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eenth century, denied that any such person as Homer ever existed, and supposed the Iliad to be made up ex tragediis, et variis canticis de trivio mendicatorum et circulatorum—à la manière des chansons du Portneuf.

There are about one thousand lines identical in the Iliad and Odyssey.

The shield of Achilles, in Homer, seems to have been copied from some pharos which the poet had seen in Egypt. What he describes on the central part of the shield is a map of the earth and of the celestial appearances.

Under a portrait of Tiberio Fiurelli who invented the character of Scaramouch, are these verses,

"Cet illustre Comedien

De son art traça la carrière ;
Il fut le maitre de Moliere,

Et la Nature fut le sien."

In Cary's "Dante," the following passage:—
"And pilgrim newly on his road with love,
Thrills if he hear the vesper bell from far,
That seems to mourn for the expiring day."

Gray has also

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day."

Marmontel, in the "Encyclopédie" declares that the Italians did not possess a single comedy worth reading— therein displaying his ignorance. Some of the greatest names in Italian literature were writers of comedy. Baretti mentions a collection of four thousand dramas made by Apostolo Leno, of which the greater part were comedies, many of a high order.

A comedy or opera by Andreini was the origin of "Paradise Lost." Andreini's "Adamo " was the model of Milton's Adam.

Milton has the expression "Forget thyself to marble." Pope has the line "I have not yet forgot myself to stone."

The most particular history of the Deluge, and the nearest of any to the account given by Moses is to be found in Lucian (De Dea Syria).

The Greeks had no historian prior to Cadmus Milesius, nor any public inscription of which we can be certified before the laws of Draco.

So great is the uncertainty of ancient history that the epoch of Semiramis cannot be ascertained within 1535 years; for according to

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An extract from "The Mystery of St. Dennis" is in the "Bibliotheque du Theatre Français, depuis son origine," Dresde, 1768. In this serious drama, St. Dennis, having been tortured and at length decapitated, rises very quietly, takes his head under his arm, and walks off the stage in all the dignity of martyrdom.

The idea of "No light but rather darkness visible" was perhaps suggested to Milton by Spenser's

"A little glooming light much like a shade."

Francis le Brossano engraved these verses upon a marble tomb which he erected to Petrarch at Argua.

"Frigida Francisci tegit hic lapis ossa Petrarcæ.
Suscipe, virgo parens, animam; sate virgine, parce,

Fessaque jam terris, cœli requiescat in arce."

Bochart derives Elysium from the Phoenician Elysoth, joy, through the Greek 'Hλvorov; Circe from the Phoenician Kirkar, to corrupt; Siren from the Phoenician Sir, to sing; Scylla from the Phoenician Scol, destruction; Charybdis from the Phoenician Chor-obdam, chasm of ruin.

Of the ten tragedies which are attributed to Seneca (the only Roman tragedies extant), nine are on Greek subjects.

Voltaire's ignorance of antiquity is laughable. In his Essay on Tragedy, prefixed to "Brutus," he actually boasts of having introduced the Roman senate on the stage in red mantles. "The Greeks," as he asserts, "font paraître ses acteurs (tragic) sur des espèces d'échasses, le visage convert d'un masque qui exprime la douleur d'un côté et la joye de l'autre." The only circumstance upon which he could possibly have founded such an accusation is that in the new comedy masks were worn with one eyebrow drawn up and the other down, to denote a busybody or inquisitive meddler.

There is a book by a Jesuit, Père Labbe, entitled La Bibliothèque des Bibliothèques; it is a catalogue of all authors in all nations who have written catalogues of books.

Lucretius, lib. v. 93, 96, has the words,

Ovid the lines,

66

terras

Una dies dabit exitio."

"Carmine sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti,

Exitio terras cum dabit una dies."

It is a remarkable fact that during the whole period of the Middle Ages, the Germans lived in utter ignorance of the art of writing.

A version of the Psalms in 1564, by Archbishop Parker, has the following

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A part of the 137th Psalm runs thus:-"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth," which has been thus paraphrased in a version of the Psalms"If I forget thee ever,

Then let me prosper never,

But let it cause

My tongue and jaws

To cling and cleave together."

At the bottom of an obelisk which Pius VI. was erecting at great expense near the entrance of the Quirinal Palace in 1783, while the people were starving for bread, were found written these words,

"Signore dia questa pietra chi divenga pane."
"Lord, command that these stones be made bread."

SOME SECRETS OF THE MAGAZINE

PRISON-HOUSE.

THE want of an International Copyright Law, by rendering it nearly impossible to obtain anything from the booksellers in the way of remuneration for literary labour, has had the effect of forcing many of our very best writers into the service of the Magazines and Reviews, which, with a pertinacity that does them credit, keep up in a certain or uncertain degree the good old saying that even in the thankless field of Letters the labourer is worthy of his hire. How-by dint of what dogged instinct of the honest and proper, these journals have contrived to persist in their paying practices, in the very teeth of the opposition got up by the Fosters and Leonard Scotts, who furnish for eight dollars any four of the British periodicals for a year, is a point we have had much difficulty in settling to our satisfaction, and we have been forced to settle it at last upon no more reasonable ground than that of a still lingering esprit de patrie. That Magazines can live, and not only live but thrive, and not only thrive but afford to disburse money for original contributions, are facts which can only be solved, under the circumstances, by the really fanciful but still agreeable supposition that there is somewhere still existing an ember not altogether quenched among the fires of good feeling for letters and literary men that once animated the American bosom.

It would not do (perhaps this is the idea) to let our poordevil authors absolutely starve while we grow fat, in a literary sense, on the good things of which we unblushingly pick

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