IV. Of 'OAE.

What has been said respecting ouros, will for the most part apply to . There are instances, however, in which the Article is omitted, when the Noun precedes the pronoun, especially if it be a Proper Name.

V. Of 'EKEINOE.

The usage of 'xvos with the Article appears to be the same as that of oUTOs and ode.

PROPOSITION VI. (Ch. VIII. of Mr. M.) To examine the Greek idiom with respect to the position of the Article in the Concord of the Adjective with the Substantive.

Rule i. Where the attribute is assumed of the Substance, if one Article only be employed, it must immediately precede the Adjective.

Ως δορυαλώτου εούσης της Αττικής χώρης. Herod. Call. 4.

Όσα προσῆκε τὸν ̓ ἀγαθὸν πολίτην.

Dem. de Cor. 55.

Rule ii. Where the attribute is not assumed, but predicated, the position is altered.

Κοινής της πατρίδος "νσης. Isocr. Pan. 30.

Τὴν φωνὴν πραοτέραν ποιουνται. Xen. Symp. ed. Aldrich, p. 62. Rule iii. When both the Substantive and the Adjective have the Article, the Substantive with its Article is always placed

first.

Isocr. Pan. 6.

Πρὸς τους προγόνους τους ημετέρους. TOTS TÓMOIS TOTS 'apxaions xpñodai. Xen. Ell. ii. ad calc. Obs. Though this order is never violated, instances occur of an Ellipsis of the first Article.

Κατιππάσατο χώρην τὴν Μεγαρίδα. Herod. Call. 14.

Οι βάρβαροι τρόπῳ τῷ σφετέρῳ ετίμων Μασίστιον. Ibid. 24.

We have now completed our view of the leading principles of Mr. Middleton's system: but, for the fuller elucidation of these principles, for the admirable strain of reasoning on their common basis, their respective application, and their mutual consistency, and for the fruits of extensive erudition which adorn the whole, we must refer to the work itself. In our estimation, that scholar will have little reason to felicitate himself on his parsimony or his indolence, who neglects to obtain it, and to peruse it attentively.

The examples are, in general, selected from the ample collections of Mr. M. Occasionally we have substituted others, partly from a motive of convenience, and partly for the sake of giving additional light and confirmation to the rules. We have not satisfied ourselves, without diligently reading and comparing them in their respective connections: and, to assist the reader in the same exercise, we have imitated Mr. M. in the particularity of our references, though we have seldom copied his notation.

It would be an arrogant pretension, to affirm that we have put Mr. M.'s doctrines to the test of an application to all the facts in the use of the article, throughout the vast extent of Grecian learning. Much remains to be done, before either an advocate or an opponent can occupy this high ground. Thousands of examples must be compared; many readings must be weighed again in the balance of impartial and rigorous criticism; and scholars must imitate Mr. M.'s patience in amassing materials, his judgement and skill in examining them, and his candour and caution in forming deductions from the scrutiúy. Concerning the result of an universal investigation, thus instituted and perfected, we have no anxiety, either for the fate of the system or the honours of its author. The laws of moral evidence must be abrogated, before a series of inductions, not fabricated to fill up an assumed hypothesis, but faithfully drawn from the scrupulous study of actual phænomena, can be proved essentially erroneous. Opinionum commenta delet dies, natura judicia confirmat.

In our own "subsecive" moments of conference with "the mighty dead," we have endeavoured to carry the recollection and comparison of Mr. M.'s observations, through a moderately extensive course of reading in the Ionic, and the Old and New Attic writers. Though these observations have been less numerous than we could wish, they have been of various nature, and in their issue very satisfactory to our own minds. Examples have occurred, which, at first sight, appeared to militate against the system; but the increasing habit of accurate attention has convinced us that they were really in accordance with it; while, to an amount beyond expectation, we have noted the recurrence of the most decided confirmations of the rules.

To any one who is apprized of the beautiful and philosophic structure of the Grecian tongue, the happy simplicity and harmony of Mr. M.'s doctrines on the Nature and Use of the Article will appear no small internal evidence in their favour. The progress which has been made, since the days of Bentley, in the investigation and criticism of this language, authorizes the expectation that new inquiries will be conducted with certainty and success. It is not a long period, since the false opinion of Expletives and Pleonasms, in the Greek idiom, was banished from the schools, and rational notions began to prevail on the use and beauty of the Particles. The common sentiments on the Article have continued in the old state of confusion and contradiction. It was for Mr. Middleton to bring order, light, and harmony out of the chaos. He has presented to the lovers of true learning, a work demanding their warmest gratitude, and which they will place in the same

rank of honour and use with the volumes of Bentley and Porson, Valckenaer and Ruhnkenius. He may very properly adopt the declaration of a worthy example in ancient learning, with which we shall conclude this long lucubration.

"Quos mihi libelli judices fingo et opto, scient, quantas hoc genus literarum difficultates habeat; intelligent, cum talis libelli summa perfectio ab infinito propemodum lectionis observationisque labore pendeat, quam humanum sit quædam non observare, omnia legere non posse; studium certe scribentis agnoscent. Ceterorum, qui istorum nihil sciunt, intelligunt, agnoscunt, levitatem contemno." J. C. T. Ernesti, in praf. ad Lex. Technol. Gr. Rhet. p. 24.

The importance of the subject and of the work must be our apology for introducing it again in our next number. It will then be our duty to give some account of Mr.* M.'s Application of his Doctrine to the Criticism and the Illustration of the New Testament.

(To be concluded in the next number.)

Art II. Latin and Italian Poems of Milton, translated into English Verse, and a Fragment of a Commentary on Paradise Losty by the late William Cowper, Esq. With a Preface by the Editor, and Notes of various Authors. royal 4to. pp. xxvii. 328, price 21. 25. boards. Johnson, 1808.

POSTHUMOUS publications are frequently discreditable

to their authors, and the reliques particularly of departed poets are liable to detract from their acquired reputation. Cowper presents an almost solitary example of a better fate his fame, lofty and established as he left it, has been exalted and extended by his letters and poems published since his death, and his memory will be crowned with additional glory by these latest laurels of his muse.

Cowper's history as a man, and his career as a poet, were equally singular and interesting. He was of noble descent, and his prospects on entering into life were of the most cheering promise; there was no obstacle in the path to earthly riches and honour that lay before him, but his own insurmountable diffidence, which made him shrink back into the shade the moment he had stepped into the sunshine of preferment; his eye never recovered the shock; it never afterwards could gaze with desire or complacency on the world, or the things that are in the world. He was a stricken deer who left the found by one who had himself been healed his wounds and bade him

herd' Happily he was hit by the Archers,' who

It had escaped our notice, till this article was at press, that our respectable author has proceeded. D. D. at the late Commencement at Cambridge.

live.' And though it pleased God thenceforward to afflict him with a mysterious malady, that preyed upon his peace, (for it was a malady in his affections and not in his understanding,) his reason was only sympathetically touched by a feeling of the infirmities of his heart. To the last hour of his long and melancholy life, whenever he could be roused by the tender assiduity of friendship to exert the energies of his soul, the same light from heaven,' that shines with pure and pre-eminent lustre through every page of his compositions, broke through the gloom of despondency and irradiaated his theme. There cannot be discerned, we think, in any of his writings, a single trace of intellectual imbecillity. The grandeur, the grace, and the simplicity of superior genius, are impressed on every one of his works even his fragments are ueither the monstrous births nor the mis-shapen abortions of an impotent or a disordered imagination; they are the unripened fruits of a sound, and vigorous, and exquisitely cultivated mind.

We have intimated that Cowper's poetical career was not less extraordinary than the circumstances of his life. It is difficult for men of like passions with ourselves to comprehend, by what magic of self denial he could cherish his genius in secret for half a century, before he became a public candidate for the bays. While he was the companion of Thurlow, the friend of Coleman and Bonnel Thornton, and a favourite with the wits in their circle; but above all, while he was the contemporary of Churchill and the admirer of his prodigious talents, possessing congenial powers of satire, and equally delighting in manly and unfettered versification ;it is strange indeed, that in the ardour of youth, at the spring tide of ambition, while the gale of fortune blew prosperously upon him, he was not tempted to embark on the sea of glory, where so many of his associates were sailing, and where he must have been conscious that he might, if he pleased, make as felicitous a voyage as the ablest and boldest among them. It was totally impossible for man to possess endowments like Cowper's without knowing them, and knowing them himself it was next to impossible to forego the opportunity of making them known to all the world. Yet his youth had passed away, the tide of ambition had retired, the gale of fortune blew bitterly against him, his heart was broken, before his tongue was loosed; and his first song 'by the rivers of Babylon,' in the land of his captivity, was the song Zion. In his retirement at Olney, he composed about sixty hymns which were published among those of the Rev. John Newton, with his initial only (C). These humble pieces are the very language of the soul, and there is a soul in that language, which communicates almost unutterable things. We

of

allude particularly to such hymns as Nos. 64 and 67, Book I. The Lord will happiness divine on contrite hearts bestow, &c.' and My God, how perfect are thy ways, &c.' in which the most secret thoughts of a Christian's heart are laid open with child-like simplicity. Who that has sought mercy through the merits of a crucified Saviour, has not sometimes experienced the discouraging sensations, the deadly indifference, the Satanic risings of self-love, in the house of prayer, in the very presence of the living God,-which poor Cowper so pathetically bewails in these hymns: and who that has felt these siftings of the soul, has not been likewise tempted to let his faith fail him, imagining that none beside him had ever been so frightfully afflicted, or could for a moment have yielded to such unnatural and dreary distraction! But the Poet's malady, the evil spirit which he sought to charm with the harp of David, overcame him at length; and for many years it was probable that these anonymous hymns would be the sole surviving labours of the most highly-gifted poet of the last or the present generation. When Cowper had already passed the meridian of life in privacy and adversity, he was encouraged by Mrs. Unwin to undertake the composition of that series of poems, which is comprehended in the first volume of his works. These were published, and for a while they experienced the common fate of the ephemera of literature; they were reviewed and forgotten. But undisheartened by this failure, and inspired by Lady Austen to enter upon a large work in blank verse, he produced the Task,' which became so signally successful, that long before his decease, (for the elaborate translation of Homer added but little to his reputation,) he might have delighted himself, had he not been dead to the world while he lived in it, with the hope, full of sublunary immortality, which is the dearest object and reward of poetical exertions After his death, Mr. Hayley published two quarto volumes concerning his life, in which were included his inestimable correspondence, and a few smaller poems and fragments of more exquisite originality, perhaps, than those which he had himself given to the public. His genius had already canonized his name among his countrymen ; but the lovely and affecting display of his heart, in his letters, gave a new and unfading charm to his poems, with readers of every description by whom virtue was revered, or suffering commiserated. While few poets, therefore, have appeared under more unseasonable and unfavourable auspices, still fewer have risen so rapidly into general and permanent fame,