To want this great inflamer of all powers

That move in humane soules! All realmes but yours,
Are honor'd with him; and hold blest that state
That have his workes to reade and contemplate.
In which, humanitie to her height is raisde;
Which all the world (yet, none enough) hath praisde.
Seas, earth, and heaven, he did in verse comprize;
Out sung the Muses, and did equalise

Their king Apollo; being so farre from cause
Of princes light thoughts, that their gravest lawes
May finde stuffe to be fashiond by his lines.
Through all the pompe of kingdomes still he shines
And graceth all his gracers. Then let lie
Your lutes, and viols, and more loftily
Make the heroiques of your Homer sung,
To drums and trumpets set his Angels tongue:
And with the princely sports of haukes you use,
Behold the kingly flight of his high Muse:

And see how like the Phoenix she renues
Her age, and starrie feathers in your sunne;
Thousands of yeares attending; everie one
Blowing the holy fire, and throwing in
Their seasons, kingdomes, nations that have bin
Subverted in them; lawes, religions, all

Offerd to change, and greedie funerall;

Yet still your Homer lasting, living, raigning.—

and likewise the 1st, the 11th, and last but one, of the prefatory sonnets to the Odyssey. Could I have foreseen any other speedy opportunity, I should have begged your acceptance of the volume in a somewhat handsomer coat; but as it is, it will better represent the sender,—to quote from myself—

Dedication to Prince Henry.

A man disherited, in form and face,
By nature and mishap, of outward grace.

Chapman in his moral heroic verse, as in this dedication and the prefatory sonnets to his Odyssey, stands above Ben Jonson; there is more dignity, more lustre, and equal strength; but not midway quite between him and the sonnets of Milton. I do not know whether I give him the higher praise, in that he reminds me of Ben Jonson with a sense of his superior excellence, or that he brings Milton to memory notwithstanding his inferiority. His moral poems are not quite out of books like Jonson's, nor yet do the

sentiments so wholly grow up out of his own natural
habit and grandeur of thought, as in Milton. The
sentiments have been attracted to him by a natural af-
finity of his intellect, and so combined ;-but Jonson has
taken them by individual and successive acts of choice.
All this and the preceding is well felt and vigor-
ously, though harshly, expressed, respecting sublime
poetry in genere; but in reading Homer I look about
me, and ask how does all this apply here? For surely
never was there plainer writing; there are a thou-
sand charms of sun and moonbeam, ripple, and wave,
and stormy billow, but all on the surface.
Had Chap-
man read Proclus and Porphyry ?—and did he really
believe them, or even that they believed themselves?
They felt the immense power of a Bible, a Shaster, a
Koran. There was none in Greece or Rome, and they
tried therefore by subtle allegorical accommodations
to conjure the poem of Homer into the βιβλιον θεοπα-
ράδοτον of Greek faith.

It is

Chapman's identification of his fate with Homer's, and his complete forgetfulness of the distinction between Christianity and idolatry, under the general feeling of some religion, is very interesting. amusing to observe, how familiar Chapman's fancy has become with Homer, his life and its circumstances, though the very existence of any such individual, at least with regard to the Iliad and the Hymns, is more than problematic. N.B. The rude engraving in the page was designed by no vulgar hand. It is full of spirit and passion.

I am so dull, that neither in the original nor in any
translation could I ever find wit or wise
any
purpose
The whole humor seems to lie in the

in this poem.
names. The frogs and mice are not frogs or mice, but
men, and yet they do nothing that conveys any satire.
In the Greek there is much beauty of language, but
the joke is very flat. This is always the case in rude
ages; their serious vein is inimitable,-their comic
low, and low indeed. The psychological cause is
easily stated, and copiously exemplifiable.

Epistle Dedi

catorie to the

Odyssey.

Epistle Dedicatorie to the

Batrachomy

omachia.

End of the Batrachomyomachia.

NOTE IN CASAUBON'S PERSIUS. 1807.

THERE are six hundred and sixteen pages in this volume, of which twenty-two are text; and five hundred and ninety-four commentary and introductory matter. Yet when I recollect, that I have the whole works of Cicero, Livy, and Quinctilian, with many others, the whole works of each in a single volume, either thick quarto with thin paper and small yet distinct print, or thick octavo or duodecimo of the same character, and that they cost me in the proportion of a shilling to a guinea for the same quantity of worse matter in modern books, or editions,—I a poor man, yet one whom βιβλίων κτήσεως ἐκ παιδαρίου δεινὸς ἐκράτησε πόθος, feel the liveliest gratitude for the age which produced such editions, and for the education, which by enabling me to understand and taste the Greek and Latin writers, has thus put it in my power to collect on my own shelves, for my actual use, almost all the best books in spite of my small income. Somewhat too I am indebted to the ostentation of expense among the rich, which has occasioned these cheap editions to become so disproportionately cheap.

NOTES ON BARCLAY'S ARGENIS. 1803.*

HEAVEN forbid that this work should not exist in its present form and language! Yet I can not avoid the wish that it had, during the reign of James I., been moulded into an heroic poem in English octavo stanza, or epic blank verse ;—which, however, at that time had not been invented, and which, alas! still remains the sole property of the inventor, as if the Muses had given him an unevadible patent for it. Of dramatic blank verse we have many and various specimens ;-for example, Shakspeare's as compared with Massinger's, both excellent in their kind of lyric, and of what may be called Orphic, or philosophic, blank verse, perfect models may be found in Wordsworth :-of colloquial blank verse there are excellent, though not perfect, ex

:

* Communicated by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge.

amples in Cowper;-but of epic blank verse, since Milton, there is not one.

It absolutely distresses me when I reflect that this work, admired as it has been by great men of all ages, and lately, I hear, by the poet Cowper, should be only not unknown to general readers. It has been translated into English two or three times —how, I know not, wretchedly, I doubt not. It affords matter for thought that the last translation (or rather, in all probability, miserable and faithless abridgment of some former one) was given under another name. What a mournful proof of the incelebrity of this great and amazing work among both the public and the people! For as Wordsworth, the greater of the two great men of this age, (at least, except Davy and him, I have known, read of, heard of, no others)-for as Wordsworth did me the honor of once observing to me, the people and the public are two distinct classes, and, as things go, the former is likely to retain a better taste, the less it is acted on by the latter. Yet Telemachus is in every mouth, in every school-boy's and school-girl's hand! It is awful to say of a work, like the Argenis, the style and Latinity of which, judged (not according to classical pedantry, which pronounces every sentence right which can be found in any book prior to Boetius, however vicious the age, or affected the author, and every sentence wrong, however natural and beautiful, which has been of the author's own combination,-but) according to the universal logic of thought as modified by feeling, is equal to that of Tacitus in energy and genuine conciseness, and is as perspicuous as that of Livy, whilst it is free from the affectations, obscurities, and lust to surprise of the former, and seems a sort of antithesis to the slowness and prolixity of the latter (this remark does not, however, impeach even the classicality of the language, which, when the freedom and originality, the easy motion. and perfect command of the thoughts, are considered, is truly wonderful):-of such a work it is awful to say, that it would have been well if it had been written in English or Italian verse ! Yet the event seems to justify the notion. Alas! it is now too late. What modern work, even of the size of the Paradise Lost —much less of the Faery Queene--would be read in the present day, or even bought, or be likely to be bought, unless it were an instructive work, as the phrase is, like Roscoe's quartos of Leo X., or entertaining like Boswell's three of Dr. Johnson's conver

sations. It may be fairly objected-what work of surpassing merit has given the proof?-Certainly, none. Yet still there are ominous facts, sufficient, I fear, to afford a certain prophecy of its reception, if such were produced.

NOTES ON CHALMERS'S LIFE OF SAMUEL DANIEL.

The justice of these remarks can not be disputed, though some of them are too figurative for sober criticism.

MOST genuine a figurative remark! If this strange writer had any meaning, it must be :-Headly's criticism is just throughout, but conveyed in a style too figurative for prose composition. Chalmers's own remarks are wholly mistaken; too silly for any criticism, drunk or sober, and in language too flat for any thing. In Daniel's Sonnets there is scarcely one good line; while his Hymen's Triumph, of which Chalmers says not one word, exhibits a continued series of first-rate beauties in thought, passion, and imagery, and in language and metre is so faultless, that the style of that poem may without extravagance be declared to be imperishable English. 1820.

BISHOP CORBET.

I ALMOST wonder that the inimitable, humor and the rich sound and propulsive movement of the verse, have not rendered Corbet a popular poet. I am convinced that a reprint of his poems, with illustrative and chit-chat biographical notes, and cuts by Cruikshank, would take with the public uncommonly well. September, 1823.

NOTES ON SELDEN'S TABLE TALK.*

THERE is more weighty bullion sense in this book, than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer.

OPINION.

Opinion and affection extremely differ. I may affect a woman best, but it does not follow I must think her the handsomest woman in the world.

* These remarks on Selden were communicated by Mr. Cary.-Ed.