For when my dear friend A. will have it that half-anhour will bring us rain, on my saying it is a fine afternoon, I cannot help thinking him a nuisance, and so catch hold of my first handle of abuse and call him a grumbler. Poor fellow! I daresay he is not more discontented than I (for between you and me, good reader, I am a thorough grumbler, a real inveterate grumbler); yet there he is, as Americans would say, "treed" as a grumbler, can't back out of it. Now though I don't hate him for it, yet I must say I scarcely can make up my mind to like X., who will always grumble when everybody else is well satisfied :— who says at a football match, "Ah! it was very even: but I wish we had had a goal, and I think Wilmot might have kicked it;" or at cricket match: "We gave them a good licking, but if Jones had not missed that catch we should have licked them in one innings;" or again whenever we have a hare and hounds run: "It was a good run, but Snookes ran it quicker the year after I came here." Now every-one else is satisfied, and X. seems only as if he were trying to spoil their satisfaction by his grumbling. Not that I would wish to confuse him with Y., whom I like intensely, even if it were only for his grumbling. His is quite a different style, for he never grumbles without good reason; ie., without a joke to make on the subject. On Tuesday he may grumble at the heat, because he says that should, by the laws of Dynamics, have been reserved for Friday;* and though his jokes are not always good (I wouldn't insult him by saying they are bad) yet they are *Query-Fry-day? horresco conjiciens. generally good enough to excuse his grumbling. Besides, poor fellow! if he is unsuccessful in his jokes, he means it well. Far different from him is the grumbler who grumbles all the days of the week, and that seemingly out of pure malice. For he like X is never satisfied: if you congratulate him on having won his heat in a race,―he didn't win the race, though; on making a long score at cricket,-he was not cock-score, though. He seems in fact to expect that he should be A.1., with the copper adjunct: or if it be a matter of clanship, his clan should be A.1., &c. This seems real conceit; pure and unmixed. If Z. can give any other account of himself I challenge him to do so. X, Y. DE INSCRIPTIONE QUADAM CARTHAGENIENSI. (VIDE ACTA: RUGB: KAL. NOV. M.DCCC.LVIII.) QUOT gratias correspondenti illi celeberrimo "Actorum Rugbiensium" agere debemus? In illustrium viatorum numero habeatur Lex; et cum Herodoto, Mungone Park, et notis illis viris, Brovinsio, Jonesio, Robinsonio, tradatur memoria ejus ad posteros posterorum. Vix audeo in re 66 tantius momenti, et simul gravissimæ difficultatis meam ferre sententiam. At enitendum est. Me, unicum ad tam reconditam exponendam inscriptionem aptissimum virum, Rugbeia, Cantabrigium, tota denique Anglia vocat. Itaque, lector beneficentissime, in duobus partibus, si vis, meam exponam sententiam: primùm, quæ ista fuerit "fæmina" investigabo, et quam in se vim habeant hi versus: deinde quomodo hæc inscriptio Carthagine sculpta fuerit, et hoc Latinè. Græcum olere versus, quis negabit, qui Eschyli Promethea Solutum ; et Elmsleii Medeam perlegerit? Itaque me ad collectionem Epigrammatum Græcorum, cui nomen "Arundines Cami," contuli; et in versus πέρι τῆς ἀλήκτου " incidi: (cf. P: 297), Editor quidem "Echidnam" auctorem esse significare videtur; litteras enim E. C. H. subscribit: ineptissimè sanè quæ enim femina, (et Echidna mens fæminea) de aliâ fæminâ bene disserat. Nec Professori Gammerio Gurtonio assentior, qui hos versus Anglice reddidit: tradit enim wàμa kaì βρώμα ẞpôμa per "victuals and drink"-at quis nisi insanissimus putare potuisset fæminam alio modo vivere. Quam ineptissimam sententiam nemo veterum in Epigrammate exponere voluisset; (de recentiorum Epigrammatibus non satis confido). "'H aλŋkтos" autem Cereris personam agere, omnibus patebit, qui Ovidium (Fasti: IV. 475) consulant, Himeraque et Didymen, Acragantaque, Tauromenonque,' ex quibus Ceres aŋkтos, ut Gallici dicunt, "par excellence" fuisse videtur: necnon ipsa (v. 456) "me miseram” dicit, quæ duo verba sola testimonio sufficiunt. At "Lex" invenit in hâc inscriptione "multo; primùm mihi legendum videbatur "nullo "-deinde solatio Deæ, quum ad Jovem refugisset, denotari apparebat: tum enim ἡ θέα ἐμείλιξεν prius enim αμείλιχος fuerat quod sand melius-Transcriptor quidam, hæc parum intelligens, aŋkros in ultimo versu interpolavit. Quid autem "potus cibusque?" Cf. Hom. Hym. ad. Cer. 202-210, ex quo constat Cererem nihil alimenti nisi "äλpi kaì dop," mixtum cum λx cepisse. Quod autem inscriptio dicit "Plurimus," sanè vult dicere alium quoddam exiguum cepisse Deam; quod ad "yλnxw" spectare videtur. Quis enim negare audebit, hanc herbam Carthagine abundare? (Cf. Billerbeck. Flores Classici-sub verbo). Quod autem Carthagine inventa fuerit inscriptio et hoc Latinè, difficillimum videtur, at reverâ facillimum. Nonne enim Cereris μvorýpia ad fruges pertinebant? de Libycis autem areis fruges verri ne Buckollianus quidem puer ignorabit. Templum itaque, Cereri sacratum, Carthagine, utpote Africæ urbe, ædificari a Romanis necesse erat. Quamobrem Latina est inscriptio. Denique quid magis in templi muris inscribi decebat, quam hoc epigramma, quod μvoraus, veluti nostris "Liberis Structoribus" Cantilenæ suæ, relligionem quondam significaret. DABAM CANTABRIGII: A: D: xII. Kal. Dec. P. S. Hæc argumenta si cui displiceant, ad editorem scribat, qui meam directionem docere poterit. ADDENDUM. MR. EDITOR, Having just received a copy of the 12th number of the Classical Journal, in which I find another hypothesis on this subject, I hasten to reply, hoping this will arrive in time for your number. The writer wishes to prove the "Fœmina to be the mother of Marius; and states the inscription to be the work of Marius, while waiting in the ruins for the reply of the Prætor. I can hardly imagine that had the mother of Marius lived to an age in which her stomach could be called "senilis," his education would have been as neglected as it appears to have been, and that he would not have known Greek. I would only add the antecedent improbability of Marius' blunting his sword in the process of inscription when so much in need of it; and the fact that his powers of versification would not be good so soon after a sea voyage, and that so stormy, as the one in question. I feel, however, confident of my hypothesis ; but I think it fair to make this announcement, so as to give all sides a fair hearing, my object being only to elicit truth. SYMPATHY. Brother, to thyself unkind, Whence this gloom enveloped mind; |