the strictly classical epigrammatists, and the first to be guilty of downright bad taste. His better pieces, however, are characterised by an austere ethical impressiveness, and his literary position is very interesting, as that of an indig nant but despairing opponent of Christianity. 4. The fourth or Byzantine style of epigrammatic composition was culti vated by the beaux-esprits of the court of Justinian. To a great extent this is merely imitative, but the circumstances of the period operated so as to produce a species of origi nality. The peculiarly ornate and rechercM diction of Agathias and his compeers is not a merit in itself, but applied for the first time, it has the effect of revivifying an old form, and many of their new locutions are actual enrich ments of the language. The writers, moreover, were men of genuine poetical feeling, ingenious in invention, and capable of expressing emotion with energy and liveliness ; the colouring of their pieces is sometimes highly dramatic. The charge of impurity, alleged by Mr Symonds against them as a body, applies to Rufinus alone in any consider able degree, and he is purity itself compared with Martial. There is something very touching in the attitude of these last belated stragglers towards the antique culture from which they are hopelessly severed, their half-conscious yearning for the glorious past, whose monuments still sur rounded them on every side, but whose spirit had departed fur ever. With them the volume of the Greek anthology is closed, for the " Christian epigrams " are totally value
less in a literary point of view.It would be hard to exaggerate the substantial value of the Anthology, whether as a storehouse of facts bearing on antique manners, customs, and ideas, or as one among the influences which have contributed to mould the literature of the modern world. The multitudinous votive inscrip tions, serious and sportive, connote the phases of Greek religious sentiment, from pious awe to irreverent familiarity and sarcastic scepticism ; the moral tone of the nation at various periods is mirrored with corresponding fidelity; the sepulchral inscriptions admit iis into the inmost sanc tuary of family affection, and reveal a depth and tenderness of feeling beyond the province of the historian to depict, and which we should not have surmised even from the dramatists ; the general tendency of the collection is to display antiquity on its most human side, and to mitigate those contrasts with the modern world which more am bitious modes of composition force into relief. The con stant reference to the details of private life renders the Anthology an inexhaustible treasury for the student of archaeology ; art, industry, and costume receive their fullest illustration from its pages. Its influence on Euro pean literatures will be appreciated in proportion to the inquirer s knowledge of each. The further his researches extend, the greater will be his astonishment at the extent to which the Anthology has been laid under contribution for thoughts which have become household words in all cultivated languages, and at the beneficial effect of the imitation of its brevity, simplicity, and absolute verbal accuracy upon the undisciplined luxuriance of modern genius.
Translations, Imitations, &c., of the Anthology.—The best versions of the Anthology ever made are the Latin renderings of select epigrams by Hugo Grotius. They have not been printed separately, but will be found in Eosch and Lennep s edition of the Planudean Anthology, in the Didot edition, and in Dr Wellesley s Anthologia Poly- fflotta. The number of more or less professed imitations in modern languages is infinite, that of actual translations less considerable. French and Italian, indeed, are ill adapted to this purpose, from their incapacity of approxi mating to the form of the original, and their poets have usually contented themselves with paraphrases or imitations, often exceedingly felicitous. Dehesme s French prose translation, however (1863), is most excellent and valuable. The German language alone admits of the pre servation of the original metre, a circumstance advan tageous to the German translators, Herder and Jacobs, who have not, however, compensated the loss inevitably consequent upon a change of idiom by any added beauties of their own. Though unfitted to reproduce the precise form, the English language, from its superior terseness, is better adapted to preserve the spirit of the original than the German; and the comparative ill success of many English translators must be chiefly attributed to the ex tremely low standard of fidelity and brevity observed by them. Bland, Merivale, and their associates (1806-13), are often intolerably diffuse and feeble, from want, not of ability, but of painstaking. Archdeacon Wrangham s too rare versions are much more spirited ; and John Sterling s translations of the inscriptions of Simonides deserve high praise. Professor Wilson (Blackivood s Magazine, 1 833-35) collected and commented upon the labours of these and other translators, with his accustomed critical insight and exuberant geniality, but damaged his essay by burdening it with the indifferent attempts of William Hay. In 1849 Dr Wellesley, principal of New Inn Hall, Oxford, pub lished his Anthologia Polyglotta, a most valuable collec tion of the best translations and imitations in all languages, with the original text. In this appeared some admirable versions by Mr Gold win Smith and Dean Merivale, which, with the other English renderings extant at the time, will be found accompanying the literal prose translation of the Public School Selections, execiited by the Rev. George Burges for Bohn s Classical Library (1854). This is a useful volume, but the editor s notes are worthless. In 1864 Major R. G. Macgregor published an almost complete translation of the Anthology, a work of stupendous industry and fidelity, which almost redeem the general mediocrity of the execution. Idylls and Epigrams, by R. Garnett (1869), include about 140 translations or imitations, with some original compositions in the same style. An agree able little volume on the Anthology, by Lord Neaves, is one of Collins s series of Ancient Classics for Modern Readers. Two recent critical contributions to the subject should be noticed, the Rev. James Davies s essay on Epigrams, in the Quarterly Review (vol. cxvii.), especially valuable for its lucid illustration of the distinction between Greek and Latin epigram ; and the brilliant disquisition in Mr J. A. Symonds s Studies of the Greek Poets (1873).
upon a collection of fugitive Latin verse, from the age of Ennius to about 1000 A.D., formed by Peter Burmann the Younger. Nothing corresponding to the Greek anthology is known to have existed among the Romans, though pro fessional epigrammatists likeMartialpublishedtheirvolumes on their own account, and detached sayings were excerpted from such sententious authors as Publius Syrus, while the Priapeia were probably but one. among many collec tions on special subjects. The first general collection of scattered pieces made by a modern scholar was Scaliger s, in 1573, succeeded by the more ample one of Pithoeus, in 1594. Numerous additions, principally from inscriptions, continued to be made, and in 1759 Burmann digested the whole into his Anthologia veterum Latinorum Epigramma- tum et Poematum. This, occasionally reprinted, has been the standard edition until recently ; but in 1869 Alexander Riese commenced a new and more critical recension, from which many pieces improperly inserted by Burmann are rejected, and his classified arrangement is discarded for one according to the sources whence the poems have been derived. The first volume contains those found in MSS.,
in the order of the importance of these documents ; those
