18 Bight Hon. Sir M. E. Grant Duff [Jan. 27, 



We may next take that upon Aster, ascribed (scholars, I believe, 

 think rightly) to Plato : — 



Thou wert the morning Star among the living 



Ere thy fair light had fled ; 

 Now having died, thou art as Hesperus giving 



New splendour to the dead. 



To Plato likewise is attributed the wonderfully touching epitaph 

 on the Eretrians who were transported to Ecbatana and died there. 

 I have never seen a metrical translation of this which succeeds in 

 rendering the concentrated pathos of the original. Mr. Symonds' 

 version runs : — 



We who once left the iEgean's deep-voiced shore, 

 Lie 'neath Ecbatana's champaign, where we fell. 



Farewell Eretria, thou famed land of yore, 

 And neighbour Athens, and loved sea, farewell. 



There is nothing to be said against this save that the gifted writer 

 has not succeeded in performing an impossibilty. " Loved sea fare- 

 well ! " is of course perfectly literal, but the last three words of the 

 original x°^P € OdXaaaa <£tX?7 fall on the ear like a sigh, and those of the 

 translation do not. 



We may pass to the epitaph on Plato himself, of which, as of his 

 lines on Aster, we have a translation by no less a personage than 

 Shelley :— 



Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb? 

 To what sublime and star-y-paven home 

 Floatest thou ? 



I am the image of swift Plato's spirit, 

 Ascending heaven : Athens does inherit 

 His corse below. 



The next I shall cite is by Callimachus, supremely translated by 

 the late Mr. Cory : — 



They told me, Heracleitus, they told me you were dead ; 

 They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. 

 I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I 

 Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky. 



And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, 

 A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest, 

 Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake, 

 For death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take. 



A very large number of the Greek epitaphs which have been pre- 

 served deal, as might be expected, with the innumerable accidents 

 incident to a seafaring life. Here, for instance, is one : — 



Ask not, Oh Sailor, what my name might be, 

 But may Heaven grant io you a kinder Sea. 



