TRACT VII. OF ROPALIC OR GRADUAL VERSES, ETC. Mens mea sublimes rationes præmeditatur. SIR,-Though I may justly allow a good intention in this poem presented unto you, yet I must needs confess, I have no affection for it; as being utterly averse from all affectation in poetry, which either restrains the fancy, or fetters the invention to any strict disposure of words. A poem this nature is to be found in Ausonius, beginning thus, Spes Deus æternæ stationis conciliator. of These are verses ropalici or clavales, arising gradually like the knots in a pоnáλn or club; named also fistulares by Priscianus, as Elias Vinetus* hath noted. They consist properly of five words, each thereof increasing by one syllable. They admit not of a spondee in the fifth place, nor can a golden or silver verse be made this way. They run smoothly both in Latin and Greek, and some are scatteringly to be found in Homer, Ω μάκαρ Ατρείδη μοιρηγενὲς ὀλβιοδαίμον, Libere dicam sed in aurem, ego versibus hujusmodi ropalicis, longo syrmate protractis, Ceraunium affigo. He that affecteth such restrained poetry, may peruse the long poem of Hugbaldus the monk, wherein every word beginneth with a C, penned in the praise of calvities or baldness, to the honour of Carolus Calvus, king of France, Carmina clarisonæ calvis cantate Camænæ. The rest may be seen at large in the Adversaria of Barthius : or if he delighteth in odd contrived fancies, may he please himself with antistrophes, counterpetories, retrogrades, rebuses, leonine verses, &c., to be found in Sieur des Accords. But these and the like are to be looked upon, not pursued. *El Vinet. in Auson. Odd work might be made by such ways; and for tion I propose these few lines unto you.1 Arcu paratur quod arcui sufficit. your recrea Misellorum clamoribus accurrere non tam humanum quam sulphureum est. Asino teratur quæ asino teritur. Ne asphodelos comedas, phœnices manduca. Coelum aliquid potest, sed quæ mira præstat papilio est. Not to put you unto endless amusement, the key hereof is the homonomy of the Greek made use of in the Latin words, which rendereth all plain. More enigmatical and dark expressions might be made if any one would speak or compose them out of the numerical characters or characteristical numbers set down by Robertus de Fluctibus.2* As for your question concerning the contrary expressions of the Italians and Spaniards in their common affirmative answers, the Spaniard answering cy Sennor, the Italian Signior cy, you must be content with this distich, Why saith the Italian Signior cy, the Spaniard Sy Sennor? Occidit heu tandem multos quæ occidit amantes, *Tract 2, part lib. i. I am, &e. and, &c.] MS. Sloan. reads thus, " And I remember I once pleased a young hopeful person with a dialogue between two travellers, beginning in this manner : well drunk, my old friend, the famous king of Macedon; that is, well overtaken, my old friend Alexander, your friend may proceed. With another way I shall not omit to acquaint you, and for your recreation I present these few lines." 2 More enigmatical, &c.] These are more largely noticed in MS. Sloan. 1837: thus, "One way more I shall mention, though scarce worth your notice -Two pestels and a book come short of a retort, as much as a spear and an ass exceed a dog's tail. This is to be expounded by the numerical characters, or characteristical numbers set down by Robertus de Fluctibus, and speaks only this text :-two and four come short of six, as much as ten exceed six; the figure of an ass standing for a cipher." 3 Occidit heu tandem, &c.] In MS. Sloan. 1827, is the following translation "She is dead at last, who many made expire, TRACT VIII. OF LANGUAGES, AND PARTICULARLY OF THE SAXON TONGUE. SIR, The last discourse we had of the Saxon tongue recalled to my mind some forgotten considerations.1 Though the earth were widely peopled before the flood (as many learned men conceive), yet whether, after a large dispersion, and the space of sixteen hundred years, men maintained so uniform a language in all parts, as to be strictly of one tongue, and readily to understand each other, may very well be doubted. For though the world preserved in the family of Noah before the confusion of tongues might be said to be of one lip, yet even permitted to themselves their humours, inventions, necessities, and new objects (without the miracle of confusion at first), in so long a tract of time, there had probably been a Babel. For whether America were first peopled by one or several nations, yet cannot that number of different planting nations answer the multiplicity of their present different languages, of no affinity unto each other, and even in their northern nations and incommunicating angles,2 their languages are widely differing. A native interpreter brought from California proved of no use3 unto the Spaniards upon the neighbour shore. From Chiapa to Guatemala, S. Salvador, Honduras, there are at least eighteen several languages; and so numerous are they both in the Peruvian and Mexican regions, that the great princes are fain to have one common language, which, besides their vernaculous and mother tongues, may serve for commerce between them. And since the confusion of tongues at first fell only upon those which were present in Sinaar at the work of Babel, whether the primitive language from Noah were only pre 1 forgotten considerations.] "Both of that and other languages." MS. Sloan. 2 angles.] "Where they may be best conceived to have most single originals." "Of little use."-MS. Sloan. 3 of no use.] served in the family of Heber, and not also in divers others, which might be absent at the same, whether all came away, and many might not be left behind in their first plantations about the foot of the hills, whereabout the ark rested, and Noah became an husbandman,4 is not absurdly doubted. For so the primitive tongue might in time branch out into several parts of Europe and Asia, and thereby the first er Hebrew tongue, which seems to be ingredient into so many languages, might have larger originals and grounds of its communication and traduction than from the family of Abraham, the country of Canaan, and words contained in the Bible, which come short of the full of that language. And this would become more probable from the septuagint or Greek chronology strenuously asserted by Vossius; for making five hundred years between the deluge and the days of Peleg, there ariseth a large latitude of multiplication and dispersion of people into several parts, before the descent of that body which followed Nimrod unto Sinaar from the east. They who derive the bulk of European tongues from the Scythian and the Greek, though they may speak probably in many points, yet must needs allow vast difference or corruptions from so few originals, which, however, might be tolerably made out in the old Saxon, yet hath time much confounded the clearer derivations. And as the knowledge thereof now stands in reference unto ourselves, I find many words totally lost, divers of harsh sound disused or refined in the pronunciation, and many words we have also in common use not to be found in that tongue, or venially derivable from any other from whence we have largely borrowed, and yet so much still remaineth with us that it maketh the gross of our language. The religious obligation unto the Hebrew language hath so notably continued the same, that it might still be understood by Abraham, whereas by the Mazorite points and 4 husbandman, &c.] MS. Sloan. 1827, adds here the following clause: "whether in that space of 150 years, according to common compute, before the conduct of Nimrod, many might not expatriate northward, eastward, or southward, and many of the posterity of Noah might not disperse themselves before the great migration unto Sinaar, and many also afterwards; is not," &c. 4 Chaldee character the old letters stand so transformed, that if Moses were alive again, he must be taught to read his own law.5 The Chinese, who live at the bounds of the earth, who have admitted little communication, and suffered successive incursions from one nation, may possibly give account of a very ancient language: but, consisting of many nations and tongues, confusion, admixtion, and corruption in length of time might probably so have crept in, as, without the virtue of a common character and lasting letter of things, they could never probably make out those strange memorials which they pretend, while they still make use of the works of their great Confucius many hundred years before Christ, and in a series ascend as high as Poncuus, who is conceived our Noah. The present Welsh, and remnant of the old Britons, hold so much of that ancient language, that they make a shift to understand the poems of Merlin, Enerin, Telesin, a thousand years ago, whereas the Herulian Pater Noster, set down by Wolfgangus Lazius, is not without much criticism made out, and but in some words; and the present Parisians can hardly hack out those few lines of the league between Charles and Lewis, the sons of Ludovicus Pius, yet remaining in old French. The Spaniards in their corruptive traduction and romance, have so happily retained the terminations from the Latin, that, notwithstanding the Gothic and Moorish intrusion of words, they are able to make a discourse completely consisting of 5 law.] In MS. Sloan. 1827, the following additional paragraph occurs:-"Though this language be duly magnified, and always of high esteem, yet if, with Geropius Becanus, we admit that tongue to be most perfect which is most copious or expressive, most delucid and clear unto the understanding, most short, or soon delivered, and best pronounced with most ease unto the organs of speech, the Hebrew now known unto us will hardly obtain the place; since it consisteth of fewer words than many others, and its words begin not with vowels, since it is so full of homonymies, and words which signify many things, and so ambiguous, that translations so little agree; and since, though the radices consist but of three letters, yet they make two syllables in speaking; and since the pronunciation is such, as St. Jerome, who was born in a barbarous country, thought the words anhelent, strident, and of very harsh sound. they are able.] "This will appear very unlikely to a man that conVOL. III. Q |