sometimes breaks through the veil of wit, "dark with excessive bright," that usually

obscures it:

"Lo! how th' obsequious wind and swelling air
The Theban swan does upward bear
Into the walks of clouds, where he does play,
And with extended wings opens his liquid way!"

But it has been all along forgotten that
Horace is speaking of Pindar's dithyram-
bics to Bacchus, which, together with his
pæans to Apollo, are, unfortunately, lost.
It is from this traditionary character that
Pope, under the same mistaken impression,

describes him :

“Here, like some furious prophet, Pindar rode, And seemed to labor with the inspiring god."

the Greeks, who listened with interest to their historic legends and mythological tales, must have appeared delightful. Pindar saw that a chariot-race could admit of no variety; he therefore merely used his subject and his hero as hints for different episodes, not confusedly jumbled together, but growing out of each other. If the conqueror in the race had any pretensions to a descent from gods or heroes, he seized the occasion, by tracing his pedigree, to emblazon his ode with fabulous marvels or heroic exploits; if this were denied him, he struck out some moral truth, which he proceeded to illustrate from some tale of mythical lore; this tale suggested another, and that, perhaps, a third, but they all hinged together, and he brought back the reader at the close to the subject from which he had digressed. An attention to this method of Pindar will show that, so far from bounding along on an ungovernable Pegasus, nothing can be more steady or more managed than his paces, nothing more systematic than the structure of his poems or more lucid than the disposition of his subject; and his style, also, so far from sweeping along with the rapidity ascribed to it, is rather grave and

But in the odes which have reached us he rather appears as a grave, sacerdotal bard, riding, indeed, in a chariot drawn by four fiery coursers, but reining them abreast with an easy mastery by a curb of iron. The censurers of Pindar, who imagine that his digressions and transitions are the marks of an ungovernable fancy, are equally mistaken with his admirers, who see in them the sallies of poetic transport and the fine irregularitythe beau désordre, as Boileau phrases it solemn and invested with a certain comwhich they conceive to be essentially charac- posed and stately energy. The art of his teristic of the ode, and which they suppose plan is, however, the result of a felicity of to represent the frenzy of inspiration. Nei- genius, and not of labor. Critics of the ther in his numbers, which are strictly met- | French school, who talk of Pindar's metarical, nor in the plan of his poems, which are phoric diction as exceeding the just limits of uniform contrivance, is Pindar, as he ap- of what they cantingly call a correct style, pears to us, that foaming enthusiast, that appear to fancy that he fashioned these bold maniacal bard, that " furious prophet," which metaphors on the anvil with a forced heat the received opinion would lead us to believe. and a pedantic ambition to be great and We see in Pindar a man of genius escaping swelling, but they only show that they unfrom the barren monotony of his subject with derstand neither the genius of ancient manan intuitive judgment and facility which to ners nor that of the Greek language. There

is no labor in Pindar, and there cannot be a | The state where spirits of the dead,
greater proof of the vulgar misconception re-
specting him than the common comparison
of Pindar with Gray, whose whole poetical
life was consumed in the painful elaboration
of a few slender odes in which we trace the
commonplaces of a scholar's reading and per-
ceive the odor of the lamp. Collins bears
an infinitely closer resemblance to the sim-
ple spontaneousness, the fine abstraction and
ideal sublime, of Pindar, but perhaps, if we
wish for a parallel with Pindar's odes, we
must seek it in the odes and choruses of
Milton. We perceive in the lyrics of Mil-
ton and in the odes of Pindar a similar copi-
ousness of words and thoughts and images,
rolling forth as if involuntarily from the deep
and abundant sources of fancy and reflec-
tion; a similar severe and chaste style, re-
lieved by a freshness of color and picturesque-
ness of manner in descriptive painting and
the intermixture of gorgeously romantic im-
agery; a similar lofty and calm abstracted-
ness of imagination, and the same purity
and unworldliness of feeling, the same relig-
ious tone and almost oracular emphasis in
the uttering of moral truths.

Intractable and unatoning, pay
The penalty of crime.
Not so the good, for they
Alike by night, alike by day,
Behold the glory of the sun;
Their lives unlaboring pass away;
They harrow not with sinewy hands the
ground;

Nor yet upturn the waters of the sea
For empty aliment;

But in the blessed company

Of spirits by the gods with honor crownedMen who rejoiced to keep their oath unshent

Their days through tearless ages run :
The whilst the wicked rue
The crimes in days of nature done
With penance horrible to view.
And they that thrice, above, below
This earth, with transmigrating entity
Have stood their trial, passing to and fro,
And from the unjust society
Have kept their souls aloof and free—
They take the way which Jove did long
ordain

To Saturn's ancient tower beside the deep,
Where gales that softly breathe,
Fresh-springing from the bosom of the main,
Through the islands of the blessed blow;
And flowers like burning gold of hue-
Some on the green earth creep,

Some bourgeon on the splendid trees,
Some in cool, nurturing streams their blos-
soms steep-

The blissful troops of these

For their twined wrists inwoven bracelets

wreathe,

And garlands for their brow.

Translation of CHARLES ABRAHAM ELTON

A light of stars shone round her head; I Else could I bear, on all days of the year— Not now alone, this gentle summer night,

The sombre shores that gloomed the lake When scythes are busy in the headed grass

Let this remembrance comfort me-that Lovely the aged when like shocks of corn Full ripe and ready for the reaper's hand,

My heart seemed bursting like a restless Which garners for the resurrection-morn