I cannot forbear giving a passage out of the Latin poem I mention, by which you will find the English poet is indebted to it: Alternat mira arte fides: dum torquet acutas, Præbet iter liquidum labenti e pectore voci, Nunc cæsim variat, modulisque canora minutis This poem was many years since imitated by Crashaw, out of whose verses the following are very remarkable : From this to that, from that to this he flies, Caught in a net which there Apollo spreads, I have (as I think I formerly told you) a very good opinion of Mr. Rowe's ixth book of Lucan: * Neither of these words are used by Horace or Virgil: reciprocat is to be found in Lucretius, book iii. 1101, but in another Warton. sense. Rowe's translation of Lucan has certainly never met with the popularity and applause it deserved. It is one of the few translations that is better than its original. I venture to say the same of three more translations; namely, of Hampton's Polybius; of Pitt's Vida; and of Melmoth's Pliny. Brebeuf, says Vigneul-Marville, was Lucano Lucanior. Horace was the favourite of Brebœuf in his youth, as was Lucan of his friend M. Gautier. They disputed so frequently and so warmly on the preference due to each of their favourites, that they agreed to give these authors a very attentive reading. The consequence was, they became mutual converts; Brebœuf became intoxicated with the love of Lucan, and Gautier of Horace. Melanges, v. i. p. 25. Warton. indeed he amplifies too much, as well as Brebœuf, the famous French imitator. If I remember right, he sometimes takes the whole comment into the text of the version, as particularly in line 808. Utque solet pariter totis se effundere signis Corycii pressura croci.-And in the place you quote, he makes of those two lines in the Latin, Vidit quantâ sub nocte jaceret Nostra dies, risitque sui ludibria trunci, no less than eight in English. What you observe, sure, cannot be an ErrorSphæricus, strictly speaking, either according to the Ptolemaic, or our Copernican system; Tycho Brahe himself will be on the translator's side. For Mr. Rowe here says no more, than that he looked down on the rays of the sun, which Pompey might do, even though the body of the sun were above him. You cannot but have remarked what a journey Lucan here makes Cato take for the sake of his fine descriptions. From Cyrene he travels by land, for no better reason than this; Hæc eadem suadebat hiems, quæ clauserat æquor. The winter's effects on the sea, it seems, were more to be dreaded than all the serpents, whirlwinds, sands, &c. by land, which immediately after he paints out in his speech to the soldiers: then he fetches a compass a vast way round about, to the Nasamones and Jupiter Ammon's temple, * *The situation of this celebrated temple, so long unknown, has at last been discovered, under the auspices of the African purely to ridicule the oracles: and Labienus must pardon me, if I do not believe him when he says -sors obtulit, et fortuna via-either Labienus, or the map, is very much mistaken here. Thence he returns back to the Syrtes (which he might have taken first in his way to Utica) and so to Leptis Minor, where our author leaves him; who seems to have made Cato speak his own mind, when he tells his army- Ire sat est-no matter whither. I am your, &c. LETTER XXIII. FROM MR. CROMWELL. Nov. 20, 1710. THE HE system of Tycho Brahe (were it true, as it is novel) could have no room here: Lucan, with the rest of the Latin poets, seems to follow Plato; whose order of the spheres is clear in Cicero, De naturâ Deorum, De somnio Scipionis, and in Macrobius. The seat of the Semidei manes is Platonic too, for Apuleius De deo Socratis assigns the same to the genii, viz. the region of the air Society. From the peculiar circumstance of the warm and cold spring, (i. e. cold in the day, and warm at night,) which is described by Herodotus and Curtius; from the trees, and magnificent ruins, near the spot where the "fons solis," and "Templum Ammonis," are marked in the ancient maps, there appears little doubt, but that this celebrated temple was situated (according to the conjectures of Horneman) in the Oasis of Siwah, amid the desert, north-west of Cairo. Bowles. for their intercourse with gods and men; so that, I fancy, Rowe mistook the situation, and I cannot be reconciled to Look down on the sun's rays. I am glad you agree with me about the latitude he takes; and wish you had told me if the sortilegi and fatidici could license his invective against priests; but, I suppose, you think them (with Helena) undeserving of your protection. I agree with you in Lucan's errors, and the cause of them, his poetic descriptions; for the Romans then knew the coast of Africa from Cyrene (to the south-east of which lies Ammon toward Egypt) to Leptis and Utica but, pray, remember how your Homer nodded, while Ulysses slept, and waking knew not where he was, in the short passage from Corcyra to Ithaca. I like Trapp's versions for their justness; his Psalm is excellent; the prodigies in the first Georgic judicious; whence I conclude that it is easier to turn Virgil justly in blank verse, than rhyme. The eclogue of Gallus, and fable of Phaëton, pretty well; but he is very faulty in his numbers; the fate of Phaeton might run thus: The blasted Phaëton with blazing hair, * Of all the parts of Trapp's translation of Virgil, that of his Georgics is most blamable and prosaic. The author of the Prelections lost himself much in this translation of Virgil: yet many of his notes shew that he understood and felt his author; and his Prelections may be read with advantage by young scholars. His Latin translation of Milton was a woful performance. Warton. LETTER XXIV. TO MR. CROMWELL. Nov. 24, 1710. To make use of that freedom and familiarity of style, which we have taken up in our correspondence, and which is more properly talking upon paper, than writing; I will tell you without any preface, that I never took Tycho Brahe for one of the ancients, or in the least an acquaintance of Lucan's; nay, it is a mercy on this occasion that I do not give you an account of his life and conversation; as how he lived some years like an enchanted knight in a certain island, with a tale of a King of Denmark's mistress that shall be nameless-But I have compassion on you, and would not for the world you should stay any longer among the Genii and Semidei Manes, you know where; for if once you get so near the moon, Sappho will want your presence in the clouds and inferior regions; not to mention the great loss Drury-lane will sustain, when Mr. C is in the milky-way. These celestial thoughts put me in mind of the priests you mention, who are a sort of sortilegi in one sense, because in their lottery there are more blanks than prizes; the adventurers being at first in an uncertainty, whereas the setters-up are sure of something. Priests indeed in their character, as they represent God, are sacred; and so are constables, as they represent |