certain degree of looseness and incompactnessthe lines flowing carelessly into each other, the better to express the negligence and unembarrassed air of conversation. The same manner is attempted in the 25th Idyllium of Theocritus, where Hercules relates his conflict with the Nemean lion. IDYLLIUM V. 'THE Choice' (and indeed the Address to the Evening Star'-seventh Idyl.) hath much pictoresque beauty. This has been seldom aimed at, by the ancients, in any little composition. In the Anthologia we have scarce an instance of stilllife painting pure and unmixed. The Idyllium before us is in the style of the modern sonnet. The translator hath attempted something, not very unlike it. See the light breeze the quivering aspin stirs, Whose snowy bark and yellow foliage throw That to the Muse's eye new beauties flow; The sweet delusion of the scene is hers! NOTES ON TYRTEUS. ELEGY I. Page 163, line 1. I would not value or transmit the fame. SUCH (as we have before had occasion to observe) was the peculiar office of the Aodo-the rhapsodists of ancient Greece-who, in the early periods of her civilization, were characters of the first distinction. They much resembled, in respect to their profession, the Bardi of the Northern nations. The manners and policy of the Celta were formed and supported by the influence of their bards, whose heroic hymns were alike the incentives to virtue, and the records of her exploits. Βαρδοι μεν υμνηται, says Strabo, b. iv. Diodorus Siculus calls them Ποιη]αιμελων, b. v. Thus also Ammianus Marcellinus: Bardi quidem fortia virorum illustrium facta heroicis composita versibus cum dulcibus lyræ modulis cantitarunt. B. xv. c. 9. And the poet Lucan sings in consonance with the historians: Vos, quoque, qui fortes animos belloque peremptos Plurima securi fudistis carmina Bardi. Pharsal. lib. i. In the meantime the poems of Ossian, and other compositions of a like nature, abound with transactions, examples, and allusions, that evince the dignity of these venerable personages. From the characters of the Bardi we may form a just idea of the Aodo, as they existed in the earlier ages of Greece. Such were Orpheus, Tyrtæus, and Homer. As Orpheus was the first distinguished rhapsodist of Greece (whom Pindar calls πatɛpzz adidas) he may here deserve our particular attention. The historiographer and the poet have profusely celebrated the name of Orpheus; in whom we have been taught to view the several characters united of the rhapsodist, the legislator, and the priest. Amidst the legends of superstition, it is in vain we search for well authenticated truths. But (we are told) it was Orpheus who introduced into Greece the first elements of civilization—who soothed the boisterous passions by the music of his lyre, drew the uninstructed multitude from the wilds of barbarism and rapine into the paths of meliorated society, and infused into their minds the true notions of morality and legislation. He instructed them in the holy mysteries—sacer interpresque Deorum. He was the inventor of the sacred hymn—the first teacher of Polytheism3. To the religious ceremonies of Osiris and Isis, transplanted by him from Egypt into Greece, under the names of Bacchus and Ceres, he is said to have added 2 1 Aristophanes Bargaxo. Act 4, scene 2. Hor. Epist. ad Pison. 2 Schol. in Hesiod. 3 Justin Martyr, Parænes. 1. + See Diodorus, Bibl. lib. i. mysteries of his own, in which the initiated were called Oppεwlɛɛça. Of his age we have uncertain accounts; though some critics have been inclined to fix it to the time of Gideon, one of the judges of Israel. All these are doubtful facts, enveloped in the darkness of conjecture and fabulous tradition. In respect to the works of Orpheus, the controversy has been carried to so tedious a length, that to touch on the leading circumstances of it would be, instead of a note, to write a volume. The principal work attributed to Orpheus is the Argonautica; which, according to Ruhnkenius, is a very ancient poem, whether written by Orpheus, or (as some will have it) Onomacritus the Athenian. Not a vestige (says Ruhnkenius) can be found in this piece of an age later than Homer's. The Indigitamenta, or Orphic hymns, are doubtless of very high antiquity. They are allowed by most writers to be older than the invasion of Greece by Xerxes. They were, probably, a set of devotional forms: Demosthenes hath cited a passage from one of them, in his first oration against Aristogeiton, as the saying of Orpheus, the founder of their holy mysteries. Yet have the Indigitamenta been ascribed also to Onomacritus, by Clemens Alexandrinus and others; and Grotius considers them as the effusion of the Pythagoreans, who professed themselves the disciples of our mystic poet. The poem Пɛp Awv is referred by Tyrwhitt to the age of Constantius. But the Orphic frag 5 See Gesner's Prolegomena to his edit. of Orpheus, for information on this subject. 6 See his edition of Пept Awv-Octavo, 1781. ments preserved by Justin Martyr, Eusebius, Clemens Alexandrinus, Proclus, Macrobius, and others, and collected by H. Stephens, are the pieces which chiefly interest the translator. Whether they were composed by the real Orpheus, or by one of the later sophists, they are unquestionably the product of an elevated mind. Let us suppose them to have been written by the hoary priest of the mysteries of Greece. If the supposition be unfounded, the wanderings of the fancy are more pardonable than the deviations of the judgment. The delusions of poetry may amuse; but the errors of criticism perplex, while they mislead. Let us imagine, therefore, our holy rhapsodist attuning these poems to his harp in the midst of his initiated disciples. Struck by the awful minstrelsy, let us catch the enthusiasm of the religionist-the fervours of inspiration! here, indeed, we may recognise the features of a muse that soared above the Aonian mount' -and on the sacred top Of Oreb or of Sinai did inspire That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed In these fragments we may perceive a theology, whose source is clearly distinguishable in the writings of Moses. The unity of the godhead was the grand secret of the mysteries. Such a notion (as it might have been drawn from the light of reason) we by no means deduce from Scripture or tradition. But for the Orphic attributes of the Divine Nature that are set forth |