not quarrel with his application of the phrase by which Horace expresses his indifference to foreign wars, "unice securus." to the insensibility of the infant Perseus; but we cannot understand why, because Alcæus, according to Horace, sang his own fortunes in exile and in war, "Dura fugæ mala, dura belli," Mr. Merivale should translate εὐδέτω δὲ πόντος, εὐδέτω ἄμετρον κακὸν -" Dura fugæ mala, dura ponti." Still more inappropriate is Archdeacon Wrangham's use of the well-known lines by which Horace expresses the sauntering walk of an unoccupied man, -" Ibam forte via sacra, sicut meus est mos, Nescio quid meditans nugarum, et totus in illis." "If, when the darling maid is gone, Thou dost not seek to be alone, Rapt in a pleasing trance of tender woe, Thou dost not love, for love is nourished so." Dumque absit, ni percupias tecum esse, viasque We have already quoted Mr. Drury's translation of "The little dog laughed to see such fine sport," -" Nescio qua catulus risit dulcedine ludi," which reminds a reader unpleasantly of Virgil's beautiful description of birds in spring, -" Nescio qua præter solitum dulcedine læti Inter se foliis strepitant." We may add to our list two unnecessary interpolations of irrelevant phrases by Mr. H. J. Hodgson, who has no poverty of language in himself to plead as an excuse. The first instance is from Wordsworth's last rifacimento of the poem which properly begins, " I met Louisa in the shade" "Though by a sickly taste betrayed, "Rusticam spernant alii puellam, et Some may dispraise the lovely maid." Simplici myrto folia allaborent." What Mr. Wordsworth may think proper to say in his next edition we know not; but hitherto he has not in any of his readings of this passage said anything about myrtle or supererogatory additions to myrtle. But Horace desires his page to bring him a garland of myrtle, without looking for exotics or rare flowers,-" Simplici myrto nihil adlabores Sedulus curo." We wish notwithstanding that we had room to quote Mr. Hodgson's remaining stanzas. But we must proceed to the conclusion of his translation from Milton, who of all men was least in need of having classical scraps thrust upon him, which he would have been both able and willing to borrow if they had suited his immediate purpose. "He who of these delights can judge, and spare We have not thought it necessary to dilate either on Latin composition in general, or on the merits of the passages which we have quoted. All men of classical knowledge and taste are well aware how much refinement, critical skill, habitual accuracy, and valuable knowledge is implied in the power of writing the least excellent of the passages which we have selected. Mr. Drury has given pleasure to many; and we hope he may have done much good by keeping up the traditional English love for this form of intellectual exercise. We do not altogether agree with him that recent poetry supplies much facility for transferring it into rhymed Latin hymns, and we have already intimated the qualified admiration with which we regard this form of composition. But, in justice to an editor to whom we are so much indebted, and in the expectation that religious poetry will be especially interesting to the readers of the Christian Remembrancer, we will conclude with one of Mr. Drury's shorter rhymed poems, from a quaint and touching address to Death by Herrick: "Thou bidst me come away, For faults of former years, This done, I'll only cry, "Jubes abire, nec recuso, NOTICES OF BOOKS. 1. "The English Churchman" Newspaper, No. 33. 2. A Lecture on the Distinctive Characters and relative bearings of Theological Parties in the Christian Church; delivered in the Episcopal Chapel of Inverary, on the Evening of Sunday the 12th of March, 1843, by the Rev. ALEXANDER ALLAN, M.Α. Aberdeen: Brown, 1843. LAST month we expressed our regret that "the Dunbar Schism" had not been terminated by the excommunication of the unhappy person whose name has attained such melancholy notoriety: in so speaking, we were not, as indeed we expressed, without hopes that our Scottish brethren and fathers would, in this trying emergency, show themselves in their appointed stations true guardians of " the excellent deposit." Our anticipations have been realized: our Lord's promise of the perpetual life of his Church has been appealed to by His own successor: the dead branch has been pruned out of the chosen vine, and the false brother put out of communion. We cannot but with all solemn thankfulness record the awful words which have denounced Sir William Dunbar as a wilful and confirmed schismatic, and the letter in which the Bishop of Aberdeen com municated this sentence of the Church to all his Presbyters, and through them to "the Holy Church throughout all the world." "Aberdeen, August 11, 1843. "Rev. Sir, I feel it to be my painful duty, as Bishop of this Diocese, to direct that the accompanying Declaration be read from the Altar of every Chapel within the same, immediately after the Nicene Creed, on Sunday next, being the Ninth Sunday after Trinity. And I remain, your faithful brother, "(Signed) WILLIAM SKINNER, D.D. Bishop of Aberdeen." "IN THE NAME OF GOD. Amen. - Whereas the Reverend Sir William Dunbar, Baronet, late Minister of St. Paul's Chapel, Aberdeen, and a Presbyter of this diocese, received by letters dimissory from the Lord Bishop of London, forgetting his duty as a Priest of the Catholic Church, did, on the twelfth day of May last, in a letter addressed to us, William Skinner, Doctor of Divinity, Bishop of Aberdeen, wilfully renounce his Canonical obedience to us his proper Ordinary, and withdraw himself, as he pretended, from the jurisdiction of the Scottish Episcopal Church; and, notwithstanding our earnest and affectionate remonstrances repeatedly addressed to him, did obstinately persist in that his most undutiful and wicked act, contrary to his ordination vows and his solemn promise of Canonical obedience, whereby the said Sir William Dunbar hath violated every principle of duty, which the laws of the Catholic Church have recognised as binding on her Priests, and hath placed himself in a state of open schism: And, whereas the said Sir William Dunbar hath continued to officiate in defiance of our authority, therefore, we, William Skinner, Doctor in Divinity, Bishop of Aberdeen aforesaid, sitting with our Clergy in Synod, this tenth day of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-three, and acting under the provisions of Canon XLI. do declare that the said Sir William Dunbar hath ceased to be a Presbyter of this Church, and that all his Ministerial acts are without authority, as being performed apart from Christ's mystical Body, wherein the one Spirit is; and we do most earnestly and solemnly warn all faithful people to avoid all communion with the said Sir William Dunbar in prayers and sacraments, or in any way giving countenance to him in his present irregular and sinful course, lest they be partakers with him in his sin, and thereby expose themselves to the threatening denounced against those who cause divisions in the Church, from which danger we most heartily pray that God of his great mercy would keep all the faithful people committed to our charge, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. The Synod sat two days, August 9th and 10th, in St. Andrew's Chapel, and was occupied, besides the Dunbar Schism, with the heretical lecture whose title we have prefixed to these remarks, and which we are given to understand, was most solemnly and formally condemned. We care not to give any extracts from it, or indeed to say more upon a very painful subject than that Mr. Allan avowed the wildest latitudinarianism, and openly renouncing "creeds, councils, fathers, liturgies, and sacramental offices," avowed his sympathy with the most extreme rationalism, even to the limits, as far as we can make him out, of Pantheism. "Christianity, whilst it is an efflux from the Divine soul of the universe, is at the same time regarded as a product of the human mind and the human heart."-P. 19. Such are the opinions which Mr. Allan attributes to the "Liberal party," and he "has not the slightest fear or hesitation in owning his conviction that this party is, upon the whole, a noble and a generous party; earnestly devoted to the cause of truth, and having the best interests of mankind at heart. Let the names of Milton, Locke, and Priestley, [two Arians and a Socinian,] bear witness to the assertion," p. 23. On being summoned to attend the synod of Aberdeen on a charge of heresy, this servant of Satan, to use the plain language of Athanasius against the Arians, resigned his cure, and is now significant retreat! -on his way to Germany, there to find sympathy with the Weyscheiders and Pauluses, or their successors. Of course all our readers will anticipate our feelings on this remarkable and affecting occasion. Deep gratitude to Him whose life is thus working in the Church, together with prayers that He will in His own good time "take from the offenders all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of His words, and fetch them home to His flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites." Such feelings are not unaccompanied with fears for our own Holy Mother, how she will receive grace and power in the coming strife. It may be that He is dealing with us at home mercifully and gently, accustoming men's minds here to the inconceivable might and inner life of the Church, by displaying it elsewhere; that gradually and by imitation we may be taught our duty; in the Colonies as in Australia, we allude to the Bishop's wonderful protest against the Romanist intrusion, - in Scotland, as on the present occasion, Church principles are at work; other Bishops are acting while we are talking; reading books or writing them are very well, but in other places the Church has the Great Realities. We hear about life, they show it. But this their life is also our own, praised be God! either that of our daughters or our nearest sister; and when the graciously deferred time comes, neither the Church, nor the Bishops, nor the Priests of England will be found wanting; we are now, it may be, training to do, and to suffer, and to witness as God shall require of us; on the one hand let us not forestall our place or our duty, let us in our several stations bide our time, accustom ourselves to unworldly thoughts, and, still better, to an unworldly life. It is not because we may be the last called that we shall have the least to do, or, if so be, to suffer for His Name's sake: and so, on the other hand, as we are to avoid all rashness and forward presumption, let us try to strive also against the soothing hope that all this, as far as we are concerned, is to end in books and pamphlets, reviews and articles, speeches and fine talk. We are exceedingly well prepared with weapons here in England; it is quite delightful to hear all that we say and to read all that we write; but in our hour of need and in coming day of sifting, may we but act half as well as those who, in literary graces, in popularity, and in the world's estimate, are immeasurably our inferiors! In conclusion, we cannot but remind our readers of good Bishop Horne's memorable opinion. "From the present circumstances of its primitive orthodoxy, piety, and poverty, if the great Apostle of the Gentiles were upon earth, and it were put to his choice with what denomination of Christians he would communicate, the preference would probably be given to the Episcopalians (THE CHURCH) of Scotland as most like the people he had been used to," and though "this expression happened, as Jones, of Nayland, perfectly recollects, while they were talking together on one of the hills near the city of Canterbury, higher than the pinnacles of the cathedral, where there was no witness to their discourse but the sky that was over their heads," we venture, even with the fear of Dr. Wynter before our eyes, to express a conviction that the prayers of Bishop Horne himself, and of the faithful departed this life in God's faith and fear, have been not without their power to win for the suffering Church of Scotland the privilege which has been granted to it, of witnessing before men and angels a good confession. We only repeat our prayer, may we do as well, and may we remember Cecil's deep, perhaps prophetic, words, "The Church of England is not fitted, in its present state, for a General Church. Its secularity must be purged away. He only can, by unknown means, heal the schisms of the Church, and unite it together as one external body, and that this will be done by persecution appears highly probable. I see no other means adequate to the end." Millennium Eve. A Poem. London: Thomas Cadell, Strand. THE number of persons who, without common information, common sense, or an acquaintance with the most ordinary rules of poetical composition, send forth what they call "Religious poems," is frightfully on the increase. Unsuccessful as we have hitherto been, we will not relax in our endeavours to abate this nuisance, and now call for judgment on the very worst culprit in this line whom, in the whole course of our duties as public prosecutor, we have ever met with. Millennium Eve is a religious poem of some nine thousand lines; but what its general scheme is, and why such a singular title is given to it, we are utterly at a loss to say, though we have given some little time and trouble to the investigation of both points. The author shall not be condeinned unheard; and we will, therefore, give a few lines as a specimen of his style. In the 8th book, entitled "Hell," one Constantine, we believe, a hero, or one of the heroes of the poem, after the manner of other heroes in great poems, makes a descent into hell. Thus opens the book "Like some rich fluid press'd through cloth of hair; Nor that "new thing" which God did once prepare Baseless but for a character of woe, The fiendly uniform transferr'd below; Forced through the earth, now Constantine descends In spirit to its centre;" |