Stern fate, perhaps, determin'd to destroy All that was precious, all thou wish'd to fave, Or gives thy bofom friend to an untimely grave.' The tranflation of the Oedipus Tyrannus being professedly a FREE one, its fidelity to the original does not come properly before us. We apprehend, however, that it will afford the English reader a pretty competent idea of the work of Sophocles. Confidered merely as a poem, it has much merit, the language not being deficient either in ftrength or melody; as will appear from the following quotations : As a fpecimen of the Lyric parts of this tragedy, we fhall give the second strophe and antistrophe of the chorus, Act I. The pride of Thebes is levell'd with the ground, The fruits of earth lie blasted on the plain : Her palaces with fhrieks of death refound, And her streets groan beneath the heaps of flain. Imbibes pollution with his earliest breath. But hark! in louder burfts the pæans break; The fhores with wilder acclamations ring, Mad with the flames that revel through their blood. And fwift as rapid fire, or torrent flood, By myriads rush to Lethe's gloomy lake.' Of the colloquial parts, with quick returns of dialogue, our Readers will judge from the following interesting scene; Oedipus. Delay not, but inform me, didit thou give An infant to this man! Shepherd. I did, and oh! Death had that moment been my happiest boon. Oed. This day thou dieft, unless I know the whole Of this dark scene. Shep. Ah fpare the dire recital: 'Tis death to tell thee. Oed. Doft thou trifle with me? Shep. Did I not fay I gave the child? Oed. Go on; Whence came he? Was he thine by birth, or whỏ Confign'd him to thy charge? Oed. Shep. He was not mine; I had receiv'd him from another hand. What other? Speak his name, and where he dwells. Shep. By all the pow'rs above, enquire no more: Oed. I do conjure thee. Oed. If I afk again, Wretch, thou shalt die. Shep. In yonder palace born Sprung from a flave, or was the king his fire? Shep. Oh mifery to declare Yet fpeak Oed. Oh! Death to hear! Shep. He was fuppos'd the king's own fon. Oed. Didit thou from her Why didst thou give it to this fhepherd's care? For oh! if thou be'ft he, thou art indeed Oed. 'Tis done; the tenfold mystery bursts to light; Thou fun, farewell; why fmile thy beams on me, A father flain, a mother's bed defil'd! Come night, come horror, fhield me from his rays; Black as my crimes, and boundless as my guilt. From the longer fpeeches, we shall extract part of the pathetic address of Oedipus to his daughters: Come near, my daughters; fhudder not to touch Yet Yet red with gore, whofe fury hath confign'd me The fight of you and heav'n: a king myself, Driv'n with difgrace, your virgin bloom to waste The name of father. Ye must never taste Also the conclufion of the tragedy, being the addrefs of the chorus to the inhabitants of Thebes: • Inhabitants of Thebes, behold your prince, Till death decide, and stamp the name of "happy." This pleafing collection contains feveral other (maller) pieces, which have their merit. The Roman critic's maxim, ubi plura nitent, &t. we hope always to have in view, in our decifions; but candidly to point out fmaller faults is fometimes an office of kindness. Mr. Maurice feems to pay confiderable attention to correctness ; we would wish him to be quite correct. He will, we hope, excufe the hint, that he might derive advantage from avoiding a recurrence of the fame thought in different expreffions. An inftance of this we obferved in his verfes to the Marquis of Blandford, (p. 13.) where, if the two lines, But lo! attended by her infant train, had had been omitted, the circumftance defcribed would have been more beautifully, because more abruptly, introduced by the nineteenth line of the fame page: But who are thefe, that flufh'd with all the glow-&c.' There are a few blemishes of other kinds, which struck us in the course of perufal. In Hero and Leander, Descending torrents, mix'd with ruddy flame, Roar'd to the howling blaft in loud acclaim. The later part of the laft line is an impropriety committed for the fake of rhyme. The laft line of our firft quotation from Hinda, we could with the Author to reconfider. Perhaps the idea of indulging grief is not the moft claffically expreffed by -Sorrow cherish'd an eternal wound. In the fame poem, p. 28, 1. 10, there is an elipfis of the prepofition to, which does not please, While unremitting forrow points the tomb.' Had the epithet, unremitting, been fuppreffed, SORROW Would have been perfonified, and might with propriety have been faid to point, or direct, the unhappy mourner to his tomb. We must not take leave of this publication, without doing its Author the juftice to remark, that, in this edition, he has much improved fome of the poems which were formerly publifhed, by the omiffion or alteration of exceptionable paffages. Yet we cannot help wishing that he had paid more attention to Hagley, and Netherby, in this republication. These poems, though they contain many excellent lines, ftill appear, in our opinion, to want some curtailing, and much polishing. FOREIGN LITERATURE. HISTOIRE Naturelle, generale, & particuliere; contenant les Epoques de la Nature, &c.-A Natural History, general and particular; containing the Epochas of Nature. Supplement. Volume V. of the 4to Edition, and IX. and X. of the 8vo. 1779. Concluded. In the preceding part of our account* of this volume we arrived, in our analysis of this philofophical romance, at the end of the fourth epocha of nature. As the chief merit of the Author, however extensive his knowledge may be, lies in invention and painting, fo his picture of the state of the earth during this fourth period, when its domain was divided between water and fire, is fublime and terrible, in the highest degree. The objects that enter into this difmal and tremen * Appendix to the laft volume of our Review [the 6ift] p. 543. dous dous tablature, are deep lakes,-rapid currents, and whirlpools, -earthquakes occafioned by the finking of rocks, the falling in of caverns, and the explosions of volcanos,-general and particular hurricanes-vortices of fmoke,-tempefts produced by thefe violent convulfions of earth and fea, inundations, and impetuous floods and torrents, occafioned by thefe earthquakes and commotions,-rivers of melted glafs, and of bitumen and fulphur, ravaging the mountains, rolling their peftilential ftreams along the plains, and infecting their waters,-the fun himself darkened, not only by thick, watry clouds, but alfo by enormous maffes of athes and ftones, ejected from the volcanos fuch are the materials that enter into this dreadful difplay; which is concluded by an unufual ftrain of piety, and thanks to the Creator, that he did not render man the fpectator of these terrible and tumultuous fcenes that preceded the birth of intelligent and fenfitive natures. We come now to the fifth EPOCHA, during which elephants, and other animals of the fouthern climates, inhabited the northern regions. When the earth was ftill burning-hot toward the fouth, it was cooling toward the Poles, which enjoyed, during a long space of time, the temperature adapted to the prefervation and fubfiftence of the plants and animals that can only live, now, in the fouthern regions. Animal or living nature may have commenced its exiftence on our globe about 36,000 years from its formation, or expulfion from the fun, as its pofar regions, at leaft, were then fo far cooled, that the curious examiner might touch them without burning his fingers. To this living nature the author gives a long leafe of exiftence, (for as the bufinefs is all ideal, liberality is eafy) even 93,000 years, at the end of which the globe will be colder than ice. But, between these terms, there are intermediate ones, as between the extremities of the thermometer. In the first degrees of refrigeration, when the waters ceafed to boil, animals and vegetables may have exifted, which were afterwards deftroyed (both individuals and fpecies) by the increafing refrigeration of fucceeding ages, and we find only their remains in calcareous fubftances: but the claffes of organized and animal beings, that, by their nature, are more affected by intenfe heat, could only exift and multiply in periods nearer that in which we live. It is about 15,000 years backwards from our time that our Author places, in the North, elephants and other kinds of animals, who, at prefent, can only live and multiply in the torrid zone. According to him, the quantity of ivory discovered in the northern regions, proves that they once really contained a great number of elephants; but there are many more plaufible accounts given of the existence of thefe animals in the North, than the wild romance of the epochas. M. DE BUFFON obferves, |