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[page 573, column 2:]
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PINAKIDIA.
Under the head of "Random Thoughts,"
"Odds and
Ends,"
"Stray Leaves," "Scraps," "Brevities," and a variety of similar titles,
we occasionally meet, in periodicals and elsewhere, with papers of rich
interest and value — the result, in some cases, of much thought and
more
research, expended, however, at a manifest disadvantage, if we regard
merely
the estimate which the public are willing to set upon such articles. It
sometimes occurs that in papers of this nature may be found a
collective
mass of general, but more usually of classical erudition, which, if
dexterously
besprinkled over a proper surface of narrative, would be sufficient to
make the fortunes of one or two hundred ordinary novelists in these our
good days, when all heroes and heroines are necessarily men and women
of
"extensive acquirements." But, for the most part, these "Brevities,"
&c.
are either piecemeal cullings at second hand, from a variety of source
hidden or supposed to be hidden, or more audacious pilferings from
those
vast storehouses of brief facts, memoranda, and opinions in general
literature,
which are so abundant in all the principal libraries of Germany and
France.
Of the former species, the Koran of Lawrence Sterne is, at the same
time,
one of the most consummately impudent and silly; and it may well be
doubted
whether a single paragraph of any merit in the whole of it may not be
found, nearly verbatim, in the works of some one of his [page
574:] immediate cotemporaries. If the Lacon of Mr. Colton is
any better, its superiority consists altogether in a deeper ingenuity
in
disguising his stolen wares, and in that prescriptive right of the
strongest
which, time out of mind, has decided upon calling every Napoleon a
conqueror,
and every Dick Turpin a thief. Seneca; Machiavelli;*
Balzac, the author
of "La Maniere de bien Penser;" Bielfeld, the German, who wrote, in
French,
"Les Premiers Traits de L'Erudition Universelle;" Rochefoucault; Bacon;
Bolingbroke; and especially Burdon, of "Materials for Thinking" memory,
possess, among them, indisputable claims to the ownership of nearly
every
thing worth owning in the book.
Of the latter species of theft, we
see frequent
specimens
in the continental magazines of Europe, and occasionally meet with them
even in the lower class of periodicals in Great Britain. These
specimens
are usually extracts, by wholesale, from such works as the
"Bibliothlque
des Memorabilia Literaria," the "Recueil des Bons Pensecs," the
"Lettres
Edifiates et Cucieuses," the "Literary Memoir," of Sallengre, the
"Melanges
Literaires" of Suard and Andre, or the "Pieces Interressantes et peu
Connues"
of La Place. D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Literature," "Literary
Character,"
and "Calamities of Authors," have, of late years, proved exceedingly
convenient
to some little American pilferers in this line, but are now becoming,
too
generally known to allow much hope of their good things being any
longer
appropriated with impunity.
Such collections, as those of which
we have been
speaking, are usually entertaining in themselves, and, for the most
part,
we relish every thing about them save their pretensions to originality.
In offering, ourselves, something of the kind to the readers of the
Messenger,
we wish to be understood as disclaiming, in a great degree, every such
pretension. Most of the following article is original, and will be
readily
recognized as such by the classical and general reader — some portions
of it, may have been written down in the words, or nearly in the words,
of the primitive authorities. The whole is taken from a confused mass
of
marginal notes, and entries in a common-place-book. No certain
arrangement
has been considered necessary; and, indeed, so heterogeneous a farrago
it would have been an endless task to methodize. We have chosen the
heading
Pinakidia, or Tablets, as one sufficiently comprehensive. It was used,
for a somewhat similar purpose, by Dionysius of Harlicarnassus.
——
The whole of Bulwer's elaborate
argument on the
immortality
of the soul, which he has put into the mouth of the "Ambitious
Student,"
may be confuted through the author's omission of one particular point
in
his summary of the attributes of Deity — a point which we cannot
believe
omitted altogether through accident. A single link is deficient in the
chain — but the chain is worthless without it. No man doubts the
immortality
of the soul — yet of all truths this truth of immortality is the most
difficult
to prove by any mere series of syllogisms. [column 2:]
We would refer our readers to the argument here mentioned.
——
The rude rough wild waste has its power to please,
a line in one Mr. Odiorne's poem, "The Progress of
Refinement," is
pronounced
by the American author of a book entitled "Ante-Diluvian Antiquities,"
"the very best alliteration in all poetry."
——
The Turkish Spy is the original of many similar
works —
among
the best of which are Montesquieu's Persian Letters, and the British
Spy of our own Wirt. It was written undoubtedly by John Paul
Marana,
an Italian, ins Italian, but probably was first published in French.
Dr.
Johnson, who saw only an English translation, supposed it an English
work.
Marana died in 1693.
——
The hunter and the deer a shade
is a much admired line in Campbell's Gertrude of
Wyoming —
but
the identical line is to be found in the poems of the American Freneau.
——
Corneille's celebrated, Moi of Medea is borrowed
from
Seneca.
Racine, in Phoedra, has stolen nearly the whole scene of the
declaration
of love from the same puerile writer.
——
The peculiar zodiac of the comets is comprised in these
verses of
Cassini
—
Antinous, Pegasusque, Andromeda, Taurus, Orion,
Procyon, atque Hydrus, Centaurus, Scorpius, Arcus.
——
Speaking of the usual representation of the banquet
scene in
Macbeth,
Von Raumer, the German historian, mentions a shadowy figure thrown by
optical
means into the chair of Banquo, and producing intense effect upon the
audience.
Enslen, a German optician, conceived this idea, and accomplished it
without
difficulty.
——
A religious hubbub, such as the world has seldom seen,
was excited,
during the reign of Frederic II, by the imagined virulence of a
book entitled "The Three Impostors." It was attributed to Pierre des
Vignes,
chancellor of the king, who was accused by the Pope of having treated
the
religions of Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet as political fables. The work in
question, however, which was squabbled about, abused, defended, and
familiarly quoted by all parties, is well proved never to have
existed.
——
The word [[Greek text=]]TvXn [[=Greek Text]], or
Fortune, does not
appear
once in the whole Iliad.
——
The "Lamentations" of Jeremiah are written, with the
exception of
the
last chapter, in acrostic verse: that is to say, every line or couplet
begins, in alphabetical order, with some letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
In the third chapter each letter is repeated three times successively.
——
The fullest account of the Amazons is to be found in
Diodorus
Siculus.
——
Theophrastus, in his botanical works, anticipated the [page
575:] sexual system of Linnaeus. Philolaus of Crotona
maintained
that comets appeared after a certain revolution and AEcetes contended
for
the existence of what is now called the new world. Pulci, "the sire of
the half -serious rhyme," has a passage expressly alluding to a western
continent. Dante, two centuries before, has the same allusion.
De vostri sensi ch e del rimanente
Non vogliate negar l'esperenza
Diretro al sol, del mondo sensa gente.
——
Cicero makes finis masculine, Virgil feminine.
Usque ad eum
finem
— Cicero. Quae finis standi? Haec finis Priami fatorum — Virgil.
——
Dante left a poem in three languages-Latin, Provencal,
and Italian.
Rambaud de Vachieras left one in five.
——
Marcus Antoninus wrote a book entitled [[Greek text=]]
Txx xxx xxxx
[[=Greek text]] — Of the things which concern himself. It would be a
good
title for a Diary.
——
Lipsius, in his treatise " De Supplicio Crucis," says
that the
upright
beam of the cross was a fixture at the place of execution,
whither
the criminal was made to bear only the transverse arm. Consequently the
painters are in error who depict our Savior bearing the entire cross.
——
The stream flowing through the middle of the valley of
Jehoshaphat,
is called, in the Gospel of St. John, "the brook of cedars." In the
Septuagint
the word is [[Greek text=]] xxxxx, [[=Greek text]] darkness, from the
Hebrew
Kiddar, black, and not [[Greek text=]] xxxx, [[=Greek text]] of cedars.
——
Seneca says that Appion, a grammarian of the age of
Caligula,
maintained
that Homer himself made the division of the Iliad and Odyssey into
books,
and evidences the first word of the Iliad, [[Greet text=]] Mxxx,
[[=Greek
text]] the [[Greek text=]] Mx [[=Greek text]] of which signifies 43,
the
number of books in both poems. Seneca however adds, "Talia sciat
oportet
qui inulta vult scire."
——
The tale in Plato's "Convivium," that man at first was
male and
female,
and that, though Jupiter cleft them asunder, there was a natural love
towards
one another, seems to be only a corruption of the account in Genesis of
Eve's being made from Adam's rib.
——
Corneille has these lines in one of his tragedies;
Pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux, et fondez volis en eau —
La moitie de ma vie a mis l'autre au tombeau
which may be thus translated,
Weep, weep, my eyes! it is no time to laugh
For half myself has buried the other half.
——
Over the iron gate of a prison at Ferrara is this
incription —
"Ingresso
alla prigione di Torquato Tasso."
——
Hedelin, a Frenchman, in the beginning of the 18th
century, denied
that
any such person as Homer ever existed, and supposed the Iliad to be
made
up ex tragediis, et variis canticis de trivio mendicatorum et
circulatorum
— a la maniere des chansons du Pontneuf. [column 2:]
[[——]]
The Rabbi Manasseh published a book at Amsterdam
entitled "The Hopes
of Israel." It was founded upon the supposed number and power of the
Jews
in America. This supposition was derived from a fabulous account by
Montesini
of his having found a vast concourse of Jews among the Cordilleras.
——
The word assassin is derived according to Hyle
from Hassa,
to
kill. Some bring it from Hassan, the first chief of the association —
some
from the Jewish Essenes — Lemoine from a word meaning "herbage" — De
Sacy
and Hammer from "hashish" the opiate of hemp leaves, of which the
assassins
made a singular use.
——
"Defuncti injuria ne afficiantur" was a law of the
twelve tables.
——
The origin of the phrase "corporal oath" is to be found
in the
ancient
usage of touching, upon occasion of attestation, the corporale
or
cloth which covered the consecrated articles.
——
Montgomery in his lectures on Literature (!)
has the
following
— "Who does not turn with absolute contempt from the rings and gems,
and
filters, and caves and genii of Eastern Tales as from the trinkets of a
toyshop, and the trumpery of a raree-show?" What man of genius but must
answer "Not I."
——
The Abbee de St. Pierre has fixed in his language two
significant
words,
viz: bienfaisance, and the diminutive la gloriole.
——
There is no particular air known throughout Switzerland
by the name
of the Ranz des Vaches. Every canton has its own song varying in words,
notes and even language. Mr. Cooper, the novelist, is our authority.
——
Incidis in Scyllam ciiplens vitare Charybdim
is neither in Virgil nor Ovid, as often supposed, but in
the
"Alexandrics"
of Philip Gualtier a French poet of the thirteenth century.
——
Under a portrait of Tiberio Fiurilli who invented the
character of
Scaramouch,
are these verses,
Cet illustre Cooedien
De son art traca la carriere:
Il fut le maitre de Moliere
Et la Nature fut le sien.
——
A curious passage in a letter from Cicero to his
literary friend
Papyrius
Paetus, shows that our custom of annexing a farce or pantomime to a
tragic
drama existed among the Romans.
——
In Cary's "Dante" is the following passage —
And pilgrim newly on his road with love
Thrills if he hear the vesper bell from far
That seems to mourn for the expiring day.
Gray has also
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.
——
Marmontel in the "Encyclopedie" declares that the
Italians did not
possess
a single comedy worth reading — therein displaying his ignorance. Some
of the greatest [page 576:] names in Italian
Literature
were writers of comedy. Baretti mentions a collection of four thousand
dramas made by Apostolo Zeno, of which the greater part were comedies —
many of a high order.
——
A comedy or opera by Andreini was the origin of
"Paradise Lost."
Andreini's
Adamo was the model of Milton's Adam.
——
Milton has the expression "Forget thyself to marble."
Pope has the
line
"I have not yet forgot myself to stone."
——
The noble simile of Milton, of Satan with the rising sun
in the
first
book of the Paradise Lost, had nearly occasioned the suppression of
that
epic: it was supposed to contain a treasonable allusion.
——
Campbell's line
Like angel visits few and far between,
is a palpable plagiarism. Blair has
Its visits
Like angel visits short and far between.
——
In Hudibras are these lines —
Each window like the pillory appears
With heads thrust through, nailed by the ears.
Young in his "Love of Fame" has the following —
An opera, like a pillory, may be said
To nail our ears down and expose our head.
——
Goldsmith's celebrated lines
Man wants but little here below
Nor wants that little long,
are stolen from Young; who has
Man wants but little, nor that little long.
——
The character of the ancient Bacchus, that graceful
divinity, seems
to have been little understood by Dryden. The line in Virgil
Et quocunque deus circum caput egit honestum
is thus grossly mistranslated,
On whate'er side he turns his honest face.
——
There are about one thousand lines identical in the
Iliad and
Odyssey.
——
Macrobius gives the form of an imprecation by which the
Romans
believed
whole towns could be demolished and armies defeated. It commences "Dis
Pater sive Jovis mavis sive quo alio nomine fas est nominare," and ends
"Si haec ita faxitis ut ego sciam, sentiam, intelligamque, tum quisquis
votum hoc faxit recte factum esto, ovibus atris tribus, Tellus mater,
teque
Jupiter, obtestor."
——
The "Courtier" of Baldazzar Castiglione, 1528, is the
first attempt
at periodical moral Essay with which we are acquainted. The Noctes
Atticae
of Aulus Gellius cannot be allowed to rank as such.
——
These lines were written over the closet door of M.
Menard,
Las d'esperer, et de me plaindre
De l'amour, des grands, et du sort
C'est ici que J'attends la mort
Sans la desirer ou la craindre. [column 2:]
[[——]]
Martin Luther in his reply to Henry VIIIth's book by
which the
latter
acquired the title of "Defender of the Faith," calls the monarch very
unceremoniously
"a pig, an ass, a dunghill, the spawn of an adder, a basilisk, a lying
buffoon dressed in a king's robes, a mad fool with a frothy mouth and a
whorish face."
——
The Psalter of Solomon, which contains 18 psalms, is a
work which
was
found in Greek in the library of Ausburg, and has been translated into
Latin by John Lewis de la Cerda. It is supposed not to be Solomon's,
but
the work of some Hellenistical Jew, and composed in imitation of
David's
Psalms. The Psalter was known to the ancients, and was formerly in the
famous Alexandrian MS.
——
An unshaped kind of something first appeared,
is a line in Cowley's famous description of the
Creation.
——
It is probable that the queen of Sheba was Balkis — that
Sheba was a
kingdom in the Southern part of Arabia Felix, and that the people were
called Sabaeans. These lines of Claudian relate to the people and
queen,
Medis, levibusque Sabreis
Imperathic sexus; reginarumque sub armis
Barbariae magna pars jacet.
——
Sheridan declared he would rather be the author of the
ballad called
Hosier's Ghost, by Glover, than of the Annals of Tacitus.
——
The word Jehovah is not Hebrew. The Hebrews had no such
letters as J
or V. The word is properly Iah-Uah-compounded of Iah Essence and Uah
Existing.
Its full meaning is tile self-existing essence of all things.
——
The "Song of Solomon" throwing aside the heading of the
chapters,
which
is the work of the English translators, contains nothing which relates
to the Savior or the Church. It does not, like every other sacred book,
contain even the name of the Deity.
——
In the Vatican is an ancient picture of Adam, with the
Latin
inscription
"Adam divinitus edoctus, primus scientiarum et literarum inventor."
——
The word translated "slanderers" in I Timothy
iii, 2, and
that
translated "false accusers" in Titus ii, 3, are "female devils"
in the original Greek of the New Testament.
——
The Hebrew language contains no word (except perhaps
Jehovah) which
conveys to the mind the idea of Eternity. The translators of the Old
Testament
have used the word Eternity but once.
——
"The slipper of Cinderella," says the editor of the new
edition of
Warton
"finds a parallel in the history of the celebrated Rhodope." Cinderella
is a tale of universal currency. An ancient Danish ballad has some of
the
incidents. It is popular among the Welch — also among the Poles — in
Hesse
and Sweden. Schottky found it among the Servian fables. Rollenbagen in
his Froachmauseler speaks of it as the tale of the despised [page
577:] Aschen-possel. Luther mentions it. It is in the
Italian
Pentamerone under the title of Cenerentola.
——
Porphyry, than whom no one could be better acquainted
with the
theology
of the ancients, acknowledged Vesta, Rhea, Ceres, Themis, Priapus,
Proserpina,
Bacchus, Attis, Adonis, Silenus, and the Satyrs to be one and the same.
——
Servius on Virgil's AEneid speaks of a bearded Venus.The
poet Calvus
in Macrobius speaks of Venus as masculine. Valerius Soranus among other
titles calls Jupiter the Mother of the Gods.
——
In Suidas is a letter fiom Dionysius, the Areopagite,
dated
Heliopolis,
in the fourth year of the 202d Olympiad (the year of Christ's
crucifixion)
to his friend Apollophanes, in which is mentioned a total eclipse of
the
sun at noon. "Either," says Dionysius "the author of nature suffers, or
he sympathizes with some who do."
——
The most particular history of the Deluge, and the
nearest of any to
the account given by Moses is to be found int Lucian (De Dea Syria.)
——
The Greeks had no historian prior to Cadmus Milesius,
nor any public
inscription of which we can be certified, before the laws of Draco.
——
So great is the uncertainty of ancient history that the
epoch of
Semiramis
cannot be ascertained within 1535 years, for according to
Syncellus, she lived before Christ 2177,
Patavius,'''' 2060,
Helvicus,'''' 224S,
Eusebius,'''' 1984,
Mr. Jackson'''' 1964,
Archbishop Usher,'' 1215,
Philo-Biblius from Sanconiathon, 1200,
Herodotus about''' 713.
——
The book of Jasher, said to have been preserved from the
deluge by
Noah,
but since lost, was extant in the time of Joshua, and in the time of
David.
Mr. Bryant thinks, however, very justly, that the ten tables of stone
were
the first written characters. The book of Jasher is mentioned Joshua x.
13, and 2 Samuel i. 18.
——
Andre Chenier, imprisoned during the French Revolution,
began thus
some
lines on his unhappy situation,
Peut-htre avant que l'heure en cercle promenee
Ait pose sur l'email brillant
Dans les soixante pas ou sa route est bornoe
Son pied sonore et vigilant,
Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupiere
At this instant Andre Chenier was interrupted by the
officials of
the
guillotine.
——
Archbishop Usher, in a MS. of St. Patrick's life, said
to have been
found at Louvain as an original of a very remote date, detected several
entire passages purloined from his own writings.
——
An extract from the "Mystery of St. Denis" is in the
"Bibliotheque
du
Theatre Francois, depuis son [column 2:] origine, Dresde. 1768." In
this
serious drama, St. Denis, having been tortured and at length
decapitated,
rises very quietly, takes his head under his arm and walks off the
stage
in all the dignity of martyrdom.
——
The idea of "No light but rather darkness visible" was
perhaps
suggested
to Milton by Spenser's
A little glooming light much like a shade.
——
In the Dutch Vondel's tragedy "The Deliverance of the
Children of
Israel"
one of the principal characters is the Divinity himself.
——
Darwin is indebted for a great part of his "Great poem"
to a Latin
one
by De La Croix, published in 1727 and entitled "Connubia Florum."
——
Mr. Bryant in his learned "Mythology" says that although
the Pagan
fables
are not believe, yet we forget ourselves continually and make
inferences
from them as existing realities.
——
The shield of Achilles in Homer seems to have been
copied from some
Pharos which the poet had seen in Egypt. What he describes on the
central
part of the shield is a map of the earth and of the celestial
appearances.
——
Anaxagoras of Clazomenw is said to have prophecied that
a stone
would
fall from the sun. This is a mistake of the learned. All that
Anaxagoras
averred may be seen in the Scholiast upon Pindar (Olymp. Ode. 1.) It
amounts
only to this, that Petros was a name of the sun.
——
The Hebrew language has lain now for two thousand years
mute and
incapable
of utterance. The "Masoretical punctuation" which professes to supply
the
vowels was formed a thousand years after the language had ceased to be
spoken, and disagrees in many instances with the Seventy, Origen and
other
writers.
——
James Montgomery thinks proper to style M'Pherson's
Ossian, a
collection
"of halting, dancing, lumbering, grating, nondescript paragraphs."
——
The paucity of spondees in the English language, is the
reason why
we
cannot tolerate an English Hexameter. Sir Philip Sidney, in his
Arcadia,
thus speaks of Love in what is meant for Hexameter verse:
So to the woods Love runnes, as well as rides
to the
palace:
Neither he bears reverence to a prince, nor pity to a beggar;
But, like a point in the midst of a circle, is still of a nearnesse.
——
His form had not yet lost
All her original brightness,
is a very remarkable passage in Milton's Paradise Lost,
wherein a person
is personified.
——
It is certain that Hebrew verse did not include rhyme:
the
terminations
of the lines where they are most distinct, never showing any thing of
the
kind.
——
Francis le Brossano engraved these verses upon a marble
tomb which
he
erected to Petrarch at Arqua. [page 578:]
Frigida Francisci tegit hic lapis ossa Petrarcae.
Suscipe, virgo parens, animam: sate virgine, parce,
Fessaque jam terris, cceli requiescat in arce.
——
"Statua Stature" was an inscription handed about at
Paris for the
equestrian
statue of Louis XV, begun by Bouchardon and finished by Pigal. The
following
also,
Bouchardon est un animal
Et son ouvrage fait piti6:
II place les vices h cheval
Et les vertus i pied.
And another,
Voila notre roi commnie il est h Versailles
Sans foi, sans loi, et sans entrailles.
——
Bochart derives Elysium from the Phoenician Elysoth,
joy, through
the
Greek [[Greek text=]] 'Hxxxx [[=Greet text]]. Circe from the Phoenician
Kirkar, to corrupt — Siren from the Phoenician Sir, to sing — Scylla
from
the Phoenician Scol, destruction — Charybdis from the Phoenician
Chor-obdam,
chasm of ruin.
——
Attrogs, a fruit common in Palestine, is supposed to
have been "the
forbidden." It has a rough rind, and resembles a citron or lemon.
——
The following quaint sentence is found in Saint
Evremond. "I own I
do
not envy him, when I consider that there are in the next world such
people
as Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Eacus."
——
The standard of Judas Maccabaeus displayed the words "Mi
camoca
baelim
Jehovah" — Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the Gods? This being
afterwards
intimated by the first letter of each word, in the manner of the S. P.
Q. R., gave rise to the surname Maccabeaus — for the initials in Hebrew
form "Maccabi."
——
Josephus, with Saint Paul and others, supposed man to be
compounded
of body, soul, and spirit. The distinction between soul and spirit is
an
essential point in ancient philosophy.
——
Lord Lyttleton acknowledged the authorship of two
dialogues, in the
first of which the personages were the savior and Socrates, in the
second
king David and Caesar Borgia.
——
Dante gives the name of sonnet to his little canzone or
ode
beginning
O vol che per la via d'Amor passate.
——
Boileau is mistaken in saying that Petrarch'qui est
regarde conmme
le
pere du sonnet' borrowed it from the French or Provencal writers. The
Italian
sonnet can be traced back as far as the year 1200. Petrarch was not
born
until 1304.
——
The learned Menage has this epitaph on Sannazariu
Ci git, dont l'esprit fut si beau,
Sannazar, ce poete habile,
Qui par ses vers divins approche de Virgile,
Plus encore que par son tombeau.
——
The two reprehensible lines in Pope's Eloisa,
Not Caesar's empress would I deign to prove;
No — make me mistress to the man I love [column
2:]
are to be found in the original letters of Eloisa — at
least the
thought.
——
Mercier, in "L'an deux mille quatre cents quarante"
seriously
maintains
the doctrines of the Metempsychosis, and J. D'Israeli says there is no
system so simple, and so little repugnant to the understanding.
——
One of the best epigrams affixed to the statue of
Pasquin was the
following
upon Paul III,
——
Ut canerent data multa olim sent vatibus aera
Ut taceam quantum tu mihi, Paule, dabis?
——
Milton in Paradise Lost, has this passage,
——— when the scourge
Inexorably, and the torturing hour
Call us to penance.
Gray, in his Ode to Adversity, has
Thou tamer of the human breast
Whose iron scourge, and torturing hour
The bad affright.
Gray tells us that the image of his bard, where
Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air
was taken from a picture by Raphael: yet the beard of
Hudibras is also likened to a meteor,
This hairy meteor did denounce
The fall of sceptres and of crowns.
——
The lines
For he that fights and runs away
May live to fight another day,
But he that is in battle slain
Will never rise to fight again
are not to be found, as is thought, in Hudibras.
Butler's verses ran
thus;
For he that flies may fight again
Which he can never do that's slain.
——
The former are in a volume of' Poems' by Sir John Mennes
reign of
Charles
II. The original idea is in Demosthenes. [[Greek text=]] Axxx xxxxxx
xxxx
xxxx. [[=Greek text]]
——
"Semel insanivimus omnes" is not from Horace but from
Mantuanus, an
Italian. In a work entitled "De honesto amore" is this line,
Id commune malum, semel insanivimus omnes.
——
Dryden in 'Absalom and Achitophel' has these lines,
David for him his tuneful harp had strung
And heaven had wanted one immortal song.
Pope in his Epistle to Arbuthnot has
Friend of my life which did not you prolong
The world had wanted many an idle song.
——
Tickell's lines
While the charmed reader with thy thought complies
And views thy Rosamond with Henry's eyes,
are evidently borrowed from those of Boileau,
En vain contre' Le Cid' un ministre se ligue;
Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrigue.
——
The expression, ' nemorlumque noctem' occurring in one
of Gray's
Latin
odes, has been repeatedly found fault with-yet Virgil has'medio
nimborum
in nocte.' [page 579:]
[[——]]
Selden observes of Henry VIII, that he was a king with a
pope in his
belly.
——
In the 'Nubes' of Aristophanes, there are several Greek
verses in
rhyme.
——
Of the ten tragedies which are attributed to Seneca,
(the only Roman
tragedies extant,) nine are on Greek subjects.
——
Ariosto says of one of his heroes, that, in the heat of
combat, not
perceiving that he was a dead man, he continued to fight valiantly,
dead
as he was.
Il pover' huomo che non s'en era accorto,
Andava combattendo, e era morto.
——
The author of 'La Maniere de bien Penser' speaks of a
French divine
who, to prove that young persons sometimes die before old ones, cited
the
text,' Prcecucurrit citius Petro Johannes et venit primus ad
monumentunm.
——
There is no passage among all the writings of antiquity
more sublime
than these lines of Silius Italicus. The words are addressed to a young
man of Capua, who proposed to assassinate Hannibal at a banquet.
Fallis te mensas inter quod credis inermem,
Tot bellis quimsita viro, tot ccedibus arrnat
Majestas eterna ducem: si admoveris ora
Cannas et Trebiom ante oculos, Trasymeriaque busta,
Et Pauli stare ingentum miraberis umbram.
——
Giace l'alta Cartag: t pena i segni
De l'alte sui rmine il lido serba:
Muoino le citth, muoino i regnit
Copre i fasti e le pompe aiena et herba:
E l'huom d'esser mortal per che si sdegni.
These lines of Tasso are a curious specimen of literary
robbery-being
made up entirely of passages from Lucan and Sulspicius. Lucan says of
Troy
Jam tota tcguntur
Pergama duoietis: etiam perire ruinm:
and Sulspicius in a letter to Cicero says of Megara,
Egina, Corinth,
&c. — "Hem! nos homunculi inidigniatour si quis nostrum interilit,
quorulm vita brevior esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidorum cadavera
projecta
jaceant."
——
An epigram upon the subject of Francois (de Bassompiere
being
released
from the Bastille upon the death of Richlieu, is a strange mixture of
lofty
thought and puerile conceit.
Enfin dans l'arriere saison
La fortune d'Armand s'accorde avec la mienne:
France, Je sors de mla prison
Quand son ame sort de la sienne.
The line, "France, Je sors de ma prison," is the anagram
of Francois
de Bassompiere.
——
The epigrams of the Greek Anthology are characterized
more by
naivete
than point. They are for the most part insipid.
——
Longinus calls pompous and inflated thoughts, "reveries
of Jupiter"
— insomnia Jovis.
[[——]]
A French writer of celebrity dedicated a book to
Richelieu in terms
of the most blasphemous flattery. But being disappointed in his
expectations,
he suppressed all his praises in a second edition, and re-dedicated his
volume "a Jesus Christ."
——
The following inscription intended for the Louvre,
possesses both
simplicity
and dignity:
Pande fores poptlis, sublimis Lupara: non est
Terrarum imperio dignior ulla domus.
——
Under a fine painting of St. Bruno in solitude, some
Italian wrote
these
words, "Egli e vivo, e parlerebbe se non osservasse la rigola del
silentio."
Malherbe has taken the hint in his epigram upon a picture of Saint
Catherine.
——
A fine sample of galimatias is to be found in an
epigram of
Miguel
de Cervantes:
Van muerte tan escondida,
Que no te sienta venir;
Porque el plazer del morir
No me tomne A dar la vida.
——
Quintillian mentions a pedant who taught obscurity, and
who was wont
to say to his scholars, "This is excellent — I do not understand it
myself."
——
An Italian metaphysician to disprove that greatness of
mind is
proportioned
to the size of the skull, argues thus: "Noan sano, che la mnente e6 il
centro del capo; e il centro nion cresce per la grandezza del circolo."
——
A horse is often seen on ancient sepulchral monuments.
Caylus quotes
a passage fi'om Passeri, " de animie transvectione," implying that the
horse designates the passage of the soul to Elysium.
——
The Satyre Menippee of the French is, in prose, the
exact
counterpart
of Hudibras in rhyme.
——
A remarkable instance of concord of sound and sense is
to be seen in
the following stanza by M. Anton Flaminius:
Ast amans chare thalamum puellmes
Deserit flens, et tibi verba dicit
Aspera amplexu tenerso cupito a —
— vulsus amicre.
——
Voltaire's ignorance of antiquity is laughable. In his
Essay on
Tragedy,
prefixed to Brutus, he actually boasts of having introduced the Roman
senate
on the stage in red mantles. "The Greeks," as he asserts, "font
paraitre
ses acteurs (tragic) sutir des especes d'echasses, le visage couvert
d'un
masque quti exprime la douleur d'un cotd et la joye de l'autre!" The
only
circumstance upon which lie could possibly have founded such an
accusation
is, that in these comedy masks were worn with one eyebrow drawn up and
the other down, to denote a busy-body or inquisitive medler.
——
Several ancient tragedies, viz: Eumenides, Philoctetes,
and AEdipus
et Colonos, besides many pieces of Euripides, have a happy and
enlivening
termination.
——
The only historical tragedies by Grecian authors [page
580:] were
The
Capture of Miletus by Phrynicus and the Persians of AEschylus.
——
The foundation of all the erroneous opinions on the
subject of the
old
Greek comedy (Voltaire's opinion particularly) may be found in the
comparison
between Aristophanes and Menander, in Plutarch.
——
Schlegel says justly, that Harlequin and Pulcinello
descend in a
direct
line from the buffoons of the ancient Romans. On Greek vases are seen
also
dresses like theirs-long breeches and waistcoats with arms, articles
worn
by neither Greeks nor Romans except upon the stage. At present Zanni is
one of the names of Harlequin, and Sannio in the Latin farces was a
buffoon
— who had a shaven head, and a dress patched together of all colors.
——
In Racine's Berenice Antiochus says to the queen
Je me suis tu cinq ans
Madame, et vais encore me taire plus long tems,
and to give a direct proof of his intention, recites
immediately no
less than fifty verses in a breath.
——
In Voltaire's scruples about unity of place he has
committed a
thousand
blunders. In the Mort deCaesar the scene is in the Capitol, but the
people
seem not to know their precise situation. On one occasion Cesar
exclaims,
"Courons au Capitole!"
——
Denis deSallo's "Journal des Scavans," in 1665 may be
considered as
the origin of Literary Journals or Reviews.
——
Sous ce tombeau git Le Sage abattu
Par le cisean de la Parque importune,
S'il ne fut pas ami de la fortune
I fut toujours ami de la vertu,
was Le Sage's epitaph.
——
These lines although extremely French are forcible,
Et comme un jeune caur est bientot enflan-me
Il me vit, il m'aiula, je le vis, je l'aimai.
——
On Cardinal Richelieu, Benserade made the following
epitaph:
Cy gist — ouy gist par la mort bleu
Le Cardinal de Richelieu,
Et ce qui cause mon ennuy
Ma pension avec lui.
——
The Jesuits called Crebillon 'Puer ingeniosus, sed
insignis nebulo.'
——
Dr. E. Young published "A true Estimate of Human Life,
Part I,"
dedicated
to Queen Anne, and describing the shades of existence. The second part,
however, which should have contained the lights never appeared.
——
The " Batrachomyomachia," is nothing, more than a
burlesque poem,
much
in the manner of Aristophanes, and doubtfully attributed to Homer.
Philip
Melnethon however, wrote a commentary to prove the poet's object was to
excite a hatred for tumults and sedition. Pierre La Seine going a step
farther, thinks the intention [column 2:] was to recommend to young men
temperance in eating and drinking.
——
"Amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur," is not Seneca's as
generally
supposed.
——
The heathen poets are mentioned three times in the New
Testament.
Aratus
in the seventeenth chapter of Acts — Menander in the fifteenth chapter
of I Corinthians — also Epimenides.
——
"Semper sub Sextis perdita Roma fuit,"
was a line written during the pontificate of Alexander
VI. Sextus
Tarquinius
provoked by his tyranny the expulsion of the kings of Rome. Urban VI.
began
the great schism of the West. Alexander VI astonished the world by the
enormity of his crimes, and Pius VI did not falsify the saying.
——
A letter was once addressed from Rome " Alla sua
Excellenza
Seromfidevi,"
in London. It caused much perplexity at the Post-office and British
Museum,
and after foiling the acumen of a minister of state, was found to be
intended
for Sir Humphrey Davy.
——
The vulgar Christian era is the invention of Dionysius
Exiguus.
——
The book of Judith was originally written in Chaldee,
and thence
translated
into Latin by St. Jerom. There are several particulars in our English
version
which are not to be found in St. Jerom's, and which seem to be those
readings
which he professes to omit as vicious corruptions.
——
The proverb, "Evil communications corrupt good manners,"
which is
found
in Corinthians, is a quotation, intended as such, from Euripides.
——
Varro reckons three epochs: the first from the beginning
of the
world
to the first flood, which he calls uncertain; the second from
the
flood to the first Olympiad, fabulous; the third from the first
Olympiad to his own time, historical.
——
Politian, the poet and scholar, was an admirer of
Alessandra Scala,
and addressed to her this extempore:
To teach me that in hapless suit
I do but waste my hours,
Cold maid, whene'er I ask for fruit,
Thou givest me naught but flowers.
——
In the Latin version of Herodotus, the lowest of the
towers forming
the temple of Belias, is said to be a furlong thick and a furlong high;
and some writers concluding each of the eight to be as high, make the
whole
one mile in height. In the Greek text, however, the lowest tower is
merely
said to be a furlong through — nothing is said of its height.
Strabo
makes the temple a furlong altogether in altitude.
——
Jacobus Hugo was of opinion that by the Harpies Homer
intended the
Dutch;
by Euenis, John Calvin; by Antinous, Martin Luther; and by the
Lotophagi,
Protestants in general. [page 581:]
[[——]]
"Impune quae libet facere id est esse regem," is a
definition of a
king
to be found in Sallust.
——
The first collection of the Iliad was by Pisistratus, or
some of the
Pisistratida. There were, after this, innumerable editions — but
Aristarchus
in the reign of Ptolemy Philometer, B. C. 150, published from a
collection
of all the copies then existing, a new edition, the text of which has
finally
prevailed.
——
Some one after the manner of Santeuil, composed the
following
quatrain
for the gates of the market to be erected on the site of the famous
Jacobin
Club at Paris,
Impia tortorum longas hic turba furores
Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit.
Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,
Mors ubi dira fuit, vita salusque patent.
——
A version of the Psalms was published in 1642 William
Slatyer, of
which
this is a specimen:
The righteous shall his sorrow scan
And laugh at him, and say 'Behold!
What hath become of this here man
That on his riches was so bold.'
——
At the bottom of an obelisk which Pius VI was erecting
at great
expense
near the entrance of the Quirinal Palace in 1783, while the people were
suffering for bread, were found written these words,
Signore, di a questa pietra clite divenga pane.
Lord, command that these stones be made bread.
——
Constantine Koliades wrote a book to prove that Homer
and Ulysses
were
one and the same-but Joshua Barnes attributes the authorship of the
Iliad
to Solomon.
——
In E. xviii. 192, of the Iliad, Achilles says none of
the armor of
the
chieftains will fit him except the shield of Ajax: how then did his own
armor fit Patroclus?
——
In the reign of Edward VI, Dr. Christopher Tye turned
the Acts of
the
Apostles into rhyme. They begin thus,
In the former epistle to thee
Dear friend Theophilus
I have written the veritie
Of the Lord Christ Jesus.
——
Empedocles professed the system of four elements, and
added thereto
two principles which he called 'principium amicitime and principium
contentionis.'
What are these but attraction and repulsion?
——
The Count Bielfeld's definition of poetry is' L'art
d'exprimer les
pensees
par la fiction.' The German terms Dichtkunst, the art of fiction,
and Dichten to feign, which are used for Poetry, and to make verses,
are
in full accordance with his definition.
——
The Germans have epic poems composed in metre of sixteen
and
seventeen
syllables.
——
The following Vaudeville is one of the drollest of its
kind:
Quand un bon vina meuble mon estomac
Je suis plus savant que Balzac [column 2:]
Plus sage que Pibrac.
Mon bras seul faisant l'attaque
De la nation Cossaque
La mettroit au sac.
De Charon Je passerois le lac
En dormant dans sonr bac.
J'irois au fier Eac
Sans que mon coeur fit tic ni tac
Presenter du tabac.
——
On ancient monuments are often found the letters A. E.
R. A. meaning
Annus erat Regni Augusti. The ignorance of copyists may probably have
formed
of these letters the single word AERA. Would it not be a better
derivation
than the Latin AES?
——
The work of John Albert Fabricius, the Hamburg
professor, entitled
Bibliotheca
Graeca, in which his sole object is to render an account of the Greek
authors
extant, occupies fourteen thick volumes in quarto.
——
The usual derivation of the word Metaphysics is not to
be sustained.
Meta physicam is tortured into meaning super physicam, and the science
is supposed to take its name from its superiority to physics. The truth
is, that Aristotle's treatise on Morals is next in succession to his
Book
of Physics, and this order he considers the rational order of study.
His
Ethics consequently commence with the words [[Greek text=]] Mxxx xxx
xxxxx,
[[=Greek text]] &c. from which the word Metaphysics.
——
The commentators upon Mr. Beckford's Vathek say that the
locusts
derive
their name from having been so called by the first English settlers in
America. The word comes evidently from loco usto, the havoc they made
wherever
they passed leaving the appearance of a place desolated by fire.
——
M. Patru was convinced that in all his prose writings no
sentence or
part of a sentence could be found so cadenced as to form a verse. A
friend,
however immediately pointed out to him the words in his 'Plaidoyers'
Septeme plaidoyer pour un jeune Allemand.
——
Despreaux speaking of the caesura in French
versification, asserts,
Que toujours dans nos verble sens coupant les mots,
Suspende l'hemistiche —en marquiant le repos.
M. Despreaux seems to have forgotten that hemistich is a
composite
Greek
word signifying a demi-line, and that consequently his own admired
verses
have no meaning at all.
——
Every one is acquainted with the excellent commencement
of the
Annals
of Tacitus. From this, principally he has acquired his reputation for
concision.
It is singular that no notice has ever been taken of the extreme
prolixity
of their conclusion.
——
There is a dissertation upon Hebrew, or Samaritan medals
by Pere
Soucier,
in which he proves the existence of Hebrew money struck by the Jews
upon
the model of the coins current before the captivity. All the Hebrew
medals,
however, bearing a head of Moses or of Christ, are manifestly
forgeries.
[page 582:]
[[——]]
There is a book by a Jesuit, Pure Labbe, entitled La
Bibliotheque
des
Bibliotheques. It is a catalogue of all authors in all nations who have
written catalogues of books.
——
Lucretius, lib. v, 93, 96, has the words,
— — — terras — — —
Una dies dabit exitio.
Ovid the lines,
Carmine sublimis tune sunt peritura Lucreti
Exitio terras cum dabit una dies.
——
Albert in his Hebrew Dictionary, pretends to discover in
each word,
in its root, in its letters, and in the manner of pronouncing them, the
reason of its signification. Loescher in his treatise De causis Linguae
Hebrew, carries the matter even farther.
——
In Judges is this expression,'And he smote them hip and
thigh with a
great slaughter.' The phrase 'to smite hip and thigh' arises from these
words. No meaning, however, can be attached to them as they stand — but
the original will admit of a different signification, viz: 'He smote
them
with his leg on the thigh,' and alludes to the wrestling matches which
were common in the east. In this sense the phrase exactly answers to
the
'crus femori impingere,' and the [[Greek text=]] xxx xxx xxx [[=Greek
text]]
or [[Greek text=]] Xxxx xxxx xxx [[=Greek text]] of the ancients.
——
It is a remarkable fact, that during the whole period of
the middle
ages, the Germans lived in utter ignorance of the art of writing.
——
The silver shekel of the Hebrews has on its face the rod
of Aaron
with
the inscription, Jeruschalaim Hakkedoucha, Jerusalem the Holy, and on
the
reverse a cup with the words Chekel Ischraei, money of Israel.
——
The Masoretical punctuation is a kind of critique upon
the Hebrew
text
invented by the Jewish teachers to prevent its alteration. The first
original
being lost, recourse was had to the Masore as an infallible method of
fixing
the text. The verses, words, and even letters are there counted, and
all
their variations recorded.
——
Among the Hebrew text of the Old Testament are mingled a
few
passages
of Chaldaic. All the characters as we have them now, are
properly
speaking Chaldaic.
——
A version of the Psalms in 1564, by Archbishop Parker,
has the
following
—
Who sticketh to God in stable trust
As Sion's mount he stands full just
Which moveth no whit, nor yet can reel,
But standeth for ever as stiff as steel.
——
A part of the 137th Psalm runs thus: 'If I forget thee,
O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the
roof
of my mouth,' which has been thus paraphrased in a version of the
Psalms,
If I forget thee ever
Then let me prosper never,
But let it cause
My tongue and jaws
To cling and cleave together.
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