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six dirty rags. When his wound was washed and dressed the captain began to instruct him as to what lies he must tell in order to deceive the officers of the quarantine: as, that he was called Gaetano, son of Gabrielle Massa; that he came with the vessel from Genoa, and had not been on board any other, &c.: when the docile youth had learned his lesson, which, however, for fear of any blunder was several times afterwards repeated to him, the captain took him upon his knee, and began to question him about the sailors on board the fishing-boat; how much fish they took; how many hours they worked; whether a good account was kept of the sale; whether they grumbled at his having so large a share, &c. &c. The boy, thus carefully instructed, and disciplined in falsehood and treachery, had naturally profited by the lessons he had received, and was as worthless a little wretch as could well be found; still he was his father's darling, probably by a sympathy of merit, perhaps by a similarity of ugliness, for he had both these recommendations to his worthy parent's affections. As soon as he was able to limp about he resumed his vocation of spy, to the great satisfaction of his admiring sire, who highly approved of the diligence and ingenuity which he exerted in his calling. We scarcely need mention our passing Monte Circello, the white-faced Terracina, and Gaeta, one of the few cities in the kingdom of Naples which of late years has dared to resist an enemy,-since, of course, we saw but little of them. One evening, after supper, we came upon deck, and immediately our eyes were riveted upon a red light, far off, flaming high in the air. "It is Vesuvius," cried we: it was, and our hearts leaped within us. How grand, how awful is that light when it first bursts upon the stranger's eye! It fixes itself in the memory for ever; that shooting flame, that river of fire, will perhaps be one among the last recollections that the mind will lose. Towards morning we came in sight of the tower-crowned Cape of Misenum; a little wind enabled us to double it, and the Gulph of Pozzuolo lay before us; the breeze slept upon the golden shore, and the purple of the morning still lingered on

the hills and in the clouds; the sea presented a broad surface, undulating, but unbroken, save when our lazy oars dipped in the waves, and shook from their broad blades a shower of gems. In the back ground Vesuvius lifted up his mighty fork, dark, swarthy, and alone, standing apart in sullen greatness, and frowning on all around: a column of smoke rose from his highest summit, and then stretched out in a line, sometimes dark, and sometimes gilded, for leagues across the sky. We had but just looked around when up rose the burning sun

Not as in northern climes obscurely bright, but fresh as a bridegroom, and looking gladly and gaily athwart the hills. How majestically does he roll up into heaven, shedding ten thousand glories from his golden hair! All nature gladdens before the god; even the grim Vesuvius dimples into smiles. The Scirocco breathes upon the waters; ripples rise and sink, and rise again gradually, growing into waves, which flash as they roll. But who may hope to describe the magnificence of opening day in a scene like this, where plenty has exhausted her horn, and where nature has lavished every element of beauty and grandeur? We may talk of mountain and sea; of a shore crowded with ruins and palaces; of hills crowned with towers and convents; of a burnt and smoking volcano; of a bay sprinkled with islands; of vines, and figs, and olives; of the thousand shifting effects of light and shade; of beauty here, and sublimity there, until the mind runs riot in the glittering confusion, and the images mass together like the gay but unmeaning glories of a kaleidoscope. We grieve that we cannot master the difficulties of the subject; we grieve, but we submit. The captain sent off a boat to get some water, having wisely suffered himself to run out of that indispensable necessary; and as the day was hot, and the boat absent for three or four hours, we all experienced the miserabie suffering of thirst, and when the boat returned, we gulped down that element, which the worthy Squire Ileadlong dẹspised so heartily, as eagerly as though it had been true Falernian. The captain ought to have been

hanged for such an impudent prospective violation of his quarantine oath, but, we are sorry to say, he was not hanged. We toiled all day across the gulph with straining oars, and night fell upon us before we could get round Posilipo. We had told the captain who was passenger with us, that we were so ill-contented with Don Guiseppe Russo, we had determined not to give him a single grain above the sum which we had agreed to pay for our voyage; and one day, when the two captains were communing together, and Don Guiseppe was reckoning up how much he should gain by his voyage, as, so much by his rice, so much by his cheese, so much by his passengers, and then the buona mano, the other frankly told him, we did not mean to give him any thing. Our captain was very much dismayed by this information, but he was not a man to let money go without striking a blow for it; accordingly, when we sat at supper, he very gravely addressed the German in the following speech, as near as we can translate it, which, we suppose, he had conned for the purpose. "I always look upon my passengers, Don Pepuno, while they remain with me, just as though they were my own children," (the old rascal had been trying to coax us into a good humour all day,)" there

is nothing in the world I would not do for them, and I would rather go without myself than that they should want for any thing; and yet to-night I dreamt, that some one came and told me, you did not mean to give me any buona mano.' ." The German was a very bluff fellow, and immediately replied, "Captain Russo, there was no occasion for your dreaming a dream about that, because, if you had asked me, I could have told you so, without giving you the trouble to go to bed and dream; if you treat your children as you have treated us, you treat them very ill, that's all I know about it: but there is no need of all this roundabout nonsense; the plain fact is, you have behaved very ill to us, and we won't give you any thing."-Figuratevi! as the Neapolitans say; the captain's consternation was ludicrous beyond description, but it was such a point-blank reply, that he was quite stunned, and we heard no more of his dream. After supper we went upon deck, and found our humble bark was riding at anchor, under the shade of a hundred "mighty Argosies." I intended to write rather more than this, but I must break off here, for C is abed, asleep, and snoring like an elephant, and I am weary of solitude and silence. Farewell.

OLD SONG.

SONNET.

"Twas not the voice of nightingale; 'twas not
Woman's sweet voice when first of love she tells ;
"Twas not the sound of distant shepherd bells,

Naiade, or nymph in her Egerian grot,
Or plash of waves in that so lonely spot:
"Twas not the baleful Ocean, when he swells
Into the clouds; or bees in lowly dells,
Passion'd me so,-the world was all forgot:
But 'twas an echo of far years, when grief,
Like to an April cloud, did pass away;

Joy's herald, that did show in woe so brief
Love's gentle dream coming with flowers of May:
What time I leap'd to hear the cuckoo singing,

And earth, sky, air, the voice of Summer bringing.
Feb. 16, 1821.

R

The corresponding expression for buona mano, in English, is, "something to drink." The incessant thirst with which the English are troubled is very justly complained of by travellers.

THE DYING POET'S FAREWELL.
Animula vagula, blandula,
Hospes, comesque corporis,
Quæ nunc abibis in loca?

O thou wondrous arch of azure,
Sun, and starry plains immense !
Glories that astound the gazer

By their dread magnificence ;—
O thou ocean, whose commotion
Awes the proudest to devotion,
Must I-must 1 from ye fly,
Bid ye all adieu-and die !—

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ye keen and gusty mountains,
On whose tops I braved the sky;
O ye music-pouring fountains,
On whose marge I loved to lie;
O ye posies,—lilies, roses,

All the charms that earth discloses,
Must I must I from ye fly,
Bid ye all adieu-and die!
O ye birds, whose matin chorus
Taught me to rejoice and bless ;
And ye beasts, whose voice sonorous
Swell'd the hymn of thankfulness;
Learned leisure, and the pleasure
Of the muse, my dearest treasure,
Must I-must I from ye fly,
Bid ye all adieu-and die!
O domestic ties endearing,

Which still chain my soul to earth;
O ye friends, whose converse cheering
Wing'd the hours with social mirth;
Songs of gladness, chasing sadness,
Wine's delight without its madness,
Must I must I from ye fly,
Bid ye all adieu-and die!
Yes-I now fulfil the fiction

Of the swan that sings in death:
Earth, receive my benediction;
Air, inhale my parting breath;
Hills and valleys, forest alleys,
Prompters of my muse's sallies;
Fields of green, and skies of blue,
Take, oh take my last adieu.
Yet, perhaps, when all is ended,

And the grave dissolves my frame,
The elements from which 't was blended
May their several parts reclaim;
Waters flowing, breezes blowing,
Earth, and all upon it growing,
Still may have my alter'd essence
Ever floating in their presence.
While my disembodied spirit
May to fields Elysian soar,
And some lowest seat inherit
Near the mighty bards of yore;
Never, never to dissever,
But to dwell in bliss for ever,
Tuning an enthusiast lyre

To that high and laurel'd quire.

H.

THE LYRICS OF HORACE:

BEING THE FIRST FOUR BOOKS OF HIS ODES.

Translated by the Rev. Francis Wrangham, MA. FRS.*

QUINTILIAN remarks of Horace, that he is "almost the only one of the Roman Lyrics worthy of being read." De Institut. Orat. x. 575. It is singular that he should have hazarded this judgment, when he had mentioned Catullus in the sentence immediately preceding. The playful trifles of the latter (we do not wish to sully our own imaginations, or those of our readers, by any allusion to his indecencies) are very far superior, in a certain artless and spontaneous effect, to any sallies of a similar kind in the latter. There is not in Horace a stroke of such natural and amiable tenderness, as the infantile gesture of the babe of Torquatus. The wonderfully impetuous poem of the Atys leaves the boldest flight of Horace toiling and panting behind it. Catullus, in fact, considered simply as a poet, possessed over Horace the same ascendancy as that held by Lucretius over Virgil: the writers of the republic had the advantage of composing at an era when the fastidiousness of criticism, the slavish obsequiousness to models, and the squeamish anxiety to "gild refined gold, and paint the lily," had not tamed and trammeled the vigour of original genius. How strange is it, that with the powers and graces of the Catullan lyrics impressed upon his memory (could he for an instant have forgotten them?) the rhetorician should have afforded to Catullus only a dry notice on the acerbity of his iambic verses!

But his definition of the character of Horace is singularly neat; "insurgit aliquando, et plenus est jucunditatis et gratiæ, et variis figuris et verbis felicissimè audax." In this

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lies partly the secret of that attraction which the works of Horace have retained in every nation of the least pretensions to literary taste. To the awful and chastened splendour, and the ideal grandeur of Pindar, he has no claim in pure and flowing simplicity he is very far inferior to Anacreon: he has nothing of the breathless burning emotion which escapes in gasps, and sighs, and fluttering accents, from the lips of the enthusiastic Sappho: but he copes with them all at once, though inferior in the single comparison with either. Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet.

If not sublime, he is at least lofty: if not artless, he is at least not florid: if not pathetic, he is pensive: if not impassioned, he is tender. The variety of his manner excites and refreshes the attention by a perpetual relief and interchange. His political odes claim indulgence as courtly compositions: they are stiff, stately, and well-studied stanzas, and that is all. But he has patriotic odes; and they breathe considerable moral energy. Nothing can be finer than his description of the degeneracy of the Romans, and the contrast with the hardy and rustic manners of the ancient race, who, as Roscommon vigorously phrases it, "quash'd the stern acidæ." This kind and degree of the sublime he certainly possessed. Of anacreontic elegance the ode, ii. 11, "Quid bellicosus Cantaber," may be adduced as a pleasing instance, though more elaborate and artificial than the native effusions of the Teian poet. Of passion, we scarcely recollect an instance, except in iv. 1, "Cur manat rara meas la

The "elegant version of Philips has found another encomiast, in Mr. Lamb, the new translator of Catullus. If the epithet be deserved (and we think it is), there cannot be a stronger proof, how totally the writer has failed in conveying any thing like the spirit and character of the original.

cryma per genas?" which we would rather forget: perhaps the xvth ode of the Epodon, "Nox erat," makes an approach to it; but his Glyceras and Lydias are mere objects of gallantry. In the speech of the Danaid, "I, pedes quo te rapiunt," iii. 11, there is a touch of exquisite tenderness; but his affections turn rather on friendship than on love.

It is, however, to such passages as "Tu secanda marmora locas sub ipsum funus," ii. 18, or, "Sed timor et minæ scandunt eodem quo dominus,” iii. 1, that we most frequently resort: the primary cause of that peculiar intimacy which subsists between Horace and his readers is to be traced in his moral power. There is nothing that has at all the air of common-place, or affectation, in the solemn and striking reflections so thickly scattered through his odes, and, above all, his epistles. The contaminating influence of the age in which he was born infected his imagination, and has left its stain upon his pages; but, like Tibullus, he was endued with a lively sensibility for rural objects, which, as they are connected with ideas of purity and of the tranquillity resulting from temperate enjoyments and wisely regulated passions, tend imperceptibly to moral amelioration.

trembling of the water as it struggles round among the windings of the bed of the rivulet, evince a knowledge of the picturesque, and an attachment to nature in her coyest solitudes and most romantic combinations, which, while they bring the poet to our observation, insensibly identify him with the moralist. It all ends, indecd, with the wretched epicurean philosophy of rosebuds and winecups; but we feel a conviction, that the heart thus susceptible of impressions from the forms of this "world so beautiful" was capable of better hopes and wiser affections, could its veil have been removed. There is a gravity and depth in the Horatian philosophy, a screne and profound intensity of thought and feeling, a stoical resignation without the stoical apathy, very distinct from ethics learnt by rote, or a set of maxims consecrated by the trite usage of rhetorical sophists or sententious poets. How often has the passage "Sperat infestis, metuit secundis," awakened serious and salutary reflection in the meditative spirit! How often has the assurance "Non si male nunc et olim sic erit," so similar to the finest sentiment of the tender and descriptive, but not heroic, Eneid, "O passi graviora! dabit deus his quoque finem!" breathed hope into the mind, like the whisper of a consoling friend! How nearly does the beautiful illustration,

-hyemes reducit Jupiter : idem Summovet

approach to the sublime consolation contained, among a multitude of others similar or superior, in that book, at which every fool who is "wise in his own conceit" thinks himself qualified to shoot his bolt, "Sorrow and pain may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning!

Me pascant olivæ, Me cichorea, levesque malvæ, gains instant credit with us for the unaffected sincerity of the wish. In rural images and associations Horace is more original than Catullus; he more frequently recurs to them; he paints them with more freshness; with more of instinctive sympathy, and more of ideal feeling. What can be more deliciously grouped than the cavernous and oak-crowned scenery of the fountain of Bandusia? What a spirit and a poetic feeling in the prattling and leaping of the waters! and Before this quality, the pretensions with what a truly Spenserian fanci- of more highly fanciful poets fade fulness of sylvan accident he describes away, and the notes of singing men the shuddering of the forest leaves in and singing women are as the tinkthe car of the stray fawn! There is Imgs of a cymbal. This is the salt also a matchless stanza in the ode to which preserves the works of HoDellius, ii. 3. The pine-tree, de- race; counteracting the evil of his fined by the vastness of its over-corruptions, and purifying the grosshanging branches, the poplar by ness of pagan custom. We come its silvery leaf, the hospitable roof to the odes and epistles less as to a of their meeting shades, the toiling and spring of poesy, than as to a well of

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