I had intended translating all or nearly all these Idylls into blank
verse, as the natural equivalent of Greek or of Latin hexameters; only
deviating into rhyme where occasion seemed to demand it. But I found
that other metres had their special advantages: the fourteen-syllable
line in particular has that, among others, of containing about the same
number of syllables as an ordinary line of Theocritus. And there is also
no doubt something gained by variety.
Several recent writers on the subject have laid down that every
translation of Greek poetry, especially bucolic poetry, must be in rhyme
of some sort. But they have seldom stated, and it is hard to see, why.
There is no rhyme in the original, and _primâ facie_ should be none in
the translation. Professor Blackie has, it is true, pointed out the
"assonances, alliterations, and rhymes," which are found in more or less
abundance in Ionic Greek.[A] These may of course be purely accidental,
like the hexameters in Livy or the blank-verse lines in Mr. Dickens's
prose: but accidental or not (it may be said) they are there, and ought
to be recognised. May we not then recognise them by introducing similar
assonances, etc., here and there into the English version? or by
availing ourselves of what Professor Blackie again calls attention to,
the "compensating powers"[B] of English? I think with him that it was
hard to speak of our language as one which "transforms _boos megaloio
boeién_ into 'great ox's hide.'" Such phrases as 'The Lord is a man of
war,' 'The trumpet spake not to the armed throng,' are to my ear quite
as grand as Homer: and it would be equally fair to ask what we are to
make of a language which transforms Milton's line into [Greek: ê
shalpigx ohy proshephê ton hôplismhenon hochlon.][C] But be this as it
may, these phenomena are surely too rare and too arbitrary to be
adequately represented by any regularly recurring rhyme: and the
question remains, what is there in the unrhymed original to which rhyme
answers?
To me its effect is to divide the verse into couplets, triplets, or (if
the word may include them all) _stanzas_ of some kind. Without rhyme we
have no apparent means of conveying the effect of stanzas. There are of
course devices such as repeating a line or part of a line at stated
intervals, as is done in 'Tears, idle tears' and elsewhere: but clearly
none of these would be available to a translator. Where therefore he has
to express stanzas, it is easy to see that rhyme may be admissible and
even necessary. Pope's couplet may (or may not) stand for elegiacs, and
the _In Memoriam_ stanza for some one of Horace's metres. Where the
heroes of Virgil's Eclogues sing alternately four lines each, Gray's
quatrain seems to suggest itself: and where a similar case occurs in
these Idylls (as for instance in the ninth) I thought it might be met by
taking whatever received English stanza was nearest the required length.
Pope's couplet again may possibly best convey the pomposity of some
Idylls and the point of others. And there may be divers considerations
of this kind. But, speaking generally, where the translator has not to
intimate stanzas--where he has on the contrary to intimate that there
are none--rhyme seems at first sight an intrusion and a _suggestio
falsi_.
No doubt (as has been observed) what 'Pastorals' we have are mostly
written in what is called the heroic measure. But the reason is, I
suppose, not far to seek. Dryden and Pope wrote 'heroics,' not from any
sense of their fitness for bucolic poetry, but from a sense of their
universal fitness: and their followers copied them. But probably no
scholar would affirm that any poem, original or translated, by Pope or
Dryden or any of their school, really resembles in any degree the
bucolic poetry of the Greeks. Mr. Morris, whose poems appear to me to
resemble it more almost than anything I have ever seen, of course writes
what is technically Pope's metre, and equally of course is not of Pope's
school. Whether or no Pope and Dryden _intended_ to resemble the old
bucolic poets in style is, to say the least, immaterial. If they did
not, there is no reason whatever why any of us who do should adopt
their metre: if they did and failed, there is every reason why we should
select a different one.
Professor Conington has adduced one cogent argument against blank verse:
that is, that hardly any of us can write it.[D] But if this is so--if
the 'blank verse' which we write is virtually prose in disguise--the
addition of rhyme would only make it rhymed prose, and we should be as
far as ever from "verse really deserving the name."[E] Unless (which I
can hardly imagine) the mere incident of 'terminal consonance' can
constitute that verse which would not be verse independently, this
argument is equally good against attempting verse of any kind: we should
still be writing disguised, and had better write undisguised, prose.
Prose translations are of course tenable, and are (I am told) advocated
by another very eminent critic. These considerations against them occur
to one: that, among the characteristics of his original which the
translator is bound to preserve, one is that he wrote metrically; and
that the prattle which passes muster, and sounds perhaps rather pretty
than otherwise, in metre, would in plain prose be insufferable. Very
likely some exceptional sort of prose may be meant, which would dispose
of all such difficulties: but this would be harder for an ordinary
writer to evolve out of his own brain, than to construct any species of
verse for which he has at least a model and a precedent.
These remarks are made to shew that my metres were not selected, as it
might appear, at hap-hazard. Metre is not so unimportant as to justify
that. For the rest, I have used Briggs's edition[F] (_Poetæ Bucolici
Græci_), and have never, that I am aware of, taken refuge in any various
reading where I could make any sense at all of the text as given by him.
Sometimes I have been content to put down what I felt was a wrong
rendering rather than omit; but only in cases where the original was
plainly corrupt, and all suggested emendations seemed to me hopelessly
wide of the mark. What, for instance, may be the true meaning of
[Greek: bolbhost tist kochlhiast] in the fourteenth Idyll I have no
idea. It is not very important. And no doubt the sense of the last two
lines of the "_Death of Adonis_" is very unlikely to be what I have made
it. But no suggestion that I met with seemed to me satisfactory or even
plausible: and in this and a few similar cases I have put down what
suited the context. Occasionally also, as in the Idyll here printed
last--the one lately discovered by Bergk, which I elucidated by the
light of Fritzsche's conjectures--I have availed myself of an opinion
which Professor Conington somewhere expresses, to the effect that, where
two interpretations are tenable, it is lawful to accept for the purposes
of translation the one you might reject as a commentator. [Greek:
tetootaiost] has I dare say nothing whatever to do with 'quartan fever.'
On one point, rather a minor one, I have ventured to dissent from
Professor Blackie and others: namely, in retaining the Greek, instead of
adopting the Roman, nomenclature. Professor Blackie says[G] that there
are some men by whom "it is esteemed a grave offence to call Jupiter
Jupiter," which begs the question: and that Jove "is much more musical"
than Zeus, which begs another. Granting (what might be questioned) that
_Zeus, Aphrodite_, and _Eros_ are as absolutely the same individuals
with _Jupiter, Venus_, and _Cupid_ as _Odysseus_ undoubtedly is with
_Ulysses_--still I cannot see why, in making a version of (say)
Theocritus, one should not use by way of preference those names by which
he invariably called them, and which are characteristic of him: why, in
turning a Greek author into English, we should begin by turning all the
proper names into Latin. Professor Blackie's authoritative statement[H]
that "there are whole idylls in Theocritus which would sound ridiculous
in any other language than that of Tam o' Shanter" I accept of course
unhesitatingly, and should like to see it acted upon by himself or any
competent person. But a translator is bound to interpret all as best he
may: and an attempt to write Tam o' Shanter's language by one who was
not Tam o' Shanter's countryman would, I fear, result in something more
ridiculous still.