Alexander the Great achieved, was only stopped by his assassination, B. C. 336.

66

33"By the conquests of Alexander the continents of Asią and Europe were put into closer communication with one another; and both, but particularly Asia, were the gainers." 'Alexander's achievements, though they undoubtedly occasioned great partial misery, must be regarded as beneficial to the human race; the families of which, if it were not for some such movements, would stagnate in solitary listlessness and poverty." "The language, the arts, and the literature of Greece, were introduced into the East; and after Alexander's death, Greek kingdoms were formed in the western parts of Asia, which continued to exist for many generations. Alexander founded many cities, of which the most famed was Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile; which for many centuries continued to be not only the grand emporium of Europe, Africa, and India, but also the principal centre of intellectual life." The views and ambition of the father were certainly as large as those of the son; and it is doubtful if the latter could have performed his great achievements had not Philip handed down to him all the means and instruments which they required.

ON QUINTUS ENNIUS,' BY HIMSELF.

EMO me decoret lacrumis, nec funera, fletu
Faxit. Cur? volito vivu' per ora virum.

To me no tears, no funeral give;
For why? in all men's mouths I live.

LET none bemoan my death, or deck my tomb
With show of sorrow, weak and unavailing.
For why? I live, and feel no stint of room,
For ever on men's mouths through ether sailing.
J. Davies.

ON VIRGIL AND TIBULLUS.2

From Domitius Marsus.

HE, who sublime in epic numbers roll'd,
And he who struck the softer lyre of love,

1 Ennius wrote, in heroic verse, annals of the Roman Republic, fragments of which only now remain to us. He displayed much knowledge of the world, too, in some dramatical and satirical compositions. He was the first epic poet of Rome, and called himself the Homer of Latium.

By death's3 unequal hand alike controll'd,
Fit comrades in Elysian regions move.

Lord Byron.

2 The classical scholar need not be told that Virgil's great poem, the "Eneid," is composed upon the model of Homer's "Iliad," and relates the adventures of Æneas after the destruction of Troy. After being engaged on it for eleven years he died without revising it. By some critics it is considered inferior to the "Iliad" and "Odyssey as being deficient in the truth and simplicity which so eminently characterize those poems, whilst Voltaire thinks it the finest monument which remains to us of all antiquity; and even goes so far as to say that the second book, in which Æneas relates to Dido an account of the destruction of Troy, is worth the whole Iliad. In the fifteenth century a Latin poet, Maphæus Vegius, who displays considerable powers of description, and a strong feeling of the beauties of Roman poetry, wrote and published as a continuation and finish of the Æneid a thirteenth Book, "Virgil's Georgica," his most finished work. His ten smaller poems, the "Bucolics," his earliest compositions, smooth and polished in their versification, and displaying many natural and simple touches, but as an attempt to transfer the Syracusan muse, Theocritus, into Italy, a failure. The wellknown inscription, said to have been placed on his tomb:

Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc
Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces.

thus translated:

In Mantua born; Calabria took me thence;

At last Parthenope became my residence.

Of shepherds I have sung, of fields, of rural life,

Of heroes known to fame, who led the battle's strife.

Rev. 7. H. C. Wright.

ON P. SCIPIO AFRICANUS.

HIC est ille situs, cui nemo civi' neque hostis quivit pro factis reddere operæ pretium.

Q. Ennius.

HERE he lies whose deeds no countryman or stranger could ever recompense.

From Catullus,* 96.

IF e'er in human grief there breathe a spell
To charm the silent tomb, and soothe the dead;
When soft regrets on past affections dwell,
And o'er fond friendships lost, our tears are shed;
Sure, a less pang must touch Quintilia's shade
While hov'ring o'er her sad, untimely bier,
Than keen-felt joy that spirit pure pervade,
To witness that her Calvus held her dear.

Elton.

Of the four Books of Elegies, which pass as those of Tibullus, the two first books are of undoubted genuineness. The third book, much inferior, has been ascribed to Lygdamus, and the opening of the fourth book is so bad that it cannot be ascribed to a writer of the exquisite taste of Tibullus.

3 The hand of death is said to be unjust, or unequal, as Virgil was considerably older than Tibullus at the time of his death. Virgil died B. C. 19, aged 51, and Tibullus B. C. 17, aged about 29.

The first Roman who imitated with success the Greek writers, and introduced their numbers amongst the Latins. His compositions, though elegant, are the offspring of a too luxuriant imagination. "He adorned all he touched, and his shorter poems are characterized by original invention and felicity of expression."

Catullus, IOI.

O'ER many a realm, o'er many an ocean tost,
I come, my brother, to salute thy ghost!
Thus on thy tomb sad honour to bestow,
And vainly call the silent dust below.

Thou, too, art gone! Yes, thee I must resign,
My more than brother-ah! no longer mine.
The funeral rites to ancient Romans paid,
Duly I pay to thy lamented shade.

Take them these tears their heart-felt homage tell;
And now-all hail for ever, and farewell!

F. Hodgson.

ON A FREEDMAN.

Martial's Epigrams, Lib. vi. Ep. 29.

NOT basely born, nor bought at mart,
But worthy all a master's love:

5 A poet whose compositions on a vast variety of subjects are distinguished by singular fertility of imagination, a prodigious flow of wit, and delicate felicity of language, affording much valuable information on the national customs and social habits of the Romans during the first century of the empire. He is to be censured for "habitual impurity of thought, combined with habitual impurity of expression." It is well known that the word epigram, which originally denoted simply an Inscription, was, in process of time, applied to any brief metrical effusion, whatever the subject might be, or whatever the form under which it was presented. Martial, however, first placed the epigram upon the narrow basis it now occupies;