setting out home again laden with doves and thrushes,-are all so vivid and so natural, that we have not a more complete domestic scene in any ancient writer. Indeed we have scarcely any thing that can be compared with them, except the more homely idyls of Theocritus and the sketches of country life in Aristophanes.

Daphnis and Chloe have but one quarrel; and though our extracts are rather long, we cannot resist giving the account of it, as a very pretty example of the mode in which all lovequarrels ought to be ended. There is an apple tree which has been stripped, and only one apple, the finest of all, left upon the topmost branch. "This apple, when Daphnis saw, he was eager to climb up and pluck it, and paid no attention to Chloe who would have hindered him. She being disregarded went away hastily to the flocks; but Daphnis, having climbed up, achieved the plucking it and bringing it as a present for Chloe, and said some words of this sort to her as she was angry: O virgin, this apple, the beautiful seasons produced, and a beautiful tree nourished, the sun ripening it, and fortune watched over it: and as I had eyes, I was not going to leave it alone, to be looked at and praised, that it might fall to the ground, and either one of the flock trample it as they fed, or a reptile creeping over it make it poisonous, or time consume it as it lay. This Venus received as the prize of beauty; this I give to you as a trophy of your victory. We have your witnesses of like sort with her's; he was a shepherd, I a goatherd.' Having said these things, he puts it in her bosom; and she kissed him as he came near; so that Daphnis did not repent having dared to climb to so great a height, for he received a kiss better even than a golden apple."

66

Daphnis and Chloe are not doomed to feed their flocks for any very patriarchal time. The discovery of their parents and their marriage takes place in the second summer. The marriage is celebrated in the country with all the accompaniments of rustic festivity. They would be attended even by their flocks. "And this not only then," Longus adds, " but, as long as they lived, they spent the greater part of their time like shepherds, worshipping as gods the Nymphs, and Pan, and Love, having acquired numerous flocks of sheep and goats, and thinking the sweetest food ripe fruits and milk. And a male infant they placed under a she-goat, and a little daughter, who was their second born, they caused to draw the teat of an ewe; and they called the one Philopomen, and the other Agele, (both pastoral names :) thus with them, these habits also grew old. These it was who adorned the grotto and erected the statues, and made for themselves the altar of Love

the Shepherd; and to Pan they gave instead of his pine tree a temple to dwell in, having named him Pan the Soldier*."

* We cannot refrain from leading our readers into a labyrinth of difficulties, in which we have been ourselves entangled. We have before us an edition of Huet's Dissertation De l'Origine des Romans,' printed at Amsterdam in 1700. We have also the Latin translation of Piron, printed in 1682. Now the French and Latin differ very materially throughout, and in the part relating to Longus, they are absolutely and completely at variance. The Latin is the more ample; and Piron in his dedication to Huet admits that he has interpolated the work. Yet Villoison, in the prolegomena to his edition of Longus, quotes a French text accurately corresponding to the Latin. Huet, in his life of himself, mentions the circumstances which led to the production of the work, but makes no mention of any subsequent additions or alterations, and no complaint of his friend Piron. It may be right to add, that in the catalogue of the various editions of Huet's works, prefixed to his life by the editors, there is no mention of this edition of 1700. Whatever may be the explanation of this discrepancy in the Latin version, there are some absurdly unfounded criticisms upon the incongruity of the slight notice of the after life of Daphnis and Chloe which we have quoted above. These Bayle, who has used only the Latin text of Huet, has implicitly adopted, and adds sneeringly, "C'est sortir entièrement du vrai caractère de cette espèce d'écrits. 11 les faut finir au jour des noces, et se taire sur les suites du mariage. Une héroine de Roman grosse et accouchée est une étrange personnage." The mode in which he thus acquiesces in the false representation of Piron or Huet, that Longus has continued his narration down to the children and old age of his hero and heroine, shows plainly that he never read the book itself; as he was compelled in another place to acknowledge that he had never read the romance of Heliodorus, upon which he had hazarded some severe criticisms. Mr. Dunlop, who has made great use of the Latin version of Huet, but has apparently known the French only from the quotations of Villoison, has been careless enough to quote Bayle's observation as part of Huet's words. Villoison, Mr. Dunlop, and the writer in the Liberal, have all with just taste defended Longus; and Villoison, who was evidently enraptured with the romance upon which he has bestowed so much erudition, is even beautifully eloquent upon the subject. We have, however, a charge of more culpable carelessness than Mr. Dunlop's, if indeed it be carelessness, to make against the critic in the Liberal. Apparently he has not had before him either the French or the Latin of Huet, but has quoted them at second hand from Villoison and Bayle. He first quotes, in the Latin, the remarks on the indecency of some parts of the story, and with great grossness of taste contradicts them in several flippant and offensive sentences. He then continues, "there is yet another objection made by the same Huet, which is a greater fault than the former: Pejus etiam vitium est, says the Right Reverend Bishop; it is much worse than that cynical indecency &c.- What can this be? What but the perverse and preposterous conduct of the story, &c.——” After thus sneering at the Bishop, evidently because he is a Bishop, as if he represented the critical faults of the work as of greater consequence than its moral faults, he gravely argues to his unsuspecting reader, that, if that which is represented as the greater objection be so light as it really is, the accusation of indecency must be equally unfounded. Now it happens that, as if to serve his purpose, he has transposed the sentences. If he quoted from the book itself, he must have known that the remarks on the conduct of the story preceded the remarks on its indecency; and that the expression pejus vitium, the greater fault, referred to some foregoing observations on the introduction of machinery. And it will not VOL. I. PART II.

X

This last surname refers to a signal deliverance which Pan had wrought for the lovers. Chloe had been carried off with all her flocks by an invading army of the Methymnæns; but when the plunderers took up their station for the night, Pan, by strange portents, infused into them what is termed a panic terror, and directed in a dream the release of his votary as the propitiation of his offended divinity. This incident may serve as a specimen of the events with which the story is filled up, but of which we have not thought it necessary to give an account, as they contribute nothing to its final develope

ment.

We have thus conducted our readers to the union of these affectionate and innocent lovers; and we trust that they will not be so fastidious as to be displeased at the short glimpse which Longus has given us of the simple and tranquil mode in which their later days were passed.

In our translations we have endeavoured to retain every turn of thought by adhering closely to the original; but all persons familiar with the ancient writers must be aware how impossible it is to convey at the same time any notion of the beauty of the language. We have already alluded to the allegorical narrative of Philetas as one of the most fanciful passages of the work. It is literally translated in the Liberal; but it possesses so much poetical beauty, that we will venture to present as close and simple a version of it as we can, in the stanza which the custom of our own poetry has consecrated to allegory.

Then in their joyaunce came a man of eld,
With shagged cloak to keep him from the cold,
And untanned shoon, and little scrip which held
His scanty dinner, and his scrip was old.
Straight sitting down by them, his name he told,
The old Philetas; how, when he was young,
He piped to Pan beneath the sheltering fold,
Or filled this grotto of the nymphs with song ;
And how his many kine would to his music throng.

avail him to plead that he borrowed his quotations from Bayle; for Bayle, where he introduces the remarks on the indecency, opus alioqui tam obscænum est, &c., has taken the trouble expressly to explain the reference of alioqui to the criticisms which went before on the conduct of the plot.

Another curious instance of literary carelessness relative to Longus, which harsh judges have considered as literary dishonesty, is noticed in a note in the Museum Criticum, No. III. p. 409. It relates to a lacuna, which unfortu nately occurs just at the point where Chloe and Daphnis fall in love.

And now, he said, fair children, ye shall hear
Of a strange marvel that to me befel.
I have a garden, laden all the year:
Too old as herdman in the fields to dwell,
With my own hands I till it passing well:
In spring the ground with violets is strown,
And sweet my hyacinths and lilies smell;

And summer apples weigh my branches down; And now are grapes and figs and myrtle-berries brown.

When morning sparkles through the misty air,
The little birds in many a merry throng
Will flock in search of food and settle there,
Or pipe their matin notes the boughs among :
For there, full fit for forest warbler's song,
Trees arch their branches o'er the secret shade;
Three bubbling fountains roll their rills along;
And, but for fence around the garden made,
Some copse it well might seem, or wilder woodland glade.

And there at noontide as I went to-day,
Beneath the myrtle and pomegranate trees,
With myrtle-berries was a boy at play,
As white as milk; and with luxurious ease
His sunny ringlets idled on the breeze;
Alone he sported in his careless joy;

And fain would I the truant urchin seize ;
For much I feared, that little naked boy
My tender myrtles and pomegranates would destroy.

But lightly he escaped, and laughing fled;
For underneath the rose-trees he would run,
Or closely nestling in the poppy-bed,

Like a young partridge, his pursuer shun.

When kids and calves to leave their dams begun,

Full oft I followed them in weary chase,

And little good and mickle trouble won ; But never kid or calf from place to place So led my doubling steps in such a bootless race.

All breathless therefore on my staff I lean
And watching held the little thief at bay,

And asked whose child he was, and what he meant,
By plucking all the fruit that round him lay?
He answered nothing, but in roguish play
With myrtle-berries pelted me and smiled;
And nearer came, and smiled in such a way—
I know not how he was so fair a child,
That, angry as I was, my anger was beguiled.

More lovely seemed he as he laughed, I wis: So then I bade him be afraid no more, But come and kiss me with one little kiss ; And by the child's own myrtle-berries swore, Of pears and apples I would give him store, And let him pluck my fruit and crop my flowers: But then he laughed yet louder than before; More sweet than nightingale in wild wood bowers, Or swan grown old like me, and in its dying hours.

His laughing voice so musically rung:
"To me, Philetas, would a kiss be sweet;
I love it more than thou wouldst to be young;
But think if kisses for thine age be meet:
For thou wouldst follow me with feeble feet,
If but one kiss upon thy lips I told;

And I than hawk or eagle fly more fleet:

No child am I ; though child I seem, more old Than Cronus, or than Time, or aught men oldest hold.

"And thee I know, how in thy budding days
Thy herd thou feddest in yon marshy mead,
And by those beech-trees listened to thy lays,
To Amaryllis piped upon the reed:

I stood beside her; but thou didst not heed:
Yet her to thee I gave; and now a race
Of goodly sons, full fit the kine to feed,

Around thy hearth-stone throng with gladsome face:

So Daphnis with like care and Chloe now I grace.

"I lead them till they meet at peep of day,
And with long kisses to each other grow ;
Then to thy garden wend my lonely way,

And sport with all the flowers that round me blow,