1803.]

GREEK CRITICISM.

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seeing a young butcher, said to him, Μειράκιον ὁ καλός, φησί, πῶς ἵστης, φράσον; ‘My pretty lad, tell me how you sell (your meat). Your readers, Sir, who recollect Shallow's questions, How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?' How a score of ewes now?'* will readily agree that Tŵs Corns is at least good English. But Lennep, in a note upon Phalaris, p. 95, 1, will not allow it to be good Greek; so corrects it to mógov orns, and falls into the error I have just exposed. Mr. Jacobs, in a note upon the Anthology, approves of Lennep's correction. Let us try to defend the vulgar reading by a quotation from Aristophanes, Eq. 478, Пôs οὖν ὁ τυρὸς ἐν Βοιωτοῖς ὤνιος; but, see what a general prejudice has taken place in behalf of πόσου against poor πῶς! Gerard Horreus would read πόσου δ ̓ ὁ τυρός. This conjecture Pierson (on Maris, p. 424) refutes by producing Acharn. 768, Τί δ' ἄλλο, Μεγαροῖ πῶς ὁ σῖτος ὤνιος; to which when your readers have added a fragment of Strattis (apud Polluc. iv. 169), Τὰ δ' ἄλφιτ ̓ ὑμῖν πῶς ἐπώλουν; τεττάρων Δραχμῶν μάλιστα τὸν κόφινον, they will consent to let Machon and Aristophanes enjoy their old reading.

"Oct. 11. 1802."

"I am, Sir, &c.

In July 1803, a fragment of a statue of Ceres, which had been brought from Eleusis, was to be placed in the vestibule of the Cambridge University Library, and Porson was requested to write the inscription for it:

SIMULACHRI. CERERIS. FRAGMENTUM

ELEUSINE. DEPORTATUM

POSUERUNT

EDVARDUS. DANIEL. CLARKE ET

*Shaksp. 2 Hen. IV. 3, 2. ‡ Kidd, Tracts, p. lxxvii.

"JOHN NIC. DAWES. †

S

.

COLLEGII · ALUMNI

A. D. M.DCCC.III.‡

257

† Kidd, Tracts, pp. 151-153.

Some time previously, the famous Rosetta stone, a block of black marble, engraven with three inscriptions, in hieroglyphics, in the Coptic or native language of Egypt, and in Greek, all of the same import, setting forth the services which Ptolemy the Fifth had done to his country, and decreeing, in the name of the priests assembled at Memphis, various honours to be paid to him, had been brought to England, and deposited in the British Museum; and Porson, fixing his attention on the Greek, the last twenty-six lines of which are considerably mutilated, restored it, in a great measure, by conjecture, and gave a translation of it. These results of his critical skill he presented, in January 1803, to the Antiquarian Society, who printed them, but not till several years after his death, in the sixteenth volume of their Transactions. While he was exercising his sagacity on the stone, he visited the Museum so often, to read and consider it, that he got from the officials the name of "Judge Blackstone." +

In the "Monthly Review" for September 1801, James Tate, then a very young man, had made some remarks on Porson's Preface to the "Hecuba," and particularly on the subject of the pause. Having a great respect for Porson, he was pleased to find some of his observations supported in the Supplement to the Preface, which appeared in 1802; and Dalzel, to whom he was known, admitted a paper of his, on Greek metres, into the Preface to his "Analecta." Dalzel soon after wrote to Porson, and observed, in his letter, that he did not suppose Porson looked much into Reviews,

1803.]

or he would probably have taken some notice of Tate's

paper.

These observations drew from Porson the following letter, which, passing into the hands of Tate, was by him sent to the "Museum Criticum."

LETTER TO DALZEL.

R. PORSON to A. DALZEL.

259

"Essex Court, No. 5, Sep. 3, 1803.

"DEAR SIR,

"Our friend Mr. Laing being in town, and on the eve of his departure for the north, I could not find in my heart to take leave of him without troubling him to bear this trifling token of my esteem, public and private, for Mr. Dalzel.

"It is unpleasant enough at any rate to be engaged in controversy; unpleasant with an enemy; but still more unpleasant with a friend. A few minutes' conversation would generally decide a question better than volumes of dispute. I shall therefore be very concise, and only take the liberty of mentioning a very few points in which you seem to have either misconceived, or not fully conceived my meaning.

"

"You suppose me not to have seen (p. 164) the Monthly Review' for Sep. 1801. It is of no consequence whether I saw it or not. The Canon concerning the fifth foot of a Senarian was already published in the first edition of Hecuba.' "A gentleman who sent me some anonymous remarks on the Hecuba' dated June 7th, 1798, has these words on v. 347. 'Nobody seemed to know the meaning of this note, till an imperfect account in the 'Monthly Review' (a short time since) appeared written, as it is said, by Dr Burney. It was mentioned to me three years ago by Dr. Goodall.' This last sentence is capable of two interpretations. 1. The editor of 'Hecuba' needed not to produce this observation as a discovery of his own, since it was already taught by an eminent scholar at our most famous school. 2. The editor of Hecuba' stole this observation from Dr. Goodall, and published it as his own. "If our friends can indulge themselves in such candid in

nuendoes, what are we to expect from our rivals and ene-
mies? Godfrey Herman's note upon this passage is a model
of learning and liberality. He is exceedingly angry that I
made the remark at all. He is also very angry that I had
any remark to make upon iambic verses after his elaborate
treatise concerning metres.
He is still more angry that I
wrapped up my Canon in studied obscurity. The fact, he
grants, is true; but, if I had given my mind to it, could I
not have discovered the reason of the fact? for if the editor
pretends that he passed by the reason, on account of its ex-
treme easiness, Mr. Herman is resolved not to believe him.
'Now,' quoth he, 'what the editor reprehends in this verse,
if we retain Toνμπаλiv, cannot be any thing else than the
spondee in the fifth place.' And then he goes on to say,
that a spondee in the fifth place has nothing in it reprehen-
sible.* I will consent to be called as ignorant of metre and
harmony as Leclerc, Reiske, and Herman, if I ever said or
thought any thing like the proposition that Mr. Herman has
fathered upon me. I must have been an accurate reader of
Euripides, to have disapproved of a Spondee in the fifth place
of a trimeter iambic, when, of the fifty-eight verses that
begin the Hecuba,' twenty-seven, at the lowest reckoning,
would oppose my Canon. To the candid observations of
Godfrey Herman, I shall only answer by a quotation from
Valckenaer's dissertation on the unpublished Scholia upon
Homer (post Ursini Virgilium cum Græcis collatum, Llo-
vardiæ, 1747, p. 147). Quum illud-monuerat Canterus,
biennio post, invidus sæpe virtutis alienæ obtrectator, Henr.
Stephanus, ita libello renovato præfatus est, ut cupidè velit
videri non ignoravisse quod Canterus detexerat.'

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It may perhaps divert you to insert an epigram, made by an Etonian, a friend of mine, upon the said Herman, in imitation of Phocylides's saw †, (Strabo, X. p. 487, ed. Par.)

Νήϊδες ἐστὲ μέτρων, ὦ Τεύτονες· οὐχ ὃ μὲν, ὃς δ ̓ οὔτ
Πάντες, πλὴν ΕΡΜΑΝΝΟΣ· ὁ δ ̓ ΕΡΜΑΝΝΟΣ σφόδρα Τεύτων.

* Vide Hecubam Hermanni, p. 108, quam totam perlegas velim.
† Καὶ τόδε Φωκυλίδεω. Λέριοι κακοί· οὐχ ὁ μὲν, ὃς δ ̓ οὔ·
Πάντες, πλὴν Προκλέους· καὶ Προκλέης Λέριος.

A

Νήιδες ἐστὲ μέτρων, ὦ Τεύτομεσ, οὐχ ὁμεμ, δεδου Πάντες,πλὴν ΕὔMANNoc· ὁ δ ̓ Ερμαμμα σφόδρα τεύτων.

From the original in the possession of the Rev. H. R. Luard, Trin Coll. Cambridge.

Achbee & Dangerfield, Fac-sun 22 Beford Street, Covent Garden.