GILBERT WAKEFIELD. "This said, he placed his infant in the arms Here, again, all the Seven are beautiful-from Homer to Gilbert Wakefield, who in general was no great beauty. Chapman, as usual, is intense and not satisfied with Homer, he must needs translate daκρυόεν γελάσασα into “ fresh streams of love's salt fire billowed on her soft cheeks," an atrocity deserving death. Still the passage is passionate; and Chapman having chosen to add "dried her tears," which is not in Homer, (but afterwards in Milton,) almost all the other translators have followed him in this-and, without blame, as there can be no doubt that Hector did dry Andromache's tears with his lips from which "not words alone pleased her," and that without those kisses her heart would have broken. Dryden is not correct in saying that Hector first" with suppliant hands the gods adored." For Hector had done that already; but "wiping her fair eyes," is, if not in Homer, Chapmannish and Miltonic, and mighty motherish; and therefore," dear child of nature, let them rail," the version is good. Pope's translation is, in itself, so delightful, that we have no heart to breathe a syllable in its deprecia tion, dispraise, or disparagement. Yet not so true to nature, as the simple "fondly gazing on her charms" is αλόχοιο φίλης ἐν χερσὶν ἔθηκε - for Homer, though he knew that Hector felt how beautiful was Andromache at that hour, likewise knew that all the world would know it without being told so, in secula seculorum. "Pleasing burden," is a pleasing expression, and always will be, in spite of its being so very common a one; but how much better is adóv? "The troubled pleasure soon chastised by fear" is very unhomericand though at first hearing it sounds very fine, yet is it essentially faulty; for observe that the word "troubled" doth of itself necessarily imply in the pleasure the very "fear" which is said soon to chastise it! Call not this, we beseech you, O reader! a verbal criticism, for it strikes at the root of an error originating in the brain that at the time was trying to do the business of the heart. spouse" is just aλoxolo pians, "darCowper is very tender. "Lovely ling boy," is just aid' ov, according to the corresponding spirit of the Greek and English speech; with as near to dxgvis hozoa as may be, mingled smiles and tears" comes is without attempting to give the peculiarity of the expression; "panged with pity" is strongly true for ixines; "stroked softly” is right, and ребя well changed into " cheek;"" wrapped in her bosom's fragrant folds," is very motherly, and very sweet. In short, though not perfect, the version in spirit is tender and true." Sotheby has much of the mellifluousness of Pope, with more of the delightful definiteness of the Homeric touch. He alone gives daxguós yeλácara aright-" smiled in her tears" -literally, "weepingly smiling,"our version of the two well-matched words. "Kissed her pale cheek" we approve of―since it is writtenand therefore the whole is good. But after all, to give the demon his due, the most Homeric of them all is Gilbert Wakefield. Poor Gilbert! We have by heart one of his affecting confessions in one of his notes. Ön quoting that famous lineαιεν αριστεύειν και υπείροχον εμμεναι λλ-he says, "a maxim imbibed by the writer of this note with such effect, even to the marrow of his soul, to use a bold expression of Euripides, that, could genius and fortune have conspired in his favour, he had owned no superior in literary accomplishment; but circumstances were unfavourable, and nature infused a large portion of cold blood about his heart." None of the translations have missed Andromache's "fragrant breast," nádóλ; but we know not if any one of them knew why it was fragrant-the sole reason being, as Blackwall somewhere informs us in his rambling Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, that the Trojan ladies put certain odorous plants or preservatives into their clothesbaskets and chests to save them from the moths! But we are at the end of our article-which, long as it is, may haply seem not too long, since it overflows with Homer-and ends with the parting of Hector and Andromache, CHAPMAN. "On went his helm, his princess home, half cold with kindly fears, She pierc'd their hearts, that all her numerous train For all hope fail'd them of his safe return." SOTHEBY. "He spake; then rais'd from earth, and firmly prest Dryden says, that Homer is "much more capable of exciting the manly passions than those of grief and pity." Are grief and pity not manly passions? Ay that they are, whether in heroic or Christian hearts. Homer had power given to him over them all; and he knew when and where to touch them-the proper place and the proper time-and the key to which each heart-chord responded in terror or in tears. Mighty masters of emotion as were in a later age the three tragedians, neitherÆschylus, Sophocles, nor Euripides in that power transcended Homer. But Homer seldom puts that power forth; for it is not the prime end of the epic, as it is of the tragic, to purge the soul by pity and terror. "Homer," Dryden says again falsely, "was ambitious enough of moving pity, for he has attempted twice, on the same subject of Hector's death; first, when Priam and Hecuba beheld his corpse, which was dragged after the chariot of Achilles; and then in the lamentation which was made over him, when his body was redeemed by Priam ; and the same persons again bewail his death, with a chorus of others to help the cry. But if this last excite compassion in you, as I doubt not but it will, you are more obliged to the translator than the poet, [he alludes here to Congreve !] for Homer, as I have observed before, can move rage better than he can pity." Dryden uttered this sad stuff, we suspect, because he was the translator of Virgil. Now Virgil's pathos is certainly more profuse than Homer's-but it is not so profound; although, as certainly, it is more characteristic of his delightful genius. Pope, too, in deference perhaps to Dryden, has ob served," that pity and the softer pas- answers « Η καὶ ἐμοὶ τάδε πάντα μέλει, γύναι On WE modern Athenians, with our unfinished Approach and Parthenon, and with our finished pride and presumption, have of course the loftiest opinion of ourselves among all mortal creatures, and are constantly seen by our introverted mental eyes towering conspicuous, mountainlike, over all the other nations of the earth dwindled into molehills. us, and on our altitude, all the regards of all those pigmy peoples are at all times uplifted and concentered; we are the cynosure of the extensive neighbourhood of the universe. Our literature, our philosophy, our poetry, our politics, our patriotism, are all transcendental and supermundane; and no wonder, no wonder, therefore, that the genius of Scotland vainly attempts to hide her head among the stars. There it shines lustrous and more lustrous in that transparent ether; on clear nights it might be mistaken for the moon, but for the multum-in-parvo superiority of its lustre; Hesperus has too much good sense to compete with its radiance; and as for Lucifer, shorn of his beams, he winks in presence of a luminary prouder and brighter than ever he was, even before the revolt in Heaven. As Pope's Homer says, "The conscious swains, exulting in the sight, put it to you if a finer picture can easily be imagined than that of the whole inhabitation "exulting in the sight" of that one "bright particular star," perfectly fixed-yet harmoniously uniting within itself the elsewhere incompatible attributes of planet, comet, and meteor, except on those occasions when it would seem absolutely to be "another sun risen on mid-day." Let this image suffice for the present to shew our perpetual sense of our national supereminence. We are aware, at the same time, that Scotland has often been laughed at by the "conscious swains," when the moods of their own minds have been wearied of admiration; and that in sudden revulsions of feeling, they have not scrupled not only to regard us with evil eyes, but to bestow upon us some very scurvy epithets. We confess that we are unwilling to lay much emphasis on the term scurvy" willing to lay less on the term "itch ;" anxious to overlook entirely the term "sulphur;" and earnest to forget that there is such a word in the language as "brimstone," or such a disease in "man, in nature, and in human life," as that to which it has often, we shall not say with what propriety, been applied;-but still the fact itself we cheerfully admit, that the "conscious swains," and more especially such of them as re Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful joice in the name of Englishmen, not light." "Conscious swains" here mean mankind" blue vault" is the world "useful light" Scotland; and we VOL. XXIX, NO. CLXXXI. unfrequently within the last quarter of a century, and sometimes before it, while they have been "eyeing the blue vault," instead of "blessing 3 L our useful light," have been in the habit of swearing that it was both dim and disastrous-encircled, in short, with a halo of Scotch mist, quite sufficient to wet an Englishman to the skin, and involving this our northern hemisphere in a perpetual drizzle, through which we raw-boned Scotsmen, though in reality of mere mortal dimensions, see each other standing like trees, or in the deceptive atmosphere moving to and fro like a race of giants. Both views, thus taken of us by others, and by ourselves, are just; for a greater mistake cannot be than to suppose that truth lies in the middle point between two extremes. It lies alternately in each extreme, passing imperceptibly from one to the other for eye never saw thought, though it sees the flight of an arrow. Thus the mind that oscillates, never does more, at the best, than momentarily touch truth; at the worst,which is the most frequent case, it misses truth altogether; for truth, which is an" extravagant and erring spirit," is at the one extreme, while the oscillator is at the other; and thus the poor pendulum keeps swinging to and fro for ever, without perhaps once coming into contact with the capricious charmer. Let no man, therefore, as he values his temporal and eternal welfare and wellbeing, regulate his political, philosophical, or religious creed and conduct by that unhappy heathen rule, " in medio tutissimus ibis." The mean, ignorantly called golden, is but gilt-'tis a mere plated article, unfit for this Magazine. In politics, especially, the mean-the brazen mean-is worst of all-and they are fools, if not knaves, who follow it. In bold and bright Britain, shame on all trembling trimmers; let us have -friends and foes-all true men. The trimmers draw themselves up, like cowards as they are, on a "hill retired," and there they keep prating and palavering away of peace all the while the two great armies are engaged in battle, waiting till they see one host or another reel, with bloody "inroad gored," that then the traitors may rally under the victorious banners. But we are forgetting ourselves, and permitting fancy to waft us away on her wings from the "haunt and main region of our speech." We were approving, on principle, of the very different lights in which the "conscious swains," especially the English, at different times regard our national character-and we now say, the character of Maga as its representative. They see in her an Angel of Light, or a Demon of Darkness-and she is both-but neither long. Were she always an Angel of Light, we are persuaded that her circulation would be gradually narrowed within the limits of religion-were she always a Demon of Darkness, subscribers would fall off in superstitious fear, and contributors beseech shelter even in the Balaam Box. But Maga, by an alternation true to nature, of Angel and Demon, "we verily believe, promotes her sale;" and thus though neither fit for Heaven nor its antipodes, continues to rule the roast on earth, a tower of strength to the Tories, and of terror to the Whigs, till periodical literature and periodical revolutions shall be no moretill the Examiner shut his eye, be cause there is nothing to examinethe Spectator shake his head, to think what has become of all the shifting scenes on the stage of Life-the Atlas cease to support the Globethe sightless Courier of the air be as motionless as any Morning or Evening Post-the Standard furled for ever-the rosy-fingered Herald of the morn gone to chaos and old night-all Chronicles swept into oblivion, and the evil spirits of the Times for ever laid in the dead sea of eternity. But not till then-shall we cease to be the scourge or knout of the Whigs. We, the Incomparable Christopher-She, the Matchless Magaas We and She blush to hear Ourselves universally denominatedWe, the Socrates-and She, the Aspasia of the Modern Athens. Yesthe Modern Athens. Our modesty never could have so christened Edinburgh, nor our second-sight have discerned the similitude between the two illustrious cities. But the learned Thebans south of the Tweed saw, we shall not say the resemblance, but the identity; and from the baptismal font in the Castle-cliff, close beneath the "kittle-stanes," priest-like they laved the water on Edina's broad |