cannot be doubted, since the latin pastoral, in which, as he expresses it, he laments his solitude," bears the impression of sorrow equally with that of poetry, and is as honourable to his heart as to his talents. This effusion of strong grief lowered into melancholy, and of power to incline without oppressing the fancy, is entitled to very high regard from every reader of taste. It has been censured, and has been defended; but the deed in either case will, perhaps, be viewed with indifference by the unprejudiced and able critic. "It is written," as it has been dogmatically, and, I think, ignorantly observed, "with the common but childish affectation of pastoral life;" and this has been excused "as the fault of the 66 poet's age;" and as compensated by some passages in the poem, wandering far beyond the bounds of bucolic song."" Affectation is every where a just object of reprobation; but how a writer can, with propriety, be said to be guilty of it, for employing any allowed and established species of composition as the vehicle of his thoughts, is more than I can possibly comprehend. When Milton n Se suamq; solitudinem hoc carmine deplorat. • See Johnson's Life of Milton. • Warton's note at the end of the poem. Arg. E.D. Silenus, his Pollio, its to har Its be Sactly bitly see with exception to those in a very few lines, His scene is deter- I have said so much on the subject of is where the first four feet are not linked by a syllable to the One slight incongruity occurs in the 41st verse of the readers to have the whole of it laid before them. Its beauties, indeed, will be only indistinctly seen in my translation: but to those, who are not conversant with the original, the inadequate copy may not, perhaps, be unacceptable. EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS. Himerides nymphæ, (nam vos et Daphnin et Hylan," 'I am afraid that our poet has been guilty in this place of a false quantity. The first syllable of Hylas is unquestionably short. His adjungit Hylan nautæ quo fonte relictum Clamassent; ut littus Hyla, Hyla omne sonaret. This, however, was only a slip of Milton's pen: in his seventh elegy the quantity of Hylas is right— Thiodamantæus Naiade raptus Hylas. But I have an objection, on the ground of taste, to the opening passage of this poem. It presents us with an unwarrantable mixture of fable with truth; and brings the fictitious or fabulous personages of Daphnis and Hylas into union with Bion, the pastoral poet of Smyrna, whose death was lamented in the elegiac strains of Moschus of Syracuse. Dicite Sicelicum Thamesina per oppida carmen; Two rivers of Sicily bore the name of Himera, one of them flowing, with a northern course, into the Tuscan sea, and the other, which is the largest, with a southern, into the Lybian. On the banks of the former of these rivers, near its influx into the sea, stood the city of Himera, in the vicinity of which Gelon, the king of Syracuse, gained a memorable victory over the Carthaginians at the time of the invasion of Greece by Xerxes. I am at a loss to discover why Mr. Warton should call the Himera "the famous bucolic river of Theocritus." Not one of this sweet poet's scenes are placed upon this river: it is mentioned only twice (if my recollection be at all accurate) in the thirty idylliums, which have been ascribed to him; and he was a native, as Suidas informs us, according to some accounts, of Coös, and, according to others, of Syracuse, a city no otherwise connected with the Himera than as it is in Sicily. The two passages in which this river is named by Theocritus are the following: ἡμέρα ἀνθ' ύδατος ῥείτω γάλα. καὶ ὡς δρύες αὐτὸν ἐθρήνουν Idyll. v. 124. Ἱμέρα αἴτε φύοντι παρ' όχθησιν ποταμοία. Idyl. vii. 74. Cœpit et immensum sic exonerare dolorem. Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. Solvere post Daphnin, post Daphnin dicere laudes Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat, agni. Dulcibus alloquiis, grato cùm sibilat igni Molle pyrum, et nucibus strepitat focus, et malus Auster Miscet cuncta foris, er desuper intonat ulmo? Ite domum impasti, domino jam non vacat agni. Aut æstate, dies medio dum vertitur axe, Cùm Pan æsculeâ somnum capit abditus umbrâ, |