of a cockney, a dandiprat hop-thumb; and that Jupiter, in kissing his daughter, Venus, bust his pretty-prating parrot; and that Æneas was fain to trudge out of Troy. We must, also, introduce a specimen of his rhyme, taken from "An Epitaph against Rhyme, entituled, Commune Defunctorum,' such as our unlearned Rithmours accustomably make upon the death of every Tom Tyler; as if it were a last for every one his foot, in which the quantities of syllables are not to be heeded.”

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A Sara for goodness; a great Bellona for budgeness; For mildness, Anna; for chastity, godly Susanna; Hester, in a good shift; a Judith, stout at a dead lift; Also, Julietta, with Dido, rich Cleopatra;

With sundry nameless, and women, many more blameless."

And yet the man who wrote these uncouth fooleries was, certainly, no mean scholar, and his translation was highly prized by some, at least, among his contemporaries. That such, however, was far from being the universal opinion, the following satirical quotation from Nash will be sufficient to prove. "But fortune, respecting Master Stanihurst's praise, would

that Phaer should fall, that he might rise, whose heroical poetry, infired (I should say inspired,) with an hexameter fury, recalled to life whatever hissed barbarism hath been buried this hundred year, and revived, by his ragged quill, such carterly variety, as no hedge-ploughman in a country but would have held as the extremity of clownery." And Bishop Hall thus alludes to him in one of his excellent Satires :

"Another scorns the home-spun thread of rhymes,

Match'd with the lofty feet of elder times:
Give me the number'd verse that Virgil sung,
And Virgil's self shall speak the English tongue.
'Manhood and garboiles' chaunt with changed feet,
And headstrong dactyls making music meet;
The nimble dactyl striving to outgo

The drawling spondees pacing it below,
The ling'ring spondees, labouring to delay
The breathless dactyls with a sudden stay.
Whoever saw a colt, wanton and wild,
Yok'd with a slow-foot ox on fallow field,
Can right areed how handsomely besets
Dull spondees with the English dactylets.
If Jove speak English in a thund'ring cloud,
Thwick-thwack and riff-raff roars he out aloud.
Fie on the forged mint that did create
New coin of words never articulate."

Milton, likewise, or his nephew, Phillips, in the "Theatrum Poetarum," censures this affectation of hexameter and pentameter, in the instances of Fraunce and Sidney; "since," he says, "they neither become the English, nor any other modern language." And Southey, in his " Omniana," says, "As Chaucer has been called the well of English undefiled, so might Stanyhurst be denominated the common sewer of the language. It seems impossible that a man could have written in such a style without intending to burlesque what he was about; and yet it is certain, that Stanyhurst intended to write heroic poetry. His version is exceedingly rare, and deserves to be reprinted for its incomparable oddity."

We have already noticed Vicars's burlesque bombast, so that it is only necessary here to refer to him as the climax of this positive, comparative, and superlative trio of translators.

POPE, AND LORD HALIFAX.

"THE famous. Lord Halifax was rather a pretender to taste, than really possessed of it. When I had finished the two or three first

books of my translation of the ' 'Iliad,' that Lord desired to have the pleasure of hearing them read at his house. Addison, Congreve, and Garth, were there at the reading. In four or five places, Lord Halifax stopped me very civilly, and, with a speech each time of much the same kind, I beg your pardon, Mr. Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me. Be so good as to mark the place, and consider it a little more at your leisure: I am sure you can give it a better turn.' I returned from Lord Halifax's with Dr. Garth, in his chariot; and as we were going along, was saying to the Doctor, that my Lord had laid me under a good deal of difficulty, by such loose and general observations; that I had been thinking over the passages ever since, and could not guess at what it was that offended his Lordship in either of them. Garth laughed heartily at my embarrasment; said I had not been long enough acquainted with Lord Halifax, to know his way yet; that I need not puzzle myself in looking those places over and over again when I got home. All you need do,' said he, is to leave them just as they are; call on Lord Halifax two or three months hence ;

thank him for his kind observations on those passages; and then read them to him as if altered. I have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event.' I followed his advice; waited on Lord Halifax some time after; said I hoped he would find his objections to those passages removed; read them to him exactly as they were at first. His Lordship was extremely pleased with them, and cried out, Ay, now, Mr. Pope, they are perfectly right; nothing can be better."

SPENCE.

VIDA.

JEROME VIDA, after having long served two Popes, at length attained to the Episcopacy. Arrayed in the robes of his new dignity, he prepared to visit his aged parents, and felicitated himself with the raptures which the old couple would feel in embracing their son as their Bishop. When he arrived at their village, he learnt, that it was but a few days since they were no more. His sensibilities were awakened, and his Muse dictated some elegiac verse, and, in the sweetest pathos, deplored the death and the disappointment of his aged parents.