} 
aa 
1808.] 
doses of laudanum, without the advice 
of a physician, ‘The bold and indiseri- 
minate use of this precious but dange- 
yous medicine, which prevails in this coun- 
try, is not only pernicious, but criminal. 
Probably accidents by. fire are so fre- 
quent in this country owing to our open 
grates; on the continent, stoves are a 
preventative. There can be no doubt 
the present mode of forming fire-places, 
called Rumfording, which has many obvi- 
ous advantages, has been the cause of 
many fatal accidents. They draw so 
much air, that it is almost impossible a 
lady can pass within three feet of the 
grate, without having her dress sucked 
in. The use of wire fenders, two. feet 
high, ought to be ordered by Parliament. 
Your’s, &c. X. 
~ P.S. Sprigs of wormwood Jaid amongst 
woollens, prevent the ravages of the moth, 
and have a pleasanter smell than pepper or 
tobacco. 
056 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
* ot SIR, : 
“HN the 497th page of your Magazine 
for July last, Mr. Westman has done 
ame the favour to notice my observations 
‘upon that passage im Ovid’s Fable of 
Phaéton, wherein has long appeared to 
me an inconsistency, and whatever has 
hitherto been adduced to clear it up, I 
confess has not yet proved (to my mind) 
- Satisfactory. i 
.« [never had either wish or intention to 
enter into a formal controversy upon a 
matter which perhaps after all may be 
regarded by many merely as a poetic ii- 
cence, or to manifest any liypercritical 
propensity: my sole desire was to obtain 
from better stholars than myself, that de- 
gree of elucidation which might free one 
of the-most sublime poets that ever adorn- 
ed the bower of the Muses, from any ap- 
earance of absurdity; and the manner 
in which Mr. Westman has taken up the 
) pen upon the question, is so ingenious, 
60 candid, and so modest, that I feel par- 
ticular gratification in requesting a few 
moments of his attention to such argu- 
ments as seem to me bearing most strong- 
ly upon the point. ; 
_ Mr. W. is of opinion that “ the pre- 
Sent tense (in Latin) never signifies a 
perfect action,” and therefore that if the 
oet had intended to represent the river 
Po as actually dried up, he would have 
employed the perfect tense siccavit, in- 
stead of the present tense siccat, as it 
stands in the text. His quotation from 
Enripides is perfectly just as to the im- 
Montuty Mac. No. 175, 
Mr. Wesley, on a Passage in Ovid. © 
105 | 
“propriety of rendering gepasveras by 7s 
compleated in that particular place, but 
this solitary instance cannot very fairky 
be considered authority sufficient to 
establish a-rule which shall always deny 
that an action may be said to be com. 
pleat in ihe present tense. The Greeks 
had their appropriate Paulo-post Futu- 
rum, expressing an action as imminent, 
or just about to happen... The Port Royal 
Grammar (Nugent’s, English translation, 
2d edit. p. 94) says that this tense “ ig 
‘very little used ;” but in the case Mr. W. 
brings forward, I should conceive that 
the use of it would have been peculiarly 
proper, had the verse admitted it, which 
last circumstance I am not competent to 
judge of, neyer having read the play 
whence it is quoted, 
Virgil is said to abound in the rheto- 
rical tigure hypotyposis (iaerverwers); the 
essence of which is ta represent to the 
mind of the hearer or. reader an action 
or person as actually present before the 
eyes. “Now this can never be more na- 
turally effected than by the use of the 
present tense for a past action, and L 
think we shall find that Virgil is continu- 
ally employing it in this way. 
When Scaliger says of Juvenal, “ ar- 
det, instat, apert® jugulat,” we seem to 
see the satirist in the act of employing 
fire and sword for the sudden and radical 
extirpation of crimes: but had he used 
the perfect tense arsit, insiitit, aperte 
jgugulasit, this (although nearer the 
truth, considered logically alone,) would 
plainly have weakened, and nearly de- 
stroyed the whole effect of the figure. 
It is of no small consequence in the 
present disquisition to remark, that 
throughout the greater part of the se- 
cond book of the Mneid, wherein Aneas 
relates the Trojan calamities, the poet 
uses the present tense in his descriptions 
of past actions, especially of such as are 
the most momentous and affecting. 
At the very commencement of the nare 
rative we find, 
Fracti bello, fatisque repulsi 
Ductores Danatim, tot jam Jabentibus annis, 
Instar montis equum, divina Palladis arte, 
Aidificant + sectaque intexunt abiete costas. * 
Z wv. 13. 
But when only a bare matter of fact 
(no otherwise interesting than as it leads 
to some grand event) is to be recounted, 
he employs the imperfect or perfect 
tense. 
Laocoon ductus Neptuno sorte sacerdos, 
Solemnes taurum ingentem mactabat ad arag, 
P This 
