Why would not the writer stop here? Why would he afflict us with that ludicrous touch of burlesque, which represents the Cam as flowing with a more rapid tide on the occasion of Mr. Pitt's monument being erected in the Senate-house?

Lætusque claras laude nová domos
Arundinoso præfluere alveo,

Superbiet Camus, tumensque

Volvet aquas violentiores.'-p. 70.

Such personifications (though Cam may be said to have the same classical privileges as the Tibur) are, in these days of incredulity, revolting to true taste, and ought not to disgrace such an ode to the memory of such a statesman.

Neither in this ode, nor in that by Mr. Blomfield on the Duke D'Enghein, are the editor's metrical rules accurately observed: of that for the exclusion of the quadrisyllable (or a Cretic preceded by a monosyllable) from the beginning of the third verse, no less than eight violations occur in the first-mentioned ode.

The Greek Odes, being written in imitation of Sappho, ought to admit no other dialect than that of Sappho : but this rule is in vain enforced in the Preface; it is violated, as well as the others there laid down in continual instances. It does not leave them, to be sure, the more harmonious of the dialects; but then, if an imitation of Sappho be pretended to, it ought to be complete; and it would be not more preposterous to imitate Sophocles in Doric, than to imitate Sappho in Attic Greek.

Twedder's Juvenum Curas is a masterly performance, and, we think, without a parallel in the volume. It bears a close resemblance to Gray's Ode on a distant Prospect of Eton College,' substituting for the sports of boyhood the more interesting pursuits of youth, which are displayed with such a mixture of nature, spirit, and sweetness, that we scarcely hesitate to prefer it to the admirable performance of Gray. To quote any part of it as peculiarly beautiful, is impossible; but we will just remark, how superior is the chaste simplicity of the following stanzas to all the sickening indecency, which in the shape of amatory poetry has of late years contaminated the English press.

-· τίς ίχνος

θηλύπουν, στραφέν ποκ' ἐκεῖ τε κἀκεῖσ',
ὡς ἴδ ̓, ου μέμηνεν ἰδων, ὅτ' ἐν γῇ
τὰν βάσιν ἁβρὰν,

ἐγγελάξασ' μέροεν, κροτείται
Χρυσέα νύμφη; τότε δ ̓ ἐπτοάθη
τῶ νεανιῶ τάχ ̓ ἐρωτυλον κηρ·
χειρα πιάζει

The conclusion is a neat translation of Gray's last stanza:
σύ τ ̓ ἴσθ ̓, ὃς ἀκμᾶς
κὐδεὶ γαίεις,

Ανατὸς ὢν μη δ ἴσθι· τεὰν τί μοίραν

ἂν σκόποις ; μεῖον σκοπέοντι κέρδος
ὄλβος ὡς λελογχεν ἄνουν, τίς εὔφρων,

ἂν φρονέειν λῆ;pp. 112--3.
'But, ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies:
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more-where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.

The next Ode, by Mr. Keate, in praise of Astronomy, is pretty; it is also free from the technical terms which we censured in the Latin ode on the same subject: but it has no pretensions to extraordinary commendation, and it is inferior to that which follows it, by Mr. Ramsden, on the subject of • Arx Calpeia obsidione liberata.' The distress of the besieged is painted in a lively manner; and the aggravation of their sufferings by famine is very poetically represented by

κλαρόν τ' ὀλέθρου τέθεικεν

λίμος ἐς ταύταν κορυν, ἐγγράφουσ ̓ ἐν

αίσιον ἅμαρ.

Their subsequent relief by the arrival of the British fleet, and the contrasted joy and desperation of the besieged and the besiegers, close the ode in a spirited and triumphant strain of poetry.

In the Ode on the Desolation of our West-Indian islands, by a hurricane, there is much to praise. The horror of the tempest is judiciously contrasted with a description of the previous serenity of the atmosphere, and the fertility of the soil: but it is the horrid stillness' which precedes the storm; when the fury of the tempest bursts forth, the author rises with his subject, and his description of the desolation is awfully grand :

· τίς θεὸς θνατῶν νεφέλας ἀπ' ὅσσων
ἐιλ'; ὁρῶ δ ̓, ὦ πικρὸν δραμα, πᾶσαν
οικίαν γοργο θανάτου· ὁ δ ̓ ἀυτὸς
έμμα πυρωπον

ἀστραπάων ἐσσάμενος, δαφοινὸν

μαίνεται στυγνῶν ἐπί νῶτα λοιμῶν·
παρ' δ' οἱ ἱππεύει φόβος ἐν πτερωτοίς

ἅρμασ' άητων. p. 128.

After this description, the author's unseasonable fit of patriotism, which occupies the last five stanzas, savours somewhat of an anticlimax it unfortunately reminds us of a patrio.ic epilogue to a modern comedy, and we are on our guard against being entrapped into applause.

The security of Britain, together with its total separation from the rest of the world, has long been a favourite point of boasting and congratulation, and is the subject of a very good ode by Mr. Frere. The idea that it was formerly united to the continent, and rent from it by the gradual inroad of waters, is fanciful and well adapted to the ode; but surely this separation might have been effected without the introduction of any mythological puppet-work.

This part of the subject was susceptible of a higher degree of sublimity than it exhibits in its present state; and, by the execution of other parts of his ode, Mr. Frere has well convinced us of his capacity to have done it justic. The instantaneous effects of Neptune's trident are forcibly described:

· ουρανός δ' ἔφριξε μέγας, χθονός δὲ
πυθμένες ρίζαι τ ̓ ἀδαμάντινον γᾶς
δέσμα λύετ ̓ ὠγυγίας, μέσον δ' εισ
ήλατο βένθος

̓Αλβίων. νᾶσοι δὲ χορόν νιν ἄμφι
Ὄρκαδες στησάν τε βαρύβρομοι, καὶ
ἱερῶν τὺ, Μῶνα, δρυῶν τιθάνα

ἐξ ἁλὸς ὑγρᾶς

βλάστες. ὁ δ' Ελευθερία προσώπω
μειδιάσασ ̓ ἀμβροσίῳ κατ ̓ ἀκτὰν

i=T ;

-p. 140.

The remainder, too, is excellent: but for this one error of taste, we could have given the ode unqualified approbation.

Of the remaining Greek Odes the two best are Dr. Maltby's 'Mare Liberum,' and Mr. Blomfield's Mors Nelsoni.' Both contain much to praise, and little to censure: we could wish, indeed, that they had been entirely free from the intermixture of any other dialect with that of Sappho; a fault, which is here certainly less inveterate, but which, in some of the odes, assumes a formidable appearance. The fact is, that those, who in the Latin pilfer Horace so unmercifully, have in the Greek no Horace to pilfer; their resource, therefore, is Pindar, whose sentences are interspersed, somewhat more thinly, through their writings, and, with his sentences, his dialect: and the dialect of Pindar, as the editor remarks, à Sapphicâ plurimùm distat.' This then is their principal fault; and the editor's rules are not invariably observed upon the whole, however, we are inclined to prefer the Greek collection to

the Latin; though there is no doubt, that both of them, or either of them, may add paululum gloriolæ et uignitatis' to Alma Mater.

It will now be required, perhaps, that we should say something of the Epigrams, which close the volume: but thinking, as we do, that an annual pair of epigrams is an effort rather unworthy of such an University, we shall not detain our readers on the subject. As there will probably be some, however, who assign them a higher importance, we will quote, first, a specimen of what we think the best, and then, of what appears to us about the worst, and dismiss them without a comment.

'Ludentis speciem dabit, et torquebitur.
Βάρβαρος ἐν Πίσα τις ἐών ποτ ̓ ἐτύγχανε, πουλὺς
Ως νέος ἰσχυρᾶς παιζεν ἀγῶνα πάλης.
Ενθα τε κάνθ', ἐνόησεν, ὅπως ἐπὶ δίζυγι καρπῷ
Σύμπλεκον ἀμφοτέρας ἀμφότεροι παλάμας.
Καὶ πλευρὰς ἐνόησεν ὅπως, στόμα τε ἶνάς τι,
Δείν ἀσθμαινόντων σκληρὸν ἔτυπτε πέδον.
Η δ' άρα, θαύξεν, τοίους ἡ παίζετ ̓ ἀγῶνας ;
Αλλ' ἡμεῖς τοίην δ' μαχόμεσθα μάχην.

Inest sua gratia parvis.

'O Quis, Flacce, tuum speret deprendere plectrum,
Quisve tuis. Sappho bella, sonare modis?
Quisve tuos æquare sales, lepidissime vatûm?
Quid faciam? triplex, en! mihi surgit opus.
Quid dubitem? quædam saltem mihi gratia detur,
E tribus hoc minimum me petiîsse malum.'

ART. VIII. A Treatise on Plane and Spherical Trigonometry. By Robert Woodhouse, A.M. F.R.S. Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge. 8vo. pp. xii. 200. London. Black, Parry, and Co. 1809.

HE works on trigonometry, published in this country, are, in general, so inferior to those on the same subject by the Continental mathematicians, that we regard, with peculiar interest, every new performance devoted to its elucidation. In many other matters they are far behind us. Their treatises on arithmetic, geometry, and mensuration; on the practical applications of mechanical theory, and on life annuities and assurances, are infinitely inferior to ours; and, in the geometrical construction of many problems, both in pure and mixed mathematics, even their most able men would be found less expert and elegant than many of the undergraduates

at our Universities. In the theory of trigonometry, however, they have as decidedly the advantage-a circumstance which we regret, since nothing so much facilitates a progress in the higher branches of analysis, and in the sublime investigations of physical astronomy, as an aptness in the use of trigonometrical formulæ. subject, the continental mathematicians derive much benefit from the admirable works of Euler, Bertrand, Gua, Legendre, Lacroix, Cagnoli, and Lagrange; they may even consult the disquisition prefixed by Puissant to his heavy but useful Traité de Géodésie' with advantage; whether their object be to acquire the principles of plane and spherical trigonometry merely, or to trace the extent of their application to other branches of mathematics. But an English geometer has no such helps. Several of our books, indeed, contain much that is valuable; but it is either not of the kind that is most wanted, or it is so exhibited as to be rendered almost useless. Thomas Simpson's trigonometry is elegant, considered geometrically, and it contains some useful theorems; but it is entirely elementary, and, therefore, the author excluded nearly all the higher formulæ. Emerson's abounds in curious theorems, and in useful deductions from them; but the whole is delivered in so aukward a mode of notation, as to render the reading of his work insufferably tiresome. Baron Maseres's manifests the perspicuity with which this clear-headed geometer marks all his works; but it also partakes of the tediousness which so invariably characterises them, and which inevitably renders a moderate sized octavo defective in information on many points where the pupil greatly needs it. Vince's is professedly elementary, and so short, as scarcely to give scope for the power of that learned author, or to furnish space for the introduction of any such matter as was required by the more scientific students in the University to which the professor belongs. Bishop Horsley's bears many marks of the vigorous mind of that learned prelate; it is elegant, sound, and strictly geometrical; but its author meant it to be brief, and, in his own view, we doubt not, superficial. Keith's may be useful to a certain class of readers; those, we mean, who wish to learn nautical astronomy without dwelling much upon mathematical topics; but, with the exception of eight or ten pages, this work might as easily, for aught we see to the contrary, have been composed in the middle of the seventeenth, as at the com mencement of the nineteenth century. Bonnycastle's trigonometry comports far better than any of the former, both in substance and appearance, with the present state of the mathematical sciences: the collection of trigonometrical formula is the most copious of any with which we are acquainted; but the demonstrations of several of them are not given, nor is there any attempt to shew their applica tion to general mechanics, or physical astronomy.