25 FEB. the 12th. the first fourteen Odes of Horace, Lib. 1, with Dacier's and ations. I am still undecided as to the construction of the twelve the 2d, in the first ode: a verse seems wanting between the 10th cis oculis" in the 3rd ode, appears a strange epithet-" rectis" is wish; but I see no other authority for substituting it to instance , by saying that he can face danger without blubbering, is certainly but might not Horace sometimes be unhappy; and do we not re scrupulosity than he wrote ?-It would be difficult, any where, r construction of words than in the conclusion of the 5th Ode-Me tabula sacer Votivâ paries indicat uvida Vestimenta maris Deo. er have been clear, or pleasing?-Tarteron's prudery in suppression, the four last lines in the 4th, 6th, and 9th Odes, and the th, is perfectly ridiculous: one can have no opinion of the purity hich could suspect such verses as unchaste. FEB. the 19th. illy's Critique sur la fidelité de l' histoire (Memoires de L'Academie , Tom 8me.); in which, the nature of historical evidence is very ussed. Hume, I think, has borrowed from this tract in his Essay Allowing for the superior spirit of attack over defence, De Pouilly elf a very superior writer to his antagonist l' Abbè Sallier, in a prehe same vol., on the uncertainty of the earlier part of the Roman well repays the reading. hastily, Erskine's pamphlet on the Causes and Consequences of r; and was much struck with that part, in which he exposes the coalition against France, by supposing that a similar confederacy d against England, on the decapitation of Charles I.: yet, on the irers of this great advocate must surely be disappointed with this powers; and will be tempted to apply to him, what Cicero observed jus in verbis mens ardentior spirat, ejus in scriptis, omnis illa vis oratoris extinguitur." E [1797.] FEB. the 24th. W. who, by a happy choice of characteristic features, and the dexterous use of intermediate ideas, possesses, beyond any man I know, the enchanting art of painting vividly to the imagination whatever he has seen, has been for some days. delighting me with descriptions of what occurred during a voyage along the Western coast of Italy, the tour of Sicily, and a visit to Rome. The ample basin of the Bay of Naples, with its gay shores, surmounted by the awful form of Vesuvius-the Isles of Lipari, emitting flames and coruscations as he passed them in the dead stillness of night-the first distant view of Etna, through the clear medium of an Italian atmosphere, tinged with ethereal blue, and lifting his snow-capt head in solitary majesty the iron frontier of the coast of Scylla-the ascent of Ætna in the night, by a torrent of liquid lava, surcharged with scoria, reddening the air with its glow, and plunging with a tremendous crash over a precipice equal to the cliffs of Dover-the pillar of smoke, slowly and steadily ascending through the vast concavity of the crater, till it caught the breeze upon the summit, and scudded horizontally away, coldly tinged by the morning twilight-the first sparkle of the long expected sun; gilding, as he rose, the highest points of the eminences beneath, while all below was buried in a purple gloom-Sicily, through all its extent and waving shores, at length spread under the eye, like an illuminated map; and Calabria and Malta, in opposite directions, rising faintly in the distance—the approach to Rome from the South, descending through a thick forest on the flat and dreary expanse of the Campania-Claudius' aquæduct, while Rome was yet invisible, shooting athwart the level, in a long line and endless succession of arcades the first aspect of the Imperial City-the Coliseum, as he passed it, bleached to the North, and apparently fresh from the architect.-The bare recital of such scenes, fires the imagination, and kindles an eager curiosity to behold them yet the perplexing difficulties, the vexatious delays, the misery of accommodation, the fatigue of body, and anxiety of mind, which would in many cases attend the actual inspection of these interesting objects, must considerably deduct from the delight they are calculated to afford; and it is, perhaps, only under the purifying process of recollection, that the luxury of having seen them, can be fully enjoyed.-W. confessed, that the ruins of Rome, widely scattered as they are, in different directions, choaked up with buildings, and in many instances artificially supported by iron cramps, at the first view, miserably disappointed him; as they inevitably must do, every one whose expectations have been formed, on the sketches of Piranesi, &c. in which, all that is offensive is carefully excluded, and whatever [1797.] is most interesting in these remains, selected and combined.-St. Peter's, though yielding to its powerful rival in exterior elegance of form, exhibits such vast dimensions and surpassing splendour within, that St. Paul's, on a review, appeared like the inside of a deserted tap-room. MARCH the 14th. Read Freret's Essay on the Evidence of Antient History, Tom 8me., of the Memoires de L' Academie a masterly disquisition, which, so far as it forms a general argument, (for of its particular application to certain points of antient history, I am an incompetent judge), has my fullest assent. The concluding part, on the different and inconvertible natures of mathematical and moral evidence, particularly meets my ideas. Pursued the Odes of Horace, Lib. 1. What does Dacier mean, in his concluding note on the 30th, by hinting, with a sort of pregnant brevity, that the reason is obvious why the antients attached Mercury to Venus? Had he been criticising a modern, I should have supposed he meant to be smart. I cannot bring myself to think, with him, that the 34th Ode is ironical: it appears very evidently to me, to have been written under a sudden fit of piety, produced, as such fits often are with the dissolute, by imminent danger escaped. MARCH the 21st. Looked over Malone's Enquiry into the Authenticity of Ireland's Shakespearian Papers; a learned and decisive piece of criticism, which would have settled my doubts, if all doubts had not been already removed by the forger's impudent confession. Yet Malone sometimes insists too strongly on slight proofs; as in his objection from the word "amuse" in Q. Elizabeth's Letter, which affords sense in its primitive meaning, of arresting attention: his violent politics, too, are violently introduced; and suggest but a feeble argument against Shakespear's Love Letter. Read with much delight in the 8me. Tom of Memoires de L. Academie, Gedoyn's Dissertation de l' Urbanité Romaine, in which the origin and expansion of this quality are delicately traced, its volatile form delineated with elegance and spirit, and its seperate nature forcibly and pointedly discriminated; nor is there any part of this disquisition exceptionable, but the application of this accomplishment to Homer, Pindar, and others, in whom it surely does not predominate. Amongst the [1797-] moderns, I should point without hesitation to St. Evremond, as exhibiting this qualification in its purest form.-Racine, in a subsequent Essay, resolves the essence of poetry, into the language of passion. MARCH. the 25th. Finished the Italian. This work will maintain, but not extend, Mrs. Radcliffe's fame as a novelist. It has the same excellencies and defects as her former compositions. In the vivid exhibition of the picturesque of nature, in the delineation of strong and dark character, in the excitation of horror by physical and moral agency. I know not that Mrs. R. has any equal: but she languishes in spinning the thread of the narrative on which these excellencies are strung; natural characters and incidents are feebly represented; probability is often strained without sufficient compensation; and the developement of those mysteries which have kept us stretched so long on the rack of terror and impatience (an unthankful task at best) is lame and impotent. Eleanor and Vivaldi, either in their seperate character or mutual attachment (a wire-drawn theme), touched me but little; but I confess myself to have been deeply and violently impressed, by the midnight examination of the corpse of Bianchi; by the atrocious conference of Schedoni and the Marquesa, in the dim twilight of the Church of San Nicolo; and, above all, by what passed in Spalatro's solitary dwelling on the sea shore. If Mrs. Radcliffe justly consulted her fame, she would confine herself to fragments.-She and Miss Burney might compose a capital piece between them-Mrs. R. furnishing the landscape, and Miss B. the figures. MARCH the 26th. Finished Gibbon's Memoirs of himself—an exquisite morceau of literature, but which might have been rendered far more interesting by anecdotes of such of his acquaintance as were distinguished characters-a disclosure, properly conducted, of which I cannot see the harm; and by less reserve on the subject of his progress in infidelity-a topic which the Biographer touches with all the caution of the Historian. In the Memoirs, and in the Journal, there is one strange and material inconsistency which I cannot reconcile. In the former, he represents himself as overpowered with admiration of the calm philosophy, and careless inimitable beauties of Hume's history in his Journal, descriptive of a period immediately succeeding that in which he paints himself thus struck, he calls Hume's history, ingenious but : [1797.] superficial. The accuracy of Mr. Gibbon's memory, it is to be presumed, forsook him, on this occasion, in his Memoirs; and he has been led to ascribe to too early a period, the more enlightened judgment of maturer years. MARCH the 31st. Read Swift's Four last Years of Queen Anne; a clear, connected detail of facts, exhibited with exquisite art (artis est, celare artem) to give the particular impression he wished. How different do the same transactions appear, under the colouring of Swift and Burnet!-The Letter to a Whig Lord (Vol. 24, Nichols' edition) strikingly displays Swift's talents as a party writer: under the shew of serious and earnest admonition, he shrewdly urges, with cutting force, and in galling succession, all the topics which malice could suggest, to bring the opponents of the Oxford administration, at the critical juncture when it was written, into general contempt and obloquy Si Pergama dextrâ Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent. Read the first five Odes (Lib. 2.) of Horace. Bentley has compleatly puzzled himself with the passage in the 5th,-illi, quos tibi dempserit apponit annos: and proposed an emendation, "quod" "annus," by which, if there were any difficulty, it would doubtless be removed; but Dacier's explanation, that, to a certain period of life, the passing years may be considered as added, and after that period, as taken away, seems quite clear and satisfactory. Gibbon might have applied the remarkable pun, which occurs somewhere in his history, with good effect to Ausonius' epigram, quoted in Dacier's last note to this Ode, Dum dubitat Natura, marem faceretne puellam, APRIL the 4th. Looked through the European Magazine for last month. I hardly remember to have been more struck, on any occasion, by any composition, than with the remonstrance of one Gibbins, a Quaker, against the proceedings of the Monthly Meeting at Birmingham towards his expulsion, for manufacturing and selling fire arms. It is a masterpiece of sound and close reasoning, forcibly urged in |