Recite it, and to future times shall tell :
When closed within the dark sepulchral cell
Your form shall moulder, and your empty ghost
Wander along the dreary Stygian coast;

Yet shall your memory

flourish green and

Recorded and revered on every tongue:
In continents and islands, every place

young,

That owns the language of the Grecian race.
No purchas'd prowess of a racing steed,
But the triumphant Muse, with airy speed,
Shall bear it wide and far, o'er land and main :
A glorious and imperishable strain:

A mighty prize, gratuitously won,

Fix'd as the earth, immortal as the sun!

But for all this no kindness in return

No token of attention or concern!

Baffled and scorn'd, you treat me like a child,
From day to day with empty words beguil'd.'

We come now to those fragments which relate to the personal misfortunes of the poet. We cannot but think that the most simple explanation of the total loss of his property is, that in one of those political revolutions that not uncommon event took place—a new partition of the lands of the republic; Theognis, being absent on an unfortunate voyage, lost his estate. From this time, whether

he was still at home in Megara, striving no doubt by a counter revolution to regain his confiscated lands, or abroad, an exile, poverty (down to a late period of his life) is the sad burthen of his

song.

Πίστει χρήματ' ὄλεσσα. 829.

'Bad faith hath ruin'd me; distrust alone
Has sav'd a remnant; all the rest is gone
To ruin and the dogs! The powers divine,
I murmur not against them, nor repine:
Mere human violence, rapine, and stealth,
Have brought me down to poverty from wealth.'

'Learn patience, O my soul! though rack'd and torn
With deep distress: bear it-it must be borne!

Your unavailing hopes and vain regret,

Forget them, or endeavour to forget.

These womanish repinings, unrepress'd,
(Which gratify your foes,) serve to molest

Your sympathising friends. Learn to endure!
And bear calamities you cannot cure!
Nor hope to change the laws of Destiny
By mortal efforts. Vainly would you fly
To the remotest margin of the sky,

Where

Where ocean meets the firmament: in vain

Would you descend beneath, and dive amain

Down to the dreary subterraneous reign.'

But this kind of desperate resignation is constantly giving place to bitter expostulations against the divine government. Theognis is clearly of opinion that Jove ought always to take the aristocratical side. Virtue, and the privileges of his order, are with him convertible terms. He reminds us of the good old Tory in Washington Irving, who thought that, somehow or other, God was always on the government side of the question.'

Ζεῦ φίλε, θαυμάζω. 373.

'Blessed, Almighty Jove, with deep amaze
I view the world, and marvel at thy ways!
All our devices, every subtle plan,

Each secret art, and all the thoughts of man,
Your boundless intellect can comprehend;
On your award our destinies depend !—
How can you reconcile it to your sense
Of right and wrong, thus loosely to dispense
Your bounties to the wicked and the good?
How can your laws be known and understood,
When we behold a man faithful and just,
Humbly devout, true to his word and trust,
Dejected and oppress'd--whilst the profane
And wicked, and unjust, in glory reign,
Proudly triumphant, flushed with power and gain?
What inference can human reason draw?
How can we guess the secret of thy law?
Or choose the path approv'd by power divine?
-We take, alas, perforce the crooked line,
And act unwillingly the baser part,

Though loving truth and justice at our heart;
For very need reluctantly compell'd
To falsify the principles we held;
With party factions basely to comply;
To flatter, to dissemble, and to lie!
Yet he, the truly brave, tried by the test
Of sharp misfortune, is approv'd the best.
While the soul-searching power of indigence
Confounds the weak and banishes pretence;
Fixed in an honourable purpose still,

The brave preserve the same unconquer'd will,
Indifferent to fortune, good or ill.'

The misery of the heathen (says Mr. Frere) is singularly manifest in the preceding lines. They were unable to find in their national belief any sanction even for those imperfect notions of right and wrong, which natural reason suggested to them; and

the

the concluding passage shows that the better and nobler minds among them framed to themselves a rule of conduct more elevated than that which their religion authorised. This kind of piety, consisting in patient submission to the dispensations of an irresistible and inexplicable destiny, is exemplified in the lines which follow.' They are fine verses, and do more than justice to Theognis :

Οὐδεὶς, Κύρνε. 133.

Kyrnus, believe it! Fortune, good or ill,
No mortal effort, intellect, or skill
Determine it; but Heaven's superior Will.
We struggle onward, ignorant and blind,
For a result unknown and undesign'd,
Avoiding seeming ill, misunderstood,
Embracing evil as a seeming good:
In our own plans unable to detect
Their final, unavoidable effect.
Tormented with unsatisfied desire,
The Fortunate to further aims aspire,
Beyond the bounds of mortal happiness;
Restless and wretched in their own success.

We strive like children, and the Almighty plan
Controls the froward children of weak Man.'

The passages which we shall now quote belong still more clearly to the personal history of the poet. Among the miseries of his reduced circumstances, one of the most grievous is, that he can no longer afford to exercise those rites of hospitality which connected together the great Grecian families in the different cities of the same race. Yet, even in his poverty, Theognis will not shrink from this sacred obligation, or close his humble doors against the stranger, who was perhaps an exile, an aristocratic exile, from his own city.

Ἦλθες δὴ, Κλεάριστε. 511.
• In a frail bark across the seas you come,
Poor Clearistus, to my poorer home.
Yet shall your needy vessel be supplied
With what the gods in clemency provide;
And if a friend be with you, bring him here,
With a fair welcome to my simple cheer.
I am not yet a niggard, nor by stealth
Dissemble the poor remnant of my wealth:
Still shall you find an hospitable board,
And share in common what my means afford.
Then should inquirers ask my present state,
You may reply, my ruin has been great;
Yet, with my means reduced, a ruined man,
I live contented on a humbler plan:

Unable

Unable now to welcome every guest

But greeting glad and freely, though distrest,
Hereditary friends-of all the best.'

The next two fragments are very touching: the allusion to the return of spring, which is to send the plough in the hands of strangers over his hereditary fields, is of a more imaginative style than is usual with Theognis.

Ορνιθος φωνὴν. 1197.

The yearly summons of the creaking crane,
That warns the ploughman to his task again,
Strikes to my heart a melancholy strain-
When all is lost, and my paternal lands
Are till'd for other lords, with other hands,
Since that disastrous wretched voyage brought
Riches and lands and everything to nought.'

The second is the autumnal scene of the harvest-home, in which the husbandmen are employed in conveying the produce of the same paternal acres to the granary of others.

Πῶς ἡμῖν τέτληκεν. 823.

How could I bear it?-in the public place
To chaunt and revel! when before my face,
Seen in the distance, I discern the train
Of harvest-triumph, and the loaded wain,
And happy labourers with garlands crown'd,
Returning from the hereditary ground,
No more my own! My faithful Scythian slave,
Break off this strain of idle mirth, and shave
Your flowing locks, and breathe another tone

Of sorrow for my fair possessions gone.'

The new division of lands, in which the poet lost his estate, did not tend, apparently, to the restoration of order or of peace. According to Mr. Frere—and the verses seem to bear him outthere was still a fierce and desperate struggle among the rival factions. The state of men's minds grew more violent, treacherous, and unprincipled.

ἀστῶν μηδενὶ. 283.

'Stir not a step! risk nothing! but believe

That vows and oaths are snares meant to deceive!

Jove is no warrant for a promise given

Not Jove himself, nor all the gods in heaven.
Nothing is safe; no character secure,
No conduct, the most innocent and pure:
All are corrupt, the commons and the great,
Alike incapable to serve the state.

The

The ruin of the noblest and the best

Serves for an idle ballad or a jest.

Shame is abolish'd; and in high command

Rage, Impudence, and Rapine rule the land.'—p. 69.

It should seem indeed that some chief of a faction had for a time obtained despotic authority. Either in bitterness or in irony, Theognis addresses him in these lines :

Λὰξ ἐπίβα.

6 Lash your obedient rabble!
The burden on their backs!

845.

Cast and load

Spurn them, and goad!

They'll bear it all!-by patience and by birth

The most submissive, humble slaves on earth.'

Kyrnus, according to Mr. Frere, was at length incited to more vigorous measures. Our translator has even given a speech, composed of several fragments, which he supposes to have been delivered by the poet in a meeting of the aristocratic party. But all the powers of his eloquence and his poetry were in vain. It seems clear that at one period foreign interference threatened the good party, which was either again dominant, or struggling for ascendancy. The following picturesque lines show the march of the troops of some neighbouring state upon the town :

Αγγελος άφθογγος.

'A speechless messenger! the Beacon's light
Announces danger from the mountain's height!
Bridle your horses, and prepare to fly!
The final crisis of our fate is nigh.

A momentary pause, a narrow space
Detains them, but the foes approach apace.-

-We must abide what fortune has decreed,

And hope that heaven will help us at our need.
Make your resolve! at home your means are great;
Abroad you will retain a poor estate.

Unostentatious, indigent, and scant,

You live secure at least from utter want.'

Theognis now, besides the loss of his estate, suffered the miseries of exile. Mr. Frere traces him first to Eubœa, and afterwards to Thebes, which he calls the Coblentz of the emigrating party. Mr. Frere explains in this sense a passage which had perplexed all the commentators on Theognis, and gives a plausible and ingenious reason for the poet's silence about Thebes in his own account of his travels. His faction seems to have suffered another terrible blow (Mr. Frere thinks during his residence in Eubœa), which made the poet emphatically end one piece with

The gods confound the Cypselising race '

a line which appears to imply the interference of Corinth with the affairs of Megara.