Alter equis, alter pugna bonus atque palestra; Et noster Deus, unde salus et vita resurgit.' In the fifth there is a pleasant picture of a Christmas fireside : The sixth contains a marvellous strange legend (p. 87-8), to which we can only refer; as also a curious picture of Roman morals, compared with those of the country (p. 91 sqq.); and in the seventh there is a rather pleasing passage on the estimation in which the gods (or saints) hold the pastoral life, where Apollo and Admetus are coupled with the shepherds of Bethlehem after the usual style of those days, when the two were almost equally matter of belief. We would willingly extract these and some other passages, did our limits allow. The eighth eclogue is almost wholly occupied with the praises of a mighty goddess, and her marvellous works, for which the worshipper refers to the paintings which he has seen suspended on the walls of the temples-the source, apparently, of most of the theological knowlege of our shepherds. Who this power is, the reader may discover from the following description, in which the attributes of Juno, Cybele, Diana, and Amphitrite, are curiously mingled. Non erat illa Dryas, neque Libethris, nec Oreas :: Venerat e cœlo Superum regina, Tonantis Mater. Huic Tethys, huic alma Ceres famulatur, et ipse Hunc Deus, astrorum flammas super, atque volantes Extulit, et sacram bisseno sidere frontem We quote the following apophthegm, from the ninth, for the benefit of those whom it concerns : 1 Potare semel, gustare: secundus Colluit os potus: calefacta refrigerat ora Compare Dante Inf. Canto ii. 15. &c. I non Enea, i non Paulo sono." (Alphonsus, lib. ii.) Mercury is sent to of Christ into hell. "Tu dici, che di Silvio lo parente, In another of Mantuan's poems announce to Pluto the descent And we shall conclude with the following description from the tenth, and last, of a shepherd's summer-day in the happy south, as a companion to the winter-night above quoted: O nostræ regionis opes! o florida prata! Of the eclogues of Petrarch we have very little to say, for their character is that of respectable mediocrity. The style is nore sustained than that of the Africa; but the heavy allegory, as in the former, and indeed in almost all similar cases, drags the poet along with it; and the length to which every thing is drawn out gives an air of mawkishness to his very sweetness. The most vigorous are those levelled at the vices of the Church (a frequent subject with Petrarch), which are written in a tone of indignant invective; although the temporary nature of the allusions prevents us from making any quotations from them. There is a certain solemn pathos in the following passage, which, although we do not clearly perceive its immediate scope, obviously relates to one of Petrarch's favorite topics, the decayed state of Rome, and the unpatriotic apathy of her citizens: A. Nos sorte maligna Vivere per sylvas vix ulla possumus arte: 'Ev'n the rough rocks with tender myrtle bloom, So Lord Byron, of Italy:— Addison's Letter from Italy. Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste Childe Harold, Canto iv. M. Non nova, sed veterum turpes reparare ruinas. Hic aget, atque illic, geminoque fruetur honore. Ipsa aderit. In another eclogue the great poets of Greece and Rome pass before him in a vision, under the guise of shepherds : Atque hic multa jubens e sede verendus acerna Otia ni desint, nulli usquam voce secundus. The following curious conceit is from the "Opuscula" of Simon Fagellus, a Bohemian writer. Leipsic, 1536. AD MUSAS. Nunc gaudere licet vobis, o Corycidum grex, Vos decus imperii, vos Maximilianus alit nunc, We have made a few alterations, for the sake of sense and prosody, in the above composition, which is worth notice merely as a curiosity. In the same view we present our readers with a specimen of a work, entitled "Pugna Porcorum, per Placentium Portium Poëtam. Præterea Protestatio propter puncta perverse posita. Postremo Pasquillus post prandium Pontificis perlegens poëma. Perlege porcorum pulcherrima prælia, Potor, Lond. 1586." The poem (which appears to be a satire on certain dignitaries of the church) opens as follows: Plaudite porcelli, porcorum pigra propago Pars pungit populando potens; pars plurima plagis [Processus porcorum ponitur.] On the triumph of the young swine (porcelli) over the adult grunters, the poet breaks forth into the following strain of alliterative exultation: Plaudite Porcelli, pubes pretiosa, perenni With more in the same style. We might have given some better samples; but, unfortunately (as is sometimes the case in poems of more consequence), the best parts are the least intelligible. We know nothing of the author, and have not thought it worth our while to seek for information. Is the Nightingale the Herald of Day, as well as the Messenger of Spring? No. IV. [Concluded from No. LVIII.] My best acknowlegements are due to P. V. for his satisfactory references to Sir W. Ouseley's Travels and his Persian Miscellanies, on the subject of the Nightingale, The following additional notices may be acceptable to him and the readers of the Classical Journal in general. "He, that should attempt a translation of this most artful composition (Strada's Contest of the Musician and Nightingale), 'dum tentat discrimina tanta reddere,' would probably, like the Nightingale, find himself impar magnanimis ausis.' The attempt, however, has been made. Without mentioning the miserable imitation by Ambrose Philips, in his fifth Eclogue, there is in a little volume, entitled Prolusiones Poetica, by the Rev, T. Bancroft, printed at Chester, 1788, a version of the Fidicinis et Philomela Certamen, which will please every reader of taste, who forbears to compare it with the original; and in the Poems of Pattison, the ingenious author of the Epistle of Abelard to Eloisa, is a fable, entitled The Nightingale and Shepherd, imitated from Strada. But these performances serve only to con vince us that a perfect translation of that composition is a thing almost impossible." Lord Woodhouselee's Essay on Translation, p. 349, 3d Ed. An article on this subject of the Musician and the Nightingale will be found in Leigh Hunt's Essays, entitled Indicator. That it is the male bird only, which sings, was well understood by the ancients. Eust. 395. Φανερὸν δὲ καὶ ὅτι ἄῤῥενες τέττιγες ᾄδουσιν, οἱ καὶ ἀχέται (Ι. ἠχέται) παρ' Ησιόδω (Εργ. 580. καὶ ἠχέτα τέττιξ, Α. 393. κυανόπτερος ἠχέτα τέττιξ·) ἄφωνοι δὲ τὸ τῶν θηλειῶν εἶδος, οἳ καὶ τιγόνια (1. τιτιγόνια, see the New Gr. Thes. 307. n.) ὃ διδασκαλία εἴη ἂν σιγῆς κοσμούσης γυναῖκας, κατὰ τὸ, Γύναι, γυναιξὶ κόσμον ἡ σιγὴ φέρει. Εἰς δὲ τὸ αὐτὸ συντελεῖ πρὸς ἄλλοις καὶ τὸ |