with R, were written by my friend Sir Roger. That L signifies the Lawyer, whom I have described in my second Speculation; and that T stands for the Trader or Merchant: but the letter X which is placed at the end of some few of my papers, is that which has puzzled the whole town, as they cannot think of any name which begins with that letter, except Xenophon and Xerxes, who can neither of them be supposed to have had any hand in these speculations. In answer to these inquisitive gentlemen, who have many of them made inquiries of me by letter, I must tell them the reply of an ancient philosopher, who carried something hidden under his cloak. A certain acquaintance desiring him to let him know what it was he covered so carefully, 'I cover it (says he) on purpose that you should not know.' I have made use of these obscure marks for the same purpose. They are, perhaps, little amulets or charms to preserve the paper against the fascination or malice of evil eyes for which reason I would not have my reader surprised if hereafter he sees any of my papers marked with a Q, a Z, a Y, &c. or with the word Abracadabra.' I shall, however, so far explain myself to the reader, as to let him know that the letters C, L, and X, are cabalistical, and carry more in them than it is proper for the world to be acquainted with. Those who are versed in the philosophy of Pythagoras, and swear by the Tetrachtys, that is, the number four, will know very well that the number ten, which is signified by the letter X, (and which has so much perplexed the town,) has in it many particular powers; that it is called by platonic writers the com 1 1 A noted charm for agues, said to have been invented by Basilides, an heretic of the second century, who thought that very sublime mysteries were contained in the number 365 (not only the days of the year, but the different orders of celestial beings, &c.), to which number the Hebrew letters that compose the word Abracadabra are said to amount.-C. 2 ' Stanley's Lives of the Philosophers, p. 527. ed. 1687. fol.-C. But these are not plete number; that one, two, three, and four, put together, make up the number ten; and that ten is all. mysteries for ordinary readers to be let into. spent many years in hard study before he knowledge of them. A man must have can arrive at the We had a robbinical divine in England, who was chaplain to the Earl of Essex in Queen Elizabeth's time, that had an admirable head for secrets of this nature. Upon his taking the doctor of divinity's degree, he preached before the university of Cambridge, upon the first verse of the first chapter of the first book of Chronicles, in which (says he) you will see the three following words, Adam, Sheth, Enosh. He divided this short text into many parts, and discovering several mysteries in each word, made a most learned and elaborate discourse. The name of this profound preacher was doctor Alabaster, of whom the reader may find a more particular account in Doctor Fuller's book of English Worthies.' This instance will, I hope, convince my readers, that there may be a great deal of fine writing in the capital letters which bring up the rear of my paper, and give them some satisfaction in that particular. But as for the full explication of these matters, I must refer them to time, which discovers all things. C. 1 Adam signifies 'man;' Sheth, 'placed;' Enoch, misery;' hence this profound doctor, (to use the words of the historian referred to) 'mined for a mystical meaning,' and dug out this moral inference, that man is placed in misery or pain.' See Fuller's Worthies of Suffolk, p. 70.-C. No. 223. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15. O suavis anima! qualem bonam Antehac fuisse, tales cùm sint reliquiæ! PIED. iii. i. 5. O sweet soul! how good you must have been heretofore, when your WHEN I reflect upon the various fate of those multitudes of ancient writers who flourished in Greece and Italy, I consider time as an immense ocean in which many noble authors are entirely swallowed up, many very much shattered and damaged, some quite disjointed and broken into pieces, while some have wholly escaped the common wreck; but the number of the last is very small. Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto. VIRG. En. i. 122. One here and there floats on the vast abyss. Among the mutilated poets of antiquity, there is none whose fragments are so beautiful as those of Sappho.' They give us s taste of her way of writing, which is perfectly conformable with that extraordinary character we find of her, in the remarks of those great critics who were conversant with her works when they were entire. One may see by what is left of them, that she followed nature in all her thoughts, without descending to those little points, conceits, and turns of wit, with which many of our 1 Between 610-580 before Christ. Temperat Archilochi musam pede mascula Sappho, Eoliis fidibus querentem Sappho puellis de popularibus. HOR. Ep. i. 19, 28. Carm. ii. 19, 24. Of her numerous writings we have only a few fragments, and one entire ode preserved by Dionys. Hal. and one by Longinus. The first is given in the present paper, and the other in No. 229-V. Dionysius Hal. de Comp. c. 23-Longinus, c. 10. Sappho has found an ingenious defender in Welcker. Sappho von einem herschenden Vorurtheil befreit. Göttingen, 1816, 8vo.-G. modern lyrics are so miserably infected. Her soul seems to have been made up of love and poetry; she felt the passion in all its warmth, and described it in all its symptoms. She is called by ancient authors the Tenth Muse and by Plutarch is compared to Cacus, the son of Vulcan, who breathed out nothing but flame. I do not know by the character that is given of her works, whether it is not for the benefit of mankind that they are lost. They were filled with such bewitching tenderness and rapture, that it might have been dangerous to have given them a reading.' An inconstant lover, called Phaon, occasioned great calamities to this poetical lady. She fell desperately in love with him, and took a voyage into Sicily, in pursuit of him, he having withdrawn himself thither on purpose to avoid her. It was in that island, and on this occasion, she is supposed to have made the Hymn to Venus, with a translation of which I shall present my reader. Her Hymn was ineffectual for the procuring that happiness which she prayed for in it. Phaon was still obdurate, and Sappho so transported with the violence of her passion, that she was resolved to get rid of it at any price. There was a promontory in Acarnania called Leucate, on the top of which was a little temple dedicated to Apollo. In this temple it was usual for despairing lovers to make their vows in secret, and afterwards to fling themselves from the top of the precipice into the sea, where they were sometimes taken up alive. This place was therefore called The Lover's Leap; and whether or no the fright they had been in, or the resolution that could push them to so dreadful a remedy, or the bruises which they The application of the two lines of Phædrus in the motto, has called forth a warm eulogium from Warton, in his 'Essay on the Genius of Pope.' His supposition that both this and the translation of the ode preserved by Longinus, was corrected and altered by Addison himself, is a compliment to his genius, at the expense of his modesty; reminding you of the patron of the young poetess in Miss Edgeworth's Helen.-G. often received in their fall, banished all the tender sentiments of love, and gave their spirits another turn; those who had taken this leap were observed never to relapse into that passion. pho tried the cure, but perished in the experiment. Sap After having given this short account of Sappho so far as it regards the following Ode, I shall subjoin the translation of it as it was sent me by a friend," whose admirable pastorals and winter-piece have been already so well received. The reader will find in it that pathetic simplicity which is so peculiar to him, and so suitable to the Ode he has here translated. This Ode in the Greek (besides those beauties observed by Madam Dacier) has several harmonious turns in the words, which are not lost in the English. I must further add, that the translation has preserved every image and sentiment of Sappho, notwithstanding it has all the ease and spirit of an original. In a word, if the ladies have a mind to know the manner of writing practised by the so much celebrated Sappho, they may here see it in its genuine and natural beauty, without any foreign or affected ornaments. AN HYMN TO VENUS. I. O, Venus, beauty of the skies, Mr. Ambrose Philips; who was a friend of our author, but being a great party-man drew upon himself much envy, and, of course, the ridicule of the wits; such of them, I mean, as lived in connections opposite to his. As a poet, however, he had real merit, which consisted in a certain natural turn of sentiment and expression, called by his friends, simplicity; and by his enemies, we may be sure, insipidity. The worst part of his character is that he was generally thought (and I believe on good grounds) to have done Mr. Pope ill-offices with Mr. Addison; for which, he is treated by that poet, on many occasions, with great severity.-H. |