Latine Poets into the best of vulgar Languages. By one that hath no name' (London, 1622) Præterea fuit in tectis,' &c. (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 When darke night holds the world. The ellenge Owle r 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 they will thank us for selecting two of Lisle's stanzas. (Felix qui potuit,' &c., Georg. II. 490): * 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's 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 100 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 marying elms with vines.'-May. Dryden borrows also once at least from Lisle. But of his plagiarisms more below. The The rurall Gods, Sylvanus, and great Pan, '(Ah foolish Fon) whom dost thou seek to shun? Which shee hath builded: but of all the rest, The crewell grim-faced Lionesse pursues The bloody Woolfe: the Woolfe the kid so free: 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 stars.' Sandys is celebrated as the author of a translation of Ovid, which Pope read as a child and (not an invariable consequence with him) praised as a man. There seems to be no merit in Vicars. Sandys is perhaps superior to May, but, like him, he pleases chiefly as the harbinger of better * The title of Vicars's work is 'The XII Aeneids of Virgil, the most renowned Laureat-Prince of Latine Poets, translated into English deca-syllables, by Iohn Vicars.' Sandys's is added to an edition of his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1632). and entitled, 'An Essay to the Translation of Virgil's Æneis.' Vol. 110.-No. 219. things in language and versification. Here is a favourable specimen ('Est in secessu,' &c., Æn., I. 159):— Deepe in a Bay an Ile with stretcht-out sides Their streams discharge, with rocks invirond round, Their browes with dark and trembling woods arayd, 6 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' 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 Æneas '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,' &c., Æn. IV. 651):— 'Dear Reliques whilst that Gods and Fates gave leave, That date which fortune gave I now must end A better translation of this Fourth Book appeared in 1648 by Sir Richard Fanshaw, a friend of Denham's, who does justice to his powers in an excellent copy of verses recommendatory of his version of Pastor Fido. Fanshaw's case is not unlike Lisle's: instead of prosecuting the cultivation of the heroic, he revives that of the Spenserian stanza. The choice was not a happy one under the circumstances: Virgil did not write in periods of nine lines, and Fanshaw, not being a diffuse writer, is led in conse quence quence to run stanza into stanza, so that the versification 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,' &c., En. IV. 305): 'Didst thou hope too by stealth to leave my land, Should Troy itself be sought through a tempestuous sea?' 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 inde. fatigable adventurer, who practised successively or simultaneously the callings of dancing-master, original poet, translator from the classics, and literary projector, frequently ruined, but always recovering himself, learnt Latin in 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 labourers whom the Dean of Westminster is marshalling 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 anything 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 6 G 2 readers, readers, have the means of comparing him with his predecessors and contemporaries. Ad aperturam libri, we select the opening of his Sixth Eneid : 'Weeping he said: at last with Sails a-trip, To the Euboick Confines steers his Ship: Ogilby's elaborate work may possibly have stood in the way of other attempts on a large scale, but it did not deter holidayauthors,' 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 Æneid still continued to be popular with this class of writers, three or four of whom attempted it about this time-Edmund Waller and Sidney Godolphin (1658), Sir Robert Howard (1660), and Sir Robert Stapylton. None of them are memorable; but as some slight interest may be felt in comparing them, we give their versions of the end of the book in juxtaposition: From heaven then Iris with dewy wings, And her enlarged breath slides into air.' Howard. 'So dewy rose-winged Iris,* having won Thousand strange colours from the adverse Sun, Slides down, stands on her head: I bear this, Sacred to Dis: be from this flesh enlarged. *Dewy rose-winged Iris' also appears in Ogilby, who resembles Stapylton likewise in his version of 'teque isto corpore solvo.' Godolphin |