That is, Sheffield, and, legally speaking, of Buckingham shire. For he would not take the title of Buckingham, under a fear that there was lurking somewhere or other a claim to that title amongst the connections of the Villiers family. He was a pompous grandee, who lived in uneasy splendor, and, as a writer, most extravagantly overrated; accordingly, he is now forgotten. Such was his vanity, and his ridiculous mania for allying himself with royalty, that he first of all had the presumption to court the Princess (afterwards Queen) Anne. Being rejected, he then offered himself to the illegitimate daughter of James II., by the daughter of Sir Charles Sedley. She was as ostentatious as himself, and accepted him.
NOTE 6.
Meantime, the felicities of this translation are at times perfectly astonishing; and it would be scarcely possible to express more nervously or amply the words,
—"jurisque secundi
Ambitus impatiens, et summo dulcius unum
Stare loco,"——
than this child of fourteen has done in the following couplet, which, most judiciously, by reversing the two clauses, gains the power of fusing them into connection.
"And impotent desire to reign alone, That scorns the dull reversion of a throne."
But the passage for which beyond all others we must make room, is a series of eight lines, corresponding to six in the original; and this for two reasons: First, Because Dr. Joseph Warton has deliberately asserted, that in our whole literature, "we have scarcely eight more beautiful lines than these;" and though few readers will subscribe to so sweeping a judgment, yet certainly these must be wonderful lines for a boy, which could challenge such commendation from an experienced polyhistor of infinite reading. Secondly, Because the lines contain a night-scene. Now it must be well known to many readers, that the famous night scene in the Iliad, so familiar to every schoolboy, has been made the subject, for the last thirty years, of severe, and, in many respects, of just criticisms. This description will therefore have a double interest by comparison, whilst, whatever may be thought of either taken separately for itself, considered as a translation, this which we now quote is as true to Statius as the other is undoubtedly faithless to Homer
"Jamque per emeriti surgens confima Phoebi
Titanis, late mundo subvecta silenti
Rorifera gelidum tenuaverat aera biga
Jam pecudes volucresque tacent. jam somnus avaris
Inserpit curis, pronusque per aera nutat,
Grata laboratae referens oblivia vitae"
Theb I 336-341.
"'Twas now the time when Phoebus yields to night,
And rising Cynthia sheds her silver light,
Wide o'er the world in solemn pomp she drew
Her airy chariot hung with pearly dew
All birds and beasts he hush'd. Sleep steals away
The wild desires of men and toils of day,
And brings, descending through the silent air,
A sweet forgetfulness of human care."