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fended by them; though we mean ret
to say, that every instance of hiatus in
English verse is absolutely productive ci
unpleasing effect. In the lines which are
immediately afterwards produced, as
fording specimens of open vowels with
out offence, the fact is, that very few suc
specimens occur. Those which Dr.Gir
dlestone considers as such, are common-
ly produced by the final and mute e, in
one word, followed by a vowel at the
In words the
beginning of the next.
terminating, the final vowel, by one ci
those anomalies which deform our lat
guage, has no other power than that c
prolonging the preceding vowel, or me
difying its sound; and such words, a
to all purposes of speech, are to be coz
sidered as closing with a consonant.

ART. IV. The Lyricks of Horace; comprising his Odes, Epodes, and secular Odu, in English Verse, with the Latin Text revised and subjoined. 8vo. 2 vols.

WHAT service this translator can imagine that he has conferred upon the cause of literature, we find it difficult to conjecture. To have rendered Horace into such lines as occur in many of these versions, is an act of treason against the Muses, which the writer will not expiate, till, like Milton, guilty in one instance of a similar crime, he shall have produced a "Paradise Lost." What literal prose translation would not be preferable to the following attempt at poetry?

"By all the gods, pray tell, Why Sybaris with love you to his ruin haste! Why, Lydia, does he shun

The Sunny Field*, to dust and heat habituated?

Why soldier-like not ride Among his compeers, or the mouths of Gallic steeds

Break in with bitted reins?

Why does he dread to feel the yellow Tiber? why

Like viper's blood avoid

Cautious the wrestler's oil? Nor livid are his

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This is one of nineteen odes, comesponding to as many different species Horatian metre, which the translator forms us that he has executed in bla verse, of the same measure as the La as nearly as the English language wo allow, for the purpose, we suppose, affording to his readers, who are i rant of the originals, some knowledge the beauty of their versification. must, however, in justice say, that are usually the worst specimens of translator's skill; and for the purpose impartiality, we insert one of rather be

ter note:

"Wherefore does the bard this day
To consecrated Pha:bus pray?
What does he ask, while at his shrine
He pours profuse his early wine?
Not the harvests to obtain,
Which load Sardinia's fertile plain;
Not the gladsome flocks, which feed
On hot Calabria's sunuy mead;
Nor gold, nor Indian ivory;
Nor yet those rural scenes which lie
Near where the peaceful Lyris strays,
Sapping its way with silent ease.

Calenian culture wait the vines

Of those who boast their costly wines,
And let the thrifty merchant pour
The foreign cask's delicious store,
For which his Syrian wares he sold,
Into capacious cups of gold,
That merchant to the gods most dear,
Since thrice, nay four times ev'ry year

"The Campus Martius."

O'er th' Atlantic flood he sails,
Wafted safe by prosp'rous gales;
While lenient mallows nurture ine,
With olives, and wild succory.
"Latonian progeny, then grant

One only boon, 'tis all I want;
Let me enjoy the good I find
With perfect health, and perfect mind;
Respected be my hoary age,

And let the lyre my latest hours engage!"

ANTIQUITIES AND MYTHOLOGY.

ART. V. Testimonies of different Authors, respecting the colossal Statue of Ceres, placed in the Vestibule of the public Library at Cambridge. 8vo. pp. 25.

THE author of this pamphlet, we presume to be Mr. Clarke, of the university of Cambridge; who, accompanied by another gentleman of the same university, was lately engaged in a tour in Greece, and the neighbouring islands, from which they returned with a collection of literary and antique monuments of great value, procured in the course of their progress. Among these was a fragment of a statue of colossal size, found among the ruins of the celebrated temple of Ceres, at Eleusis, and supposed to represent the goddess herself. The object of this pamphlet is to collect the testiinonies of former travellers respecting the existence of this bust or statue; to ascertain the object which it was intended to Represent; and to give a narrative of the means used to procure this ancient monument, and the difficulties which attended its removal. The former writers, whose testimonies are here quoted, are Wheler, Spon, Pococke, and Chandler. To these authorities is added that of Montfaucon. The Kakao, or holy basket on the head of this statue, has given rise, we are told, to an opinion, that it was intended, not for the goddess Ceres, but a canephora. This hypothesis is, we think, satisfactorily disproved by the observations adduced by the author of The pamphlet. The passage which will prove most interesting to general readers, is that which describes the difficulties acmpanying the removal of the statue, which are thus related:

18

The difficulties to be encountered were ant trivial. It was first necessary to purchase e statue from the waiwode, or governor of Athens, who alone had power to dispose of A firman was then to be obtained for removal; the attendance of a Turkish ofFor to enforce the order; and a vessel capaof conveying it away. The old quay of Issia, corisisting of immense blocks of

marble, broken and disordered, required reparation. Across the chasms, where the stones were wanting, it was necessary to place pieces of timber, as temporary bridges, that the statue might be conveyed to the utmost depth of water would admit the approach of extremity of the quay, where a sufficient large boats.

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When all these preliminaries were adjusted, which required equal promptness and secresy, amidst the opposition to be expected from a herd of idle and mercenary Greeks, acting as consuls to different nations; in mechanical aid, expect to raise a mass of that manner could a foreigner, without any magnitude, and convey it over rocks and ruins from its station at Eleusis to the sea?

what

"Athens afforded a rope of twisted herbs, and a few large nails. A small saw about six inches in length, an axe, and some long poles, were found at Eleusis. The stoutest of these poles were cut in pieces and nailed in a triangular form, having transverse beams at the vertex and base. Weak as this machine was, it acquired considerable strength by the weight of the statue when placed on the transverse beams. With the remainder of the poles were made rollers, over which the machine might move. The rope was then made fast to each extremity of the transverse beams at the vertex. Simple as this contrivance was, it succeeded, when perhaps and a mass or marble, weighing near two more complicate machinery might have failed;

tons, was moved over the brow of the hill, or

Acropolis of Eleusis, and from thence to the sea, in about nine hours.

"An hundred peasants were collected from the village and neighbourhood of Eleusis, and near fifty boys. The peasants were ranged forty on each side to work at the ropes, the rest being employed with levers to raise the machine when rocks or large stones opposed its progress. The boys who were not strong enough to work at the ropes and levers, were employed in taking up the rollers as fast as the machine left them, and in placing them again in front.

"But the superstition of the inhabitants of Eleusis, respecting an idol, which they all regarded as the protectress of their fields, was

"Those who have visited Turkey, know the difficulty of making such a purchase. Among other absurd notions which the Turks, and even some of the Greeks, have about foats, they believe such stones are only sought for the gold they contain; and this gold, But in the form of ore, but ready coined fine glittering sequins."

not the least obstacle to be overcome. On the evening preceding the removal of the statue, an accident happened which had nearly put an end to the undertaking. While the inhabitants were conversing with the Turkish officer who brought the firman from the waiwode of Athens, an ox, loosed from its yoke, came and placed itself before the statue; and after butting with its horus for some time against the marble, ran off with considerable speed bellowing into the plain of Eleusis. Instantly a general murmur prevailed; and several women joining in the clamour, it was with difficulty any proposal could be made. They had been always,' they said, famous for their corn; and the fertility of the land would cease when the statue was removed.' These are exactly the words of Cicero with respect to the Sicilians, when Verres removed the statue of Ceres: • Quéd Cerere violatá, omnes cultus fructúsque Cereris, in his locis interiisse arbitrantur*"

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"At length, however, these scruples were removed; and on the following morning, November the 22d, 1801, the priest of Elensis, arrayed in his vestments as for high

mass, descended into the hollow in which the statue was partially buried, to strike the first blow with a pickaxe for the removal of the rubbish, that the people might be con vinced no calamity would befal the labourers. At mid-day the statue had reached the sunmit of the hill above Eleusis; and as the sun was setting, by the additional assistance of the crew of a Casiot vessel, hired to convey it away, was placed at the extremity of thi ancient quay of the port.

"The next day, November 23, boats were placed parallel to each other from the quay to the vessel; and planks being laid over thera, a kind of stage was formed, on which the crew could more easily work the blocks of the ship. These being all brought to act at once upon the marble, it was raised and let irr the hold. The vessel then sailed to Smyrna, where the statue was again moved into the Princessa merchantman, Capt. Lee. In he passage home this vessel was wrecked an! lost near Beachy Head; but the statue was recovered, and has finally reached its destinar tion."

ART. VI. A Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri. By GEORGE STANLEY FABER, Fellow of Lincoln College. Svo. 2 vols. pp. about 900.

THOSE persons, to whom Mr. Faber's book is only known by the title of a Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri, will possess but a very faint idea of the multiplicity of topics to which it extends. It is, in short, nothing less than an attempt to prove, that the whole eircle of the heathen mythology is reducible to two united sources of superstition: the worship of the heavenly bodies, and that of the ark of Noah, with the persons and personified circumstances connected with it. Before we proceed any further, it may be proper to give a general account of this system in the words of the author.

"We have no reason to think, that the idolatry of the Gentile world was of a merely arbitrary contrivance; on the contrary, it seems to have been built, almost universally, upon a traditional remembrance of certain real events. These events I apprehend to be the destruction of the first race of mankind by the waters of the deluge, and the introduction of the Sabian superstition by Nimrod.

"It is scarcely possible, that all recollection of the flood could have becu very soon erased from the minds of the Noachide; hence it is natural to suppose, that the anniversary either of its commencement, or of

its termination, would be duly commemor
by a solemn religious festival. Such a
niemoration, in its primitive simplic
would doubtless be not only innocent,
morality; but at the same time it wo
even serviceable to the cause of piety
liable to gross abuse, which in the res
proved unhappily to be the case. The cr
memorative festival, however irreprchen
it might originally have been, was but
soon corrupted; Noah and his family went
elevated to the rank of demons or hero-2
and at length unblushing obscenity usu
the name and garb of religion.

C

"The antediluvian worship appears have been of a totally different sort. the days of Enos the son of Seth,' says M monides, men fell into grievous en and even Enos himself partook of their fatuation. Their language was, that God had placed on high the heavenly bod and used them as his ministers, it was dently his will, that they should receive tra men the same veneration, as the servert a great prince justly claim from the st multitude. Impressed with this they began to build temples to the stars, sacrifice to them, and to worship thers, 4 the vain expectation, that they should please the Creator of all things. At first t deed, they did not suppose the stats f the only deities, but adored in conjunca 4 with then the Lord God Omnipotent.

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"* Cicero in Verr. lib. 4. c. 51. The removal of the statues of Ceres and Triptolerni from the Temple at Enna, by Verres, is particularly applicable. His pulchritudo per via amplitudo saluti fuit, quód forum sometio, atque asportatio perdifficilis videlatur." L

4. c. 49.

process of time, however, that great and venerable name was totally forgotten; and the whole human race retained no other religion, than the idolatrous worship of the host of heaven.'

"With this superstition the patriarch Ham seems to have been tainted, and to have conveyed the knowledge of it to his own particular descendants. Although he had been mercifully preserved in the ark, along with the other members of his family, yet his subsequent conduct plainly shewed, that he was not only ignorant of the sanctifying influence of pure religion, but that he was a stranger to the laws even of common decency. This leaven of the ancient idolatry lay secretly working in the bosoms of his posterity, during the space of near 400 years; but was prevented from openly shewing itself by the dread of Noah, who was still living. At length that venerable patriarch was removed by the hand of death; and the mighty hunter of men, the tyrannical Nimrod, rose, like a baleful comet, above the political horizon. He was the grandson of Ham, and the son of Cush; and he appears to have been the first avowed postdiluvian apostate. We are informed by the sacred historian, that the ginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erich, and Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar.' Here he attempted to establish in universal monarchy, and an universal reSon; which produced a struggle between a, and the descendants of Ashur, whose onions he had invaded. The result of De contest was, that Ashur was compelled a quit his territory, and to provide for himelsewhere. Out of that land went th Ashur, and builded Nineveh, and the iv Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen, beKem Nineveh and Calah.'

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The very name indeed of Nimrod, which rently signifies a rebellious panther, wints out the nature of his offence; and we * justified in concluding, that the first postluvian idolatry was openly established at metropolis Babylon, because that city, hen its name is mystically applied to papal ne, is styled the mother of harlots and eminations of the earth. The analogy is us: as the pure worship of the patrih was first authoritatively corrupted at ,20 was the divine religion of Christ at

e.

Previous to the building of the tower I conceive, that all mankind were acmed solemnly to commemorate the catophe of the deluge; but, at the same se, I think it probable, that they had now to entertain too excessive a veneration their arkite ancestors. This veneration by the degenerate Nimrod soon perverted gross idolatry, and blended with the anrian worship of the host of heaven. hand the sun were henceforth regarded e divine object; and the ark, in which was preserved, was profanely reverenced : conjunction with the moon. The Chal

dèans soon became famous throughout the world for their astronomical researches; and, while they marshalled the stars in a variety of distinct constellations, they contrived to depict upon their sphere the principal events, which are narrated in the history of the deluge.

Noah however was not the only patriarch worshipped along with the sun; in subsequent ages Ham not unfrequently obtained the same honour. I may here, therefore, with propriety notice a singular sort of confusion, which will be found very generally to pervade the mythology of the heathens. Noah and his triple offspring are continually represented to us under the character of an ancient deity and his three sons; and yet every one of these three sons is, upon various occasions, confounded with his father. Thus Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, taken conjointly, are evidently Noah, Ham, Japhet, and Shem; nevertheless, as will hereafter sufficiently appear, Saturn, Jupiter, and Pluto, when considered separately, are all equally the solar Noah, while Neptune very froquently seems to be the same patriarch adored as a diluvian god. This remark will equally apply to the Cronus of Sanchoniatho, and his three sons, Cronus the younger, JupiterBelus, and Apollo; to the Brachme of Hindostan, and his children Brahma, Vishnou, and Seeva; and to the Bore of Scandinavia, and his triple offspring Odin, Vile, and Ve. Many observations, in the course of the present work will be built upon this curious, though to my own conviction at least undoubted, circumstance.

That the moon and the ark were worshipped together will abundantly appear in the sequel. It is not improbable, that this peculiar kind of idolatry might have origi-. nated from the following circunstance. When the two great superstitions were united, and when Noah began to be adored along with the sun, the Chaldean astronomers, having observed the resemblance of a crescent to a boat, thought that the waning_moon was no unapt symbol of the ark. Hence they were reverenced conjointly; and hence we find, that the very same goddess was sometimes a personification of the one, and sometimes of the other. Varro accordingly asserts, that the moon, when in the form of a crescent, was called Jana; but Janus is the scriptural Noah, consequently Jana is the Noetic ark or crescent.

"This I apprehend to be the only key, that can unlock the hidden meaning of the mysterious polytheism of the antients. Osiris, Bacchus, Cronus, Pluto, Adonis, and.Hercules, taken in one point of view, as will be shown at large hereafter, are all equally the sun; but, if we examine their respective bistories, and attentively consider the actions, which are ascribed to then, we shall be convinced, that, in their human capacity, they can each be no other than the great patriarch. In a similar manner, the various god

desses of paganism seem to be all one and the same mythological character; though they sometimes represent the moon, sometimes the ark, and sometimes the globe of the earth emerging from the waters of the deluge.

"From this union of the two primitive superstitions originated the custom of bestowing the names of the hero-gods upon the celestial catasterisms. Modern astronomy still continues to retain the same titles; and Nimrod himself, the founder of this compound idolatry, still holds a conspicuous place in the sphere, and still overlooks the affairs of mortals from the brilliant constellation of Orion. The servile flattery of more recent times translated the deified spirit of the first Cesar into the Julium Sidus; and a great astronomer of the present day, adopting the classical compliment without the classical impiety, has given the appellation of the Georgium Sidus to his newly discovered planet.

"The attempt of Nimrod, to force his abominations upon the reluctant consciences of mankind, produced a war between his followers, and those, who still persevered in commemorating the event of the deluge, and who rejected with horror the profane reveries of Sabianism. The issue of it was such as I have mentioned; the arkite festival was perverted into a superstitious idolatry, and was for ever united with the worship of the hea venly bodies. The mysteries of the Cabiri are in fact nothing more than a mythological account of these events; and they will be found throughout to refer at once to the catastrophe of the deluge, and to the impious rites of that Sabianism, which was united by Nimrod with the arkite superstition."

From this extract our readers will have already begun to suspect, that Mr. Faber is an adept of no mean proficiency in that school of criticism, which if not established by Mr. Bryant, has, at least, received from his labours its greatest share of celebrity and illustration. This opinion will need no further confirmation, when they are informed that in some of the most important of the circumstances, in which the present writer has departed from the system delivered in the analysis of ancient mythology, the veteran author of that work had himself already seen reason to change his own sentiments. We must, there fore, listen to our author with the respect due from the uninitiated to a hierophant of acknowledged skill in these solemn mysteries.

In the imagination of Mr. Faber, the memorials of the deluge are imprinted not less indelibly in the languages, customs, and traditions of all the nations

of the earth, than its physical effects are impressed on the structure of the globe itself. In one place, the appearance convulsed nature attests to the admiring spectator that awful season, when “the fountains of the great deep were broken up;" and in another, with no less cer tainty, some fragment of a Hebrew word, or some diluvian symbol, has pr petuated through the dark succession t ages, an uninjured memorial of the same event. Even in this remote isha the philosopher has often traced, in imagination, the impetuous course of overflowing waters; but what convic tion is contained in the name of the country itself, Britannia, as we corrup write it, but more truly, Brit-tan-nuor "the land of the fish-god, Noah t covenanter?" The author, however, c didly observes, that Bochart gives 2 ui

ferent derivation of Britannia.

The inherent improbability of a 575. tem, founded principally on such etym logies, must be so obvious to alm every reader, that a laboured refutati of it would be as superfluous as t hypothesis itself is groundless. We shi only bestow a few words on the nature of the calculus employed by Mr. Fabr and similar writers, to shew, what needs but little proof, how utterly inapplicat it is to the investigation of historic trut

Not only are his particular derivation of words opposite, in most instances, t all probability, but his whole system etymology contradicts, in our opin every established principle of languag Nothing appears to us more clear, t that languages are reducible to severa classes, radically distinct from each ot whose differences are almost unive and their instances of agreement ra particular, or accidental. Such classe in the opinion of the most skilful judg of language, are the Celtic, the T tonic, and the Slavonic, with others which might be mentioned. If this 5 tem be true, all etymological hypothe which violates these fixed barriers, mu except in some particular instances, b wholly nugatory. That all languages have many sounds in common, prove nothing. As all speech is capabi of being reduced to a few articul tions of voice, which admit of pression by letters, so all languages me be capable of being analyzed into a cr tain, though considerably greater, ber of common syllables, which, h ever, in different languages have

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