United States or Gibraltar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A review of the literature previous to this century shows the names of Arcaeus, Brunner, Collomb, Fabricius Hildanus, Vogel, Rhodius, Petit, Guerin, Koler, Peters, Flebbe, and Stalpart, as authorities for instances of this nature. In one of the journals there is a description of a man who was wounded by a broad-sword thrust in the mediastinum.
It is pretty plain that, in literary society, Homer was thought out of date and rococo. The favourite topics of poets were now, not the tales of Troy and Thebes, but the amorous adventures of the gods. When Apollonius Rhodius attempted to revive the epic, it is said that the influence of Callimachus quite discomfited the young poet.
Homer gives the credit to Ulysses, who stuffed his mariners' ears with wax, and had them bind him to the mast. Apollonius Rhodius, however, in the Argonautica, claims the credit for Orpheus, who saved the expedition of the Argonauts by singing the Sirens into silence, after which the musical damsels fell from their heights and were themselves changed into rocks.
Fynes himself knew nothing about him except that he had come in answer to his inquiry for a curate, had brought good letters of recommendation, and had shown himself acquainted with the learned doctor's notes to Apollonius Rhodius; on which several grounds the doctor, who was himself a better scholar than a priest, had made him his curate, and had heard no complaints, except from a few puritanical souls.
The Greeks, however, were too much overshadowed by the greatness of Homer to do much towards this. The Argonautica, the half-hearted epic of Apollonius Rhodius, is the only attempt that need concern us.
The Ephemerides, Meibomius, and Rhodius mention instances. The case of Meibomius was that of an infant, and the case mentioned by Rhodius was associated with hemorrhages from the lungs, umbilicus, thigh, and tooth-cavity. Allport reports the history of a case in which there was recession of the gingival margins and alveolar processes, the consequence of amenorrhea.
Bartholinus, Fabricius Hildanus, Pliny, Rhodius, Schenck, Marcellus Donatus, Riedlin, and Garengeot speak of death from fright and fear, and the Ephemerides describes a death the direct cause of which was intense shame.
They lay no less than want of invention to his charge a capital charge, I must acknowledge; for a poet is a maker, as the word signifies; and who cannot make that is, invent hath his name for nothing. That which makes this accusation look so strong at the first sight is that he has borrowed so many things from Homer, Apollonius Rhodius, and others who preceded him.
He is author of the "Argonautica," an imitation and in some parts a translation of the Greek poem of Apollonius Rhodius on the same subject. He evidently did not live to complete his original design. In the Argonautica there are no glaring faults or blemishes, but there is also no genius, no inspiration.
In "Apollonius Rhodius" we find one of these hamadryads imploring a woodman to spare a tree to which her existence is attached: "Loud through the air resounds the woodman's stroke, When, lo! a voice breaks from the groaning oak, 'Spare, spare my life! a trembling virgin spare! Oh, listen to the Hamadryad's prayer! No longer let that fearful axe resound; Preserve the tree to which my life is bound.
Word Of The Day