<a ae 
484 
ply to Mr, Carey."—As Mr. Dyer intends to 
drop the controverfy, fo fhall I after a brief 
notice of one or two pafiages in his Reply. 
— He fays—** All that I know of the poets 
<< themfelves {nobody, I believe, knows much 
** more) is this :—that Leonidas, @ modern 
*¢ Greek poet, excelled in writing a fpecies of 
“¢ verfe,”’&c.--If Mr. Dyer,when he undertook 
to wnriddle and tranflate two of Leonidas’s tri- 
fles, bad only taken the trouble of reading, in 
the fame page, afew lines more than he quoted 
from bim, he might have difcovered that the 
poet was a native of Alexandria—was cotem- 
porary with the emprefs Agrippina—and was 
noticed by the reigning emperot, to whom he’ 
had the honour of préfenting at leat zhrec 
fuccefiive volumes of his poems. Frora book i. 
of the Anihelogia, ch. 68, he might have 
further learned (if that were of any confe- 
quence) that Leonidas was a mathematician 
and afironomer as weil as a poet: for we 
may fafely conclude that this was the fame 
Leonidas, partly from his own words, evyeve- 
Taig yrwpiynogivarcduis, &c. partly from the 
Mathematic turn of his genius, difplayed in 
the accommodation of his verfes to arithnie- 
tical as well as poetic numbers.—Now, if 
the cotermporary of Agrippina, living at a pe- 
siod when the Greek language was yet in its 
purity; is to be fcornfully depreciated as 
“° a modern Greck,” in what clafs are we to 
rank Plutarch and Lucian and Marcus Anto- 
ninus, who wrote fo long pofterior to Leoni- 
das—and, much later than thefe, the great 
Longinus? JLongifus to.be contemned as 
“* a modern Greek!”—I hepe Mr. Dyer does 
not carry his ideas of modernifm to that éx- 
tent. 
He accufes me of *¢ flying of to higher 
«* matter, and /eaving the poor epigrams to fhift for 
“* themfelves.”—I had no further occafion for the 
epigrams: I did not want to either unriddle 
or tranflate them: JF reforted to a higher 
fource, to Homer himfelf, for arguments in 
fupport of the opinion founded on the epi- 
grams: in reply to which arguments, Mr. 
Dyer quotes Gruter and Gronovius and Mont- 
faucon, to prove, zot the Greek mode of pro- 
punciation, which was the only point to be 
proved—but the Greek mode of penmanfhip 
and feulpture, which has as little to do in the 
decifion of the queftion, as the Greek mode of 
eating and drixking. 
He afierts that the verfes of Nicodemus 
¢ absurd with falfe quantities,” and quotes the 
auihority ofi Mr. Wakefield for pronouncing. 
two of them to be “ proper monflers.” He 
points out, as a heinous fin againft profody, 
the alpha long in ayoxsv. But alpha is one of 
the common vowels, and is indiicriminately 
made either long or fhort by Hemer in apne, 
avnp, Sc. If this reafon will not fatisfy Mr. 
Dyer, perhaps I may fatisfy him hy afferting 
that ayouev is not the prefent tenfe, but the 
ecord aoriff, aS nyayounv in the fubfequent epi- 
gram on a’fimilar faubje& and a fimilar occa- 
~~ 
LS 
fion: wherefore, in reading Ex Carayay ayouacyy 
ee. 3 
Mr. Corey’s Rejotnder to Mr. Dyer: . PJuly 
the Ionic diale&, without the augment, gives 
us the alpha fhort—in reading backward 
Ayouey ex Gadapsov, the Doric gives ayouey for 
wyomev, with the alba long 3 and thus the 
“pretended ‘* mzonffer”’ of <¢ falfe quantity” will 
prove to be nothing more than a dialeétic va- 
tiation, overlooked by Mr. Dyer. 
Further, Nicodemus has fome fhort fyllas 
bles made long by the cejfura, after the ex- 
ample of Homer and other (not ¢* mowern”’) 
poets—among the reft (one of Mr> Wakee 
field’s monfters) the final fyllable of eypapey 
lengthened before a vowel in the penthemime= 
ral cefura. Eut, with all due deference to 
Mr, Wakeficid, I cahnot cohfider this as a 
monfier more juftly deferving to be pierced 
with the arrows of conje€tural criticifm than 
a fimilar diafole in Homer, Iliad 3, 1 
Necropa O° ove cAa@EN AX, Tovovree ep . 
ELTINS— 
than SdoMEN, Iliad B, verf. 228—or ayarEN, 
Hymn. in Mercur. verf. 12—with many 
others of the fame kind, which might be 
quoted from the beft Greek and Latin poets. 
Or, granting it (ill to be a monfier, Mr. 
Wakefield has fhown how ‘afily the mmonffer 
may be fubdued by the bare tranfpofition of a 
word, without the alteration of a fingle letter 
—being, as he fuppofes, nothing more than an - 
error of the copyift, fuch as may be found in 
almoft every page of the old manufcripts. _ - 
With refpe& to the other monfler— 
Tlevtevsuxs ME Tlave WET PNG 
though I do not pretend to defend if by al- 
leging the pra€tice of Homer who abounds 
with fhort menocfyllables made long in the 
firft half of a foot*—yet I believe no impar- 
tial judge will deem that fingle blemith (fup- 
_ pofing it a blemith) fufficient te juftify Mr. 
Dyer’s unqualified conderanation of Nicode-. 
mus’s verfes. And, whereas he roundly af- 
ferts that <* in olwoft every -one of the epigrams. 
there is a violation of the rules of profody,” 1 
think I may fafely venture to’maintain, that,. 
unlefs he ftill infift on the paflages here noticed, 
he cannot produce, from the avrierebore 
ef Nicodemus+ or the icolaga of Leonidas, a 
fingle inftance of an unlicenfed infringement 
of the efteblithed laws of Greek verfification ; 
and, therefore, that the verfes of thofe poets 
are not, as hefays, © proper moufters injudiciouf— 
Ly introduced by Mr. Carey in a queffion - concerm 
ing accent and quantity.” cane (3.5 
May 3. ; 
a Nl 
* See Iliad B, 58, 196—T, 125, 221—A, 
161, 274—T, 255, 498, 516—Ay 10, 375 
378, 541, S10, &c. &c. &c. ‘Si 
+ To fome of your readers, it may perhaps 
be not difagreeable.to be informed that Sr- 
DONiuS APOLLINARIS gives us the foliow- 
ing antiftrophic couplet, lib. ix. epift, 13— 
Przcipiti modo quod decurrit tramite lumen, 
Tempore confumptum jam eito deficiet. ~ ” 
x Io 
Sip al 
