Pinakidia — 1902 historical reading — reading text

sentence is found in Saint Evremond. “I own I do not envy him, when I consider that there are in the next world such people as Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Eacus.” ———— The standard of Judas Maccabaeus displayed the words “Mi camoca baelim Jehovah” — Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the Gods? This being afterwards intimated by the first letter of each word, in the manner of the S. P. Q. R., gave rise to the surname Maccabeaus — for the initials in Hebrew form “Maccabi.” ———— Josephus, with Saint Paul and others, supposed man to be compounded of body, soul, and spirit. The distinction between soul and spirit is an essential point in ancient philosophy. ———— Lord Lyttleton acknowledged the authorship of two dialogues, in the first of which the personages were the Savior and Socrates, in the second, king David and Cæsar Borgia. ———— Dante gives the name of sonnet to his little canzone or ode beginning O voi che per la via d’Amor passate. ———— The learned Ménage has this epitaph on Sannazarius — Ci git, dont l’esprit fut si beau, Sannazar, ce poéte habile, Qui par ses vers divins approche de Virgile, Plus encore que par son tombeau. ———— The two reprehensible lines in Pope's Eloisa, Not Cæsar's empress would I deign to prove; No — make me mistress to the man I love, are to be found in the original letters of Eloisa — at least the thought. ———— Mercier, in “L’an deux mille quatre cents quarante,” seriously maintains the doctrines of the Metempsychosis, and I. D’Israeli says there is no system so simple, and so little repugnant to the understanding. ———— Boileau is mistaken in saying that Petrarch, ‘qui est regardé conmme le père du sonnet,’ borrowed it from the French or Provençal writers. The Italian sonnet can be traced back as far as the year 1200. Petrarch was not born until 1304. ———— One of the best epigrams affixed to the statue of Pasquin was the following upon Paul III, Ut canerent, data multa olim sunt vatibus aera; Ut taceam quantum tu mihi, Paule, dabis? ———— Milton in Paradise Lost, has this passage, ... when the scourge Inexorably, and the torturing hour Call us to penance. Gray, in his Ode to Adversity, has Thou tamer of the human breast Whose iron scourge, and torturing hour The bad affright. ———— Gray tells us that the image of his bard, where Loose his beard, and hoary hair Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air, was taken from a picture by Raphael: yet the beard of Hudibras is also likened to a meteor, This hairy meteor did denounce The fall of sceptres and of crowns. ———— The lines For he that fights and runs away May live to fight another day, But he that is in battle slain Will never rise to fight again, are not to be found, as is thought, in Hudibras. Butler's verses ran thus; For he that flies may fight again, Which he can never do that's slain. The former are in a volume of Poems’ by Sir John Mennes, reign of Charles II. The original idea is in Demosthenes. ανηρ ο φευγων και παλιν μαχησεται ———— “Semel insanivimus omnes” is not from Horace but from Mantuanus, an Italian. In a work entitled “De honesto amore” is this line, Id commune malum, semel insanivimus omnes. ———— Dryden in ‘Absalom and Achitophel’ has these lines, David for him his tuneful harp had strung And heaven had wanted one immortal song. Pope, in his Epistle to Arbuthnot, has Friend of my life which, did not you prolong, The world had wanted many an idle song. ———— Tickell's lines While the charmed reader with thy thought complies, And views thy Rosamond with Henry's eyes, are evidently borrowed from those of Boileau, En vain contre’ Le Cid’ un ministre se ligue; Tout Paris pour Chimène a les yeux de Rodrigue. ———— The expressions ‘nemorumque noctem’ occurring in one of Gray's Latin odes, has been repeatedly found fault with — yet Virgil has ‘media nimborum in nocte.’ ———— Selden observes of Henry VIII., that he was a king with a pope in his belly. ———— In the ‘Nubes’ of Aristophanes, there are several Greek verses in rhyme. Of the ten tragedies which are attributed to Seneca, (the only Roman tragedies extant,) nine are on Greek subjects. ———— Ariosto says of one of his heroes, that, in the heat of combat, not perceiving that he was a dead man, he continued to fight valiantly, dead as he was. Il pover’ huomo, che non s’en era accorto, Andava combattendo, ed era morto. ———— The author of ‘La Manière de bien Penser’ speaks of a French divine who, to prove that young persons sometimes die before old ones, cited the text, ‘Praecucurrit citius Petro Johannes et venit primus ad monumentunm.’ ———— There is no passage among all the writings of antiquity more sublime than these lines of Silius Italicus. The words are addressed to a young man of Capua, who proposed to assassinate Hannibal at a banquet. Fallis te mensas inter quod credis inermem, Tot bellis quæsita viro, tot caedibus armat Majestas eterna ducem: si admoveris ora Cannas et Trebium ante oculos, Trasymenaque busta, Et Pauli stare ingentum miraberis umbram. ———— Giace l’alta Cartagoo: à pena i segni De l’alte sui rmine il lido serba: Muoino le città, muoino i regni; Copre i fasti e le pompe arena ed herba: E l’huom d’esser mortal par che si sdegni. These lines of Tasso are a curious specimen of literary robbery — being made up entirely of passages from Lucan and Sulspicius. Lucan says of Troy Jam tota teguntur Pergama dumetis: etiam perire ruinæ: and Sulspicius, in a letter to Cicero, says of Megara, Ægina, Corinth, &c. — “Hem! nos homunculi indignamur si quis nostrum interiit, quorulm vita brevior esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidorum cadavera projecta jaceant.” ———— The epigrams of the Greek Anthology are characterized more by naïveté than point. They are for the most part insipid. ———— Longinus calls pompous and inflated thoughts “reveries of Jupiter” — insomnia Jovis. ———— The “Satyre Ménippée” of the French is, in prose, the exact counterpart of Hudibras in rhyme. ———— An epigram upon the subject of François (de Bassompiere being released from the Bastille upon the death of Richlieu, is a strange mixture of lofty thought and puerile conceit. Enfin dans l’arrière saison La fortune d’Armaud s’accorde avec la mienne: France, je sors de ma prison Quand son âme sort de la sienne. The line, “France, je sors de ma prison,” is the anagram of François de Bassompiere. ———— A French writer of celebrity dedicated a book to Richelieu in terms of the most blasphemous flattery. But being disappointed in his expectations, he suppressed all his praises in a second edition, and rededicated his volume “à Jésus Christ.” ———— The following inscription intended for the Louvre, possesses both simplicity and dignity: Pande fores populis, sublimis Lupara: non est Terrarum imperio dignior ulla domus. ———— Under a fine painting of St. Bruno in solitude, some Italian wrote these words, “Egli è vivo, e parlerebbe se non osservasse la regola del silenzio.” Malherbe has taken the hint in his epigram upon a picture of Saint Catherine. ———— A fine sample of galimatias is to be found in an epigram of Miguel de Cervantes: Van muerte tan escondida, Que no te sienta venir; Porque el plazer del morir No me tomne à dar la vida. ———— Quintillian mentions a pedant who taught obscurity, and who was wont to say to his scholars, “This is excellent — I do not understand it myself.” ———— An Italian metaphysician, to disprove that greatness of mind is proportioned to the size of the skull, argues thus: “Non sano, che la mente è il centro del capo; ed il centro non cresce per la grandezza del circolo.” ———— A horse is often seen on ancient sepulchral monuments. Caylus quotes a passage from Passeri, “de animia transvectione,” implying that the horse designates the passage of the soul to Elysium. ———— A remarkable instance of concord of sound and sense is to be seen in the following stanza by M. Anton Flaminius: Ast amans chare thalamum puellmæ Dēserit flens, et tibi verba dicit Aspera amplexu tenersæ cupito a — vulsus amicae. Voltaire's ignorance of antiquity is laughable. In his Essay on Tragedy, prefixed to Brutus, he actually boasts of having introduced the Roman senate on the stage in red mantles. “The Greeks,” as he asserts, “font paraître leurs acteurs (tragic) sur des espèces d’échasses, le visage couvert d’un masque qui exprime la douleur d’un côté et la joye de l’autre!” The only circumstance upon which he could possibly have founded such an accusation is, that in the new comedy masks were worn with one eyebrow drawn up and the other down, to denote a busy-body or inquisitive medler. ———— Several ancient tragedies, viz: Eumenides, Philoctetes, and Œdipus et Colonos, besides many pieces of Euripides, have a happy and enlivening termination. ———— The only historical tragedies by Grecian authors were The Capture of Miletus by Phrynicus and the Persians of Æschylus. ———— The foundation of all the erroneous opinions on the subject of the old Greek comedy (Voltaire's opinion particularly) may be found in the comparison between Aristophanes and Menander, in Plutarch. ———— Schlegel says justly, that Harlequin and Pulcinello descend in a direct line from the buffoons of the ancient Romans. On Greek vases are seen also dresses like theirs — long breeches and waistcoats with arms, articles worn by neither Greeks nor Romans except upon the stage. At present Zanni is one of the names of Harlequin, and Sannio in the Latin farces was a buffoon who had a shaven head, and a dress patched together of all colors. ———— In Racine's Bérénice Antiochus says to the queen: ... Je me suis tû cinq ans, Madame, et vais encore me taire plus longtems, and to give a direct proof of his intention, recites immediately no less than fifty verses in a breath. ———— In Voltaire's scruples about unity of place he has committed a thousand blunders. In the Mort de César the scene is in the Capitol, but the people seem not to know their precise situation. On one occasion Cæsar exclaims, “Courons au Capitole!” ———— Denis de Sallo's “Journal des Sçavans,” in 1665 may be considered as the origin of Literary Journals or Reviews. ———— Sous ce tombeau git Le Sage abattu Par le cisean de la Parque importune, S’il ne fut pas ami de la fortune Il fut toujours ami de la vertu, was Le Sage's epitaph. ———— These lines although extremely French are forcible, Et comme un jeune œur est bientôt enflammé Il me vit, il m’aima, je le vis, je l’aimai. ———— On Cardinal Richelieu, Benserade made the following epitaph: Cy gist — ouy gist par la mort bleu Le Cardinal de Richelieu, Et ce qui cause mon ennuy Ma pension avec lui. ———— The Jesuits called Crébillon ‘Puer ingeniosus, sed insignis nebulo.’ ———— Dr. E. Young published “A true Estimate of Human Life, part I,” dedicated to Queen Anne, and describing the shades of existence. The second part, however, which should have contained the lights, never appeared. ———— The “Batrachomyomachia,” is nothing more than a burlesque poem, much in the manner of Aristophanes, and doubtfully attributed to Homer. Philip Melancthon however, wrote a commentary to prove the poet's object was to excite a hatred for tumults and sedition. Pierre La Seine going a step farther, thinks the intention was to recommend to young men temperance in eating and drinking. ———— “Amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur,” is not Seneca's, as generally supposed. ———— The heathen poets are mentioned three times in the New Testament. Aratus in the seventeenth chapter of Acts — Menander in the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians — also Epimenides. ———— “Semper sub Sextis perdita Roma fuit,” was a line written during the pontificate of Alexander VI. Sextus Tarquinius provoked by his tyranny the expulsion of the kings of Rome. Urban VI. began the great schism of the West. Alexander VI. astonished the world by the enormity of his crimes, and