Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 098.djvu/360

348 Amid such banquets, sweet it is to see

The fed sheep hastening homeward,

To see the wary bulls with languid neck

The inverted ploughshare trailing,

And~swarm of a rich house—the little slaves

Laid round the shining Lares."

Thus spake the money-lender Alfius, bent

On instant rustication;

Tum'd on the Ides his bonds to cash; but sought

New borrowers on the Kalends.

There is so little of the jocose about Mr. Newman's temperament, that bis transfusion of Horatian levities into sober English is not accompanied by any sparkling effervescence of gaiety. The sal ceases to be volatile. Nevertheless, his muse is more elastic and nimble than might be anticipated; and though not quite au fait in poising and twirling on the light fantastic toe, she glides or walks through her part much as a heavy member of a Greek chorus may be supposed to have done, conscientiously and perseveringly, but with more of art and effort than nature or enthusiasm.

He throws no new light upon the chronological arrangement of the Odes; but, premising that the common arrangement is impossible and unendurable, and allowing that the great variety of opinion as to the order of their composition indicates the hopelessness of arriving at truth, he follows what he devises as at least a possible order, for which he does not attempt to offer any convincing reason. Nor does he write any regular biography of the poet—remarking, that the lyrical poetry of the ancients made the individuality of the poet so prominent, that commentator and biographer become almost synonymous terms. There is, however, an ample and judicious provision of explanatory notes, of the kind required by an English reader—and those of historical character, concise as they are, frequently evince painstaking research. Mr. Newman assumes in his reader no knowledge whatever of ancient languages or literature, except to have read Homer in a translation: "And I endeavour," he says, "to afford whatever is subsidiary to full intelligence,—whatever will aid him to that dose insight into men and times, which nothing but contemporary literature can ever give."

⁂ Since the foregoing was in type, an important edition of the "Works of Horace" has appeared, for which classical students will own their obligations to that careful and accomplished scholar, the Rev. A. J. Macleane.