such a purchase; and besides, the bookseller who bought it, had a precise order from the said Saxon Prince not to spare any cost to procure it, in case he could discover where it was. This made him give so great a price for it to Taussendorf, who in a few = days went abroad, having treated us in his turn. Let us now treat of the origin of this book and its author, of which no true account could have been given but by considering the book itself, of which the epistle at the beginning of it, which we remarked to be in a handwriting different from that of the book, may afford some sort of light into this matter, as it goes addressed to the illustrious Otho. The capital city of Bavaria, where this manuscript was found, and that name Otho, joined together, do sufficiently authorise the conjecture of its having been addressed to Otho, Duke of Bavaria, surnamed the Illustrious, who was grandson of Otho the Great, Count of Shiren and Wiselspach, from whom the Bavarians and Palatine House deduce their origin. The Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, made him a donation of Bavaria, as a recompense for his singular fidelity to him, having taken it from Henry the Lion to chastise him for his inconstancy, and having sided with his enemies. Lewis the First succeeded his father Otho the Great, and having been disquieted in the possession of Bavaria by Henry the Lion, he left it to his son Otho, the Illustrious, who secured to himself that dominion, by marrying Henry the Lion's daughter, about the year 1260. When Frederic the Second, Emperor of Germany, returned from Jerusalem, where he had been to war against the Saracens, after his being excommunicated by Pope Gregory the Ninth, who persecuted him even in Syria, where, by his intrigues, he hindered the Imperial army from obeying that monarch, whose patience was at length so tried and worn out, that, at his return home, he went and besieged this Pope at Rome, after having ravaged all the circumjacent provinces; nor was the peace, which he afterwards struck up with him, of any long continuance, and was followed by such a violent animosity between this Emperor and that Pontiff, that it ended only with the breath of the latter, who bursted with mere envy and rage, to see Frederic triumph over him, despise his vain fulminations, and even expose him terribly, by enumerating his enormities in sarcastical verses, which he got dispersed all over Germany, Italy, and France. Otho, the Illustrious, not unmindful of the obligations which his family had to that of the Emperor, espoused Frederic's cause, and remained firmly attached to his interest, notwithstanding the many vicissitudes of that monarch's fortune. These historical facts, the truth whereof is incontestible, are quite proper to support our conjecture, that the copy of this treatise was addressed to this Otho the Illustrious, our opinion being, that the meaning of these two capitals, F. J., which are followed by S. D., and those preceded by the words Amico meo Charissimo, at the head of that epistle which introduces this piece, cannot be any other than Fredericus Imperator Salutem dicit. The result of which must be, that the tract in question was addressed to Otho the Illustrious, by the Emperor Frederic the Second, son of Henry the Sixth, and grandson of Frederic Barbarosa, who, succeeding them in the empire, did likewise inherit their hatred to the Roman Pontiff. What reader is there, who, having perused the history of the Western Church, and the Chronicle of the German Empire, does not retain in his memory, with what pride and insolence Pope Alexander the Third trode on the neck of this very Emperor Frederic Barbarosa, when he went to solicit him for peace. And who can be ignorant of the mischiefs which the Holy See (as they style it) procured to the son of that monarch, Henry Sixth, against whom his very wife took up arms, at the Pope's instigation? But finally, when Frederic the Second assumed the same resolution, which he had remarked in his father and grandfather, he found raised against him a Gregory the Ninth, who united in his own breast all the gall and bitterness of the Alexanders, the Innocents, and the Honorius's, against Imperial Majesty.One carried fire and sword into every quarter, the other plied his thunderbolts of excommunication like a very fury. Over and above all which, they mutually defamed each other with biting satires, and the cruellest invectives. This seems sufficient to maintain the conjecture, that it was by command of this Emperor, irritated against Religion by the enormous vices of its high priest, and of such as were the creatures and members of his pontifical court, that Doctissimus ille vir, of whom mention is made in the epistle, directed Othoni Illustrissimo, did compose this treatise, which consequently owes not its birth to any inquiry after truth, but a spirit of hatred and implacable animosity. A still greater confirmation of the preceding conjecture will be to take notice, that this book was never heard of till the reign of this emperor, and that it was fathered upon him even in his life-time; in so much, that Peter de Vignes, his secretary, thought himself obliged to dissipate this rumour in one of his letters, and to retort the calumny on the enemies of that monarch his sovereign, who had been loaded with it in order to make him odious. There remains then nothing for us to do, but to make some inquiry who was the doctissimus vir, with whom Otho the Illustrious had discoursed on this subject of the Three Impostors, and who had methodized the same in this treatise. Certain it is, that its date or epoch being such as we have been proving it, cannot be attributed to any one of those who have been taxed with being its author, since (Averroes only excepted, who died before Frederic was born) all of whom lived a long while, nay, even whole ages after this tract was composed. We cannot, however, deny, but that it will be much more difficult for us to discover this author, than to mark out the time when the book itself began to exist. But on which side soever we turn ourselves, we shall not be able to meet with any one upon whom it may with more probability be fixed, than upon the before cited Peter de Vignes. If we had not his treatise De protestate imperiali, his epistles suffice to demonstrate how very zealously he sided with Frederick the II. whose secretary he was, in his resentments against the Holy See. They who have written concerning him, as Sigonious Trithemus and Ri naldi, drew so advantageous a picture, both of his learning and parts, that all this, put together, is doubtless very favourable to our conjecture, and particularly when he mentions this book in his epistles, sharply reproaching his master's adversaries with their falsely spreading the report, then current, of this prince's being the Author. For, from hence we may infer, that he himself had the greatest share in the composition, and that the great pains he took to destroy this malig nant rumour, was a mere effect of his apprehension or dread, lest the accusation, in case it gathered strength by continuing much longer to pass from one to another, might at last drop from the monarch and light upon the secretary, who most apparently was a much properer person to pen such a piece, than was a great and martial emperor, constantly busied in feats of warfare, and often attacked with thunder from the Vatican. In short, than a prince, who, though a gallant personage, had little leisure to be a casuist; not like Peter de Vignes, who had allowed himself all the time and application necessary to perfect his studies, and who owed his post and the affec tion of his sovereign, to his great fund of erudition. Now, from all this it may be readily concluded, that this little book was composed since the year 1230, by order of the emperor Frederick the II. in hatred to the court of Rome, and that there is very great probability that Peter de Vignes, that monarch's secretary, did compose it by his command. This is the sum of what I judged necessary for me to advance in the front of this tract, in order to give some tolerable idea of its history, and withal, to prevent its being any longer attributed to persons who perhaps never thought of it. THE EPISTLE. Frederic the Emperor, to the most illustrious Otho, greeting. MY DEAREST FRIEND.-I took care to get copied out the treatise, which I ordered to be composed and digested on the Three famous Impostors, by that most learned man with whom you discoursed on the same topic in my closet; and though you did not ask me for it, I nevertheless made haste to send you the manuscript, well knowing how ardently you long to peruse it. So I am persuaded nothing can afford you greater satisfaction, except indeed it should be the joyful tidings of my having utterly crushed my cruel and inveterate enemies, and that my foot was actually on the Romish Hierarchy's throat, whose skin is not yet tinged red enough with the blood of so many millions of men, whom her fury has sacrificed to her abominable pride. Rest assured, that I shall neglect nothing in order one day to convince you of my absolute triumph over her, or my determination is to perish in the pursuit; for what reverses soever I may undergo, the world shall never TRANSLATIONS FROM THE LESS FAMILIAR LATIN CLASSICS. DEAR SIR, No III. Seneca, the Tragic Poet. TO CHRISTOPHER NORTH, ESQ. THERE seems to have been some confusion respecting the origin of the tra gedies which bear the name of Seneca. Whatever may be thought of their style, they seem to be too voluminous for a forgery of the middle ages. The hypothesis of modern fabrication may be plausible when applied to the Elegies of Gallus; but to believe that some obscure monk should succeed in palming upon the world a collection of ten tragedies, requires the imagination of a Pere Hardouin. It has been by a hasty guess, probably, that they were first attributed to the philosopher Seneca. That a man should write a tragedy, of which he himself is one of the dramatis persona, appears a strange thing. To obviate this improbability, some commentators appear to hold that Seneca (that is to say, L. Annæus Seneca) was the author only of three or four of these plays, and have added a Seneca Tragicus as the author of the rest. Others have adopted three authors for them-Seneca, Seneca Tragicus, and an unknown hand. All of these hypotheses are liable to objection. The tragedies, whoever may be their author, are written throughout in one style. That style does not possess the superabundance of point and antithesis which is peculiar to Seneca the philosopher. It is as improbable, too, that the tragedy of Octavia should have been written in Nero's lifetime, as that his tutor should be the author. The style of these productions, indeed, includes far too little of the artificial for the age of Seneca. Flatness is their characteristic. They have little passion, and less novelty of thought-little point, and little felicity of metaphor. That sort of snip-snap dialogue, in which the interlocutors keep up a "keen encounter of their wits," and play at battledore and shuttlecock in alternate lines, occurs in them, but scarcely so often as it does in the Greek tragedies. The Hercules Furens and the Troas are, I believe, thought the best. The Edipus, however, is the best subject; but the author had to steer clear of Sophocles, whom, after all, it is evident, he had in his eye. It will not be objected, I presume, to the chorus given below, that it does not, like the Greek, include the regularity of strophe, antistrophe, and epode. The lyric measures, into which the translators of the Greek tragedies have turned their chorusses, would really seem, in our present ignorance of ancient music, to be a gratuitous trouble. It is by far the most probable supposition, that the chorus was performed in a manner resembling our recitative; and, for this, lyrical regularity is quite unnecessary.-I am, &c. T. D. P. S.-I must beg to echo Mr O'Fogarty's pathetic remonstrance on the subject of incorrect printing. In verse it is absolutely excruciating; and I have more than once yearned for an opportunity of giving your compositor a practical exposition of the You will tell us, that there are blunders in MS. as well as in print; and I believe, after all, you have your own troubles. CHORUS. CEDIPUS. ACT I. The Chorus laments the Pestilence which afflicted Thebes. I. Offspring of ancient Cadmus, gen'rous race, Strikes down thy soldiers, Bacchus, erst who bore Who dared those eastern trackless sands o'er-run- And plucks the endless gifts that Nature gave; The wheeling Parthian, whose deceptive string II. Sons of a yet unconquer'd race, we die ; And scarce suffice the gates that open lie To let the slaughter through. Yea, thy seven gates, O Thebes! are all too few To serve for those that fall, and serve for those that fly! III. The herds first felt the pestilential breath; Their pastures yielded death; Snake-like, he lurk'd amid the herbage new; The priest the heifer to the altar drew But e'er the patient neck had felt the knife, E'en in the midst of his exulting course, Beneath his rider dropp'd-and sunk in all his pride. VI. Our voice of lamentation hath gone deep, But hath not risen to heaven; For lo! the darksome womb of night is riv'n, Do watch, and wave their torches o'er our sleep. Yea, Phlegethon's red stream hath bubbled up And tainted all the clear Sidonian waters. Death opes his greedy jaws, and flaps his pinions; Ply half his horrible trade; Such throngs are shivering on that ghastly shore, Such crowds are hurrying to those dark dominions. There are who will relate, That the abortive monster whom earth fears Th' unshapeliest shape of hell-deform'd and foul, The mountains shudder, and the fixed earth moves; VII. Oh! strange approach of death! |