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ESSAY on the
PRINCIPLES of
TRANSLATION
by ALEXANDER
FRASER·TYTLER
LORD WOODHOUSELEE

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INTRODUCTION

Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, author of the present essay on Translation, and of various works on Universal and on Local History, was one of that Edinburgh circle which was revolving when Sir Walter Scott was a young probationer. Tytler was born at Edinburgh, October 15, 1747, went to the High School there, and after two years at Kensington, under Elphinston—Dr. Johnson’s Elphinston—entered Edinburgh University (where he afterwards became Professor of Universal History). He seems to have been Elphinston’s favourite pupil, and to have particularly gratified his master, “the celebrated Dr. Jortin” too, by his Latin verse.

In 1770 he was called to the bar; in 1776 married a wife; in 1790 was appointed Judge-Advocate of Scotland; in 1792 became the master of Woodhouselee on the death of his father. Ten years later he was raised to the bench of the court of session, with his father’s title—Lord Woodhouselee. But the law was only the professional background to his other avocation—of literature. Like his father, something of a personage at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, it was before its members that he read the papers which were afterwards cast into the present work. In them we have all that is still valid of his very considerable literary labours. Before it appeared, his effect on his younger contemporaries in Edinburgh had already been very marked—if we may judge by Lockhart. His encouragement undoubtedly helped to speed Scott on his way, especially into that German romantic region out of which a new Gothic breath was breathed on the Scottish thistle.

It was in 1790 that Tytler read in the Royal Society his papers on Translation, and they were soon after published, without his name. Hardly had the work seen the light, than it led to a critical correspondence with Dr. Campbell, then Principal of Marischal College, Aberdeen. Dr. Campbell had at some time previous to this published his Translations of the Gospels, to which he had prefixed some observations upon the principles of translation. When Tytler’s anonymous work appeared he was led to express some suspicion that the author might have borrowed from his Dissertation, without acknowledging the obligation. Thereupon Tytler instantly wrote to Dr. Campbell, acknowledging himself to be the author, and assuring him that the coincidence, such as it was, “was purely accidental, and that the name of Dr. Campbell’s work had never reached him until his own had been composed.... There seems to me no wonder,” he continued, “that two persons, moderately conversant in critical occupations, sitting down professedly to investigate the principles of this art, should hit upon the same principles, when in fact there are none other to hit upon, and the truth of these is acknowledged at their first enunciation. But in truth, the merit of this little essay (if it has any) does not, in my opinion, lie in these particulars. It lies in the establishment of those various subordinate rules and precepts which apply to the nicer parts and difficulties of the art of translation; in deducing those rules and precepts which carry not their own authority in gremio, from the general principles which are of acknowledged truth, and in proving and illustrating them by examples.”

Tytler has here put his finger on one of the critical good services rendered by his book. But it has a further value now, and one that he could not quite foresee it was going to have. The essay is an admirably typical dissertation on the classic art of poetic translation, and of literary style, as the eighteenth century understood it; and even where it accepts Pope’s Homer or Melmoth’s Cicero in a way that is impossible to us now, the test that is applied, and the difference between that test and our own, will be found, if not convincing, extremely suggestive. In fact, Tytler, while not a great critic, was a charming dilettante, and a man of exceeding taste; and something of that grace which he is said to have had personally is to be found lingering in these pages. Reading them, one learns as much by dissenting from some of his judgments as by subscribing to others. Woodhouselee, Lord Cockburn said, was not a Tusculum, but it was a country-house with a fine tradition of culture, and its quondam master was a delightful host, with whom it was a memorable experience to spend an evening discussing the Don Quixote of Motteux and of Smollett, or how to capture the aroma of Virgil in an English medium, in the era before the Scottish prose Homer had changed the literary perspective north of the Tweed. It is sometimes said that the real art of poetic translation is still to seek; yet one of its most effective demonstrators was certainly Alexander Fraser Tytler, who died in 1814.

The following is his list of works:

Piscatory Eclogues, with other Poetical Miscellanies of Phinehas Fletcher, illustrated with notes, critical and explanatory, 1771; The Decisions of the Court of Sessions, from its first Institution to the present Time, etc. (supplementary volume to Lord Kames’s “Dictionary of Decisions”), 1778; Plan and Outline of a Course of Lectures on Universal History, Ancient and Modern (delivered at Edinburgh), 1782; Elements of General History, Ancient and Modern (with table of Chronology and a comparative view of Ancient and Modern Geography), 2 vols., 1801. A third volume was added by E. Nares, being a continuation to death of George III., 1822; further editions continued to be issued with continuations, and the work was finally brought down to the present time, and edited by G. Bell, 1875; separate editions have appeared of the ancient and modern parts, and an abridged edition in 1809 by T. D. Hincks. To Vols. I. and II. (1788, 1790) of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Tytler contributed History of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Life of Lord-President Dundas, and An Account of some Extraordinary Structures on the Tops of Hills in the Highlands, etc.; to Vol. V., Remarks on a Mixed Species of Evidence in Matters of History, 1805; A Life of Sir John Gregory, prefixed to an edition of the latter’s works, 1788; Essay on the Principles of Translations, 1791, 1797; Third Edition, with additions and alterations, 1813; Translation of Schiller’s “The Robbers,” 1792; A Critical Examination of Mr. Whitaker’s Course of Hannibal over the Alps, 1798; A Dissertation on Final Causes, with a Life of Dr. Derham, in edition of the latter’s works, 1798; Ireland Profiting by Example, or the Question Considered whether Scotland has Gained or Lost by the Union, 1799; Essay on Military Law and the Practice of Courts-Martial, 1800; Remarks on the Writings and Genius of Ramsay (preface to edition of works), 1800, 1851, 1866; Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Hon. Henry Horne, Lord Kames, 1807, 1814; Essay on the Life and Character of Petrarch, with Translation of Seven Sonnets, 1784; An Historical and Critical Essay on the Life and Character of Petrarch, with a Translation of a few of his Sonnets (including the above pamphlet and the dissertation mentioned above in Vol. V. of Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin.), 1812; Consideration of the Present Political State of India, etc., 1815, 1816. Tytler contributed to the “Mirror,” 1779-80, and to the “Lounger,” 1785-6.

Life of Tytler, by Rev. Archibald Alison, Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin.

CONTENTS

ESSAY ON THE
PRINCIPLES OF TRANSLATION

INTRODUCTION

There is perhaps no department of literature which has been less the object of cultivation, than the Art of Translating. Even among the ancients, who seem to have had a very just idea of its importance, and who have accordingly ranked it among the most useful branches of literary education, we meet with no attempt to unfold the principles of this art, or to reduce it to rules. In the works of Quinctilian, of Cicero, and of the Younger Pliny, we find many passages which prove that these authors had made translation their peculiar study; and, conscious themselves of its utility, they have strongly recommended the practice of it, as essential towards the formation both of a good writer and an accomplished orator.[1] But it is much to be regretted, that they who were so eminently well qualified to furnish instruction in the art itself, have contributed little more to its advancement than by some general recommendations of its importance. If indeed time had spared to us any complete or finished specimens of translation from the hand of those great masters, it had been some compensation for the want of actual precepts, to have been able to have deduced them ourselves from those exquisite models. But of ancient translations the fragments that remain are so inconsiderable, and so much mutilated, that we can scarcely derive from them any advantage.[2]

To the moderns the art of translation is of greater importance than it was to the ancients, in the same proportion that the great mass of ancient and of modern literature, accumulated up to the present times, bears to the general stock of learning in the most enlightened periods of antiquity. But it is a singular consideration, that under the daily experience of the advantages of good translations, in opening to us all the stores of ancient knowledge, and creating a free intercourse of science and of literature between all modern nations, there should have been so little done towards the improvement of the art itself, by investigating its laws, or unfolding its principles. Unless a very short essay, published by M. D’Alembert, in his Mélanges de Litterature, d’Histoire, &c. as introductory to his translations of some pieces of Tacitus, and some remarks on translation by the Abbé Batteux, in his Principes de la Litterature, I have met with nothing that has been written professedly upon the subject.[3] The observations of M. D’Alembert, though extremely judicious, are too general to be considered as rules, or even principles of the art; and the remarks of the Abbé Batteux are employed chiefly on what may be termed the Philosophy of Grammar, and seem to have for their principal object the ascertainment of the analogy that one language bears to another, or the pointing out of those circumstances of construction and arrangement in which languages either agree with, or differ from each other.[4]

While such has been our ignorance of the principles of this art, it is not at all wonderful, that amidst the numberless translations which every day appear, both of the works of the ancients and moderns, there should be so few that are possessed of real merit. The utility of translations is universally felt, and therefore there is a continual demand for them. But this very circumstance has thrown the practice of translation into mean and mercenary hands. It is a profession which, it is generally believed, may be exercised with a very small portion of genius or abilities.[5] “It seems to me,” says Dryden, “that the true reason why we have so few versions that are tolerable, is, because there are so few who have all the talents requisite for translation, and that there is so little praise and small encouragement for so considerable a part of learning” (Pref. to Ovid’s Epistles).

It must be owned, at the same time, that there have been, and that there are men of genius among the moderns who have vindicated the dignity of this art so ill-appreciated, and who have furnished us with excellent translations, both of the ancient classics, and of the productions of foreign writers of our own and of former ages. These works lay open a great field of useful criticism; and from them it is certainly possible to draw the principles of that art which has never yet been methodised, and to establish its rules and precepts. Towards this purpose, even the worst translations would have their utility, as in such a critical exercise, it would be equally necessary to illustrate defects as to exemplify perfections.

An attempt of this kind forms the subject of the following Essay, in which the Author solicits indulgence, both for the imperfections of his treatise, and perhaps for some errors of opinion. His apology for the first, is, that he does not pretend to exhaust the subject, or to treat it in all its amplitude, but only to point out the general principles of the art; and for the last, that in matters where the ultimate appeal is to Taste, it is almost impossible to be secure of the solidity of our opinions, when the criterion of their truth is so very uncertain.

CHAPTER I

DESCRIPTION OF A GOOD TRANSLATION—GENERAL RULES FLOWING FROM THAT DESCRIPTION

If it were possible accurately to define, or, perhaps more properly, to describe what is meant by a good Translation, it is evident that a considerable progress would be made towards establishing the Rules of the Art; for these Rules would flow naturally from that definition or description. But there is no subject of criticism where there has been so much difference of opinion. If the genius and character of all languages were the same, it would be an easy task to translate from one into another; nor would anything more be requisite on the part of the translator, than fidelity and attention. But as the genius and character of languages is confessedly very different, it has hence become a common opinion, that it is the duty of a translator to attend only to the sense and spirit of his original, to make himself perfectly master of his author’s ideas, and to communicate them in those expressions which he judges to be best suited to convey them. It has, on the other hand, been maintained, that, in order to constitute a perfect translation, it is not only requisite that the ideas and sentiments of the original author should be conveyed, but likewise his style and manner of writing, which, it is supposed, cannot be done without a strict attention to the arrangement of his sentences, and even to their order and construction.[6] According to the former idea of translation, it is allowable to improve and to embellish; according to the latter, it is necessary to preserve even blemishes and defects; and to these must, likewise be superadded the harshness that must attend every copy in which the artist scrupulously studies to imitate the minutest lines or traces of his original.

As these two opinions form opposite extremes, it is not improbable that the point of perfection should be found between the two. I would therefore describe a good translation to be, That, in which the merit of the original work is so completely transfused into another language, as to be as distinctly apprehended, and as strongly felt, by a native of the country to which that language belongs, as it is by those who speak the language of the original work.

Now, supposing this description to be a just one, which I think it is, let us examine what are the laws of translation which may be deduced from it.

It will follow,

I. That the Translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work.

II. That the style and manner of writing should be of the same character with that of the original.

III. That the Translation should have all the ease of original composition.

Under each of these general laws of translation, are comprehended a variety of subordinate precepts, which I shall notice in their order, and which, as well as the general laws, I shall endeavour to prove, and to illustrate by examples.

CHAPTER II

FIRST GENERAL RULE—A TRANSLATION SHOULD GIVE A COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT OF THE IDEAS OF THE ORIGINAL WORK—KNOWLEDGE OF THE LANGUAGE OF THE ORIGINAL, AND ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE SUBJECT—EXAMPLES OF IMPERFECT TRANSFUSION OF THE SENSE OF THE ORIGINAL—WHAT OUGHT TO BE THE CONDUCT OF A TRANSLATOR WHERE THE SENSE IS AMBIGUOUS

In order that a translator may be enabled to give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work, it is indispensably necessary, that he should have a perfect knowledge of the language of the original, and a competent acquaintance with the subject of which it treats. If he is deficient in either of these requisites, he can never be certain of thoroughly comprehending the sense of his author. M. Folard is allowed to have been a great master of the art of war. He undertook to translate Polybius, and to give a commentary illustrating the ancient Tactic, and the practice of the Greeks and Romans in the attack and defence of fortified places. In this commentary, he endeavours to shew, from the words of his author, and of other ancient writers, that the Greek and Roman engineers knew and practised almost every operation known to the moderns; and that, in particular, the mode of approach by parallels and trenches, was perfectly familiar to them, and in continual use. Unfortunately M. Folard had but a very slender knowledge of the Greek language, and was obliged to study his author through the medium of a translation, executed by a Benedictine monk,[7] who was entirely ignorant of the art of war. M. Guischardt, a great military genius, and a thorough master of the Greek language, has shewn, that the work of Folard contains many capital misrepresentations of the sense of his author, in his account of the most important battles and sieges, and has demonstrated, that the complicated system formed by this writer of the ancient art of war, has no support from any of the ancient authors fairly interpreted.[8]

The extreme difficulty of translating from the works of the ancients, is most discernible to those who are best acquainted with the ancient languages. It is but a small part of the genius and powers of a language which is to be learnt from dictionaries and grammars. There are innumerable niceties, not only of construction and of idiom, but even in the signification of words, which are discovered only by much reading, and critical attention.

A very learned author, and acute critic,[9] has, in treating “of the causes of the differences in languages,” remarked, that a principal difficulty in the art of translating arises from this circumstance, “that there are certain words in every language which but imperfectly correspond to any of the words of other languages.” Of this kind, he observes, are most of the terms relating to morals, to the passions, to matters of sentiment, or to the objects of the reflex and internal senses. Thus the Greek words αρετη, σωφροσυνη, ελεος, have not their sense precisely and perfectly conveyed by the Latin words virtus, temperantia, misericordia, and still less by the English words, virtue, temperance, mercy. The Latin word virtus is frequently synonymous to valour, a sense which it never bears in English. Temperantia, in Latin, implies moderation in every desire, and is defined by Cicero, Moderatio cupiditatum rationi obediens.[10] The English word temperance, in its ordinary use, is limited to moderation in eating and drinking.

Observe

The rule of not too much, by Temperance taught,

In what thou eat’st and drink’st.

Par. Lost, b. 11.

It is true, that Spenser has used the term in its more extensive signification.

He calm’d his wrath with goodly temperance.

But no modern prose-writer authorises such extension of its meaning.

The following passage is quoted by the ingenious writer above mentioned, to shew, in the strongest manner, the extreme difficulty of apprehending the precise import of words of this order in dead languages: “Ægritudo est opinio recens mali præsentis, in quo demitti contrahique animo rectum esse videatur. Ægritudini subjiciuntur angor, mœror, dolor, luctus, ærumna, afflictatio: angor est ægritudo premens, mœror ægritudo flebilis, ærumna ægritudo laboriosa, dolor ægritudo crucians, afflictatio ægritudo cum vexatione corporis, luctus ægritudo ex ejus qui carus fuerat, interitu acerbo.”[11]—“Let any one,” says D’Alembert, “examine this passage with attention, and say honestly, whether, if he had not known of it, he would have had any idea of those nice shades of signification here marked, and whether he would not have been much embarrassed, had he been writing a dictionary, to distinguish, with accuracy, the words ægritudo, mœror, dolor, angor, luctus, ærumna, afflictatio.”

The fragments of Varro, de Lingua Latina, the treatises of Festus and of Nonius, the Origines of Isidorus Hispalensis, the work of Ausonius Popma, de Differentiis Verborum, the Synonymes of the Abbé Girard, and a short essay by Dr. Hill[12] on “the utility of defining synonymous terms,” will furnish numberless instances of those very delicate shades of distinction in the signification of words, which nothing but the most intimate acquaintance with a language can teach; but without the knowledge of which distinctions in the original, and an equal power of discrimination of the corresponding terms of his own language, no translator can be said to possess the primary requisites for the task he undertakes.

But a translator, thoroughly master of the language, and competently acquainted with the subject, may yet fail to give a complete transcript of the ideas of his original author.

M. D’Alembert has favoured the public with some admirable translations from Tacitus; and it must be acknowledged, that he possessed every qualification requisite for the task he undertook. If, in the course of the following observations, I may have occasion to criticise any part of his writings, or those of other authors of equal celebrity, I avail myself of the just sentiment of M. Duclos, “On peut toujours relever les défauts des grands hommes, et peut-être sont ils les seuls qui en soient dignes, et dont la critique soit utile” (Duclos, Pref. de l’Hist. de Louis XI.).

Tacitus, in describing the conduct of Piso upon the death of Germanicus, says: Pisonem interim apud Coum insulam nuncius adsequitur, excessisse Germanicum (Tacit. An. lib. 2, c. 75). This passage is thus translated by M. D’Alembert, “Pison apprend, dans l’isle de Cos, la mort de Germanicus.” In translating this passage, it is evident that M. D’Alembert has not given the complete sense of the original. The sense of Tacitus is, that Piso was overtaken on his voyage homeward, at the Isle of Cos, by a messenger, who informed him that Germanicus was dead. According to the French translator, we understand simply, that when Piso arrived at the Isle of Cos, he was informed that Germanicus was dead. We do not learn from this, that a messenger had followed him on his voyage to bring him this intelligence. The fact was, that Piso purposely lingered on his voyage homeward, expecting this very messenger who here overtook him. But, by M. D’Alembert’s version it might be understood, that Germanicus had died in the island of Cos, and that Piso was informed of his death by the islanders immediately on his arrival. The passage is thus translated, with perfect precision, by D’Ablancourt: “Cependant Pison apprend la nouvelle de cette mort par un courier exprès, qui l’atteignit en l’isle de Cos.”

After Piso had received intelligence of the death of Germanicus, he deliberated whether to proceed on his voyage to Rome, or to return immediately to Syria, and there put himself at the head of the legions. His son advised the former measure; but his friend Domitius Celer argued warmly for his return to the province, and urged, that all difficulties would give way to him, if he had once the command of the army, and had increased his force by new levies. At si teneat exercitum, augeat vires, multa quæ provideri non possunt in melius casura (An. l. 2, c. 77). This M. D’Alembert has translated, “Mais que s’il savoit se rendre redoutable à la tête des troupes, le hazard ameneroit des circonstances heureuses et imprévues.” In the original passage, Domitius advises Piso to adopt two distinct measures; the first, to obtain the command of the army, and the second, to increase his force by new levies. These two distinct measures are confounded together by the translator, nor is the sense of either of them accurately given; for from the expression, “se rendre redoutable à la tête des troupes,” we may understand, that Piso already had the command of the troops, and that all that was requisite, was to render himself formidable in that station, which he might do in various other ways than by increasing the levies.

Tacitus, speaking of the means by which Augustus obtained an absolute ascendency over all ranks in the state, says, Cùm cæteri nobilium, quanto quis servitio promptior, opibus et honoribus extollerentur (An. l. 1, c. 2). This D’Alembert has translated, “Le reste des nobles trouvoit dans les richesses et dans les honneurs la récompense de l’esclavage.” Here the translator has but half expressed the meaning of his author, which is, that “the rest of the nobility were exalted to riches and honours, in proportion as Augustus found in them an aptitude and disposition to servitude:” or, as it is well translated by Mr. Murphy, “The leading men were raised to wealth and honours, in proportion to the alacrity with which they courted the yoke.”[13]

Cicero, in a letter to the Proconsul Philippus says, Quod si Romæ te vidissem, coramque gratias egissem, quod tibi L. Egnatius familiarissimus meus absens, L. Oppius præsens curæ fuisset. This passage is thus translated by Mr. Melmoth: “If I were in Rome, I should have waited upon you for this purpose in person, and in order likewise to make my acknowledgements to you for your favours to my friends Egnatius and Oppius.” Here the sense is not completely rendered, as there is an omission of the meaning of the words absens and præsens.

Where the sense of an author is doubtful, and where more than one meaning can be given to the same passage or expression, (which, by the way, is always a defect in composition), the translator is called upon to exercise his judgement, and to select that meaning which is most consonant to the train of thought in the whole passage, or to the author’s usual mode of thinking, and of expressing himself. To imitate the obscurity or ambiguity of the original, is a fault; and it is still a greater, to give more than one meaning, as D’Alembert has done in the beginning of the Preface of Tacitus. The original runs thus: Urbem Romam a principio Reges habuere. Libertatem et consulatum L. Brutus instituit. Dictaturæ ad tempus sumebantur: neque Decemviralis potestas ultra biennium, neque Tribunorum militum consulare jus diu valuit. The ambiguous sentence is, Dictaturæ ad tempus sumebantur; which may signify either “Dictators were chosen for a limited time,” or “Dictators were chosen on particular occasions or emergencies.” D’Alembert saw this ambiguity; but how did he remove the difficulty? Not by exercising his judgement in determining between the two different meanings, but by giving them both in his translation. “On créoit au besoin des dictateurs passagers.” Now, this double sense it was impossible that Tacitus should ever have intended to convey by the words ad tempus: and between the two meanings of which the words are susceptible, a very little critical judgement was requisite to decide. I know not that ad tempus is ever used in the sense of “for the occasion, or emergency.” If this had been the author’s meaning, he would probably have used either the words ad occasionem, or pro re nata. But even allowing the phrase to be susceptible of this meaning,[14] it is not the meaning which Tacitus chose to give it in this passage. That the author meant that the Dictator was created for a limited time, is, I think, evident from the sentence immediately following, which is connected by the copulative neque with the preceding: Dictaturæ ad tempus sumebantur: neque Decemviralis potestas ultra biennium valuit: “The office of Dictator was instituted for a limited time: nor did the power of the Decemvirs subsist beyond two years.”

M. D’Alembert’s translation of the concluding sentence of this chapter is censurable on the same account. Tacitus says, Sed veteris populi Romani prospera vel adversa, claris scriptoribus memorata sunt; temporibusque Augusti dicendis non defuere decora ingenia, donec gliscente adulatione deterrerentur. Tiberii, Caiique, et Claudii, ac Neronis res, florentibus ipsis, ob metum falsæ: postquam occiderant, recentibus odiis compositæ sunt. Inde consilium mihi pauca de Augusto, et extrema tradere: mox Tiberii principatum, et cetera, sine ira et studio, quorum causas procul habeo. Thus translated by D’Alembert: “Des auteurs illustres ont fait connoitre la gloire et les malheurs de l’ancienne république; l’histoire même d’Auguste a été écrite par de grands génies, jusqu’aux tems ou la necessité de flatter les condamna au silence. La crainte ménagea tant qu’ils vécurent, Tibere, Caius, Claude, et Néron; des qu’ils ne furent plus, la haine toute récente les déchira. J’écrirai donc en peu de mots la fin du regne d’Auguste, puis celui de Tibere, et les suivans; sans fiel et sans bassesse: mon caractere m’en éloigne, et les tems m’en dispensent.” In the last part of this passage, the translator has given two different meanings to the same clause, sine ira et studio, quorum causas procul habeo, to which the author certainly meant to annex only one meaning; and that, as I think, a different one from either of those expressed by the translator. To be clearly understood, I must give my own version of the whole passage. “The history of the ancient republic of Rome, both in its prosperous and in its adverse days, has been recorded by eminent authors: Even the reign of Augustus has been happily delineated, down to those times when the prevailing spirit of adulation put to silence every ingenuous writer. The annals of Tiberius, of Caligula, of Claudius, and of Nero, written while they were alive, were falsified from terror; as were those histories composed after their death, from hatred to their recent memories. For this reason, I have resolved to attempt a short delineation of the latter part of the reign of Augustus; and afterwards that of Tiberius, and of the succeeding princes; conscious of perfect impartiality, as, from the remoteness of the events, I have no motive, either of odium or adulation.” In the last clause of this sentence, I believe I have given the true version of sine ira et studio, quorum causas procul habeo: But if this be the true meaning of the author, M. D’Alembert has given two different meanings to the same sentence, and neither of them the true one: “sans fiel et sans bassesse: mon caractere m’en éloigne, et les tems m’en dispensent.” According to the French translator, the historian pays a compliment first to his own character, and secondly, to the character of the times; both of which he makes the pledges of his impartiality: but it is perfectly clear that Tacitus neither meant the one compliment nor the other; but intended simply to say, that the remoteness of the events which he proposed to record, precluded every motive either of unfavourable prejudice or of adulation.

CHAPTER III

WHETHER IT IS ALLOWABLE FOR A TRANSLATOR TO ADD TO OR RETRENCH THE IDEAS OF THE ORIGINAL.—EXAMPLES OF THE USE AND ABUSE OF THIS LIBERTY

If it is necessary that a translator should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work, it becomes a question, whether it is allowable in any case to add to the ideas of the original what may appear to give greater force or illustration; or to take from them what may seem to weaken them from redundancy. To give a general answer to this question, I would say, that this liberty may be used, but with the greatest caution. It must be further observed, that the superadded idea shall have the most necessary connection with the original thought, and actually increase its force. And, on the other hand, that whenever an idea is cut off by the translator, it must be only such as is an accessory, and not a principal in the clause or sentence. It must likewise be confessedly redundant, so that its retrenchment shall not impair or weaken the original thought. Under these limitations, a translator may exercise his judgement, and assume to himself, in so far, the character of an original writer.

It will be allowed, that in the following instance the translator, the elegant Vincent Bourne, has added a very beautiful idea, which, while it has a most natural connection with the original thought, greatly heightens its energy and tenderness. The two following stanzas are a part of the fine ballad of Colin and Lucy, by Tickell.

To-morrow in the church to wed,

Impatient both prepare;

But know, fond maid, and know, false man,

That Lucy will be there.

There bear my corse, ye comrades, bear,

The bridegroom blithe to meet,

He in his wedding-trim so gay,

I in my winding-sheet.

Thus translated by Bourne:

Jungere cras dextræ dextram properatis uterque,

Et tardè interea creditis ire diem.

Credula quin virgo, juvenis quin perfide, uterque

Scite, quod et pacti Lucia testis erit.

Exangue, oh! illuc, comites, deferte cadaver,

Qua semel, oh! iterum congrediamur, ait;

Vestibus ornatus sponsalibus ille, caputque

Ipsa sepulchrali vincta, pedesque stolâ.

In this translation, which is altogether excellent, it is evident, that there is one most beautiful idea superadded by Bourne, in the line Qua semel, oh! &c.; which wonderfully improves upon the original thought. In the original, the speaker, deeply impressed with the sense of her wrongs, has no other idea than to overwhelm her perjured lover with remorse at the moment of his approaching nuptials. In the translation, amidst this prevalent idea, the speaker all at once gives way to an involuntary burst of tenderness and affection, “Oh, let us meet once more, and for the last time!” Semel, oh! iterum congrediamur, ait.—It was only a man of exquisite feeling, who was capable of thus improving on so fine an original.[15]

Achilles (in the first book of the Iliad), won by the persuasion of Minerva, resolves, though indignantly, to give up Briseis, and Patroclus is commanded to deliver her to the heralds of Agamemnon:

Ως φατο· Πατροκλος δε φιλω επεπεἰθεθ’ εταιρω·

Εκ δ’ ἄγαγε κλισιης Βρισηιδα καλλιπαρηον,

Δῶκε δ’ αγειν· τω δ’ αυτις ιτην παρα νηας Αχαιων·

Ἡ δ’ αεκουσ’ ἁμα τοισι γυνὴ κιεν.

Ilias, A. 345.

“Thus he spoke. But Patroclus was obedient to his dear friend. He brought out the beautiful Briseis from the tent, and gave her to be carried away. They returned to the ships of the Greeks; but she unwillingly went, along with her attendants.”

Patroclus now th’ unwilling Beauty brought;

She in soft sorrows, and in pensive thought,

Past silent, as the heralds held her hand,

And oft look’d back, slow moving o’er the strand.

Pope.

The ideas contained in the three last lines are not indeed expressed in the original, but they are implied in the word αεκουσα; for she who goes unwillingly, will move slowly, and oft look back. The amplification highly improves the effect of the picture. It may be incidentally remarked, that the pause in the third line, Past silent, is admirably characteristic of the slow and hesitating motion which it describes.

In the poetical version of the 137th Psalm, by Arthur Johnston, a composition of classical elegance, there are several examples of ideas superadded by the translator, intimately connected with the original thoughts, and greatly heightening their energy and beauty.

Urbe procul Solymæ, fusi Babylonis ad undas

Flevimus, et lachrymæ fluminis instar erant:

Sacra Sion toties animo totiesque recursans,

Materiem lachrymis præbuit usque novis.

Desuetas saliceta lyras, et muta ferebant

Nablia, servili non temeranda manu.

Qui patria exegit, patriam qui subruit, hostis

Pendula captivos sumere plectra jubet:

Imperat et lætos, mediis in fletibus, hymnos,

Quosque Sion cecinit, nunc taciturna! modos.

Ergone pacta Deo peregrinæ barbita genti

Fas erit, et sacras prostituisse lyras?

Ante meo, Solyme, quam tu de pectore cedas,

Nesciat Hebræam tangere dextra chelyn.

Te nisi tollat ovans unam super omnia, lingua

Faucibus hærescat sidere tacta meis.

Ne tibi noxa recens, scelerum Deus ultor! Idumes

Excidat, et Solymis perniciosa dies:

Vertite, clamabant, fundo jam vertite templum,

Tectaque montanis jam habitanda feris.

Te quoque pœna manet, Babylon! quibus astra lacessis

Culmina mox fient, quod premis, æqua solo:

Felicem, qui clade pari data damna rependet,

Et feret ultrices in tua tecta faces!

Felicem, quisquis scopulis illidet acutis

Dulcia materno pignora rapta sinu!

I pass over the superadded idea in the second line, lachrymæ fluminis instar erant, because, bordering on the hyperbole, it derogates, in some degree, from the chaste simplicity of the original. To the simple fact, “We hanged our harps on the willows in the midst thereof,” which is most poetically conveyed by Desuetas saliceta lyras, et muta ferebant nablia, is superadded all the force of sentiment in that beautiful expression, which so strongly paints the mixed emotions of a proud mind under the influence of poignant grief, heightened by shame, servili non temeranda manu. So likewise in the following stanza there is the noblest improvement of the sense of the original.

Imperat et lætos, mediis in fletibus, hymnos,

Quosque Sion cecinit, nunc taciturna! modos.

The reflection on the melancholy silence that now reigned on that sacred hill, “once vocal with their songs,” is an additional thought, the force of which is better felt than it can be conveyed by words.

An ordinary translator sinks under the energy of his original: the man of genius frequently rises above it. Horace, arraigning the abuse of riches, makes the plain and honest Ofellus thus remonstrate with a wealthy Epicure (Sat. 2, b. 2).

Cur eget indignus quisquam te divite?

A question to the energy of which it was not easy to add, but which has received the most spirited improvement from Mr. Pope:

How dar’st thou let one worthy man be poor?

An improvement is sometimes very happily made, by substituting figure and metaphor to simple sentiment; as in the following example, from Mr. Mason’s excellent translation of Du Fresnoy’s Art of Painting. In the original, the poet, treating of the merits of the antique statues, says:

queis posterior nil protulit ætas

Condignum, et non inferius longè, arte modoque.

This is a simple fact, in the perusal of which the reader is struck with nothing else but the truth of the assertion. Mark how in the translation the same truth is conveyed in one of the finest figures of poetry:

with reluctant gaze

To these the genius of succeeding days

Looks dazzled up, and, as their glories spread,

Hides in his mantle his diminish’d head.

In the two following lines, Horace inculcates a striking moral truth; but the figure in which it is conveyed has nothing of dignity:

Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas

Regumque turres.

Malherbe has given to the same sentiment a high portion of tenderness, and even sublimity:

Le pauvre en sa cabane, où le chaume le couvre,

Est sujet à ses loix;

Et la garde qui veille aux barrieres du Louvre,

N’en défend pas nos rois.[16]

Cicero writes thus to Trebatius, Ep. ad fam. lib. 7, ep. 17: Tanquam enim syngrapham ad Imperatorem, non epistolam attulisses, sic pecuniâ ablatâ domum redire properabas: nec tibi in mentem veniebat, eos ipsos qui cum syngraphis venissent Alexandriam, nullum adhuc nummum auferre potuisse. The passage is thus translated by Melmoth, b. 2, l. 12: “One would have imagined indeed, you had carried a bill of exchange upon Cæsar, instead of a letter of recommendation: As you seemed to think you had nothing more to do, than to receive your money, and to hasten home again. But money, my friend, is not so easily acquired; and I could name some of our acquaintance, who have been obliged to travel as far as Alexandria in pursuit of it, without having yet been able to obtain even their just demands.” The expressions, “money, my friend, is not so easily acquired,” and “I could name some of our acquaintance,” are not to be found in the original; but they have an obvious connection with the ideas of the original: they increase their force, while, at the same time, they give ease and spirit to the whole passage.

I question much if a licence so unbounded as the following is justifiable, on the principle of giving either ease or spirit to the original.

In Lucian’s Dialogue Timon, Gnathonides, after being beaten by Timon, says to him,

Αει φιλοσκῴμμων συ γε· αλλα ποῦ το συμποσιον; ὡς καινον τι σοι ασμα των νεοδιδακτων διθυραμβων ἥκω κομιζων.

“You were always fond of a joke—but where is the banquet? for I have brought you a new dithyrambic song, which I have lately learned.”

In Dryden’s Lucian, “translated by several eminent hands,” this passage is thus translated: “Ah! Lord, Sir, I see you keep up your old merry humour still; you love dearly to rally and break a jest. Well, but have you got a noble supper for us, and plenty of delicious inspiring claret? Hark ye, Timon, I’ve got a virgin-song for ye, just new composed, and smells of the gamut: ’Twill make your heart dance within you, old boy. A very pretty she-player, I vow to Gad, that I have an interest in, taught it me this morning.”

There is both ease and spirit in this translation; but the licence which the translator has assumed, of superadding to the ideas of the original, is beyond all bounds.

An equal degree of judgement is requisite when the translator assumes the liberty of retrenching the ideas of the original.

After the fatal horse had been admitted within the walls of Troy, Virgil thus describes the coming on of that night which was to witness the destruction of the city:

Vertitur interea cœlum, et ruit oceano nox,

Involvens umbrâ magnâ terramque polumque,

Myrmidonumque dolos.

The principal effect attributed to the night in this description, and certainly the most interesting, is its concealment of the treachery of the Greeks. Add to this, the beauty which the picture acquires from this association of natural with moral effects. How inexcusable then must Mr. Dryden appear, who, in his translation, has suppressed the Myrmidonumque dolos altogether?

Mean time the rapid heav’ns roll’d down the light,

And on the shaded ocean rush’d the night:

Our men secure, &c.

Ogilby, with less of the spirit of poetry, has done more justice to the original:

Meanwhile night rose from sea, whose spreading shade

Hides heaven and earth, and plots the Grecians laid.

Mr. Pope, in his translation of the Iliad, has, in the parting scene between Hector and Andromache (vi. 466), omitted a particular respecting the dress of the nurse, which he thought an impropriety in the picture. Homer says,

Αψ δ’ ὁ παϊς προς κολπον ἐϋζωνοιο τιθηνης

Εκλινθη ἰαχων.

“The boy crying, threw himself back into the arms of his nurse, whose waist was elegantly girt.” Mr. Pope, who has suppressed the epithet descriptive of the waist, has incurred on that account the censure of Mr. Melmoth, who says, “He has not touched the picture with that delicacy of pencil which graces the original, as he has entirely lost the beauty of one of the figures.—Though the hero and his son were designed to draw our principal attention, Homer intended likewise that we should cast a glance towards the nurse” (Fitzosborne’s Letters, l. 43). If this was Homer’s intention, he has, in my opinion, shewn less good taste in this instance than his translator, who has, I think with much propriety, left out the compliment to the nurse’s waist altogether. And this liberty of the translator was perfectly allowable; for Homer’s epithets are often nothing more than mere expletives, or additional designations of his persons. They are always, it is true, significant of some principal attribute of the person; but they are often applied by the poet in circumstances where the mention of that attribute is quite preposterous. It would shew very little judgement in a translator, who should honour Patroclus with the epithet of godlike, while he is blowing the fire to roast an ox; or bestow on Agamemnon the designation of King of many nations, while he is helping Ajax to a large piece of the chine.

It were to be wished that Mr. Melmoth, who is certainly one of the best of the English translators, had always been equally scrupulous in retrenching the ideas of his author. Cicero thus superscribes one of his letters: M. T. C. Terentiæ, et Pater suavissimæ filiæ Tulliolæ, Cicero matri et sorori S. D. (Ep. Fam. l. 14, ep. 18). And another in this manner: Tullius Terentiæ, et Pater Tulliolæ, duabus animis suis, et Cicero Matri optimæ, suavissimæ sorori (lib. 14, ep. 14). Why are these addresses entirely sunk in the translation, and a naked title poorly substituted for them, “To Terentia and Tullia,” and “To the same”? The addresses to these letters give them their highest value, as they mark the warmth of the author’s heart, and the strength of his conjugal and paternal affections.

In one of Pliny’s Epistles, speaking of Regulus, he says, Ut ipse mihi dixerit quum consuleret, quam citò sestertium sexcenties impleturus esset, invenisse se exta duplicata, quibus portendi millies et ducenties habiturum (Plin. Ep. l. 2, ep. 20). Thus translated by Melmoth, “That he once told me, upon consulting the omens, to know how soon he should be worth sixty millions of sesterces, he found them so favourable to him as to portend that he should possess double that sum.” Here a material part of the original idea is omitted; no less than that very circumstance upon which the omen turned, viz., that the entrails of the victim were double.

Analogous to this liberty of adding to or retrenching from the ideas of the original, is the liberty which a translator may take of correcting what appears to him a careless or inaccurate expression of the original, where that inaccuracy seems materially to affect the sense. Tacitus says, when Tiberius was entreated to take upon him the government of the empire, Ille variè disserebat, de magnitudine imperii, suâ modestiâ (An. l. 1, c. 11). Here the word modestiâ is improperly applied. The author could not mean to say, that Tiberius discoursed to the people about his own modesty. He wished that his discourse should seem to proceed from modesty; but he did not talk to them about his modesty. D’Alembert saw this impropriety, and he has therefore well translated the passage: “Il répondit par des discours généraux sur son peu de talent, et sur la grandeur de l’empire.”

A similar impropriety, not indeed affecting the sense, but offending against the dignity of the narrative, occurs in that passage where Tacitus relates, that Augustus, in the decline of life, after the death of Drusus, appointed his son Germanicus to the command of eight legions on the Rhine, At, hercule, Germanicum Druso ortum octo apud Rhenum legionibus imposuit (An. l. 1, c. 3). There was no occasion here for the historian swearing; and though, to render the passage with strict fidelity, an English translator must have said, “Augustus, Egad, gave Germanicus the son of Drusus the command of eight legions on the Rhine,” we cannot hesitate to say, that the simple fact is better announced without such embellishment.

CHAPTER IV

OF THE FREEDOM ALLOWED IN POETICAL TRANSLATION.—PROGRESS OF POETICAL TRANSLATION IN ENGLAND.—B. JONSON, HOLIDAY, SANDYS, FANSHAW, DRYDEN.—ROSCOMMON’S ESSAY ON TRANSLATED VERSE.—POPE’S HOMER.

In the preceding chapter, in treating of the liberty assumed by translators, of adding to, or retrenching from the ideas of the original, several examples have been given, where that liberty has been assumed with propriety both in prose composition and in poetry. In the latter, it is more peculiarly allowable. “I conceive it,” says Sir John Denham, “a vulgar error in translating poets, to affect being fidus interpres. Let that care be with them who deal in matters of fact or matters of faith; but whosoever aims at it in poetry, as he attempts what is not required, so shall he never perform what he attempts; for it is not his business alone to translate language into language, but poesie into poesie; and poesie is of so subtle a spirit, that in pouring out of one language into another, it will all evaporate; and if a new spirit is not added in the transfusion, there will remain nothing but a caput mortuum” (Denham’s Preface to the second book of Virgil’s Æneid).

In poetical translation, the English writers of the 16th, and the greatest part of the 17th century, seem to have had no other care than (in Denham’s phrase) to translate language into language, and to have placed their whole merit in presenting a literal and servile transcript of their original.

Ben Jonson, in his translation of Horace’s Art of Poetry, has paid no attention to the judicious precept of the very poem he was translating:

Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere, fidus

Interpres.

Witness the following specimens, which will strongly illustrate Denham’s judicious observations.

Mortalia facta peribunt;

Nedum sermonum stet honos et gratia vivax.

Multa renascentur quæ jam cecidere, cadentque

Quæ nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus,

Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi.

De Art. Poet.

All mortal deeds

Shall perish; so far off it is the state

Or grace of speech should hope a lasting date.

Much phrase that now is dead shall be reviv’d,

And much shall die that now is nobly liv’d,

If custom please, at whose disposing will

The power and rule of speaking resteth still.

B. Jonson.

Interdum tamen et vocem Comœdia tollit,

Iratusque Chremes tumido delitigat ore,

Et Tragicus plerumque dolet sermone pedestri.

Telephus et Peleus, cùm pauper et exul uterque,

Projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba,

Si curat cor spectantis tetigisse querela.

De Art. Poet.

Yet sometime doth the Comedy excite,

Her voice, and angry Chremes chafes outright,

With swelling throat, and oft the tragic wight

Complains in humble phrase. Both Telephus

And Peleus, if they seek to heart-strike us,

That are spectators, with their misery,

When they are poor and banish’d must throw by

Their bombard-phrase, and foot-and-half-foot words.

B. Jonson.

So, in B. Jonson’s translations from the Odes and Epodes of Horace, besides the most servile adherence to the words, even the measure of the original is imitated.

Non me Lucrina juverint conchylia,

Magisve rhombus, aut scari,

Si quos Eois intonata fluctibus

Hyems ad hoc vertat mare:

Non Afra avis descendat in ventrem meum,

Non attagen Ionicus

Jucundior, quam lecta de pinguissimis

Oliva ramis arborum;

Aut herba lapathi prata amantis, et gravi

Malvæ salubres corpori.

Hor. Epod. 2.

Not Lucrine oysters I could then more prize,

Nor turbot, nor bright golden eyes;

If with east floods the winter troubled much

Into our seas send any such:

The Ionian god-wit, nor the ginny-hen

Could not go down my belly then

More sweet than olives that new-gathered be,

From fattest branches of the tree,

Or the herb sorrel that loves meadows still,

Or mallows loosing bodies ill.

B. Jonson.

Of the same character for rigid fidelity, is the translation of Juvenal by Holiday, a writer of great learning, and even of critical acuteness, as the excellent commentary on his author fully shews.

Omnibus in terris quæ sunt a Gadibus usque

Auroram et Gangem, pauci dignoscere possunt

Vera bona, atque illis multum diversa, remotâ

Erroris nebulâ. Quid enim ratione timemus,

Aut cupimus? quid tam dextro pede concipis, ut te

Conatûs non pœniteat, votique peracti.

Evertêre domos totas optantibus ipsis

Dii faciles.

Juv. Sat. 10.

In all the world which between Cadiz lies

And eastern Ganges, few there are so wise

To know true good from feign’d, without all mist

Of Error. For by Reason’s rule what is’t

We fear or wish? What is’t we e’er begun

With foot so right, but we dislik’d it done?

Whole houses th’ easie gods have overthrown

At their fond prayers that did the houses own.

Holiday’s Juvenal.

There were, however, even in that age, some writers who manifested a better taste in poetical translation. May, in his translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia, and Sandys, in his Metamorphoses of Ovid, while they strictly adhered to the sense of their authors, and generally rendered line for line, have given to their versions both an ease of expression and a harmony of numbers, which approach them very near to original composition. The reason is, they have disdained to confine themselves to a literal interpretation, but have everywhere adapted their expression to the idiom of the language in which they wrote.

The following passage will give no unfavourable idea of the style and manner of May. In the ninth book of the Pharsalia, Cæsar, when in Asia, is led from curiosity to visit the plain of Troy:

Here fruitless trees, old oaks with putrefy’d

And sapless roots, the Trojan houses hide,

And temples of their Gods: all Troy’s o’erspread

With bushes thick, her ruines ruined.

He sees the bridall grove Anchises lodg’d;

Hesione’s rock; the cave where Paris judg’d;

Where nymph Oenone play’d; the place so fam’d

For Ganymedes’ rape; each stone is nam’d.

A little gliding stream, which Xanthus was,

Unknown he past, and in the lofty grass

Securely trode; a Phrygian straight forbid

Him tread on Hector’s dust! (with ruins hid,

The stone retain’d no sacred memory.)

Respect you not great Hector’s tomb, quoth he!

—O great and sacred work of poesy,

That free’st from fate, and giv’st eternity

To mortal wights! But, Cæsar, envy not

Their living names, if Roman Muses aught

May promise thee, while Homer’s honoured

By future times, shall thou, and I, be read:

No age shall us with darke oblivion staine,

But our Pharsalia ever shall remain.

May’s Lucan, b. 9.

Jam silvæ steriles, et putres robore trunci

Assaraci pressere domos, et templa deorum

Jam lassa radice tenent; ac tota teguntur

Pergama dumetis; etiam periere ruinæ.

Aspicit Hesiones scopulos, silvasque latentes

Anchisæ thalamos; quo judex sederit antro;

Unde puer raptus cœlo; quo vertice Nais

Luserit Oenone: nullum est sine nomine saxum.

Inscius in sicco serpentem pulvere rivum

Transierat, qui Xanthus erat; securus in alto

Gramine ponebat gressus: Phryx incola manes

Hectoreos calcare vetat: discussa jacebant

Saxa, nec ullius faciem servantia sacri:

Hectoreas, monstrator ait, non respicis aras?

O sacer, et magnus vatum labor; omnia fato

Eripis, et populis donas mortalibus ævum!

Invidia sacræ, Cæsar, ne tangere famæ:

Nam siquid Latiis fas est promittere Musis,

Quantum Smyrnei durabunt vatis honores,

Venturi me teque legent: Pharsalia nostra

Vivet, et a nullo tenebris damnabitur ævo.

Pharsal. l. 9.

Independently of the excellence of the above translation, in completely conveying the sense, the force, and spirit of the original, it possesses one beauty which the more modern English poets have entirely neglected, or rather purposely banished from their versification in rhyme; I mean the varied harmony of the measure, which arises from changing the place of the pauses. In the modern heroic rhyme, the pause is almost invariably found at the end of a couplet. In the older poetry, the sense is continued from one couplet to another, and closes in various parts of the line, according to the poet’s choice, and the completion of his meaning:

A little gliding stream, which Xanthus was,

Unknown he past—and in the lofty grass

Securely trode—a Phrygian straight forbid

Him tread on Hector’s dust—with ruins hid,

The stone retain’d no sacred memory.

He must be greatly deficient in a musical ear, who does not prefer the varied harmony of the above lines to the uniform return of sound, and chiming measure of the following:

Here all that does of Xanthus stream remain,

Creeps a small brook along the dusty plain.

While careless and securely on they pass,

The Phrygian guide forbids to press the grass;

This place, he said, for ever sacred keep,

For here the sacred bones of Hector sleep:

Then warns him to observe, where rudely cast,

Disjointed stones lay broken and defac’d.

Rowe’s Lucan.

Yet the Pharsalia by Rowe is, on the whole, one of the best of the modern translations of the classics. Though sometimes diffuse and paraphrastical, it is in general faithful to the sense of the original; the language is animated, the verse correct and melodious; and when we consider the extent of the work, it is not unjustly characterised by Dr. Johnson, as “one of the greatest productions of English poetry.”

Of similar character to the versification of May, though sometimes more harsh in its structure, is the poetry of Sandys:

There’s no Alcyone! none, none! she died

Together with her Ceÿx. Silent be

All sounds of comfort. These, these eyes did see

My shipwrack’t Lord. I knew him; and my hands

Thrust forth t’ have held him: but no mortal bands

Could force his stay. A ghost! yet manifest,

My husband’s ghost: which, Oh, but ill express’d

His forme and beautie, late divinely rare!

Now pale and naked, with yet dropping haire:

Here stood the miserable! in this place:

Here, here! (and sought his aërie steps to trace).

Sandys’ Ovid, b. 11.

Nulla est Alcyone, nulla est, ait: occidit una

Cum Ceyce suo; solantia tollite verba:

Naufragus interiit; vidi agnovique, manusque

Ad discedentem, cupiens retinere, tetendi.

Umbra fuit: sed et umbra tamen manifesta, virique

Vera mei: non ille quidem, si quæris, habebat

Assuetos vultus, nec quo prius ore nitebat.

Pallentem, nudumque, et adhuc humente capillo,

Infelix vidi: stetit hoc miserabilis ipso

Ecce loco: (et quærit vestigia siqua supersint).

Metam. l. 11.

In the above example, the solantia tollite verba is translated with peculiar felicity, “Silent be all sounds of comfort;” as are these words, Nec quo prius ore nitebat, “Which, oh! but ill express’d his forme and beautie.” “No mortal bands could force his stay,” has no strictly corresponding sentiment in the original. It is a happy amplification; which shews that Sandys knew what freedom was allowed to a poetical translator, and could avail himself of it.

From the time of Sandys, who published his translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid in 1626, there does not appear to have been much improvement in the art of translating poetry till the age of Dryden:[17] for though Sir John Denham has thought proper to pay a high compliment to Fanshaw on his translation of the Pastor Fido, terming him the inventor of “a new and nobler way”[18] of translation, we find nothing in that performance which should intitle it to more praise than the Metamorphoses by Sandys, and the Pharsalia by May.[19]

But it was to Dryden that poetical translation owed a complete emancipation from her fetters; and exulting in her new liberty, the danger now was, that she should run into the extreme of licentiousness. The followers of Dryden saw nothing so much to be emulated in his translations as the ease of his poetry: Fidelity was but a secondary object, and translation for a while was considered as synonymous with paraphrase. A judicious spirit of criticism was now wanting to prescribe bounds to this increasing licence, and to determine to what precise degree a poetical translator might assume to himself the character of an original writer. In that design, Roscommon wrote his Essay on Translated Verse; in which, in general, he has shewn great critical judgement; but proceeding, as all reformers, with rigour, he has, amidst many excellent precepts on the subject, laid down one rule, which every true poet (and such only should attempt to translate a poet) must consider as a very prejudicial restraint. After judiciously recommending to the translator, first to possess himself of the sense and meaning of his author, and then to imitate his manner and style, he thus prescribes a general rule,

Your author always will the best advise;

Fall when he falls, and when he rises, rise.

Far from adopting the former part of this maxim, I conceive it to be the duty of a poetical translator, never to suffer his original to fall. He must maintain with him a perpetual contest of genius; he must attend him in his highest flights, and soar, if he can, beyond him: and when he perceives, at any time, a diminution of his powers, when he sees a drooping wing, he must raise him on his own pinions.[20] Homer has been judged by the best critics to fall at times beneath himself, and to offend, by introducing low images and puerile allusions. Yet how admirably is this defect veiled over, or altogether removed, by his translator Pope. In the beginning of the eighth book of the Iliad, Jupiter is introduced in great majesty, calling a council of the gods, and giving them a solemn charge to observe a strict neutrality between the Greeks and Trojans:

Ἠὼς μεν κροκόπεπλος ἐκιδνατο πᾶσαν ἐπ’ αίαν·

Ζευς δε θεῶν ἀγορην ποιησατο τερπικέραυνος,

Ἀκροτάτη κορυφη πολυδειραδος Οὐλυμποιο·

Αὐτὸς δέ σφ’ ἀγόρευε, θεοὶ δ’ ἅμα πάντες ἄκουον·

“Aurora with her saffron robe had spread returning light upon the world, when Jove delighting-in-thunder summoned a council of the gods upon the highest point of the many-headed Olympus; and while he thus harangued, all the immortals listened with deep attention.” This is a very solemn opening; but the expectation of the reader is miserably disappointed by the harangue itself, of which I shall give a literal translation.

Κέκλυτέ μευ, πάντες τε θεοὶ, πᾶσαὶ τε θέαιναι,

Ὄφρ’ εἴπω, τά με θυμὸς ἐνὶ στήθεσσι κελεύει·

Μήτε τις οὖν θήλεια θεὸς τόγε, μήτε τις ἄρσην

Πειράτω διακέρσαι ἐμὸν ἔπος· ἀλλ’ ἅμα πάντες

Αἰνεῖτ’, ὄφρα τάχιστα τελευτήσω τάδε ἔργα.

Ον δ’ ἂν ἐγὼν ἀπάνευθε θεῶν ἐθέλοντα νοήσω

Ἐλθόντ, ἢ Τρώεσσιν ἀρηγέμεν, ἢ Δαναοῖσι,

Πληγεὶς οὐ κατα κόσμον ἐλευσεται Οὔλυμπόνδε·

Η μιν ἑλὼν ῥίψω ἐς Τάρταρον ἠερόεντα,

Τῆλε μάλ’, ἦχι βάθιστον ὑπο χθονός ἐστι βέρεθρον,

Ἔνθα σιδήρειαί τε πύλαι καὶ χάλκεος οὐδὸς,

Τόσσον ἔνερθ’ Ἀΐδεω, ὅσον οὐρανός ἐστ’ ἀπὸ γαίης·

Γνώσετ’ ἔπειθ’, ὅσον εἰμὶ θεῶν κάρτιστος ἁπάντων.

Εἴ δ’ ἄγε, πειρήσασθε θεοὶ, ἵνα εἴδετε πάντες,

Σειρην χρυσείην ἐξ οὐρανόθεν κρεμάσαντες·

Πάντες δ’ ἐξάπτεσθε θεοὶ, πᾶσαί τε θέαιναι·

Ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἂν ἐρύσαιτ’ ἐξ οὐρανόθεν πεδίονδε

Ζῆν’ ὕπατον μήστωρ’ οὐδ’ εἰ μάλα πολλὰ κάμοιτε.

Ἀλλ’ ὅτε δὴ καὶ ἐγὼ πρόφρων ἐθέλοιμι ἐρύσσαι,

Αὐτῆ κεν γάιῃ ἐρύσαιμ’, αὐτῆ τε θαλάσσῃ·

Σειρην μέν κεν ἔπειτα περὶ ῥίον Οὐλύμποιο

Δησαίμην· τὰ δέ κ’ αὖτε μετήορα πάντα γένοιτο·

Τόσσον ἐγώ περί τ’ εἰμὶ θεῶν, περί τ’ εἴμ’ ἀνθρώπων.

“Hear me, all ye gods and goddesses, whilst I declare to you the dictates of my inmost heart. Let neither male nor female of the gods attempt to controvert what I shall say; but let all submissively assent, that I may speedily accomplish my undertakings: for whoever of you shall be found withdrawing to give aid either to the Trojans or Greeks, shall return to Olympus marked with dishonourable wounds; or else I will seize him and hurl him down to gloomy Tartarus, where there is a deep dungeon under the earth, with gates of iron, and a threshold of brass, as far below hell, as the earth is below the heavens. Then he will know how much stronger I am than all the other gods. But come now, and make trial, that ye may all be convinced. Suspend a golden chain from heaven, and hang all by one end of it, with your whole weight, gods and goddesses together: you will never pull down from the heaven to the earth, Jupiter, the supreme counsellor, though you should strain with your utmost force. But when I chuse to pull, I will raise you all, with the earth and sea together, and fastening the chain to the top of Olympus, will keep you all suspended at it. So much am I superior both to gods and men.”

It must be owned, that this speech is far beneath the dignity of the Thunderer; that the braggart vaunting in the beginning of it is nauseous; and that a mean and ludicrous picture is presented, by the whole group of gods and goddesses pulling at one end of a chain, and Jupiter at the other. To veil these defects in a translation was difficult;[21] but to give any degree of dignity to this speech required certainly most uncommon powers. Yet I am much mistaken, if Mr. Pope has not done so. I shall take the passage from the beginning:

Aurora now, fair daughter of the dawn,

Sprinkled with rosy light the dewy lawn,

When Jove conven’d the senate of the skies,

Where high Olympus’ cloudy tops arise.

The fire of Gods his awful silence broke,

The heavens attentive, trembled as he spoke.

Celestial states, immortal gods! give ear;

Hear our decree, and reverence what ye hear;

The fix’d decree, which not all heaven can move;

Thou, fate! fulfil it; and, ye powers! approve!

What God but enters yon forbidden field,

Who yields assistance, or but wills to yield,

Back to the skies with shame he shall be driven,

Gash’d with dishonest wounds, the scorn of Heaven;

Or far, oh far, from steep Olympus thrown,

Low in the dark Tartarean gulph shall groan;

With burning chains fix’d to the brazen floors,

And lock’d by hell’s inexorable doors;

As deep beneath th’ infernal centre hurl’d,

As from that centre to th’ ethereal world.

Let him who tempts me dread those dire abodes;

And know th’ Almighty is the God of gods.

League all your forces then, ye powr’s above,

Join all, and try th’ omnipotence of Jove:

Let down our golden everlasting chain,

Whose strong embrace holds Heav’n, and Earth, and Main:

Strive all, of mortal and immortal birth,

To drag, by this, the Thunderer down to earth:

Ye strive in vain! If I but stretch this hand,

I heave the gods, the ocean, and the land;

I fix the chain to great Olympus’ height,

And the vast world hangs trembling in my sight!

For such I reign, unbounded and above;

And such are men and gods, compar’d to Jove![22]

It would be endless to point out all the instances in which Mr. Pope has improved both upon the thought and expression of his original. We find frequently in Homer, amidst the most striking beauties, some circumstances introduced which diminish the merit of the thought or of the description. In such instances, the good taste of the translator invariably covers the defect of the original, and often converts it into an additional beauty. Thus, in the simile in the beginning of the third book, there is one circumstance which offends against good taste.

Ευτ’ ορεος κορυφῆσι Νοτος κατεχευεν ὀμιχλην,

Ποιμεσιν ουτὶ φιλην, κλεπτη δε τε νυκτος αμεινω,

Τὸσσον τις τ’ επιλευσσει, ὅσον τ’ επι λααν ἵησιν·

Ὡς ἂρα των ὓπο ποσσι κονισσαλος ωρνυτ’ αελλης

Ερχομενων· μαλα δ’ ώκα διεπρησσον πεδίοιο.

“As when the south wind pours a thick cloud upon the tops of the mountains, whose shade is unpleasant to the shepherds, but more commodious to the thief than the night itself, and when the gloom is so intense, that one cannot see farther than he can throw a stone: So rose the dust under the feet of the Greeks marching silently to battle.”

With what superior taste has the translator heightened this simile, and exchanged the offending circumstance for a beauty. The fault is in the third line; τοσσον τις τ’ επιλευσσει, &c., which is a mean idea, compared with that which Mr. Pope has substituted in its stead:

Thus from his shaggy wings when Eurus sheds

A night of vapours round the mountain-heads,

Swift-gliding mists the dusky fields invade,

To thieves more grateful than the midnight shade;

While scarce the swains their feeding flocks survey,

Lost and confus’d amidst the thicken’d day:

So wrapt in gath’ring dust the Grecian train,

A moving cloud, swept on and hid the plain.

In the ninth book of the Iliad, where Phœnix reminds Achilles of the care he had taken of him while an infant, one circumstance extremely mean, and even disgusting, is found in the original.

οτε δη σ’ επ εμοισιν εγα γουνασσι καθισας,

Οψου τ’ ασαιμι προταμων, και οινον επισχων.

Πολλακι μοι κατεδευσας επι στηθεσσι χιτωνα,

Οινου αποβλυζων εν νηπιεη αλεγεινῆ.

“When I placed you before my knees, I filled you full with meat, and gave you wine, which you often vomited upon my bosom, and stained my clothes, in your troublesome infancy.” The English reader certainly feels an obligation to the translator for sinking altogether this nauseous image, which, instead of heightening the picture, greatly debases it:

Thy infant breast a like affection show’d,

Still in my arms, an ever pleasing load;

Or at my knee, by Phœnix would’st thou stand,

No food was grateful but from Phœnix hand:

I pass my watchings o’er thy helpless years,

The tender labours, the compliant cares.[23]

Pope.

But even the highest beauties of the original receive additional lustre from this admirable translator.

A striking example of this kind has been remarked by Mr. Melmoth.[24] It is the translation of that picture in the end of the eighth book of the Iliad, which Eustathius esteemed the finest night-piece that could be found in poetry:

Ὡς δ’ ὁτ εν ουρανῶ αστρα φαεινην αμφι σεληνην,

Φαίνετ’ ἀριπρεπέα, ὅτε τ’ ἔπλετο νήνεμος αἰθὴρ,

Ἔκ τ’ ἔφανον πᾶσαι σκοπιαί, καὶ πρώονες ἄκροι,

Καὶ νάπαι· οὐρανόθεν δ’ ἄρ’ ὑπεῤῥάγη ἄσπετος αἰθὴρ,

Πάντα δέ τ’ εἴδεται ἄστρα· γέγηθε δέ τε φρένα ποιμήν·

“As when the resplendent moon appears in the serene canopy of the heavens, surrounded with beautiful stars, when every breath of air is hush’d, when the high watch-towers, the hills, and woods, are distinctly seen; when the sky appears to open to the sight in all its boundless extent; and when the shepherd’s heart is delighted within him.” How nobly is this picture raised and improved by Mr. Pope!

As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,

O’er heav’n’s clear azure spreads her sacred light:

When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,

And not a cloud o’ercasts the solemn scene;

Around her throne the vivid planets roll,

And stars unnumber’d gild the glowing pole:

O’er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,

And tip with silver every mountain’s head:

Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,

A flood of glory bursts from all the skies:

The conscious swains rejoicing in the sight,

Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.[25]

These passages from Pope’s Homer afford examples of a translator’s improvement of his original, by a happy amplification and embellishment of his imagery, or by the judicious correction of defects; but to fix the precise degree to which this amplification, this embellishment, and this liberty of correction, may extend, requires a great exertion of judgement. It may be useful to remark some instances of the want of this judgement.

It is always a fault when the translator adds to the sentiment of the original author, what does not strictly accord with his characteristic mode of thinking, or expressing himself.

Pone sub curru nimium propinqui

Solis, in terrâ domibus negatâ;

Dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo,

Dulce loquentem.

Hor. Od. 22, l. 1.

Thus translated by Roscommon:

The burning zone, the frozen isles,

Shall hear me sing of Celia’s smiles;

All cold, but in her breast, I will despise,

And dare all heat, but that in Celia’s eyes.

The witty ideas in the two last lines are foreign to the original; and the addition of these is quite unjustifiable, as they belong to a quaint species of wit, of which the writings of Horace afford no example.

Equally faulty, therefore, is Cowley’s translation of a passage in the Ode to Pyrrha:

Qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem

Sperat, nescius auræ fallacis.

He sees thee gentle, fair, and gay,

And trusts the faithless April of thy May.

As is the same author’s version of that passage, which is characterised by its beautiful simplicity.

somnus agrestium

Lenis virorum non humiles domos

Fastidit, umbrosamque ripam,

Non zephyris agitata Tempe.

Hor. 3, 1.

Sleep is a god, too proud to wait on palaces,

And yet so humble too, as not to scorn

The meanest country cottages;

This poppy grows among the corn.

The Halcyon Sleep will never build his nest

In any stormy breast:

’Tis not enough that he does find

Clouds and darkness in their mind;

Darkness but half his work will do,

’Tis not enough; he must find quiet too.

Here is a profusion of wit, and poetic imagery; but the whole is quite opposite to the character of the original.

Congreve is guilty of a similar impropriety in translating

Vides, ut alta stet nive candidum

Soracte: nec jam sustineant onus

Sylvæ laborantes.

Hor. i. 9.

Bless me, ’tis cold! how chill the air!

How naked does the world appear!

Behold the mountain tops around,

As if with fur of ermine crown’d:

And lo! how by degrees,

The universal mantle hides the trees,

In hoary flakes which downward fly,

As if it were the autumn of the sky,

Whose fall of leaf would theirs supply:

Trembling the groves sustain the weight, and bow,

Like aged limbs which feebly go,

Beneath a venerable head of snow.

No author of real genius is more censurable on this score than Dryden.

Obsidere alii telis angusta viarum

Oppositi: stat ferri acies mucrone corusco

Stricta parata neci.

Æneis, ii. 322.

Thus translated by Dryden:

To several posts their parties they divide,

Some block the narrow streets, some scour the wide:

The bold they kill, th’ unwary they surprise;

Who fights finds death, and death finds him who flies.

Of these four lines, there are scarcely more than four words which are warranted by the original. “Some block the narrow streets.” Even this is a faulty translation of Obsidere alii telis angusta viarum; but it fails on the score of mutilation, not redundancy. The rest of the ideas which compose these four lines, are the original property of the translator; and the antithetical witticism in the concluding line, is far beneath the chaste simplicity of Virgil.

The same author, Virgil, in describing a pestilential disorder among the cattle, gives the following beautiful picture, which, as an ingenious writer justly remarks,[26] has every excellence that can belong to descriptive poetry:

Ecce autem duro fumans sub vomere taurus

Concidit, et mixtum spumis vomit ore cruorem,

Extremosque ciet gemitus. It tristis arator,

Mœrentem abjungens fraterna morte juvencum,

Atque opere in medio defixa relinquit aratra.

Which Mr. Dryden thus translates:

The steer who to the yoke was bred to bow,

(Studious of tillage and the crooked plow),

Falls down and dies; and dying, spews a flood

Of foamy madness, mixed with clotted blood.

The clown, who cursing Providence repines,

His mournful fellow from the team disjoins;

With many a groan forsakes his fruitless care,

And in the unfinished furrow leaves the share.

“I would appeal to the reader,” says Dr. Beattie, “whether, by debasing the charming simplicity of It tristis arator with his blasphemous paraphrase, Dryden has not destroyed the beauty of the passage.” He has undoubtedly, even although the translation had been otherwise faultless. But it is very far from being so. Duro fumans sub vomere, is not translated at all, and another idea is put in its place. Extremosque ciet gemitus, a most striking part of the description, is likewise entirely omitted. “Spews a flood” is vulgar and nauseous; and “a flood of foamy madness” is nonsense. In short, the whole passage in the translation is a mass of error and impropriety.

The simple expression, Jam Procyon furit, in Horace, 3, 29, is thus translated by the same author:

The Syrian star

Barks from afar,

And with his sultry breath infects the sky.

This barking of a star is a bad specimen of the music of the spheres. Dryden, from the fervour of his imagination, and the rapidity with which he composed, is frequently guilty of similar impropriety in his metaphorical language. Thus, in his version of Du Fresnoy, de Arte Graphica, he translates

Indolis ut vigor inde potens obstrictus hebescat,

“Neither would I extinguish the fire of a vein which is lively and abundant.”

The following passage in the second Georgic, as translated by Delille, is an example of vitious taste.

Ac dum prima novis adolescit frondibus ætas,

Parcendum teneris: et dum se lætus ad auras

Palmes agit, laxis per purum immissus habenis,

Ipsa acies nondum falce tentanda;—

Quand ses premiers bourgeons s’empresseront d’eclore,

Que l’acier rigoureux n’y touche point encore;

Même lorsque dans l’air, qu’il commence à braver,

Le rejetton moins frêle ose enfin s’elever;

Pardonne à son audace en faveur de son age:—

The expression of the original is bold and figurative, lætus ad auras,—laxis per purum immissus habenis; but there is nothing that offends the chastest taste. The concluding line of the translation is disgustingly finical,

Pardonne à son audace en faveur de son age.

Mr. Pope’s translation of the following passage of the Iliad, is censurable on a similar account:

Λαοὶ μεν φθινυθουσι περι πτολιν, αιπυ τε τεῖχος,

Μαρναμενοι·

Iliad, 6, 327.

For thee great Ilion’s guardian heroes fall,

Till heaps of dead alone defend the wall.

Of this conceit, of dead men defending the walls of Troy, Mr. Pope has the sole merit. The original, with grave simplicity, declares, that the people fell, fighting before the town, and around the walls.[27]

In the translation of the two following lines from Ovid’s Epistle of Sappho to Phaon, the same author has added a witticism, which is less reprehensible, because it accords with the usual manner of the poet whom he translates: yet it cannot be termed an improvement of the original:

“Scribimus, et lachrymis oculi rorantur abortis,

Aspice, quam sit in hoc multa litura loco.”

See while I write, my words are lost in tears,

The less my sense, the more my love appears.

Pope.

But if authors, even of taste and genius, are found at times to have made an injudicious use of that liberty which is allowed in the translation of poetry, we must expect to see it miserably abused indeed, where those talents are evidently wanting. The following specimen of a Latin version of the Paradise Lost is an example of everything that is vitious and offensive in poetical translation.

Primævi cano furta patris, furtumque secutæ

Tristia fata necis, labes ubi prima notavit

Quotquot Adamæo genitos de sanguine vidit

Phœbus ad Hesperias ab Eoo cardine metas;

Quos procul auricomis Paradisi depulit hortis,

Dira cupido atavûm, raptique injuria pomi:

Terrigena donec meliorque et major Adamus,

Amissis meliora bonis, majora reduxit.

Quosque dedit morti lignum inviolabile, mortis

Unicus ille alio rapuit de limine ligno.

Terrenusque licet pereat Paradisus, at ejus

Munere laxa patet Paradisi porta superni:

Hæc œstro stimulata novo mens pandere gestit.

Quis mihi monstret iter? Quis carbasa nostra profundo

Dirigat in dubio?

Gul. Hogæi Paradisus Amissus, l. 1.

How completely is Milton disguised in this translation! His Majesty exchanged for meanness, and his simplicity for bombast![28]

The preceding observations, though they principally regard the first general rule of translation, viz. that which enjoins a complete transfusion of the ideas and sentiments of the original work, have likewise a near connection with the second general rule, which I shall now proceed to consider.

CHAPTER V

SECOND GENERAL RULE: THE STYLE AND MANNER OF WRITING IN A TRANSLATION SHOULD BE OF THE SAME CHARACTER WITH THAT OF THE ORIGINAL.—TRANSLATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES;—OF HOMER, ETC.—A JUST TASTE REQUISITE FOR THE DISCERNMENT OF THE CHARACTERS OF STYLE AND MANNER.—EXAMPLES OF FAILURE IN THIS PARTICULAR;—THE GRAVE EXCHANGED FOR THE FORMAL;—THE ELEVATED FOR THE BOMBAST;—THE LIVELY FOR THE PETULANT;—THE SIMPLE FOR THE CHILDISH.—HOBBES, L’ESTRANGE, ECHARD, ETC.

Next in importance to a faithful transfusion of the sense and meaning of an author, is an assimilation of the style and manner of writing in the translation to that of the original. This requisite of a good translation, though but secondary in importance, is more difficult to be attained than the former; for the qualities requisite for justly discerning and happily imitating the various characters of style and manner, are much more rare than the ability of simply understanding an author’s sense. A good translator must be able to discover at once the true character of his author’s style. He must ascertain with precision to what class it belongs; whether to that of the grave, the elevated, the easy, the lively, the florid and ornamented, or the simple and unaffected; and these characteristic qualities he must have the capacity of rendering equally conspicuous in the translation as in the original. If a translator fails in this discernment, and wants this capacity, let him be ever so thoroughly master of the sense of his author, he will present him through a distorting medium, or exhibit him often in a garb that is unsuitable to his character.

The chief characteristic of the historical style of the sacred scriptures, is its simplicity. This character belongs indeed to the language itself. Dr. Campbell has justly remarked, that the Hebrew is a simple tongue: “That their verbs have not, like the Greek and Latin, a variety of moods and tenses, nor do they, like the modern languages, abound in auxiliaries and conjunctions. The consequence is, that in narrative, they express by several simple sentences, much in the way of the relations used in conversation, what in most other languages would be comprehended in one complex sentence of three or four members.”[29] The same author gives, as an example of this simplicity, the beginning of the first chapter of Genesis, where the account of the operations of the Creator on the first day is contained in eleven separate sentences. “1. In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth. 2. And the earth was without form, and void. 3. And darkness was upon the face of the deep. 4. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 5. And God said, let there be light. 6. And there was light. 7. And God saw the light, that it was good. 8. And God divided the light from the darkness. 9. And God called the light day. 10. And the darkness he called night. 11. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” “This,” says Dr. Campbell, “is a just representation of the style of the original. A more perfect example of simplicity of structure, we can nowhere find. The sentences are simple, the substantives are not attended by adjectives, nor the verbs by adverbs; no synonymas, no superlatives, no effort at expressing things in a bold, emphatical, or uncommon manner.”

Castalio’s version of the Scriptures is intitled to the praise of elegant Latinity, and he is in general faithful to the sense of his original; but he has totally departed from its style and manner, by substituting the complex and florid composition to the simple and unadorned. His sentences are formed in long and intricate periods, in which many separate members are artfully combined; and we observe a constant endeavour at a classical phraseology and ornamented diction.[30] In Castalio’s version of the foregoing passage of Genesis, nine sentences of the original are thrown into one period. 1. Principio creavit Deus cœlum et terram. 2. Quum autem esset terra iners atque rudis, tenebrisque effusum profundum, et divinus spiritus sese super aquas libraret, jussit Deus ut existeret lux, et extitit lux; quam quum videret Deus esse bonam, lucem secrevit a tenebris, et lucem diem, et tenebras noctem appellavit. 3. Ita extitit ex vespere et mane dies primus.

Dr. Beattie, in his essay On Laughter and Ludicrous Composition, has justly remarked, that the translation of the Old Testament by Castalio does great honour to that author’s learning, but not to his taste. “The quaintness of his Latin betrays a deplorable inattention to the simple majesty of his original. In the Song of Solomon, he has debased the magnificence of the language and subject by diminutives, which, though expressive of familiar endearment, he should have known to be destitute of dignity, and therefore improper on solemn occasions.” Mea Columbula, ostende mihi tuum vulticulum; fac ut audiam tuam voculam; nam et voculam venustulam, et vulticulum habes lepidulum.—Veni in meos hortulos, sororcula mea sponsa.—Ego dormio, vigilante meo corculo, &c.

The version of the Scriptures by Arias Montanus, is in some respects a contrast to that of Castalio. Arias, by adopting the literal mode of translation, probably intended to give as faithful a picture as he could, both of the sense and manner of the original. Not considering the different genius of the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Latin, in the various meaning and import of words of the same primary sense; the difference of combination and construction, and the peculiarity of idioms belonging to each tongue, he has treated the three languages as if they corresponded perfectly in all those particulars; and the consequence is, he has produced a composition which fails in every one requisite of a good translation: it conveys neither the sense of the original, nor its manner and style; and it abounds in barbarisms, solecisms, and grammatical inaccuracy.[31] In Latin, two negatives make an affirmative; but it is otherwise in Greek; they only give force to the negation: χωρις εμου ου δυνασθε ποιειν ουδεν, as translated by Arias, sine me non potestis facere nihil, is therefore directly contrary to the sense of the original: And surely that translator cannot be said either to do justice to the manner and style of his author, or to write with the ease of original composition, who, instead of perspicuous thought, expressed in pure, correct, and easy phraseology, gives us obscure and unintelligible sentiments, conveyed in barbarous terms and constructions, irreconcileable to the rules of the language in which he uses them. Et nunc dixi vobis ante fieri, ut quum factum fuerit credatis.—Ascendit autem et Joseph a Galilæa in civitatem David, propter esse ipsum ex domo et familia David, describi cum Maria desponsata sibi uxore, existente prægnante. Factum autem in esse eos ibi, impleti sunt dies parere ipsam.—Venerunt ad portam, quæ spontanea aperta est eis, et exeuntes processerunt vicum.—Nunquid aquam prohibere potest quis ad non baptizare hos?—Spectat descendens super se vas quoddam linteum, quatuor initiis vinctum.—Aperiens autem Petrus os, dixit: in veritate deprehendo quia non est personarum acceptor Deus.[32]

The characteristic of the language of Homer is strength united with simplicity. He employs frequent images, allusions, and similes; but he very rarely uses metaphorical expression. The use of this style, therefore, in a translation of Homer, is an offence against the character of the original. Mr. Pope, though not often, is sometimes chargeable with this fault; as where he terms the arrows of Apollo “the feather’d fates,” Iliad, 1, 68, a quiver of arrows, “a store of flying fates,” Odyssey, 22, 136: or instead of saying, that the soil is fertile in corn, “in wavy gold the summer vales are dress’d,” Odyssey, 19, 131; the soldier wept, “from his eyes pour’d down the tender dew,” Ibid. 11, 486.

Virgil, in describing the shipwreck of the Trojans, says,

Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto,

Which the Abbé des Fontaines thus translates: “A peine un petit nombre de ceux qui montoient le vaisseau purent se sauver à la nage.” Of this translation Voltaire justly remarks, “C’est traduire Virgile en style de gazette. Où est ce vaste gouffre que peint le poête, gurgite vasto? Où est l’apparent rari nantes? Ce n’est pas ainsi qu’on doit traduire l’Eneide.” Voltaire, Quest. sur l’Encyclop. mot Amplification.

If we are thus justly offended at hearing Virgil speak in the style of the Evening Post or the Daily Advertiser, what must we think of the translator, who makes the solemn and sententious Tacitus express himself in the low cant of the streets, or in the dialect of the waiters of a tavern?

Facile Asinium et Messalam inter Antonium et Augustum bellorum præmiis refertos: Thus translated, in a version of Tacitus by Mr. Dryden and several eminent hands: “Asinius and Messala, who feathered their nests well in the civil wars ’twixt Antony and Augustus.” Vinolentiam et libidines usurpans: “Playing the good-fellow.” Frustra Arminium præscribi: “Trumping up Arminius’s title.” Sed Agrippina libertam æmulam, nurum ancillam, aliaque eundem in modum muliebriter fremere: “But Agrippina could not bear that a freedwoman should nose her.” And another translator says, “But Agrippina could not bear that a freedwoman should beard her.” Of a similar character with this translation of Tacitus is a translation of Suetonius by several gentlemen of Oxford,[33] which abounds with such elegancies as the following: Sestio Gallo, libidinoso et prodigo seni: “Sestius Gallus, a most notorious old Sir Jolly.” Jucundissimos et omnium horarum amicos: “His boon companions and sure cards.” Nullam unquam occasionem dedit: “They never could pick the least hole in his coat.”

Juno’s apostrophe to Troy, in her speech to the Gods in council, is thus translated in a version of Horace by “The Most Eminent Hands.”

Ilion, Ilion,

Fatalis incestusque judex, &c.

Hor. 3, 3.

O Ilion, Ilion, I with transport view

The fall of all thy wicked, perjur’d crew!

Pallas and I have borne a rankling grudge

To that curst Shepherd, that incestuous judge.

The description of the majesty of Jupiter, contained in the following passage of the first book of the Iliad, is allowed to be a true specimen of the sublime. It is the archetype from which Phidias acknowledged he had framed his divine sculpture of the Olympian Jupiter:

Η, και κυανεησιν επ’ οφρυσι νευσε Κρονιων·

Αμβροσιαι δ’ αρα χαιται επερρωσαντο ανακτος,

Κρατος απ’ αθανατοιο, μεγαν δ’ ελελιξεν Ολυμπον.

He spoke, and awful bends his sable brows,

Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod,

The stamp of fate, and sanction of the God:

High heaven, with trembling, the dread signal took,

And all Olympus to its centre shook.

Pope.

Certainly Mr. Hobbes of Malmsbury perceived no portion of that sublime which was felt by Phidias and by Mr. Pope, when he could thus translate this fine description:

This said, with his black brows he to her nodded,

Wherewith displayed were his locks divine;

Olympus shook at stirring of his godhead,

And Thetis from it jump’d into the brine.

In the translation of the Georgics, Mr. Dryden has displayed great powers of poetry. But Dryden had little relish for the pathetic, and no comprehension of the natural language of the heart. The beautiful simplicity of the following passage has entirely escaped his observation, and he has been utterly insensible to its tenderness:

Ipse cavâ solans ægrum testudine amorem,

Te, dulcis conjux, te solo in littore secum,

Te veniente die, te decedente canebat.

Virg. Geor. 4.

Th’ unhappy husband, now no more,

Did on his tuneful harp his loss deplore,

And sought his mournful mind with music to restore.

On thee, dear Wife, in deserts all alone,

He call’d, sigh’d, sung; his griefs with day begun,

Nor were they finish’d till the setting sun.

The three verbs, call’d, sigh’d, sung, are here substituted, with peculiar infelicity, for the repetition of the pronoun; a change which converts the pathetic into the ludicrous.

In the same episode, the poet compares the complaint of Orpheus to the wailing of a nightingale, robb’d of her young, in those well-known beautiful verses:

Qualis populea mœrens Philomela sub umbra

Amissos queritur fœtus, quos durus arator

Observans nido implumes, detraxit: at illa

Flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen

Integrat, et mœstis late loca questibus implet.

Thus translated by De Lille:

Telle sur un rameau durant la nuit obscure

Philomele plaintive attendrit la nature,

Accuse en gémissant l’oiseleur inhumain,

Qui, glissant dans son nid une furtive main,

Ravit ces tendres fruits que l’amour fit eclorre,

Et qu’un leger duvet ne couvroit pas encore.

It is evident, that there is a complete evaporation of the beauties of the original in this translation: and the reason is, that the French poet has substituted sentiments for facts, and refinement for the simple pathetic. The nightingale of De Lille melts all nature with her complaint; accuses with her sighs the inhuman fowler, who glides his thievish hand into her nest, and plunders the tender fruits that were hatched by love! How different this sentimental foppery from the chaste simplicity of Virgil!

The following beautiful passage in the sixth book of the Iliad has not been happily translated by Mr. Pope. It is in the parting interview between Hector and Andromache.

Ως ειπων, αλοχοιο φιλης εν χερσιν εθηκε

Παιδ’ ἑον· ἡ δ’ αρα μιν κηωδει δεξατο κολπω,

Δακρυοεν γελασασα· ποσις δ’ ελεησε νοησας,

Χειρι τε μιν κατερεξεν, επος τ’ εφατ’ εκ τ’ ονομαζε.

He spoke, and fondly gazing on her charms,

Restor’d the pleasing burden to her arms;

Soft on her fragrant breast the babe she laid,

Hush’d to repose, and with a smile survey’d.

The troubled pleasure soon chastis’d by fear,

She mingled with the smile a tender tear.

The soften’d chief with kind compassion view’d,

And dried the falling drops, and thus pursu’d.

This, it must be allowed, is good poetry; but it wants the affecting simplicity of the original. Fondly gazing on her charms—pleasing burden—The troubled pleasure soon chastised by fear, are injudicious embellishments. The beautiful expression Δακρυοεν γελασασα is totally lost by amplification; and the fine circumstance, which so much heightens the tenderness of the picture, Χειρι τε μιν κατερεξεν, is forgotten altogether.

But a translator may discern the general character of his author’s style, and yet fail remarkably in the imitation of it. Unless he is possessed of the most correct taste, he will be in continual danger of presenting an exaggerated picture or a caricatura of his original. The distinction between good and bad writing is often of so very slender a nature, and the shadowing of difference so extremely delicate, that a very nice perception alone can at all times define the limits. Thus, in the hands of some translators, who have discernment to perceive the general character of their author’s style, but want this correctness of taste, the grave style of the original becomes heavy and formal in the translation; the elevated swells into bombast, the lively froths up into the petulant, and the simple and naïf degenerates into the childish and insipid.[34]

In the fourth Oration against Catiline, Cicero, after drawing the most striking picture of the miseries of his country, on the supposition that success had crowned the designs of the conspirators, closes the detail with this grave and solemn application:

Quia mihi vehementer hæc videntur misera atque miseranda, idcirca in eos qui ea perficere voluerunt, me severum, vehementemque præbeo. Etenim quæro, si quis paterfamilias, liberis suis a servo interfectis, uxore occisa, incensa domo, supplicium de servo quam acerbissimum sumserit; utrum is clemens ac misericors, an inhumanissimus et crudelissimus esse videatur? Mihi vero importunus ac ferreus, qui non dolore ac cruciatu nocentis, suum dolorem ac cruciatum lenierit.

How awkwardly is the dignified gravity of the original imitated, in the following heavy, formal, and insipid version.

“Now as to me these calamities appear extremely shocking and deplorable: therefore I am extremely keen and rigorous in punishing those who endeavoured to bring them about. For let me put the case, that a master of a family had his children butchered, his wife murdered, his house burnt down by a slave, yet did not inflict the most rigorous of punishments imaginable upon that slave: would such a master appear merciful and compassionate, and not rather a monster of cruelty and inhumanity? To me that man would appear to be of a flinty cruel nature, who should not endeavour to soothe his own anguish and torment by the anguish and torment of its guilty cause.”[35]

Ovid, in describing the fatal storm in which Ceyx perished, says,

Undarum incursa gravis unda, tonitrubus æther

Fluctibus erigitur, cœlumque æquare videtur

Pontus.

An hyperbole, allowable in poetical description; but which Dryden has exaggerated into the most outrageous bombast:

Now waves on waves ascending scale the skies,

And in the fires above the water fries.

In the first scene of the Amphitryo of Plautus, Sosia thus remarks on the unusual length of the night:

Neque ego hac nocte longiorem me vidisse censeo,

Nisi item unam, verberatus quam pependi perpetem.

Eam quoque, Ædepol, etiam multo hæc vicit longitudine.

Credo equidem dormire solem atque appotum probe.

Mira sunt, nisi invitavit sese in cœna plusculum.

To which Mercury answers:

Ain vero, verbero? Deos esse tui similes putas?

Ego Pol te istis tuis pro dictis et malefactis, furcifer,

Accipiam, modò sis veni huc: invenies infortunium.

Echard, who saw no distinction between the familiar and the vulgar, has translated this in the true dialect of the streets:

“I think there never was such a long night since the beginning of the world, except that night I had the strappado, and rid the wooden horse till morning; and, o’ my conscience, that was twice as long.[36] By the mackins, I believe Phœbus has been playing the good-fellow, and ’s asleep too. I’ll be hang’d if he ben’t in for’t, and has took a little too much o’ the creature.”

“Mer. Say ye so, slave? What, treat Gods like yourselves. By Jove, have at your doublet, Rogue, for scandalum magnatum. Approach then, you’ll ha’ but small joy here.”

“Mer. Accedam, atque hanc appellabo atque supparasitabo patri.” Ibid. sc. 3.

“Mer. I’ll to her, and tickle her up as my father has done.”

“Sosia. Irritabis crabrones.” Ibid. act 2, sc. 2.

“Sosia. You’d as good p—ss in a bee-hive.”

Seneca, though not a chaste writer, is remarkable for a courtly dignity of expression, which, though often united with ease, never descends to the mean or vulgar. L’Estrange has presented him through a medium of such coarseness, that he is hardly to be known.

Probatos itaque semper lege, et siquando ad alios divertere libuerit, ad priores redi.—Nihil æque sanitatem impedit quam remediorum crebra mutatio, Ep. 2.—“Of authors be sure to make choice of the best; and, as I said before, stick close to them; and though you take up others by the bye, reserve some select ones, however, for your study and retreat. Nothing is more hurtful, in the case of diseases and wounds, than the frequent shifting of physic and plasters.”

Fuit qui diceret, Quid perdis operam? ille quem quæris elatus, combustus est. De benef., lib. 7. c. 21.—“Friend, says a fellow, you may hammer your heart out, for the man you look for is dead.”

Cum multa in crudelitatem Pisistrati conviva ebrius dixisset. De ira, lib. 3, c. 11. “Thrasippus, in his drink, fell foul upon the cruelties of Pisistratus.”

From the same defect of taste, the simple and natural manner degenerates into the childish and insipid.

J’ai perdu tout mon bonheur,

J’ai perdu mon serviteur,

Colin me délaisse.

Helas! il a pu changer!

Je voudrois n’y plus songer:

J’y songe sans cesse.

Rousseau, Devin de Village.

I’ve lost my love, I’ve lost my swain;

Colin leaves me with disdain.

Naughty Colin! hateful thought!

To Colinette her Colin’s naught.

I will forget him—that I will!

Ah, t’wont do—I love him still.

CHAPTER VI

EXAMPLES OF A GOOD TASTE IN POETICAL TRANSLATION.—BOURNE’S TRANSLATIONS FROM MALLET AND FROM PRIOR.—THE DUKE DE NIVERNOIS FROM HORACE.—DR. JORTIN FROM SIMONIDES.—IMITATION OF THE SAME BY DR. MARKHAM.—MR. WEBB FROM THE ANTHOLOGIA.—HUGHES FROM CLAUDIAN.—FRAGMENTS OF THE GREEK DRAMATISTS BY MR. CUMBERLAND.

After these examples of faulty translation, from a defect of taste in the translator, or a want of a just discernment of his author’s style and manner of writing, I shall now present the reader with some specimens of perfect translation, where the authors have entered with exquisite taste into the manner of their originals, and have succeeded most happily in the imitation of it.

The first is the opening of the beautiful ballad of William and Margaret, translated by Vincent Bourne.

I

When all was wrapt in dark midnight,

And all were fast asleep,

In glided Margaret’s grimly ghost,

And stood at William’s feet.

II

Her face was like the April morn,

Clad in a wintry-cloud;

And clay-cold was her lily hand,

That held her sable shrowd.

III

So shall the fairest face appear,

When youth and years are flown;

Such is the robe that Kings must wear,

When death has reft their crown.

IV

Her bloom was like the springing flower,

That sips the silver dew;

The rose was budded in her cheek,

And opening to the view.

V

But Love had, like the canker-worm,

Consum’d her early prime;

The rose grew pale and left her cheek,

She died before her time.

I

Omnia nox tenebris, tacitâque involverat umbrâ.

Et fessos homines vinxerat alta quies;

Cùm valvæ patuere, et gressu illapsa silenti,

Thyrsidis ad lectum stabat imago Chloes.

II

Vultus erat, qualis lachrymosi vultus Aprilis,

Cui dubia hyberno conditur imbre dies;

Quaque sepulchralem à pedibus collegit amictum,

Candidior nivibus, frigidiorque manus,

III

Cùmque dies aberunt molles, et læta juventus,

Gloria pallebit, sic Cyparissi tua;

Cùm mors decutiet capiti diademata, regum

Hâc erit in trabeâ conspiciendus honos.

IV

Forma fuit (dum forma fuit) nascentis ad instar

Floris, cui cano gemmula rore tumet;

Et Veneres risere, et subrubuere labella,

Subrubet ut teneris purpura prima rosis.

V

Sed lenta exedit tabes mollemque ruborem,

Et faciles risus, et juvenile decus;

Et rosa paulatim languens, nudata reliquit

Oscula; præripuit mors properata Chloen.

The second is a small poem by Prior, intitled Chloe Hunting, which is likewise translated into Latin by Bourne.

Behind her neck her comely tresses tied,

Her ivory quiver graceful by her side,

A-hunting Chloe went; she lost her way,

And through the woods uncertain chanc’d to stray.

Apollo passing by beheld the maid;

And, sister dear, bright Cynthia, turn, he said;

The hunted hind lies close in yonder brake.

Loud Cupid laugh’d, to see the God’s mistake:

And laughing cried, learn better, great Divine,

To know thy kindred, and to honour mine.

Rightly advis’d, far hence thy sister seek,

Or on Meander’s banks, or Latmus’ peak.

But in this nymph, my friend, my sister know;

She draws my arrows, and she bends my bow.

Fair Thames she haunts, and every neighbouring grove,

Sacred to soft recess, and gentle Love.

Go with thy Cynthia, hurl the pointed spear

At the rough boar, or chace the flying deer:

I, and my Chloe, take a nobler aim;

At human hearts we fling, nor ever miss the game.

Forte Chloe, pulchros nodo collecta capillos

Post collum, pharetrâque latus succincta decorâ,

Venatrix ad sylvam ibat; cervumque secuta

Elapsum visu, deserta per avia tendit

Incerta. Errantem nympham conspexit Apollo,

Et, converte tuos, dixit, mea Cynthia, cursus;

En ibi (monstravitque manu) tibi cervus anhelat

Occultus dumo, latebrisque moratur in illis.

Improbus hæc audivit Amor, lepidumque cachinnum

Attollens, poterantne etiam tua numina falli?

Hinc, quæso, bone Phœbe, tuam dignosce sororem,

Et melius venerare meam. Tua Cynthia longè,

Mæandri ad ripas, aut summi in vertice Latmi,

Versatur; nostra est soror hæc, nostra, inquit, amica est.

Hæc nostros promit calamos, arcumque sonantem

Incurvat, Tamumque colens, placidosque recessus

Lucorum, quos alma quies sacravit amori.

Ite per umbrosos saltus, lustrisque vel aprum

Excutite horrentem setis, cervumve fugacem,

Tuque sororque tua, et directo sternite ferro:

Nobilior labor, et divis dignissima cura,

Meque Chloenque manet; nos corda humana ferimus,

Vibrantes certum vulnus nec inutile telum.

The third specimen, is a translation by the Duke de Nivernois, of Horace’s dialogue with Lydia:

Horace

Plus heureux qu’un monarque au faite des grandeurs,

J’ai vu mes jours dignes d’envie,

Tranquiles, ils couloient au gré de nos ardeurs:

Vous m’aimiez, charmante Lydie.

Lydie

Que mes jours étoient beaux, quand des soins les plus doux

Vous payiez ma flamme sincére!

Venus me regardoit avec des yeux jaloux;

Chloé n’avoit pas sçu vous plaire.

Horace

Par son luth, par sa voix, organe des amours,

Chloé seule me paroit belle:

Si le Destin jaloux veut épargner ses jours,

Je donnerai les miens pour elle.

Lydie

Le jeune Calaïs, plus beau que les amours,

Plait seul à mon ame ravie:

Si le Destin jaloux veut épargner ses jours,

Je donnerai deux fois ma vie.

Horace

Quoi, si mes premiers feux, ranimant leur ardeur,

Etouffoient une amour fatale;

Si, perdant pour jamais tous ses droits sur mon cœur,

Chloé vous laissoit sans rivale——

Lydie

Calaïs est charmant: mais je n’aime que vous,

Ingrat, mon cœur vous justifie;

Heureuse également en des liens si doux,

De perdre ou de passer la vie.[37]

If any thing is faulty in this excellent translation, it is the last stanza, which does not convey the happy petulance, the procacitas of the original. The reader may compare with this, the fine translation of the same ode by Bishop Atterbury, “Whilst I was fond, and you were kind,” which is too well known to require insertion.

The fourth example is a translation by Dr. Jortin of that beautiful fragment of Simonides, preserved by Dionysius, in which Danae, exposed with her child to the fury of the ocean, by command of her inhuman father, is described lamenting over her sleeping infant.

Ex Dionys. Hal. De Compositione Verborum, c. 26.

Οτε λαρνακι εν δαιδαλεα ανεμος

Βρεμη πνεων, κινηθεισα δε λιμνα

Δειματι ερειπεν· ουτ’ αδιανταισι

Παρειαῖς, αμφι τε Περσεῖ βαλλε

Φιλαν χερα, ειπεν τε· ω τεκνον,

Ὁιον εχω πονον. συ δ’ αυτε γαλαθηνω

Ητορι κνοσσεις εν ατερπει δωματι,

Χαλκεογομφω δε, νυκτιλαμπεῖ,

Κυανεω τε δνοφω· συ δ’ αυαλεαν

Υπερθε τεαν κομαν βαθειαν

Παριοντος κυματος ουκ αλεγεις

Ουδ’ ανεμου φθογγων, πορφυρεα

Κειμενος εν χλανιδι, προσωπον καλον·

Ει δε τοι δεινον το γε δεινον ην

Και μεν εμων ρηματων λεπτον

Υπειχες οὐας. κελομαι, ἑυδε, βρεφος,

Ἑυδετω δε ποντος, ευδετω αμετρον κακον.

Ματαιοβουλια δε τις φανειη

Ζευ πατερ, εκ σεο· ὁτι δη θαρσαλεον

Επος, ευχομαι τεκνοφι δικας μοι.

Nocte sub obscura, verrentibus æquora ventis,

Quum brevis immensa cymba nataret aqua,

Multa gemens Danaë subjecit brachia nato,

Et teneræ lacrymis immaduere genæ.

Tu tamen ut dulci, dixit, pulcherrime, somno

Obrutus, et metuens tristia nulla, jaces!

Quamvis, heu quales cunas tibi concutit unda,

Præbet et incertam pallida luna facem,

Et vehemens flavos everberat aura capillos,

Et prope, subsultans, irrigat ora liquor.

Nate, meam sentis vocem? Nil cernis et audis,

Teque premunt placidi vincula blanda dei;

Nec mihi purpureis effundis blæsa labellis

Murmura, nec notos confugis usque sinus.

Care, quiesce, puer, sævique quiescite fluctus,

Et mea qui pulsas corda, quiesce, dolor.

Cresce puer; matris leni atque ulciscere luctus,

Tuque tuos saltem protege summe Tonans.

This admirable translation falls short of its original only in a single particular, the measure of the verse. One striking beauty of the original, is the easy and loose structure of the verse, which has little else to distinguish it from animated discourse but the harmony of the syllables; and hence it has more of natural impassioned eloquence, than is conveyed by the regular measure of the translation. That this characteristic of the original should have been overlooked by the ingenious translator, is the more remarkable, that the poem is actually quoted by Dionysius, as an apposite example of that species of composition in which poetry approaches to the freedom of prose; της εμμελους και εμμετρου συνθεσεως της εχουσης πολλην ὁμοιοτητα προς την πεζην λεξιν. Dr. Markham saw this excellence of the original; and in that fine imitation of the verses of Simonides, which an able critic[38] has pronounced to be far superior to the original, has given it its full effect. The passage alluded to is an apostrophe of a mother to her sleeping infant, a widowed mother, who has just left the deathbed of her husband.

His conatibus occupata, ocellos

Guttis lucidulis adhuc madentes

Convertit, puerum sopore vinctum

Qua nutrix placido sinu fovebat:

Dormis, inquiit, O miselle, nec te

Vultus exanimes, silentiumque

Per longa atria commovent, nec ullo

Fratrum tangeris, aut meo dolore;

Nec sentis patre destitutus illo

Qui gestans genibusve brachiove

Aut formans lepidam tuam loquelam

Tecum mille modis ineptiebat.

Tu dormis, volitantque qui solebant

Risus in roseis tuis labellis.——

Dormi parvule! nec mali dolores

Qui matrem cruciant tuæ quietis

Rumpant somnia.—Quando, quando tales

Redibunt oculis meis sopores!

The next specimen I shall give, is the translation of a beautiful epigram, from the Anthologia which is supposed by Junius to be descriptive of a painting mentioned by Pliny,[39] in which, a mother wounded, and in the agony of death, is represented as giving suck to her infant for the last time:

Ελκε τάλαν παρα μητρος ὅν οὐκ ἔτι μαζὸν ἀμελξεις,

Ελκυσον ὑστατιον νᾶμα καταφθιμενης

Ηδη γαρ ξιφέεσσι λιπόπνοος, ἀλλὰ τὰ μητρος

Φιλτρα καὶ εν ἀϊδη παιδοκομειν ἔμαθον.

Thus happily translated into English by Mr. Webb:

Suck, little wretch, while yet thy mother lives,

Suck the last drop her fainting bosom gives!

She dies: her tenderness survives her breath,

And her fond love is provident in death.

Equal in merit to any of the preceding, is the following translation by Mr. Hughes from Claudian.

Ex Epithalamio Honorii & Mariæ.

Cunctatur stupefacta Venus; nunc ora puellæ,

Nunc flavam niveo miratur vertice matrem.

Hæc modo crescenti, plenæ par altera Lunæ:

Assurgit ceu fortè minor sub matre virenti

Laurus; et ingentes ramos, olimque futuras

Promittit jam parva comas: vel flore sub uno

Seu geminæ Pæstana rosæ per jugera regnant.

Hæc largo matura die, saturataque vernis

Roribus indulget spatio: latet altera nodo,

Nec teneris audet foliis admittere soles.

The goddess paus’d; and, held in deep amaze,

Now views the mother’s, now the daughter’s face.

Different in each, yet equal beauty glows;

That, the full moon, and this, the crescent shows,

Thus, rais’d beneath its parent tree is seen

The laurel shoot, while in its early green

Thick sprouting leaves and branches are essay’d,

And all the promise of a future shade.

Or blooming thus, in happy Pæstan fields,

One common stock two lovely roses yields:

Mature by vernal dews, this dares display

Its leaves full-blown, and boldly meets the day

That, folded in its tender nonage lies,

A beauteous bud, nor yet admits the skies.

The following passage, from a Latin version of the Messiah of Pope, by a youth of uncommon genius,[40] exhibits the singular union of ease, animation, and harmony of numbers, with the strictest fidelity to the original.

Lanigera ut cautè placidus regit agmina pastor,

Aera ut explorat purum, camposque virentes;

Amissas ut quærit oves, moderatur euntûm

Ut gressus, curatque diu, noctuque tuetur;

Ut teneros agnos lenta inter brachia tollit,

Mulcenti pascit palma, gremioque focillat;

Sic genus omne hominum sic complectetur amanti

Pectore, promissus seclo Pater ille futuro.

As the good shepherd tends his fleecy care,

Seeks freshest pasture and the purest air;

Explores the lost, the wandering sheep directs,

By day o’ersees them, and by night protects;

The tender lambs he raises in his arms,

Feeds from his hand, and in his bosom warms:

Thus shall mankind his guardian care engage

The promis’d Father of the future age.

To these specimens of perfect translation, in which not only the ideas of the original are completely transfused, but the manner most happily imitated, I add the following admirable translations by Mr. Cumberland,[41] of two fragments from the Greek dramatists Timocles and Diphilus, which are preserved by Athenæus.

The first of these passages beautifully illustrates the moral uses of the tragic drama:

Nay, my good friend, but hear me! I confess

Man is the child of sorrow, and this world,

In which we breathe, hath cares enough to plague us;

But it hath means withal to soothe these cares: