He bids thee breed him as thy son, His look grew fixed, his cheek grew pale, 'Twas long ere soothing might prevail Which had not been if Redmond's hand The tear, down childhood's cheek that flows, By lawn, by grove, by brooklet's strand, But summer months bring wilding shoot And soon in Rokeby's woods is seen Her Redmond's dangerous sports to chide, How the grim wild-boar fought and fell, But Redmond knew to weave his tale That, while she blamed, and while she feared, She loved each venturous tale she heard. Oft, too, when drifted snow and rain HOMER. Homer is usually styled the father of poetry. The oldest poet with whom we are acquainted, is Moses.— Moses' song, which may be found in Deuteronomy, chap ter xxxii. is translated from the Hebrew, and is the most ancient specimen of poetry with which we are acquainted. The probable date of it is 1550 years before Christ-six hundred years before Homer, the Greek poet. MOSES' SONG. "Give ear, O ́ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass: Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he." "They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation. Do ye thus requite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee? Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee. When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. "For the LORD's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him." celebrates the divine majesty and goodness, are the Israelites, whom, during more than forty years, this great man had governed, and whom he was now about to leave for ever. Homer's verses were first preserved by oral tradition. Lycurgus heard them recited in Ionia, and made the people of Sparta acquainted with them; but according to Cicero, it is to Pisistratus, the Athenian, that we are indebted for the ultimate preservation of Homer's works and fanie. Pisistratus caused the bocks of Homer to be transcribed and placed in the public library which he founded at Athens. From this copy other manuscripts were taken, and these in modern times, have been copied, multiplied, and diffused by means of the art of printing. Scholars of the sixteenth century in England employed themselves in translations from Greek and Latin. Greek and Latin tragedies, and the poetry of Virgil, and Ovid, were thus made familiar to the English reader. When Pope was a boy, about the year 1700, he "was initiated in poetry by the perusal of Ogilby's Homer, and Sandy's Virgil." Chapman's translation of Homer is also mentioned about the same time. The date of these translations is not accurately known to me, but they were not of a character to exclude the utility and desirableness of an improved version of Homer. Mr. Pope began an English translation of Homer's Iliad in 1712, and finished it in 1718. It was first published by subscription in six volumes, with notes illustrative of the text. "The encouragement given to this translation,” says Dr. Johnson, "was such as the world has not often seen." Mr. Pope received from Lintot the bookseller for this work 15320, more than $18,000 of our American money. "It is," said Dr. Johnson," the noblest version of poetry which the world has ever seen; and its publication must therefore be considered as one of the great events in the annals of learning." The publication of the Iliad was completed in 1720. The Odyssey, in the translation of which Mr. Pope was assisted by two gen |