other; but does any one, however fastidious, feel any inconsistency in them? Is it not clear that conventional use has impressed upon them a secondary sense, which suggests no image sufficiently distinct to produce any confusion in the mind? Horace says to a youth, unfortunate in the object of his love'Ha! miser,

Quanta laborabas Charybdi,

Digne puer meliore flamma!'

But is not flamma, in this passage, a mere word for amor? and does it in truth suggest any such thought of fire, as to be incongruous with Charybdis? We own we cannot perceive it, and we believe that if attention were paid to this simple remark, and a reasonable allowance made for conventional use, Pindar might, upon this score alone, be relieved from the weight of a great deal of very impertinent criticism.

But it is still more important for the defence of many of the figures in the lyric and dramatic poetry of the Greeks and most other nations, to observe that the logic of terms may sometimes be superseded by the paramount logic of passion. What we mean is that, in a very highly wrought state of the imagination, there is a predominant tendency to figurative expression, and that the mind, eager to utter its thoughts in the most vivid manner possible, does not content itself with the details and accompaniments of one single image, but, having struck out the principal figure, deserts it, and glances forth in succession other and distinct images of the subordinate parts and links of the fundamental proposition. For it frequently happens that such fundamental proposition has various aspects, which can more vividly be presented to the imagination by distinct physical forms; and we think that such forms may allowably be left to stand as integers in the picture, trusting for their harmonious grouping to the motion and spirit of the general thought which supports and embraces them—just as in a modern toy the separate and fixed figures of men and beasts are endowed with connexion and life by the whirl of the card upon which they are painted. Are we prepared to condemn such a passage as this

She speaks:

O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head,
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white upturned wondering eyes
Of mortals, that fall back to gaze on him,
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds,
And sails upon the bosom of the air !'—

Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Scene ii.

or

or the following:--

This is mere madness;

And thus awhile the fit will work on him:
Anon, as patient as the female dove,

When that her golden couplets are disclos'd,

His silence will sit drooping.'-Hamlet, Act v. Scene i.

or Milton's lines on the sounds of the lady's voice, in Comus :How sweetly did they float upon the wings

Of silence through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven down

Of darkness, till it smiled.'

May not these figures be taken in succession upon the mind's eye, and yet so far linked together, or placed in such harmonious opposition, that a single and unconfused impression may be the result? We make these remarks with humility-not assuredly as having any mercy for the slip-slop or rigmarole of some of the modern versifiers, nor disputing Quinctilian's general rule that -quo genere cœperis translationis, hoc finias-but suggesting the allowability of greater freedom in the figuring of thoughts during an exalted state of the imagination, and especially adverting to the necessity, peculiar to high lyric or dramatic passion, of expressing the whole thought by images the most illustrative of every part of it. We may be wrong, but we can never consent to place such metaphorical anomalies as may be found in some of the very greatest poets that ever lived, in the same class of false style with the silly trash which is now so common as to need no particular citation. There is this difference at least between the errors of Pindar, Shakspeare, or Milton, in this point, and those of the writers to whom we allude, that the poets do produce images, whether consistent with each other or not, whereas the poetasters create no distinct image at all, but, after infinite distortion, bring forth words only, and words signifying nothing.

But most persons will allow that the main difficulty of Pindar does not lie in his figurative language, be that corrupt or not. That he is difficult, we fully admit, and believe that the difficulty consists almost exclusively in our not thoroughly understanding the plan and method of his odes, and confounding them with the lyric compositions of Horace, and other poets of the English, Italian, and German literatures. There are lyric poems in the English language, which, in beauty and harmony, are inferior to none in Pindar; but they are not like Pindar's odes; the plan is different, the tone is different, the style is different. Pindar could not have written the Prothalamion or Epithalamion of Spenser, nor Wordsworth's Platonic Ode; but neither could Spenser or Wordsworth have risen to the splendid-the almost light

ning energy of the first Pythian, or to the marvellous picturesqueness of the fourth Pythian. We imagine Pindar to be a strictly unique poet; he seems to have been as peculiar amongst his own countrymen-gópavτov nab' "Exλavas-as he has remained ever since. Corinna, indeed, his preceptress, must be named; but nothing of hers has come down to us, nor does much seem to have survived her own time. Nor, as far as we know, was her method similar to that of her pupil-rival; it seems to have been more like that of Stesichorus, who excelled in a peculiar combination of the epic and lyric styles, which, upon a former occasion, we said might have been something like the manner exhibited in the Kehama. But Pindar, although he followed the advice and example of Corinna in introducing narration in his odes, did so upon truer principles of lyric poetry; his narrative parts are not epical and ending in themselves, but very evidently emanating from the theme of the ode, and serving to explain or adorn it. And we have always thought that Pindar meant himself to hint this difference in his practice from that of his predecessors, by those commendations of brevity with which he so frequently concludes a piece of history or fable:

μακρά μοι νεῖσθαι κατ' αμαξιτόν· ὥ

ρα γὰρ συνάπτει· καί τινα

οἶμον ἴσαμι βραχύν

πολλοῖσι δ ̓ ἅγημαι σοφίας ἑτέροις.—IV. Pyth. 439.

Long for me the beaten track;

For closes fast the hour;

And some shorter path I ken;

And many else there be, the followers of my lore.'-Cary.

Moore's version of the last line is,

And wisdom follows where I lead.'

Surely the meaning has been mistaken by both. We understand the bold poet to say here, as he says elsewhere often enough,— I excel many others in this craft or talent-oopia-this knack of doing multum in parvo.' In other places he says:

τὰ μακρὰ δ ̓ ἐξενέπειν

ἐρύκει με τεθμὸς—the law or principle of the ode

ὧραι τ' ἐπειγόμεναι.—IV. Nem. 53.

πάντα δ ̓ ἐξειπεῖν, ὅσ ̓ ἀγώνιος Ερμᾶς

Ηροδότῳ ἔπορεν ίπποις, ἀφαι

ρεῖται βραχύ μέτρον ἔχων

Suvos.-I. Isth. 85.

This my brief song forbids to tell.'-Cary.

No; it is the Hymn having short space for such narrations,'— as in the preceding passage, where Mr. Cary translates Tεoμòs our statute.' Moore has it, correctly and spiritedly,

· All

All their glorious deeds to tell
Lyric law forbids the string;

Time urges.'

Pindar repeats this sort of remark, in different words, in almost every ode preserved to us, and especially remembers it before or after telling a story. If he erred in prolixity of narration in the beginning of his career, as Plutarch's anecdote* would seem to prove, certainly no poet ever corrected a fault more completely. than he did. The ofuos Bpaxis of Pindar may be studied by historians and orators as well as by poets; it is the perfection of conciseness and graphic precision withal. Perhaps it may be said with confidence, that in Pindar the distinct thoughts bear a larger proportion to the number of words used, than in any other poet-with the exception of Shakspeare in his Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece. Yet, after taking notice of a few peculiar ellipses and unusual usages of the prepositive particles, the competent reader finds less difficulty in the mere construction of Pindar's sentences than of those of most of the other great writers of independent Greece. Not to mention Thucydides-can any one, after due comparison, charge half as much involution and abruptness of phrase upon these Epinician Odes as upon the tragic chorusses-especially those in the Agamemnon and Choephora? It may be the effect of great admiration and dutiful study; but to us the Pindaric odes seem written in characters of light, and we feel, speaking humbly, as if we apprehended their spirit and meaning as well as those of any other of the precious works of the high Greek muse, which the hand of time has spared.

In proceeding now to lay open, in the summary manner which the length of our preceding remarks renders necessary, what seems to us to be the Pindaric method discoverable in these Odes-we must make our sincere acknowledgments to Professor Dissen, for the pleasure and instruction which we have received from an attentive perusal of his very ingenious preface to the edition of Pindar mentioned at the head of this article. It can be no deduction from the value of our humble commendation to say that we cannot assent to all the ramifications of his theory, nor that the main foundations of it were not new to our minds. On the contrary, we tender it as a proof of the truth of the theory itself in general, that independent scholars-unequal surely in everything, excepting a profound admiration of the great poet in question-should see, or seem to see, precisely the same leading lines in the construction of his poems. The professor has worked out and applied his principles with that resolute industry and patient devotion, which

*De Glor. Athen. Reiske. vii. p. 320.

SO

so honourably distinguish the Germans, and which, we say it in sorrow, are so signally deficient in most of the works of our modern English scholars.*

as

As long as any one acquiesces in the vulgar reason signed for Pindar's fables and histories—namely, that the poe was obliged to have recourse to them for materials of his poems; -as long as he agrees with Cowley in thinking, that the second Olympic, or any other of the Epinician Odes, consists more in digressions than in the main subject,-so long, in our judgment, such a person will remain in utter ignorance of the manner and subject of those extraordinary poems. It is said that the incidents of an individual contest in the games could not afford matter for repeated odes of victory. But it must surely be admitted, that if Pindar had thought it proper for the occasion, such powers as his might at least have succeeded in the description of one chariot race-one boxing match-or one quinquertium. Does any one seriously believe that such a poet as Pindar-so copious, so varied, so picturesque-could not find in the struggle and accompaniment of an Olympic or Pythian contest in that glorious age of Greece, what a scarcely greater poet had found in the Funeral Games of Patroclus ?-what a much inferior poet was afterwards to find in those of Anchises? Have we duly considered, and passed before our mind's eye, the august spectacle of one of these assemblies-the tens of thousands of Greeks of every race, met again at the end of four years, on the sacred plain-from the islands-from Asia-from Africa-from Sicily-the sword thrown aside for this and this alone-the twelve altars burning on either side of the course-the grove of Hercules-the tomb of Pelopsthe foaming Alpheus-the fane of Jove-the oath-bound candidates-the inviolable judges-the struggle, the agony, the wreath, and the triumph? Could not such a glorification of gymnastic virtue as this have furnished forth imagery and sentiment for one ode, or several odes, or even a considerable part of all the odes which were demanded of the poet? Whereas, with the partial exception of the V. Pythian, to Arcesilaus, Pindar does not, as far as we remember at this moment, vouchsafe five lines in any one

* Dr. Arnold's Thucydides and the Museum Philologicum of Cambridge are the only very recent exceptions that occur to us from this general imputation of sciolism and want of zeal; but, if we may judge from a few sheets which have come into our hands, another work is about to appear which will go far to vindicate the name of English scholarship from the disrepute into which it has lately fallen. We allude to Mr. Mitchell's annotated edition of the Acharnenses of Aristophanes-(the first only, we hope, of a complete series of that poet's comedies)-in which we recognize profound and varied erudition, combined with manly and sagacious views of life and manners, and an English style not easily to be surpassed for clearness, energy, or grace.

ode