"Waits the glad coming of day's burning eye." In truth, there are many lines in this poem, which might be cut down to eight syllables, with no detriment to the meaning and with much advantage to the style. We notice, too, several repetitions of favorite words, such as "immortal," "glowing," "burning," &c. which have an unpleasant effect, and weaken the impression of the imagery. Occasionally we find a finical expression like, "jewelled sky." It might do to compare jewels to stars, but to compare stars to jewels is to compare an object of transcendent beauty in nature, to another beautiful indeed, but too familiar, to tradesmen's shops and ladies' fingers. However, it must be confessed, that the best poets frequently commit this fault, we mean the error of taste, in comparing noble objects to things in their nature less noble. Having found fault freely with this poem, we give the following extract. "Would grander visions charm gay fancy's eye? As when our common parents o'er it trod - Rise up and vanish, like a shifting dream! — p. 30. Many of the shorter poems are written with grace, feeling, and great truth to nature. Take, for instance, the following; "TO A WARM WIND IN WINTER. "Low, sweet wind, whose melody Floats along the rippled sea, Why, to ride the curling foam, Did'st thou leave thy pleasant home? For thy motion soft and slow, And thy voice so sweet and low, We have been struck, in reading this volume, with Mr. Lunt's command of poetical expression and imagery. Sometimes his pictures are indistinct, from being overwrought; but generally they show a nicely observant eye, and a happy facility in the execution. 17. Caii Crispi Salustii de Catilina Conjuratione Belloque Jugurthino Historiæ. Sallust's Histories of the Con spiracy of Catiline and the Jugurthine War. the Text of Gerlach. From With English Notes. Edited by H. R. CLEVELAND, A. M. pp. 198. This is a very neat and attractive edition of the great Latin Historian. It is printed in a clear type, on good paper, and with a careful supervision of the press. The text selected by the editor is an excellent one. Mr. Cleveland has given, in a short introduction, a well-considered and well-worded criticism on the different classes of historical compositions, and on the writings of Sallust. The peculiarities of Sallust's style make him a difficult author for schoolboys to understand. He is condensed, epigrammatic, and elliptical. Now a condensed style is for strong minds; an epigram is not comprehended readily by those who are unaccustomed to the society of wits; and elliptical sentences require a reflective power, and a concentrated and continued attention, which schoolboys are not apt to have. Sallust abounds, moreover, in philosophical reflecNo. 103. VOL. XLVIII. 71 tions, drawn from an extensive experience of life, sometimes from an experience nowise creditable to the historian himself; - and these reflections are addressed to minds of more maturity than are found within the walls of a school-room. These points in the character of Sallust require a peculiar treatment by the editor of a school edition. Mr. Cleveland has met the difficulties of the case very skilfully and successfully. His notes are brief and pertinent; they explain what really needs explanation, either in the construction of the sentences or in the matter treated of by the author. They are uniformly clear, intelligible, and neatly expressed; sometimes highly ingenious in solving difficulties, and throwing light on disputed passages; and they condense, within a very narrow compass, a great variety of excellent criticism. NOTE TO ARTICLE III. OF THE LAST NUMBER. In our late article on "Nautical Discovery in the Northwest," we had occasion to speak of "the supposititious voyage called De Fonte's" (North American Review, Vol. XLVIII. pp. 129– 132); we quoted a part of the letter published in Burney's "Voyages "under the name of this navigator, and added, that, without feeling any confidence in its genuineness, we yet thought that there was matter in it for an investigation, which we hoped would be undertaken by some one with leisure and opportunity for such inquiries. The following views and facts, for which we are indebted to the Honorable James Savage, the learned editor of "Winthrop's History," appear to put at rest a question, itself of no little curiosity, and of which both sides have been maintained by foreign writers of consideration. The introduction to the "Letter" of De Fonte recites, that "the Viceroys of New Spain and Peru, having advice from the court of Spain, in the fourteenth year of King Charles [of England], A. D. 1639, of a voyage being undertaken by some industrious navigators from Boston in New England, for discovery of a Northwest passage, he [Admiral De Fonte] received orders from Spain and the Viceroys to equip four ships of force, and sailed with such ships April 3d, 1640." It is impossible to imagine, that the memory of such an expedition, undertaken under such auspices, with a commander of high rank, sailing with the purpose of promptly defeating the attempt of a great rival maritime power, (acting, indeed, through its humble colonists, nearest neighbours, however, to the long-sought passage,) an expedition so successful, besides, in its discoveries, should survive in a sailor story of six pages, and in that alone; the Spanish authors, to whom we referred, affirming, that "the public repositories in Spain and the Indies have been carefully searched, and that neither journal, copies of orders, nor any paper whatever, relating to such a voyage, can be found." But, again, the expedition is alleged in the "Letter" itself to have been against a Massachusetts vessel, which had reached the Pacific Ocean by a northwest passage. Accordingly, the Spanish critic, who refutes the fabulous story of his country's honor, objects to the relation of De Fonte, that there is a contradiction between his tale of meeting the Boston ship so little distance from Behring's Straits, and his conclusion, on returning home to Peru, "having found that there was no such passage into the South Sea, by what they call the Northwest passage "; and remarks, that on the showing of the "Letter," the voyage of Shepley must have been through the "thick-ribbed ice." The voyage being represented to have been made by a northwest passage, it is immaterial to the present purpose, to inquire, whether any Massachusetts vessel," so early as the middle of the seventeenth century, found her way round Cape Horn to the Northwest." The truth, however, is, that there is no reason to suppose any such vessel to have been in the Pacific till a century and a quarter later. The London "Quarterly Review" (Vol. xvi. p. 160), referred to by us, in our recent article, has the statement, that "about the same time, one M. de Groseiller, of Canada, was despatched from Quebec for the purpose of discovery. Landing near Nelson's River, he fell in with a wretched hut, in which were six people, nearly famished. They were part of the crew of a ship which had been sent from Boston, and which, while they were on shore, had been driven to sea by the ice, and was never heard of more." But where is the account of Groseiller's voyage, or rather journey? At all events, "about the same time," in the connexion in which it stands, means, about the time of James's and Foxe's voyage, in 1631, when our humble city was a year old, and boat had not yet been built here; so that if such a shipwreck as is alleged, of a Boston vessel, occurred, she must have been from Boston, in Old England. Further, there is no credible account of a New England ship, within a hundred years after, going half the length of the Labrador coast, much less penetrating into Hudson's Bay. At the close of the " Letter" the editor of the "Monthly Miscellany," where it first appeared, expresses his belief, that it "will not be unacceptable to those who have either been in those parts, or will give themselves the trouble of reviewing the chart." But here is no proof, that the author of the "Letter," or the editor of the "Miscellany," so much as pretended to possess a chart by De Fonte. He may have referred to any chart of the South Sea in common use. If this editor, in 1708, were the fabricator of the "Letter" about a voyage in 1640,* as is altogether probable, he forebore to stretch his boldness so far as to project a chart to commemorate those great discoveries, which he described in a narrative of six pages, written, perhaps, in half as many hours. The French translators supplied the deficiency, by enriching the adventure, after the middle of the last century, with that requisite accoutrement, though, as was at that day suspected, it was obtained from the laboratory of the recent Russian discoveries. The conduct, ascribed to the commander of the expedition, was so absurd, under the circumstances, as to stamp the "Letter" for a fiction. De Fonte is represented to have been fitted out with a fleet of four ships, to capture the Boston vessel, which had dared to go north about, and come on the back of the Spanish dominions, in that unknown ocean, they called their own; and, moreover, informed the owner, that his commission was "to make prize of any people seeking a northwest or west passage into it." Yet he tells us, how he forthwith violated his instructions, betrayed his trust, rewarded the interloper owner with a diamond ring of twelve hundred dollars' cost, besides a quarter-cask of good wine, and the interloper captain with the gift of a thousand dollars for his fine charts and journals, and even the common sailors with two hundred dollars more. Instead of this, to execute his duty, he should have made them all prisoners, and sequestrated their property. A consideration for his liberality is indeed, alleged, "a smail present of provisions," which the receiver acknowledged he had no need of. But the question, how, under such circumstances, this could have been bestowed, is as hard to answer, as the question why it should have been received. The Massachusetts captain must have had small surplus of stores, laid in by him in Boston the year before, and not needed for his return voyage from the hyperborean regions, to distribute to a squadron, nine thousand miles nearer home than himself. The name of the Massachusetts captain, if there was one, was Shapley (or Shepley, or Shapleigh). Among one thousand eight hundred and eleven names, contained in the Appendix to the second volume of "Winthrop's History," of persons desirous of becoming freemen in the colony during the years 1630-1648 *That the writer of the "Letter" knew something of Massachusetts Bay, appears probable from his finding the name Conihasset to the north of Nootka Sound. Conihasset (otherwise Cohasset) is a well-known pleasant maritime village, a few miles from Boston. |