86 
M E N 
Ei yxg tytvu erv TgoQipe ruv ituvrmv pave/;. 
Hadft thou alone of ail mankind been born 
To walk in paths untroubled with a thorn, 
From the firll hour that gave thee vital air, 
Cenfign’d to pleafure, and exempt from care, 
Heedlefs to while away the day and night 
In one unbroken banquet of delight, 
■Pamper each ruling fenfe, fecure from ill, 
And own no law fuperior to thy will: 
If partial Heav’n had ever fworn to give 
This happy right as thy prerogative; 
Then blame the gods, and call thy life the worlt, 
Thyfelf of all mankind the molt accurft ! 
But if with us the common air thou draw, 
Subjeft, alike, to Nature’s general law, 
If on thy head an equal portion fall 
Of life’s afflifting weight impos’d on all, 
Take courage from neceihty, and try 
Boldly to meet the foe thou canft not fly. 
Thou art a man, like others, doom’d to feel 
The quick defeent of Fortune’s giddy wheel. 
Weak human race! We ftrive to foar from light 
With wings unfitted to the daring flight, 
Reftlefs each fleeting objeft to obtain. 
We lofe in minutes what in years we gain. 
But why Ihouldft thou, my honour’d friend, repine ? 
No grief peculiar or unknown is thine; 
Though Fortune fmile no more as once ihe fmil’d, 
Nor pour her gifts on thee, her favourite child. 
Patient and firm, the prefent ill redrefs, 
Nor by defpairing make thy little lefs. 
— — Toy S''tvrv^ts-arcv hiyu. 
Moll blell, my friend, is he 
Who, having once beheld this glorious frame 
Of Nature, treads again the path he came. 
The common fun, the clouds, the Harry train, 
The elemental fire, and wat’ry main, 
If for a hundred years they glad our fight, 
Or but a moment ere they fade in night, 
’Tis all the fame—we never ihall furvey 
Scenes half fo wond’rous fair and bleft as they. 
Beyond ’tis all an empty giddy ihow, 
Noife, tumult, ftrife, extravagance, and woe. 
He who can firll retire departs the bell— 
His reckoning paid, he finks unharm’d to reft. 
But him who Hays, fatigue and forrows wait, 
Old age, and penury’s unhappy llate 5 
By the world’s tempefts tofs’d, a prey he lies 
To open force, and ambulh’d enemies, 
Till his long-luffering frame and ling’ring breath 
He yields at laft to agonizing death. 
In fhort, it is from thefe two fources alone, the writings 
of the melancholy and the pious man, that we are furnilhed 
with our fpecimens of the great Menander. Happy were 
it for us and for pofterity, had the gay, the voluptuous, 
and the witty, finifhed the portrait of the bard by tranf- 
mitting to after-ages examples that would have enabled 
us to mealure him by the llandard of humour, fprightli- 
nefs, and fancy. 
Menander was drowned in the harbour of Piraeus B. C. 
293, at a period of his life when he had done enough for 
immortality, but while the powers of his mind were yet 
unimpaired by age, and his genius fufficiently ardent to 
do ltill more. He is faid to have thrown himfelf into the 
lea in a fit of jealoufy, occalioned by his unfortunate com¬ 
petition with Philemon, his contemporary in the middle 
comedy. He was vanquilhed, as Aulus Gellius allerts, by 
the fuperior intereft rather than the talents of his fuccefs- 
ful rival; and the fame writer relates, that, meeting him 
Ihortly after the conteft had been decided, he alked him 
“ If he did not blulli at gaining the prize ?” 
By a ftrange fatality, a great proportion of the writers 
as well as the warriors of antiquity were thus prematurely 
cut oft from exiftence. Euripides and Heraclitus were 
1 
MEN 
torn to pieces By dogs. Theocritus ended his career by 
the halter. Empedocles was loft in the crater of Mount 
Etna. Hefiod was murdered by his fecret enemies. Ar¬ 
chilochus and Ibycus by banditti. Sappho threw herfelf 
from a precipice. Asfchylus perilhed by the fall of a tor- 
toife. Anacreon (as may beexpefted) owed his death to 
grapes. Cratinus and Terence experienced the fame fate 
with Menander. Seneca and Lucan, condemned to death, 
by a tyrant, cut their veins, and died repeating their own 
verfes ; and Petronius Arbiter met a fimilar cataftrophe. 
Lucretius, it is faid, wrote under the delirium of a philtre 
adminiltered by his miftrels, and deftroyed himfelf from 
its effects. Poil'on, though fwallowed under very different 
circumllancesjcut lhort the days both of Socrates and De- 
mofthenes ; and Cicero fell under the prolcription of the 
triumvirate. It is truly wonderful that fo many men, the 
pro felled votaries of peace and retirement, Ihould have met 
with fates fo widely different from that to which the com¬ 
mon cafualties of life Ihould feern to expofe them. The 
fragments of Menander have been feveral times reprinted. 
The moll complete edition is that of Le Clerc in 1709. 
To tliis, on account of many miftakes in profody, Bent¬ 
ley, in 1713, gave his “ Emendationes in Menandri et 
Philemonis Reliquias.” Monthly Mag. vol. xix. 
MENAN'DRA, J'. in botany. See Lechea, vol. xii. ’ 
MENAN'DRIANS, in ecclefiaftical hiftory, the moft 
ancient branch of Gnoftics ; thus called from one Me¬ 
nander their chief, faid by feme, without fufficient foun¬ 
dation, to have been a difciple of Simon Magus, and 
himfelf a reputed magician. He taught, that no perfon 
could be laved, unlels he were baptifed in his name: 
and he conferred a particular fort of baptifm, which 
would render thofe who received it immortal in the next 
world ; exhibiting himfelf to the world, with the phrenfy 
of a lunatic more than the founder of a feft, as a pro- 
mifed faviour. For it appears by the teftimonies of Ire- 
naeus, Juftin, and Tertullian, that he pretended to be 
one of the Aeons lent from the pleroma, or celeftial 
regions, to fuccour the louls that lay groaning under 
bodily oppreflion and fervitude, and to maintain them 
againll the violence and ftratagems of the daemons that 
hold the reins of empire in the lublunary world. As this 
doftrine was built upon the fame foundation with that 
of Simon Magus, the ancient writers looked upon him 
as the inllruftor of Menander. 
MENANG'-FAN', a town of Siam.- fix miles north 
of Porlelor. 
MENANGEABO'W, a kingdom of Sumatra, being 
the principal fovereignty of the ifiand, which formerly 
comprehended the whole, and Hill receives a lhadow of 
homage from the moll powerful of the other kingdoms 
that have fprung up from its ruins. This kingdom is 
the principal feat of empire of the Malays, and of the 
whole ill and. It lies near the centre, extending partly to 
the northward, but chiefly to the iouthward, of the equi- 
noftial, about fixty or a hundred miles. The country 
is, generally fpeaking, a large plain, bounded by hills, 
clear of woods, and comparatively well cultivated. It 
has an eafy communication with both tides of the illand, 
lying nearer to the wellern coall, but having the advan¬ 
tage, to the eaft, of the large rivers Racan, Indergeree, 
Siak, Jambee, and even Palembang, with which it is faid 
to have coiyieftion by means of a large lake, that gives 
fource to the two laft, as well as to the river of Cattown 
on the oppofite fide. Colonies of Malays from Menan- 
geabow are fettled on feveral branches of Jambee river, 
or rather thofe fmall rivers which run into it. Here they 
colleft large quantities of gold. The name of Menan - 
geaboiv is laid to be derived from the words menang, to 
win, and carhow, a buffalo; from a ftory, which bears a 
very fabulous air, of a famous engagement on that fpot 
between the buffalos and tigers, in which the former are 
reported to have gained a complete viftory. The aftual 
power and relources of the fultan are, at this day, fcarcely 
luperior to thofe of a.common raja; yet he Jftill affertsall 
his 
