towards the Translation of the whole. By sions, and from which he afterwards did not James Harrington, 1658." The author, Sir disdain to borrow. * Of these studies by far James Harrington, better known by his the most noteworthy is "The Last Eclogue, "Oceana," is compared to Vicars by Butler, translated, or rather imitated, in the year who, disliking his politics, chose to sneer at 1666, by Sir William Temple, Bart.," a his poetry; but those who have seen his remarkably flowing and vigorous paraphrase, "Essay" will feel that the sneer falls point- some lines of which might challenge compariless. Unequal, and occasionally grotesque, son with Dryden's own. As it appears now he yet shows undeniable signs of vigor and to be quite forgotten, we shall not apologize ability, reminding us of Cowley both in his for extracting from it rather copiously:better and his worse manner. His felicities "One labor more, O Arethusa, yield, are not indeed Virgilian, as when he translates "Oscula libavit natæ "Jove, with the smiles that clear the weather, dips His coral in the nectar of her lips," or speaks of Æneas among the paintings at Carthage as "wandering through a world the pencil struck As out of chaos with stupendous luck :" but they are felicities nevertheless: nor need "brings the Trojan to her court, The first simile in the Eneid is rendered thus "As when some mighty city bursteth out meet (For Fury's armoury is everywhere): Are mute, are planted in the place, and grow So hush the waves where Neptune's chariot rolls." As might be expected, the number of holiday-authors increased formidably after the Restoration-so formidably that it would be impossible within our present limits to give any adequate account of their several, performances. Not one of the six volumes of Miscellany" is without some pieces of Virgilian translation: one of them, the first, contains a complete translation of the Eclogues by various hands; a collection which Dryden enriched by two of his own ver Tonson's 66 Before I leave the shepherds and the field: Just one of you, and taught to wind a horn, So are the nuts and berries on the down; Phyllis makes garlands, and Amyntas sings. Further than bleating sheep can go astray: And lives may here together wear and end: *Dryden's chief plagiarisms are from the version of Eclogue I., " by John Caryll, Esqr.," twentyfour of whose lines he appropriates, with slight changes. But there are cases of obligation in subsequent Eclogues which a future editor of Dryden's Virgil will do well to note. employing themselves with these occasional "Parched meadows and dry stubble mow by night: Then moisture reigns, which flies Apollo's light. Some watch, and torches sharp with cleaving Till late by winter fires: their careful wives, Or else in kettles boil new wine, and skim But reap your yellow grain with glowing heat, beat. When days are clear, then naked till and sow: For that's a jovial time, when jovial swains In 1696, as we have already intimated, Dryden's translation was published. Of its surpassing merits we must defer speaking till we have finished our chronological enumeration, as they are not of a nature which will bear dismissing in a few sentences. Standing as it does nearly midway in the history of Virgilian translations, it throws into the shade not only all that preceded, but all that have followed it. If Dryden's successors are less incapable of being put into comparison with him than his predecessors, it is to Dryden himself that the advantage, such as it is, is in some measure due. performances, the whole of Virgil was being undertaken by a patrician author, Richard Maitland, Earl of Lauderdale. Unfortunately for his reputation, his lordship appears to have hesitated about publishing, and, while he hesitated, the time went by. The version of the first Georgic appeared in the third volume of the "Miscellany," in 1694: the Æneid was communicated to Dryden before he had embarked in his own great undertaking, and suffered to remain in his hands afterwards. At length it was resolved that it should be given to the world, but the design was prevented by the author's death. Two years later Dryden took his place as the translator of Virgil, and the chance was gone for even a temporary occupation of the throne. When the great poet, in the preface to his Æneid, complimented his noble friend's work, acknowledging some of his obligations to it, and concealing others, he spoke as if he did not expect that it would ever see the light. Eventually, however, the entire translation found an editor, who supposed, or affected to suppose, that if it could no longer reign alone, the crown might at any rate be divided. "They who do not place my Lord Lauderdale upon the same foot with Mr. Dryden," says this friendly critic, "must be equally injurious to the one's judgment and to the other's translation; for t' will be easy to find upon the parallel that the poetry of South and North Britain is no Dryden's successors did not, in the first more incompatible than the constitution." instance, attempt to meet him on his own But the Union did not extend to translations ground. He had himself expressed an opinof Virgil. The North British version seems ion, whether deliberately formed or not, in to have attracted no attention: Trapp praises favor of translations into blank verse; and it, and Martyn and Davidson quote it; but translations into blank verse soon became it probably was never read. Any one who as popular among writers, if not among readwill now take the trouble to look at it will ers, of poetry as translations into rhyme. see that it is not without merit. But though The illustrious examples of Shakspeare and the noble translator was a better versifier Milton, long slighted, had at last done their and a greater master of English than Ogilby, work, the one restoring blank verse in traghe had studied in a school which is on the edy, the other reinstating it in epic poetry: whole less favorable to a writer of limited the new measure was doubtless felt to be powers: instead of copying his original easier than the old; and criticism was beclosely, he sometimes transforms and adds ginning to find out that a translation which to it; and his transformations and additions should represent the words as well as the are hardly, in Denham's language, true to general meaning of an author could hardly Virgil's fame. The following is an extract be executed in such rhyme as the literary from the version of the Georgics, which is public of the eighteenth century would care more flowing than that of the Æneid ("Nocte to read. Accordingly, when Dr. Brady, Naleves melius stipula," etc. Georg. I., 289): | hum Tate's coadjutor in the New Version of the Psalms, turned to translating the Æneid (1716-1726), he translated it into blank verse. His attempt is characterized contemptuously enough by Johnson, whose opinion we do not feel inclined to dispute. The next blank verse experiment is better known to ourselves, and probably to our readers also. In the last volume of Tonson's "Miscellany," Trapp appeared as a translator of the Tenth Eclogue into rhyme, and of the end of the First Georgic into blank verse: he was af terwards to execute a blank version of the whole of Virgil's three poems, publishing the Eneid in 1717 or 1718, the Bucolics and Georgics about 1731. We may perhaps speak of his work more in detail hereafter: for the present it is sufficient to say, that whether owing to the University reputation of the author, who was the first Oxford Professor of Poetry, or to the more substantial recommendations of a version which, as Johnson says, might serve as the clandestine refuge of schoolboys, and of a commentary containing a good deal of information and not a little prosaic good sense, the book reached the honors of a third edition in 1735. In 1764 Trapp's example was followed by another ex-Professor of Poetry, Hawkins by name. If we are unable to give any account of his version of the Eneid, we may plead as our excuse that it is not to be found in the library of the University of which the translator was a professor, nor in that of the college (Pembroke) of which he was a fellow, nor again in that of the British Museum. By way of amends, however, we can tell our readers something of the translation which appeared next in order of time, "The Works of Virgil Englished by Robert Andrews, 1766." The author, who was fortunate enough to secure Baskerville for his printer, and thus to make his work, externally at any rate, a most attractive one, imputes the shortcomings of former translators to their adoption of rhyme. "The best of 'em had not doft their Gothic shackles when they dared to the race the most rapid of the poets; how then should they save their distance?" Here is this unshackled runner's own start: "M. You, Tityro, lolling 'neath the spreading beech, Muse on your slender straw the sylvan song, We leave our country, our sweet meadows quit, Our country fly. You, Tityro, soft imbowered, Prompt fair Amarilla to the echoing woods. T. A God, Meliboe! gave us these calm hours." This singular fashion of manipulating proper names runs through the book, and is, indeed, one of its chief characteristics. Thus we have Daphny, Alexy, Mopsy, Philly, Lycid (a name which may perhaps show that Mr. Andrews conceived himself only to be taking a Miltonic liberty), Thyrse, Menalca, Paleme, Cloanth, Helnor and Lyke (for Helenor and Lycus), Mezente, and Jutna (for Juturna). In 1767 was published "The Æneid of Virgil, translated into Blank Verse by Alexander Strahan, Esq.," who had already twice before attempted portions of the poem. He professes to have "kept as close to his author as the late Dr. Trapp in respect to his sense, but to have taken a little more compass for the sake of harmony." The experiment issues in lines like these ("Quæ te tam læta tulerunt," Æn. I. 605) :— "What happy ages gave you to the world? What parents such perfection could produce? While to their mother sea the rivers flow, While mountains cast their spreading shadows round, While Ether feeds the stars, your sacred name, Your bright idea shall forever last, Where'er my fate may bear me o'er the globe." The Tenth and Twelfth Books were contributed by Dobson, the same who gave a Latin dress to the "Paradise Lost." More than thirty years remained to the end of the century; but it was not till 1794 that another blank verse translator of Virgil showed himself. This was the Rev. James Beresford, Fellow of Merton College, otherwise known as the author of a popular jeu d'esprit called the " Miseries of Human Life," and of a less successful polemic against Calvinism. Cowper's Homer had recently appeared, and had been recognized to be, what it certainly is, a work of real merit; and it was tempting to try whether the same process could not after all be made to answer with Virgil. But Cowper's success, whatever it may have been, was due, not to the theories of his preface, but to his practice as an original poet: it established a case for blank verse as wielded by Cowper, not as wielded by Mr. Beresford. As usual, we give a specimen of his translation ("Tempus unwearied patience set himself to realize erat, quo prima,” Æn. II. 268) :— them in his practice; and his successors, after admiring the marvellous result, might reasonably hope, by the exertion of moderate powers of analysis, to attain to some notion of the process. In or before 1724, after the completion of the English Iliad, Benson, celebrated by Pope as the admirer of Milton and Johnston's Psalms, being dissatisfied with the way in which Dryden had dealt with the poetry and the agriculture of Virgil, published "Virgil's Husbandry; or an Essay on the Georgics; a version of the Second Book, with explanatory notes, following it up next year with a similar "Essay on the First. The subjoined extract, if it has no other interest, will show, at any rate, that Pope's influence was already beginning to tell (" Nec requies quin aut pomis," Georg. II. 516) :— "Nor rests the year, but still with fruit abounds The copse her wildings gives from shattered And teeming autumn lays down all her stores, The rhyming translators of Virgil during A much more memorable attempt to beat the eighteenth century were fewer, but they Dryden with Pope's weapons was made by were men of more mark. Some portion of Pitt, who, after dallying for some time with their success is doubtless due to the vehicle a new version of the Æneid, completed it at which they chose. The heroic couplet, as last, and published it in 1740. Pitt was inmanaged by Dryden, is far more open to im-timate with Spence, the friend of Pope; and itation than the blank verse of the "Para- the great poet, in words which seem not to dise Lost; " the sources of the pleasure which have been preserved, signified his approval it creates lie nearer to the surface, and are of an experiment which but for him would more accessible to an ordinary writer. And scarcely have been possible. After the auif Dryden is more imitable than Milton, Pope thor's death, Joseph Warton, a brother is more imitable than Dryden. Dryden was Wykehamist, completed the translation by essentially capricious: sometimes vigorous the addition of the Eclogues and Georgics, and splendid, at others flat and slovenly. and republished it with a dedication to the He was a critic, but his canons of criticism first Lord Lyttleton, in which he finds fault are constantly varying, and the astonishing with Dryden, and asserts Pitt's superiority: effects which he at times produces are due a judgment, the merits of which, as well as to ear and natural instinct rather than to de- those of Warton's own translation, we hope liberate judgment. With Pope, on the other shortly to consider. Sotheby's version of hand, all was conscious art; he took his the Georgics, the first edition of which (1800) measure, such as it was, of the capabilities is just included in the eighteenth century, of the heroic couplet, and with steady and will come in for its share of notice most apPreface to Eneid, p. 22 (2nd Edition). propriately at the same time. All three were present day will hardly regret that the four cantos were not extended to forty-eight. The course of Virgilian translation in the nineteenth century is as illustrative of the general literary history of the period as the conspicuously inferior to Dryden, but they were in some sense foemen worthy of his steel, and it is well that they should have an opportunity of exhibiting themselves along with him. We have been in some doubt whether to reserve our judgment of corresponding phase in the eighteenth. In Beattie's Eclogues; but a comparison of his translation with Dryden's and Warton's, by a favorable though not undiscriminating judge, is included in his Life by Sir William Forbes, and may be consulted there. The translation seems not to have been greatly valued by the author, who apparently did not reprint it, nor is it to be found in all collections of his poems. In his original compositions Beattie is pleasing rather than vigorous, and this is very much the character, both positively and negatively, of his translation, which is freely executed, and contains at least as much of the author as of his Latin model. The following lines will exhibit at once his better and his worse qualities ("Muscosi fontes," etc. Ecl. VII. 45) :— "Thyrsis. "Here's wood for fuel: here the fire displays Nor dread we more the rigor of the year When he the helpless fold by night invades, The one other translator of the eighteenth the first thirty years several translations appeared, marked more or less by the characteristics of the preceeding century: since that time, the old notion of translation-that which aims at substituting a pleasing English poem for an admired original-has been wellnigh abandoned, and experiments as multiform as those practised by the Elizabethan scholars and poets have become the order of the day. We are reminded, not of Dryden or Warton, but of Webbe, Fleming, and Stanyhurst. These revolutionary aspects constitute a new division of our subject, and call, in fact, for a separate discussion. Of the translations that remain, by far the most considerable is the "EÆneis " of Dr. Symmons, which appeared in 1816, and was reprinted in 1820. It is worth reserving for further notice, and we reserve it accordingly. The only other attempt we need mention is the version of the Eclogues made about 1830 by Archdeacon Wrangham, an accomplished scholar and versifier, whose name has not yet died out of remembrance. His lines are elegant, but artificial and involved; they show the man of taste, not the genuine poet or the master of vigorous English. Take the end of the "Pollio " (" Aggredere O magnos," Ecl. IV. 48):— "These honors thou-'tis now the time-ap- Child of the skies, great progeny of Jove! "O reach so far my long life's closing strain! His Linus' numbers Phoebus should inspire! Should Pan himself before his Arcady Contend, he'd own his song surpassed by me. "Know then, dear Boy, thy mother by her smile; Enough ten months have given of pain and toil. Know her, dear Boy,-who ne'er such smile has known, Nor board nor bed divine 'tis his to own." |