which had then come into vogue, being used even in versions from the drama, * and which was afterwards adopted by Chapman in rendering the Iliad. It is of Chapman, indeed, that the ordinary reader will most naturally think in turning over Phaer's pages. Not to dwell on the essential difference between the two involved in the choice of subject, the ballad-measure of Queen Mary's time being as ill suited to the Virgilian hexameter as the ballad-measure of King James' may be well suited to the Homeric, we shall probably be justified in saying that Phaer's inferiority in original power makes him more faithful as a translator, though less interesting as a writer, and that his greater prolixity gives him a certain advantage in dealing with a measure which from its enormous length can hardly be made attractive, when written, as Chapman has written it, in couplets closely interlaced and complicated with each other. But Phaer has little or nothing of that "daring fiery spirit" which, as Pope says, "made Chapman write like an immature Homer; and though his language is not without merit, not many expressions can be quoted from him which would appear felicitous to a modern taste. His greatest eulogist is Godwin, † who pronounces his book "the most wonderful depository of living description and fervent feeling that is to be found, perhaps, in all the circle of literature;" and, after quoting various passages with the highest commendation, says that whoever shall read his version of Anchises' speech about Marcellus, at the end of the Sixth Book, will cease to wonder that the imperial court-was dissolved in tears at Virgil's recital. Let us see if we can transcribe it dry-eyed : "Eneas there (for walke with him he saw a seemly knight, A goodly springold yong in glistring armour shining bright, But nothing glad in face, his eyes downcast did shewe no cheere), O father, what is he that walkes with him as His onely son? or of his stock some child of *See Warton's account of "Seneca his tenne Tragedies translated into English," 1581 (Hist. of Eng. Poetry, lvii.). 66 Lives of Edward and John Philips" (London, 1815), pp. 247 foll. But cloud of louring night his head full heauy wrappes about. Then lord Anchises spake, and from his eyes the tears brake out, O son, thy peoples huge lamented losse seeke not to knowe. The destnies shall this child onto the world no more but showe, Not suffer long to liue: O Gods, though Rome you think to strong And ouermuch to match, for enuie yet do us no wrong. What wailings loude of men in stretes, in feeldes, what mourning cries In mighty campe of Mars, at this mans death in Rome shall rise? What funeralls, what numbers dead of corpses shalt thou see, O Tyber flood, when fleeting nere his new tombe thou shalt flee? Nor shall there neuer child from Troian line that shal proceede Exalt his graunsirs hope so hie, nor neuer Rome shal breede An impe of maruel more, nor more on man may iustly bost. O vertue, O prescribid faith, O righthand valiaunt most! Durst no man him haue met in armes conflicting, foteman fearce, Or wold he fomy horses sides with spurres encountring pearce. O piteous child, if euer thou thy destnies hard maist breake, Marcellus thou shalt be. Lillies, Lilly flours, Now reatche me Giue purple Violetts to me, this neuews soule of ours With giftes that I may spreade, and though my labour be but vayne, Yet do my duety deere I shall. Thus did they long complayne." The remaining attempts in the sixteenth century deserve registering chiefly as curious and grotesque experiments. Abraham Fleming, indeed, gave promise of something better in his "Bucolikes of Publius Virgilius Maro, with alphabeticall Annotations upon proper nams of Gods, Goddesses, men, women, hilles, flouddes, cities, townes, and villages, &c., orderly placed in the margent. Dravvne into plain and familiar Englishe, verse for verse " (London, 1575), which is in rhymed fourteen syllable measure in the style of Phaer. But in 1589 he published another version of the Eclogues, along with one of the Georgics, in which he discarded "foolish rime, the nise observation whereof many times darkeneth, corrupteth, peruerteth, and falsifieth both the sense and the signification," in favor of unrhymed lines of fourteen or fifteen syllables, not very graceful in themselves, and rendered additionally quaint by a strange fashion of introducing made in the fourth boke betwene Dido and into the middle of the text explanatory notes, which form part and parcel of the metre. Thus he makes Virgil compliment his patron on "Thy verses, which alone are worthy of The buskins [brave] of Sophocles [I meane his stately stile]," and mentions, among the prognostics of fair weather, "And Nisus [of Megera king and turned to a falcon] Capers aloft in skie so cleere, and Scylla [Nisus daughter Changed into a larke] doth smart for [his faire] purple haire." The prevalent mania, too, for reviving classical metre, which infected even Sidney and Spenser, took hold, as might be expected, of the would-be translators of Virgil. Webbe, in his "Discourse of English Poetrie" (London, 1586), "blundered," as he aptly as well as modestly expresses it, upon a hexametrical version of the two first "Eglogues," in which Melibus tells his " "kidlings," “Neuer again shall I now in a greene bowre sweetlie reposed See ye in queachie briers farre a loofe clambering on a high hill, Now shall I sing no Iygges, nor whilst I doo fall to my iunkets, Shall ye, my Goates, cropping sweete flowers and leaues sit about me.' But the most considerable, and by far the most extraordinary, feat of this nature was performed by Richard Stanyhurst, in his "First Foure Bookes of Virgil's Æneis translated into English Heroical Verse, with other Poëticll devises thereto annexed" (London, 1583). His remarks on his own translation are a curiosity in themselves, and may remind us of Chapman's "Mysteries revealed in Homer." "Virgil," he says, "in diuerse places inuesteth Iuno with this epitheton, Saturnia. M. Phaer ouerpasseth it, as if it were an idle word shuffled in by the authour to damme vp the chappes of yawning verses. I never to my remembrance omitted it, as indeed a terme that carieth meate in his mouth, and so emphaticall, as that the ouerslipping of it were in effect the choaking of the Poets discourse, in such hauking wise as if he were throtled with the chincoughe. And to inculcate that clause the better, where the mariage is Aeneas, I adde in my verse Watry Iuno. Although mine Author vsed not the epitheton, Watrye, but onlye made mention of earth, ayer, and fier, yet I am well assured that word thoroughly conceiued of an hedeful student may giue him such light as may ease him of six moneths trauaile: whyche were well spent, if that Wedlocke were wel understoode." His practice was not less remarkable than his theory. Phaer had talked of "Sir Gyas" and "Sir Cloanthus," made Isis masquerade as "Dame Rainbowe," and turned "Gallum rebellem" into "rebell French." Stanyhurst (we take the instances given by Warton) calls Corrobus a "bedlamite ; arms Priam with his sword " Morglay," a blade that figures in Gothic romance; makes Dido's "pervulus Æneas” into "a cockney, a dandiprat hop-thumb," and says that when Jupiter "oscula libavit nate" he "bust his pretty prating parrot.” But he shall exhibit himself more at length, and somewhat more favorably, in a passage from the end of the First Æneid (v. 736, "Dixit, et in mensam,” etc.) :— "Thus sayd, with sipping in vessel nicely sho dipped. Shee chargeth Bicias: at a blow hee lustily swapping Thee wine fresh spuming with a draught swild up to the bottom. Thee remnaunt lordings him pledge: Then curled Höppas Twang'd on his harp golden what he whillon learned of Atlas. How the moone is trauers'd, how planet soonnie reuolueth, He chaunts how mankind, how beasts dooe carrie their offspring: How flouds be engendered, so how fire, celestial Arcture, Thee raine breede sev'n stars, with both the Trionical orders: Why the sun at westward so timely in winter is housed, And why the night seasons in summer swiftly be posting. The Moores hands clapping, thee Troians plaudite flapped." In passing to the seventeenth century we feel that a change has already set in. The metres adopted are such as commend themselves to modern ears; the language, though varying according to the greater or less skill of the individual writer, is not in general marked by much quaintness or redundancy. Let us take a specimen from the earliest ver sion with which we are acquainted, "Di- they will thank us for selecting two of Lisle's stanzas. ("Felix qui potuit," etc., Georg. II. 490) :— do's Death: Translated out of the best of Latine Poets into the best of vulgar Languages. By one that hath no name " (London, 1622) "Præterea fuit in tectis," etc. (Book IV., v. 457) :— "In her house of stone A temple too she had, of former spouse, By her much Reuerenc't, with holy bowes And Snowwhite Wooll adorn'd, whence oft she hears A voice that like her husbands call appeares, When darke night holds the world. The ellenge Owle Oft on her housetop dismall tunes did houle, Lamenting wofull notes at length outdrawing: And many former Fortune-tellers' awing Forewarnings fright: AEneas too in Dreames Makes her runne mad: left by her selfe, she seemes Alone some vncouth foule long way to haue taken, Tyrians to seeke in desert Land forsaken." The vogue which these translations obtained does not seem always to have been proportioned to their merits. In 1628 were published "Virgil's Georgicks Englished by Thomas May, Esq.," and "Virgil's Eclogves translated into English by W. L." (William Lisle.) The former, if little read, has been not unfrequently mentioned since; the very existence of the latter has been forgotten. † Yet our readers, if we mistake not, will peruse the following extract from May's heroics with comparative indifference, while When we wrote the above, we had not met with a translation of the Second Eneid published in 1620, by Sir Thomas Wroth, under the title of "The Destruction of Troy, or the Acts of Aeneas," a copy of which is in the British Museum. Our space will only allow us to say that the metre is Phaer's, but the style more modern. An account of Lisle, who was an Anglo-Saxon scholar and antiquary, is given in Chalmers' Biographical Dictionary; but nothing is said of this translation. He appears, however, to have dedicated an edition of a treatise by Elfric to Prince Charles in a copy of verses "by way of Eclogue, imitating the 4th of Virgile," besides being the author of a version from Du Bartas, and of "The Fair Ethiopian," which Chalmers calls a long poem of very indifferent merit. Benson, whom we shall have occasion to mention below, says that almost one hundred of May's lines are adopted by Dryden with very little alteration. The first two lines of May seem to have been copied by Ogilby. "What makes rich crops, what season most inclines To plowing th' earth, and marrying elms with vines."-May. "What makes Rich Grounds, in what Caelestial Signs 'Tis good to Plow, and marry Elms with Vines." -Ogilby. Dryden borrows also once at least from Lisle. But of his plagiarisms more below. "Happy is he that knowes the cause of things, "(Ah foolish Fon) whom dost thou seek to shun? Why, Dardan Paris (that same shepheard knight) Yea, e'ne the gods themselves, the woods did woon: Let Pallas praise her Towres goodly hight, The wanton capring kidd doth chiefly chuse We must confess, however, that Lisle's Eclogues, which are in a variety of metres, contain other passages less attractive than this. Nor should it be forgotten that much of the charm of these stanzas consists in their reminding us of strains which, when Lisle wrote, already belonged to the past,the pastoral poetry of Spenser. May's notes are less sweet, but they are probably more his own; they reach forward, not backward; they contain not an echo of Spenser, but a prophecy of Dryden. The year 1632 saw a complete version of the Eneid by Vicars, and a translation of the First Book by Sandys. Vicars, a parliamentary fanatic, is known to the world as a poet only by the savage lines in Hudibras, where he is coupled with Withers and Prynne as "inspired with ale and viler liquors to write in spite of nature and his *The title of Vicars' work is "The XII Aeneids of Vigil, the most renowned Laureat-Prince of Latine poets, translated into English deca-syllables, by John Vicars." Sandys' is added to an edition of his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1632), and entitled, "An Essay to the Translation of Virgil's Eneis."" stars." Sandys is celebrated as the author | recommendatory of his version of Pastor of a translation of Ovid, which Pope read as Fido. Fanshaw's case is not unlike Lisle's : a child and (not an invariable consequence instead of prosecuting the cultivation of the with him) praised as a man. There seems heroic, he revives that of the Spenserian to be no merit in Vicars. Sandys is perhaps stanza. The choice was not a happy one superior to May, but, like him, he pleases under the circumstances: Virgil did not write chiefly as the harbinger of better things in in periods of nine lines, and Fanshaw, not language and versification. Here is a favor- being a diffuse writer, is led in consequence able specimen ("Est in secessu," etc., En., to run stanza into stanza, so that the versiI. 159):fication does not enable us to follow the sense. Where, however, sense and metre happen to coincide, he may be read with real pleasure, as in the following passage (" Dissimulare etiam sperasti," etc., En. IV. 305) : 'Deepe in a Bay an Ile with stretcht-out sides A harbor makes, and breakes the justling tides: The parting floods into a landlockt sound Whereof two, equal lofty, threat the skies, Whose spreading branches cast a dreadfull Sir John Denham's translation of the Second Eneid is said to have been made in 1636. We know not whether his "Passion of Dido for Eneas 99 was written at the same time, but it seems rather the better of the two. In both, however, Denham is very unequal; a series of vigorous couplets will be followed by passages written in "concatenated metre," as Johnson calls it, and disfigured by bad or feeble rhymes. He is fond, too, of engrafting comments and conceits upon his original, as when Dido tells Eneas "Thou shouldst mistrust a wind False as thy Vows, and as thy heart unkind." The queen's dying speech is a fair example of his better manner (" Dulces exuviæ," etc., En. IV. 651) :— "Dear Reliques whilst that Gods and Fates Free me from care, and my glad soul receive; We now come to the first translation of the whole of Virgil, "The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro, Translated by John Ogilby, and Adorn'd with Sculptur," first published in 1649-50, and afterwards, we believe, three times reprinted. This indefatigable adventurer, who practised successively or simultaneously the callings of dancing-master, original poet, translator from the classics, always recovering himself, learnt Latin in and literary projector, frequently ruined, but middle life, and proceeded to translate Virgil, as he afterwards learnt Greek and translated Homer. In his way he must be pronounced successful; he was ridiculed, but his version continued to be bought till Dryden's came into the market; and the "Sculpturs" (engravings), which form a prominent feature in this, as in his other books, were considered good enough to be borrowed by his rival, who did not like to go to the expense of new plates. Nay, he seems to have found admirers still later: his work heads the list of the lady's library in the "Spectator," Dryden's "Juvenal" coming second; and we happen to know that it not only is included among the books recommended for examination to the fraternity of laborers are memorable; but as some slight interest "From heaven then Iris with dewy wings, whom the Dean of Westminster is marshal- and Sir Robert Stapylton. None of them ling with a view to the production of a new English dictionary, but that a member of the band has undertaken to study it. In its day it was doubtless a useful and-in the absence of any thing better suited to the taste of that generation-even a readable book. It is sufficiently close to the words of Virgil -much more so than Dryden. Its margin is furnished with a collection of notes from the old commentators, done in a tolerably business-like style; and though the author shows no trace of poetical feeling, no real appreciation of poetical language, he writes in general fair commonplace prosaic English, while his mastery over the heroic couplet will probably be pronounced creditable by those who, like our readers, have the means of comparing him with his predecessors and contemporaries. Ad aperturam libri, we select the opening of his Sixth Æneid :— Weeping he said: at last with Sails a-trip, And the tall Navy fring'd the edging Shore. Others cut down, and find concealed Floods : Whom Delius had inspired with future Fates. Made to the colder North a desperate Flight, High Crete against it overlook'd the Flood." Ogilby's elaborate work may possibly have stood in the way of other attempts on a large scale, but it did not deter "holiday-authors," as Dryden calls them, who felt they could do better, from exhibiting specimens of their powers in translating portions of Virgil. The Fourth Book of the Eneid still continued to be popular with this class of writers, three or four of whom attempted it about this time-Edmund Waller and Sidney Go. dolphin (1658), Sir Robert Howard (1660), And her enlarged breath slides into air." "So dewy rose-winged Iris, having won Sacred to Dis be from this flesh enlarged. -Stapylton. Godolphin makes such short work of Dido's death, that we are compelled to begin our extract from him some lines earlier : : "Then Juno, looking with a pitying eye To self-destroyers who refuse to live, Waller's work merely embraces about a hun- "Tu lacrimis evicta meis " (v. 548):— While the Dardanian does securely rest More remarkable than any of these experiments on Dido's story is "An Essay upon Two of Virgil's Eclogues, and Two Books of his Æneis (if this be not enough) "Dewy rose-winged Iris" also appears in Ogilby, who resembles Stapylton likewise in his version of "teque isto corpore solvo." "Single-lived" is the spelling of the copy before us (1658); but it may be doubted whether the writer did not intend "lived" for a verb. In that case the compound adjective would be rather a felicitious blunder. |