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1817.] Or thrown ashore dripping from the rough main, Still pour'd the lay with thy all-powerful aid In praise of Bacchus and the heavenly Nine, And made bright Venus and her boy his theme, And sang his black-eyed love with locks of jet; O shell, soft trembling in the hands divine Of Phœbus, at the feasts of Jove supreme, Sweet nurse of care, favour thy suppliant yet!"

We cannot refrain from quoting another, perhaps still more beautiful.

In his translation of a Chorus in the Phenissse of Euripides, he has endeavoured, and we think successfully, to trace a strong resemblance to a celebrated passage in Shakspeare.

The translation from Tyrtæus is very dull, but the fault is in the original. Tyrtæus, it is said, roused the martial enthusiasm of the Spartans by his poetry. If so, it is a proof that the Spartans had no taste—for nothing can be heavier and more spiritless than his remains. The Poet-Laureate, Pye, translated some of those martial effusions with kindred lumpishness and a few lines read to a volunteer company by their Colonel, set the soldiers into a sound sleep on parade. Polwhele rendered them still more somniferous, for they overcame the wakefulness of the Cornish miners; and, lastly, Professor Young of Glasgow recited them in choice English to two hundred sleeping tyros, in the Greek class-room of that university. We had forgotten Mr Charles Elton, who himself fell fairly asleep during the process of translation—and the present version seems to have been made between a snore and a yawn, and is the most powerful soporific in the whole materia poetica. We decline quoting any part of it, lest our readers should be unable to peruse the rest of this article.

The Translator, however, soon gets upon better ground, and gives us about twenty select sonnets from Petrarch. We have compared his translations with those of Mrs Dobson, Dr Nott, and many anonymous writers, and they far outshine them all, both in fidelity and elegance. It is a most miserable mistake, to believe that Petrarch has no genuine sensibility. Is not his 24th Sonnet of Book II. most pathetic? It is thus exquisitely rendered:

One other quotation, and we must say good-bye to this accomplished scholar and gentleman.