us to believe that they were
human beings at all; while the description of the behaviour of the
men, and the bodies of the women, is not repugnant to the supposition
that they were large apes, baboons, or orang-outangs, common to this
part of Africa. At all events, the voyagers do not say that they
flayed a people having the faculty of speech.

It is not, however, improbable that the Carthaginians were severe
taskmasters of the people whom they subdued. Such I understand those
to have been who opened the British tin mines, and who, according to
Diodorus Siculus, excessively overworked the wretches who toiled for
them, "wasting their bodies underground, and dying, {362} many a one,
through extremity of suffering, while others perished under the lashes
of the overseer." (_Bibl. Hist._ l. v. c. 38.)

R.T. Hampson.

* * * * *

POPE VINDICATED.

"P.C.S.S." is too great an admirer of Pope not to seek to vindicate
him from one, at least, of the blunders attributed to him by Mr. D.
Stevens, at p. 331. of the "Notes and Queries."

"Singed are his _brows_, the scorching _lids_ grow black."

Now, if Mr. S. will refer to Homer, he will find that the original
fully justifies the use of "brows" and "lids" in the _plural_. It runs
thus (_Od._ ix. v. 389.):

"[Greek: Panta de ui blephar amphi kai ophruas eusen autmae]."

"P.C.S.S." wishes that he could equally remove from Pope the charge
of inaccuracy respecting the _three_ cannibal meals of Polyphemus. He
fears that nothing can be alleged to impugn Mr. Stevens's perfectly
just criticism.

While on the subject of Pope, "P.C.S.S." would wish to advert to
a communication (No. 16. p. 246.) in which it is insinuated that
Pope was probably indebted to Petronius Arbiter for the well-known
passage--

"Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;
The rest is all but leather and prunella."

With all respect for the ingenious author of that communication,
"P.C.S.S." confesses that he is unable to discover such a similitude
of expression as might warrant the notion that Pope had been a
borrower from Petronius. He cannot suppose that Mr. F. could have been
led away by any supposed analogy between _corium_ and _coricillum_.
The latter, Mr. F. must know, is nothing more than a diminutive of
a diminutive (coricillum, _not_ corcillum, from corculum); and the
word is coined by Petronius to ridicule one of the affectations of
Trimalchio (Nero),