It has not occurred to me that Herodotus any where mentions Gaza in his history; if he has, he then could not mean Gaza by Cady-tis; but as to tis that may be merely an adjunct termination, which the Greeks frequently added to oriental names: and we have certainly other Greek changes of oriental names nearly similar. Thus Gedor, in 1 Chr. iv. 39, is by Eusebius writ Kedous; and Chatsur in 2 K. 15, 29, in English Hazor, is in the Sept. Arup, and with the aspirate added might easily become in Greek Karup, or Kasyr; why then from Gaza, i. e. Chadsa, might not Herodotus form Kada, or Kady, just as easily as from Kedesh? Gaza he certainly must have actually seen himself in his passage to Egypt, and his own words prove him to have seen the city Cadytis in question.

But it is, however, more easy to say what city it was not, if his description be accurate, than what it was; and if we cannot depend upon his description of the situation of the city, much less can we depend upon our own derivation of the name of it, either from Kedesh or Chadsa, or any other oriental name.

Upon the whole then no critic ought, with any confidence, to pronounce it to be Jerusalem, unless he can, at the same time, produce some further and better proofs of it than have been adduced hitherto, and which do not depend upon mere conjectures concerning its oriental derivation, as is the case at present, excepting this single fact, that Nechao did take Jerusalem after his victory and not before it.

But then Herodotus certainly mistook Megiddo, where the Jews agree that the battle was fought in the kingdom of Israel, and on the north of Jerusalem,

for

for Magdolus, which Antoninus places on the confines of Egypt, near Pelusium; consequently, he might have reasonably thought the capture of Gaza also to have happened after that victory, if this was the city meant by him. So that nothing else is certain except that either these modern critics must be mistaken, who suppose Cadytis to be Jerusalem; or if not, then Herodotus must be strangely mistaken in describing Cadytis as situated contiguous to the Arabian dominion and desert, and, at the same time, near the coast, if not actually a sea-port town.

Whatever is doubtful in ancient history ought to be represented as doubtful, and the unlearned not imposed on by pretended learning, which amounts to nothing more than uncertain, and those often fanciful conjectures, concerning the derivations of names, from oriental sources.

ούρων,

Mr. Beloe has altogether omitted to translate the word oupwy, but in his note on Magdolum he has also retained the erroneous sense of it, in calling Cadytis a mountainous city, and thus inclining others to agree to his opinion of its being Jerusalem in the mountains. But if this was actually the city meant by Herodotus, and now called Kuds, we have here another excellent specimen how well the Arabians have preserved the right pronunciation of the ancient oriental name Kedesh, or Kedeschah, or Kedetha, as our critic contended in my last.

S.

ART.

ART. XVI. The Ruminator. Containing a series of moral, sentimental, and critical Essays.

No. XX.

On the Sonnets of Milton, with a translation of one of his Italian Sonnets.

There are few persons, I presume, among those who are in the habit of exercising their mental faculties, exempt from occasionally suffering an unconquerable lassitude and imbecility, the effect perhaps of over-exertion, and often of great anxiety and fatigue. On such occasions the assistance of eminent friends, which is at all times highly acceptable, becomes doubly gratifying. It is therefore with more than common satisfaction, that at a moment when my spirits are low, and my humble talents more than commonly weak, I am enabled to communicate a very excellent translation of an Italian Sonnet of Milton by the learned and poetic editor of that poet's Paradise Regained.

Milton's Fourth Sonnet, "Diodati, io te'l diro," &c. Translated from the Italian.

"Yes, Diodati, wonderful to tell,

Ev'n I-the stubborn wretch, who erst despis'd
The God of Love, and laugh'd his chains to scorn,
Am fall'n, where oft the brave have captur'd been.

Nor golden tresses, nor the vermeil cheek,

Are my resistless victors. A new form

Of

Of foreign beauty fascinates iny soul:

That nobly graceful portance; those smooth brows Arch'd with the lustrous gloss of loveliest black;

That converse sweet, with various tongues adorn'd;
That song, whose charming potency might well
Draw down the labouring moon from her high path,

But 'gainst whose magic strains to close the ear,
Avails not,-while those radiant eyes beam fire.”*

C. D.

There seems to my ear a kind of stately Miltonic movement in these verses, which makes the want of rhyme unperceived.

In my humble judgment, the Sonnets of Milton, however condemned by the malignant sarcasms of Johnson, though I will not say they are among the best of his compositions, partake almost every where of the majestic plainness of his lofty genius. For seven and twenty years they have been the objects of my admiration; and I do not like them the less because they are deficient in all the finical prettinesses of modern poetry. When I hear of their harsh and bald deformities, I only smile with scorn at the tasteless inability to discern in them the spirit of an exalted mind above the artifices of a tinsel dress.

I have already given my opinion in the memoir of Dr. Darwin, and elsewhere, of those narrow notions of poetry, which too many indulge. They seem to think it confined to sparkling images, to pointed expressions, and harmonious rhymes. Even the best of

This was written near two years ago, under an idea that in translating a sonnet from the Italian, if you keep pretty close to the original thoughts and expressions, it may be made more readable in blank verse than by cramping it into the correspondent rhymes of the legal sonnet. C. D.

these

these ingredients is of very inferior importance to that sublimity or tenderness of soul, which has the power of communicating its own strong impressions to the reader. He who busies himself with the tricks of language, is never hurried away by the fire of natural thoughts.

A manly mind hates all the minor machinery of poetical composition, though it be the only part which a feeble or vitiated critic comprehends or relishes. But yet how contemptible is he, who in the boundless varieties of the human intellect, and the boundless space over which it may travel, would confine our judgments to one or two models of excellence! If Spenser, and Shakspeare, and Milton were poets, so were Cowley and Dryden; yet how unlike! Where then is to be found the definition of poetry large enough to comprehend its powers?

Of all the Sonnets of Milton, I am almost inclined to prefer the XIXth, On his Blindness. It has, to my weak taste, such various excellences, as I am unequal to praise sufficiently. It breathes doctrines at once so sublime and consolatory, as to gild the gloomy paths of our existence here with a new and singular light.

Of Milton's harshness, may it not be observed, that originality often appears like harshness? Commonplace phrases seem smooth, because we are habituated to them, while a new combination of words sounds rough to our ears. How far from harsh are those fine lines in the XIVth Sonnet to the memory of Mrs. Thomson, where he says,

"Thy works and alms

Staid not behind, nor in the grave were trod;

-Love