mrcAR.

[TO THE EDITOR, OP THE "I3PEDIATOR."]

Sia,—After many years of reading (and lecturing on) /await, I have oome to agree with the statement that an eighteenth- century mind is needed for his translation. It is not merely that Lucan's brilliant rhetoric has lest its appeal, and that a Cato, struggling with adversity, no longer moves us as he moved Addison; the real difficulty is that Lucas clamours for the rhyming couplet, which is anathema to the present century. Metrieally, Rowe seems to glee us the true Lncau; but ho mishandled the poet by an intblerithle diffueeriess on which Johnson laid his unerring finger. Rowe falls in one of Lucan's finest passtagesthe spew& of Cate at the shrine of Hammon (IX. 5644584)takirig over fifty lines to interpret twenty-one. The passage has a peculiar interest, since it not only gives the gist of Stoleistn, but shows that Liken could have been great pdet as well as a great rhetorician—si sic omnia dixisset. I venture a version; which is at least nearly as brief as the original, but I cannot claim to possess an eighteenth-century Mind

Within his heart the silent voice diVine I5rompted an answer worthy of the shrine.

" What should I ask? ' Whether I cheese to fall Prim to the end, or live a tyrant's thrall ' Or, 'Is life nothing, be it brief or long ?' Can any violence work a good man wrong? '

'Is Fortune's threat on Virtue vainly spent? '

or, 'Does Success add nething.te the good Intent?'

All this we know; Hammon can do no More

Than testify the truth we knetv before.

God is about us ; and, do what we will, We do•God's bidding, though His voice be still.

e needs no revelation, having shown

Once, on our birthday, all that may be known.

Nor has He plunged the truth in barren sand

For a few travellers in a desert land.

Wherever there is earth and sea and air, Wherever Heaven and VittueGod is there.

Shall we search further ? veitay shall we rove;

When every feeling, every sight is Jove.

Doubters may tremble, and seek prophetic aid; I, being sure of death, am unafraid.

Death waits alike the coward and the bold —Thus Bath God speken ; 'tie all we need be told:" St. John's eollege, Cambridge.