Here be grapes, whose lusty blood

Is the learned poet's good,

Sweeter yet did never crown

The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown
Than the squirrel's teeth, that crack them;
Deign, oh, fairest fair, to take them.

For these, black-eyed Dryope

Hath oftentimes commanded me

With my clasped knee to climb:

See how well the lusty time

Hath deck'd their rising cheeks in red,

Such as on your lips is spread.

Here be berries for a queen;

Some be red, some be green."

(How much better than if he had said “some be red and some be green." He is like a great boy, poking over the basket, and pointing out the finest things in it with rustic fervor.)

"These are of that luscious meat,

The great god Pan himself doth eat:
All these, and what the woods can yield,

The hanging mountain or the field,

I freely offer; and ere long

Will bring you more, more sweet and strong:

Till when humbly leave I take,

Lest the great Pan do awake,

That sleeping lies in a deep glade,

Under a broad beech's shade.

I must go, I must run,

Swifter than the fiery sun."

In this passage, Mr. Seward, in his edition of "Beaumont

and Fletcher," has a note containing an extract from The

ocritus, so happily rendered that, as it suits our purpose, we will repeat it. It is seldom that a writer not professedly a poet, and an eminent one too, has struck forth so masterly a bit of translation. The verb in the last line even surpasses the original. We will put the Greek first, both in justice to it, and because (to own a whim of ours) the glimmering and thorny look of the Greek characters gives, in our eyes, something of a boskiness to one's pages. A page of a Greek pastoral is the next thing with us to a wood-side, or a landscape of Gasper Poussin :

Ου θεμις, ω ποιμαν, το μεσαμβρινον, ου θεμις αμμιν
Συρίσδεν· τον Πανα δεδοικαμες η γαρ απ' αγρας
Τανικα κεκμακως αμπαύεται, εντι γε πικρός,
Και οἱ αει δριμεια χολα ποτι ῥινι καθηται.

"Shepherd, forbear: no song at noon's dread hour;
Tir'd with the chase, Pan sleeps in yonder bower;
Churlish he is; and, stirr'd in his repose,

The snappish choler quivers on his nose."

We must quote the Satyr's concluding speech, though it is not so much in character. The poet might have defended his straying in the air, but it must have been upon very abstract and ethereal grounds, foreign to the substantial part which he plays in this drama; and the fine allusion to Orpheus' lute is equally learned and out of its place. However, the whole passage is so beautiful, that we cannot help repeating it. Our Platonical friend is taking leave of the lady :

"Satyr. Thou divinest, fairest, brightest,
Thou most pow'rful maid, and whitest,

Thou most virtuous and most blessed,
Eyes of stars, and golden tressed
Like Apollo! tell me, sweetest,
What new service now is meetest

For the Satyr? Shall I stray

In the middle air, and stay

The sailing rack, or nimbly take

Hold by the moon, and gently make

Suit to the pale queen of night
For a beam to give thee light?
Shall I dive into the sea,
And bring thee coral, making way
Through the rising waves, that fall
In snowy fleeces? Dearest, shall
I catch thee wanton fawns, or flies,
Whose woven wings the summer dyes
Of many colours? Get thee fruit?

Or steal from heav'n old Orpheus' lute!"

What a relic! The lute of Orpheus! and laid up in some corner of heaven! Doubtless in the thick of one of its grassiest nooks of asphodel; and the winds play upon it, of evenings, to the ear of Proserpine when she visits her mother, giving her trembling memories to carry back to Eurydice.

THE NYMPHS OF ANTIQUITY AND OF

THE

POETS.

HE Nymphs of antiquity are the gentle powers
of the earth, and therefore figured under the
shape of beautiful females.
lent river had a god to it:

A large or vio

the nymph is ever gentle and sweet. The word signifies

a marriageable female. It is traced to a word signifying moisture; and all the Nymphs, as a body, are said to have derived their origin from Neptune, or water— the first principle of all things.

Every fountain, every wood, many a single tree, had a nymph to it. An ancient could not stir out of doors, if he

was religious, without being conscious that he was surrounded with things supernatural; and thus his religion, though full of beautiful forms, was a different thing to him from what it is to us. The nymph was lovely and beneficent; she took care of her brook or her grove for the agriculturist, and he humbly assisted her in his turn and presented her with flowers; and yet a sight of her was supposed to occasion a particular species of madness, thence called Nympholepsy. A living writer,* who has a young heart, has founded a pastoral drama upon it. We are informed, by a native of the Ionian Isles,† that to this day a peasant there cannot be persuaded to venture out of his cottage at noonday during the month of July, on account of the fairies whom he calls Aneraides, i.e., Nereids. The truth is, that in this instance, as in that of the modern fairies, he who thought he beheld any thing supernatural was in a fair way of being delirious beforehand.

It was otherwise with the great or "initiated." Poets talked of seeing the nymphs, and the gods too, without any harm, not excepting Bacchus, the most awful vision of them all; ‡ and multitudes of heroes were descended and received favors from enamoured Dryads and Naiads. The old poets have a favorite phrase to denote these condescending amours. § The use of the fiction was obvious; nor was it confined to the maternal side of ancient heraldry. There is a story of a girl, who, having been honored with

* See "Amarynthus, or the Nympholept." By Mr. Horace Smith. † Ugo Foscolo, in his criticism in the "Quarterly Review," upon the "Narrative and Romantic Poems of the Italians," vol. 21, p. 514.

+ Cospetto di Bacco (Face of Bacchus) is still an oath among the Italians. In the Homeric account of Venus's amours with Anchises, the goddess enjoins the hero, in case he is asked questions about their child, to say that a nymph was his mother; but on no account was he to dare to say it was Venus.

the attentions of the river Scamander, observed him one day standing in a crowd at a public festival; upon which the divinity was taken up and carried before the magis

trate.

We shall give a list of the principal nymphs and their names; partly, because the genuine reader, who does not happen to be learned, will be glad of it, and partly on account of the beauty of the nomenclature. These were the Nereids, or nymphs of the sea, daughters of Nereus: Oreads, or nymphs of the mountains; Naiads, or nymphs of the streams; Dryads, or nymphs of the woods; and Hamadryads, or nymphs of trees by themselves; nymphs who were born and died each with her particular tree.

Those were the principal; but we also hear of the Limnads or Limniads, nymphs of the lakes; Potamèdes, or nymphs of the rivers; Ephydriads, or nymphs of the fountains; Napèæ, nymphs of the woody glens and meadows; and Mèliæ, nymphs of the honey-making.

But these specific appellations, we suppose, were given at will. There are furthermore the Bacchantes, or nymphs of Bacchus; the Hesperides, or daughters of Hesperus,

the nymphs who waited upon the deities in general; the celestial Sirens, who sat upon the spheres; and some reckon among them, the Graces and the Muses.

Aristophanes, in one of his plays, has introduced a chorus of clouds; and, though the singers appear to be the clouds themselves and not deities conducting them, it seems remarkable that an incarnation of those fair and benignant travellers through heaven escaped the fertile imagination of the Greeks.

All these nymphs passed a happy and graceful life of