for 'la Reggia Oriental.' Crashaw has the same vivid fancy in the Hymn
for Epiphany:
'Aurora shall set ope
Her ruby casements.'
Finally, to show that even where our Translator keeps closest to the
original, he yet gives the creative touches of which I have already
spoken, read his st. v. beside this literal translation:
'Under the abysses, at the very core of the world,
In the central point of the universe,
Within the bowers of the darkest deep,
There stands the fiendly perverse Spirit:
With sharp thongs an impure group
Binds him with a hundred snakes athwart:
With such bonds girds him for ever,
The great champion who conquered HIM in Paradise.'
Thus we might go over the entire poem, and everywhere we should gather
proofs that he was himself all he conceived in his splendid portraiture
of the true Poet's genius:
'no rapture makes it live
Drest in the glorious madnesse of a Muse,
Whose feet can walke the Milky Way,
Her starry throne, and hold up an exalted arm
To lift me from my lazy urn and climbe
Upon the stooped shoulders of old Time,
And trace eternity.' (vol. i. p. 238.)[38]
Fully to estimate Crashaw's own grander imaginative faculty the Reader
must study here the now-first-printed and very Miltonic poems on
Apocalypse xii. 7 (Vol. II. pp. 231-3) and 'Christe, veni' (_ib._ pp.
223-5). It is profoundly to be regretted that our Poet should have
limited himself to Book I. of the 'Strage degli Innocenti,' viz.
'Sospetto d'Herode.' Book VII. especially, 'Della Gerusalemme Distruta,'
would have demanded all his powers. The entire poem was 'done in
English,' and it is '_done_' (by T.R. 1675).
With reference to our own Translations of Crashaw, if in some instances
we have enlarged on our original, and adventured to fill-in what in the
Latin the Poet is fettered in uttering, may we apologise by pleading his
own example as a Translator, though with unequal steps and far off? I
would specify the very remarkable 'Bulla,' in which, indeed, I find
Crashaw's highest of pure poetic faculty within the region of Fancy in
its delicatest and subtlest symbolisms; also the scarcely less
remarkable address 'To the Reader' ('Lectori'); and his 'Fides &c. &c.'
and his classical legends of 'Arion,' and his University 'Laments' and
'Appeals' for Peterhouse. Throughout, my co-workers and myself have
aimed to give the _thought_ of Crashaw; and, unless I egregiously
mistake, we have together earned some gratitude from admirers of our
Worthy.
I leave to other Scholars to deal critically with the Latin and Greek of
these Poems and Epigrams now first translated. Read unsympathetically, I
fear that very often his quantities and versification will be regarded
as barbarous; but we have done something, it is believed, to neutralise
Turnbull's most discreditable misprints herein, as in the English Poems.
In the places (vol. ii. pp. 5-6, 244, and 332) we have recorded some of
his more flagrant blunders; but besides we have silently corrected as
many more of the original and early editions.
That Crashaw was not an accurate scholar the Greek Epigrams (as well as
some of the Latin ones) furnish sufficient proof. Of the many obvious
errors in quantity and construction, I have only corrected such as may
have been mere oversights, some of them perhaps caused by his MS. having
been misread; in other cases I have followed the original editions, and
corrected the numerous errors made by Turnbull from his not being able
to read the Greek ligatures &c. It may be well to indicate a few of the
typical corrections that I felt obliged to make, and note other lapses
which I did not feel justified in altering.
In XI. last line, {aperrhipton} for {aporrhipton}; CXXI. last line,
{een} for {ee}; CXXV. line 5. {kein'} for {kein}; CLXXX. line 1 has
{plane} as if the penult were long instead of short, and {alemi} an
unused form, so that the line offends both quantity and usage--it
might be amended thus, {Heis men ego, he mou te plane periegen,
alomai}; CLXXXII. line 1, {epeballen} for {epiballen}; CLXXXIII.
line 2, {sykomore} should be {sykomore}, but altered for scansion;
line 3, {ekkremnes} should perhaps be {ekkremnas}; line 4,
unscanable; and in CXXV. line 4, {dasiois} should be {dasesin}.
{ouranos}, the penult of which is short, he uses as either long or
short.
I must add, that the accentuation was as often wrong as right. I have
carefully corrected it throughout. And this seems to me to be the only
allowable way of reproducing Crashaw. An Editor cannot be held
responsible for his Author writing imperfect Greek or Latin, any more
than for his mistakes either in opinion or in matters-of-fact or taste.
Anderson's and Chalmers' Poets, and Peregrine Phillip's Selections, and
Turnbull's edition in Russell Smith's 'Old Authors' and that in
Gilfillan's Poets (a selection only), are our predecessors in furnishing
Crashaw's Poetry. We confess to a feeling of just pride (shall we say?)
in being the first worthily and adequately to present as remarkable
Poetry, in its own region, as is anywhere to be found. RICHARD CRASHAW
has assuredly not yet gathered all his fame.[39]