Here we close this imperfect sketch of the Greek elegy. The readers of Athenæus-that delightful Boswell of the ancientswill see how imperfect the sketch is-how many great names we have passed over in silence, and how many fragments of elegiac verse we have forborne to criticise. We might have mentioned Phocylides of Miletus, and Ion of Chios-the Lyde of Antimachus, and the Leontium of Hermesianax-the two latter poets both of Colophon, the favourite school of elegy, and both of them, as it should seem, emulous of the fame, but not equally inheritors of the spirit and genius of their great fellow-townsman, Mimnermus. We might have speculated on Philetas of Cos, of whom we know nothing, but that he was famous and little, that he was jilted by his mistress, one Madame Bittis, and that he was blown away by the wind,-against a recurrence of which species of attack, he devised a scheme of ballasting his shoes with lead; and we might have expressed our wonder at the vast reputation which Callimachus enjoyed amongst the ancients, especially the Romans, although it might be thought unjust to do so in the total loss of his Cydippe. That poem, or collection of poems, must surely have possessed more truth of feeling, and simplicity of manner, than the Lavacrum Pallados-which still exists to have induced the uncommonly high praise implied in Ovid's well-known couplet : Callimachi numeris non est dicendus Achilles ; Cydippe non est oris, Homere, tui. We might have done this and more; but our limits forbid, and our chief object was rather to take a view of the inventors and first cultivators of Greek elegy in its various kinds, than to exhibit a complete catalogue of all the names of elegiac poets which the industry of collectors has preserved. That catalogue would be almost endless; so numerous were Greek poets, and so favourite a measure was the elegiac couplet. It became nearly as favourite a mode of composition with the Romans; but in the handling of their most popular poets, the rhythm was almost entirely altered. Even in those instances in which the Greek rhythm is very sedu lously lously imitated, as in the greater part of the elegies of Catullus and Propertius, the different genius of the language made the Latin couplet a very distinct measure to the ear, from the Greek. It may be remarked in particular, that, in consequence of the condensed character of the Latin, the elegiac measure in that language lost the power, so graceful in Greek, of linking the pentameter to the following hexameter, as the necessity of adequate expression, or the call for variety might require. This never became natural, or even bearable in Latin elegy, and the effect is, that the successive couplets read very much like so many separate epigrams without continuity and flowing-and a very heavy monotony, a sing-song repetition of short, alternating sounds, is the disagreeable consequence. Nevertheless, inferior as we must ever think the most finished elegy of the Romans to the specimens we have of that of the Greeks in the fragments of Mimnermus, we are not insensible of the very high and peculiar, though varying, merits of Ovid, Tibullus, and Propertius, and consider that, with the single exception of their satire, the Latin poets succeeded better in their elegy, than in any other department of verse. It has long been a popular wish with the devoted lovers of Greek literature-we think Cumberland first uttered it-that if Time would restore to us any of his spoils, it might be a complete play of Menander. We should receive such a present with gratitude; but we must own that, if our choice were limited to works of the imagination, we should rather decide for some of the lost monuments of the great elegiac and lyric geniuses of the age which we have been noticing in this article. Perhaps, indeed, to us, in possession, as we are, of Plautus and Terence-a play of Cratinus or of Eupolis would be more valuable than any production of the new comedy; their handling of Pericles would, no doubt, be as interesting as Aristophanes' manipulation of Cleon; and we should like very much to know whether Aristophanes really was such a complete cock of the walk in the old comedy as he seems to us, when we have no rival to compare him with. But these poets, curious and precious as they are in their fragments, were not poets of the highest range of imagination; a greater gap in the history of Greek genius would be filled up by a restoration of some of the extraordinary productions of the sixth century before Christ, than exists anywhere in the subsequent literature of that marvellous people. We would say with Wordsworth,— O ye who patiently explore The wreck of Herculanean lore, 2 H But But this is vain wishing. They made clean work at Constanti nople! Every divine verse of Sappho and Mimnermus, which we now do possess, is only ours, because it was enshrined in the unobnoxious manuscripts of collectors or critics. Every shred of their mantles-every string of their lyres, was meant to be burnt; and we were to dry our tears with Gregory Nazianzen! We do not know that the darkness of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was ever made more visible than by the light of that bonfire. ART. IV.-1. The Entire Works of the Rev. Robert Hall, A.M., &c. Published under the superintendence of Olinthus Gregory, LL.D., F.R.A.S. 5 vols. 8vo. London. 1830-32. 2. Reminiscences of the Rev. Robert Hall, A. M. By John Greene. London. 1831. E We have not, of late years, undertaken a task of greater difficulty than this, of laying before our readers our opinion of Hall and of his writings, and the grounds upon which it has been formed. On the one hand there is to be taken into consideration the dignity of Hall's talents, for they were surpassed perhaps by those of very few men in his time; the reverence we naturally feel for one who, so gifted, was content, for conscience sake, to occupy a far lower station in society than seemed his due; the reserve which we would most sincerely desire to exercise in dealing with a noble mind in which there was a flaw-a flaw extending perhaps farther than met the eye; and the allowance which ought, in fairness, to be made for the defects of an author, no longer alive to superintend the publication of his own works, to revise, to reconcile, above all, to withhold. On the other hand, we cannot forget, that the editor has been acting a deliberate part towards the memory of his friend, whether a discreet one or otherwise; that the sentiments of such a man as Hall, so vividly conceived, so eloquently expressed, (for he is an absolute master of English,) cannot fail of producing powerful effects; and that, whilst they are often tributary in the highest degree to patriotism, to liberty, to morals, to all the graces of a Christian life, they often again breathe a spirit so fierce, so dogmatical, so impatient of fair opposition, so studiously offensive to every honest member of the Church of England, that, though quite unconscious of party feelings, and certainly having opened these volumes with many prepossessions in favour of the writer, we cannot altogether submit to charges so intemperate, and lick the hand upheaved to lay what of earthly institutions we most estimate low. If, therefore, Dr. Gregory has allowed himself, from whatever motive, to give to the public essays composed at distant intervals, under different circumstances, in the fervour of youth and the circumspection of age, at seasons of extraordinary ferment and of calm repose, of bright hope and of bitter knowledge-regardless of the inconsistencies they betray, which are many and grievous-on him and not on us be the blame. We are unwilling to pronounce that there is anything in the condition of the times, which stimulates the principles of dissent to unwonted and ungenerous activity-that they are working just now, as they have done in times past (to use Mr. Southey's illustration), because there happens to be thunder in the air-but if it be so, we advise them to be still a little longer, lest eagerness should get the better of discretion-lest that which is probably meant as a menace should be taken as a warning; and the temper already shown, should only suggest the caution, if it be such in the green tree what will it be in the dry? Hall, at the age of seven and twenty, publishes a pamphlet, entitled, Christianity consistent with a Love of Freedom.' It is impossible to read the works of this extraordinary man without perceiving, that his passions in his youth were turbulent in the extreme that the energies of his mind were then scarcely under his own control-that years of reflection and dear-bought experience were wanting to him, above all men, in order to tame his spirit that, like Milton's lion, he was a long time before he could struggle out of earth. I presume,' says he, in one of his letters, the Lord sees I require more hammering and hewing than almost any other stone that was ever selected for his spiritual building, and that is the secret of his dealing with me.'* Tranquillity,' he writes in another letter, is not my lot; the prey in early life of passion and calamity, I am now perfectly devoured with an impatience to redeem the time.' + Why then will Dr. Gregory disturb his repose by a republication, to which Mr. Hall would never consent, he tells us, during his life; doubtless condemning, in his more sober years, the bitter temper which spake in this youthful effort; for of the ability with which it is writen even Hall could never have had any reason to be ashamed. It is a poor apology, as seems to us, to the wounded spirit of Hall, if his spirit can now be wounded, to say, that surreptitious editions of the work had been printed and must be met. What if they had? These editions, some or all of them, must have been known to Hall himself, yet they did not provoke him to republish. He had unhappily suffered words to escape him which he was not able to revoke, and he made all the atonement he could to his own sense of right and wrong by refusing to repeat them ;- we cannot but think that it would have been the office of a true friend, to respect his self-accusing silence, and set upon it his seal. For, after all, the treatise, now that it is once again † Vol. v., p. 424. *Vol. v., p. 479. the before the public, as compared with Hall's subsequent writings, is full of contradictions; so that whatever honour it may reflect on the genius of the man is at the expense of his judgment-a poor compensation. Thus, he calls the maxims of Mr. —'s sermon, to which the tract is an answer, servile,' because Mr. thinks it better that ministers of the gospel should not turn politicians, or if they do depart from their natural line, that it should be to defend governments, to allay dissensions, to convince the people that they are incompetent judges of their rights.'* Yet, servile' as was this counsel, the time came when Hall himself was determined to have as little to do as possible with party politics, and in the exercise of his professional duties nothing at all.'+ And again, at a later period, he expresses a reluctance to appear as a political writer, from an opinion, whether well or ill founded, that the Christian ministry is in danger of losing something of its energy and sanctity by embarking on the stormy element of political debate.' Mr. — had said no more. 'Our author,' writes Hall in the same treatise, expresses an ardent desire for the approach of that period, when all men will be Christians. I have no doubt,' he adds, that this event will take place, and rejoice in the prospect of it; but whenever it arrives it will be fatal to Mr.'s favourite principles, for the professors of Christianity must then become politicians, as the wicked, on whom he at present very politely devolves the business of government, will be no more; or perhaps he indulges a hope, that even then, there will be a sufficient number of sinners left to conduct political affairs, especially as wars will then cease, and social life be less frequently disturbed by rapine and injustice. It will still, however, be a great hardship, that a handful of the wicked should rule innumerable multitudes of the just, and cannot fail, according to our present conceptions, to operate as a kind of check on piety and virtue.'-vol. iii., p. 18. Now, to say nothing of Hall misrepresenting his antagonist-for Mr., if we understand right, was confining his observations to ministers of the gospel, and restricting them, and them only, from taking an active part in matters of state-to say nothing of this-we confess that we do not discover aught, in this irreverent badinage on the fulfilment of prophecy, which should recommend the divine to descend to the politician, and mingle hot blood and devotion. Again; Mr. had presumed to quote the example of our Lord in favour of his view of the question: On this ground,' replies Hall, the profession of physic is unlawful for a Christian, because our Lord never set up a dispensary; and that of law, because he never pleaded at the bar.'-vol. iii., p. 40. * Vol, iii., p. 7. + Vol. i., p. 83. ‡ Vol. iii., p. 81. And |