beyond requitall in relation to us Esteem worth learning, but the (To be continued.) way to Die." J. B. ILLUSTRATIONS OF HORACE. Book I. SAT. VIII. AMONG * MONG the poems of Horace, we a certain Canidia is handled most unmercifully; the Satire now before us, and the fifth and seventeenth of the Epodes. She is there described, more especially in the last, as a creature, who, after having followed in her youth the infamous profession of a priestess of the Venus Volgivaga was at last reduced to the necessity of practising magical arts, in order still to procure customers for her faded charms. It may be, that her real name was Gratidia, and herself a Neapolitan unguentaria (perfumer); but from what quarter the Scholiasts derived their information, that she had been a mistress of our Poet, nay, the very same person to whom the Palinodia ad Amicam (the 16th Ode of the first Book) is addressed, I am as much at a loss to guess, as how that groundless, and, in all its circumstances, so incoherent an assertion, could obtain credit with even some modern Com mentators. Horace had affronted some anonymous fair by satirical iambics; this he himself confesses: but throughout the whole of that palin * Amata nautis multùm et institoribus, the mistress of every sailor and shopkeeper; a sort of people who worked hard, and were well paid. Confer Ode iii. 6. Jim. 29, et seqq. ode, not the slightest vestige is apparent that could lead to the suppos tion, that those iambics were the two epodes in Canidiam. However, in order to see clearly into this curious affair between Canidia and our bard, we are in need of no other candle than that which himself has lighted for us. How much soever we may be inclined to impute the bitter sarcasms, and the horrible accusations, with which he overwhelms this person, either to the vengeance of an offended poet, who was so apt to be angry, (irasci celeris, epist. xx. 25.) or to the reports and anecdotes, that might be in common circulation about Canidia as a power ful witch, or in short to the humour and imagination of the poet, who chose to divert himself on this occa sion with the subject of magic in general there still remain some data, that we may reasonably admit as true, which first gave rise to our author's displeasure against Canidia; and without which it would not be conceivable how he could bring himself to lance his wit with such deliberate cruelty at a being of that description. From comparing and combining these several circumstances togther, my belief is, that by the following statement we shall come as near as possible to the truth of the matter. Canidia had in her youth been one of that class, to which the beautiful Lydia, Pyrrha, Leuconoë, Glycera, Cynara, Barine, Lycymnia, Lyce, Neobule, Inachia, Neæra, and who can tell how many others, belonged, of whom our bard had been enamoured, and whose praises he had sung in his blooming years: but their spring-tide of life had long since been passed, when their acquaintance with him began, and they cast their nets in vain for the minion of the Graces, who, it appears, possessed the talent to please the most amiable, and to whom the savu mater Cupidinum was seldom cruel. Perceiving at length the insufficiency of their attractions, they had recourse to magical charms. The natives of Italy have been in all ages, like the Greeks, extremely superstitious; and there prevailed among the common people, or rather amongst all, whose conceptions were not refined by philosophy, a traditional notion, that there were arts, by the assistance of the subterranean deities, and by specific magical processes, formularies, talismans, and other methods of sorcery, of working wonders; as, for instance, to conjure up the spirits of the dead, in order to learn of them future events; to transform themselves and others into the likeness of various and strange animals; by certain philtres, or other spells and operations, (such as are described by Virgil in his viiith eclogue) to make people nolens volens fall in love with them, and the like. Among the Greeks, the Thessalians, and among the Italians, the Marses and Sabines * were particularly famous for these magical arts; and how greatly disposed the antient Roman ladies were to heighten the natural magic of their charms, by calling in the aid of lovepotions, is evident from numerous examples. Whatever relation now this might have to the fascinating prac tices which Canidia seems to have resorted to, for forcing Horace to love her against his consent; thus much at least is evident, that he was provoked by it to summon up all his wit to revenge himself on her in such a manner as must have been most sensibly cutting to au elderly and decayed courtezan. The present composition forms the first act of his resentment. He makes the fig-tree Priapus, which (according to the Roman custom) was set up in a corner of the newly-planted Esquiline gardens, blab the mystic ceremonies and magical arts, practised in the dead of night by Canidia, and the old hags her companions, on the campus Esquilinus, as an unobserved eye-witness of these deeds of darkness. A happy conceit, as furnishing him with an opportunity for diverting himself, as if at one stroke, with the divinity of the wooden Priapus, with *This appears from various passages in our author. See Epist. v. 76. xvii. 27. et seqq. Sat. lib. I. ix. 29, 30. + This I infer from the answer, which in the xviith Epode he makes Canidia give to his ironical declaration of love. Inullus ut turiseris Cotyttia the ridiculous belief of his countrymen in the black art, and, to crown' all, with the infatuated wretch Canidia. It cannot well be otherwise, thau that such a fiction, however inoffensive to the contemporaries of our bard, should come in collision here and there with our more fastidious conceptions of decorum. The god of the gardens was a boorish, rude, and obscene deity; Horace must either have not spoke of him at all, or Priapus must be allowed to talk consistently with his character; and, so to say, his own peculiar language. This poetical licence, as it was the poet's duty to assert, so it is ours to grant him; and we must be able to transport ourselves in imagination for a few moments back to the age, manners, and ideas of the antient Romans, in order to reap that entertainment from the wit and humour of this inimitable piece of pleasantry, which it doubtless afforded to Mecenas and the good company met together in the Esquiline gardens. Pantolabo scurræ, Nomentanoque nepoti.] A couple of graceless fellows, of whom one defrayed the expences of his kitchen by the revenues of his scurrility, and the other having been such a bad economist of his ample patrimony, that probably he had to look to no better a place of interment than that. The former had been already quoted by Horace in his first Satire, as the complete model of a glutton and spendthrift. Seneca, in his ingenious and longwinded disputation against the voluptuousness of the Epicureans (cap. xi. de vita beata) places him on a parallel with the celebrated Apicius. "Behold," says he, " a Nomentanus, an Apicius, who collect together whatever, according to their terminelogy, is good either on land or in water, and muster upon their tables the animals of all nations! Look at them, bending down from their roseate thrones to snuff up the fumes of their culinary preparations, &c.” Pantolabus (if we may credit the Commentators) is improperly so 'called, his real name being Mallius Verna, as the patronymic of Nomentanus was Cassius. He is again mentioned afterwards in the first Satire of the second book. Esquit all the others, lay within the walls of the Esquiline hill, whatever the pretended Scholiast Porphyrion may say to the contrary. How else could Priapus, who, as the guardian of these new pleasure grounds, was probably set up at the extremest verge of them, have been an eye-witness to the magical mysteries of the two witches ? or how would the sudden crack which burst from his godship's hinder parts, have been so dreadfully alarming, as to make them abruptly leave their unfinished rites, and, all confusion, scamper into the town? Our poet was certainly not the man to neglect on any occasion his own rule, Ficta voluptatis causâ sint proxima veris. Animas responsa daturas.] The pagan sorcerers abusively made their religion subservient to their mysteries, as the Christian exorcists, necromanhave the Christian. Thus, for examcers, treasure-finders, diviners, &c. ple, they were wont to slay a black amb *, to appease, or to propitiate, the manes of the departed; in the opinion, that the steam of the victim's blood was grateful to them, and that they inhaled it with great avidity, in hopes that the shadowy form between nothing and something, stead of their pristine body, would which they now must put up with inthereby acquire somewhat more consistence and energy. Canidia and Sagana, who wanted to inquire into futurity of these sprights, bring them, therefore, the customary offerings; but, in order to preserve the appropriate costume, the proper ceremonial of night-hags, the poet makes them not slay the lamb, but tear it in pieces with their teeth and nails. &c.] The poet, without explicitly Lanea et effigies erut, altera cerea, revealing (as it would not have been proper in a description of such mysterious witcheries, especially in the mouth of Priapus, who relates barely what he could see) yet with sufficient perspicuity gives it to be understood, that Canidia's object in these nocturnal enchantments, was to make some obstinate wight in love with her by magical spells and charms. that end the two sympathetic figures To Esquiliis.] The Esquiline mount was included in the precincts of the city of Rome by King Servius Tullius. It was of so large a circuit, that it antiently composed the second, and on the new division by Augustus, including the Viminalis, the fifth region of that capital. The place here described, as selected by Canidia to be the scene of her mystic rites, in all probability lay at the farthest extremity of the Esquiline, and appears not to have been the same with the puticulæ mentioned by Varro and Festus. To me it seems likely, that those puticula, where in the remotest ages of Rome the corpses of malefactors and paupers had been customarily inhumed, were indeed entirely without the Esquiline gate; that, however, in process of time, in consequence of the vast enlargement, and still in creasing population of Rome, the ground-plot of which Horace speaks, situate within the walls of the campus Esquilinus, had been bequeathed by some humane land-owner for the express purpose of being used as a common burial-place for slaves, and per Nar sons of the lowest class. For this latter seems evidently to follow from the expression; that a monument there erected, with the usual letters H. M. H. N. S. denoted that this field, a thousand feet in length, and three hundred in breadth, could not be claimed by the heirs of the anonymus, who had left it as a legacy to the necessitous part of the community, as their inheritance. dini, it is true, finds this opinion incumbered with several difficulties; but, since after all, they proceed entirely from ignorance of the true antient site of the place, their solution is neither possible nor necessary. It may suffice, that Horace, who must best have known the Esquiline, and the situation of the newly-planted gardens of Maecenas (which is here the point in hand) expressly says: these gardens had rendered the region of the Esquiline, which had before been a loathsome cœmetery for slaves and beggars, a salubrious and delightful abode. He seems, therefore, to have left us in no doubt, that the retired and lonely spot, where Canidia, with her associate hag, assembled, in hopes of practising their nocturnal sorceries undisturbed, formed a part of Mæcepas's new plantations, ana uo less than * It is well known, that no other than black victims were slaughtered to the subterranean deities. + See the eleventh book of the Odyssey, were Virgil, in the vith book of the Æneis, says: Visæque canes ululare per umbram Adventante deâ *. Priapus heard likewise the howling of these dogs; for the voces furiarum in the 45th line mean nothing else. cording to the Scholiasts, this PriaJulius et fragilis Pediatia.] Acpeian piece of pleasantry is aimed at a certain Julius Pediatius, a Roman knight, who, after having wasted his substance, is said to have had recourse to infamous practices for gaining a livelihood. stranger, the thief Voranus, the Concerning our other Scholiasts likewise relate a dull anecdote, which, after all, tells us nothing more, than that he was -- a thief. were principally subservient. The smaller one, of wax, represented the patient who was to be enchanted; the greater one, of woollen, with the Scourge in hand, probably Canidia herself. The former was formed of wax, that it might be pierced by the needles with which the lash was armed, and then melted in the fire: but why the other was of wool, I know not; that it had some superstitious notion for its basis, may easily be supposed, and more than this the Commentators are unable to tell us. Virgil makes his Pharmaceutria put two figures of her lover in the magic fire, one of wax, and one of clay, saying: As fire this figure hardens, made of clay, And this of wax with fire consumes away; Such let the soul of cruel Daphnis be, Hard to the rest of women, soft to me. pro Hecaten vocat altera, sævam altera Tisiphonem.] Hecate, or the subterranean Diana (Aplus ada, in Theocritus) was worshiped as a formidable and mysterious subterranean deity. In truth, her theology is so mysterious, that it is not possible to see clearly into it. It was a prime article of faith with the necromancers and witches, that they could accomplish nothing without her aid; and therefore they regularly began their incantations by endeavouring to pitiate this puissant goddess. If she appeared at their invocations, then all proceeded well. Tisiphone, here invoked by the other witch, was one of the Furies; and Horace appears by the fiction of this extraordinary incident, to have pointed at the amorous fury of poor Canidia, no less than her utter despair of effecting any thing by her personal charms; seeing she is forced to call in the aid of the Furies, in order to procure herself a lover. In the nocturnal incantations described by Theocritus in his second Idyll, he makes his enchantress infer the approach of Hecate solely from the barking of the dogs in the town: The barking town-dogs, Thestylis, I hear, Announce that Hecate is drawing near. Here, however, Priapus actually sees infernal snakes and hell-hounds, as signals announcing the arrival of Hecate and Tisiphone, although these goddesses were not visible in their proper form. To the same purport Lupi barbam.] Pliny the Naturalist (lib. xxviii. cap. 10.) says, it was a common practice to nail a wolf's muzzle against the village gates, the vulgar believing it a powerful preservative from all kinds of witchcraft. This seems, in some measure, to explain why the witches here bury privily in the earth a wolf's, muzzle; namely, by this ceremony to render impotent the means that might be adopted to counteract their enchant ments. The same affinity perhaps obtained with the serpent's teeth. Nam, displosa sonat quasi vesica, &c.] Judging from circumstances, this Priapus was quite as new as the Mæcenatian gardens, to which it was appointed the guardian, and probably made of green wood; it is therefore perfectly natural, that it should suddenly split, with a crack so loud as to terrify the witches: but the conceit of making such a droll use of it, is equal to the best of the kind in all Rabelais. Calliendrum.] A sort of fontanges, with a head-dress of false hair, says one Scholiast, who seems to have had a better guess than another, who makes it a simple bonnet. Ormond-street. W. T. Mr. URBAN, Doughty-street, Jul.13. some edition of Hall's Works, in 10 * And howling dogs in glimmering light advance Ere Hecate came. DRYDEN. yols. 8vo, was lately published by the Rev. Josiah Pratt, to which a New Life was to have been prefixed: but the Editor, for whatever reason, contented himself (but not his subscribers) with merely reprinting the above tracts;" meaning the Bishop's" Specialities," and his " Hard Measure." As the reason assigned by the Editor has not been seen, it should appear, by your Reviewer, I beg leave to subjoin it. In his Preface it is said: "The Editor originally proposed to accompany this edition with a New Life of the Author; but, finding the materials for such a work accumulate very much in his hands, he has judged it best to limit this publication to the Bishop's own writings ; and has, therefore, prefixed only such Memoirs as the Author has left of himself: reserving whatever else he has been able to collect together, for a separate vo lume, to be published hereafter, and to be independent of the present undertaking." That your Reviewer speaks on conjecture, or on misinformation, when be intimates that the Subscribers are dissatisfied with this arrangement, I have no doubt. After remarking, however, that each Subscriber paid 7s. 6d. per Volume, for a work, which, at the usual rates of the trade, would have been charged 10s. 6d. or 12s. I will engage, that, if any one Subscriber shall think himself fairly entitled to the Volume containing the Bishop's Life, gratis, on sending his name to my house, he shall so receive it when published. I take this opportunity, however, of stating, that I cannot fix any time for the publication of the Life in question, as, from the nature of the materials, and their bearings on the history of Religion among us, and on many points controverted warmly at the present day, much research and deliberation are required. Yours, &c. JOSIAH PRATT. As convenient chaunel, through S your Miscellany furnishes a which doubts may be proposed for solution, and controverted points for discussion, I take the liberty of calling the attention of your Readers to the consideration of a subject, which has of late, in no small degree, interested the feelings of the publick. I allude to the treatment of Brute Animals, which has been revived by the interposition of Lord Erskine's eloquence, and which has since beep reinforced, by a pathetic and farewell appeal from an experienced Bard. In the Poem of "The Lower World," Mr. Pratt has advocated the cause of the Brute Creation, and employed the last efforts of his pen in benevolent effusions. Whilst I cordially join in my ab. horrence of vexatious and unnatural torture of animals ;-whilst I would not (to use the language of the ele gant Blair)" treat the smallest insect with wanton cruelty;" yet I have long entertained doubts concerning the unlawfulness of field amusements, till my mind was fixed by a mere accidental occurrence. In the British Critic for April, a volume of Poems intituled "Bidcombe Hill," was reviewed. In the Table of Contents given by the Reviewer, was included "Fox-hunting described and vindicated." As the Critic remarked of the book, that "the sentiments were pure, with a strong tincture of the truest piety and most ardent benevolence pervading the whole," I was curious to see how the vindication of the pleasures of the Chace could comport with such a distinguished encomium. As the reasoning in the poem, and in the annotation, carried conviction to my mind, I beg leave to submit them to the consideration of your intelligent Readers. The Poet concludes his description of Fox-hunting with the following argumentative versification. "What tho' the rigid Moralist may smile, [field; And scory the healthsome pleasures of the Yet |