Venit fumma dies, et ineluctabile tempus Dardaniæ: fuimus Troes: fuit Ilium, et ingens Gloria Teucrorum. "Our last hour is come: Troy has been: we "have been Trojans." As if he had faid, "Trojans, " and their city, and all their glory, are to be "reckoned among the things that have been, "but are now no more."-The fame poet, fpeaking of Ardea, an antient Rutilian town, has these words, et nunc magnum manet Ardea nomen, Sed fortuna fuit. "Ardea is ftill a great name; but its fortune has been, or is over and gone." Rueus, indeed, the learned editor of Virgil for the úfe of the Dauphin, explains the word otherwife, and makes it fignify, that "fortune had fo determined:" and in this he is countenanced by Scaliger. But the interpretation here given is more fuitable to the context, as well as to the folemn phrafeology of the poet; and is, befides, warranted by Taubmannus and Mr. Harris. I faid, that the nature of the tense we now fpeak of is more fully expreffed by the common. appellation appellation of preterperfect, than by that of the perfect prefent, which is the name the Stoicks gave it. And fo indeed it is for the most part. But I ought to have added, that this tenfe in Greek does fometimes imply, not paft time terminating in or near the prefent, nor even complete action, but past and prefent time united; in which cafe it becomes a fort of prefent, and, in Doctor Clarke's opinion, fhould be called, not the preterperfect, but the prefent perfect as in the following line of Homer: : * Kluthi meu, Argurotox, hos Chrufên amphibebêkas; "Hear me, O God of the filver bow, who haft "been and art the guardian of Chryfe." Mr. Harris feems to think, that, in Virgil, the preterperfect often implies the fame fort of time with the prefent. That this is never the cafe, I will not affirm. But, if I mistake not, most of the paffages he has quoted will be found to have a more expreffive meaning, if we fuppofe the tense in queftion to fignify past time. For example, Si brachia forte remifit, Atque illum in præceps prono rapit alveus amni.† 1 would • Κλύθι μου Αργυροτοξ' ός χρυσην αμφιβέβηκας. Iliad. i. ↑ Georg. i. ver. 202. I would render thus: "If he who rows against "the tream has intermitted for a moment the exertion of his arms, headlong he is inftantly "born by the current of the river." For atque is here used in the antique fenfe, and denotes immediately; as in that line of Ennius, Atqi ie atque ad muros properat Romanijuventus. -So in the defcription of the night-ftorm of thunder, lightning, and rain, Terra tremit, fugere feræ "The earth is trembling"-you feel it, and therefa re that commotion is prefent: but, when you lock around you, fugere fera, you find that the wild beasts have difappeared, and therefore had fled away, before you lifted up your eyes. When the poet fays, tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat Min cius, et tenera prætexit arundine ripas:† The great Mincius rolls flowly winding along, "and fringes (or borders) his banks with reeds;" I agree with Mr. Harris, that the two verbs are the fame in refpect of time; but I do not find, that the tenfes are different. The learned author probably mistook the prefent of prætexo for the pre terite of prætego: which laft is a word that Virgil Georg. i. ver. 330. + Georg. iii. ver. 15. Virgil never ufes, and which I cannot recollect to have seen in any Claffick of the Auguftan age. Once more, when Virgil fays, of a ship, illa Noto citius, celerique fagitta, "Swifter than the wind, or an arrow, fhe flies "to land;"-this is prefent; " and now," before I can speak the word, "fhe has run into the har"bour." There is in this example the fame diverfity of time, as if I were to fay: "See how "fwiftly the boy purfues the butterfly; he runs-and now he has caught it." But of this, enough. 11. 2. The tenses of past time denote two forts of actions; first, actions complete or perfect, and fecondly, actions incomplete or imperfect. First, I fay, the tenses of past time denote.complete actions. Of this kind, for the most part, is the preterperfect above defcribed, which expreffes past time as ending in the prefent, or near it. Of this kind, also, is the aorist of the past † egrapfa, I wrote, or I did write; as already obferved. And of the fame kind is the tenfe called Plufquamperfectum; which denotes complete action connected, not with prefent, but with past time. • Æneid. v. Η εγραψα. time. That this is its import, will appear from an example." He came to forbid me to write, "but I had written before he came." Here obferve, that the words I had written refer, first, to a complete action; fecondly, to past time; and, thirdly, to an action that was prior in time to another action which is alfo paft. This is the peculiar meaning of the plufquamperfect: so that in three refpects it refembles the preterperfect, namely, in denoting complete action, past time, and paft time definite; but from the preterperfect it differs in this one refpect, that the time expreffed by it terminates not in time prefent, but at fome point of the time that is paft. And the double reference which it bears to paft time appears in our complex way of expreffing it, I had written; in which it is obfervable, that the auxiliary had and the participle written, are both fignificant of paft time. The Greeks and Latins elegantly exprefs this tenfe by one word, which is derived immediately from the preterperfect, to which indeed it bears a nearer affinity than to any other tenfe fcripfi, fcripferam; gegrapha, egegraphein.-So much for thofe tenfes of paft time, which denote complete action. Secondly, there is alfo a preterite tenfe, which denotes incomplete action: Sribebam, I was writing In this expreffion it is implied, that the action is paft, that it continued, or might have continued for fome time, but that it was not finished. The tense therefore is very properly called the imperfect preterite. The Greeks gave it a name fignifying t extended; and defcribed it more particularly, by faying γέγραφα, γεγράφειν Η παρατατικός |