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part of youth, with whatever good intentions and resolutions, would forever procrastinate the hour of study to the imaginary but never arriving determination of the day of pleasure. The collegiate student knows, that at a stated hour he will be called on* to demonstrate his progress, and must therefore have some stated hours of preparation. Fixed hours will scarcely be allotted, nor time regularly divided by the undirected boy. In colleges the division is made for him, and enforced by necessity. The excessive indulgence of domestic affection is here corrected by wholesome discipline and statutable power, preparing the disciple to become a member of larger communities, and accustoming him to that attention to just and legal authority, which on a larger scale will hereafter be due from him to the state. The advantage of early rising, a custom, which, if adopted by the boy, seldom deserts the man, is too plain to be dwelt upon. But the utility of being secluded at an early hour of night from the world of pleasure and of vice is still superior. Nor let it be objected, that the practice does not equal my theory; very often it does, but, if it does not, be it remembered, that I am not defending the relaxation of college discipline, but supporting the original design and plan of those seminaries, whose discipline I should wish to see reinstated in its full energy. Nor let it be forgotten, that a great portion of the world complains of its severity, and perhaps one great cause of the evil is the eternal murmur of the fond father, or foolish mother, that their offspring are forbidden from the full range of modern dissipation, and cruelly compelled to retire before a late hour of the night.

Did I not fear it might appear too trivial an observation, I should discover an advantage, derivable even from the simplicity and uniformity of college commons, abstracting the youth from the luxury of his domestic board, and, beyond the bounds of cleanliness, teaching him indifference about diet. The disgraceful attention to appetite among our younger

* I speak of the university of Dublin, which I best know; I am sure it is the case in many others.

gentry, unknown and dispised in the better ages of Greece. and Rome, forms a shameful though minuter characteristic of the present age, and might be usefully controlled by the early practice of temperance, considered as a part of education. All neglect of neatness in college servants should be strictly and severely punished, but the complaints of juvenile pampered delicacy, imbrued in luxury and indulgence, systematically disregarded.

In this brief sketch, to which innumerable additions might be made by more prolix and less occupied essayists, let me include the advantage of being taught to read; let not the reader stare; I mean not the mechanical act of reading, but the skill to read with utility and effect. The youth, whose avidity for information, or rather for entertainment, has hurried him before his college æra through a numerous series of books, will find, when he recollects their slight impression, and compares it with the solid adherance of subsequent studies, that reading is an art, and an art, taught him by scholastic system. When he is obliged to weigh every period, to consider its purport, its tendency, its real meaning, with previous consciousness of obligation to render an analysis of it, he will confess the utility of habits, thus acquired, which without such aid not ten men in ten thousand would spontaneously acquire.

If we add to all these benefits the mass of real and solid learning, usually included in academical courses, (whatever desiderata may be omitted) it were to be hoped, that even the most prejudiced of modern reformers would view universities with a more favorable eye. But, if they are determined upon novelties, let their invidious reflections be maturely considered by the dispassionate, as floating in that general tide, which rolls against every thing, that we have been accustomed to consider sacred, or venerable; and let us not imagine, that every thing must be wrong, which our ancestors approved, and that nothing can be right, which ever has been before.

REMARKS ON ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE ROMAN POETS.

No. IV.

PERSIUS.

"Perse en ses vers obsurs, mais serrez et pressans,
"Affecta d' enfermer moins de mots que de sens.'

OF

Bioleau, l' Art Poetique.

F that distinguished triumvirate of Roman satirists, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, Persius, the second in the order of succession, has commonly been considered the last in eminence. He did not live in the very best days of Rome. Instead of Augustus for a patron, he had Nero for an adversary; not a rival, for, though the Emperor wrote verses, they were quoted by Persius only to be ridiculed. Nero was a mark, at which the satirist frequently aimed; but he was shielded so sffectually by ignorance and vice, and the arrows were so distant, that they either missed the object, or wounded but slightly.

The satires of Persius are the productions of a youth. He died in the thirtieth year of his age A. D. 62. He is said to have acquired a relish for satire upon reading the tenth book of Lucilius.* He was educated in the philosophy of the sto

* Suetonius, Persi vita. Op. 4th Delph. p. 661. Lucilius appears to have been read with avidity by the satirists, who succeeded him. Horace frequently mentions him, and mentions him generally with respect.

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The praise, which Horace bestows on him, is not always unmixed. He sometimes uses diminutive appellations in speaking of his verse. He was "garrulus," and wrote " versiculos euntes molliùs," &c. but, though a flowing writer, the stream was not always pure. "Flueret lutulentus," says Hor

ics, and was an exemplary disciple of the founder of the

sect.

If Persius were superior to Horace and Juvenal in learning, which has been contended, he was inferior to both, as a poet and satirist. This seems to be conceded in effect even by Casaubon, his most able advocate and commentator ;* for,

ace; and the same writer certainly places him in a ridiculous attitude, when he relates, that this same poet often dictated in an hour two hundred verses, standing on one foot. He speaks also of his fondness for mixing Greek words with his Latin compositions. Another peculiarity, remarked by Macrobius in his saturnalia, but which does not appear in what remains of Lucilius, is the separation of two syllables of the same word by an intervening word.

Unfortunately the fragments only of this author remain, and those so broken, that we can scarcely estimate the value of the entire work.

Lucilius has been called the father of satire. Ennius and Pacuvius did indeed precede him, but Quintillian decides for us, that Lucilius was the first, who arrived at any considerable excellence in that species of composition. « In satyra primus insignem laudem adeptus est Lucilius." The rhetorician is also extremely tenacious of its Roman origin. "Satyra quidem tota nostra "est." Dryden has entered into a long discussion of the origin and progress of satire in the dedication, prefixed to the translation of Juvenal and Persius. It contains also an ingenious parallel between Horace, Persius, and Juvenal; and, excepting a most gross and distorted effusion of praise, bestowed on the earl of Dorset and Middlesex, which occupies about twelve pages, the whole dedication, addressed to that nobleman, must delight the classical reader.

* Dryden gives Casaubon the credit of having "understood Persius partic"ularly well, and better, than all the former commentators, and Stelluti, who "succeeded him." But, says the same writer," the best commentators can "but guess his meaning in many passages, and none can be certain, that he ❝ has divined rightly." Casaubon published a very correct text of Persius from an ancient manuscript; accompanied with a copious and critical commentary. The third edition, printed in 1647, is in the library of Harvard College, and contains on a blank leaf the following in manuscript.

"The satires of Persius are here collated with the finest and oldest MS. ❝ of that author, now probably extant. It is in the Bodley-Library No. 2455, joined with Boetius de Consol: Philos: which at the end of it has this << remarkable inscription.

cr

« Hunc codice dedit Leofricus Episc: Ecclesiæ B: Petri Apostoli in Ex“onia, ad utilitate successorū suorū; siquis illū illinc abstulerit, eternæ subjaceat maledictioni.

"FIAT, FIAT, FIAT,

though he nowhere acknowledges, that his favorite author falls below them en masse, yet he grants, that he is often obscure, and sometimes an unhappy imitator of his predecessor, Horace. It was the object of Persius to write with sententious brevity, and in lofty numbers. Aware that wit was not his province, he aimed with grave severity to recommend virtue and integrity. This he has sometimes done al→ most with a spirit and wisdom, which would become a christian. He attacked with a boldness approaching temer ity the writings of the Emperor and nobility; the levity, exhibited in prayers and vows to the gods; and the vices of idleness and luxury and ambition and voluptuousness in the great and the wealthy.

The veil of obscurity, which conceals the beauty and gran deur of Persius, can be withdrawn by no ordinary hand. The whole of him can never be exhibited. If he had taken a middle course between that strained, majestic diction, by which he is distinguished, and the "sermo pedestris" of Horace's satires, it would have deducted nothing from his excellence, and would have added many to the list of his admir

ers.

I know of but one attempt to render Persius literally into English poetry. Barton Holyday was the author of the undertaking. But Holyday was by no means a poet; and, if he had been, he would not have rendered his version interesting, or even intelligible, for he was ignorant of the art of translating. He labored for verbal exactness, for compression, and for rhyme; and, in defiance of all rules of interpretation, he studied to render line for line.* Holyday had nothing

"Leofric was Bishop of Exeter and Cornwall about the year 1050, "W. HARTE.” (Probably Walter Harte, an English poet and historian, author of the history of Gustavus Adolphus &c.)

The writer hazards these remarks chiefly on the authority of Dryden, for he has not been able to obtain Holyday's translation of Juvenal and Persius. Dryden allows, that he possessed a good knowledge of Persius, and commented on many passages with ingenuity and correctness; but his version cannot be understood without as large a commentary, as that, which he

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