In the eye of the Greek, the whole material world was "peopled with life and mystical predominance." The gloom, the silence of the forest ;* the solitude and majesty of earth-o'er-gazing mountains;" all that expands, enchants, or appals the spirit, the beautiful, the 66 sublime, were hallowed by the presiding influence of some present deity. The ground which the living hero had trod, was still visited by his shade; the cities which his valour or virtue had adorned, still under his protection and care.t "These superstitions are vanished- Veneration was the prevailing characteristic of Pindar's mind. "His poetry," says Strabo, "is the land of monster, tragedy, and fable." His muse loved to hear the "tale of other days," to brood over the dim and the vast, the lonely and the obscure. And it is the predominance of this faculty that constitutes the resemblance, which Bishop Heber had remarked, between his poetry and that of Sir Walter Scott. The same feeling that, in Pindar, conjured up the ancient mythi, the woes of an Ixion, the romantic expedition of Jason, or the wierd destinies that o'ershadowed the house of Tantalus-in the minstrel of Scotland recalled to light the legends of eld, the reveries of the astrologer-the magic of the wizard-walked amid the pride, pomp, circumstance, of courts and monarchs; or turned from the vanity of human pursuits to "the longdrawn aisle and fretted vault"-beheld the pale moonlight gleaming on the grey abbey, and communed with the invisible spirits, the shadows and superstitions of his native land. In the composition of Pindar's odes, the adaptation of the verse to the movements of the dance, and to the accompaniments of music was regarded; and but faintly can any modern conceive the effect of the most sublime poetry, uttered by the voices, and imaged by the graceful movements of a Grecian choir. Faintly can we hear the distant echoes and murmurs of the stream of song, and transient are the glimpses revealed to us of its beauty and loveliness. The most learned can only hope to know, not feel, the splendid diction, the judicious collocation, the glowing metaphors of the Pindaric poems. We shall conclude our remarks by quoting some extracts; and difficult is the selection, where each ode is distinguished by some characteristic beauty. "Non est admirationi una arbor, ubi in eandem altitudinem silva surrexit."Seneca. Ep. 23. THE FIRST PYTHIAN. O thou, whom Phoebus and the quire Prelude sweet to festive pleasures, Minstrels hail thy sprightly measures; Soon as shook from quivering strings Leading the choral bands, thy loud preamble rings. Bolts of ever-flowing fire. * Lucos atque in iis ipsa silentia adoramus. Pliny, xii. 1. † τοι μεν δαιμονεσ εισι Διοσ μεγαλου δια βουλας Coleridge's Wallenstein. VOL. IV. Hesiod. syg. xas.'Eμ. a. 121. 2 M Jove's eagle on the sceptre slumbers, And deep-zoned muses have their lays begun. But whomsoever Jove Hath looked on without love, Are anguished when they hear the voiceful sound. Or in the raging sea; With him, outstretched on dread Tartarian bound In fam'd Cilicia's cavern nurst; Foe of the gods; whose shaggy breast And that snowy pillar, heavenly high, By day, a flood of smouldering smoke, How Etna's tops with umbrage black And by that pallet all his back This version is by the Rev. Henry Francis Carey, the translator of Dante, who has at length given the English reader the best image of Pindar's genius and manner; nor is there in the whole range of classic literature any author whose beauties it is so hard to preserve in a translation. No language, save the Greek, could express those majestic epithets, those glowing compounds, which ring on our ear as the tones of a harp. The genius of Cowley, the learning and taste of West, Wheelwright, Moore, Pye, failed in their efforts to represent any adequate notion of the Theban bard; and until Mr. Carey's work appeared, the choruses of Milton in his plays, and the imitations of Gray, presented the only similitudes to his Compare Akenside's Hymn to the Naiads'-Gray's Progress of Poesy, and Cassimer Expode. xi. 15. manner of thought and expression. The picture of the departure of the We shall now give an extract in a Argo, in the exquisite romance of different tone from the preceding. Jason. And soon as by the vessel's bow Then took the leader on the prow, And on great Jove did call ; And on the nights and ocean ways, From out the clouds, in answer kind, A voice of thunder came, And shook in glistening beams around, Burst out the lightning flame. The chiefs breathed free; and at the sign Hinting sweet hopes, the seer cried And swift went backward from rough hands, The dythyrambics of Pindar, and the elegies, have been lost, except a few beautiful fragments preserved by Dionysius and Plutarch. As they have never been translated, we shall venture to offer to our readers an attempt to transfuse some of their inimitable beauties into an English version. FRAGMENTS PRESERVED BY PLUTARCH. Oh! when our frames are mouldering back to clay, To its native land returning, Beyond the bounds of space or time,' Doubts and fears for aye enshroud Yes, at the hour when slumbers deep The soul asserts her immortality. Visions of terror and of dread Gathering round the sinner's head Awful dreams he cannot banish, As clouds athwart the face of heaven, Fears that will not, will not vanish. These, these proclaim that he can never die. But in hell's deepest, blackest gloom, Where never beamed one ray of light, His soul shall meet her final doom, Those who have walked in righteousness, Whom pleasure's song hath ne'er beguiled, To stray from truth and holiness, Some swell the tide of festive song, Or emulative wield the bow Sheds a mild radiance o'er the scene. Sweet fragrance breath'd from incense-burning fires, Is borne upon the wings of gentlest galesAnd still, at times, from all the glorious choirs Echos the strain of joy along the happy vales. ON AN ECLIPSE OF THE SUN. FROM DIONYSIUS HALICAR. Why veilest thou thy splendour in a cloud, Trembling we gaze upon the awful shroud Return! return! in wonted light arrayed, THE BALLAD OF LEONORE. FAITHFULLY RENDERED FROM THE GERMAN OF GOttfried augUSTUS BÜRGER. With corresponding imitations of all the rhythmical peculiarities of the original. BY J. C. MANGAN. Upstarting with the dawning red, War's trumpet blew its dying blast, And on the highways, paths, and byways, |