important capacities than those of a scholar and a translator of Virgil,
and had this little work, therefore, been less meritorious than it is,
no critic with a sense of the becoming would deal harshly with it. But
it challenges and deserves serious consideration, not only as an attempt
to solve a problem of singular interest to students of classical poetry,
but as a somewhat ambitious contribution to the literature of
translation. Sir Osborne Morgan is, however, mistaken in supposing that
in translating Virgil into his own metre he “has undertaken a task which
has never been attempted before.” In 1583 Richard Stanihurst published a
translation of the first four books of the _Æneid_ in English
hexameters; and, if Sir Osborne will turn to Webbe’s _Discourse of
English Poetrie_, published as early as 1586, he will find versions in
English hexameters of the First and Second Eclogues, while Abraham
Fraunce, in a curious volume, entitled _The Countess of Pembroke’s Ivy
Church_, which appeared in 1591, has, among the other hexameters in the
collection, given a version of the Second Eclogue in this measure. But
Sir Osborne Morgan has been more immediately anticipated in his
experiment. In 1838 Dr. James Blundell published anonymously, under the
title of _Hexametrical Experiments_, versions in hexameters of the
First, Fourth, Sixth, and Tenth Eclogues, and to this translation he
prefixed an elaborate preface, vindicating the employment of the
hexameter in English, and explaining its mechanism to the unlearned.
Indeed, Blundell arrived at the same conclusion as Sir Osborne Morgan,
that the proper medium for an English translation of hexametrical poems
in Greek and Latin is the English hexameter. We may, however, hasten to
add that Sir Osborne has little to fear from a comparison with his
predecessors, who have, indeed, done their best to refute by example
their own theory. It may be observed, in passing, that the translations
of Virgil into rhymed decasyllabic verse are far more numerous than Sir
Osborne Morgan seems to suppose. He is, he says, acquainted only with
two--the version by Dryden and Joseph Warton--not seeming to be aware
that Warton translated only the _Georgics_ and _Eclogues_, printing
Pitt’s version of the _Æneid_. The whole of Virgil was translated into
this measure by John Ogilvie between 1649-50, and by the Earl of
Lauderdale about 1716, while versions of the _Æneid_, the _Georgics_,
and the _Eclogues_, in the same metre, have abounded in every era of our
literature, from Gawain Douglas’s translation of the _Æneid_ printed in
1553, to Archdeacon Wrangham’s version of the _Eclogues_ in 1830.
It is no reproach to Sir Osborne Morgan that, in the occupations of a
busy political life, his scholarship should have become a little rusty,
but it is a pity that he should so often have allowed himself to be
caught tripping, when a little timely counsel in the correction of his
proof sheets might have prevented this. In the First Eclogue the line
“Non insueta graves temptabunt pabula fetas”
is translated
“Here no unwonted herb shall tempt the travailing cattle.”
What it really means is, no change of fodder, no fodder which is strange
to them, shall “infect” or “try” the pregnant cattle, “insueta” being
used in exactly the same sense as in Eclogue V. 56, “_insuetum_ miratur
limen Olympi,” and “temptare” as it is used in Georg. III. 441, and
commonly in classical Latin. It is, to say the least, questionable
whether in the couplet--
“Pauperis et tuguri congestum cæspite culmen,
Post aliquot, mea regna videns, mirabor aristas?”--
the last line can mean
“Gaze on the straggling corn, the remains of what once was my kingdom.”
“Aristas” is much more likely to be a metonymy for “messes,” _i.e._
“annos,” like αροτου in Sophocles’ _Trachiniæ_, 69, τον
μεν παρελθοντ’ αροτον, a confirmative illustration which seems to have
escaped the commentators; but it is difficult to say, and Sir Osborne
has, it must be owned, excellent authority for his interpretation. In
Eclogue III. the somewhat difficult passage
“pocula ponam
Fagina....
Lenta quibus torno facili superaddita vitis
Diffusos hedera vestit pallente corymbos”--
_i.e._ “where the limber vine wreathed round them by the deft graving
tool is twined with pale ivy’s spreading clusters,”--is translated:
“Over whose side the vine by a touch of the graving tool added
Mantles its clustering grapes in the paler leaves of the ivy.”
This is quite wrong. “Corymbos” cannot possibly mean clusters of grapes,
but clusters of ivy berries, “hederâ pallente” being substituted, after
Virgil’s manner, for “hederæ pallentis.” In Eclogue IV. 24 there is no
reason for supposing that the “fallax herba veneni” is hemlock; it is
much more likely to be aconite. In line 45 “sandyx” should be translated
not “purple” but “crimson,” vague as the colour indicated by “purple”
is. In Eclogue V.
“Si quos aut Phyllidis ignes,
Aut Alconis habes laudes, aut jurgia Codri”
is not
“Phyllis’s fiery loves you would sing or the quarrels of Codrus,”
but “your passion for Phyllis, your invectives against Codrus,” “ignes”
being used far more becomingly for a man’s love than for a woman’s. So,
again, “pro purpureo narcisso” cannot mean what nature never saw,
“purple daffodil,” but the white narcissus. In Eclogue VIII. “Sophocleo
tua carmina digna cothurno” is turned by what is obviously a _lapsus
calami_, “worthy of Sophocles’ sock.” A scholar like Sir Osborne Morgan
does not need reminding that the “sock” is a metonymy for Comedy, as
Milton anglicizes it in _L’Allegro_, “if Jonson’s learned sock be on.”
In the exquisite passage in Eclogue VIII. 41--
“Jam fragiles poteram ab terrâ contingere ramos”--
to translate “fragiles” as “frail” is to miss the whole point of the
epithet. What Virgil means is, “I could just reach the branches from the
ground and _break them off_”; if it is to be translated by one epithet,
it must be “brittle.” Again in the Ninth Eclogue the words
“quâ se subducere colles
_Incipiunt_, mollique jugum demittere clivo,”
do not mean “where the hills with gentle depression steal away into the
plain,” but the very opposite: _i.e._ “Where the hills begin to draw
themselves up from the plain,” the ascent being contemplated from below.
In Eclogue IX., in turning the couplet
“Nam neque adhuc Vario videor, nec dicere Cinnâ
Digna, sed argutos inter strepere anser olores,”
the translator has no authority for turning the last verse into “a
cackling goose in a chorus of cygnets,” for there is no tradition that
cygnets sang, and goose should have been printed with a capital letter
to preserve the pun, the allusion being to a poetaster named Anser.
Unfortunately for the English translator, our literature can boast no
counterpart to “Anser” _totidem literis_, but Goose printed with a
capital is near enough to preserve, or suggest the sarcasm. There is
another slip in Eclogue X.: “Ferulas” is not “wands of willow” but
“fennel.”
Occasionally a touch is introduced which is neither authorized by the
original, nor true to nature. There is nothing, for instance to warrant,
in Eclogue I. 56, the epithet “odorous” as applied to the willow, nor
does “salictum” mean a “willow” but a “willow-bed or plantation.” To
translate “ubi tempus erit” by “when the hour shall have struck” reminds
us of Shakespeare’s famous anachronism in _Julius Cæsar_ and is as
surprising in the work of a scholar as the lengthening of the
penultimate in arbutus, “Sweet is the shower to the blade, To the newly
weaned kid the arbutus.” As a rule, the translator turns difficult
passages very skilfully, but this is not the case with the couplet which
concludes the “Pollio”:--
“Incipe, parve puer: cui non risere parentes
Nec deus hunc mensâ, dea nec dignata cubili est”;
that is, the “babe on whom the parent never smiled, no god ever deemed
worthy of his board, no goddess of her bed”--in other words, he can
never enjoy the rewards of a hero like Hercules; but there is neither
sense nor skill, and something very like a serious grammatical error, in
“Who knows not the smile of a parent,
Neither the board of a god nor the bed of a goddess is worthy.”
But to turn from comparative trifles. No one who reads this version of
the _Eclogues_ can doubt that Sir Osborne Morgan has proved his point,
that the English hexameter, when skilfully used, is the measure best
adapted for reproducing Virgil’s music in English. The following passage
(_Ec._ VII. 45-48) is happily turned; let us place the original beside
the translation:--
“Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba,
Et quæ vos rarâ viridis tegit arbutus umbrâ,
Solstitium pecori defendite: jam venit æstas
Torrida, jam læto turgent in palmite gemmæ.”
“Moss-grown fountains and sward more soft than the softest of slumbers,
Arbutus tree that flings over both its flickering shadows,
Shelter my flock from the sun. Already the summer is on us,
Summer that scorches up all! See the bud on the glad vine is swelling.”
Again (_Ec._ X. 41-48):--
“Serta mihi Phyllis legeret, cantaret Amyntas:
Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori,
Hic nemus: hic ipso tecum consumerer ævo.
Nunc insanus amor duri me Martis in armis
Tela inter media atque adversos detinet hostes:
Tu procul a patriâ--nec sit mihi credere tantum!--
Alpinas, ah dura, nives et frigora Rheni
Me sine sola vides.”
“Phyllis would gather me flowers and Amyntas a melody chant me;
Cool is the fountain’s wave and soft is the meadow, Lycoris;
Shady the grove! Here with thee I would die of old age in the greenwood.
Mad is the lust of war, that now in the heart of the battle
Chains me where darts fall fast, and the charge of the foemen is fiercest,
Far, far away from your home--Oh, would that I might not believe it--
Lost amid Alpine snows or the frozen desolate Rhineland,
Lonely without me you wander.”
Many other felicitous passages might be quoted; indeed, there is no
Eclogue without them; but the translator is not sure-footed, and, if he
occasionally illustrates the hexameter in its excellence, he
illustrates, unhappily too often, some of its worst defects. Two
qualities are indispensable to the success of this measure in English.
Our language, unlike the classical languages, being accentual and not
quantitative, if the long syllable is not represented where the stress
naturally falls, and the short syllables where it does not fall, the
effect is sometimes grotesque, sometimes distressing, and always
unsatisfactory. Nothing, for example, could be worse in their various
ways than the following:--
“Wept when you saw they were given the lad, and had you not managed.”
“Let not the frozen air harm you.”
“Scatter the sand with his hind hoofs.”
“The pliant growth of the osier.”
“Worthy of Sophocles’ sock, trumpet-tongued through the Universe echo.”
“Own’d it himself, and yet he would not deliver it to me.”
A very nice ear, too, is required to adjust the collocation of words in
which either vowels or consonants predominate, and the relative position
of monosyllabic and polysyllabic words, the predominance of the former
in our language increasing enormously the difficulty. No measure,
moreover, so easily runs into intolerable monotony--a monotony which
Clough sought to avoid by overweighting his verses with spondees, and
which Longfellow illustrates by the cloying predominance of the dactylic
movement. Sir Osborne Morgan tells us that he took Kingsley as his
model. Kingsley’s hexameters are respectable, but they have no
distinction, and he had certainly not a good ear. Longfellow’s are far
better, and are sometimes exquisitely felicitous, as in a couplet like
the following, which, with the exception of one word, is flawless:--
“Men whose lives glided on like the rivers that water the woodlands,
Darken’d by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of Heaven.”
Probably the best hexameters which have been composed in English are
those in William Watson’s _Hymn to the Sea_ and those in which Hawtry
translated Iliad III. 234-244, and the parting of Hector and Andromache
in the Sixth Iliad, models--these versions--not merely of translation,
but of hexametrical structure. There are, however, certain magical
effects, particularly in the Virgilian hexameter, produced by an
exquisite but audacious tact in the employment of licences, which can
never be reproduced in English.
Such would be--
“Nam neque Parnassi vobis juga, nam neque Pindi
Ulla moram fecere, neque Aonie Aganippe.
Illum etiam lauri, etiam flevere myricæ;
Pinifer illum etiam solâ sub rupe jacentem
Mænalus et gelidi fleverunt saxa Lycæi.”
Milton, and Milton alone among Englishmen, had the secret of this music,
but he elicited it from another instrument.
THE LATEST EDITION OF THOMSON[46]
[Footnote 46: _The Poetical Works of James Thomson._ A New Edition, with
Memoir and Critical Appendices, by the Rev. D. C. Tovey. 2 vols.
London.]
“Jacob Thomson, ein vergessener Dichter des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts”--a
forgotten poet of the eighteenth century--such is the title of a recent
monograph on the author of _The Seasons_ by Dr. G. Schmeding. Dr. G.
Schmeding is, however, so obliging as to pronounce that, in his opinion,
this ought not to be Thomson’s fate; that there remains in his work,
especially in _The Seasons_ merit enough to entitle him to be “enrolled
among poets,” and to find appreciation, at all events in schools and
reading societies. Dr. Schmeding may rest assured that Thomson’s fame is
quite safe. It has no doubt suffered, as that of all the poets of the
eighteenth century has suffered, by the great revolution which has, in
the course of the last ninety years, passed over literary tastes and
fashions. But during the present century there have been no less than
twenty editions of his poems, to say nothing of separate editions of
_The Seasons_; while his works, or portions of them, have been
translated into German, Italian, modern Greek, and Russian. Only two
years ago M. Léon Morel, in his _J. Thomson, sa vie et ses œuvres_,
published an elaborate and admirable monograph on this “forgotten poet.”
And now Mr. Tovey, who, we are glad to see, has been appointed Clarke
Lecturer at Cambridge, has given us a new biography of him and a new
edition of his works, making, if we are not mistaken, the thirty-second
memoir of him and the twenty-first edition of his works which have
appeared since the beginning of the century. This is pretty well for a
forgotten poet!
Mr. Tovey’s name is a sufficient guarantee for accurate and scholarly
work. But it might naturally be asked, what is there to justify another
edition of this poet, when so many editions are already in the field and
so easily accessible? We have little difficulty in answering this
question. The special features of Mr. Tovey’s edition are as important
as they are interesting. In the first place, he has given us a much
fuller biography than has hitherto appeared in English; in the second
place, he has thrown much interesting light on the political bearing of
Thomson’s dramas; and, in the third place, he has given, what no other
editor of Thomson has given, a full collation of Thomson’s own MS.
corrections, preserved in Mitford’s copy, now deposited in the British
Museum. The critical notes have cost him, he says, and we can quite
believe it, much time and labour, and in his preface he half apologizes
for what may seem “a ridiculous travesty of more important labours.”
There was no necessity for such an apology: he observes justly that he
has “not spent more pains on Thomson’s text than so many of our scholars
bestow upon some Greek and Latin poets whose intrinsic merit is no
greater than Thomson’s.”
To serious readers these critical notes will constitute the most
valuable part of Mr. Tovey’s labours; they are, in truth, the speciality
of this particular edition, and will make it indispensable to all
students of this most interesting poet. And now Mr. Tovey will, we
trust, forgive us if, with due deference, we point out what seem to us
to be defects in his work. The first thing that might have been expected
from so learned and careful an editor of Thomson was an adequate
discussion of the great problem of the authorship of _Rule Britannia_,
and the second an exposure of one of the most extraordinary
“mare’s-nests” to be found in English literature. But nothing, we regret
to say, can be more perfunctory and inadequate than the two notes in
which the first question is hurried over with references to _Notes and
Queries_, and nothing more irritating than the confusion worse
confounded in which Mr. Tovey leaves the second. We shall therefore
make no apology for entering somewhat at length into both these
questions.
And first for the authorship of _Rule Britannia_. The facts are these.
In 1740 Thomson and Mallet wrote, in conjunction, a masque entitled
_Alfred_, which, on 1st August in that year, was represented before the
Prince and Princess of Wales at Clifden. It was in two acts, and it
contained six lyrics, the last being _Rule Britannia_, which is entitled
an “Ode,” the music being by Dr. Arne. In 1745 Arne turned the piece
into an opera, and also into “a musical drama.” By this time the lyric
had become very popular, but there is no evidence to show that it had
been definitely attributed to either of the coadjutors. In 1748 Thomson
died. In 1751 Mallet re-issued _Alfred_, but in another form. It was
entirely remodelled, and almost entirely re-written, and, in an
advertisement prefixed to the work, he says: “According to the present
arrangement of the fable I was obliged to reject a great deal of what I
had written in the other: neither could I retain, of my friend’s part,
more than three or four speeches, and a part of one song.” Now, of the
parts retained from the former work, there were the first three stanzas
of _Rule Britannia_, the three others being excised, and their place
supplied by three stanzas written by Lord Bolingbroke. If Mallet is to
be believed, then, “part of one song” must refer, either to a song in
the third scene of the second act, beginning “From those eternal
regions bright,” or to _Rule Britannia_, for these are the only lyrics
in which portions of the lyrics in the former edition are retained.
_Rule Britannia_ is, it is true, entitled “An Ode” in the former
edition, and the other lyric “A Song,” so that Mallet would certainly
seem to imply that what he had retained of his friend’s work was the
portion of the song referred to, and not _Rule Britannia_. But, as
Mallet was notoriously a man who could not be believed on oath, and was
an adept in all those bad arts by which little men filch honours which
do not belong to them, if he is to be allowed to have any title to the
honour of composing this lyric, it ought to rest on something better
than the ambiguity between the word “Ode” and the word “Song.”
There is no evidence that, while both were alive, either Thomson or
Mallet claimed the authorship; but this is certain, it was printed at
Edinburgh, during Mallet’s lifetime, in the second edition of a
well-known song book, entitled _The Charmer_, with Thomson’s initials
appended to it. It is certain that Mallet had friends in Edinburgh, and
it is equally certain that neither he nor any of his friends raised any
objection to its ascription to Thomson. In 1743, in 1759, and in 1762
Mallet published collections of poems, but in none of these collections
does he lay claim to _Rule Britannia_, and, though it was printed in
song-books in 1749, 1750, and 1761, it is in no case assigned to
Mallet. None of his contemporaries, so far as we know, attributed it to
him, and it is remarkable that, in a brief obituary notice of him which
appeared in the _Scots Magazine_ in 1765, he is spoken of as the author
of the famous ballad _William and Margaret_, but not a word is said
about _Rule Britannia_. A further presumption in Thomson’s favour is
this: in all probability Dr. Arne, who set it to music, knew the
authorship, and he survived both Thomson and Mallet, dying in 1778. The
song had become very popular and celebrated, so that if Mallet had
desired to have the credit of its composition, it is strange that he
should not have laid claim to it, had his claim been a good one. But if
his claim was not good, he could hardly have ventured to claim the
authorship, as Dr. Arne would have been in his way. It is quite possible
that the ambiguity in the advertisement to the recension of 1751 was
designed; it certainly left the question open, and we cannot but think
there is something very suspicious in what follows the sentence in
Mallet’s advertisement, where he speaks of his having used so little of
his friend’s work. “I mention this expressly,” he adds, “that, whatever
faults are found in the present performance, they may be charged, as
they ought to be, entirely to my account.” A vainer and more
unscrupulous man than Mallet never existed; and, while it is simply
incredible that he should not have claimed what would have constituted
his chief title to popularity as a poet, had he been able to do so, it
is in exact accordance with his established character that he should, as
he did in the advertisement of 1751, have left himself an opportunity of
asserting that claim, should those who were privy to the secret have
predeceased him, and thus enabled him to do so with impunity.
The internal evidence--and on this alone the question must now be
argued--seems to us conclusive in Thomson’s favour. The Ode is simply a
translation into lyrics of what finds embodiment in Thomson’s
_Britannia_, in the fourth and fifth parts of _Liberty_, and in his
Verses to the Prince of Wales. Coming to details, there can be no doubt
that the third stanza--
“Still more majestic shalt thou rise,
More dreadful from each foreign stroke;
As the loud blast that tears the skies
Serves but to root thy native oak”--
was suggested by Horace’s
“Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus
Nigræ feraci frondis in Algido,
Per damna, per cædes, ab ipso
Ducit opes animumque ferro.”
Now, not only was Horace, as innumerable imitations and reminiscences
prove, one of Thomson’s favourite poets, but Thomson has, in the third
part of _Liberty_ translated this very passage:--
“Like an oak,
Nurs’d on feracious Algidum, whose boughs
Still stronger shoot beneath the rigid axe
By loss, by slaughter, from the steel itself
E’en force and spirit drew.”
He has, elsewhere, two other reminiscences of the same passage, once in
the third part of _Liberty_--
“Every tempest sung
Innoxious by, or bade it firmer stand”--
and once in _Sophonisba_ (Act V. sc. ii.):--
“Thy rooted worth
Has stood these wintry blasts, grown stronger by them.”
The epithet “azure” employed in the first stanza is, with “cerulean” and
“aerial,” one of the three commonest epithets in Thomson, the three
occurring at least twenty times in his poetry. A somewhat cursory
examination of his works has enabled us to find that “azure” or “azured”
alone occurs ten times. “Generous,” too, in the Latin sense of the term,
is another of his favourite words, it being used no less than sixteen
times in _Britannia_ and _Liberty_ alone. Another of his favourite
allusions is to England’s “native oaks.” Thus in _Britannia_ he speaks
of--
“Your oaks, peculiar harden’d, shoot
Strong into sturdy growth;”
in the last part of _Liberty_ we find “Let her own naval oak be basely
torn,” and in the same part of the poem he speaks of the “venerable
oaks” and “kindred floods.” The epithet “manly” and the phrase “the
fair”--“manly hearts to guard the fair”--are also peculiarly Thomsonian,
being repeatedly employed by him, the phrase “the fair” occurring in his
poetry at least six times, if not oftener. “Flame,” too, is another of
his favourite words.
“All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse,” etc.,
is exactly the sentiment in _Britannia_.
“Your hearts
Swell with a sudden courage, growing still
As danger grows.”
The stanza beginning “To thee belongs,” etc., is simply a lyrical
paraphrase of the passage in _Britannia_ commencing “Oh first of human
blessings,” and of a couplet in the last part of _Liberty_:--
“The winds and seas are Britain’s wide domain;
And not a sail but by permission spreads.”
The couplet
“All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore it circles thine”
is simply the echo of a couplet in the fifth part of _Liberty_--
“All ocean is her own, and every land
To whom her ruling thunder ocean bears.”
The phrase “blessed isle,” as applied to England, he employs three
times in _Liberty_. Again, the stanza in which _Rule Britannia_ is
written is the stanza in which the majority of Thomson’s minor lyrics
are written, and the rhythm and cadence, not less than the tone, colour
and sentiment, are exactly his.