Phoebe parens, seu te Lyciae Pataraea nivosis 830 Exercent dumeta jugis, feu rore pudico Ingratis Phrygios humeris fubiisse molares: Seu juvat Aegaeum feriens Latonius umbra Cynthus, et affiduam pelago non quaerere Delon: 840 Te ! i 829 835 Oh father Phoebus! whether Lycia's coast 840 845 T' excel the music of thy heav'nly lyre; Thy shafts aveng'd lewd Tityus' guilty flame, Th' immortal victim of my mother's fame; Thy NOTES. VER. 829. Some of the most finished lines he has ever written, down to verse 854. VER. 841. 'Tis thine) Far superior to the original are these four lines; and how mean is the Tityus of Statius, compared with the tremendous picture in Virgil! May I venture to add, that we have in our language fome tranflations that have excelled the originals; perhaps they are, Rowe's Lucan, Pitt's Vida, Hampton's Polybius, Melmoth's Pliny, and Carter's Epictetus. Te viridis Python, Thebanaque mater ovantem, NOTES. 855 VER. 850. Torva Megaera] This expression, and premit and inftimulat, are weakened in the translation; but mista faftidia is a harsh expression; as also is a line above, 842, Tu Phryga fubmittis citharae. Thy hand flew Python, and the dame who lost 850 Propitious hear our pray'r, O Pow'r divine! 855 And on thy hofpitable Argos shine, Whether the stile of Titan please thee more, Whose purple rays th' Achaemenes adore ; Or great Ofiris, who first taught the swain In Pharian fields to fow the golden grain; Or Mitra, to whose beams the Persian bows, And pays, in hollow rocks, his awful vows; Mitra, whose head the blaze of light adorns, Who grafps the struggling heifer's lunar horns. 860 IN order to give young readers a just notion of chasteness and fimplicity of style, I have seen it of use to let them compare the mild majesty of Virgil and the violent exuberance of Statius, by reading ten lines of each immediately after one another. The motto for the style of the age of Augustus may be the " Simplex Munditiis" of Horace; for the age of Domitian and the fucceeding ages, the "Cultûque laborat Multiplici" of Lucan. After this censure of Statius's manner, it is but justice to add, that in The Thebais there are many strokes of a strong imagination; and indeed the picture of Amphiaraus, swallowed up fuddenly by a chasm that opened in the ground, is truly fublime : " Illum ingens haurit specus, & tranfire parantes, B. vi. v. 817. |