cent per annum) they peremptorily insisted on FORTY-EIGHT IN THE HUNDRED! When the penury of the wretched islanders-and it was the same on the continent-rendered them absolutely incompetent to answer such cravings, might we not hope some little relaxation, some shew of pity, needful under such circumstances? No such thing. Brutus, well known in Cyprus, where he had some time resided, and the inhabitants of which island he even affected to patronize, copying the extortions connived at, and practised, by a late consul, still urged Cicero to befriend his clients, whose claims, he "iusolently" stated, demanded immediate satisfaction; but which, he knew, were unattainable by any other process, than through the fraudulent interposition of the proconsul, and in direct violation of an edict issued by him at Ephesus, previous to his arrival at the seat of government. Sympathizing with the sufferers, and moved by their supplications, Cicero reiterated his commands, forbidding every excess of interest, and confining it to the twelve per cent per annum. It appears, before he reached Cyprus, that the magistrates of Salamis, dreading renewed persecutions, bad, by the most humiliating sacrifices, and borrowing from every quarter of the island, scraped together the principal, with the trifling arrears of interest, which they actually tendered in liquidation of every legal claim. But the appetites of Scaptius and Matinius were too keen to relish so paltry a remuneration as twelve per cent; they stood upon precedents which they

Cicero ad Atticum. Lib. 6. Ep. 1.

↑ Witness King Dejotarus, whose restoration to the throne Brutus so vehemently contended for before Cæsar. But let it be noted, next to Pompey, Brutus, AFTER that event, appeared as his principal creditor, nor till the restoration was accomplished, had he the smallest chance of squeezing from him a single drachm,

and their confederate had revived, and, as before observed, insisted on forty-eight in the hundred. Now, by an existing decree of the Roman senate, the demanding more than the lawful premium rendered every pecuniary contract void, which Cicero clearly demonstrated to the magistrates; at the same time exhorting them to retaliate on their oppressors, by cleaving to the decree and his own edict against the usurers, and discarding from their minds every idea of compromise with those vultures. But alas! their fears precluded them from adhering to such salutary counsel. They knew not how soon he might be superseded, or who might succeed him in the government; perhaps, another relative of Brutus, and the ready upholder of Scaptius and Matinius,

It has, I own, often stirred within me a feeling bordering on admiration, to perceive how systematically Brutus acted in the several applications made by him in favour of these varlets. In the first place, he represented them as his friends, and as such he invoked the pro-consul to countenance their demands, and enforce the adjustment of them by his authority. This not succeeding, he next had recourse to personal consideration as an infallible charm to sooth him into compliance; meekly insinuating, that to meet the necessities of the Salaminian magistrates, Scaptius and Ma. tinius had proved chiefly instrumental in procuring for them the stipulated supplies, but that he himself became responsible for the amount, having guaranteed the payment to the MONEY-BROKERS AT ROME, from whom the sums necessary to their relief, had been obtained!! I have read somewhere of a Dutch reckoning, when the exorbitant charges on a bill being objected to, the sagacious landlord soon qualified the objections, by sending it up with fresh additions on every

renewed complaint. Foiled in these his expectations, Brutus now

"New parts puts on;"

swelling with indignation that his applications should be rejected, and upbraiding Cicero in the most haughty terms, for opposing the interest of persons whom he had particularized and recommended to him, as his friends and clients. Nurtured, however, in the schools of philosophy, he at length (yielding to a thrifty impulse) deemed it consistent with the dignity and professed principles of his sect, to suppress the appearance of anger, and exhibit a specimen of his complacency and moderation. SusSuspending, therefore, to a more convenient season every acrimonious invective, like a wary Field- Marshal he seized upon new ground for his operations, leaving the execution of his projects to the skill and dexterity of Scaptius and his colleagues. The zeal and avidity of these subalterns, justified his selection of alterns, justified his selection of them by their commander-in-chief'; for no enterprize was too mighty for their attempt, where reciprocal advantage was the lure to be derived either from open or clandestine rapine, and the most savage extortions. Paying willing obedience to his injunctions, every ef

fort was now used to win Cicero's concurrence to the solicitations of

Brutus; but firm as the rock of Oreb, his stubborn honesty was impregnable to their multifarious stratagems and assaults. Their coaxings, their whinings, and their threatenings, were alike unsuccessful; still "they gave not up all for lost," but like impenitent sinners, at the last gasp, could cherish "hope-even against hope." These, and all their future schemes, proving abortive, the final appeal in behalf of Brutus (whether undertaken voluntarily or not is no where stated) devolved on an individual apparently his friend. Though no accomplice in the nefarious practices of the former, his disposition

to serve him we may presume was sincere; but whatever ingenuity, as an advocate, might have been displayed by him before Cicero, yet preferring candour to evasion, he was induced ultimately to confess, that the money, with which the magistrates of Cyprus had been accommodated, was NOT the property EITHER of SCAPTIUS or MATINIUS; NEITHER was it furnished to them by the MONEY-BROKERS at ROME, to whom the alleged guarantee was unknown; but that the entire sums for which they stood indebted, were wholly extracted from the pure coffers of " an honourable man," who, it seems,

"Would, like a dog, rather bay the moon,

Than sell the mighty space of his large ho

nours,

Or contaminate his fingers with base bribes:" even BRUTUS HIMSELF!!

Without animadverting on such a disclosure, the above testimonies, and general infamy, or the integrity whether they respect the duplicity of Brutus, I resign to the contemplation of every reader..

B.

perhaps not altogether irrelevant.] [The following is an after-thought

As to Scaptius, the barbarities exercised by him over the Cypriots, were more appalling to the inhabitants than all the thunder-bolts of

Jupiter; and the following being avouched by Cicero, may be accepted as an unexaggerated sample of his humanity: A public convention of the Senators (for so they were denominated) being held at of the island, Scaptius, who then Salamis to deliberate on the affairs acted as lieutenant under Appius, seized the critical moment, when they were assembled, to exhibit to them certain pecuniary claims; the immediate discharge of which he peremptorily required and comwith, either from inability on their manded. This not being complied

"Brutus never told me that the money was his own property." Cic. ep. 6.

part, or the known illegality of the demand, without further ceremony, "he surrounded the Senate-house with a troop of horse, denying all egress and sustenance to the unhappy members, and kept them so long confined, that four of the individuals were starved to death!" (Cic. ep. 6.) Notwithstanding the notoriety of the fact, Brutus-will it be believed? with singular earnestness importuned Cicero to reinstate him in the office of Lieutenant, which being refused, his resentment knew no bounds; nor was it at all abated by the consideration, that the cavalry had been ignominiously dismissed by an order from the Pro-consul, before he reached Cyprus,

1

[There appeared in a very recent Number of a contemporary Magazine" the London"-under the signature of Idler, a translation of this most curious relic of antiquity, this parody of the pomp and solemnities of epic poetry. This new version has a great deal of merit, though our Critic complains of its being of too serious a cast.

For a better insight into the meaning and good humour of the fol. lowing communication, we refer our readers to the article alluded to. A friendly feeling between Translator and Critic seems evidently to subsist, but we have no authority to introduce our inser-. tion in any other shape than by the few lines which accompanied it. We shall be most happy to

receive the Critic's own translation, and to leave our classical friends to determine which of the two is the more in the spirit of the original.]

Mr. Editor,-As you profess your Magazine to be literary as well as political, I venture to send you the following, which is much at your service.

My friend Idler! (in name a Paradox) with a most busy industry, has been hunting poor Homer, through all the dark and recondite labyrinths of erudition: it is enough to frighten the humane reader, who has little taste to be in at Homer's death, to see this classical Nimrod mounted on his hobby-horse, take the field with. a whole host of historians, epigrammatists, biographers, scholiasts, grammarians, and lexicographers, Greek, Latin, English, French, and German: but there is little cause to fear; he is forced at length to confess he has been, all the while, pursuing but a shadow, a mere

who, under which happy figures (as Æneas in the Iliad through the aid of the Patron of Song) the bard having fairly slipped through his fingers, he exhibits to us a very ingenious mode of annihilation, by assuring us, this venerable old Gre cian never was in existence: but lest we thould really think him to have been led away by an ignis fatuus, he makes a special remark upon "the limestone eye-balls," as if he had actually seen them. This is a hard hit upon the poor old blind Poet, and I cannot help exclaiming in his name, and in his own words,

σε δὸς δ' οφθαλμοισιν ιδέσθαι, Ἐν δε φάει καὶ ἵλεσσον.

" give me but sight

And then dispatch me in the face of day.",

Now, Idler boasts that he is no Ixion, to embrace a cloud and call it beauty; but it seems he has no

objection to take a cloud for his enemy, and thus lance in hand to "mock the air in idle state"-for which purpose he has taken down from their rusty pegs the antiquated armour of literary worthies of old, and with a little new-furbishing, puts his large limbs into them, and stalking forth, he

σε Οὐρανῷ ἐστήριξε κάρη, καὶ ἐπὶ χθονὶ βαίνει. "Treads the low earth, and dreams amidst the clouds."

In my zeal for the author of the Iliad, I forgot to state, what every reader may not know, that under the signature of Idler in Nos. XXI. XXII. and XXIII. for September, October, and November, of the London Magazine, he will find a learned discussion, to prove first, that Homer did not write the ad. mirable miniature epic, the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, and then, that he could not have written it, by attempting to prove, there never was any such person. Now though this is a little like

"The Spanish fleet thou canst not see,
Because it is not yet in sight.”

Yet, if the reader is pleased with real wit, much ingenuity, and is a sincere lover of good poetry, I

would recommend him for his sure gratification, to read Idler's remarks, and above all, his excellent elegant translation. Yet I can scarcely forgive him, for attempting to tear this one laurel leaf from the head of the venerable old poet, to place it on that of one Tigres, for whom nobody cares a straw; nor will I make

"Cum Tigride pacem Perpetuam-"

until the succeeding part of the line come to pass, and which he will well understand

"sævis inter se convenit Ursis."

He has, indeed, brought in this Tigres or Pigres, for he has not made up his mind which to call him, well supported (as if he could

not stand by himself) between Plu tarch and Henry Stephens; but I look upon this as a mere artful invention, as bad money is slipped in between good, to make it the more passable.

Time, they say, and time alone, is the discoverer of truth, but as he is aware of the value of it, it must be confessed he is very cautious and tedious in his operations, as is sufficiently witnessed in some courts of judicature, where he is supposed more particularly to preside: It is

now more than two thousand seven hundred years since Homer wrote, (if I may be allowed to say he wrote at all) yet the Lord Chancellor Time, it seems, has not yet given his decision respecting him; in the mean while his property has passed through many hands. Alas! after all, what is there we may truly call our own? Our goods are at the mercy of the lawyers, our bodies of the physicians, and our souls of the divines, and our reputations, (if we have any,) at the mercy of the reviewers. Poor Homer! how many books have been written about him!

how hard a task, to defend him from friend and foe! One might imagine Idler had enumerated enough of them, but we may add one Dydimus the Grammarian to the number, known at least for the quantity of his works, for he wrote 4000 books, to discover amongst other fopperies, where the great poet was born, and now, it must be made out he was born-nowhere; and Idler's friend Quintus Calaber has severely wounded him, through his own Achilles, by knocking the hero on the head, or, perhaps, to speak more correctly, by tripping up his heels.

I confess myself, Mr. Editor, to beone of those persons prejudiced by habit and education, with whom there is magic in a name, and cannot have a proper taste or feeling for the Iliad and Odyssey, under any other name, or than that of Homer; perhaps I names whatever,

tongue

Proclaims you for a man replete with
mocks,

Full of comparisons and wounding flouts;
Which you on all estates will execute,
That lie within the mercy of your wit."

Love's Labour Lost, Act v. sc. 2. I have often wished Thomson had a less generic name. We all know it signed the death-warrant of his poor Sophonisba. "Oh! Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson, oh!" I am quite spoiled for Southey, because Byron has coupled it (if the expression may be allowed) with a most unfortunately happy rhyme; and his "Amos, Cottle, Phœbus! what a name!" has doomed perhaps some very fine epics to eternal oblivion. I have often thought it a proof of the very great excellence in the Roman Classics, that they got over the evil report of their own names. Take but a few as they occur; Cicero, Mr, Small-pulse; HorFlaccus, Mr. Flapear; Catullus, Mr. Whelp, or Puppy Dog, which you please; Juvenal, Mr. Youngster; T. Livius, Mr. Pale-face; (the two latter badly spelt) Ovid-Naso, Mr. Nose; and Caesar from Cæsa,

Mr. Slasher; and many others, to say nothing of the Greek Classics, which I have not time, and it would be, perhaps, impertinent to examine into.

Judge then, Mr. Editor, of my indignation, when proposing to myself a tête-a-tête with Homer, I am put off with one Tigres or Pigres—

"Do you know one Thomson; uo, friend, but I know one Jobson."

I could not help having considerable pity for a friend of mine, who went to Italy, for no other purpose, but to indulge those classical feelings which he had encouraged from his school-boy days to manhood; he was quite an enthusiast, and on his return, drew a lamentable picture of the many disappointments that there is scarcely a brick of anhe had experienced. He asserted, tiquity that is not under doubt and disputation. He left Rome in disgust, at the " uncertainty of all things," and went to Albano and L'Arici.

"Egressum magnâ me accepit Aricia
Hor.

Româ."

Where endeavouring to recover his repose, he sat down by the tomb of the Horatii and Curiatii; he had fairly worked himself into the reverse of the Scotchman's second sight, which looks forward; (for his "mind's eye" was turned backward some few generations,) and was actually surveying the combat, when a prim grave ecclesiastical Cicerone, with a little cocked hat and blue stiff cravat, stepped up to him, and told him, it was the tomb of Ascanius. My friend started from his dream: however he was still an enthusiast, the scene merely shifted a little, and another came: half the Æneid had passed in all the pageantry of a modern Melo-Drame before the vision of his mind, when a prig of a fellow suddenly lets drop the curtain, by assuring him it is neither the tomb of Horatii and Curiatii, or of Ascanius. My friend looked once more, and finding the object