33 



To point out other similitudes equally striking would be more 

 tedious than difficult. There is not only a general resemblance in 

 the style of the two poems, but the same peculiarities, and whole 

 lines exactly the same occur in both. As to tlie charge of barba- 

 rism, and violation of the rules of syntax, brought by Schneider 

 against the Cynegetics, it is not well supported. Belu shows that 

 the passages selected to justify the charge are sanctioned by the ex- 

 ample of the best Greek writers ; and that the anomalies imputed 

 to Oppiau might, with equal reason, be imputed to Homer, Pindar, 

 Lucian, and others. He is accused, for instance, of making a mas- 

 culine singular agree with a verb plural, though the highest classi- 

 cal examples authorize the practice, when the noun is a collective, 

 or when it indicates a genus and not an individual. Because a 

 word, or a phrase, an ingenious metaphor, or callida junctura, hap- 

 pens to be rare, or to be found only in one author, it does not fol- 

 low that it must be a barbarism. Such a canon would be fatal to 

 the spirit of a writer, oblige him to follow, with servile steps, the 

 tracks of his predecessors, debar him from every " brave disorder," 

 and crush every attempt at originality.* 



VOL. XIII. p 



* Schneider condemns the following passage as barbarous : 



but says not wherefore. It is justified by the example of the verses attributed to Orpheus ; 



and it will, no doubt, strike the reader of taste as truly poetical. The eagle rushing impetu- 

 ously on the ctherenl concaves, and the thunder roaring iu tlie concaves of ether, are sublime 

 images. The former remiuds us of Gray's eagle — 



