gative. Mr. S. says that I have invented a derivation of apa from ἀράομαι. The derivation is no more an invention than that of ἄρα from pw; and the verb happens to agree with the particle both in the quantity of the first syllable, and in its general meaning, which apw assuredly does not. I cannot conceive how the meaning of "pa could be changed by a change of accent, and giving it in addition the emphasis of interrogation. This is somewhat in Godofred Hermann's style, who says that μèv becomes μyv, and ôè—ôn, by the talismanic power of emphasis!! If such a doctrine were allowable, then farewell to all sound views of philology. "Apa," says Mr. Sheppard, "is an inferential interrogative, and differs from another interrogation in that it always refers to some antecedent grounds for the question asked." This is not strictly true; for åpa frequently refers to a future act in no dependence upon antecedent grounds. I should like to know how Mr. Sheppard would reconcile the interrogative apa when followed by ovv, an inferential particle as well as apa, in the following sentences from Plato : "Αρ' οὖν, ὦ γαθέ, ἀγροικότερον τοῦ δέοντος λελοιδορήκαμεν τὴν τῶν λόγων τέχνην, Phaedr. § 94; and again, "Αρ' οὖν οὐ τὸ μὲν ὅλον ἡ ῥητορικὴ ἂν εἴη τέχνη ψυχαγωγία τις διὰ λόγων, § 95. If ἄρα and ovv have nearly the same signification, being both illative particles, with what propriety could apa precede the latter, if it had nearly the same meaning, and only changed the accent? If we were to translate both, according to Mr. Sheppard's idea, as may be inferred from his interpretation of the line in Hamlet, " Then, saw you not his face ?" the translation would be, Then then!! In both the sentences from Plato, ovv indicates a consequence drawn from a preceding statement; upa, interrogative, implies, a wish to obtain information respecting the bearing of the preceding statement, it being taken for granted: "Pray, my good friend, this being the case, have we not attacked the art of oratory with more rudeness than was necessary ?" Mr. Sheppard sneers a little at the doctrine I stated, that a short syllable, when the second of an Iambic foot, must be pronounced long, or have double its usual time. If he will take the trouble to examine the examples I have quoted in the Second Dissertation of my Greek Prosody, I think he will be convinced that it is a principle extensively acted upon by the Greek Tragic and Comic Poets, and is equally applicable to Trochaic and Anapæstic verse. Why, for instance, has Aristophanes, in line 409 of his Nubes, made the third syllable of diaλākýjaσa long? With the usual quantity of the syllable, it would be a Tribrach, but here the foot must be an Anapast. Mr. Sheppard may scan the following lines, and then tell me why the quantity of the first syllable in the following words is alternately short and long. This looks like emphasis; but the meaning is not altered, nor the accent changed: Ω τέκνα, Κάδμου τοῦ πάλαι νέα τροφή.—Soph. Ed. Tyr. 1. The following line (298) from the Philoctetes of the same poet is remarkable : ἀλλ' ἐν πέτροισι πέτρον ἐκτρίβων, μόλις. Take also the two following lines from the same Play, (587-8.) Neopt.—ἐγὼ εἰμ' 'Ατρείδαις δυσμενὴς· οὗτος δέ μοι 3. REMARKS ON A PASSAGE IN MILTON'S FIRST ELEGY. "Me tenet urbs refluâ quam Thamesis alluit undâ, Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum, "Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiisse penates, Ad Carolum Deodatum, vv. 9–20. THE biographers of Milton seem all to concur in regarding these verses as affording conclusive evidence of his having been rusticated from college. Mr Warton observes, that "the words vetiti laris, and afterwards exilium, will not suffer us to determine otherwise than that Milton was sentenced to undergo a temporary removal or rustication from Cambridge." Dr. Johnson is, if possible, even more decided :"It was in the violence of controversial hostility objected to him, that he was expelled; this he steadily denies, and it was apparently not true; but it seems plain from his own verses to Deodate, that he had incurred rustication, or temporary dismission into the country, with perhaps the loss of a term. I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence can give the term vetiti laris, ‘a habitation from which he is excluded.'" Mr. Mitford and Sir Egerton Brydges feel themselves compelled, however reluctantly, to admit the fact; while Archdeacon Todd seems to have been puzzled by the 1 evidence these lines are supposed to contain of the poet's "exile from Cambridge," and the circumstance, that by his admission to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1628, he had incurred no loss of terms, which rustication must have occasioned, and which the register of his College, or of the University, would probably have noticed. "His reply to an enemy," the Archdeacon proceeds to say, "who in the violence of controversy had asserted that he was expelled, may here be cited: 'I must be thought, if this libeller (for now he shows himself to be so,) can find belief, after an inordinate and riotous youth spent at the university, to have been at length 'vomited out thence.' For which commodious lie, that he may be encouraged in the trade another time, I thank him; for it hath given me an apt occasion to acknowledge publicly with all grateful mind, that more than ordinary favour and respect which I found above any of my equals at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the fellows of that college wherein I spent some years; who, at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much better it would content them that I would stay; as by many letters full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long after, I was assured of their singular good affection towards me." And still more pointedly in another place: "Pater me Cantabrigiam misit; illic disciplinis atque artibus tradi solitis septennium studui; procul omni flagitio, bonis omnibus probatus, usque dum magistri, quem vocant, gradum," &c. It is surprising that in the face of these remarkable passages, which could not have been penned by one who was conscious of having incurred disgrace at college, the expressions in the Elegy should ever have been construed, I need not say by "kindness and reverence," but even by malevolence and contempt, so as to lend support to a slander thus indignantly repelled by the object of it! To me it seems clear as day, that when properly interpreted, they afford not a shadow of countenance to the injurious calumny. They occur in an elegy written in London during a vacation, in the poet's eighteenth year, and addressed to his school-fellow and friend, Charles Deodate. This gentleman, after leaving Oxford, had established himself in Cheshire, whence, as appears from the poem, he addressed an epistle to Milton, probably a poetical one, in which, it would seem, ignorant of the feelings with which his friend had come to regard the University, he condoled with him on his absence from it during the vacation, and spoke of this temporary separation as a state of exile. This view of his position in London Milton repudiates in terms not very complimentary, I grant, to his alma mater, but which most assuredly do not support the imputation that has been founded on them. But, it will 1 Apology for Smectymnuus. * Defensio Secunda. be said, admitting that in this way the use of the words exilium and profugus is explained, how do you account for the phrase dudum vetiti laris? Nothing is easier; indeed I am filled with surprise that its true meaning has so long escaped discovery. The commentators have hitherto understood these words as if they referred to the poet's cheerless apartments in Christ College, Cambridge! Milton was too good a Latinist ever to employ the word lar for a purpose so unsuitable. He uses it here in its only proper sense, to denote his home, his father's fireside, to revisit which during term-time had, by the discipline of his college, been lately forbidden him. In short, he enumerates amongst the delights of his present situation, freedom from the home-sickness with which he used to be tormented at Cambridge. When read in this light, the passage assumes consistency with itself, with other portions of Milton's writings, and with the register of his college; and, what is perhaps of higher importance, while it rescues the memory of the greatest poet and one of the ripest scholars of England from a shade that has long rested on it, it deprives giddy and thoughtless youth of a precedent they are fond of quoting for their own irregularities and contumacy. EDINBURGH ACADEMY. ROBERT MACLURE. NOTE. The substance of the above paper was published by me ten or twelve years ago, in another periodical; but as I am desirous of bringing the view it contains under the notice of a class of readers able to judge of its soundness, I now submit it to the readers of the Classical Museum.-R. M. 5. REMARKS ON SOPHOCLES, Antig. 679–83. Πάτερ, θεοὶ φύουσιν ἀνθρώποις φρένας, Or this passage the true interpretation of the last verse seems to have escaped all the editors and commentators that I have had an opportunity of consulting. The Scholiast has gone farthest astray, since he has mistaken the meaning not only of the line adverted to, but has strangely misrepresented the sense of the two verses that immediately precede it, which he paraphrases thus:y è ov δύναμαι ταῦτα ἀποδέξασθαι, ἐπειδὴ μὴ καλῶς ταῦτα λέγεις, and the concluding line he expounds as follows :—δυνατὸν δὲ καὶ ἑτέρως μετα βουλεύσασθαι. It is surely unnecessary to be at any pains to shew that yw'πws, &c., cannot be understood to represent Hæmon as peremptorily saying that he does not approve of his father's sentiments. The interpretation of the last verse is equally wide of the truth, if the Scholiast understood Hæmon to hint at the possibility of Creon's changing his purpose. Musgrave suggested xárépa (sc. oow) which Erfurdt adopted, and, according to this reading, the meaning would be, But it is possible, a view of the case different from yours may be the correct one. To this I have no other objection than that it is founded on an unwarranted alteration of the text. Brunck adhered to the common reading, xȧrépw, but affixed to it a sense which, however good in itself, the words will not bear; est tamen ut alius etiam vera dicere queat. Hermann edits the passage as I have quoted it, and says, waλŵs ἔχον referri puto ad χρῆμα τῶν φρενῶν. The interpretation of this violent construction would be nearly the same as that proposed by Brunck; it would represent Hæmon as suggesting the possibility of another's being in the right, who should view Antigone's conduct differently from his father: to this again I object, only because it rests on a construction forced and altogether unnecessary. For I take the easy and natural interpretation of the passage to be this: I, even were it becoming in me to try, might have neither ability nor skill to expose the erroneousness of your sentiments; but what I cannot, or perhaps ought not to attempt, may be quite becoming in another. All that follows is in exact accordance with this view; for Hæmon, after reminding the impetuous monarch that his rank and character were such as deterred his subjects from speaking freely in his presence, proceeds to report the sentiments expressed by his fellow-citizens, both with regard to Antigone's conduct, and the king's treatment of her. EDINBURGH ACADEMY. ROBERT MACLURE. 5. ON CICERO, De Nat. Deorum, п. 48. "Quin etiam anatum ova gallinis sæpe supponimus, e quibus pulli orti primum aluntur ab iis, ut a matribus, a quibus exclusi fotique sunt; deinde eas relinquunt et effugiunt sequentes, quum primum aquam quasi naturalem domum videre potuerunt. Tantam ingenuit animantibus conservandi sui natura custodiam." แ In the last number of the Classical Museum, there are a few Remarks" on this passage by Dr. Maclure, to which we beg leave shortly to refer. We are much pleased with the concise and perspicuous manner in which the Doctor states his views of the passage; but we regret that he has failed to convince us of the correctness, either of the |