easily, indeed, be concluded of Sheridan, from the very limited circumstances of his father-who had nothing beside the pension of 2001. a-year, conferred upon him in consideration of his literary merits, and the little profits he derived from his lectures in Bath, to support with decency himself and his family. The prospects of Halhed were much more golden, but he was far too gay and mercurial to be prudent; and from the very scanty supplies which his father allowed him, had quite as little of "le superflu, chose si necessaire," as his friend. But whatever were his other desires and pursuits, a visit to Bath,-to that place which contained the two persons he most valued in friendship and in love,-was the grand object of all his financial speculations; and among other ways and means that, in the delay of the expected resources from Aristænetus, presented themselves, was an exhibition of 201. a-year, which the college had lately given him, and with five pounds of which he thought he might venture "adire Corinthum." Though Sheridan had informed his friend that the translation was put to press some time in March, 1771, it does not appear to have been given into the hands of Wilkie, the publisher, till the beginning of May, when Mr. Ker writes thus to Bath: "Your Aristænetus is in the hands of Mr. Wilkie, in St. Paul's Church-yard, and to put you out of suspense at once, will certainly make his appearance about the 1st of June next, in the form of a neat volume, price 3s. or 3s. 6d., as may best suit his size, &c., which cannot be more nearly determined at present. I have undertaken the task of correcting for the press . . ... Some of the Epistles that I have perused seem to me elegant and poetical; in others I could not observe equal beauty, and here and there I could wish there were some little amendment. You will pardon this liberty I take, and set it down to the account of oldfashioned friendship." Mr. Ker, to judge from his letters, (which, in addition to their other laudable points, are dated with a precision truly exemplary,) was a very kind, useful, and sensible person, and in the sober hue of his intellect exhibited a striking contrast, to the sparkling vivacity of the two sanguine and impatient young wits, whose affairs he so good naturedly undertook to negotiate. At length in August, 1771, Aristænetus made its appearance-contrary to the advice of the bookseller, and of Mr. Ker, who represented to Sheridan the unpropitiousness of the season, particularly for a first experiment in authorship, and advised the postponement of the publication till October. But the translators were too eager for the rich harvest of emolument they had promised themselves, and too full of that pleasing but often fatal delusion-that calenture, under the influence of which young voyagers to the shores of Fame imagine they already see her green fields and groves in the treacherous waves around them-to listen to the suggestions of mere calculating men of business. The first account they heard of the reception of the work was flattering enough to prolong awhile this dream of vanity. "It begins (writes Mr. Ker, in about a fortnight after the publication,) to make some noise, and is fathered on Mr. Johnson, author of the English Dictionary, &c. See to-day's Gazetteer. The critics are admirable in discovering a concealed author by his style, manner, &c." Their disappointment at the ultimate failure of the book was proportioned, we may suppose, to the sanguineness of their first expectations. But the reluctance, with which an author yields to the sad certainty of being unread, is apparent in the eagerness with which Halhed avails himself of every encouragement for a rally of his hopes. The Critical Reviewers, it seems, had given the work a tolerable character, and quoted the first Epistle.* The Weekly Review in the Public Ledger had also spoken well of it, and cited a specimen. The Oxford Magazine had transcribed two In one of the Reviews I have seen it thus spoken of:-"No such writer as Aristænetus ever existed in the classic era; nor did even the unhappy schools, after the destruction of the Eastern empire, produce such a writer. It was left to the latter times of monkish imposition to give such trash as this, on which the translator has ill spent his time. We have been as idly employed in reading it, and our readers will in proportion lose their time in perusing this article." whole Epistles, without mentioning from whence they were taken. Every body, he says, seemed to have read the book, and one of those hawking booksellers who attend the coffeehouses assured him it was written by Dr. Armstrong, author of the Economy of Love. On the strength of all this he recommends that another volume of the Epistles should be published immediately-being of opinion that the readers of the first volume would be sure to purchase the second, and that the publication of the second would put it in the heads of others to buy the first. Under a sentence containing one of these sanguine anticipations, there is written, in Sheridan's hand, the word "Quixote !" They were never, of course, called upon for the second part, and, whether we consider the merits of the original or of the translation, the world has but little to regret in the loss. Aristænetus is one of those weak, florid sophists, who flourished in the decline and degradation of antient literature, and strewed their gaudy flowers of rhetoric over the dead muse of Greece. He is evidently of a much later period than Alciphron, to whom he is also very inferior in purity of diction, variety of subject, and playfulness of irony. But neither of them ever deserved to be wakened from that sleep, in which the commentaries of Bergler, De Pauw, and a few more such industrious scholars have shrouded them. The translators of Aristænetus, in rendering his flowery prose into verse, might have found a precedent and model for their task in Ben Jonson, whose popular song, "Drink to me only with thine eyes," is, as Mr. Cumberland first remarked, but a piece of fanciful mosaic, collected out of the love-letters of the sophist Philostratus. But many of the narrations in Aristænetus are incapable of being elevated into poetry; and, unluckily, these familiar parts seem chiefly to have fallen to the department of Halhed, who was far less. gifted than his coadjutor with that artist-like touch, which polishes away the mark of vulgarity, and gives an air of elegance even to poverty. As the volume is not in many hands, the following extract from one of the Epistles may be acceptable--as well from the singularity of the scene described, as from the specimen it affords of the merits of the translation: "Listen-another pleasure I display, That help'd delightfully the time away. From distant vales, where bubbles from its source Tow'rds us they taught the new-born stream to flow, Scarce had the infant current trickled by, When lo! a wondrous fleet attracts our eye; Laden with draughts might greet a monarch's tongue, The mimic navigation swam along. Hasten, ye ship-like goblets, down the vale, His mildest breath a gentle zephyr gave; As a scholar, such as Halhed, could hardly have been led into the mistake, of supposing to Medixx Qury Quaλo to mean "a leaf of a medicinal nature," we may, perhaps, from this circumstance not less than from the superior workmanship of the verses, attribute the whole of this Epistle and notes to Sheridan. There is another Epistle, the 12th, as evidently from the pen of his friend, the greater part of which is original, and. shows, by its raciness and vigour, what difference there is be "In the original, this luxurious image is pursued so far that the very leaf which is represented as the sail of the vessel, is particularized as of a medicinal nature, capable of preventing any ill effects the wine might produce."-Note by the Translator. tween "the first sprightly runnings" of an author's own mind, and his cold, vapid transfusion of the thoughts of another. From stanza 10th to the end is all added by the translator, and all spirited-though full of a bold defying libertinism, as unlike as possible to the effeminate lubricity of the poor sophist, upon whom, in a grave, treacherous note, the responsibility of the whole is laid. But by far the most interesting part of the volume is the last Epistle of the book, “From a Lover resigning his Mistress to his Friend,"-in which Halhed has contrived to extract from the unmeaningness of the original a direct allusion to his own fate; and, forgetting Aristænetus and his dull personages, thinks only of himself, and Sheridan, and Miss Linley. "Thee, then, my friend,—if yet a wretch may claim A last attention by that once dear name, Thee I address:-the cause you must approve; I yield you-what I cannot cease to love. But sure to thee, dear, charming-fatal maid! (For me thou'st charmed, and me thou hast betray'd,) Forget the lover thou, as he the friend. May'st then have taught that stubborn heart to bend,) Be past all power to raise her scorn again--) |