the gifts of fortune, and all the appendages of state, cannot add one jot of real importance to the degraded and worthless characters who are too often found as their possessors.

"Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere."

Dear Sir;

Wishing, to the best of my power, to contribute to your Publication, I inclose a short Translation for your notice. You cannot be so unreasonable as to expect it should bear much resemblance to the original.

From the "Hecuba" of Euripides, v. 444.

STROPHE I.

Gentle breeze, that fann'st the sea,
As the surge thou raisest, free,
That bearest o'er the swelling foam
The way-worn sailor to his home;
Whither, o'er the billows wild,
Wilt thou bear the Trojan's child?
Whither shall the child of woe

To chains, and grief, and anguish go?

On the Dorian's distant shore,

Or where the Phthian rivers roar?

Where, sire of streams that lave the earth,
Enipeus gives his waters birth?

M

ANTISTROPHE I.

Shall Boreas bear my mournful flight
To some far island's rocky height,
Where the first-born palms expand
Their treasures on the Delian strand?
Where the bay-tree's hallow'd shade
Saw Latona's burden laid ?

Where the damsel minstrels raise
The hymn of chaste Diana's praise,
The golden wreath, th' unerring dart
That pierc'd the sylvan hunter's heart?

STROPHE II.

Or on the fertile olive plains,
Where virgin Pallas dwells and reigns,
Join the coursers to the car

Of her who loves the race, the war?
Weave the car and weave the horse,
Bounding on in rapid course,
With many a tinge and many a hue,
Weave them for the Virgin's view?
Or Titan's bold and giant band,

That dared the Thund'rer's red right hand,
Hurl'd from the heavens highest steep,

And hush'd in everlasting sleep?

ANTISTROPHE II.

Woe, woe is me for those I bore,
Woe for my sires, and ravag'd shore;
Behold the flames in fury rise,
Behold the Grecian's sacrifice!
'Tis mine to lie on foreign strand,
No more to see my native land----
No more to see my country, save
To see her to her foes a slave:
And change the soft, the bridal bed
For the dark chambers of the dead.

APPEARANCE OF VIRGIL IN THE UPPER

WORLD.

Somnia, terrores magicos.

Sir;

Being one of the very few individuals who, in this degenerate age, adhere to the practice, and maintain the certainty, of dreaming, and having seen in your second Number an account of an interview which you had with the sheep-stealing vagabond, Mercury (it was fortunate for him that there were no assizes in his days), I take this opportunity of informing you of an encounter which I had with Virgil some nights ago, in which the proceedings were far from pacific, and, indeed, we had almost come to logger-heads. He shook his hand at me in a menacing attitude; but by passing my little finger through it, I convinced him that his rage was impotent, and reduced him to a tolerable state of tranquillity.

I first heard him muttering, in a very sepulchral tone, but with an amazing nicety of accent, something which I supposed to be Latin, but it certainly was very different in sound and quantities from that which we work at here. The substance of his invectives, as far as I could understand them was, that he had been grievously mutilated in the Upper World, and having taken an opportunity when Cerberus was employed in eating his meat, he had played truant for the purpose of stating his calamities, in hopes of having them remedied.

"What, my dear Sir, are they?" I exclaimed. "Depend upon my willingness to assist the author of the Georgics in any legitimate enterprise."

"In the first place, I have to complain of the Delphin Editor, and his interpretation, and of the circulation which my execrable tormentor enjoys in this country." [Of course I translate for the benefit of ladies and country gentlemen].

"True enough," I replied; "but what expedient can you propose?"

66

'Only to burn the publisher's house, and so cut up the evil by the roots."

"You would have the Bow-street officers after you immediately, and, shade as you are, I defy you to slip through their fingers."

"Well, even if they did catch me, and if the worst came to the worst, they could but send me back to Tartarus, where my habitation has now been fixed for my flattering Augustus, and stealing so much from Homer. Alas, alas! it is but too true :

Læva malorum

Exercet pœnas, et ad impia Tartara mittit."

"Then I suppose Rhadamanthus, if your account of him be true, charged the jury with some severity."

“'Infandum jubes renovare dolorem.' We have no Court of Chancery there; for judgment is pronounced without hesitation, and executed without delay."

"And who pleaded your cause?"

"I wanted to get Cicero: but he remembered the cutting off his head by my friend Augustus, and would

I am now sorry

that I did not

have nothing to say to me. mention him in my works. I was forced to put up with a common hack. But, to return-another thing which I wish to complain of is, the miserable manner in which you murder me by your vile pronunciation. I mean to indict you all for it when you come down, I assure you.

"You impertinent fellow! why what shall we have next,

Here it was that his rage boiled over. However, in a short time, he told me that we pronounced short syllables long, and long syllables short; that we confounded accent and quantity; that amor and clamor, nomine and domine, pedes and sedes, desero and resero, were all the same to us by which, and many other reprehensible practices, his verses were deteriorated, and his reputation injured.

I in vain endeavoured to confute him, by appealing, as I thought triumphantly, to the testimony of my Gradus. He laughed loud and long at the idea, and said that the ear was the standard by which the correctness of sounds ought to be judged, and that it was preposterous to make little marks govern what they were only intended to facilitate.

I confess I was rather puzzled by what he said, on this head, of which I have only given you a very small part : but the authority of a Gradus cannot, in my humble opinion, be shaken :

"Ille, velut pelagi rupes immota, resistit."

"And what is become of the 'anima dimidium tuæ,' Horace?" said I, feeling myself on rather ticklish ground