9.

[53] Gray, _Observations on English Metre_.

[54] Warton, _History of English Poetry_, Vol. I. p 133.

[55] Vossius, _De Poetis Latinis_, p. 74. is mistaken in saying that it
had nine books instead of ten. See also _Menagiana_, Tom. I. P. 177.

[56] _Inferno_, Canto XXXIII.

[57] This is the passage translated into blank verse by the early
English poet, Grimoald Nicholas.

[58] There is a contemporary poem in leonine verses on the death of
Thomas a Becket, with the same allusion to opposite dangers:--

"Ut post Syrtes mittitur in Charybdim navis,
Flatibus et fluctibus transitis tranquille,
Tutum portus impulit in latratus Scyllae."

Du Meril, _Poesies Populaires Latines_, p. 82.

[59] Some of the expressions of this passage may be compared with other
writers. See Burmanni _Anthologia Latina_, Vol. I. pp. 152, 163; Ovidii
_Metam._ Lib. I. 514.

[60] "C'etait un homme qui battait des eglises sans payer ses dettes."

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Works of Epictetus, consisting of his Discourses in
Four Books, the Enchiridion and Fragments._ A Translation
from the Greek, based on that of Elizabeth Carter. By THOMAS
WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.

Happy the youth who has this Stoic repast fresh and untasted before him!
Heaven give him appetite and digestion; for here is food indeed!

Epictetus and Marcus Antoninus, at the two extremes of the social
system,--the one that most helpless of human beings, a Roman slave, the
other that terrestrial god, a Roman Emperor,--are yet so associated in
fame that he who names either thinks of the other also. Neither of them
men of astonishing intellect, though certainly of a high intelligence,
they have yet uttered thoughts that cannot die,--thoughts so simple,
vital, and central, so rich in the purest blood of man's moral being,
that their audience and welcome are perpetual. Without literary
ambition, one of them wrote only for his own eye, merely emphasizing the
faith he lived by, while the other wrote not at all, but, like another
and yet greater, simply spoke with men as he met them, his words being
only the natural respirations of belief. Yet that tide of time which
over so many promising ambitions and brilliant fames has rolled
remorseless, a tide of oblivion, bears the private notes or casual
conversation of these men in meek and grateful service.

A vital word,--how sure is it to be cherished