MADEMOISELLE DE MERSAC. By W. E. Norris.
London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.
Footnotes:
[1] See that beautiful book, Amadis of Gaul, vol. i. chap. 12, in the admirable translation by Southey.
[2] There have been writers who concluded that Theocritus did not write some of these poems, because the style of them differed from that of his pastorals. “As though” (says Mr. Chapman, his best translator) “the same poet could not possibly excel in different styles.” But this is the way the opinions we have alluded to come up. A writer’s powers are turned against himself, and his very property is to be denied him, because critics of this kind have brains for nothing but one species of handicraft. It is lucky for the human being in the abstract, that he is gifted with tears and smiles; otherwise one or the other of those natural possessions would assuredly have been called in question. In fact, the marvel is, not that genius should deal in both, but that it should ever show itself incapable of either. Exclusive gravity and exclusive levity are alike a solecism, as far as regards the common source of emotion, which is sensitiveness to impressions.
[3] ’Αδηφάγον—Literally, insatiably eating, voracious; one who has never had enough. Observe how the same instinctive phraseology is used by strong sensations all over the world. The “Fancy” pugilistic, and fancy poetical, like differently bred relations, thus find themselves, to their astonishment, of the same family; so the like metaphors of “flashing one’s ivories” (for suddenly showing the teeth), “tapping the claret,” and other jovial escapes from vulgarity into elegance.
[4] An epithet applied by the Sicilians to Proserpine.
[5] The Greek Pastoral Poets, Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, done into English by M. J. Chapman, M.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge, pp. 7, 331.—We like the good faith of Mr. Chapman’s “done into English.”
[6] Perhaps from a Greek root, expressing carelessness or quiet.