the word is to be taken in its proper and usual signification; it is ex plained by what went before: "The bishop and the duke of Gloster's men, Have fill'd their pockets full of pebble stones,” &c. "For, seeing him, I see my life in death." This, without the conceit, is "For, when I see Gloster, I see that man dead, whom I loved above all things." HENRY VI. Part II. Act IV. Sc. 10. "How much thou wrong'st me, Heaven be my judge." Dr. Johnson appears to have mistaken the sense. Iden had mor tally wounded Cade. Cade, dying, had said, "Tell Kent from me, she hath lost her best man;" Iden thinks himself a better man than Cade, and therefore says he wrongs him. ADDISON (Whig Examiner, No. 2.) makes the following remark on an expression in a Letter to the Examiner: "A man may be said to describe or to collect accounts of indignities, and unnatural struggles; but to collect the things themselves is a figure which this gentleman has introduced into our English prose." Demosthenes (in Midiam) has let a similar inaccuracy escape him: Πολλὰ μὲν τοίνυν, ὦ ἄνδρες Αθηναῖοι, καὶ περὶ ὧν τοὺς ἄλλους ἠδίκηκεν ἔχω λέγειν, ὥσπερ εἶπον ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ λόγου, καὶ ΣΥΝΕΙΛΟΧΑ ΥΒΡΕΙΣ αὐτοῦ καὶ ΠΟΝΗΡΙΑΣ τοσαύτας, ὅσας ἀκούσεσθε αὐτίκα δὴ μάλα. In Dr. JOHNSON'S Dictionary, ἵνα κόφινον ἕνα ἐκ τῆς Αὐγείου βουστά tas expog)under the word Abstract, n. s., I find the following verses cited from Dryden's Aurengzebe to prove that one meaning of Abstract is, A smaller quantity containing the virtue or power of a greater: "If you are false, these epithets are small, "You're then the things, and abstract of them all.” I am much mistaken if these lines will not seem quite irrelevant, when the whole passage in the play shall have been considered. Indamora, (Act iv. Sc. 1.) Your accusation must, I see, take place: Aurengzebe. If you are false, those epithets are small; You're then the things, the abstract of them all. The concrete and abstract terms of logicians were in Dryden's thoughts when he wrote this. If you are false, says Aurengzebe, you are not merely guilty, infamous, and base, but guilt, infamy, and baseness themselves. GAY in celebrating Wine, that tax encomium of a very extraordinary nature : or dad, bestows on it one "Thou with eloquence profound, Gay on Wine, v. 92, One would think that Gay, when he wrote this, was over-inspired with that poctical liquor. Did he consider the fictions of poetry as limitable? or was he ignorant that Cicero was remarkably temperate, and Demosthenes a water-drinker? Επαναστὰς δ ̓ ὁ Φιλοκράτης, μάλα ὑβριστικῶς, οὐδέν ἐστιν, ἔφη, θαυμαστὸν, ὦ ἄνδρες Αθηναίοι, μὴ ταυτὰ ἐμοὶ καὶ Δημοσθένει δοκεῖν· οὗτος μὲν γὰρ ὕδωρ, Demosthenes tel ris magaretoB. Extract from Lord KAIMES'S Elements of Criticism, vol. I. p. 117. (Octavo, 1763.) "An attribute of the effect expressed as an attribute of the cause: Quos periisse ambos MISERA censebam in mari. Plautus. No wonder, fall'n such a PERNICIOUS height. Paradise Lost." Lord Kaimes actually seems to have supposed, that misera here agrees with mari; and not to have known that it is interjected, as rdless Tdrave often in Greek. ἐγὼ δ ̓ ὑπὸ τῶν γλαυκῶν γε, ΤΑΛΑΙΝ', ἀπόλλυμαι. MISERA, timeo, hoc incertum quorsum accidat. SPECIMENS OF PERSIAN POETRY. No. III. THE following ghazal is extracted from Shāheë. ساقی از غم تو عقل وجان رفت كه تكلفه از میان رفت مرده شد تاب و توانم اندر این راه من هم بروم اگر توان رفت تا شد دو رخ از نظر دور كام دل وارزوي جان رفت من بودم و دل که قامتت برد ان نیز بجارب استان رفت شاهی که چون لاله غرق خون است با داغ تو خواهد از جهان رفت "O Cup-bearer, through the grief, which thou hast caused me, my understanding and soul have forsaken me: Smitten by love, they have died away, and departed from me. My strength has also gone :-can I then go on this road ?Most gladly would I go, had I but the power. As long as thy two cheeks remained distant from my view, the wishes of my heart, and the hopes of my soul departed. I was the person, and it was my heart, that thy stature bore away. Yes, it flowed from me, and hastened to thy threshold: So Shahee, who like the tulip has been immersed in blood, will leave this world, with the marks, which thou hast caused." After which comes one from Shefalee." سرخوش از خون حکر چون شعله رقصیدن خوشست در میان خاک خون مستانه غلطیدن خوشست تا بکي کشتي چمن دزیده کردن چون صبا كل بتكليف رضاب باغبان چیدن خوشست برسرخش نخستین نااید قایم مباش صلح کردن از برای تازه رنجیدن خوشست میتوان خندید بیدردانه همچون صبح ليك در میان گریه همچون ز خم خندیدن خوشست كه غيرة میبرم ز دیده چونش بنگرم کر نباشد پاپ اشک در میان دیدن خوشست من میریزد ولپ در جهان هر دوش بیک اشک گردیدن خوشست "With your liver intoxicated with blood, it is delightful to reel like a flame! intoxicated with blood' it is delightful to wallow on the ground! whilst jovial, to plunder the bower like the breeze, to cull the rose, on which the gardener has bestowed his willing care, is delightful. But in a drunken fit, never be thou so weak as to rise up the first to make peace, because to be 2 By blood, the poet alludes to wine. angry afresh is بی تکلیف رضاي باغبان Tconjecture the true reading in the orig. MS. to be without the ceremony of the gardener's consent. delightful. When free from care, you can laugh as merrily as the morning, but to laugh in the midst of wailing as heartily as with the goblet is delightful. How shall I, who am a man of spirit, look upon that person! who has not the sign of a tear, to see which floating in the eye is delightful. Petitionest thou for that water of the face?-Love sheds it but you must rub2 dignity on your forehead, to rub which is delightful. O Shafalee, are we not filled with dignity? when in this state of impotency -throughout the whole world, each dream that will end in a tear is delightful." The next specimen is selected from Jamee 3 "The garment of my soul has been rent by woe;-come hither, ye hopes of my soul perishing with woe! Vital motion has not forsaken my beating heart, although my whole frame+ be composed generally means brightness of countenance, here it certainly means a 2 Although the literal meaning of and ما لیدن may appear homely, 4 Literally picture. it appears to give the force of the original better than any substitute. 3 Drunkenness. of air, water, and clay. When once thou hadst set out, thou borest away a hundred hearts upon the road:-God most High was surprised at thy alacrity and expedition. Every night I privately advance to address thee, my collar is torn, my skirt is rent. Debilitated through grief, I scatter earth upon my head: debilitated through love, I rub my face upon the ground. Through gates and walls impatiently I address thee, uttering my vows to Selima, that scorner of my peace. If thou wouldst incline thine head to Jāmēē, what would be his opinion?-that thou art the tender rose-shoot, himself the thorns, and branches to be lopped off." This concludes the untranslated ghazals in the two volumes 2 of the oriental collections, that are written in the Persian language. Time, and the wantonness of transcribers, have committed greater ravages on no one thing, than on Oriental MSS., more especially on that part of them, which bear the Arabic character. To rightly ascertain the writer's meaning three MSS. at the least should be possessed, for, as it has been mentioned before, no two MSS. of a Deewan correspond, and scarcely a ghazal occurs, where the order, or even the number of beets will be found alike, and in passages, too frequent to be numbered, the persons of the verbs are altered, and the sense perverted to introduce some quaint fancy of the copyist. Oftentimes, for instance, where occurs in one copy, p will in another, where is used in this, i will be found in that, besides many other examples, which clearly prove, that the difference is wilfully caused by the transcriber. Of these assertions the venerable Shāh-nāměh of Ferdōōsee stands a lamentable evidence; and although we may well doubt, whether either Grecians or Romans would recognize one half of what transcribers and editors have made them write, could their works be shown them in their present state, we know for certainty, that an Eastern poet of ancient date would in such a case find distichs, and even odes inserted among his productions, which he never wrote. In a collation of the odes in the Deewan of Hhafezz, who is comparatively a modern writer, as they stood in a friend's MS. and my own, I found the difference in a ghazal, according to the two copies, occupy several lines, although, on an average, his odes do not exceed fourteen beets; and not unfrequently a distich occurs in a ghazal or quascēdăh, which is of a metre quite different from either the preceding or the following. The subjoined beautiful ode of Hhāfězz will exemplify these observations. See note in the preceding page. 2 1 have heard that the first part of the third vol. was afterwards published, but I could never procure a sight of it. |