I have no doubt will be adopted by Invernizius and Ammonius, Graiæ gentis decora, those living ornaments of Greek learning." Ammonius or Ammon had published an edition of the Hecuba in 1789. On ver. 1235, he again takes occasion, in noticing a verse of Aristophanes, to censure Invernizius, who, he says, has there introduced a bad reading from the excellent Ravenna manuscript, from which a man of but moderate sense and learning could not have failed to extract the right reading. “For the information of tiros," he adds, "I will show how the present corruption was caused. A transcriber, after writing the line, found that he had accidentally omitted two letters, which letters he put in the margin, with a mark that they were to be inserted. A succeeding transcriber, observing the letters and the mark, was desirous to obey the admonition of his predecessor, but, being made of the same clay as Invernizius, could not see the right place for them, and put them in one which they ought not to have occupied." On ver. 273, he makes another hit at Reiske, who, attempting to amend the verse, (the end of which, by some failure in the utterance of the actor, had been pronounced yaññv öρã instead of yanv' opш, I see a weasel instead of I see a calm, and had consequently afforded a fertile subject for jest to the comic writers,) observes that Euripides might have escaped ridicule by writing ex xupáτwv gàp ὁρῶ γαλήνην αὖθις αὖ. "Yes," says Porson, alluding to the words of Juvenal about Cicero," he certainly might have despised all the stings of Aristophanes, Sannyrio, and Strattis, if he had constructed all his lines on such a model."

Wakefield, on reviewing this play in the "British

Critic," "'* was at first completely deceived by Porson's irony, and took it for sober remark:

“ Ἐκ κυμάτων γὰρ ὁρῶ γαλήνην αὖθις αὖ

Behold," says he, " in opposition to his own statutes, an anapæst, sanctioned by our metrical lawgiver, in the third foot:

Quæ nemora, aut qui vos saltus habuere, puellæ
Pierides,'

that ye should abandon the Professor to this dereliction of his own rules, and such failure of recollection ? Besides, the inadvertency of the tragedian should be called, in strictness of speech, an ambiguity, and is denominated a solecism, we apprehend, with inaccuracy not pardonable in an instructor of such eminence." But after he had written this he began to feel misgivings that Porson might be playing the deceiver, and, to save himself from utter vilification, added, " After all, however, this may be no more than a piece of affected jocularity in the Professor to entrap the uninitiated in the mysteries of his witticisms."

66

On ver. 412 Porson remarks that Reiske, quod cum risu mirere, was the first that gave it metrical harmony; an effect which the reader is to understand that Reiske produced by chance.

In his note on the ellipsis in the 664th verse, Taúτns ἱκνοῦμαι σε, he turns aside to make a comment on the 283rd verse of the first book of the Iliad, aiooqu' Ἀχιλῆϊ μεθέμεν χόλον: a comment which we will translate.

* Nov. 1800.

"Rollin* remarked (being perhaps instructed by Jean Boivin†) that ioooμai never governs a dative, and that consequently this passage of the Iliad ought to be rendered, I entreat you to lay aside your anger towards Achilles. Not that Rollin was the first to make this remark, for Henry Stephens had given nearly the true sense in his Thesaurus; but, when Rollin had made it, Bellenger started up to contradict it; and, in the supplement to the Essais de Critique de M. Vander Meulen' (the name under which Bellenger himself wrote), Amst. 1741, pp. 92-101, says that all interpreters had given the passage a different signification. He seems to have thought that if all interpreters go wrong, it is our business to perpetuate their errors, and transmit them to posterity! But he next accuses Rollin of plagiarism from Stephens. If he thought this accusation just, he ought at the same time to have acquitted Rollin of having introduced a new interpretation. But afterwards, in order to prove that Xioooμai may govern a dative, he cites a verse from Phavorinus, where that verb is followed by a genitive, π or πpòs being understood: λίσσομαι Ζηνὸς Ὀλυμπίου ἠδὲ Θέμιστος, a defective line of Homer, from which Bellenger argues thus: If λίσσομαι governs a genitive, with ἐπὶ or πρὸς understood, it may also govern a dative, since πì or πpòs governs also a dative. An egregious specimen of argumentation! And how astonishing that he should have adduced so lame a verse without remark; that one pretending to be a critic should not have remembered even the well-known words of Homer! In this note I acknowledge that I have deviated from my proper course; but I have done so for two reasons; the first is, because the true sense of this passage of Homer is not generally known, and a new one, but false, has recently been devised by certain Scotchmen; the second, that I might show, by a striking example, into what monstrous blunders learned men may fall, and what absurdities they may blurt forth, if they

Manière d'Enseigner, tom. i. p. 191, éd. Amst. 1745.

† See Academiæ Inscriptionum Monument. tom. ii. p. 23; or

once venture, under the influence of anger, hatred, envy, or any ill-feeling, to pass censure upon subjects which they cannot or will not understand."

The hint about writing under the influence of illfeeling was probably directed as much against the living Wakefield as against the deceased Bellenger. Who the "certain Scotchmen" are, that had interpreted this passage of Homer falsely, we do not know; for Dunbar, in his Analecta Minora, Professor Young, and Monboddo in his "Origin and Progress of Language," * seem all to have understood it rightly.

For his note on 1121,

Ωστ' ἐκδακρῦσαι γ ̓ ἔνδοθεν κεχαρμένην,

“ Κεχαρμένη Ald. κεχαρμένην plures MSS. Utrumque probum, the German editors, Matthæi and Schæfer, have pronounced him guilty of a solecism, in sanctioning the nominative, in such a phrase, before the infinitive. "We will utter lamentations to Helen," says Pylades, in the preceding lines. "So that she may make a show of shedding tears," rejoins Orestes, "while she rejoices in her heart." Scholefield endeavours to defend Porson, by understanding καὶ αὐτὴ αἰσθήσεται, ὥστε αὐτὴ ἐκδακρύσαι, "and she will see us lamenting, so that she may shed tears," &c. But this attempt at extrication, it is to be feared, will satisfy but few. How Porson himself would have vindicated the nominative must be left to conjecture.

* Vol. ii. p. 158.

THREE

HUMOROUS TRANSLATIONS OF

ODES OF HORACE, IN REFERENCE TO THE POLITICS OF THE

DAY. SOME ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS.

WE have noticed these two plays, the Hecuba and Orestes, together; but previously to the publication of the Orestes, we must observe, there had appeared, in the "Morning Chronicle," several squibs from Porson's pen, the chief of which were burlesque "Imitations of Horace," and some humorous papers on "The Orgies of Bacchus." After his marriage he had become still more intimate with Perry than he had previously been ; Perry, valuing his intellectual powers, contributed in various ways to his comfort; and Porson, in requital, furnished him with numerous paragraphs, chiefly of a jocose and satirical kind, for his paper. Some have considered that he gave up large portions of his time to Perry, and that the columns of the "Morning Chronicle" received numbers of contributions or corrections from him; but more has perhaps been supposed, in regard to this point, than was really the case. The strongest for this supposition is found in the "Pursuits of Literature," where Porson is charged

foundation for this