objection to the Mosaic records, but to the interposition and divinity. of our Saviour. To such objections, my book is meant to be a reply; and the whole purport of it is to show, that, supposing the notion just, and that those remote orbs are other worlds, there is not only nothing in the Holy Scriptures to contradict such a supposition, but that the interposition of our blessed Lord, for what we know, may have extended to those other worlds. I do not pretend to say that ei ther Moses, or the inspired writers of the New Testament, meant to inform us directly of more than regards our own globe and our own . race: but I venture to affirm, that such is the peculiar latitude of expression upon all such points throughout the sacred writings, that no new discoveries in this branch of philosophy, nor yet any objections as to the insignificance of our earth and its inhabitants, should be allowed to stand in the way of the doctrines of the church of England. I forbear to trouble you with references; but am certain, that whoever would take the pains to examine my book after this explanation, would allow, that, however unintentionally it may have happened, your critique has misrepresented me, and given a character of the work which does not fairly belong to it.

Biddenden, Kent,
June 16, 1903.

I am, Gentlemen,

Your humble Servant,

EDWARD NARES.

We meaned precisely what Mr. Nares allows to have been one ob-’ ject of his work in the letter before us, though we still cannot think it to have been his sole object; namely, that the doctrinė of the plurality of worlds is not contradicted by any passage in the Scripture. The very title of the work-s MIT-led us to the opinion in our critique, that the other great object of it was to show the probability of a mediatorial dispensation, with which he was become acquainted, from examining the Scriptures extending to the remote spheres. The language of the writer seems conclusive in our favour: When I first turned to the Scriptures,' he says, I had it not so much in view to seek for the general notion of a plurality of worlds, as, supposing this notion to be just, to examine whether the mediatorial dispensation could be in any manner, and with any propriety, so extended by analogy, as to be brought to correspond with such enlarged notions of the visible creation.' The texts introduced confirm this opinion; and the probability of this mediatorial dispensation is the discovery the author thinks he has made of the Cre ator's economy, to which we are not inclined to give our assent, however pleased we may be with his ingenuity in support of his hypothesis. We should be extremely sorry to have misrepresented the author; and, if we have done so, it must be without intention: but, on a further perusal of this work, the idea of is ang still seems to us to have been the uppermost in his mind; and, consequently, we do not see any grounds for altering our opinion, that he conceived himself to have. become acquainted with some material part of the Creator's economy, with respect to the inhabitants of distant worlds.

CRITICAL REVIEW.

JULY, 1803.

ART. I.-The Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius, translated into English Verse. With Notes critical, historical, and explanatory, and Dissertations. By William Preston, Esq. M.R.I.A. 3 Vols. 12mo. 1. Is. sewed. Payne and Mackinlay. 1803.

NOTWITHSTANDING two prior English versions of the Argonautics, Apollonius Rhodius has not acquired that celebrity in our country to which he is justly entitled. He had the good fortune to be born at Alexandria, during the brilliant æra of the Ptolemies; was, in all probability, educated under that excellent master Callimachus, many of whose lyric effusions have descended to the present day, though we have lost his Ibis; and is generally supposed to have formed one of the seven contemporary poets in that celebrated city, who, from the splendor of their genius, were elegantly denominated the Pleiades. Like most other young men, and especially those who are conscious of the existence of some portion of superior talent, Apollonius, when in the prime of life, became too confident in his own powers, and evinced a vanity, which for many years afterwards he severely repented of. Following the example of Orpheus and other early poets of Greece, he had selected, as the basis of an elaborate epic, the story of the voyage' of Jason to the Colchian coast, in pursuit of the golden fleece; and upon this poem he was determined to build his hopes of immortality. But he was in too much haste to obtain his reward; and the speed with which he composed did not allow him time enough for that arrangement of matter, and polish of style, which were necessary to insure him success: in consequence of which, when, flushed with the expectation of unmingled applause, he obtained leave to recite certain portions of his poem before his compatriots, he found his labours received by that elegant people with contempt and ridicule: he had, indeed, already recited the same passages before Callimachus, and deserved the mortification he experienced, for not having attended to his advice, and bestowed more pains upon his versification, before he ventured to appear in public. If, however, the humiliation to which his vanity thus exposed him be a useful example to the too confident and sanguine of the CRIT. REV. Vol. 38. July, 1803.

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present day-the lesson he learned from it-the conduct he aft erwards pursued, and the deserved success with which he was eventually crowned, may afford an instruction of equal importance to the timid and the unfortunate scholar. Apollonius, after his discomfiture, immediately retired from Alexandria, and migrated to Rhodes, where he supported himself, for many years, by reading lectures on logic and rhetoric, devoting, nevertheless, his leisure hours to a close and careful correction of his ill-fated poem, which the manly spirit he possessed did not allow him to relinquish, notwithstanding the defeat he had sustained; and it was from his long residence in this city that he acquired the surname of Rhodius. Beneath his revising hand, his Argonautics now gradually advanced towards that positive perfection, which he had vainly conceived the poem to possess when he first offered it to his countrymen; and, having at length given it all the finish of which his powers were capable, he returned to Alexandria, about twelve or fourteen years after he had quitted it, and had the happiness to find that his laboured performance was now received with universal admiration and applause. Nor were the honours, which were at this time. heaped upon him, altogether empty and unsatisfying; for he was appointed, by Ptolemy Euergetes, to the important care of the celebrated Alexandrian library-a post which seems to have been set apart as the reward of merit, and which had been uniformly bestowed on men of the first talents and literary emi

nence.

As to the poem of the Argonautics itself, its excellence is very considerable, though it certainly possesses prominent blemishes. No painter ever beheld nature with a more curious eye, or delineated the characteristic features of the landscape before him with more spirit and truth, than Apollonius has done in this admirable epic: but, with a view of giving a kind of picturesque representation of the whole, he often enters too much into detail, and becomes tediously minute. In displaying the passions, he succeeds better in the softer than the more harsh: his fort is tenderness, rather than sublimity; and, when love and beauty, distress and sorrow, become the theme of his song, he is always exquisite, and frequently unrivaled. His imagination is unbounded; and hence he exhibits too great an inclination for the marvellous. His language is studiously select; and, as may naturally be expected, from the repulse he at first met with, and the time afterwards bestowed upon the poem, his versification is polished to the utmost degree of splendor, though, from its numerous revisals, it not unfrequently evinces strong marks of affectation and parade, while the epithets employed are far too redundant and pleonastic. Instructed in all the learning of the East, he exhibits at times an unnecessary and pedantic display of it; and his si

miles and illustrations, though generally most apposite and precise, are, from this very circumstance, occasionally recondite and obscure. It is, however, no slender praise of Apollonius, that Virgil has copied him almost as much as he has Homer; and we have only to reflect upon this fact, to be sensible that the writer of the Argonautics has scarcely received, in any age, the full measure of the applause to which he is fairly entitled.

Having offered these few remarks concerning the life and merits of the original poet, we now hasten to the general views and merits of the present translator. We have already observed, that, independently of those who have rendered particular and select parts of the Argonautics into English, Mr. Preston has been preceded by two gentlemen, who have given English versions of the entire poem (Mr. Fawkes and Mr. Greene), whose rival efforts were both offered to the public about twenty years ago. Of these two anterior translations, we shall only observe, that the former has been generally esteemed the best : it partakes of Mr. Fawkes's common beauties and blemishes, and labours under the misfortune of not having been completed by himself, the translator dying before he had finished his version, and the remaining part being supplied by an anonymous friend, who, it is but just to observe, has executed his task in a manner of which Mr. Fawkes himself could not have been ashamed. Of other translations of the Argonautics into living languages, Mr. Preston shall speak for himself.

There are two modern Italian versions-the first, by the well known Salvini. The latest translation of the Argonautics, is that by cardinal Filangieri, an author well known, by his productions on œconomic subjects, which appeared at Rome-the first volume in the year 1791. It is printed, together with the original Greek text, in two volumes in quarto, with the title of L'Argonautica di Apollonio Rhodio tradotta ed illustrata.'-An ample preface, treating of the fable of the poem, and the design and scope of the author, is prefixed. This translator, while he aims at too scrupulous and exact fidelity, and labours to render all the epithets of his author into Italian, becomes verbose and enervate; and smothers all the elegance of the original, in a mass of words. It frequently happens too, that he mistakes and perverts the sense of his author. There are short notes subjoined, at the bottom of each page, and larger notes thrown together, at the end of each book. In these latter, we are presented with a confused and injudicious mass of good and bad-trite and recondite. -There is also a German version, in hexameter verse, by Jo. Jac. Bodmer, printed in octavo, Turici, 1779.-See Fabr. Thesau, a Harl. Such are the marks of attention, which Apollonius has hitherto received, from the literary world.

I shall not presume to say, how the English translators of Apol lonius, who have gone before me, have succeeded in their task. It would ill become me, to speak in degrading terms of those gentlemen,

whose taste led them, to precede me, in the meritorious province of endeavouring to do justice to this delightful, and too much neglected writer. Their performances are before the public; and it is the privilege of the public, to appreciate the labours of writers. It may appear to many, that a new translation of an author, who has been twice translated, might well be spared-yet, in one point of view, I hope my attempt will appear allowable, and free from the imputation of vanity. Whatever may be the demerits of the present translation; I flatter myself they will find indulgence and pardon from the candid reader; for the sake of the concomitants, of which this version is introductory. He will find large extracts from the Greek scholia, which deserve to be well known to the classical reader-a variety of hints, critical, historical, and explanatory, some few of them extracted from those of Fawkes, and the Oxford editor, but, for the most part, wholly new, of which some may not be altogether unacceptable, even to those, who read Apollonius, in the original text.And lastly, certain essays, which if they shall succeed in making the reader an admirer of this delightful poet, they will have contributed to an act of justice.

It is but fair, to apprize the reader, with respect to the translation, which I now, with much diffidence, offer to his hand; that he will find it, in general, rather paraphrastic than strict; in many places, more redundant than I could wish. I must own, that I have endeavoured, to follow rather the spirit, than the letter of the original. But, I hope, I have not been unfaithful to the general sense, to the substance of what the Greek text meant to say.-Shall I own it?— I sometimes had the vanity of aiming at another sort of translationa kind of portrait translation:-a version, not of the matter merely, but of the style and manner of my original. How I may have succeeded in this-alas, I fear-I feel-but the reader, who is capable of comparing the version with the text, must judge for himself.-And, in judging, the test is, if the version reads, in English, like an original work.' Vol. i. P. xxviii.

Had I consulted my own judgment, I should have subjoined the notes incidental to my translation, at the bottom of each page, as I went along. It was the old practice; and I have a great respect for old practices; they are generally reasonable, and founded in convenience. By subjoining the notes, where notes are necessary, at the bottom of the page, much trouble is saved to the reader; and the danger of much misapprehension avoided by the writer. However, the reigning taste of the present day, which seems to consider books, rather as things of ornament than use, as matters designed to please the eyes, rather than to inform the understanding, has thought fit to consult the beauty of the page, at the expence of many more important considerations; and, with this view, has consigned the notes, to the end of the volume, or to a separate volume. This practice is now so generally established, that it would appear an ungracious affectation of singularity, were I to contend for a disposition generally exploded. With the exception of a very few short ones, I have, therefore, consigned the notes, to a separate station, in my second volume; accor ding to the received form of book-making.