efforts, and place their highest excellence, on the point of a word or the turn of a sentence. Such are some of the principal merits and defects in the Poets of these two great nations. Upon the whole then we may conclude, that in originality of conception, as it appears in the fable, the characters, and the sentiments, in a bold felicity of expression, in a just neglect of artificial refinement, and a genuine adherence to nature, the Greeks have an unrivalled claim to our fullest approbation. At the same time it must be allowed, that in correctness of taste, in propriety of thought, in a strict perception and observance of the rules of good writing, and above all, in a peculiar talent for descriptive Poetry, they have generally been outdone by the Latins. To the Greeks, indeed, we must ever resort as the standard models of all the grand excellencies of Poetry; yet as correctors of their oversights, and as guides to teach us the right use and application of these models, we can recur no where so well as to the critical discernment displayed in the successful imitations of the Latins. Let the native genius and spirit of the Greeks remain undisputed: it is still however no small merit in the Latins, that they possessed judgment to appreciate it, candor to acknowledge it, and talent to employ and not seldom improve it. It is impossible to close considerations like these without congratulating ourselves on the advantages we enjoy in the possession of two such different yet admirable guides; or without admiring that wise and judicious proportion of attention, which in the system of a classical education is bestowed upon each. Seeking as we do our higher inspiration from the Greeks, yet correcting their exuberances in the chaster and severer school of Latin Poetry, we are adopting the most effectual method (a method sustained by the example and by the eminent success of Milton) to combine in the productions of our own country, the bold genius of the one nation attempered with the strict judgment of the other; and to establish for ever that high rank in the civilised world for talent and taste, which we have long maintained for power and virtue. Oriel College, SAMUEL RICKARDS, 4. B. CLASSICAL CRITICISM. ON A PASSAGE IN THE FIRST BOOK OF THE GEORGICS OF VIRGIL. I HAVE translated the first book of the Georgics of Virgil into blank verse, and added copious notes, chiefly taken from more ancient writers, to whom Virgil might have been supposed to allude; which together have now amounted to upwards of 400 4to. manuscript pages. My motive for undertaking the task was partly for my own amusement, and partly for explaining to some agricultural friends my conception of various passages, which the commentators, being mere scholars, and not conversant in the pursuits of husbandry, had, in my opinion, misrepresented; and of which the English translators had given such free, and such diffuse interpretations, as were incompatible with the preciseness of a didactic poem. In pursuance of my plan of investigating the relative meaning of every identical word of any consequence, I have discovered, under the article spatium in the concluding lines of the first Georgic, a more plausible solution of the Enigma of Damotas recited in the third Eclogue, than had been given to it by any former exposition; and by which the Enigma itself was demonstrated to be much more simple, elegant, and appropriate in all its well-adapted allusions. The Enigma is couched in the following terms: Dic quibus in terris, et eris mihi magnus Apollo, As my performance is not yet sufficiently correct to be consigned to the press, I thought a new explication of the longconcealed Enigma, might gratify the readers of the Classical Journal.. But to comprehend the whole bearing of the Ænigma, it will be necessary to give a cursory transcript of my notes on these three concluding lines:. Ut cum carceribus sese effudere quadriga. Addunt in spatia; et frustra retinacula tendens Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habenas. The lines are concise, beautiful, and expressive; and the more forcible by not being clogged with epithet: it would therefore be difficult to exhibit them with adequate justice in an English metrical version. My own translation, giving the requisite consequence to each efficient word, is as follows: "As when high-mettl'd steeds yok'd four abreast On flies the car, nor heeds the curbing rein." The Poet concludes this first part of his work by an illustration (for Servius will not allow it to be a simile) of unrestrained war by a chariot race: war, he says, when once it is commenced, is no more to be confined within bounds, than spirited horses in a chariot race; which, if they become ungovernable, run off the course, and it cannot be ascertained what direction they will take, nor when their career will be stopped. The "quadriga" were chariots drawn by four horses yoked in double pairs, or four abreast; in modern times they would be called four-in-hand chariots. By "auriga" is supposed to be meant Octavius Cæsar himself; who, although of a peaceable disposition, could not at the commencement of his imperial power restrain the fury of war. "Retinacula" refers to the guiding reins, and "habenas" to the curbing bridles. The force of "audit" is "to hear so as to obey." But the purport of this paper is to examine the phrase addunt in spatia; and particularly as the word spatium is applied in the Enigma of Damotas. The phrase addunt in spatia has not been well explained either by commentators or grammarians. The note of Servius, as a commentator, is: "addunt in spatia, id est, currendo plus eorum cursus augetur." And Ainsworth, as a grammarian, interprets "addere in spatia," to "gallop faster:" each leaving out the peculiar signification attached to in spatia. The term addunt signifies, the horses add something in a certain degree to what they had before, and that is "speed." And the undefined and overlooked in spatia, means, "upon the measured space" of the race course. The stadium (or dpóuos) I consider as the stage on which the performances were exhibited, whether ón land or water: and the spatium to be the measured distance between the barrier (carcer) and the goal (meta): one certain distance being allowed to the competitors in the foot race, and another, in the horse, chariot, or boat race. The great competition in the chariot race was to get the first to the goal; and great skill and adroitness was requisite to prevent the chariots from clashing with each other, or encountering the goal itself, at each turn or return. Thus Horace : metaque fervidis Evituta rotis. Lib. i. Ode 1. At the funeral games instituted by Achilles in honor of Patroclus, Nestor is introduced as advising his son Archilochus, one of the competitors in the chariot race, to keep as near the goal as possible in turning round it; checking the horse on the left, and giving the reins to the horse on the right; since the gaining the prize often depended as much on the skill of the charioteer, as on the fleetness of the horses, (and those of Nestor are represented as none of the swiftest,) or light construction of the chariot. Thus Homer, Il. xxiii. vs. 319 : ̓Αλλ' ὅς μέν θ ̓ ἵπποισι καὶ ἅρμασιν οἶσι πεποιθὼς, Equique vagantur per stadium neque (eos) continet. And some of the spectators having lost sight of the chariots, supposed they had run off the course: Αἱ δ' (ἵπποι) ἐξηρώησαν ἐπεὶ μένος ἔλαβε θυμόν. I. xxiii. vs. 468. Ipsæque (equa) extra viam cucurrerunt postquam furor occupavit animam. If the horses became ungovernable, they were apt, when in full speed, according to the racing phrase, to bolt at the turn of the meta," and run off the course between the "termata," or bounding stones; and the director of course lost his controul: nor, to apply the illustration, is war to be restrained or confined within prescribed limits.. The word spatium is also metaphorically used to signify a certain limitation of space, where, in the fourth Georgic, the Poet, describing the scientific practice of the old Corycian in his garden, refrains from expatiating too largely on the interesting topic, because he was confined by the subject of his poem within determinate bounds, which it would be injudicious to transgress. G. iv. vs. 147. Verum hæc ipse equidem " spatiis" exclusus iniquis Prætereo, atque aliis post me memoranda relinquo. The term also occurs in the sense of a measured space in the third Eclogue, vs. 106. Dic quibus in terris, et eris mihi magnus Apollo, And the consideration of it in this place has led the translator, without any premeditated design, to attempt a new solution of the Ænigma contained in the foregoing lines. The reader will himself perceive that the dignity of the Georgics will not be compromised by this endeavour, since the elucidation of the term in the Ænigma will help to determine its meaning in the chariot race. The note of Ruæus is, "Enigma difficile in quo Virgilium crucem fixisse grammaticis refert Servius ex Asconio, qui hoc ipsum e Virgilio audisse se professus est." And he quotes no less than eight different interpretations, neither of which appears to have the least available reference to the subject under review.. It will in the first place be necessary to attach a precise meaning to ulna, as connected with spatium. This word occurs only in one other place in Virgil's works, where he describes the Scythian winter, Sed jacet aggeribus niveis in formis, et alto Terra gelu late, septemque assurgit in ulnas, when he says the snow lay in heaps "seven ells" in depth: this some interpret seven cubits; others seven times the length of a man's arm; and others the length of the extended arms: from this discordancy, therefore, its measurement cannot satisfactorily be determined by a reference to commentators; nor from its Greek derivation wλévn, which is indifferently rendered by cubitus and ulna: but Virgil himself has more precisely defined the "cubitus," in the description of the death of Dido, En. iv. vs. 690. Ter sese attollens, cubitoque innixa levavit ; where the cubit certainly means the part of the arm from the elbow to the extremity of the fingers the fore-part of the arm being thus assigned to the " cubit," (cubitus,) it is fair to presume the whole arm means 66 an ell" (ulna). The us of Homer seems to be usually rendered by "cubitus," and λég by "ulna:" thus the latter is applied to the whole arm in λeuxúλevos "Hon, (translated by Clarke "candidas ulnas habens Juno"): 'Exévy λeuxwλevos, &c. Virgil in the eighth Eneid, vs. 387, where he represents Venus as embracing Vulcan, exemplifies the Greek epithet by "niveæ lacertæ.” Dixerat, et niveis" hinc atque hinc Diva " lacertis” Having thus determined the use of ulna by the authority of Virgil himself, as signifying "an ell," or the length of a man's arm, the next point is to consider in what way it applies to |