of manhood, and begin to offend by the exhibition of novel opinions and strong censures, than he became the object of that enmity, which, pursuing him with detraction to his grave, has, in later times, disturbed his ashes, and endeavoured to fix deformity on his memory. Of his conduct, and the treatment which he experienced in his college, much has been asserted, and much been made the subject of dispute. His enemies in his own days, (a son of bishop Hall is supposed to have been the immediate advancer of the charge,) accused him of having been vomited, after an inordinate and riotous youth, out of the University; and his adversaries in the present age, inflamed with all the hate of their predecessors, have pretended to prove, from some vague expressions in one of his own poems, that the slander, though completely overthrown at the time of its first production, was not altogether unsupported by truth, The lines, supposed to contain the proof in question, are the following, which have been so frequently cited from the first of his elegies to his friend, C. Deodati: Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum; Nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor: Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles: Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri; No love of late forbidden scenes now pains, • Our author seems in this place to be guilty of a false quantity, and to begin his hexameter very unwarrantably with a cretic. Terentianus Maurus accuses Virgil of the same inaccuracy in the line "Sōlus hic inflexit sensus," &c. affirming with the old grammarians, that hic and hoc were formerly written with two c's, hicc, hocc being contracted from hicce and hocce, and were always long. Vossius on the contrary asserts that these pronouns were long only when they were written with the double cc." Ad quantitatem hujus pronominis quod attinet, producebant et hic et hoc veteres quando per duplex c scribebant. hicc vel hocc, abjecto, e; corripiebant cum c simplex scripsere. Art. Gram. 29. Of a short hic more than one instance may be produced, "Hic vir hic est, tibi quem promitti sæpius audis;" but not one, as far as my recollection is accurate, of a short hoc. "Hōc illud, germana, fuit." "Hic labor hoc opus est." "Hōc erat, alma parens."-" Hōc erar experto frustra Varrone.""Hoc erat in votis."-Salmasius in his abusive reply to our author, accuses his latin poetry of false quantities; but excepting in this instance, and in one, which shall be noticed in its proper place, in the first line of the Damon, I have not been able to detect any of these crimes against prosody. In the few spe P On this passage, which probably would not have been published had it referred to cimens, which he has given us of his Greek poetry, he has more frequently fallen into error, as Dr. C. Burney has very acutely and learnedly demonstrated. On Milton's Greek composition I have purposely foreborne to offer any remarks, the accomplished scholar and very acute critic, whom I have just mentioned, having completely exhausted the subject. When the almost infinite niceties of the Greek language are considered, and it is recollected that even Dawes, the most accurate Grecian, perhaps, whom this Island, till the present day, has ever produced, and the great sir William Jones have not, in every instance, been able to observe them, the lapses in Milton's Greek composition will possibly be regarded as venial, and not to be admitted in diminution of the fame of his Greek erudition. P It may be proper to give a literal translation of these lines, that the English reader may form his own judgment on the extent of their testimony. "Now neither am I anxious to revisit reedy Cam, nor does the love of my lately forbidden college give me uneasiness. Fields naked and destitute of soft shades do not please me. How ill-suited to the worshippers of Phoebus is such a place! Neither do I like always to bear the threats of a hard master, and other things, which are not to be submitted to by a mind and temper like mine. If it be banishment to return to a father's house, and there, exempt from cares, to possess delightful leisure, I will not refuse even the name and the lot of a fugitive, but exultingly enjoy the condition of an exile." As it may amuse some of my readers to see the entire elegy, I will transcribe it in its complete state, with a translation very inferior to the merits of the original. ELEG. I. AD. CAROLUM DEODATUM. Tandem, chare, tuæ mihi pervenere tabellæ, Vergivium prono quà petit amne salum. any transactions dishonourable to the writer, is rested the whole support of the accusa Multùm, crede, juvat terras aluisse remotas Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum, Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles: O, utinam vates nunquam graviora tulisset, Non tunc Ionio quicquam cessisset Homero, Sæpe novos illic virgo mirata calores Quid sit amor nescit, dum quoque nescit, amat. Et dolet, et specto, juvat et spectâsse dolendo, tion, preferred against our author's college life, from his own to the present times. The Seu puer infelix indelibata reliquit Sed neque sub tecto semper, nec in urbe latemus; Nos quoque lucus habet vicinâ consitus ulmo, Et quæcunque vagum cepit amica Jovem. Et quot Susa colunt, Memnoniámque Ninon ; |