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BOOKS ON OUR TABLE. Tracts Illustrative ...
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Wo should do onr utmost to enccmrage the...
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VIVIAN FLIRTING WITH THE MtJSE. Poetry I...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The Clouds Of Aristophanes. The Clouds O...
nd grounds for their belief as hten m our day have for their opinion of 'I ciafist & viii * the interpretation of a few detached phrases from the point fvSw of the interpreters ! The denial of the Mythological Deities was Sms naturally enough held as equivalent to a denial of all deity ; because the interpreters , believing in these deities , could only deny them atheis-Jicallv not having a belief out of which such denial could spring . Thus , la our day are men called irreligious when they withdraw from the religion ' of their accusers . A .. B ., who believes in Christianity , feels that if he trere to deny it , he would be without a religion ; and does not suspect that 0 . p . ' s denial results from a belief in some other form of religion . The Clouds Is very interesting in this as in so many respects . Here is an amusing bit of ridicule , wherein we see the incipient Positivism of Socrates interpreted in a spirit very similar to that which greeted the Vestiges . Socrates introduces Strepsiades to the Clouds : —
Stbeps . Oh Earth ! what a sound , how august and profound ! it fills nie with wonder and awe . ' Socb * These , these then alone , for true Deities own , the rest are all God-ships of straw . " Stbeps . Let Zeus be left out : He's a God beyond doubt : come , that you can scarcely deny ! * iSoOB . Zeus , indeed ! there ' s no Zeus : don't you be so obtuse . Steeps . No Zeus up aloft in the sky I Then first must lainwho it is sends the rain I reallmust
, you exp , ; or y think you are wrong . $ ocB . Well then , be it known , these send it alone : I can prove it by arguments strong . Was there ever a shower seen to fall in an hour when the sky was all cloudless and blue ? Yet on a fine day , when the Clouds are away , he might sead one , according to you . Steeps . "Well , it must be confessed , that chimes in with the rest : your words I am forced to believe . Yet before I had dreamed that the rain-water streamed from Zeus and
his chamber-pot sieve . But whence then , my friend , does the thunder descend ? that does laake me quake with affright ! J 8 » 0 B . Why'tis they , I declare , as they roll through the air . SSebeps . What i the Clouds ? did I hear you aright ? JSecB . Ay : for when to the brim filled with water they swim , by Necessity carried along , ¦ They are hung up on high in the vault of the sky , and so by Necessity strong , In the midst of their course , they clash with great force , and thunder away without end . . -Sweeps . But is it not He who compels this to beP ^ does not Zeus , this Necessity send ? Socb . No Zeus have we there , but a Vortex of air . Steeps . What ! Vortex ? that ' s something , I own . I knew not before , that Zeus was no more , but Vortex was placed on his
throne ! But I have not yet heard to what cause you referred the thunder ' s majestical roar . Soob . Yes , 'tis they , when on high full of water they fly , and then , as I told you before , By Compression impelled , as they clash , ore compelled a terrible clatter to make . Steeps . Come , how can that be ? I really don't see . Socb . Yourself as my proof I will take . Have you never then ate the broth-puddings you get when the Panatheneea conies round , And felt with what might your bowcla all night in turbulent tumult
resound ? Weeps . By Apollo , 'tis true , there ' s a mighty to-do , and ray belly keeps rumbling about ; And the puddings begin to clatter ' within and ] to kick up a wonderful rout : ' Quite gently at first , papftpax , papapax , but Boon pappapappax away , Till ofc last , I'll be bound , I can thunder as loud , papapappapnppax , as They . » 00 l n . Shalt thou then a sound so loud and profound from thy belly diminutive send , And shall not the high and the infinite Sky go thundering on without end ? For both , you will find , on an impulse of wind and similar causes depend . SDftHPs . Well , but toll me from Whom cornea the bolt through the gloom , with it »
awful and terrible flashes ; And wherever it turns ,, some it singes and burns , and some it reduces to ashes t Tor this 'tis quite plain , lot who will send the rain , that Zeus against porjurors dashes . SOoit . And how , you' old fool of a dark-ages school , and an antediluvian wit , If the perjured they strike , and not all men alike , have they never Cleonymua hit P Then of Simon again , and Theorem explain j known perjurers , yet they escape . ' ' ' . But ho smites his own shrino with these arrows divine , and " Suniuin , Attioa , 's cape , " n ' mi And the nncient gnarled oaks : wow what prompted those strokes ? They never forsworo I should « fly .
Aa to wliat is bo often said about Aristophanes having substituted the Well known figure of Socrates for the typo of the Sophists , he at the same time not believing Socrates to be a Sophist , a little reflection and inquiry Will scatter that notion into thin air . Aristophanes ridiculed Socrates because Socrates was the most prominent of the innovators . That he did « ° * take him as a typo of the SophiBts is shown in the single faot that juoh of his ridicule turns upon the physical speculations of Socrates ; Ww Sophists notorioualy ecoutod such speculations ; and although
Socrates himself , later in life * scouted those speculations ( even , pronouncing the study of astronomyto be impious ) , yet nothing is more certainly known of him . than that he did occupy himself with physics at the time Aristophanes wrote . But we must not be seduced further into this large subject . A new translation of The Clouds lies before m : the work of a scholar , and addressed , to scholars . Of the translation as a translation we cannot speak very highly , unless the enormous—may we not say insuperable P-y difficulties be taken into account . The poetical passages ( and what
exquisite poetry there often is in the choruses of Aristophanes •; . ' ) are beyond comparison the best . Athenian fun is not so easily rendered , and this translator does not seem gifted with the requisite command of humorous language , but runs into vapid colloquialisms when he would catch the bantering tone of the original . The notes , as usual in such works , are an ollapodridd of fragmentary erudition , good and bad , curious and worthless , thrown together without much system . In one of them , the author forgets himself so far as to speak of the " able but unscrupulous volumes of Mr . Grote , " a sentence which must jar upon every ear . The author is at liberty to reject Mr . Grote's defence of the Sophists , if he see grounds ; but to apply the epithet " unscrupulous" to a writer of Mr . Grote ' s character can only be regarded as a bit of collegiate coxcombry .
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Books On Our Table. Tracts Illustrative ...
BOOKS ON OUR TABLE . Tracts Illustrative of Unsectarian Christianity . By Henry W . Crosskey . " The Past and Future of Christianity" is the subject of the first Tract , which is ardently and earnestly written . A Popular History of the British JPents , and the Allied Plants , comprising the Clulmosses , Pepperworts , and Horsetails . By Thomas Moore . Reeve and Benham . This , the latest volume of the series of popular scientific books , published by Messrs . Reeve and Benham , is one of the most useful , if not the most interesting . It hicks the interest of physiological inquiry , and is of a more rudimentary character than was absolutely necessary j but it is plain , copious , and minute in its descriptions , and contains twenty coloured lithographs illustrative of the text . Grammar of the Hungar ian Language . By Sigismund Wekey . Trelawney Saunders . Cloud * of' Aristophanes . ¦'¦' ., F . Macbheraoii . Our Antipodes . By Lieut .-Colonel G . C . Mundey . 3 vols . .. Bentley . Sixteen Month * in the Danish Islet . By A . Hamilton . 2 vols . B . Bentley . Bentiei / s Shilling Series—A Glimpse at the Cheat Western Republic . B . Bentley . Narrative of a Residence at the Capital of Siam . By P . A . NeaUv , „ ,.., x , . t . ¦*¦¦ - ¦¦ National BlnstratedXibrary . Life of Napoleon Bonaparte . By William Hazlitt . Illustrated Library . Gardener ' s Record . GwotabnOge an 4 | om Policy of Retaliation . TWT . „ J . W . Parker and Son . Exercise * adapted to the Complete Latin Grammar . By J . W . Donaldson . J . W . Parker and Son . German PhraseBook . By A , Bernays . " J . W . Parker and Son * Life of Roger Williams . By Borneo Elton . „ . A . Cookshaw . The Bible , and the Working Classes . By A , Wallace . W . Oliphant and Sons . Notes on the Isthmus of Panama . By A . Dunlop , P . B . G . S . J . Thomus . Bakn's Scientific Idbrary . —On the Power , WUdom , -and Goodness of God . BytheKev . VV . Kirby . vol . 1 . H . G . Bonn , Bohn's Illustrated Library : —Rome in the Nineteenth Century . By C . A . Eaton . Vol . 1 . H . G . Bonn , Bohn's Classical Library . —Ovid , Literally Translated . By H . J . Eiley . H . G . Bohn , Bohn's Standard Library - . — Vasari ' s Lives of the Painters . By Mrs , J . Foster . Vol . 2 . Jl . Or . xionn , Lawson ' s Merchant ' s Magazine . Parti . B . Hastings . Transactions of the Co-operative League . J J ¦ Bezel
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Wo Should Do Onr Utmost To Enccmrage The...
Wo should do onr utmost to enccmrage the Beautiful , for the Useful encourages itselr . — Goethe .
Vivian Flirting With The Mtjse. Poetry I...
VIVIAN FLIRTING WITH THE MtJSE . Poetry I once before denned to be " a sort of moral measles . " We all have it in youth , but get over it when Years that bring the philosophic mind ( and tradesman ' s bills !) warn us that Fama and Fanies are nearly allied , — that poetry and poverty have only the difference of the letter v - and what does that mean but veto ? We get over it ; as we " get over" our youth , alas ! irrevocable yduth . But even as the dulcet accents of youthful joys ever and anon recur to charm us during thie anxious days , so does poetiy , like a silver thread running through our tapestry of life , ever and anon emerge into fugitive distinctness , to charm awhile , and then be lost again . I thought of this the other day as I rambled among the gorse , under a bright joyous sunlight , with the birds singing above and around me , and a little song that would keep murmuring itself into shape within me . The silver thread would reappear ! I walked on , and verses came " thick and fast , " vanishing almost as swiftly , and leaving behind them in my memory not more than half-a-dozen stanzas . When I came home I tried to write them down ; they were almost all gone ! With great difficulty I remembered some , and patched up these lines , which , when you have read , you will say were not worth remembering . 80 NG . Let me fling out this current of thought into Song , And give vent to this passionate music of pain I I have felt the tide rising in silence too long , Till the painful delight has set whirling my brain . Let me fling out my song to the echoing hill , And shout it exulting where two valleys meet : " Oh ! I love her ! I love her ! Her heart is my will , For I bend my fierce nature to move at her feet V * When her antelope eyes , deep as love , dark as night , Droop their softness upon me they make my soul thrill
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 22, 1852, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_22051852/page/19/
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