• afterwards removed to fome distance, and founded THURIUM. • After the deftruction of Sybaris, Thurium became a confider⚫able state under the discipline of CHARONDAS.'

It appears, that, in the time of THEOCRITUS, (long after the deftruction of the old Sybaritic republic by the Crotoniates) the rivers Crathis and Sybaris were falubrious waters, rolling amidst the richest pastures. If the authority of THEOCRITUS be admitted, the ancients by no means deemed it imprudent to let their cattle drink at the Sybaris, from a perfuafion (as Mr. SWINBURNE fays) that the water was apt to excite dangerous fneezings and convulfions, being ftrongly impregnated with mephitic gas. COMATES promises to wash his goats in this stream; unless indeed the diftinction be material between the fountain Sybaritis and the river Sybaris. For an account of the Sybarites, fee ÆLIAN, b. xvi. c. 23; with other places, indeed, of his miscellaneous hiftory.

LINE 15.

-For then thy envious eyes

Glanc'd theft; and, now, thy hands have stol'n the prize!

Eraxeu Baσxanwy is strongly expreffive of an envious eye that kills, as it were, with its glances.

Lord VERULAM attributes very powerful effects to an envious eye. Indeed there are few people who have not experienced a certain power of fascination in the eye, whether affected by envy or any other of the paffions. Who hath not felt the influence of an angry, a disdainful, a lascivious, an intreating eye?

VIRGIL..

Nefcio quis teneros oculus mihi fafcinat agnos.

Of this fafcinating quality in animals we are acquainted with various inftances, in natural hiftory. In allufion to it, probably, PINDAR calls the fox abwv, fire-eyed.

Or into Crathis' ftreams.

See ÆLIAN'S ftrange fable concerning the goatherd CRATHIS, from whom the river (he fays) derived its name. B. vi. c. 42.

A proverb, that seems to have taken its rife from the following circumftance:-HERCULES, on his arrival at Dios, a city of Macedonia, faw feveral people coming out of a temple: being himfelf defirous to enter and worship, he enquired to whom it belonged? He was informed that it was dedicated to ADONIS. On which he exclaimed udev pov-nothing is facred-intimating, that, as ADONIS was no Deity, he did not think him deserving of any honor or worship; and that things which made a show of fomething great and facred, are often, in reality, ridiculous trifles. POTTER.

LINE 27.

· MINERVA'S Sow!'

An adage used, when the unlettered put themselves in competition with the learned.

LINE 37.

Beneath the friendly shade

Of this wild olive-tree, that skirts the glade.

Here our ruftic wights, COMATES and LACON, may be defcribing, perhaps, the very spot, of which Mr. SWINBURNE speaks in the following pictorefque terms: For the next three miles our evening ride was up a moft beautiful floping hill, thickly < planted with orange, lemon, citron, olive, almond, and other

·

⚫ fruit-trees; which, by their contrafted fhades of green, and the

·

variety of their fize and fhape, compofed one of the richest ⚫ prospects I ever beheld, even in Italy-that country of en⚫ chanting landscape. I was enraptured with the beautiful scene, and almost intoxicated with perfumes.'

LINE 60.

Softer than fleep.

We have the fame expreffion MaλaxwTego UTV in the fifteenth Idyllium; and in VIRGIL-Somno mollior herba.

H 3

Thus

Thus too ANTIPATER

Η τακεραις λευσσοντα κόραις μαλακώτερον υπν8, to which that well known line of POPE is furprisingly fimilar,

The fleepy eye, that told the melting foul.

LINE 66.

The horn'd poppy's tender flower.

raw is thought to mean the horned poppy.

LINE 70.

In eight straw-hives fhall combs of honey swim.

A critic on WARTON obferves, that these Mellis Scapha, or Scaphides, are no other than straw-hives. It is remarkable (he ⚫ continues) that in the North of England any veffel made in the fame form, and of the fame materials, is called, a Skep, ap

parently from the word Scapha. The Bwsgnoques, in the fame

WARTON.

< Idyllium, feems to be the parent of another provincial word, ⚫ which fignifies to be clamorous.' Boifterous (if fuch the critic mean) is not provincial.

LINE 93.

Let but thy umpire reach alive the town.

Thus PLAUTUS:

Sinite abeam, fi poffum, viva a vobis.

LINE .97.

A goodly ram I fatten for the feaft.

A festival observed by the Greeks, in honor of APOLLO, furnamed Carneus, from CARNUS an Acarnanian, who was inftructed by this god in the art of divination, but afterwards murdered by the Dorians. APOLLO fent them in vengeance a dreadful plague, to avert which they inftituted this feftival. POTTER.

LINE 102.

Oft CLEARISTA pelts with apples crisp.
Malo me GALATEA petit, lafciva puella,
Sed fugit ad falices, et fe cupit ante videri.

LINE IIO.

I have a gentle ring-dove for my fair.
Parta mea Veneri funt munera ; namque notavi
Ipfe locum, aeriæ quo congressere palumbes.
And SHENSTONE, improving on both paffages:
I have found out a gift for my fair,
I have found where the wood-pigeons breed;
But let me that plunder forbear-

She will fay, 'twas a barbarous deed.

LINE 113.

A vi'let-coloured fleece.

Пλλav fignifies violet-coloured.

VIRGIL.

LINE 147.

She kifs'd not for my dove, or prefs'd my ears.

A particular fort of kiss which SUIDAS calls, Xulpov, the Pot→→→ because the person kissed was taken, like a pot, by both his ears.

Gnatufque parenti

Ofcula comprenfis auribus eripiet.

WARTON.

TIBULLUS.

This method of falutation ftill obtains among the modern Greeks, who falute each other, by kiffing the eyes, while they mutually take hold of each other's ears. Mr. WARTON would change Καθελοις” into Καθελοντ’, and read: I do not love 'ALCIPPE, because she did not kifs me, when I took her by the Surely the common reading is

ears, and gave her a pigeon.

the most obvious and natural.

LINE 169.

Or, like MELANTHIUS, may my limbs be torn.

-One of the fuitors of PENELOPE. See HOMER's Odyssey. But we are not to fuppofe that COMATES had read HOMER: The circumftance to which he alludes was traditionary.

IDYLLIUM

IDYLLIUM the SIXTH.

LINE I.

LATE, Herdfman DAPHNIS and DAMÆTAS fed

Their herds, ARATUS.

ARATUS, author of an aftronomical poem, entitled Phænomena -the Poet whom St. PAUL quotes in the Acts of the Apostles.

LINE 13.

He, on the lucid wave, his form furveys;
And, on the beach, his dancing shadow bays.

REISKE feems fo fond of emendation, that even the most unexceptionable paffages are, frequently, the fubjects of his conjectural criticism. He would change in this place, paves into Gaiver, and make the waters sprinkle the sheep-dog, inflead of reflecting his image. His conjectures are often ingenious, but seldom probable. Mr. WARTON hath here, too, committed a mistake, fuch as must be obvious to every reader whose head hath not been previously clouded with commentaries. He mistakes the dog for the nymph GALATEA. The fhepherd's dog runs along the fhore barking at his own fhadow: GALATEA is yet in the water. It is wonderful that a person of Mr. WARTON's taste and erudition should have misunderstood fo clear a paffage: But Humanum eft errare. And Opere in longo fas eft obrepere fomnum. If an error of Mr. WARTON, then, (after ten years labor) be excufable on this ground, ought not many imperfections to be candidly overlooked in the Tranflator?

LINE 23.

"The King's in check!"

The original, allufive probably to the Game of Chefs, appears to be a proverbial faying, expreffing a falfe ftép; or a fituation not warranted by the rules of prudence or propriety. She ' moves her King (Aboy) from his proper place, or from the