That we may not be suspected of selecting the vulnerable parts for quotation, we shall give his translation of the celebrated simile of the nightingale robbed of her young, on which he piques himself so much, that he particularly recommends it to the reader's attention, in a note.

So from the poplar, in lamenting strains
For her lost young sad Philomel complains,
Which some rude peasant with unfeeling breast
Had mark'd and tore unfeather'd from the nest.
She weeps the night :-sole-perch'd amid the grove,
Wailing the sorrows of her tortur'd love :-
Each falling note renews with fond despair,
Warble the woods, and sighs the wounded air.’

It would be the justest as well as the most severe criticism on this passage, to quote the corresponding lines of Mr. Sotheby.

We shall close our extracts with part of the fine description of a Scythian winter in the third book, I. 360, of the Georgics. Mr. Stawell's version, though much inferior to the orginal, is in his best style.

'A sudden crust the flowing river feels,

And now its back sustains the glowing wheels;
Where ships had sail'd the loaded waggons pass,
And oft asunder snaps the brittle brass.
Their clothes congeal upon the wearers' backs,
And wines, once liquid, cleave beneath the axe.
The ditches, late with stagnant waters full,
Have chang'd, and ice consolidates the pool;
And from their beards uncomb'd and matted hairs
The icicle in stiffen'd dropping stares.'

The notes are copious, and as far as they are selected from Martyn, De Lille, and the Delphin edition, may be useful to general readers. But the misplaced ambition of making a practical book, betrays him frequently into long and tiresome extracts from the Complete Farmer, and Tull's Horse-hoeing Husbandry. Virgil's precept, et sonitu terrebis aves, is expanded into a receipt for the construction of a scarecrow, and the note concludes with this profound reflection: The impudent familiarity of the sparrow should not be allowed to disgust us; who, by the destruction of insect eggs, almost repays the debt to vegetation contracted by his voraciousness.' We have long notes too on the astronomical part, the formation of the ancient plough, and other puzzling passages of Virgil; but after writing about it and about it, he leaves the subject in the same obscurity as before. It is vain, we believe, to attempt to throw new light on points so often and so ably discussed; and really the illustrations of the Georgics are so numerous and accessible, that we ap

plaud Mr. Sotheby's forbearance in resting his fame on the simple dignity of, what is so rare in these days, a poem without a note.

We have dwelt so long on Mr. Stawell's translation, that we must be very brief in our observations on that of Mr. Deare. Its being in blank verse, is an objection in limine, which, we fear, will be fatal to it. That measure is altogether unfit for any but dramatic translations. It requires to support it a nervousness of diction, and sublime originality of thought, which can be looked for only in the free and unfettered exertions of transcendent genius. We know of no blank verse translation of an ancient poet that has become a favourite with the public. Pope's Iliad is in every body's hands; but who, even of Cowper's warmest admirers, ever reads his version of Homer? Mr. Good, chiefly from the same cause, has miserably failed in his Lucretius: and Dr. Trapp's blank version of Virgil is only saved from oblivion by the value of the notes. But though we condemn the choice of his measure, the execution possesses considerable merit. He has little of the intolerable harshness and bathos of Trapp, and with the advantage of being very close and literal, is not always deficient in elevation and felicity of language. We select, as a specimen, part of Virgil's praise of a country life, which Mr. Deare thus renders:

'Ah! but too happy, if they knew their bliss,
Are husbandmen; for whom the righteous earth,
Far from discordant arms, pours forth her stores
Of ready sustenance. What, if for them
No lofty mansion from its ample porch
Vomit each morn a sycophantic tide;
What, if no decorated columns move

The admiring crowd; no broider'd gold disguise-
Their simple vests, nor Grecian vase for them
Project its graceful form; no Tyrian dye
Their spotless wool, nor vitiating use
Of eastern perfume taint their wholesome oil?
Yet rest secure, and life that ne'er deceives;
Rich in the various wealth of wide domains;
Caves and the living lake; yet cooling vales
And lowing herds and shaded slumbers sweet
Are theirs for them the woodland glade expands;
Theirs are the pleasures of the chase; a youth
Of labour patient and of frugal fare:

Theirs the pure altar; theirs old age revered:
Leaving 'mongst them her vestiges extreme,
Departing Justice fled the haunts of men.'

This is about as much above Trapp as it is beneath Sotheby. In short, Mr. Deare must, we think, be satisfied with the praise, and it is no very high one, of having produced the best blank verse translation of the Georgics. We certainly read this book with more pleasure,

or rather with less pain than Mr. Stawell's; but we cannot flatter him with the hope of being generally perused, while such translations as Sotheby's, Warton's, and Dryden's remain.

ART. VII. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Sir Philip Sidney. By Thomas Zouch, D. D. F. L. S. Prebendary of Durham. pp. 398. 4to. T. Payne, London. Wilson, York, 1808.

TH

HE period in which Sir PHILIP SIDNEY flourished, considered, as it relates to Manners, is reproached with a fondness for the fopperies of chivalry. But we must not confound the fugitive customs of the age, with that spirit which fashions the minds of men, and reaches beyond the date of those artificial customs that rather disguise than produce it. The passion for arms, gallantry, and devotion, in its minutiæ and excess, may make men fight more than they need, love more than they ought, and pray perhaps at unsuitable times; but valour, sensibility, and patient suffering, are the noble results!

The universal favourite of this age was Sir PHILIP SIDNEY, the most accomplished character in our history, till Lord Orford startled the world by paradoxes, which attacked the fame established by two centuries. Singularity of opinion, vivacity of ridicule, and polished epigrams in prose, were the means by which this nobleman sought distinction: but he had something in his composition more predominant than his wit; a cold unfeeling disposition, which contemned literary men, at the moment that his heart secretly panted to share their fame; while his peculiar habits of society deadened every impression of grandeur in the human character.

Three volatile pages of petulance, however, have provoked the ponderous quarto before us. Biassed as we are in favour of Sidney, we find this a case of criticism somewhat nice to determine; for though we are willing to censure his Lordship for being much too brisk, we do not see that, therefore, we are to excuse his antagonist, for being much too saturnine.

The materials of these Memoirs present scarcely any thing new; they have already been used by Arthur Collins, in his account of the Sidney family, prefixed to the Sidney papers; and by Dr. Campbell, in the Biographia Britannica. The only novelty, is a long and uninteresting manuscript in the British Museum; a kind of biographical homily, containing an account of Sidney's death.

The life of Sidney, who died at little more than thirty, was chiefly passed in his travels; and had no claims on a volume of this size. Dr. Zouch has the merit, however, of giving a luminous disposition

to his scanty materials: with these before us, we shall track him in his work, and ascertain whether his industry has always been vigilant, and his judgment enlightened by taste.

Sir Philip Sidney derived every advantage from two noble and excellent parents. His father, Sir Henry, was a sage, a statesman, and had even been a hero-but at this early period of life, the character of the mother is of some importance. She is thus described by Dr. Zouch.

'Nor was his mother less illustrious, or less amiable—Mary, the eldest daughter of the unfortunate Duke of Northumberland, alienated from the follies and vanities of life, by those tragical events in her own family of which she had been an eye-witness, she devoted herself, like Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, to an employment equally pleasing, useful, and honourable-the instruction of her children. It was her delight to form their early habits; to instil into their tender minds the principles of religion and virtue; to direct their passions to proper objects; to superintend not only their serious studies, but even their amusements.' p. 17.

We do not reproach this passage with a want of elegance, but of definitive ideas. We find, in this work, too many of these lax and general descriptions, which delineate nothing that is individual. The above description of Sir Philip Sidney's mother, may be let out for the use of any other: like those epitaphs on tombstones, which are used by the whole parish in turn. Biographers too often fail in the nice touches of the pencil, and Dr. Zouch has here dropt an affecting trait in the portrait of this mother, which Sir Fulke Greville has feelingly copied from the life. Alluding to the tragical events in her own family, the companion and the biographer of Sidney adds,

'She was of a large ingenuous spirit, racked with native strength. She chose rather to hide herself from the curious eyes of a delicate time, than come upon the stage of the world with any manner of disparagement-the mischance of sicknesse having cast such a kind of veile over her excellent beauty, as the modesty of that sex doth--' Again This clearnesse of his father's judgment, and ingenious sensiblenesse of his mother's, brought forth so happy a temper in their offspring.'

Here are distinctly indicated, the high spirit of ancestry, and the tender melancholy of the mother; features, entirely lost, in the portrait, blurred over by Dr. Zouch. He should have inquired whether the maternal character did not considerably influence that of Sir Philip himself. We have no doubt that it did. In his defence of his uncle Lord Leicester, he alludes, with this high-toned feeling to his descent-I am a Dudley in blood, the duke's daughter's son-my chiefest honour is to be a Dudley.'

Sidney resembled 'the melancholy Gray;' like him, too, he seems never to have been a boy. The language of Sir Fulke Greville is

that of truth and of the heart. I lived with him, and knew him from a child, yet I never knew him other than a man, with such staiednesse of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence above greater years. His talk ever of knowledge, and his very play tending to enrich his mind; so as even his teachers found something in him to observe, and learn above that which they had usually read or taught. Which eminence by nature and industry, made his worthy father style Sir Philip in my hearing (though I unseen) Lumen familia sua, the light of his family.'

His father 'designed him for foreign travel and the business of a court very early.' He drew up a compendium of instruction, which Dr. Zouch has judiciously preserved; and accompanied it by a continued and ingenious commentary from two similar compositions of Sir Walter Rawleigh, and Sir Matthew Hale. The English wisdom of these three venerable fathers we love infinitely more, than we admire the polite cynicism of Rochefoucault and Chesterfield. This old-fashioned massy sense will, in every age, be valued by its weight.

The academical education of Sidney was completed at both the universities, and such was his subsequent celebrity, that his learned tutor chose to commemorate on his tomb, that' He was the tutor of Sir Philip Sidney.' The same remarkable testimony to this extraordinary character, was given by his friend Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, on whose tomb was inscribed as the most lasting of his honours, "Fulke Greville, servant to Queen Elizabeth, Counsellor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sidney!" When afterwards we find, that there was long public mourning observed for his death, and that the eulogiums bestowed on him by the most eminent of his contemporaries, at home and abroad, are positive and definitive, it seems but an idle labour to refute the malicious ingenuity of Walpole that light work of spangles and fillagree, Truth shivers at a single stroke into glittering atoms!

At that momentous period of life, when youth steps into manhood, was Sidney a most diligent student, a lover and a patron of all the arts; but his ruling passion was a military fame. This he inherited from his father, who had distinguished himself on many occasions, and particularly, in single combat with a Scottish chieftain, whom he overthrew and stripped of his arms.

He left the university to commence his travels; Dr. Zouch informs us of a wise precaution of our ancestors on this head.

'In those days when travelling was considered as one of the principal causes of corrupt morals, a wise and sound policy, dictated the expediency of observing the most rigid circumspection in permitting the English nobility and gentry to visit distant countries: and in general no persons were permitted to go abroad, except merchants, and those who were intended for a military life.'