And wondred at the number great That through the city so, Al clad in whyte, by thousands thick, Their heads befet with garlands fayre: In hand the lillies white They joyfull beare Then follows a mixture of claffical and christian history and mythology. This poem has many fymptoms of the wildness and wanderings of Italian fiction. It must be confeffed, that there is a perfpicuity and a freedom in Googe's verfification. But this metre of Sternhold and Hopkins impoverished three parts of the poetry of queen Elifabeth's reign. A hermit is thus defcribed, who afterwards proves to be fir EPICURE, in a part of the poem which has been copied by fir David Lyndefey. His hoary beard with filuer heares His middle fully rought '; His skin was white, and ioyfull face : Of diuers colours wrought, A flowry garland gay he ware About his femely heare, &c ". The seventh book, in which the poet looks down upon the world, with its various occupations, follies, and vices, is opened. with these nervous and elegant stanzas. My Mufe aloft! raise vp thyself, And vfe a better flite : Mount vp on hie, and think it scorn Of base affayres to write. Ibid. Signat. G G iiij. 1 Reached. Lib. iii. Ej. More One cannot but remark, that the conduct and machinery of the old vifionary poems is commonly the fame. A rural fcene, generally a wilderness, is fuppofed. An imaginary being of confummate wisdom, a hermit, a goddess, or an angel, appears; and having purged the poet's eye with a few drops of fome celeftial elixir, conducts him to the top of an inacceffible mountain, which commands an unbounded plain filled with all nations. A cavern opens, and displays the torments of the damned: he next is introduced into heaven, by way of the moon, the ■ Going. • Beyond. Signat. Nj. only only planet which was thought big enough for a poetical vifit. Although fuddenly deserted by his myftic intelligencer, he finds himself weary and defolate, on the fea-fhore, in an impassable forest, or a flowery meadow. The following is the paffage which Pope has copied from Palingenius and as Pope was a great reader of the old English poets, it is most probable that he took it immediately from our tranflator, or found it by his direction 1. An Ape, quoth fhe, and iefting-stock Is Man, to god in skye, As oft as he doth truft his wit Too much, prefuming hie, Dares fearche the thinges of nature hid, Her fecrets for to speake; When as in very deed his minde Is dull, and all to weake'. These are the lines of the original. Simia cælicolum rifufque jocufque deorum est, Cum revera ejus craffa imbecillaque fit mens '. Googe, fuppofed to have been a native of Alvingham in Lincolnshire, was a fcholar, and was educated both at Chrift's college in Cambridge, and New-college in Oxford. He is complimented more than once in Turberville's SONNETS'. He pub lished other tranflations in English. I have already cited his verfion of Naogeorgus's hexametrical poem on ANTICHRIST, or the PAPAL DOMINION, printed at London in 1570, and dedicated to his chief patron fir William Cecill". The dedication is dated from Staples-inn, where he was a student. At the end of the book, is his verfion of the fame author's SPIRITUAL AGRICULTURE, dedicated to queen Elifabeth". Thomas Naogeorgus, a German, whofe real name is Kirchmaier, was one of the many moral or rather theological Latin poets produced by the reformation *. Googe alfo tranflated and enlarged Conrade Herefbach's treatife on agriculture, gardening, orchards, cattle, and domestic fowls'. This verfion was printed in 1577, and dedicated from Kingston to fir William Fiztwilliams. Among Crynes's curious books in the Bodleian at Oxford, is Googe's translation from the Spanish of Lopez de Mendoza's PROVERBES, dedicated to Cecill, which I have never feen elsewhere, printed at London by R. Watkins in 1579. In this book the old Spanish paraphraft mentions Boccace's THESEID. But it was not only to these later and degenerate claffics, and to modern tracts, that Googe's industry was confined. He also tranflated into English what he called Aristotle's TABLE OF THE TEN CATEGORIES, that capital example of ingenious but Latin verfions from the vernacular German. See Oporin. DRAM. S. vol. ii. p. 107. In quarto, for Richard Watkins. In the Preface to the first edition, he says, "For my fafety in the vniuerfitie, I craue "the aid and appeal to the defence of the "famous Chrift- college in Cambridge "whereof I was ons an vnprofitable mem"ber, and [of] the ancient mother of "learned men the New-college in Oxford." 2 Feb. 1, 1577. There were other editions, 1578, 1594. Lond. 4to. a Cod. CRYNES, 886. b Sm. 8vo. c Fol. 71. a. useless useless fubtlety, of method which cannot be applied to practice, and of that affectation of unneceffary deduction and frivolous investigation, which characterises the philofophy of the Greeks, and which is confpicuous not only in the demonftrations of Euclid, but in the Socratic difputations recorded by Xenophon. The folid fimplicity of common fenfe would have been much lefs fubject to circumlocution, embarrassment, and ambiguity. We do not want to be told by a chain of proofs, that two and two make four. This fpecific character of the schools of the Greeks, is perhaps to be traced backwards to the loquacity, the love of paradox, and the fondness for argumentative discourse, so peculiar to their nation. Even the good fenfe of Epictetus was not proof against this captious phrenzy. What patience can endure the folemn quibbles, which mark the ftoical conferences of that philofopher preferved by Arrian? It is to this fpirit, not folely from a principle of invidious malignity, that Tully alludes, where he calls the Greeks, "Homines conten"tionis quam veritatis cupidiores "." And in another part of the fame work he says, that it is a principal and even a national fault of this people, Quocunque in loco, quofcunque inter "homines vifum eft, de rebus aut DIFFICILLIMIS aut non NE"CESSARIIS, ARGUTISSIME DISPUTARE. The natural liveliness of the Athenians, heightened by the free politics of a democracy, feems to have tinctured their converfation with this fort of declamatory difputation, which they frequently practiced under an earnest pretence of discovering the truth, but in reality to indulge their native difpofition to debate, to display their abundance of words, and their address of argument, to amuse, surprise, and perplex. Some of Plato's dialogues, profeffing a profundity of fpeculation, have much of this talkative humour. De ORATORE, Lib. i. §. xi. f"> Ibid. Lib. ii. §. iv. |