Baxter says, "Festive, quem vocas, pro qui sum, et emphatice; quasi dicat, major ero quam vel ipse putas.” This interpretation seems to us obscure and inadmissible. Gesner felt the difficulty of the passage, and fluctuates between two opinions. "Quem vocas," says he, "tu quoque care Mæcenas, interdum joco pauperem, aut contemtioribus etiam nominibus. Qualia Augusti in Horatium dicta quædam memorantur a Suetonio. Nec tamen valde repugnem his, quibus videtur dilecte nomen esse, quo compellari se a Mæcenate glorietur Horatius." We prefer the opinion of Janus Dousa, and shall lay before our readers his very words, because the work, in which they are found, and which was published at Antwerp in 1580, is, we believe, not very common:-" Neque enim dignum videtur iis uti assentiar, qui vocas istud, cum sequentis versus initio construendum hariolantur, ut sit ordo: O Macenas, ego non obibo quem tu oppido et benedice appellare solitus es, O dilecte Horati: verum potius, quod mihi alias in mentem venire memini, verbum illud absolute positum esse, ut ad vocationes cœnaticas referatur, utque hoc dicat Horatius: Ego vero, qui fortasse homo novus, et sine gente plerisque nunc videor, et quem tu, O dilecte Maecenas, familiariter esum vocare, et assidue mensa tua communicare consuevisti, non interibo, etiam si periero. Etenim domesticus Cilnio Equiti convictor Horatius noster." We would be understood not to pronounce this interpretation certain, but to acquiesce in it as less unsatisfactory than any other explanation, which has fallen within the compass of our reading; and we suppose that our readers will not be displeased, if we endeavour to confirm it.

"Voco solenne verbum est invitandi ad cœnam," says

Forcellinus in his Dictionary. It is therefore used with

Terent. Act. V, Sc. VIII.

Nulli negare soleo, si quis esum me vocat.

Plaut. Stich, Act. I, Sc. III.

It is however used without cœnam or esum, nearly as

Namque eos vocabat, quorum mores a suis non abhorrerent.

C. Nepos Vit. Attic., C. 14.

Three of the foregoing instances are produced, and the last is referred to, by Forcellinus, as examples of the word voco' absolute positum. It is, however, to be observed, that the context in three of them, perhaps in the last, evidently suggests the idea of cana, or some similar word. The Latin term vocatio will strengthen Dousa's explanation.

cœnam.

"Vocatio," says Gesner, is" invitatio ad

Mei sodales

Catull. Carm. 47."

Quærunt in trivio vocationes.

Vocator is also applied to the person who invites : "Minus honorato loco positus, irasci cœpisti convivatori, vocatori," Seneca de Irâ. (3, 37.)

The foregoing passages, which we have selected from Gesner and Forcellinus, may justify Dousa's explanation

of vocas in Horace. It may be further urged in favour of Dousa that, when Horace in the 6th Sat. of the 1st book gives an account of his admission to the friendship of Mæcenas, he states the obscurity of his birth, as not having been an impediment to the familiarity, with which he was honoured by his patron. Now these ideas succeed each other in the passage we are now considering, if Dousa's opinion should be admitted.*

*In the following work, A Poetical Translation of the Works of Horace, with the Original Text, and Critical Notes, collected from his best Latin and French Commentators, by PHILIP FRANCIS, D. D. A New Edition with Additional Notes, by EDWARD DU BOIS, Esq., of the Hon. Society of the Inner Temple, 4 vols. 12mo. Lond. 1807., the editor, speaking of the aid, which he had derived from Sir Philip Francis, the son of the translator, says: "The first of these comments, Od. 2, 20, 6. is particularly deserving of attention, since the passage has puzzled all the annotators; who, after turning quem vocas, as it would bear, and as it would not bear, and even unwarrantably altering the text, were at last compelled to leave the sense at least as doubtful as ever, and it remained for Sir Philip Francis to be the means of preserving a light, which had never beamed on them." The note alluded to is this:

66

Quem vocant. Quem vocas is the true reading, confirmed not only by the new and sensible interpretation about to be given, but by the authority of all the MSS. The critics have blundered exceedingly at this passage, and we owe what appears to be the natural and clear construing of the words to the late Mr. Joseph Fowke of Calcutta, whose judgment Dr. Samuel Johnson and Mr. Gilbert Wakefield, on mature consideration, admitted to be just. For these facts, we have the authority of Mr. Francis. The poet supposes himself changed into a bird, and mounting into the skies, cycnum-in altos nubium tractus, Carm. 4, 2, with Mæcenas anxiously looking up and calling after him; 'whom you call,' que vous rappellez.

Siste gradum, teque aspectu ne subtrahe nostro :
Quem fugis?
Aen. 6.

We proceed to the consideration of another passage, which has much embarrassed the commentators, and upon which our readers will find a very long note in Boswell's Life of Johnson:

Difficile est proprie communia dicere: tuque
Rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus,
Quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus.

Art. Poet. v 128.

There can be no better illustration of quem vocas.

The idea of

quitting this sublunary sphere in the form of a bird is common to the poets. Our Cowley, in imitation of Horace, exclaims:

Lo! how the obsequious wind and swelling air

The Theban swan does upwards bear

Into the walks of clouds, where he does play,
And with extended wings opens his liquid way!

See too the commencement of The Ecstacy by the same bard.
Thus also Virg. G. 3, 8.

-tentanda via est, qua me quoque possim

Tollere humo, victorque virúm volitare per ora.

Still preserving the notion of his flight, he at the conclusion of this Ode desires Mæcenas to abstain from lamentations over his inane funus,* or cenotaph, that is empty urn;' empty, because not even his ashes remained to be deposited in it, he being actually and wholly gone; or funeral rites, idle and vain for one who yet lived, though he no longer trod the earth: :

Nemo me lacrymis decoret, neque funera fletu

Faxit: cur? volito vivu' per ora virûm.

ENNIUS'S EPITAPH.

Joseph Fowke told Mr. Francis that he had mentioned this criticism many years ago to Samuel Johnson, who, after rolling

This is affirmed in so

"Andromache and Aeneas, Aen. 3. and 6., raise an inanem tumulum in honour of Hector and Deiphobus, whose bodies they could not possess. many words by the latter,-te, amice, nequivi — Conspicere. M. Dacier, ou le corps n'est point.""

Un vain tombeau,' says

On these three lines, and especially on the first, Vincentius Gaudius in 1760, published a Dissertation, which fills a volume, containing 333 pages. He has accumulated instances from writers of poetry and prose, by whom the words communis and proprius are used. He enters very minutely into their original, their popular, their rhetorical

himself about, suo more, said, 'Sir, you are right!' Several years afterwards Mr. Francis asked Mr. G. Wakefield his opinion of the passage, which then ran, with that of most other commentators, in favour of quem vocas Dilecte, i. e. tibi dilectum, but with which neither he, nor any man of sense, or Latin scholar, could be well pleased. After weighing Mr. Fowke's ingenious interpretation, he said hastily, as if conviction had suddenly flashed upon his mind, that there could be no doubt of it.' This use of the word vocare is confirmed in different degrees by various passages in the classics. Horace Carm. 1, 14,

Non di, quos iterum pressa voces malo.

Eurydice, having glided away from Orpheus, vanishing from his sight like smoke into thin air,' ceu fumus in auras tenues, his head, though severed from his body, still called to her to stop or to return

Eurydicen anima fugiente vocabat!

GEORG. 4.

In the Eneid, when Venus quits her son, he would delay her flight by calling, as in the instance of Mæcenas with regard to Horace, fugientem est voce secutus, 1, 410. More might be adde in support of this reading; but an apology is perhaps even now necessary for having called so many witnesses to so clear a caseSept. 1806."

My ingenious and learned friend, John Symmons, Esq. in a Letter, dated Paris, Jan. 8, 1828. thus comments on Sir P. F.'s note: "I do not at all approve of Mr. Fowke's and Sir P. Francis's interpretation of quem vocas. I am decidedly for

quem vocas

Dilecte, Maecenas,