Note 24 — PREFACE.
William Dansey translation
Of Mr. Barnard, who was accustomed to enliven the sedentary pleasures of his intellectual pursuits with the active and salutary recreation of coursing, and to shake off, in Horatian language, “inhumanæ senium ... Camœnæ,” in the company of his greyhounds, on the wolds of Yorkshire, the reader must pardon me, if I speak with the deepest regret. He was indeed, like Maximus the friend and correspondent of Symmachus, Symmachi Epist. Lib. ix. Ep. 28.“inter sodales Apollinis ac Dianæ, utriusque sectator,” or in the apposite words of Ercole Strozzi,
Cæsaris Borgiæ Ducis Epicedium.
sylvæ scius, et scius artis Pieriæ, Phœbo et Phœbæ gratissimus æquè.
But alas! gifted as he was, far beyond the ordinary worshippers of the sylvan goddess, he hath “begun the travel of eternity,”
Sophoclis Trachin. v. 887.
βέβηκε ... τὴν πανυστάτην ὁδῶν ἁπασῶν.
The periodical publications of the day have given to the world the mournful tribute of a scholar to his memory: and when the voice of affection hath sung “the deathless praise” of a departed son, that of friendship may be silent. But let it not be supposed that the learning and genius of this accomplished man were confined to the inferior and perishable subjects of the courser’s pursuit. The powers of his talented mind were directed also to the high and heavenly callings of his profession; and among other subjects, to the commemoration in verse and prose, of the saints and martyrs of the Protestant Church. In the words of the Nutricia of Politiano, he was indeed
Carm. quinque illustr. Poetar. p. 178.
Felix ingenio, felix cui pectore tantas Instaurare vices, cui fas tam magna capaci Alternare animo, et varias ita nectere curas!
His poetical version of the poems of the younger Flaminio, a celebrated Latinist of the sixteenth century, on which he was engaged till his fatal illness, and the publication of which he fondly anticipated, will add, I trust, to his posthumous fame.
Pindar. Pyth. viii. 131.
ἐν δ’ ὀλίγῳ βροτῶν τὸ τερπνὸν αὔξεται· οὕτω δὲ καὶ πιτνεῖ χαμαὶ, ἀποτρόπῳ γνώμᾳ σεσεισμένον. ἐπάμεροι. τί δέ τις; τί δ’ οὔ τις; σκιᾶς ὄναρ ἄνθρωποι.
As the originator of the Courser’s Stud Book, and the indefatigable compiler of its genealogical tables, (an attempt “multâ deducere virgâ,” to derive “by trees of pedigrees,” as Dryden says, the speed and shape of each celebrated descendant, in the greyhound kennel, from the recorded genealogies and performances of a far-famed ancestry,—Platonis Menexenus.ἀγαθοὶ δὲ ἐγένοντο διὰ τὸ φῦναι ἐξ ἀγαθῶν,) the name of Mr. Barnard must be recorded in the annals of coursing with lasting gratitude; notwithstanding the prolegomena of a vicarious editor have occasioned the substitution of a second name on the title-page of the work, after the unexpected death of the original projector:
Euripidis Hippol. 56.
οὐ γὰρ οἶδ’ ἀνεῳγμένας πύλας Ἅδου, φάος τε λοίσθιον βλέπων τόδε.
But let us cease this querulous display of individual feeling. Many did not know him; and those who did—his relatives—his friends and correspondents—have felt too much already. And the preface to so trivial a work as a Courser’s Vade-Mecum is not a fit occasion for descanting on the high merits of a Christian scholar; nor is lamentation over the dead a suitable prelude to the entertainment of the living.
Ejusdem vs. 1456.
καὶ χαῖρ’· ἐμοὶ γὰρ οὐ θέμις φθιτοὺς ὁρᾷν, οὐδ’ ὄμμα χραίνειν θανασίμοισιν ἐκπνοαῖς.