Of the three figures conspicuous in this passage, Mr. H. has not preserved one; but has exchanged them for puerile and trite conceits. How could he so wretchedly misconstrue the "Neque enim, &c."-the paraphrase on sentio tantum is scarcely sense.

Hoa son. So sweet the task, so glowing the desire,
To chain attention on the siren lyre,
The darling folly to the grave we nurse,
And drivel out the impotence of verse.
But HE, who rolls the mighty strain along,
Deaf to the praises of the vulgar throng,
Divinely kindles o'er the living lay,
And bursts to immortality away;

Hɛ, whom no words, no image can define,
But whose embodied soul I feel within

He must be free from ev'ry gnawing care,

Range through the woods, and pour his numbers there;
Drink from the Muses' heav'nly fount, nor know

The little wants of busy life below.

Alas for madness! for the wretch who raves,
Poor, and unconscious, in Pierian cav s;
Naked, and hungry, and with phrenzied eye
Bearing the thyrsus o'er the rocks on high.'

pp. 136, 137.

We will subjoin Mr. Gifford's translation, in which every thought and figure is inserted and illustrated.

Gifford. Nay, should we, conscious of our fruitless pain,

Strive to escape, we strive, alas! in vain ;

Long habit, and the thirst of praise beset,
And close us in the inextricable net.

The insatiate itch of scribbling, hateful pest!

Creeps, like a tetter, through the human breast,

Nor knows, nor hopes a cure; since years, which chill
All other passions, fire this growing ill.

But HE, the bard of every age and clime,

Of genius fruitful, and of soul sublime,
Who, from the glowing mint of fancy, pours
No spurious metal, fused from common ores,
But gold, to matchless purity, refined,
And stamp'd with all the godhead in his mind;
He whom i feel, but want the power to paint,
Must boast a soul impatient of restraint,
And free from every care; a soul that loves
The Muses' haunts, clear springs, and shady groves.

Never, no never, did he wildly rave,

And shake his thyrsus in the Aonian cave,
Whom poverty kept sober, and the cries

Of a lean stomach, clamorous for supplies.'

In the remainder of this paragraph, Mr. H. has perverted the meaning of Magne mentis opus, &c; but has atoned by an excellent rendering of

Surda nihil gemeret grave buccina.

Nor the deep trump groan'd heavy on the air."

Mr. G. had extended it to a couplet, in Mr. Hodgson's manner,
And the loud trump, that rous'd the world to arms,
Languish'd in silence, guiltless of alarms.

The praises of Mr. H. for this literal felicity of version, which is characteristic of Mr. Gifford's work, can very rarely be celebrated. Many instances might be adduced in which he has expanded a hemistich or word into a couplet; in the following, an entirely new idea is added, for the mere purpose of making a line to match.

Nunc si depositum non inficietur amicus,-xiii. 60. • Now, if a friend deny not what he owes,

If voluntary payment he propose, Sc.

The following spirited lines are from the thirteenth satire, translated by a friend of the author, Mr. B. Drury.

At night, should care permit the wretch to doze,
And his toss'd limbs enjoy a short repose,
Sudden the violated fane appears,

And you, chief phantom of his nightly fears-
Your frowns terrific, and reproachful eyes,
Your shadowy form of more than mortal size,
Make the big drops from all his body start,
And wring confession from his lab'ring heart.
These are the souls who shrink with pale affright
When harmless lightnings purge the sultry night;
Who fairt, when hollow rumblings from afar
Foretel the wrath of elemental war;

Nor deem it chance nor wind that caus'd the din,
But Jove himself in arms to punish sin.

That bolt was innocent-that storm is pass'd-
More loud, more fatal, each succeeding blast-
Deceitful calms but nurse combustion dire,

And tranquil skies are fraught with embryo fire.' p. 253.

The use of lightning is not in Juvenal; and the fine expression, Iratus cadat in terras, et vindicet ignis, is not in Mr. Drury the sense is not well expressed in the last four lines. There is an excellent translation by Mr. Hodgson, in one of his Notes, of a parallel passage in Lucretius

• And oh! how deep our shudd'ring spirits feel
A dread of Heav'n through ev'ry member steal,

When the strong lightning strikes the blasted ground,
And thunder rolls the murm'ring clouds around.
Shake not the nations? and the monarch's nod,
Bows it not low before the present God,
Lest for foul deeds or haughty words, be sent
His hurried hour of awful punishment?' p. 528.

The general character of Mr. Hodgson's version will now be evident to our readers; it is on the whole smoother and more ornamented than Mr. Gifford's, and this unsuitable smoothness and gratuitous ornament the reader is expected to accept, as compensating an important defalcation in point of clearness, force, and fidelity. The diction also is less familiar; but is deformed by many low expressions, such as "Numa's love," for Egeria, and "stingo," for Alcinous's wine; some others we shall not insert. Mr. H. tells us (Pref. p. xx.) that he has "not been squeamish:" he has "called Dirt, Dirt," and "not been afraid to hold a candle to the devil;" we admit these claims, and if he had said he was not more fearful of profaneness than uncleanliness, we should be of opinion that both his version and his mountainous accumulation of notes intitled him to hazard the self-applause. His partiality for the following expressions is particularly ramarkable; we are pretty sure it occurs at least once or twice oftener, than we have been careful enough to register it. The first line is a translation of the word "Exi." • Your trial's over; rascals, off to hell.” P. 116.

By measure sins, and goes to hell by rule.' p. 127.

...... each patient's ghost

'One doctor hurries in one month to hell. p. 197.

We can pay but little attention to the notes, which occupy two hundred and seventy of these copious pages. They are the indigested contents of a brain which would seem to have been devouring for many years without the possibility of evacuation; and which, being irritated at length into action, dis gorges with the precipitate violence of a salted leech and the multifarious profusion of the stable at Elis. The principal substance is, ridicule of the industrious critics who have illustrated Juvenal; with this is mingled every variety of criticism on every kind of subject, comments on all authors that the writer ever heard of, digression upon digression ten deep, new editions of his version of Juvenal, notes upon his own notes, " additions and corrections" to these notes, with notes on the " additions and corrections," and last of all a strip of "correction" upon these very additions and corrections." The proportion of sense to compilation, and of wit to impertinence, is perhaps about one hundredth of that which subsists between the word "Exi," and the line we just quoted. In this immense bog of alluvial matter, there are, at the same time,

many beautiful gems of poetical translation, in merit not in. ferior to that of which our readers are already in possession. One of the most ludicrous passages is that in which he talks of "us Christians!" and says we might learn from the Heathens to believe the gods invisibly present at our tables. He demonstrates his orthodoxy, however, beyond all question, by ridiculing the "disc ples with itching ears," " the conventicle," and "the true churchmen as they insolently stile themselves." p. 397. As a still farther specin en of his critical and moral taste, we shall add, that he cannot "discover the harmony or great merit of any kind which belongs to Jemmy Thomson," author of the Seasons; and the Castle of Indolence. In the same note, he vouchsafes to pronounce the following sentence on Cowper," beloved as he is by religious young women."

"If broken lines, sudden pauses, and the union of stiff, prosaic, latinized language, with pur tanical sentiment, constitute poetry, Cowper is indeed a post

Cowper's verses upon great cities are the melancholy dreams of a devout enthusiast an enthusiast whose virtues make us heartily regret the gloomy unhappiness of his latter days. The excellence of the man has nothing to do with the defects of the writer-defects, however, which are so far from being allowed in the present religious age, that, excepting the Bible, and Shakespeare, Cowper is more frequently re rinted than any other author. I do not of course include Moore's Almanack, or the Newgate Calendar.' P 413.

Have we then at last discovered the being, who in a“ Critical" shape has long annoyed intelligent and feeling minds with his periodical brayings of dullness and malice over the sacred grave of Cowper? It was incautious in him to intimate, in this very note, that other men's "ears" are "very differently constituted from" his own! After reading this note, we thought it impossible for any thing to convince us that Mr. H. had what is called "a heart; in one of his notes, however, we found a short scrap which nearly vanquished our incredulity. After quoting and criticizing Chrysostom, he says, “I once heard a preacher, who had much of the rapid variety and rich exuberance of Chrysostom. But alas! Ingens illa suo lux est consumpta nitore." Whether this honourable testimony would have been introduced, but for the author's recollection, that in his wardrobe of shreds and patches there was a very suitable dress for it, we shall not inquire. We read it with emotions of sympathy and respect; we rejoice to correct his error, and assure him, in a corresponding scrap, Parva sub inducta latuit scintilla favilla

Crescere, et in veteres agitata resurgere vires.

It seems impossible that we should be mistaken in applying Mr. Hodgson's allusion to one of the most extraordinary of men; whom the pious gentleman must have entered what he

calls" a conventicle" to hear, on whom the loftiest scholars have been proud to lavish their praise*, and to whom the audience of Cicero or Bossuet might have listened with astonishment and rapture; a man, whose pure and redundant eloquence, the sublimest emanation of mind, resembles in its attributes the noblest element of nature, rivalling, in grandeur, in beauty, and in energy, the light which fills the firmament, the tints that adorn the dew, and the rapid and irresistible flash that pierces and melts while it illuminates.

We must now close our interview with Mr. Hodgson; we should have exposed the dullness of his "Arguments," and the absurdities of his very puerile and inelegant Preface; but we and our readers have had enough of Mr. Hodgson for once; we admire him in the character of an accomplished and elegant versifier, and shall be gratified to meet him, at some other time, producing a performance to our notice that we can recommend to general circulation.

I

Art. VII. Essays on the First Principles of Christianity, on the Method 5 of establishing sound Doctrine from the Sacred Oracles, and on the different Senses of Scripture Terms By James Smith, Dundee. 8vo. pp. 432. Price 98. Ogle, Hamilton, London; Ogle and Aikman, Edinburgh.

1808.

THE professed design of this work is, to correct errors, and

promote unanimity, among the friends of scriptural religion. The author's plan is disposed into three parts. The first comprehends "articles necessarily implied in the belief, that Christianity is established by divine authority." The second consists of "rules to be observed in expounding the scriptures, with an explication of theological terms. These form the present volume. The third part is to constitute a future volume, in which Mr. S. "intends to arrange and illustrate a number of such doctrines, as are generally admitted by all denominations of protestants." The first part contains nine essays on the following subjects: the importance, nature, and use, of first principles in religion; the being, perfections, and government of God; the difference between instinct and reason; the immortality of the soul; sin, conscience, and the guilt of mankind; the necessity of revelation; the authenticity of the scriptures; the inspiration of Moses and of Jesus Christ; the province of reason in religion, the sufficiency of the Scriptures, and the chief design of Christianity. As all these topics are dispatched in 130 pages, cannot be supposed, that elaborate discussion is bestowed on any of them. On some of the subjects the author has given

it

*He has," says Dr. Parr, "the eloquence of an orator, the fancy of a poet, the acuteness of a schoolman, the profoundness of a philosopher, and the piety of a saint." Spital Sermon,