enormities of domestic life in Rome, was willing to
forego all pretensions to natural power and inspiration for the sake of
obtaining such influence as would enable him to reprove Roman vices with
effect.

_XII. ANNA LOUISA._

SPECIMEN TRANSLATION FROM VOSS IN HEXAMETERS, WITH LETTER TO PROFESSOR
W. ('CHRISTOPHER NORTH').

DR. NORTH,

_Doctor_, I say, for I hear that the six Universities of England and
Scotland have sent you a doctor's degree, or, if they have not, all the
world knows they ought to have done; and the more shame for them if they
keep no 'Remembrancer' to put them in mind of what they must allow to be
amongst their most sacred duties. But that's all one. I once read in my
childhood a pretty book, called 'Wilson's Account of the Pelew Islands,'
at which islands, you know, H.M.S. _Antelope_ was wrecked--just about
the time, I fancy, when you, Doctor, and myself were in long petticoats
and making some noise in the world; the book was not written by Captain
Wilson, but by Keates, the sentimentalist. At the very end, however, is
an epitaph, and that _was_ written by the captain and ship's company:

'Stop, reader, stop, let nature claim a tear;
A prince of mine, Lee Boo, lies buried here.'

This epitaph used often to make me cry, and in commemoration of that
effect, which (like that of all cathartics that I know of, no matter how
drastic at first) has long been growing weaker and weaker, I propose
(upon your allowing me an opportunity) to superscribe you in any
churchyard you will appoint:

'Stop, reader, stop, let genius claim a tear;
A doct'r of mine, Lee Kit, lies buried here.'

'_Doct'r of_' you are to read into a dissyllable, and pretty much like
Boney's old friend on the road from Moscow, General Doct'roff, who
'doctor'd them off,' as the Laureate observes, and prescribed for the
whole French army _gratis_. But now to business.

For _your_ information, Doctor, it cannot be necessary, but on account
of very many readers it will be so, to say that Voss's 'Luise' has long
taken its place in the literature of Germany as a classical work--in
fact, as a gem or cabinet _chef d'oeuvre_; nay, almost as their unique
specimen in any national sense of the lighter and less pretending muse;
less pretending, I mean, as to the pomp or gravity of the subject, but
on that very account more pretending as respects the minuter graces of
its execution. In the comparative estimate of German