of manhood, and begin to offend by the exhibition of novel opinions and strong censures, than he became the object of that enmity, which, pursuing him with detraction to his grave, has, in later times, disturbed his ashes, and endeavoured to fix deformity on his memory.
Of his conduct, and the treatment which he experienced in his college, much has been asserted, and much been made the subject of dispute. His enemies in his own days, (a son of bishop Hall is supposed to have been the immediate advancer of the charge,) accused him of having been vomited, after an inordinate and riotous youth, out of the Uni-versity; and his adversaries in the present age, inflamed with all the hate of their predecessors, have pretended to prove, from some vague expressions in one of his own poems, that the slander, though completely overthrown at the time of its first production, was not altogether unsupported by truth. The lines, supposed to contain the proof in question, are the following, which have been so frequently cited from the first of his elegies to his friend, C. Deodati:
Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum; Nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor :
Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles : Quàm malè Phœbicolis convenit ille locus!
Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri ; Cæteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.
Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiisse penates Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi:
vel profugi nomen sortemque recuso Lætus et exilii conditione fruor.
No love of late forbidden scenes now pains, Cam's sedgy banks and Granta's cloister'd fanes. 1 like not fields that gasp in vain for shades, Fields most unfriendly to the Aonian maids. Ill too my soul a master's threats can bear, With all the fretting of the pedant's war. If this be banishment-all cares aloof- To live my own beneath a father's roof- Still, let an idle world candemn or not, Mine be a truant's name,-an exile's lot.
Our author seems in this place to be guilty of a false quantity, and to begin his hexameter very unwarrantably with a cretic. Terentianus Maurus accuses Virgil of the same inaccuracy in the line "Sõlus hic inflexit sensus," &c. affirming with the old grammarians, that hic and hoc were formerly written with two c's, hicc, hocc being contracted from hicce and hocce, and were always long. Vossius on the contrary asserts that these pronouns were long only when they were written with the double Cc." Ad quantitatem hujus pronominis quod attinet, producebant et hic et hoc veteres quando per duplex c scribebant hicc vel hocc, abjecto, e; corripiebant cum c simplex scripsere. Art. Gram, 29. Of a short hic more than one instance may be produced, "Hic vir hic est, tibi quem promitti sæpius audis;" but not one, as far as my recollection is accurate, of a short hoc. “Hōc illud, germana, fuit." "Hic labor hoc opus est." "Hōc erat, alma parens.' "Hoc erar experto frustra Varrone.""Hoc erat in votis."-Salmasius in his abusive reply to our author, accuses his latin poetry of false quantities; but excepting in this instance, and in one, which shall be noticed in its proper place, in the first line of the Damon, I have not been able to detect any of these crimes against prosody. In the few spe
tion, preferred against our author's college life, from his own to the present times. The
Seu puer infelix indelibata reliquit
Gaudia, et abrupto flendus amore cadit : Seu ferus è tenebris iterat Styga criminis ultor, Conscia funereo pectora torre movens : Seu moret Pelopeia domus, seu nobilis Ili, Aut luit incestos aula Creontis avos.
Sed neque sub tecto semper, nec in urbe latemus; Irrita nec nobis tempora veris eunt.
Nos quoque lucus habet vicinâ consitus ulmo, Atque suburbani nobilis umbra loci. Sæpius hîc, blandas spirantia sidera flammas, Virgineos videas præteriisse choros. Ah quoties dignæ stupui miracula formæ, Quæ possit senium vel reparare Jovis ! Ah quoties vidi superantia lumina gemmas, Atque faces, quotquot volvit uterque polus! Collaque bis vivi Pelopis quæ brachia vincant, Quæque fluit puro nectare tincta via ! Et decus eximium frontis, tremulosque capillos, Aurea quæ fallax retia tendit Amor! Pellacesque genas, ad quas hyacinthina sordet Purpura, et ipse tui floris, Adoni, rubor! Cedite, laudatæ toties Heroides olim,
Et quæcunque vagum cepit amica Jovem. Cedite, Achæmeniæ turritâ fronte puellæ,
Et quot Susa colunt, Memnoniámque Ninon ; Vos etiam Danaæ fasces submittite nymphæ, Et vos Iliacæ, Romuleæque nurus : Nec Pompeianas Tarpëia Musa columnas Jactet, et Ausoniis plena theatra stolis. Gloria virginibus debetur prima Britannis; Extera, sat tibi sit, fœmina, posse sequi. Tuque urbs Dardaniis, Londinum, structa colonis, Turrigerum latè conspicienda caput,
author of the "Modest Confutation," (whom Milton believed to have been the son of
Tu nimium felix intra tua monia claudis Quicquid formosi pendulus orbis habet. Non tibi tot cœlo scintillant astra sereno, Endymioneæ turba ministra deæ,
Quot tibi, conspicua formâque auróque, puellæ Per medias radiant turba videnda vias. Creditur huc geminis venisse invecta columbis Alma pharetrigero milite cincta Venus; Huic Cnidon, et riguas Simoentis flumine valles, Huic Paphon, et roseam posthabitura Cypron. Ast ego, dum pueri sinit indulgentia cæci, Moenia quàm subitò linquere fausta paro; Et vitare procul malefidæ infamia Circes Atria, divini molyos usus ope. Stat quoque juncosas Cami remeare paludes, Atque iterum raucæ murmur adire schola. Interea fidi parvum cape munus amici, Paucaque in alternos verba coacta modos.
ELEGY I. TO CHARLES DEODATI.
Ar length, my friend, the missive paper came, Warm with your words, and living with your name: Came from those fields, which Cestrian Deva laves, As prone he hurries to Iërne's waves.
Ijoy to find my friendship thus confest,
Though regions part us, thriving in your breast:
I joy, believe me, that a distant shore
Owes me a comrade-and must soon restore. Pleased with my native city, still I dwell Where Thames's restless waters sink and swell. No love of late forbidden scenes now pains, Cam's sedgy banks, and Granta's cloister'd fanes. I like not fields that gasp in vain for shades,— Fields most unfriendly to the Aönian maids.
bishop Hall,) confesses that he had no certain notice of his opponent, further than what he
Ill too my soul a master's threats can bear, And all the fretting of the pedant's war. If this be banishment,-all cares aloof, To live my own beneath a father's roof, Still, let an idle world condemn or not, Mine be a truant's name, an exile's lot. O had no weightier ills oppress'd the doom Of the sad bard in Tomi's wintry gloom; Great Homer's self had seen a rival lay, And Maro had resign'd his victor bay: For here the Muses lead my hours along, And all my day is study or is song.
Then, tired, I hasten where the scene commands The crowded theatre's applauding hands: Whether it's fictions show, with mimic truth,
A cautious parent, or a spendthrift youth:
A lover, or a peaceful son of war ;
Or, bawling the base jargon of the bar,
Pompous, and pregnant with a ten-years' cause,- The prating, puzzled pleader of the laws. There oft a servant aids the doating boy To elude his sire, and gain his promised joy: There a new feeling oft the maiden proves; Knows not 'tis love, but while she knows not, loves. Or there high tragedy, in wild despair, Lifts her red hand, and rends her streaming hair. I look and weep:-I weep-yet look again, And snatch from sorrow a delicious pain: Whether the hapless youth, from love and life Torn by strong fate, resign his virgin wife: Or, hot from hell, the dire avenger stand, Exerting o'er the wretch her Stygian brand: Or heaven's dread wrath o'ertake, with tardy pace, The crimes of Atreus in his bleeding race;
Or Creon's court atone the incestuous sire's embrace.
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