, and which Milton seems to have done little more than amplify in the Paradise Regained, to Mr. Fox.

p. 99, 1. 3.

Philenia sings, and sings the soldier's toil.

Mr. Paine alludes to Mrs. Morton's Beacon Hill, the first canto of which, was then lately published. It is to be regretted, that the poem, if finished, is still kept from the press.

p. 100, 1. 17.

When that warm tongue, from which such musick flows.

Instead of tongue, Mr. Paine, it is said, proposed to substitute lip. The substitution certainly betters the compliment; but I know not whether warm lip is not rather too luscious.

NOTES

TO THE

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

EDWIN AND EMMA.

p. 115, l. 5 sq.

Ingenuous Edwin! whom pale Envy's frown,

For thee half-brightened to a smile, applauds.

This figure, though it may not answer all the requisitions of criticism, conveys the author's meaning with uncommon felicity.

p. 116, 1sqq.

Whate'er in Love's bright landscape charmed your view, This Stanza is not less delicate than elegant.

p. 116, l. 24.

And wish, that wedlock was no sin in heaven,

Matrimony by the place of the Scripture, to which Mr. Paine alludes, is not declared a sin. The Saviour does not say, that marriage in heaven would be unlawful; he says merely that, to the blessed, being made like the angels of God, marriage is unnecessary. It is not prohibited by penalties, as an offence; it is barely described as superseded by a nobler communion, of which marriage is but a gross and imperfect symbol. The preceding stanza is finely touched. The evening star is stayed, while Venus smiles on the nuptial rites, and by her smile consecrates the genial couch to a large and happy issue. If this epithalamium commemorates a real wedding, the goddess did not smile in vain,

MONODY ON W. H. BROWN.

Of this monody there is something like concetto in the two first stanzas; but it is soon dropped, or rather lost in the poet's feelings; for the piece seems to have flowed almost without premeditation from his full and querulous sorrow. The transition, by the first line of the third stanza, is full of pathos; of that tenderness, which sobs in the very movement of the measure; the three other lines are something more than pretty.

p. 119, 1. 17.

Ithaca's queen, his comick pencil drew.

This line is extremely awkward, and moves as Penelope would have hobbled on pattens; the last line of this stanza, except that it describes the demeanour of a Pagan princess by a custom, peculiar to some christian countries, is at once tender and lofty.

p. 120, 1. 17.

Felt ye the gale? It was the Sirock blast.

One of Mason's choral odes suggested this abrupt and startling question.

p. 121, 1. 26.

To hold pure converse with the babbling brook.

So in the verses to Brattle:

And man grew social with the babbling brook.

Babbling brook is from Shakespeare.

p. 122, 1. 28.

But who has sketched the fragrance of the rose? Mr. Paine remembered the Greek epigram.

p. 124,

The Stanzas to Mr. Brattle, though somewhat extravagant, are very pleasing. The last quatrain, particularly the second line, is imagined in the true spirit of encomiastick poetry.

p. 127, 1. 1 sqq.

Thou injured maid, to gain whose secret name.

This, and the three next lines are striking. Arrected ears, is word for word from Virgil, auribus arrectis. The whispering gallery of fame, though savouring somewhat of Cowley, is a happy thought The watch tower of the winds, Mr. Paine owes to his recollection of the Octagon tower of Andronicus Cyrrhestes, of which Vitruvius takes notice, and to which Stuart assigns his third chapter of the Antiquities of Athens. It is now a Turkish chapel, called the Teckeh. The channels in the pavement, Stuart supposes to be the remains of a water dial. His margin refers us to Suidas, Pausanias, Aristophanes, Plutarch, Hesychius and Pliny. Stuart confesses that Vitruvius's silence is unfavourable to his conjecture; but then Vitruvius, he observes, is silent also as to the sun dials about the building, which were there, in his time, as appears from Varro, who calls the tower, the Horologium of Cyrrhestes. Horologium, he adds, signifies not only a sun dial but a water dial. He also adds, that a sun dial and a water dial, were placed together in the baths of Hippias, which Lucian has described, and that it appears probable from Pliny, that both those species of dials were in the Roman Forum.

p. 27, 1. 22.

In voice a Circe, and in poison too.

This line Mr. Paine afterwards employed in the Invention of Letters.

SONNET TO PHILENIA, &C.

This sonnet, notwithstanding the uncouth union of mercantile phraseology with gallantry and rhyme, is marked by some. fine strains. The twelfth and thirteenth lines are eminently beautiful. From the sincere admiration entertained by Mr. Paine for the lady, to whom some of his best verses are addressed, he seldom failed to derive inspiration.

p. 140, 1. 20.

When prudish Sanctity congeals the soul.

This verse I suspect is far from being universally true. Eloisas are still found in convents.