Collections from the Greek Anthology, and from the Pastoral, Elegiac, and Dramatic Poets of Greece. By the Rev. R. Bland and others. 8vo. pp. 525.

[From the Quarterly Review.]

THE greater part of those small poems, which, though often arbitrarily abridged and mutilated by the taste or whim of their editors, have, on the whole, been transmitted from the hands of Polemo and Meleager to those of Brunck and Jacobs, with tolerable fidelity, seem hitherto to have met with no counterpart in the literature of any country. The word epigram (properly an inscription) has been almost exclusively applied in the latin, as well as in the living languages, to that species of trifle, generally compressed within the space of a few distichs, the beauty of which consisted in some happy play of words, or conceit of thought. Very different was the epigram of he Greeks: without any of the aids by which the greater poets of antiquity embellished their works, with no development of character, no condensation of descriptive images, no agreeable fictions recommended to the imagination by what is at least the most poetical of all the systems of theology, they have contrived to infuse into their brief compositions a charm at once sober and pleasing. Most of the commonplaces of poetry may be traced to the anthology, and as the acVOL. III. New Series.

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knowledgment of obligations is rarely punctual in the world of letters, public estimation has not unfrequently been very disproportioned to the real pretensions of the literary borrower.

Whoever wishes to see the tenderness of real passion expressed forcibly, and in words which, being most natural, come most home to the heart, should seek it among the Greek epigrammatists. They seem to have had the art of the Dervise who could throw his soul into the body of another man, and at once possess himself of his sentiments, adopt his passions, and assume all the functions and feelings of his situation. We are the more sensible of this excellence, because it has so rarely been our fate to meet with that delicate tenderness which is the highest beauty of amatory poetry. Perhaps Guarini and Metastasio alone, among the moderns, have found this secret path to the heart, and even their approach is by a rather more dressed and ornamented road than that adopted by the epigrammatists. We still remember our pleasure at finding, on the first perusal of Pastor Fido, many of those elegant pieces of poetry which had so often delighted us as detached songs; and our gratification was augmented by the associations which the charms of music had connected with them;-of music in the perfection of its best powers, simple, expressive, unaffected. The merit of the similes scattered throughout the scenes of Metastasio, has been justly appreciated, and too much cannot be said in praise of their variety and exactness, or of the fertility of that genius which could furnish endless novelty of ornament to so many dramas so nearly similar in character and situation. At the same time we know not whether the whole range of Italian poetry, so eminently fitted by its polish and softness for the language of love, can furnish any thing more beautiful than the following six words of Theocritus, quoted by the present translators. No passage shows more forcibly the advantage which the Greek language possesses over every other by its conciseness.—Οι δε ποθέυντες εν ήματι γηρασκουσιν.

"Chi ama, e chi desia, in un giorno s'invecchia,"

as Salvini has accurately, but somewhat diffusely, rendered it. But the chief merit of the Italian writers is, that their embellishments are seldom out of place, their imagery is natural and appropriate; and if this is an excellence, surely the simplicity of the Greek epigrammatists, which rendered them independent of ornamental aids, is a virtue of a much higher order. With the latter the argument is not considered as a mere niche, in which the picture may be conveniently placed, but the image is made an auxiliary, and illustrates the subject; nor need we wonder if the distinct and well arranged thought, the appropriate epithet, and the familiar expression of the Greek epigram, have a more pleasing

effect than the florid and melodious delicacy of the Italian canzonet, or the more vivacious trifling of the French madrigal. The virtue of simplicity has never been sufficiently studied by the poets of our own country; and those of the present day, whose pretensions to it are most ostentatious, have given us an imitation which differs as much from the original, as Cowper's languid version from the majesty and spirit of Homer; or the vulgar travesties of the Eneid from the unequalled delicacy of the Mantuan poet.

Conciseness is another pre-eminent beauty of the anthology. The affectation of it which is created by the desire of expressing a common idea with sententious and oracular brevity, is of a very different nature from that nicety of judgment, which prunes away every word that interrupts or encumbers the sentence, yet removes none of the links which formed the original chain of connexion in the mind, and suffers every thing to remain distinct, intelligible, and well defined. There is no kind of writing less understood than this the imitation of Montesquieu has been fatal to many who could not perceive that his genius enabled him to make his way through chaos without being much encumbered or retarded in his progress; or that conciseness can never atone for obscurity, and is only pleasing when it leaves nothing to be misunderstood. It was an aim at conciseness which occasioned so many perplexing inversions of language, and such a want of lucid arrangement in Mr. Campbell's last exquisite poem; and we cannot refrain from once more expressing our regret, that the author should have ever forgotten that his readers were not possessed of the same train of ideas which filled his own mind, and that his conceptions must be distinctly embodied in language, before their character and value could be duly appreciated. Fortunately, however, good sense is of all countries and ages; so that, even in the most tasteless times, it may not be too late to recollect that the homage due to our literary predecessors is paid as properly by avoiding their errors, as by imitating their beauties. Genius is a raw material too precious to be worked up into articles of a slight and perishable nature; and we shall best consult the extension and perpetuity of our own fame, by conforming to acknowledged excellence, and by using the models of antiquity not servilely, but freely, and with discrimination.

It must not be overlooked, that the conciseness for which we have commended the poets of the anthology, is usually the product of a state which has not yet seen its Augustan age. We are told that the simplicity and purity which the chaste manners of elder Rome presented, are not to be expected among the dregs of Romulus but the greater part of the poems in this volume were composed either immediately before, or during the worst days of that calamitous period in the history of literature, so emphatically termed its dark age. It is impossible to make a proper estimate of

the efforts which produced these compositions, without considering the difficulty of substituting strength for softness, and legitimate ornament for conceit, at a time when true taste was nearly extinct, and talent chilled by the repulsive indifference of ignorant barbarians.

Nor is there less matter for surprise in the favourite subjects of this collection. The writers of a country on the decline are apt to overlook the commonplaces of poetry, and to seek a more distant field for ideas than is presented by the brief existence allotted to beauty and virtue, by remembrances of the accidents of human life, "the ills of age, sickness, or poverty, neglected love, or forsaken friendship." Yet whoever expects to meet with amusement in this volume, must be contented to derive it from the representation of unlaboured and obvious sentiments; and if he has not sufficient delicacy of taste to feel that it is to such a representation the best beauties of poetry belong, he must be ignorant of its greatest charm.

With such claims on the attention of every literary man, it may be a reasonable cause of wonder that, while most of the other classics have been presented to us again and again in an English dress, scarcely a single scholar should have hitherto called upon us to admire these smaller relics of antiquity. The success of Cowley, Prior and Cumberland, in whatever they have chosen to translate, is well known, and their full share of merit is allowed to them in this volume. Many of their versions are admitted into it, and the air of originality which pervades them, leaves us only to regret that they, who could do so well, should have done so little; and that their success should not have sooner excited others to similar efforts. Before we proceed to Mr. Bland, we will say a few words on each of these writers, and our readers will then be better able to judge what pretensions the present translators have to rank with those whose praise, for as much as they have undertaken, is already

so universal.

The ruling passion of Cowley, as far as it is to be collected from his writings, was the love of retirement. He spent the most active part of his life in the fatiguing attendance on the formalities of a court, and, as commonly happens to men familiar with greatness, he was thoroughly disgusted with the heartlessness of what is truly called public life. His essays in prose and verse are full of the pleasures of retirement, and the country; it was this predilection which led him to Virgil's "O fortunati nimium"-Horace's "Beatus ille qui procul negotiis," and the fable of the country mouse-Clau dian's "Old Man of Verona"-Martial's "Vitam quæ faciant beatiorem," and "Vis fieri liber." It is the same feeling which pervades the "Epitaphium vivi auctoris," so well known by its own classical beauty of sentiment and expression, and by Addison's admirable