TO F. W. FABER.

Amico, io vivendo cercava confortoNel monte Parnasso;Tu, meglio consigliato, cercaloNel Calvario.

Amico, io vivendo cercava conforto

Nel monte Parnasso;

Tu, meglio consigliato, cercalo

Nel Calvario.

—Chiabrera’s epitaph at Savona. From the title-page of Father Faber’sPoems.

True poet of all mountain sight and sound,Of barren glen where mighty echoes wake,Of eagle-haunted, crag-o’ershadowed lakeWhere loneliness in silent state sits crownedAnd shares her kingdom with no shallow heart:True lover of all nature’s solemn ways,The columned forest’s wind-waked song of praise—Sad chords wherein all deepest joy hath part—True reader of the primrose’ golden tale,Finding its glow but shadow of a lightWherein who seeks may find the Infinite,That doth its mystery so in least things veil—A seer thou seem’st in thy high mountain place,E’er with all holiest visions face to face.

True poet of all mountain sight and sound,

Of barren glen where mighty echoes wake,

Of eagle-haunted, crag-o’ershadowed lake

Where loneliness in silent state sits crowned

And shares her kingdom with no shallow heart:

True lover of all nature’s solemn ways,

The columned forest’s wind-waked song of praise—

Sad chords wherein all deepest joy hath part—

True reader of the primrose’ golden tale,

Finding its glow but shadow of a light

Wherein who seeks may find the Infinite,

That doth its mystery so in least things veil—

A seer thou seem’st in thy high mountain place,

E’er with all holiest visions face to face.

Yet wandering content in lowlier ways,By brambly lane and lawn-embroidered mere,By quiet river in whose waters clearThe clustering willows and tall towers gazeOf minster-town whose ancient bells ring outAnd trail their music through thy thoughtful rhymeLike far-off echoes of an older timeWhen trembled in their peal no note of doubt.Landless, yet holder of a royal fiefIn all the beauty by rich nature wrought—Each blossoming hedge-row with an earldom fraught,Wide duchies bound in every golden sheaf—Thine the unchallenged tenure of the whole,By right divine of unstained poet-soul!

Yet wandering content in lowlier ways,

By brambly lane and lawn-embroidered mere,

By quiet river in whose waters clear

The clustering willows and tall towers gaze

Of minster-town whose ancient bells ring out

And trail their music through thy thoughtful rhyme

Like far-off echoes of an older time

When trembled in their peal no note of doubt.

Landless, yet holder of a royal fief

In all the beauty by rich nature wrought—

Each blossoming hedge-row with an earldom fraught,

Wide duchies bound in every golden sheaf—

Thine the unchallenged tenure of the whole,

By right divine of unstained poet-soul!

Still hearkening ever to that low heart-beatOf sorrowing earth, whose flowers fade in death,Whose silver-threaded rills grow faint for breath,Whose wounded birds cry out beneath thy feet.Not deaf thy human ear to any plaintOf our sad mother whom her sons make weep—Breaking with cries of hate her quiet sleep,Crowding in sunless ways their brothers faint.Nor dumb thy poet-voice to speak her woe—She that hath shivered when mankind stood muteOr flung harsh words of evilest repute,Veiling her face her Maker’s cross below.With filial love thy heart ’gainst hers is laidWho rears the hills, in keeping holds the dead.

Still hearkening ever to that low heart-beat

Of sorrowing earth, whose flowers fade in death,

Whose silver-threaded rills grow faint for breath,

Whose wounded birds cry out beneath thy feet.

Not deaf thy human ear to any plaint

Of our sad mother whom her sons make weep—

Breaking with cries of hate her quiet sleep,

Crowding in sunless ways their brothers faint.

Nor dumb thy poet-voice to speak her woe—

She that hath shivered when mankind stood mute

Or flung harsh words of evilest repute,

Veiling her face her Maker’s cross below.

With filial love thy heart ’gainst hers is laid

Who rears the hills, in keeping holds the dead.

Like cleansing waters touched with heavenly graceThy mountain-consecrated words are shed,Lifting our souls to light unshadowèd,Guiding our footsteps in the holy traceOf Him who yet shall make the hills a way—Exalted paths trod by the clean of heart,Shrines for the holy-minded set apartWherein profaner feet unheeding stray.All nature wins true loving from thy song—Fair not alone with her e’er-changing grace,But, lighting each dear feature of her faceThe thought of love enduring, pure and strong—True poet, in Parnassus’ shadow stillFeeling the loadstone of blessed Calvary’s hill.

Like cleansing waters touched with heavenly grace

Thy mountain-consecrated words are shed,

Lifting our souls to light unshadowèd,

Guiding our footsteps in the holy trace

Of Him who yet shall make the hills a way—

Exalted paths trod by the clean of heart,

Shrines for the holy-minded set apart

Wherein profaner feet unheeding stray.

All nature wins true loving from thy song—

Fair not alone with her e’er-changing grace,

But, lighting each dear feature of her face

The thought of love enduring, pure and strong—

True poet, in Parnassus’ shadow still

Feeling the loadstone of blessed Calvary’s hill.

To that sad mount how eloquent a guide!Not Hybla’s blossoms could so fair beguileThe wandering bees as thy entreating wileFaint souls to climb that seeming arid side.With strength thou lead’st from seraph-haunted caveWhere Infinite Might with infinite loving smiledFrom frail, sweet lips of Holy Mary’s Child;Anon where pitying palm-trees shadow gaveTo ease the weary exile of their Lord;On through the humble toil of patient years—Till, mingling with the Magdalen our tears,Our heart’s poor vase of precious ointment poured—We stand, God’s Mother near, with woe besideThe love-pierced feet of Jesus Crucified.

To that sad mount how eloquent a guide!

Not Hybla’s blossoms could so fair beguile

The wandering bees as thy entreating wile

Faint souls to climb that seeming arid side.

With strength thou lead’st from seraph-haunted cave

Where Infinite Might with infinite loving smiled

From frail, sweet lips of Holy Mary’s Child;

Anon where pitying palm-trees shadow gave

To ease the weary exile of their Lord;

On through the humble toil of patient years—

Till, mingling with the Magdalen our tears,

Our heart’s poor vase of precious ointment poured—

We stand, God’s Mother near, with woe beside

The love-pierced feet of Jesus Crucified.

The sweetest refuge any soul can know!Where all complaining stills its idle voice,And trembling joy bids sorrow soft rejoiceFinding the living wand, whose staff belowThe living waters lie like mountain springDefiled not in its source, whose shining faceGives to e’en homely herbs a resting-place,With heaven’s blue for their bright shadowing.Pure, living source! wherein who drinks shall thirstNot any more. Blest cup of Love Divine!About whose stem the thorny wreath doth twine,Grown soft for us since He hath borne it first.Cool draught! wherein no hidden drop of gallMakes heaven bitter, and earth’s promise all.

The sweetest refuge any soul can know!

Where all complaining stills its idle voice,

And trembling joy bids sorrow soft rejoice

Finding the living wand, whose staff below

The living waters lie like mountain spring

Defiled not in its source, whose shining face

Gives to e’en homely herbs a resting-place,

With heaven’s blue for their bright shadowing.

Pure, living source! wherein who drinks shall thirst

Not any more. Blest cup of Love Divine!

About whose stem the thorny wreath doth twine,

Grown soft for us since He hath borne it first.

Cool draught! wherein no hidden drop of gall

Makes heaven bitter, and earth’s promise all.

Shall poets change for bay the crown divineWreathing the head of Him about whom throngLife’s tenderest flowers, who holds art’s perfect songIn his pierced hands?—pure gift in holiest shrine!—From whose rent side the consecrating floodDoth cleanse the poet’s thought from earthly stain,Him king anointed o’er a grand domainBy true inheritance of royal blood;In whose wide heart, broken for very love,Lies master-key to all true harmonies,So tuned, no base, discordant melodiesShall jar earth’s music saints shall sing above;So tuned, may wake in sweetness weakest string,Immortal anthems loyal echoing.

Shall poets change for bay the crown divine

Wreathing the head of Him about whom throng

Life’s tenderest flowers, who holds art’s perfect song

In his pierced hands?—pure gift in holiest shrine!—

From whose rent side the consecrating flood

Doth cleanse the poet’s thought from earthly stain,

Him king anointed o’er a grand domain

By true inheritance of royal blood;

In whose wide heart, broken for very love,

Lies master-key to all true harmonies,

So tuned, no base, discordant melodies

Shall jar earth’s music saints shall sing above;

So tuned, may wake in sweetness weakest string,

Immortal anthems loyal echoing.

So keyed thy sacred song, O poet true!With holy joy its very sorrow light,So glorified with that love infiniteThat shines as stars in heaven’s darkest blue:Washed clean thy earth-born lays in that pure flood—Thy cloudy mountains hide no fear save oneOf loving awe; though in dark gorge the sunFalls not, e’en there the Eternal Dove doth brood.Thy mountain springs are pure, wherein we dareDrink as we will, not fearing, so bent down,We shall lose sight of heaven’s fairer crownAnd find but our own likeness resting there.Fresh with a dew bearing no stain of earth,Thy hill-paths lead unto our Father’s hearth.

So keyed thy sacred song, O poet true!

With holy joy its very sorrow light,

So glorified with that love infinite

That shines as stars in heaven’s darkest blue:

Washed clean thy earth-born lays in that pure flood—

Thy cloudy mountains hide no fear save one

Of loving awe; though in dark gorge the sun

Falls not, e’en there the Eternal Dove doth brood.

Thy mountain springs are pure, wherein we dare

Drink as we will, not fearing, so bent down,

We shall lose sight of heaven’s fairer crown

And find but our own likeness resting there.

Fresh with a dew bearing no stain of earth,

Thy hill-paths lead unto our Father’s hearth.

With thee, my poet, lie our souls at restIn the soft glory of our Mother’s smile—The Maid Immaculate, who could beguileHer God to be a child on her pure breast.With thee we labor that our little lifeShall learn to lose itself, that it be foundIn that far, other life eternal crowned‘Mid hero-saints whose prayers were ours in strife;Humbly with thee, our dearest Lord before,Veiled in the little, pale, and helpless roundWherewith on earth he chooseth to be crowned,We bend with love that yearneth to love more.Fond children, at the Father’s feet we kneel,Finding the love his Spirit doth reveal.

With thee, my poet, lie our souls at rest

In the soft glory of our Mother’s smile—

The Maid Immaculate, who could beguile

Her God to be a child on her pure breast.

With thee we labor that our little life

Shall learn to lose itself, that it be found

In that far, other life eternal crowned

‘Mid hero-saints whose prayers were ours in strife;

Humbly with thee, our dearest Lord before,

Veiled in the little, pale, and helpless round

Wherewith on earth he chooseth to be crowned,

We bend with love that yearneth to love more.

Fond children, at the Father’s feet we kneel,

Finding the love his Spirit doth reveal.

O poet! more than Crashaw, saint! forgive,If break my singing in unworthy praise;Pardon, if uncouth love in stammering lays,Seeking to thank, but give thee cause to grieve.Unspoken gratitude is burden soreWhen debt so passing strong of love is owed;Unworthy speaking but augments the load,Forgiveness making so love’s burden more.So much to thee I owe! Along my lifeThy words like patient, wingèd seeds are sown,So long amid the dark and brambles grown,Yet winning bloom at last despite the strife.As once for him of Ars thy heart was shrine,So mine holds thee, O blessed of Love Divine!

O poet! more than Crashaw, saint! forgive,

If break my singing in unworthy praise;

Pardon, if uncouth love in stammering lays,

Seeking to thank, but give thee cause to grieve.

Unspoken gratitude is burden sore

When debt so passing strong of love is owed;

Unworthy speaking but augments the load,

Forgiveness making so love’s burden more.

So much to thee I owe! Along my life

Thy words like patient, wingèd seeds are sown,

So long amid the dark and brambles grown,

Yet winning bloom at last despite the strife.

As once for him of Ars thy heart was shrine,

So mine holds thee, O blessed of Love Divine!

AMONG THE TRANSLATORS.

VIRGIL AND HORACE—II.

“Traduire Horace, et surtout le traduire en vers, est même devenu, depuis soixante ou quatre-vingts ans, et chez nous et en d’autres pays, une sorte de légère infirmité morale, et de douce maladie qui prend régulièrement un certain nombre d’hommes instruits au retour d’âge; c’est une envie de redevenir enfant, adolescent, de se reporter au temps des études qui nous étaient chères.” To translate Horace, says Sainte-Beuve, above all to translate him in verse, has become within the last sixty or eighty years, both in France and abroad, a kind of venial moral infirmity, a sort of mild fever, which periodically seizes a certain number of educated men as they find themselves growing old; and it has its source in the longing to renew our youth, to live over again the time of studies we were fond of.

Like all the sayings of that most delicate andspirituelof critics, this is so far true that most translations of Horace will be found, we think, to be the work of men advancing in life, and, in the majority of cases, to have grown up insensibly through a number of years. One does not sit down to a version of theOdesas to a version of theÆneid, beginning at the first line and going religiously through in order to the end. No; but we pick out an ode here and there, as the mood takes us and that fits the mood—some gayAd AmphoramorAd Asterienwhen we are young and sprightly,calidus juventâ; a noblerAd AugustumorAd Calliopenwhen we are older and graver, in thetime of whitening locks—riding in the cars, it may be, walking in the street, smoking the after-dinner cigar; everywhere, in fact, that solitude gives us a chance to entertain the best of all good company. We turn it into such English as we can muster, and print it perhaps, or, better still, put it away in our portfolio; Horace must have had a prophetic eye on his coming translator when he gave that soundest of poetic counsels—unlessPunch’s“Don’t” be sounder still:

“Nonumque prematur in annumMembranis intus positis”—[73]

“Nonumque prematur in annum

Membranis intus positis”—[73]

we put it away to be taken up again and again, lingered over fondly, touched up and polished, until the exact word is found for every elusive epithet, the precise equivalent for every tantalizing phrase, and the entire ode lies before us, its foreign garb bagging, indeed, a little here and there, but fitting as snugly as our art can make it, and we are content. That is a moment of such supreme satisfaction, of such tranquil triumph, as life but rarely yields. Less than any other that dabbles in ink has your true Horatian the fever of the type. His virtue is really—what virtue, alas! so seldom is in this perverse world—its own reward. Like Joubert,il s’inquiète de perfection bien plus que de gloire; to have hit upon what he feels to be a happy rendering is glory enough; enough that he and Horace should share his exultation; a felicitous adjective will put himin good-humor for a week. And so, before he well knows it, his portfolio is nearly full, and the notion first dawns upon him—the duty it almost seems—of sharing his good fortune with his fellows. “Rather would I have written theQuem tu Melpomene semelor theDonec gratus eram tibi,” cried Scaliger, “than to be king of Aragon.” Rather would I make a perfect translation of these or any other of theOdes, cries our Horatian, than to be king of all Spain, with allCuba libreto boot—

“Quam si Libyam remotisGadibus jungas et uterque PœnusServiat uni.”[74]

“Quam si Libyam remotis

Gadibus jungas et uterque Pœnus

Serviat uni.”[74]

Somewhat in this wise, we fancy, have most versions of Horace come to be and to be printed; certainly, we incline to think, all the best versions. Thus, too, partly for the reason M. Sainte-Beuve gives, partly from the poet’s universality and the charm which lies in the very difficulty of the task—an impossibility Johnson called it, but it is one of those “sweet impossibilities” which ennoble failure—do we count so many renderings of single odes by famous men. There are few names eminent in English letters or statesmanship that are not thus allied to the genial Venusian—names, too, of the most diverse order. Not only poets like Cowper and Montgomery,Chatterton and Byron,[75]essayists like Addison, or dramatists like Congreve, Rowe, and Otway, but grave historians such as Mitford and Merivale, judges like Lord Thurlow and Sir Jeffrey Gilbert, philosophers like Atterbury and Sir William Temple, bitter satirists like Swift, tender sentimentalists like “Namby Pamby” Phillips, professors and prime ministers, doctors and divines, lords and lawyers, archdeacons and archtraitors, have joined in paying court to the freedman’s son. In his ante-room, oratrium, prim John Evelyn is jostled by tipsy Porson humming somewhat huskily one of the bacchanalian lyrics to a tune of his own (perhaps theAd Sodales, i. 27, which that learned Theban has rendered with true Porsonian zest—a little too much so to quote); Warren Hastings there meets Edmund Burke in friendlier contest than at the bar of the House of Commons; Dr. Bentley takes issue with Archdeacon Wrangham over a doubtful reading; Mr. Gladstone leads a poetic opposition to Lord Derby in Englishing theCarmen Amabœum. In that modestcœnaculumwe can greet these great men all on a familiar and equal footing, made one of them for the nonce by the fellowship of a common taste—nay, may even flatter ourselves that here, at least, we are at their level; that our poet’s door may even be opened to us sooner than to the tallest and wisest among them. It is true greatness has no prerogative in Horace; the meanest may win to his intimacy, be admitted to hispenetralia, sooner than the mightiest. Of all the distinguished names we have quoted, few would have had much distinction as translators alone, though Bishop Atterbury’s versions, especially that of theAd Melpomenen, iv. 2, are deservedly famous. Hastings’ translation of theAd Grosphum, written during his passage from Bengal to England in 1785 (he was going home to the famous trial), merits notice for its curious adaptation to his Indian experiences:

“For ease the slow Mahratta spoilsAnd hardier Sikh erratic toils,While both their ease forego....“To ripened age Clive lived renowned,With lacs enriched, with honors crowned,His valor’s well-earned meed.Too long, alas! he lived, to hateHis envied lot, and died too lateFrom life’s oppression freed.”

“For ease the slow Mahratta spoilsAnd hardier Sikh erratic toils,While both their ease forego....

“For ease the slow Mahratta spoils

And hardier Sikh erratic toils,

While both their ease forego....

“To ripened age Clive lived renowned,With lacs enriched, with honors crowned,His valor’s well-earned meed.Too long, alas! he lived, to hateHis envied lot, and died too lateFrom life’s oppression freed.”

“To ripened age Clive lived renowned,

With lacs enriched, with honors crowned,

His valor’s well-earned meed.

Too long, alas! he lived, to hate

His envied lot, and died too late

From life’s oppression freed.”

Another verse had perhaps a still more personal application; there is but a trace of it in the Latin:

“No fears his peace of mind annoyLest printed lies his fame destroyWhich labor’d years have won;Nor pack’d committees break his rest,Nor avarice sends him forth in questOf climes beneath the sun.”

“No fears his peace of mind annoy

Lest printed lies his fame destroy

Which labor’d years have won;

Nor pack’d committees break his rest,

Nor avarice sends him forth in quest

Of climes beneath the sun.”

The fashion of fitting Horace to contemporary persons and events was much in vogue in Hastings’ time and earlier. Creech tells us in his preface that he was advised “to turn the Satyrs to his own times.” It was carried out to the fullest extent in the well-knownHorace in Londonof Horace and James Smith.

Within the past twenty-five or thirty years many complete versions of theOdeshave been put forth, including those of H. G. Robinson, the Rev. W. Sewell (printed in Bohn’s Library), Lord Ravensworth, Mr. Whyte Melville, Mr. Theodore Martin, the late Prof. Conington, and the late Lord Lytton. Of these, Mr. Martin’s, which we shouldfeel inclined to pronounce upon the whole the best, and the most notable Lord Lytton’s, have alone been reprinted here. In giving this pre-eminence to Mr. Martin’s work we are perhaps influenced by a strong individual liking, amounting even to a prepossession, in its favor, dating from that very potent time Sainte-Beuve speaks of—“le temps des études qui nous étaient chères.” When it first fell into our hands it was the only version we had yet seen which at all reproduced, even to a limited degree, for us its original’s charm. By many Prof. Conington’s translation, easy, fluent, and in the main faithful—just what, from hisÆneid, one might expect it to be—will be preferred to Mr. Martin’s, which it certainly surpasses in single odes. As to the worst there need be no such doubt. The Rev. Mr. Sewell’s is not, perhaps, the worst possible version of theOdes, as one is half tempted to believe who remembers how it was recommended to the readers of theDublin University Magazinelong ago—how we relished that literary execution with all boyhood’s artless delight in slaughter! Time, alas! soon sobers that youthful vivacity of temper, and, better than Æsop, teaches us to respect the frogs whom it loves to revenge in kind. No; the possibilities and varieties of badness in this direction are unhappily too great for that; but it is as bad as need be—as need be, let us say, for admission to Bohn’s Library.[76]Great indulgence is certainly to be extended to translators of Horace; much is to be forgiven them; but one must finally drawthe line, and probably most Horatians would feel like drawing the line at the Rev. Mr. Sewell.

It was in the process of pointing out this fact to that gentleman, in a review of his book in the magazine mentioned, that Mr. Martin some twenty years ago put forth, we believe, the first specimens of his own translation, which was completed and published some years later. Its success was immediate and deserved; for its positive no less than its comparative merits were great. Mr. Martin was one of the first to discern, or at least to put in acceptable practice, the true theory of translating the lighter odes—“a point of great difficulty,” as he truly says. “They are,” he adds, “merevers de sociétéinvested by the language, for us, with a certain stateliness, but which were probably regarded with a very different feeling by the small contemporary circle to whom they were addressed. To catch the tone of these, to be light without being flippant, to be playful without being vulgar, demands a delicacy of touch which it is given to few to acquire, even in original composition, and which in translation is all but unattainable.” The graver odes have their own difficulties; but the skilful translator handles them more easily, we fancy, than the gay fluttering swarm of laughing Lydias and Neæras that flash athwart their statelier pomp like golden butterflies through the Gothic glooms of summer woods—butterflies whose glossy wings, alas! lose something of their down and brilliance at every, even the lightest and most loving, touch. The thought of a poem is always easier to transplant into other speech than its form. Ideas are essentially the same, whatever tongue interprets them—Homer’sGreek or Shakspeare’s English; but the infinite delicate shades of beauty or significance added to them by the subtle differences of words, by that beauty of their own and intrinsic value which, as Théophile Gautier puts it—himself a master of language—words have in the poet’s eyes apart from their meaning, like uncut and unset jewels, the deftest, most patient art of the translator toils in vain to catch. They vanish in his grasp like the bubble whose frail glories dazzle the eyes and mock the longing, chubby fingers of babyhood; to render them is like trying to paint the perfume of a flower.

Now, it is true enough, whatever iconoclasts like Stendhal may pretend, that in poetry thought cannot be divorced from form; it is the indissoluble union of both that makes the poem. Try to fancy any really great passage of verse expressed in other words, even of the same speech, and you see at once how important form is. Take once more Shakspeare’s

“DaffodilsThat come before the swallow dares, and takeThe winds of March with beauty,”

“Daffodils

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty,”

and try to change or misplace a single word. One feels instantly that any change would be fatal; it almost seems, with such passages, as though noble thought and perfect word had been waiting for each other from all time until the high-priest of Apollo should come to wed them. To quote Sainte-Beuve again—the critic who wishes to instruct his readers can scarcely quote him too often: “Je conçois qu’on ne mette pas toute la poesie dans le métier, mais je ne conçois pas du tout que quand il s’agit d’un art on ne tienne nui compte de l’art lui-même et qu’on déprécie les parfaits ouvriers qui y excellent.”[77]Yet it is none the less true that a poem in which the idea is paramount is more susceptible of translation than one whose form is the chief element of its charm. One can imagine Wordsworth’s fine sonnet on Milton, “Milton, thou shouldst be with us at this hour,” being turned into Latin with comparatively little loss; indeed it has been so turned by one of the most accomplished of English scholars—Dr. Kennedy—into Alcaics of which the purity and finish make a fitting casket for that gem of poetry; though even here one feels the wide difference between the original of that immortal line,

“Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart,”

and the Latin

“Mens tua lumineFulgebat, ut sidus, remote,”

“Mens tua lumine

Fulgebat, ut sidus, remote,”

missing, as we do, the “lovely marriage of pure words,” that in the English is itself a poem. But take such a bit of verbal daintiness as George Darley’s “Sweet in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers,” with its peculiar andsaisissantrhythm, the perfection of verbal music; or Tennyson’s “Break, break, break,” where the poetry—and undeniable poetry it is—lies in a certain faint aroma of suggestion that seems to breathe from the very words, and try to reproduce the effect of them in other speech. As well try with earthly tools to rebuild Titania’s palace of leaf shadows and the gossamer, to weave her mantle on any mortal loom out of moonbeams and the mist.

Much the same is it to attempt to transfer to an English translationaught of the peculiar grace which invests Horace’s lightest lyrics with a charm we feel but cannot analyze, which resides in the choice of epithets, the arrangement of words, the cadence of the rhythm, the metrical form, and which yet is something more than any or all of these. The noble thought which lies embodied in theJustum et tenacem propositi virumwe may not despair of rehabilitating, with somewhat of its proper majesty, in our own vernacular; but the shy, fugitive loveliness of that wildwood picnic to which the poet bids us, to forget the cares of life,

“Quo pinus et ingens albaque populusUmbram hospitalem consociare amantRamis, et obliquo laboratLympha fugax trepidare rivo”

“Quo pinus et ingens albaque populus

Umbram hospitalem consociare amant

Ramis, et obliquo laborat

Lympha fugax trepidare rivo”

—what art can coax away from its native soil? Do we find it in Francis?—

“Where the pale poplar and the pineExpel the sun’s intemperate beam;In hospitable shades their branches twine,And winds with toil, though swift, the tremulous stream”;

“Where the pale poplar and the pine

Expel the sun’s intemperate beam;

In hospitable shades their branches twine,

And winds with toil, though swift, the tremulous stream”;

or in Creech—though Creech is here luckier than usual?—

“Where near a purling Spring doth glideIn winding Streams, and softly chideThe interrupting Pebble as it flows”;

“Where near a purling Spring doth glide

In winding Streams, and softly chide

The interrupting Pebble as it flows”;

or in Prout?—

“While onward runs the crooked rill,Brisk fugitive, with murmur shrill”;

“While onward runs the crooked rill,

Brisk fugitive, with murmur shrill”;

or in Lord Lytton?—

“Wherefore struggles and murmurs the rillStayed from flight by a curve in the shore.”

“Wherefore struggles and murmurs the rill

Stayed from flight by a curve in the shore.”

Even Mr. Martin gives it up, and presents us, instead of a translation, with a couplet which is very pretty English verse, but about as far from Horace as can be:

“Where runs the wimpling brook, its slumb’rous tuneStill murmuring as it runs to the hush’d ear of noon.”

“Where runs the wimpling brook, its slumb’rous tune

Still murmuring as it runs to the hush’d ear of noon.”

It is passages such as this especiallywhich have caused Horace to be called the untranslatable.

To come from theory to practice, it is in the lighter odes, and in those parts of all the odes the beauty of which in the original lies chiefly in expression, that all Horace’s translators have most conspicuously failed. Take Milton’sAd Pyrrham, for example (Ode v.). TheAd Pyrrhamis not only one of the most charming but also one of the most difficult of the minor odes, and for that reason among the oftenest translated. It is one of the manymitten-pieces wherein the inconstant bard seems to have taken a somewhat ostentatious delight in celebrating the numerous snubbings he had to put up with from the no less inconstant fair who were the objects of his brief and fitful homage. In it, as in theAd Neæram(Epod.xv.) and theAd Barinen(Carm.ii. 8), reproaches to the lady for her perfidy are mingled with self-gratulations on the poet’s own lucky escape and sinister warnings to his rival—the time-old strategy and solace of the discarded lover the world over. He has been shipwrecked, he says, on that treacherous sea of love; but having, the gods be praised! made shift to scramble ashore in safety, and got on some dry duds, sits in gleeful expectation of seeing his successor get a like ducking. The poem is simply a piece of mock heroics, for the counterpart of which we must look to such minglings of cynicism and sentiment as we find in the poetry of Praed and Thackeray and Locker, or, to a less degree, in many of Béranger’s lighter songs. The difference between the modern poets and the ancient is that in the former the sentiment is real, veiled under an affectation of cynicism: in the latter it is precisely the reverse.But, bearing that difference in mind, the translator may find in the methods of the poets named some hints for the handling of such odes as theAd Pyrrham.

But how do the translators treat it? Take Milton’s famous version, which everybody knows:

“What slender youth bedewed with liquid odorsCourts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,Pyrrha? For whom bind’st thouIn wreaths thy golden hair?“Plain in thy neatness,” etc.

“What slender youth bedewed with liquid odorsCourts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,Pyrrha? For whom bind’st thouIn wreaths thy golden hair?

“What slender youth bedewed with liquid odors

Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,

Pyrrha? For whom bind’st thou

In wreaths thy golden hair?

“Plain in thy neatness,” etc.

—’tis as solemn as a Quaker conventicle. Nor, with reverence be it saiden passant, is it altogether free from graver faults; undeniably elegant as it is, this translation has had quite as much praise as it deserved. It is full of those Latin constructions Milton loved—“on faith and changed gods complain” forfidem mutatosque deos flebit, “always vacant” forsemper vacuam, “unwonted shall admire” foremirabitur insolens, etc.—which are nowhere more out of place than in a translation from the Latin. Some, indeed, claim that they carry with them and impart a certain flavor of the original to those unacquainted with it; but this seems to us a view at once fallacious and superficial. The office of translation into any language is surely to reproduce the original in the idiom of that language as nearly as may be; and though the theory, like all theories, may be pressed to an excess—as we think Mr. Morris has pressed it, for example, in his translation of theÆneid—better that than such deformities as

“Always vacant, always amiableHopes thee.”

“Always vacant, always amiable

Hopes thee.”

It is the suggestion not of Horace but of Milton here that is pleasant; it is because Milton’s natural English style is a highly Latinizedand involved style that these oddities of his translation strike us less than in another. Sometimes, too, oddly enough for so good a scholar, he falls short of the full sense of his original.Potenti maris deo, the commentators tell us, means, not “the stern god of sea,” but “the god potent over the sea”; and “plain in thy neatness” forsimplex munditiismisses the entire significance of the latter word, which implies something of grace and beauty. “Plain in thy neatness” suggests rather “Priscilla the Puritan maiden” than Pyrrha of the dull-gold hair. Ben Jonson’s

“Give me a look, give me a faceThat makes simplicity a grace,”

“Give me a look, give me a face

That makes simplicity a grace,”

hits Horace’s meaning exactly, and certainly far more poetically. Indeed, we often find in original English poetry much apter renderings than the translators give us. Prof. Conington knew this when he went to Shakspeare for “fancy free” as an equivalent for this very wordvacuamwe have been talking of—a perfect equivalent of its association did not make it a little un-Horatian—and to Matthew Arnold’s “salt, unplumbed,estrangingsea” for the very best version we have seen of that most puzzling phrase (i. 3), “oceano dissociabili.”

This is, perhaps, a digression; but as we set out for a ramble, we have no apologies to make. Conington’s version, in the same metre as Milton’s, only rhyming the alternate lines, is not all so good as “fancy free,” though it gains from its rhyme a certain lightness lacking in that of Milton’s:

“What slender youth besprinkled with perfumeCourts you on roses in some grotto’s shade,Fair Pyrrha? Say for whomYour yellow hair you braid.“So true, so simple! Ah! how oft shall heLament that faith can fail, that gods can change,Viewing the rough black seaWith eyes to tempests strange,” etc.

“What slender youth besprinkled with perfumeCourts you on roses in some grotto’s shade,Fair Pyrrha? Say for whomYour yellow hair you braid.

“What slender youth besprinkled with perfume

Courts you on roses in some grotto’s shade,

Fair Pyrrha? Say for whom

Your yellow hair you braid.

“So true, so simple! Ah! how oft shall heLament that faith can fail, that gods can change,Viewing the rough black seaWith eyes to tempests strange,” etc.

“So true, so simple! Ah! how oft shall he

Lament that faith can fail, that gods can change,

Viewing the rough black sea

With eyes to tempests strange,” etc.

So true, so simple! We are not much nearer tosimplex munditiisthan before. Martin is not here at his best, and Francis is unusually successful: “dress’d with careless art” and “consecrate the pictured storm” are felicities he does not always attain. Prout is chiefly noticeable for yielding to the almost irresistible temptation of a false beacon inintentata nites:

“I the false light forswear,A shipwreck’d mariner”;

“I the false light forswear,

A shipwreck’d mariner”;

and Leigh Hunt’s, though but a paraphrase, is surely a very happy one:

“For whom are bound thy tresses brightWith unconcern so exquisite?”

“For whom are bound thy tresses bright

With unconcern so exquisite?”

and

“Though now the sunshine hour beguilesHis bark along thy golden smiles,Trusting to see thee for his playFor ever keep smooth holiday,”

“Though now the sunshine hour beguiles

His bark along thy golden smiles,

Trusting to see thee for his play

For ever keep smooth holiday,”

admirably elude, if they do not meet, the difficulties of the Latin. But in none of these, nor in any other rendering we have seen, is there any trace of thatnuanceof sarcasm or polite banter we seem to taste in the original. The only American version we remember to have met with is not in this respect more successful:

“In thy grotto’s cool recesses,Dripping perfumes, lapped in roses,Say what lissome youth reposes,Pyrrha, wooing thy embrace?Braid’st for whom those tawny tresses,Simple in thy grace?“Ah! how oft averted heavenWill he weep, and thy dissembling.And, poor novice, view with tremblingO’er the erewhile tranquil deep,By the angry tempest driven,Billowy tumult sweep;“Now who in thy smile endearingBasks, with foolish fondness hopingTo his love thou’lt e’er be open,To his wooing ever kind,Knowing not the fitful veeringOf the faithless wind?“Hapless they rash troth who plight thee!On the sacred wall my votivePicture, set with pious motive,Shows I hung in Neptune’s faneMy wet garments to the mightyMonarch of the main.”

“In thy grotto’s cool recesses,Dripping perfumes, lapped in roses,Say what lissome youth reposes,Pyrrha, wooing thy embrace?Braid’st for whom those tawny tresses,Simple in thy grace?

“In thy grotto’s cool recesses,

Dripping perfumes, lapped in roses,

Say what lissome youth reposes,

Pyrrha, wooing thy embrace?

Braid’st for whom those tawny tresses,

Simple in thy grace?

“Ah! how oft averted heavenWill he weep, and thy dissembling.And, poor novice, view with tremblingO’er the erewhile tranquil deep,By the angry tempest driven,Billowy tumult sweep;

“Ah! how oft averted heaven

Will he weep, and thy dissembling.

And, poor novice, view with trembling

O’er the erewhile tranquil deep,

By the angry tempest driven,

Billowy tumult sweep;

“Now who in thy smile endearingBasks, with foolish fondness hopingTo his love thou’lt e’er be open,To his wooing ever kind,Knowing not the fitful veeringOf the faithless wind?

“Now who in thy smile endearing

Basks, with foolish fondness hoping

To his love thou’lt e’er be open,

To his wooing ever kind,

Knowing not the fitful veering

Of the faithless wind?

“Hapless they rash troth who plight thee!On the sacred wall my votivePicture, set with pious motive,Shows I hung in Neptune’s faneMy wet garments to the mightyMonarch of the main.”

“Hapless they rash troth who plight thee!

On the sacred wall my votive

Picture, set with pious motive,

Shows I hung in Neptune’s fane

My wet garments to the mighty

Monarch of the main.”

It may be said that this sly spirit of badinage which lurks, or to us, at least, seems to lurk, in the shadows of the lighter odes, like some tricksy Faun peering and disappearing through the thickets of Lucretilis, it is impossible to seize; that when we try it “the stateliness of the language” interposes itself like a wall, and we find ourselves becoming vulgar where Horace is playful, flippant where Horace is light. Doubtless this is so; what then? Because it is an impossibility, shall any loyal Horatian balk at it? It is just because of these impossibilities that translations are always in order, and will, to a certain extent, always be in demand. Translations of other poets pall; it is conceivable that a version of Virgil might be produced which human skill could not better. But no such thing being conceivable of Horace, every fresh version is a whet to curiosity and emulation; each separate ode hides its own agreeable secret, every epithet has its own individual surprise. Let there be no talk, then, of impossibilities; for our own part, to paraphrase what Hallam says of Lycidas, we look upon the ability to translate such odes as theAd Pyrrham, so as to demonstrate their impossibility, a good test of a man’s capacity to translate Horace at all.

Another nice consideration for the translator of Horace is in respect of metre. Undoubtedly the translator who can retain the metrical movement of his original has gained so much towards reproducing his general effect. But with Horace this attempt may as wellbe abandoned at once. The Alcaic and the Sapphic stanza, much less the Asclepiad or the Archilochian, have never yet been, and for obvious reasons never will be, naturalized in our English verse, though poor Percival thought differently, and added one more to a life of failures. Tennyson, in his ode to Milton,

“Whose guardian-angels, Muriel, Abdiel,Starred from Jehovah’s gorgeous armory,Tow’r, as the deep-domed empyreanRings to the roar of an angel onset,”

“Whose guardian-angels, Muriel, Abdiel,

Starred from Jehovah’s gorgeous armory,

Tow’r, as the deep-domed empyrean

Rings to the roar of an angel onset,”

gives us, perhaps, as good Alcaics as we have any right to look for in English (though “gōrgĕoŭs” is not a very gorgeous dactyl); yet how different from the Horatian cadence:

“Æquam memento rebus in arduisServare mentem, non secus in bonisAb insolenti temperatamLætitia, moriture Delli.”[78]

“Æquam memento rebus in arduis

Servare mentem, non secus in bonis

Ab insolenti temperatam

Lætitia, moriture Delli.”[78]

As for Sapphics, whether we take Canning’sKnife Grinderfor our model or Mr. Swinburne’s

“All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,Yet with lips shut close, and with eyes of iron,Stood and beheld me,”

“All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,

Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,

Yet with lips shut close, and with eyes of iron,

Stood and beheld me,”

we are not much nearer to Horace’s melody:

“Scandit æratas vitiosa navesCura, nec turmas equitum relinquitOcior cervis, et agente nimbosOcior Euro.”[79]

“Scandit æratas vitiosa naves

Cura, nec turmas equitum relinquit

Ocior cervis, et agente nimbos

Ocior Euro.”[79]

But, at least, following that rule of compensation with which all good translators are familiar, some attempt may be made to suggest the metrical variety and richness oftheOdesby a corresponding variety and grace in the English measures of the translation. It is here that the modern translators excel; indeed, it may be said that only within the last hundred years have translators had this adjunct at their command, for it is only during that period that English poets have begun to comprehend and master fully the resources and possibilities of English metre. Not that the earlier poets were at all deficient in the metrical sense; that their ears were not quick to catch the finest delicacies of verbal harmony. Not to mention a host of minor bards who knew how to marry “perfect music unto noble words,” Milton’s lyrics are melody itself. There is scarcely a more tunable couplet in the language than his

“Sweetest Shakspeare, fancy’s child,Warbles his native woodnotes wild.”

“Sweetest Shakspeare, fancy’s child,

Warbles his native woodnotes wild.”

The open vowels and liquid consonants fairly sing themselves. Nor was it for lack of experiment that they failed of

“Untwisting all the chains that tieThe hidden soul of harmony”

“Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony”

in words, as Shelley and Tennyson and Swinburne learned to do later. The attempt to naturalize the classical metres, for example, began at a very early period of our literary history, and many learned treatises were written to prove them your only proper vehicle for English poetry. Perhaps it was the ill-success of these efforts that made our poets so long shy of wandering in their metres away from the beaten track and the simplest forms. Up to the time of Campbell we may say that the iambus and the trochee reigned supreme in English verse; the anapest and the dactyl, of which such effective use has been made by the later poets, were either unknown or contemned.Suckling’sSession of the Poets, the metrical intention of which appears to be anapestic, shows what desperate work even the best lyrists could make when they strayed after strange metrical gods.[80]

It may be said, then, that until within a comparatively recent period Horace could not be properly translated into English verse at all. English verse was not yet ready to receive so noble a guest. Compare Martin’s or Conington’s versions with one of the earlier translations, and the truth of this, we think, will be apparent at once. Creech, indeed, seems to have had a dim notion of the truth, and his version shows a perceptible striving for metrical effect, at least in the arrangement of his stanza; but Creech had too little of the poetical faculty to make the effort with taste or success. Francis for the most part is content with the orthodox measures, and Father Prout was perhaps first to bring to the work this essential accomplishment of the Horatian translator. Prout’s metrical inventions are bold, and often elegant; and his versions, though free, are always spirited, and often singularly felicitous. Among the most striking of his metres is the one he employs for theSolvitur acris hiems(Carm.i. iv.):

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