et no man will, at
this day, pretend that the Greek of his prize ode is sufferable.
Neither did Coleridge ever become an accurate Grecian in later times,
when better models of scholarship, and better aids to scholarship, had
begun to multiply. But still we must assert this point of superiority
for Coleridge, that, whilst he never was what may be called a
well-mounted scholar in any department of verbal scholarship, he yet
displayed sometimes a brilliancy of conjectural sagacity, and a
felicity of philosophic investigation, even in this path, such as
better scholars do not often attain, and of a kind which cannot be
learned from books. But, as respects his accuracy, again we must
recall to the reader the state of Greek literature in England during
Coleridge's youth; and, in all equity, as a means of placing Coleridge
in the balances, specifically we must recall the state of Greek
metrical composition at that period.

To measure the condition of Greek literature even in Cambridge, about
the initial period of Coleridge, we need only look back to the several
translations of Gray's _Elegy_ by three (if not four) of the reverend
gentlemen at that time attached to Eton College. Mathias, no very
great scholar himself in this particular field, made himself merry, in
his _Pursuits of Literature_, with these Eton translations. In that he
was right. But he was _not_ right in praising a contemporary
translation by Cook, who (we believe) was the immediate predecessor of
Porson in the Greek chair. As a specimen of this translation,[27] we
cite one stanza; and we cannot be supposed to select unfairly, because
it is the stanza which Mathias praises in extravagant terms. "Here,"
says he, "Gray, Cook, and nature, do seem to contend for the mastery."
The English quatrain must be familiar to every body:--

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour;
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

And the following, we believe, though quoting from a thirty-three
years' recollection of it, is the exact Greek version of Cook:--

Ha charis eugeneon, charis ha basileidos archas,
Dora tuches chrusees, Aphrodites kala ta dora,
Panth' hama tauta tethneke, kai eiden morsimon hamar;
Heroon kle' olole, kai ocheto xunon es Aden.

Now really these verses, by force of a little mosaic tesselation from
genuine Greek sources, pass fluently over