much commended. Of these attempts the translations from the Roman poets are among the most fortunate, and deserve no small share of praise. Many who stand preeminently distinguished as poets and scholars, have been willing to forego all concern to acquire reputation for originality, and to vindicate the poets of Rome from the injuries they had received in the hands of unskilful and barbarous interpreters. Virgil has spoken with harmony and strength in the numbers of Dryden and Pitt, and Lucan has been recognised in the dress of Rowe. Creech has been true to the sense of Lucretius, though he has fallen far short of his author, and made him dull as well as didactick. With Horace, Francis has become grave or satyrical, delicate or loose. Drummond has made poetry of Persius where he understood him, and where his author was unintelligible, he has made him write sense. Juvenal has found a translator worthy of commendation in Gifford, who has generally softened what was harsh, and refined what was too gross for modern appetites. For the lovers of the drama Colman has rendered Terence, and has preserved much of his spirit and delicacy. Ovid has had his admirers; and Garth occasionally relinquished the theory of medicine to recreate himself with the extravagance of the Metamorphoses, and to superintend the printing of an anonymous translation. On these, and other translations, it is proposed, in a series of numbers, to make such remarks as shall occur to the writer from comparing them with the originals, as far as his opportunity and leisure shall permit. He has been persuaded to resume a task which he had once begun, not from a conviction that he had performed any part of it so well as many others would have done, but from the favourable manner in which some of his friends received those essays, which have already been before the publick, and from their solicitations to permit them again to appear in a literary magazine. FOR THE ANTHOLOGY. ORIGINAL LETTERS; FROM AN AMERICAN TRAVELLER IN EUROPE, TO HIS FRIENDS IN THIS COUNTRY. LETTER TWENTY FIFTH. MY DEAR SISTER, NAPLES, JANUARY 1, 1805. I DO not know that I can more advantageously, I am sure I cannot more agreeably, consecrate the anniversary of the new year, than by devoting it to my transatlantick friends. That I tender them the usual kind wishes of the season, prosperity and happiness, cannot be questioned, and if my good will or exertions could procure B them, they would most certainly be the happiest of mortals. With the entrance of a new year, we are naturally led to reflections upon the past, and to prophecies as to the future; we compare the present with the last anniversary, and we form opinions as to the next. At the last new year's day, I was in a country (Great Britain) enlivened by industry, enriched by commerce, governed with moderation, conducted by wisdom. The rich secure, the poor clothed and fed, amply protected against the insolence of the great, the stale calumnies against it to the contrary notwithstanding. The government strong to its enemies, mild to its subjects, yet firm and stable. The present year, I am in a country where the government is terrible only to the weak, feeble to its enemies, awful to its subjects, splendidly oppressive to the poor, and contemptibly suppliant to the powerful. Courting the emperour of the French, yet relying wholly on the prowess of the English. A nation idle, yet luxurious; proud, yet cowardly; debauched, yet superstitious. Its nobility, ostentatious, yet destitute of wealth; its poor, oppressed; its commerce, languishing; its religion, mingled with superstition, to a degree, that renders it at once its disgrace and its ruin. Fatal to industry, as ruinous even to morality, the superstition of the Neapolitans is equally subversive of private virtue, and of publick happiness. On the next anniversary, should I be spared to witness it, I shall be happy on my beloved, my native shores. My attachment to my country would induce me to draw a favourable picture, but my regard to truth forbids the suppression of its shades. Surrounded by every comfort and luxury which the oldest, richest, and proudest nations of Europe can boast; with habits of industry, enterprise, and generally of virtue, the domestick picture of our country is inferiour to none, is indeed superiour to any in the world. In no part of the habitable globe does domestick society, the only foundation of private happiness, stand upon foundations so stable, so respectable, and so honourable, as in ours. Where will you find paternal solicitude, maternal tenderness, filial reverence, fraternal affection, the ties of kindred, the disinterested sentiments of friendship, general hospitality, liberality to strangers, proceeding from so pure motives or carried to so honourable a height as in the United States? The heart of an American is congealed, when he encounters the frigid indifference of European manners. But there is a want of stability in our systems of every species, particularly our government, which threatens their subversion. We do not feel a security in our enjoyments, without which all pleasures lose half their zest. Our political divisions create an asperity which invades and threatens to empoison all the springs of individual enjoyment. We can soon reconcile ourselves to the cold indifference of English manners, when we reflect upon the durability of their establishments, and upon the ramparts which protect personal rights. But when we recollect our own enjoyments, they are embittered by the reflection, that, by the madness of our passions, or, to speak more correctly, by the frailty and inevitable principles of human action, unrestrained, but rather fomented by our system of government, their existence is rendered insecure. Quitting these moral reflections, which a thousand friends around you can place in a more interesting light, let me hasten to topicks which my local situation enables, and of course requires me to describe. We have all heard much of Naples and its environs; we have been taught to consider its natural history as fraught with wonders, as rendered delightful by its natural charms. Naples is one of the few places, that can never lose by description, because, possessing in itself the greatest and most striking beauties of nature, as well as the most wonderful, it bids defiance to human talent to equal it either by the pen or the more magick powers of the pencil. Where indeed is the adventurous and hardy genius, who would attempt to describe, on paper, or on canvass, in colours approaching those of nature, the glowing furies of Vesuvius, the smoking wonders of Solfaterra, or the milder but irresistible charms of the landscape of St. Elmo? Without attempting a task which I consider so herculean, I shall simply state to you the objects we have visited, without the colours which render them so interesting to the beholder, but which are so difficult to transcribe. The bay of Naples, is, as you have often heard, one of the most delightful objects in nature. Of a semicircular form, surrounded with verdant hills, overtopped again by lofty and picturesque mountains, its entrance ornamented by the enchanting island of Capri, it unites every trait which painters or poets have thought necessary to introduce into their pictures of the sublime and beautiful. Its mountains and shores sometimes exhibit the dreadful, and sometimes the smiling features of nature. In the first, the gloomy Salvator Rosa studied and acquired his awful, yet irresistible talent of depicturing the horribly sublime; and in the last, the celebrated Poussin, and the more interesting Claude Lorrain, caught those ravishing sketches, which have not only rendered their names immortal, but have given a pecuniary value to their works, which even the inimitable pencils of Raphael and Guido, of Corregio and Titian have scarcely attained. On the most beautiful part of this bay, the king of Naples has with great taste laid out a publick walk, called the Villa reale, the fashionable lounge of the idle and luxurious citizens of this most idle and luxurious city of Europe. This publick promenade is bounded by the sea on one side, and extends along the beach for nearly one mile; on the other, a noble street, excellently paved, affords a most agreeable route for the coaches and equipages of the city. In the midst of, and opposite to this scene of splendour, stands the celebrated hotel of the Granda Bretagna, where we reside, and where we have an opportunity to enjoy the finest scenery in the world without the smallest exertion. Quitting this spot in an open chariot, we skirt along the beach of this enchanting bay, for about two miles, when we enter the famous, and justly distinguished grotto of Pausilippo, or, as the scholars say, 66 Pausilupos," from the Greek, which, they say, signifies "grief appeasing." This grotto is so called, because it is pierced through a mountain of that name, which is supposed to have that appellation on account of its beauties, its verdure, its prospect, its richness of soil, its salubrity of air. The grotto is one of the most wonderful works of human exertion ever discovered. It is no less than an actual perforation of a solid mountain of rock, 2414 feet long, 21 feet wide, and from 24 to 84 feet high. In other words, it is a most perfect road cut through a mountain of rock for nearly half a mile. The bottom of the road is paved, and the passage is very practicable, and constantly crowded, but it is extremely unpleasant, and even dangerous, on account of its extreme darkness. Antiquaries are not agreed as to the authors of this most bold and stupendous project. Some sensible writers think that it is more ancient than the times of the Romans; others have attributed it to Marcus Cocceius, a Roman, from a passage in Strabo, but later criticks have thought that that passage was misconstrued. Let the author have been Cocceius or Hercules, it is a most astonishing work, Houses, and almost a town, are built upon the mountain over it, which would have been almost impassable but for this grotto. At present you pass it in a few minutes, and upon your issuing out on the other side, you lose the city of Naples, Vesuvius, the bay of Naples, and open to the most delightful scenery in the world. You enter ground the most classick and interesting in Magna Graecia. Independent of classick story, it is beautiful in itself. Fertile, loaded with vines, orange and lemon trees, with the enchanting bay of Baia in front of you, and the mountain of Pausilippo in the rear, you would see enough to fancy that it would excite the imagination of poets, if Virgil had never sung, and if Cicero and Pliny had been mute. In advancing towards Baia, the ancient seat of Roman luxury, you coast along the beach, where the roaring waves wash the same shores which were so much the delight of the ancient senators of Rome. You look round with eagerness for the proud villas, the magnificent temples, the costly and luxurious baths, the extensive theatres, which decorated these shores. You recollect, that tired with the toils of state, or worn out by its cares, fatigued with the pomp of the city, or desirous of withdrawing from the jealous eyes of a despotick court, some of the most illustrious Romans passed their days in luxurious ease in the mild and enchanting vicinity of Baia, in the interesting scenery of Magna Graecia. But alas! volcanoes, earthquakes, the ocean, and time, more destructive than all, have rendered this delightful abode of luxury and taste, the most desert and forlorn country of Europe. The remnants of former grandeur, and the curiosities it now contains, shall be the subject of a future letter. MEMOIRS OF PROFESSOR PORSON. Compositum jus fasque animi, sanctosque recessus PERS. IT is equally the duty and the province of this miscellany to call the attention of our contemporaries to examples of departed worth, and to stimulate the exertions of those, whose intimacy with the deceased, and whose knowledge of their characters, at once ani mates and enables them to pourtray their merits with an exactness of drawing and strength of colouring, proportioned to the importance of the subject. In no instance have we felt this duty more imperious, in no instance is the discharge of it more difficult, than when we find ourselves called upon to record the death of Mr. Professor Porson. His talents and attainments were exercised in a path of literature so rarely trodden, that few minds, except his own, could measure exactly the extent of his discoveries; and, besides the difficulty of giving interest to a life of study, his early years were passed in an unusual degree of privacy. It would, therefore, be a task of peculiar nicety, to state with accuracy, the facts of his initiation into letters; and still more to develope, with precision, the effect those uncommon circumstances produced upon his growing understanding. Having thus briefly stated the arduous nature of the duty imposed upon us, we nevertheless feel that it is our duty to attempt, at least in some degree, to trace the lineaments of this incomparable scholar's mind, and to point out the reasons, for which we must consider his death as the most irreparable loss that classical literature has ever yet sustained. The circumstances of his early education, and the more prominent incidents of his life, have been detailed with great ability in a periodical publication,* by a writer, in whom the means of information have been combined with a most anxious and natural desire to pay a deserved tribute to the memory of a departed and most distinguished relative. Insufficient as the time has been to collect ampler materials, we cannot do justice to the subject more completely, than by adopting this account as the ground work of our notice, and subjoining such observations upon a character so remarkable, as an accurate study of his works, added to the impressions made by our own personal knowledge, has suggested to us upon this melancholy occasion. "Richard Porson was born at East Ruston, in Norfolk, on Christmas day, 1759; so that he was only in his forty ninth year. Every thing about this most eminent scholar, and particularly the circumstances which laid the foundation of that most inestimable memory, by which he was enabled to store his mind with all the riches of literature, ancient and modern, will become truly interesting to the world. He owed the blessing to the care and judgment of his father, Mr. Huggin Porson, who was parish clerk of East Ruston; and who, though in humble life, and without the advantages himself of early education, laid the basis of his son's * Morning Chronicle, Thursday, October the 8th, 1808. We of course adopt this, not merely as an authentick account, but as the production of an acute and vigorous mind. We have understood that there are one or two inaccuracies relating to some transactions at Cambridge; but we are sure they are quite involuntary; and, if such be the case, we have no doubt that the author will correct them in the more detailed account which he promises, and which the world will expect from him with singular anxiety. |