very first sentence in Thucydides does; it is in accordance with a common Greek idiom, which, indeed, would be a bull in any modern language, but is perfectly good Attic nevertheless. Κάμηλον αμνόν τιν', νν. 1544, 1545, we should translate a camel by way of a lamb, like Theocritus, Idyll. xiv. 17, Βολβος τις κοχλίας ἐξηρέθη, ο shell-fish was chosen by way of relish. It is but fair to add, however, that both passages are much disputed. There! we have finished our observations without saying much about to, or yɛ, or лs, or any of those particles which it is, indeed, a small thing for a scholar to understand, but which it is a still smaller thing (pace T. L. again) for one professing scholarship to be ignorant of. And, in concluding, we have one suggestion to offer to Professor Felton. Aristophanes may be very pleasantly and usefully illustrated from Athenæus. Mitchell has tried this, but his extracts were too wholesale and indiscriminate, and being unaccompanied by translations or explanations, their length and dificulty generally prevent the student from making much use of them. Judicious selections, with translations attached, embodied in the notes, would do much towards making Aristophanes more intelligible and more interesting to our collegians. THE WALTER MAPES' POEMS. Knickerbocker, April 1850. * FRIENDS AND READERS OF 'OLD KNICK.': LAST May I submitted to your notice a certain translation, promising at the same time to present you, in the very next number, with some observations explanatory of it, and of the collection of poems whence it was taken. But 'man proposes,' and it is otherwise disposed for him: since then I have been terris jactatus *The Latin Poems commonly attributed to WALTER MAPES. Collected and edited by THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq. London: printed for the Camden Society. 1841. et alto, and moreover, so much mixed up in the quidquid agunt homines, that honest Walter and I have been strangers from that time to the present. Ten months! - it is a long while in Magazine history; almost long enough for the completion of a 'serial' romance; quite long enough for you to have forgotten PHILLIS and FLORA, even supposing you read their dispute. But I do not thus hold myself excused from my promise; especially since, if you should happen to have read the translation in question, that very slovenly version standing by itself must have given an unfair idea of the Oxford Archdeacon, which it is my duty to correct. Would that all mistakes of the pen could be as easily corrected! It is a very pleasant thing for a quiet man, who has been knocking about in general society, to get back once more into his library; to feel post tot naufragia, if not tutus, at least securus; careless of what is going on out of doors; to live in a world of his own, far pleasanter than that with which he associates every day. An intelligent and highly accomplished friend of mine, who has a predilection for using long words without being particular about their meaning, is wont to call himself a misogynist, intending thereby to signify that he dislikes the majority of men. Now I don't call myself a misogynist, but I avow a strong preference for books. When it is remembered that you choose your companions not from your own little age and locality, but from all countries and all times; that you can be with them just when you please, and just as long as you please; that you can vary them at will; that there is no risk of your talking them out and exhausting their capacities; no fear of their boring you or your boring them; in view of all this, I really marvel that any man who has the education to enjoy, and the means to procure a library, can be tempted out into the world to seek amusement or relaxation, unless on the principle of D'Israeli's exquisite, who found good wine such a bore because he had it every where, and wanted a little bad, by way of change. The above incipient flourish is not altogether due to Walter Mapes. I had many older and more valued friends Greek, Latin and English classics - to shake hands with first, and then after a pleasant time with them, I bethought me of my promise to 'Old KNICK.,' - and came down to the Archdeacon; who after all is not to be despised, for, though no remarkable poet, he was a stout satirist, and the school of verse which he founded valuably illustrates the popular movements in England during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Walter Mapes (the orthography of his name is uncertain we find it written Map, Mape, Mahan, and Mahapp.) was an ecclesiastic of Henry the Second's time, and a favorite with that monarch, from whom he received various preferments, ending with the Archdeaconry of Oxford. He had studied at Paris and travelled to Rome; was esteemed for his learning and celebrated for his wit. He died early in the thirteenth century. His satires on the clergy generally appear in manuscript under the name of Golias or Golias Episcopus, and even his friend and biographer Giraldus Cambrensis talks about this Golias as if it were the name of a real personage. But the appellation is so clearly a pseudonym, having reference to the goliards, or clerical buffoons of the time, that there is reason to suspect that this mistake of Giraldus, which much surprises our editor, was really a mistake made on purpose, and that prudential considerations induced him to ignore the real authorship of the satires. In the extract given by Mr. Wright from the Speculum Ecclesiæ, GIRALDUS quotes all the bitterest parts of the attack on the Romish Court (Golias in Romanam Curiam,) just as a fashionable lady repeats a scandalous story: 'It's very shocking I don't believe a word of it very improper for people to invent such things but here it is;' and the story, being much more spicy than the contradiction, goes deeper and travels farther. It is not till more than a century after that we find the best known of these poems, such as the Apocalypsis, the Confessio, and the De Conjuge, generally attributed to WALTERS MAPES. This popular opinion is supported by some slight internal evidence in the poems themselves, by the absence of contradiction, (for Giraldus may have been deceived himself, or, as we think more probable, have endeavored to deceive others,) and by the knowledge derived from Mapes' contemporaries, that he was of a satirical disposition, and lampooned the Cistercian Monks. But the original satires of Mapes gave rise to many imitations during the half century succeding him, and it is not pos sible now to discriminate accurately between the productions of the master and those of his scholars. The metre employed in these poems is chiefly of two kinds: one, the stanza of four (accentual) trochaic lines all rhyming; the other having properly neither rhyme nor assonance, but a correspondence of the unaccented syllables in the (accentual) dactylic terminations: E. G., the first stanza of the Apocalypsis: 'A TAURO torrida lampade Cynthii, As if we were to end four English lines with unity, charity, jollity, density. It is hardly necessary to observe that quantity has nothing to do with the versification of either metre. There are a few specimens of different stanzas, some of them after the model of the monkish hymns, as the one de Ruina Roma, which commences thus: 'PROPTER Syon non tacebo, Sed ruinas Romæ flebo Quousque justitia Rursus nobis oriatur, Et ut lampas accendatur The subject-matter of the poems is chiefly the corruption of the Romish church. Sometimes we find other topics introduced: a few of them discuss serious theological points: some are gross satirical attacks on the whole female sex. These libels were exceedingly common in the middle ages. Nous avons changé tout cela, and are become much more refined: witness the Caudle Lectures. But the great majority have for their theme the vices and hypocrisy of the clergy, exposed sometimes with playful raillery, sometimes with ferocious invective. After the Reformation many of them were printed, and translated into French and English. The satire is carried out in a variety of ways, direct and indirect: here for instance is a burlesque anathema pronounced by Golias on a thief: 'RAPTOR mei pilei morte moriatur, Et pœna continua post mortem sequatur, 'Raptor mei pilei sæva morte cadat, 'Ei vita brevis sit pessimusque finis 'Nunquam diu bajulet illi colum CLOTO, 'Excommunicatus sit in agro et tecto! 'Ille rebus omnibus quas habet emunctus 'Hoc si quis audierit excommunicamen Fuerit anathema! fiat, fiat. Amen!' Will the reader accept this version, in which the quadruple rhyme of the original is not attempted: ARCHDEACON WALTER'S CURSE ON THE MAN WHO STOLE HIS PURSE. MAY the man who stole my purse perish in a twinkling, Nor in fields Elysian get an habitation. |