Pinakidia — 1902 historical reading — reading text

verses, Cet illustre Comédien De son art traça la carrière: Il fut le maitre de Molière Et la Nature fut le sien. ———— A curious passage in a letter from Cicero to his literary friend Papyrius Pætus, shows that our custom of annexing a farce or pantomime to a tragic drama existed among the Romans. ———— In Cary's “Dante” is the following passage And pilgrim newly on his road with love Thrills if he hear the vesper bell from far That seems to mourn for the expiring day. Gray has also The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. ———— Marmontel in the “Encyclopédie” declares that the Italians did not possess a single comedy worth reading — therein displaying his ignorance. Some of the greatest names in Italian Literature were writers of comedy. Baretti mentions a collection of four thousand dramas made by Apostolo Zeno, of which the greater part were comedies — many of a high order. ———— A comedy or opera by Andreini was the origin of “Paradise Lost.” Andreini's Adamo was the model of Milton's Adam. ———— Milton has the expression “Forget thyself to marble.” Pope has the line “I have not yet forgot myself to stone.” ———— The noble simile of Milton, of Satan with the rising sun in the first book of the “Paradise Lost,” had nearly occasioned the suppression of that epic: it was supposed to contain a treasonable allusion. ———— Campbell's line Like angel visits few and far between, is a palpable plagiarism. Blair has Its visits Like angel visits short and far between. ———— In Hudibras are these lines — Each window like the pillory appears With heads thrust through, nailed by the ears. Young in his “Love of Fame” has the following An opera, like a pillory, may be said To nail our ears down and expose our head. ———— Goldsmith's celebrated lines Man wants but little here below Nor wants that little long. are stolen from Young; who has Man wants but little, nor that little long. ———— The character of the ancient Bacchus, that graceful divinity, seems to have been little understood by Dryden. The line in Virgil Et quocunque deus circum caput egit honestum is thus grossly mistranslated, On whate’er side he turns his honest face. ———— There are about one thousand lines identical in the Iliad and Odyssey. ———— Macrobius gives the form of an imprecation by which the Romans believed whole towns could be demolished and armies defeated. It commences “Dis Pater sive Jovis mavis sive quo alio nomine fas est nominare,” and ends “Si haec ita faxitis ut ego sciam, sentiam, intelligamque, tum quisquis votum hoc faxit recte factum esto, ovibus atris tribus, Tellus mater, teque Jupiter, obtestor.” ———— The “Courtier” of Baldazzar Castiglione, 1528, is the first attempt at periodical moral Essay with which we are acquainted. The “Noctes Atticae” of Aulus Gellius cannot be allowed to rank as such. ———— These lines were written over the closet door of M. Ménard: — Las d’espérer, et de me plaindre De l’amour, des grands, et du sort, C’est ici que j’attends la mort Sans la désirer ou la craindre. ———— Martin Luther in his reply to Henry VIII.th's book by which the latter acquired the title of “Defender of the Faith,” calls the monarch very unceremoniously “a pig, an ass, a dunghill, the spawn of an adder, a basilisk, a lying buffoon dressed in a king's robes, a mad fool with a frothy mouth and a whorish face.” ———— The Psalter of Solomon, which contains 18 psalms, is a work which was found in Greek in the library of Ausburg, and has been translated into Latin by John Lewis de la Cerda. It is supposed not to be Solomon's, but the work of some Hellenistical Jew, and composed in imitation of David's Psalms. The Psalter was known to the ancients, and was formerly in the famous Alexandrian MS. ———— An unshaped kind of something first appeared, is a line in Cowley's famous description of the Creation. ———— It is probable that the queen of Sheba was Balkis — that Sheba was a kingdom in the southern part of Arabia Felix, and that the people were called Sabæans. These lines of Claudian relate to the people and queen, Medis, levibusque Sabareis Imperat hic sexus; reginarumque sub armis Barbariae magna pars jacet. ———— Sheridan declared he would rather be the author of the ballad called Hosier's Ghost, by Glover, than of the Annals of Tacitus. ———— The word Jehovah is not Hebrew. The Hebrews had no such letters as J or V. The word is properly Iah — Uah — compounded of Iah Essence and Uah Existing. Its full meaning is the self-existing essence of all things. ———— The “Song of Solomon” throwing aside the heading of the chapters, which is the work of the English translators, contains nothing which relates to the Savior or the Church. It does not, like every other sacred book, contain even the name of the Deity. ———— In the Vatican is an ancient picture of Adam, with the Latin inscription “Adam divinitus edoctus, primus scientiarum et literarum inventor.” ———— The word translated “slanderers” in I Timothy iii, 2, and that translated “false accusers” in Titus ii, 3, are “female devils” in the original Greek of the New Testament. ———— The Hebrew language contains no word (except perhaps Jehovah) which conveys to the mind the idea of Eternity. The translators of the Old Testament have used the word Eternity but once. ———— “The slipper of Cinderella,” says the editor of the new edition of Warton finds a parallel in the history of the celebrated Rhodope.” Cinderella is a tale of universal currency. An ancient Danish ballad has some of the incidents. It is popular among the Welch — also among the Poles — in Hesse and Schwerin. Schottky found it among the Servian fables. Rollenbagen, in his Froachmäuseler, speaks of it as the tale of the despised Aschen-possel. Luther mentions it. It is in the Italian Pentamerone under the title of Cenerentola. Porphyry, than whom no one could be better acquainted with the theology of the ancients, acknowledged Vesta, Rhea, Ceres, Themis, Priapus, Proserpina, Bacchus, Attis, Adonis, Silenus, and the Satyrs to be one and the same. ———— Servius on Virgil's AEneid speaks of a bearded Venus.The poet Calvus in Macrobius speaks of Venus as masculine. Valerius Soranus among other titles calls Jupiter the Mother of the Gods. ———— In Suidas is a letter fiom Dionysius, the Areopagite, dated Heliopolis, in the fourth year of the 202d Olympiad (the year of Christ's crucifixion), to his friend Apollophanes, in which is mentioned a total eclipse of the sun at noon. “Either,” says Dionysius “the author of nature suffers, or he sympathizes with some who do.” ———— The most particular history of the Deluge, and the nearest of any to the account given by Moses, is to be found in Lucian (De Dea Syria.) ———— The Greeks had no historian prior to Cadmus Milesius, nor any public inscription of which we can be certified, before the laws of Draco. ———— So great is the uncertainty of ancient history that the epoch of Semiramis cannot be ascertained within 1535 years, for according to Syncellus, she lived before Christ 2177, Patavius, she lived before Christ 2060, Helvicus, she lived before Christ 2248, Eusebius, she lived before Christ 1984, Mr. Jackson, she lived before Christ 1964, Archbishop Usher, she lived before Christ 1215, Philo-Biblius from Sanconiathon, 1200, Herodotus, about 713. ———— The book of Jasher, said to have been preserved from the deluge by Noah, but since lost, was extant in the time of Joshua, and in the time of David. Mr. Bryant thinks, however, very justly, that the ten tables of stone were the first written characters. The book of Jasher is mentioned Joshua x. 13, and 2 Samuel i. 18. ———— André Chénier, imprisoned during the French Revolution, began thus some lines on his unhappy situation, Peut-être avant que l’heure en cercle promenée Ait posé sur l’émail brillant Dans les soixante pas où sa route est bornée Son pied sonore et vigilant, Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupière At this instant André Chénier was interrupted by the officials of the guillotine. ———— Archbishop Usher, in a MS. of St. Patrick's life, said to have been found at Louvain as an original of a very remote date, detected several entire passages purloined from his own writings. ———— An extract from the “Mystery of St. Denis” is in the “Bibliothèque du Théâtre Français, depuis son origine, Dresde. 1768.” In this serious drama, St. Denis, having been tortured and at length decapitated, rises very quietly, takes his head under his arm and walks off the stage in all the dignity of martyrdom. ———— The idea of “No light but rather darkness visible” was perhaps suggested to Milton by Spenser's A little gloaming light much like a shade. ———— In the Dutch Vondel's tragedy “The Deliverance of the Children of Israel,” one of the principal characters is the Divinity himself. ———— Darwin is indebted for a great part of his “Great Poem” to a Latin one by De La Croix, published in 1727 and entitled “Connubia Florum.” ———— Mr. Bryant, in his learned “Mythology,” says that although the Pagan fables are not believed, yet we forget ourselves continually and make inferences from them as existing realities. ———— The shield of Achilles in Homer seems to have been copied from some Pharos which the poet had seen in Egypt. What he describes on the central part of the shield is a map of the earth and of the celestial appearances. ———— Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ is said to have prophesied that a stone would fall from the sun. This is a mistake of the learned. All that Anaxagoras averred may be seen in the Scholiast upon Pindar (Olymp. Ode. 1). It amounts only to this, that Petros was a name of the sun. ———— The Hebrew language has lain now for two thousand years mute and incapable of utterance. The “Masoretical punctuation” which professes to supply the vowels was formed a thousand years after the language had ceased to be spoken, and disagrees in many instances with the Seventy, Origen and other writers. ———— James Montgomery thinks proper to style M’Pherson's Ossian, a collection “of halting, dancing, lumbering, grating, nondescript paragraphs.” ———— The paucity of spondees in the English language, is the reason why we cannot tolerate an English Hexameter. Sir Philip Sidney, in his Arcadia, thus speaks of Love in what is meant for Hexameter verse: So to the woods Love runnes, as well as rides to the palace: Neither he bears reverence to a prince, nor pity to a beggar; But, like a point in the midst of a circle, is still of a nearnesse. ———— His form had not yet lost All her original brightness, is a very remarkable passage in Milton's Paradise Lost, wherein a person is personified. ———— It is certain that Hebrew verse did not include rhyme: the terminations of the lines where they are most distinct, never showing any thing of the kind. ———— Francis le Brossano engraved these verses upon a marble tomb which he erected to Petrarch at Arqua. Frigida Francisci tegit hic lapis ossa Petrarcae. Suscipe, virgo parens, animam: sate virgine, parce, Fessaque jam terris, coeli requiescat in arce. ———— “Statua Stature” was an inscription handed about at Paris for the equestrian statue of Louis XV., begun by Bouchardon and finished by Pigal. The following also, Bouchardon est un animal Et son ouvrage fait pitié: II place les vices à cheval Et les vertus á pied. and another, Voilà notre roi commnie il est à Versailles Sans foi, sans loi, et sans entrailles. ———— Bochart derives Elysium from the Phœnician Elysoth, joy, through the Greek ’Hλυσιον. Circe from the Phœnician Kirkar, to corrupt — Siren, from the Phœnician Sir, to sing — Scylla, from the Phœnician Scol, destruction — Charybdis from the Phœnician Chor-obdam, chasm of ruin. ———— Attrogs, a fruit common in Palestine, is supposed to have been “the forbidden.” It has a rough rind, and resembles a citron or lemon. ———— The following quaint