Simon de Montfort fought for the right, so far as we can judge at this remote period; but his antagonist was the greatest general of the day, and afterwards became England's greatest king. He was but twenty-six when he won the immortal victory known as the Murder of Evesham. If Montfort gave England its first Parliament, Edward gave us Wales and Scotland, and made the priests pay taxes in defiance of the Pope. A poetic prince, as well as a gallant; for did he not, when Eleanora the Castilian died in Lincolnshire, cause Peter l'Imagineur to build a stately cross wherever her corpse rested on its way to Westminster? Thanks to the poetry of a railway company, London is to see the last and stateliest of those crosses rebuilt in what was once the quiet village of Charing.

There was another abbey at Pershore, which takes its name from its abundant pear-trees. Bredon Hill, not far from this town, is worth climbing, for its fine view towards the Malverns. At the village of Strensham the author of Hudibras was born. I must not be retarded by reminiscences of that most humorous writer of wonderful doggrel; but pass on to Tewkesbury, last of the towns on the Avon, which here falls into the wide and shining Severn. Tewkesbury had also its abbey and its famous battle; it has, moreover, its legend of that unfortunate gentleman, Brihtric of Bristol.

Farewell, beautiful Avon, with all thy poetic and historic memories; thy great abbeys and bloody battlefields; thy golden dream of Shakespeare the divine. As I stand in the Bloody Meadow at Tewkesbury and look

at the meeting of the waters, my chief thought is how many great men have fought in tented field-have written famous books-how many strange and terrible events have occurred-ere this England could become what it is, "A land of settled government,

A land of just and old renown."

TWO POETS OF ROME.

FRERE'S Aristophanes, all four plays, very rare, six pounds ten shillings." Such were the words of a courteous and intelligent librarius in the Strand when, not long ago, I inquired the value of the book in question; and not being a millionaire at the moment, I left the coveted volume, cheap at the price, to somebody who could spare the money better than I. Hookham Frere, diplomatist and confederate of Canning, was a brilliant versifier by nature, his Anti-Jacobin rhymes are of the very best of their class, infinitely superior to Theodore Hook and Tom Moore; and being at Malta, and having plenty of leisure in that torrid island of the Midland Sea, he amused himself by translating four plays of Aristophanes. He did his work well. Three of the playsthe Birds, Knights, and Acharnians were published together; the Frogs was not printed for years after; so to find all four plays in one volume is rare.1

1 An edition of the complete works of Hookham Frere, edited by Sir Bartle Frere, has since been published by Pickering. Mortimer Collins begged for a copy on the ground that he could make some mention of it. Publishers were usually generous to him in this respect. He was refused; and the copy he bought, which I now possess, contains the following inscription on the fly-leaf:

"I bought the book, for courtesy's a flickering

Flame in the breasts of Bartle Frere and Pickering." -F. C.

The English love of Greek and Latin verse-the resolute way in which English gentlemen who have any leisure occupy themselves with translation from those two languages-is a remarkable fact. Mr. Kebbel has recently dealt with the Latin-loving tendencies of Englishmen in an able essay. But he does not call attention to what is probably the translator's chief satisfaction. Wordsworth, blending philosophy and poetry into a single crystal of thought, wrote of

"The vision and the faculty divine."

Now, for one man who has the high poetic vision, there are thousands who possess the faculty in some degree. If they are foolish, they publish volumes of "original poetry." If they are wise, they keep their originative power in abeyance, employing it perhaps in political squibs and album-verses for the ladies. Translation is a work such men can do well. They have a keen eye for the niceties of language, and they versify with easy fluency. It is theirs to reveal to the less learned some portion of the beauties which lie buried in antique verse. Hence, within the last few years, we have had really good versions of Horace from at least six unusually able hands, -Mr. H. G. Robinson, Colonel Whyte Melville, Mr. F. W. Newman, Lord Ravensworth, Mr. Theodore Martin, and Professor Conington. Hence we have had the Iliad of Homer from the Earl of Derby, a translation which will take a permanent place in English literature; hence even Mr. Gladstone has found time to turn the first book of the Iliad into a ringing fifteen-syllable ballad measure, very sonorous, but no sufficient representative of the

TRANSLATORS OF HOMER.

209

dactylic hexameter. Still it is a fine metre. Listen when Zeus binds himself by his inviolate pledge to silver-footed Thetis :

“It recedes not, it misleads not, it shall stand accomplishèd, Whatsoever I assever with the nodding of my head.'

Then beneath his raven eyebrows Zeus Kronion gave the nod, And the locks ambrosial started from the temples of the god : Huge Olympus reeled beneath him, root and summit, rock and sod." Lord Derby and Mr. Gladstone are far too wise to publish original poetry; they are conscious of the absence of the visionary power; and the public, who would be very sorry to meet them as professed poets, delight in their translations. There is a translator of a higher order, doubtless-the real poet who deigns to do such work. Of such there naturally are few; the latest being Mr. Worsley, whose version of the Odyssey is as near perfection as is possible for any version not in hexameters.

Caius Julius Cæsar, as all men know, prostrated the haughty but effete aristocracy of Rome, and conquered the Empire for the middle class. The time was not ripe for this great change when Marius attempted to hasten it; but had it not been inevitable, the aristocracy would not have supported Sulla in his autocratic dictatorship. Cæsar was barely twenty-two at the death of Sulla, who is said to have predicted that he would destroy the aristocracy. It has been well said by Mr. Merivale that "the career of Cæsar is the prelude to the history of four centuries." But with that unparalleled career, whose influence on the history of Rome and of the world it is not easy to overestimate, I have no direct concern: I only design to lightly sketch the aspect of Roman literature just