racter of this Commander of the Faithful, introducing two handsome and interesting persons to each other, and allowing them to assume the names of husband and wife, with a capricious negation of the privileges of such an union, is as curious and romantic as it is true. The Caliph, willing to reward the services of his favourite Giaffer, determined, on certain conditions, to bestow on him in marriage his beloved sister Abassa, the most beautiful and accomplished princess of the East. "Were not Abassa my sister," said he, announcing to his favourite the purpose which he had formed, "marriage should unite us; but since the most lovely and the most amiable of the Oriental women cannot be the wife of Haroun, no other has a right to possess her; nor can I suffer the blood of Abbas to be contaminated by a foreign mixture. The nephews of your brothers must not be mine. I give to you the hand of my sister, it is true, as a recompense for your services, and that I may have the pleasure of beholding in my presence, at the same time, two persons whom I dearly love; but I require your sacred promise that you will be to Abassa only as I am a friend and a brother. On this condition, and this only, I consent to the union, Death to yourself and to your race will be the penalty of the violation of your oath."

Giaffer assented to this admirable piece of despotic logic, which, of the two, is worse than the reported speech of the Grand Sultan when presenting his daughter with a subject for a husband-" Here, daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave;" a form of words omitted by English parents, but which a great number of married ladies in England conceive to be implied. The nominal marriage took place between the princess and Giaffer, but, unfortunately for the unhappy lovers, the voice of love and nature, sanctioned too by the laws, was not to be stifled by the caprice of a despot; the enamoured pair baffled the vigilance of the Caliph, and a son, the fruit of their disobedience, was privately conveyed from the seraglio to Mecca. The result is a portion of public history: a discovery was made, Giaffer lost his head, and Abassa, some accounts say, died of grief; while others state, that she was driven from the palace, and suffered to languish in disgrace and indigence.

A more than common interest is given to the foregoing incidents by the character of the parties. Giaffer was one of the most cultivated men of his time-amiable, handsome in person, and benevolent in disposition. Abassa appears to have been similarly accomplished as a female; some Arabic verses from her to Giaffer still exist, expressive of her attachment. It would seem, by the tenor of them, that the lady was the most impatient of the restraint imposed her exalted rank takes away from the apparent indelicacy, for Giaffer could not speak first. The words given are as follow:

:

“ I had resolved to keep my love concealed in my heart, but, in spite of me, it escapes and declares itself. If you do not yield at this declaration, my modesty and my secret are both sacrificed: but if you reject me, you will save my life by your refusal. Whatever happens, at least I shall not die unrevenged; for my death will sufficiently declare who has been my assassin."

Nothing is frequently more unlike to truth than truth itself; we do not, therefore, think that the loves of Giaffer and Abassa are adapted

for tragedy; but, with a little freedom in the catastrophe, they would make a charming opera, either English or Italian. The story would supply at once dramatic effect, subject for the composer, and much opportunity for theatrical scenery and splendour.

TIME THE RECTIFIER.-A singular instance of the rectification of the consequences of human weakness and injustice, by Time, is to be found in the family history of the Seymours. The influence of the second wife of the Protector Somerset (uncle and guardian to Edward VI.) over her husband, produced a most unjust conduct on the part of the Duke to his eldest son. Stimulated by her ambition, he absolutely surrendered his first patent of peerage to the Crown, in order to receive it again, with remainder to the issue of the second marriage, setting aside his children by the former wife, except in succession to those of the latter. It happened, both curiously and rightfully, that in 1750 the unjustly-favoured branch failed, which event, in the person of Sir Edward Seymour of Maiden Bradley, restored the family honours to the lineal descendant of the first marriage, by whose posterity they are now enjoyed.

EUDONEIRION.

Dear Girl, that lost in deep oblivion seemest,
Fain would I know the secrets that thou dreamest;

I can but deem thee, thus serenely sleeping,

Sweet flowers of love in the bowers of Eden reaping,,

A wandering spirit, with its wings unfurled

In the home of the visions that beautify the world.

It is the body that chaineth us to place,

But we are the dwellers of the gardens of space,

We are eternal beams of God, and he

The magnificent Sun that lights Infinity.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

The paper" On the Literature of the Romans," is not suited to this publication, and will be left out for the author at the office.

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THE

LITERARY EXAMINER.

No. XI. SATURDAY, SEPT. 13, 1823.

THE INDICATOR.

No. LXXXIV.

There he arriving, round about doth fly,

And takes survey with busie, curious eye,

Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly.-SPENSER.

ON THE LATIN POEMS OF MILTON.
[Continued.]

THE book of Miscellanies or Woods (Silvarum Liber-for the ancients delighted in associating ideas taken from objects of nature with pursuits of which they were fond) commences with three compositions in Greek. Of these Greek verses, there are in all but thirty-one; and Dr. Burney has found sixteen faults in them. The Doctor says, however, that Milton was a great scholar; and that " if he had lived in the present age, the necessity of his remarks would, in all probability, have been superseded:" for Milton's "native powers of mind, and his studious researches, would have been assisted by the learned labours of Bentley, Hemsterhusius, Valckenaer, Toup, and Ruhnkenius, &c." This is probable, and might have saved the Doctor the trouble which he has taken in his twenty-two pages of criticism. It was hardly necessary to prove, that what was not likely to be done by a writer of Greek at a time when nobody else wrote Greek or read it, might have been done better in the present century. Milton, speaking of his translation of the 114th Psalm, which takes up twenty-two verses out of the thirty-one, and which he wrote when he was twentyeight, says to his friend Gill (the master of St. Paul's School) "It is the first and only thing I have ever written in Greek since I left your school for, as you know, I am now fond of composing in Latin and English. They in the present age, who write in Greek, are singing to the deaf." His Greek translation is not so good as his English version of the same psalm, written at fifteen. This latter is worth quoting, both on account of the early Milton that is in it, and as a proof how he might have e excelled in heroic rhyme if he had chosen to "tag his verses," as he called it. Many of Waller's productions are not a whit softer or more facile. I do not ask the reader's pardon for these digressions. To wander in the fields of poetry after one set of flowers, and never pick up another, would be difficult.

I VOL I.

When the blest seed of Terah's faithful son,
After long toil, their liberty had won;
And past from Pharian fields to Canaan land,
Led by the strength of the Almighty's hand;

1112 11

.IL...

Jehovah's wonders were in Israel shown,
His praise and glory were in Israel known.
That saw the troubled Sea, and shivering fled,
And sought to hide his froth-becurled head
Low in the earth; Jordan's clear streams recoil,
As a faint host that hath received the foil.

The high huge-bellied mountains skip, like rams
Amongst their ewes; the little hills, like lambs.
Why fled the ocean? And why skip the mountains?
Why turned Jordan toward his crystal fountains?
Shake, Earth and at the presence be aghast
Of him that ever was, and aye shall last;
That glassy floods from rugged rocks can crush,
And make soft rills from fiery flint-stones gush.

At this noble couplet, "Shake, Earth"-Warton exclaims in a note "He was now only fifteen!" He might well admire it. The other Psalm (the 136th) versified at the same age, has similar dawnings of the divinity that stirred within him. The king of Basan is called "large-limbed Og:"-Pharaoh is "the tawny king:" and the skies are

The painted heavens so full of state;

and God's hand is a "thunder-clasping hand." The whole version also has a high lyrical air with it, like that of a born lover of music. The short couplets, followed by a constant return of the same burden, fall and rise upon the ear like alternations of solo and chorus; and at the same time exhibit a majestic variety of modulation, in the midst of apparent uniformity. Even these earliest of our author's productions are lessons in the real music of poetry.

And so on to the end. Milton in these psalms, had the double impulse upon him of his own inclination, and a wish to please his father, who was a religious man, a musician, and a composer of sacred music. "The two Greek epigrams, one the message of a philosopher to a king who had condemned him to death, unknowingly; and the other, on a bad engraving of himself prefixed to his Poems, are as insipid as need be. The latter, however, gave rise to a good involuntary joke on the part of another engraver, Vandergucht. He copied it for Tonson's edition in 1713, and unfortunately transferring the epigram at the same time, and setting his name to the plate, requested the reader, in Greek, to laugh at his own performance.

I will take this opportunity of correcting an error which I am afraid has crept into a former article. If I said that I believed Greek elegy to have been always melancholy, it was an idle mistake. For melancholy, read serious. Warton's mention of the Latin poem of Buchanan

*

upon May-time, gave rise to another confusion of recollections. I spoke of a poem by Statius on the same subject: but the fact is, I once had a Buchanan and a Statius, which were both duodecimos and printed alike; and what I remembered as a poem by the ancient Latin writer, was the identical one alluded to by Warton in the modern.

The first of Milton's Latin compositions that we come to in the book of miscellanies, is an ode on the death of the Cambridge Professor of Medicine. Poets have generally been happy in recording the merits of their cousins-german in Phoebus, the physicians: but Milton's production is a common-place that might have been written by other boys of seventeen. A doctor and master of a college is a different thing in the eyes of a youth, from the physician in those of the grown poet. These - contributions were the result of college ambition. The next ode but > one is on the death of the bishop of Ely, who had also been a master of a college; and is worth as little. The piece that comes between, is a curiosity. It is another poem on the subject of Guy Faux; and as containing a council, conspiracy, and expedition of Satan, may be considered," says Warton, " as an early and promising prolusion of Milton's genius to the Paradise Lost." It was written at seventeen. It is more curious, however, than remarkable for its promise. The Devil considers how he shall do a mischief to the prosperity and Protestantism of England, and takes measures with the Pope and the Catholics accordingly but he is the devil of Tasso and others, not of the Paradise Lost. He gnashes his teeth, and breathes forth groans mixed with sulphur. Yet there are prophetic notes too of the future organ. The following is a fine line. Wherever Satan comes, in his passage through the air,

64

Densantur nubes, et crebra tonitrua fulgent:

Clouds thicken, and the frequent thunders glare.

When God is about to speak,

Fulmine præmisso alloquitur, terrâque tremente :

His thunder-bolts leap forth, and the earth trembles.

Milton in this piece has seized an opportunity, which must have been delightful to a young poet, of being the first to give names to the horses that draw the chariot of Night. His appellations are indicative of Blindness, of Black Hair, of Silence, and a Bristling Horror. The satire, which he could not help mixing with his Hell and Heaven in Paradise Lost, after the manner of the Italian poets, is here in its ore. When the Pope goes to-bed, it is not without a soft companion. The procession at Rome on the eve of St. Peter's day is described with great contempt. The Pope, bearing the host, is said to carry his bread-baken Gods;" the processions of begging friars are very lengthy," series longissima," blind-minded fellows carrying waxcandles; and when they all get into the churches, they make a singing and a howling, which the poet compares to Bacchus and his troop keeping up their orgies on the mountains. This is not mincing the matter. Milton hardly shewed this poem among his Italian friends, when he went to Rome. Perhaps Galileo had a sight of it. Tuscany, a little before, is described as a country infamous for its poisonings, a dead hand at a potion:

Dextra veneficiis infamis Hetruria.