_Sustinet_, _et fata imponit diversa duorum_;
_Quem damnet labor_, _et quo vergat pondere letum_.”
For I have taken these words _Quem damnet labor_ in the sense which
Virgil gives them in another place (_Damnabis tu quoque votis_), to
signify a prosperous event. Yet I dare not condemn so great a genius as
Milton; for I am much mistaken if he alludes not to the text in Daniel
where Belshazzar was put into the balance and found too light. This is
digression, and I return to my subject. I said above that these two
machines of the balance and the Dira were only ornamental, and that the
success of the duel had been the same without them; for when Æneas and
Turnus stood fronting each other before the altar, Turnus looked
dejected, and his colour faded in his face, as if he desponded of the
victory before the fight; and not only he, but all his party, when the
strength of the two champions was judged by the proportion of their
limbs, concluded it was _impar pugna_, and that their chief was
overmatched. Whereupon Juturna, who was of the same opinion, took this
opportunity to break the treaty and renew the war. Juno herself had
plainly told the nymph beforehand that her brother was to fight
“_Imparibus fatis_; _nec diis_, _nec viribus æquis_;”
so that there was no need of an apparition to fright Turnus, he had the
presage within himself of his impending destiny. The Dira only served to
confirm him in his first opinion, that it was his destiny to die in the
ensuing combat. And in this sense are those words of Virgil to be taken—
“_Non me tua turbida virtus_
_Terret_, _ait_; _dii me terrent_, _et Jupiter hostis_.”
I doubt not but the adverb _solum_ is to be understood (“It is not your
valour only that gives me this concernment, but I find also by this
portent that Jupiter is my enemy”); for Turnus fled before, when his
first sword was broken, till his sister supplied him with a better, which
indeed he could not use because Æneas kept him at a distance with his
spear. I wonder Ruæus saw not this, where he charges his author so
unjustly for giving Turnus a second sword to no purpose. How could he
fasten a blow or make a thrust, when he was not suffered to approach?
Besides, the chief errand of the Dira was to warn Juturna from the field,
for she could have brought the chariot again when she saw her brother
worsted in the duel. I might farther add that Æneas was so eager of the
fight that he left the city, now almost in his possession, to decide his
quarrel with Turnus by the sword; whereas Turnus had manifestly declined
the combat, and suffered his sister to convey him as far from the reach
of his enemy as she could. I say, not only suffered her, but consented
to it; for it is plain he knew her by these words:—
“_O soror_, _et dudum agnovi_, _cum prima per artem_
_Fædera turbasti_, _teque hæc in bella dedisti_;
_Et tunc necquicquam fallis dea_.”
I have dwelt so long on this subject that I must contract what I have to
say in reference to my translation, unless I would swell my preface into
a volume, and make it formidable to your lordship, when you see so many
pages yet behind. And, indeed, what I have already written, either in
justification or praise of Virgil, is against myself for presuming to
copy in my coarse English the thoughts and beautiful expressions of this
inimitable poet, who flourished in an age when his language was brought
to its last perfection, for which it was particularly owing to him and
Horace. I will give your lordship my opinion that those two friends had
consulted each other’s judgment wherein they should endeavour to excel;
and they seem to have pitched on propriety of thought, elegance of words,
and harmony of numbers. According to this model, Horace wrote his odes
and epodes; for his satires and epistles, being intended wholly for
instruction, required another style—
“Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta doceri”—
and therefore, as he himself professes, are _sermoni propriora_ (nearer
prose than verse). But Virgil, who never attempted the lyric verse, is
everywhere elegant, sweet, and flowing in his hexameters. His words are
not only chosen, but the places in which he ranks them for the sound; he
who removes them from the station wherein their master sets them spoils
the harmony. What he says of the Sibyl’s prophecies may be as properly
applied to every word of his—they must be read in order as they lie; the
least breath discomposes them, and somewhat of their divinity is lost. I
cannot boast that I have been thus exact in my verses; but I have
endeavoured to follow the example of my master, and am the first
Englishman perhaps who made it his design to copy him in his numbers, his
choice of words, and his placing them for the sweetness of the sound. On
this last consideration I have shunned the cæsura as much as possibly I
could; for wherever that is used, it gives a roughness to the verse, of
which we can have little need in a language which is overstocked with
consonants. Such is not the Latin where the vowels and consonants are
mixed in proportion to each other; yet Virgil judged the vowels to have
somewhat of an over-balance, and therefore tempers their sweetness with
cæsuras. Such difference there is in tongues that the same figure which
roughens one, gives majesty to another; and that was it which Virgil
studied in his verses. Ovid uses it but rarely; and hence it is that his
versification cannot so properly be called sweet as luscious. The
Italians are forced upon it once or twice in every line, because they
have a redundancy of vowels in their language; their metal is so soft
that it will not coin without alloy to harden it. On the other side, for
the reason already named, it is all we can do to give sufficient
sweetness to our language; we must not only choose our words for
elegance, but for sound—to perform which a mastery in the language is
required; the poet must have a magazine of words, and have the art to
manage his few vowels to the best advantage, that they may go the
farther. He must also know the nature of the vowels—which are more
sonorous, and which more soft and sweet—and so dispose them as his
present occasions require; all which, and a thousand secrets of
versification beside, he may learn from Virgil, if he will take him for
his guide. If he be above Virgil, and is resolved to follow his own
_verve_ (as the French call it), the proverb will fall heavily upon him:
“Who teaches himself has a fool for his master.”
Virgil employed eleven years upon his “Æneis,” yet he left it, as he
thought himself, imperfect; which, when I seriously consider, I wish
that, instead of three years which I have spent in the translation of his
works, I had four years more allowed me to correct my errors, that I
might make my version somewhat more tolerable than it is; for a poet
cannot have too great a reverence for his readers if he expects his
labours should survive him. Yet I will neither plead my age nor sickness
in excuse of the faults which I have made. That I wanted time is all I
have to say; for some of my subscribers grew so clamorous that I could no
longer defer the publication. I hope, from the candour of your lordship,
and your often-experienced goodness to me, that if the faults are not too
many you will make allowances, with Horace:—
“_Si plura nitent in carmine_, _non ego paucis_
_Offendar maculis_, _quas aut incuria fudit_,
_Aut humana parùm cavit natura_.”
You may please also to observe that there is not, to the best of my
remembrance, one vowel gaping on another for want of a cæsura in this
whole poem. But where a vowel ends a word the next begins either with a
consonant or what is its equivalent; for our _w_ and _h_ aspirate, and
our diphthongs, are plainly such. The greatest latitude I take is in the
letter _y_ when it concludes a word and the first syllable of the next
begins with a vowel. Neither need I have called this a latitude, which
is only an explanation of this general rule—that no vowel can be cut off
before another when we cannot sink the pronunciation of it, as _he_,
_she_, _me_, _I_, &c. Virgil thinks it sometimes a beauty to imitate the
licence of the Greeks, and leave two vowels opening on each other, as in
that verse of the third pastoral—
“_Et succus pecori_, _et lac subducitur agnis_.”
But _nobis non licet esse tam disertis_—at least, if we study to refine
our numbers. I have long had by me the materials of an English
“Prosodia,” containing all the mechanical rules of versification, wherein
I have treated with some exactness of the feet, the quantities, and the
pauses. The French and Italians know nothing of the two first—at least,
their best poets have not practised them. As for the pauses, Malherbe
first brought them into France within this last century, and we see how
they adorn their Alexandrines. But as Virgil propounds a riddle which he
leaves unsolved—
“_Dic quibus in terris_, _inscripti nomina regum_
_Nascantur flores_, _et Phyllida solus habeto_”—
so I will give your lordship another, and leave the exposition of it to
your acute judgment. I am sure there are few who make verses have
observed the sweetness of these two lines in “Cooper’s Hill”—
“Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage; without o’erflowing, full”—
and there are yet fewer who can find the reason of that sweetness. I
have given it to some of my friends in conversation, and they have
allowed the criticism to be just. But since the evil of false quantities
is difficult to be cured in any modern language; since the French and the
Italians, as well as we, are yet ignorant what feet are to be used in
heroic poetry; since I have not strictly observed those rules myself
which I can teach others; since I pretend to no dictatorship among my
fellow-poets; since, if I should instruct some of them to make
well-running verses, they want genius to give them strength as well as
sweetness; and, above all, since your lordship has advised me not to
publish that little which I know, I look on your counsel as your command,
which I shall observe inviolably till you shall please to revoke it and
leave me at liberty to make my thoughts public. In the meantime, that I
may arrogate nothing to myself, I must acknowledge that Virgil in Latin
and Spenser in English have been my masters. Spenser has also given me
the boldness to make use sometimes of his Alexandrine line, which we
call, though improperly, the Pindaric, because Mr. Cowley has often
employed it in his odes. It adds a certain majesty to the verse when it
is used with judgment, and stops the sense from overflowing into another
line. Formerly the French, like us and the Italians, had but five feet
or ten syllables in their heroic verse; but since Ronsard’s time, as I
suppose, they found their tongue too weak to support their epic poetry
without the addition of another foot. That indeed has given it somewhat
of the run and measure of a trimetre, but it runs with more activity than
strength. Their language is not strong with sinews, like our English; it
has the nimbleness of a greyhound, but not the bulk and body of a
mastiff. Our men and our verses overbear them by their weight; and
_pondere_, _non numero_ is the British motto. The French have set up
purity for the standard of their language; and a masculine vigour is that
of ours. Like their tongue is the genius of their poets, light and
trifling in comparison of the English—more proper for sonnets, madrigals,
and elegies than heroic poetry. The turn on thoughts and words is their
chief talent: but the epic poem is too stately to receive those little
ornaments. The painters draw their nymphs in thin and airy habits, but
the weight of gold and of embroideries is reserved for queens and
goddesses. Virgil is never frequent in those turns, like Ovid, but much
more sparing of them in his “Æneis” than in his Pastorals and Georgics.
“_Ignoscenda quidem_, _scirent si ignoscere manes_.”
That turn is beautiful indeed; but he employs it in the story of Orpheus
and Eurydice, not in his great poem. I have used that licence in his
“Æneis” sometimes, but I own it as my fault; it was given to those who
understand no better. It is like Ovid’s
“_Semivirumque bovem_, _semibovemque virum_.”
The poet found it before his critics, but it was a darling sin which he
would not be persuaded to reform.
The want of genius, of which I have accused the French, is laid to their
charge by one of their own great authors, though I have forgotten his
name, and where I read it. If rewards could make good poets, their great
master has not been wanting on his part in his bountiful encouragements;
for he is wise enough to imitate Augustus if he had a Maro. The Triumvir
and Proscriber had descended to us in a more hideous form than they now
appear, if the emperor had not taken care to make friends of him and
Horace. I confess the banishment of Ovid was a blot in his escutcheon;
yet he was only banished, and who knows but his crime was capital? And
then his exile was a favour. Ariosto, who, with all his faults, must be
acknowledged a great poet, has put these words into the mouth of an
Evangelist; but whether they will pass for gospel now I cannot tell:—
“Non fu si santo ni benigno Augusto,
Come la tuba di Virgilio suona;
L’haver havuto in poesia buon gusto,
La proscrittione iniqua gli pardona.”
But heroic poetry is not of the growth of France, as it might be of
England if it were cultivated. Spenser wanted only to have read the
rules of Bossu, for no man was ever born with a greater genius or had
more knowledge to support it. But the performance of the French is not
equal to their skill; and hitherto we have wanted skill to perform
better. Segrais, whose preface is so wonderfully good, yet is wholly
destitute of elevation; though his version is much better than that of
the two brothers, or any of the rest who have attempted Virgil. Annibale
Caro is a great name amongst the Italians, yet his translation of the
“Æneis” is most scandalously mean, though he has taken the advantage of
writing in blank verse, and freed himself from the shackles of modern
rhyme—if it be modern; for Le Clerc has told us lately, and I believe has
made it out, that David’s Psalms were written in as errant rhyme as they
are translated. Now if a Muse cannot run when she is unfettered, it is a
sign she has but little speed. I will not make a digression here, though
I am strangely tempted to it, but will only say that he who can write
well in rhyme may write better in blank verse. Rhyme is certainly a
constraint even to the best poets, and those who make it with most ease;
though perhaps I have as little reason to complain of that hardship as
any man, excepting Quarles and Withers. What it adds to sweetness, it
takes away from sense; and he who loses the least by it may be called a
gainer; it often makes us swerve from an author’s meaning. As if a mark
he set up for an archer at a great distance, let him aim as exactly as he
can, the least wind will take his arrow and divert it from the white.
I return to our Italian translator of the “Æneis;” he is a foot-poet; he
lackeys by the side of Virgil at the best, but never mounts behind him.
Doctor Morelli, who is no mean critic in our poetry, and therefore may be
presumed to be a better in his own language, has confirmed me in this
opinion by his judgment, and thinks withal that he has often mistaken his
master’s sense. I would say so if I durst, but am afraid I have
committed the same fault more often and more grossly; for I have forsaken
Ruæus (whom generally I follow) in many places, and made expositions of
my own in some, quite contrary to him, of which I will give but two
examples, because they are so near each other in the tenth Æneid:—
“_Sorti pater æquus utrique_.”
Pallas says it to Turnus just before they fight. Ruæus thinks that the
word _pater_ is to be referred to Evander, the father of Pallas; but how
could he imagine that it was the same thing to Evander if his son were
slain, or if he overcame? The poet certainly intended Jupiter, the
common father of mankind, who, as Pallas hoped, would stand an impartial
spectator of the combat, and not be more favourable to Turnus than to
him. The second is not long after it, and both before the duel is begun.
They are the words of Jupiter, who comforts Hercules for the death of
Pallas, which was immediately to ensue, and which Hercules could not
hinder, though the young hero had addressed his prayers to him for his
assistance, because the gods cannot control destiny. The verse follows—
“_Sic ait_; _atque oculos Rutulorum rejicit arvis_”—
which the same Ruæus thus construes: “Jupiter, after he had said this,
immediately turns his eyes to the Rutulian fields and beholds the duel.”
I have given this place another exposition—that he turned his eyes from
the field of combat that he might not behold a sight so unpleasing to
him. The word _rejicit_, I know, will admit of both senses; but Jupiter
having confessed that he could not alter fate, and being grieved he could
not in consideration of Hercules, it seems to me that he should avert his
eyes rather than take pleasure in the spectacle. But of this I am not so
confident as the other, though I think I have followed Virgil’s sense.
What I have said, though it has the face of arrogance, yet is intended
for the honour of my country, and therefore I will boldly own that this
English translation has more of Virgil’s spirit in it than either the
French or the Italian. Some of our countrymen have translated episodes
and other parts of Virgil with great success; as particularly your
lordship, whose version of Orpheus and Eurydice is eminently good.
Amongst the dead authors, the Silenus of my Lord Rescommon cannot be too
much commended. I say nothing of Sir John Denham, Mr. Waller, and Mr.
Cowley; it is the utmost of my ambition to be thought their equal, or not
to be much inferior to them and some others of the living. But it is one
thing to take pains on a fragment and translate it perfectly, and another
thing to have the weight of a whole author on my shoulders. They who
believe the burden light, let them attempt the fourth, sixth, or eighth
Pastoral; the first or fourth Georgic; and, amongst the Æneids, the
fourth, the fifth, the seventh, the ninth, the tenth, the eleventh, or
the twelfth, for in these I think I have succeeded best.
Long before I undertook this work I was no stranger to the original. I
had also studied Virgil’s design, his disposition of it, his manners, his
judicious management of the figures, the sober retrenchments of his
sense, which always leaves somewhat to gratify our imagination, on which
it may enlarge at pleasure; but, above all, the elegance of his
expressions and the harmony of his numbers. For, as I have said in a
former dissertation, the words are in poetry what the colours are in
painting. If the design be good, and the draft be true, the colouring is
the first beauty that strikes the eye. Spenser and Milton are the
nearest in English to Virgil and Horace in the Latin, and I have
endeavoured to form my style by imitating their masters. I will farther
own to you, my lord, that my chief ambition is to please those readers
who have discernment enough to prefer Virgil before any other poet in the
Latin tongue. Such spirits as he desired to please, such would I choose
for my judges, and would stand or fall by them alone. Segrais has
distinguished the readers of poetry, according to their capacity of
judging, into three classes (he might have said the same of writers, too,
if he had pleased). In the lowest form he places those whom he calls
_les petits esprits_—such things as are our upper-gallery audience in a
playhouse, who like nothing but the husk and rind of wit; prefer a
quibble, a conceit, an epigram, before solid sense and elegant
expression. These are mob-readers. If Virgil and Martial steed for
Parliament-men, we know already who would carry it. But though they make
the greatest appearance in the field, and cry the loudest, the best of it
is they are but a sort of French Huguenots, or Dutch boors, brought ever
in herds, but not naturalised, who have not land of two pounds per annum
in Parnassus, and therefore are not privileged to poll. Their authors
are of the same level; fit to represent them on a mountebank’s stage, or
to be masters of the ceremonies in a bear-garden. Yet these are they who
have the most admirers. But it often happens, to their mortification,
that as their readers improve their stock of sense (as they may by
reading better books, and by conversation with men of judgment), they
soon forsake them; and when the torrent from the mountains falls no more,
the swelling writer is reduced into his shallow bed, like the Mançanares
at Madrid, with scarce water to moisten his own pebbles. There are a
middle sort of readers (as we held there is a middle state of souls),
such as have a farther insight than the former, yet have not the capacity
of judging right; for I speak not of those who are bribed by a party, and
knew better if they were not corrupted, but I mean a company of warm
young men, who are not yet arrived so far as to discern the difference
betwixt fustian or ostentations sentences and the true sublime. These
are above liking Martial or Owen’s epigrams, but they would certainly set
Virgil below Statius or Lucan. I need not say their poets are of the
same paste with their admirers. They affect greatness in all they write,
but it is a bladdered greatness, like that of the vain man whom Seneca
describes an ill habit of body, full of humours, and swelled with dropsy.
Even these, too, desert their authors as their judgment ripens. The
young gentlemen themselves are commonly misled by their pedagogue at
school, their tutor at the university, or their governor in their
travels, and many of these three sorts are the most positive blockheads
in the world. How many of these flatulent writers have I known who have
sunk in their reputation after seven or eight editions of their works!
for indeed they are poets only for young men. They had great success at
their first appearance, but not being of God, as a wit said formerly,
they could not stand.
I have already named two sorts of judges, but Virgil wrote for neither of
them, and by his example I am not ambitious of pleasing the lowest or the
middle form of readers. He chose to please the most judicious souls, of
the highest rank and truest understanding. These are few in number; but
whoever is so happy as to gain their approbation can never lose it,
because they never give it blindly. Then they have a certain magnetism
in their judgment which attracts others to their sense. Every day they
gain some new proselyte, and in time become the Church. For this reason
a well-weighed judicious poem, which at its first appearance gains no
more upon the world than to be just received, and rather not blamed than
much applauded, insinuates itself by insensible degrees into the liking
of the reader; the more he studies it, the more it grows upon him, every
time he takes it up he discovers some new graces in it. And whereas
poems which are produced by the vigour of imagination only have a gloss
upon them at the first (which time wears off), the works of judgment are
like the diamond, the more they are polished the more lustre they
receive. Such is the difference betwixt Virgil’s “Æneis” and Marini’s
“Adone.” And if I may be allowed to change the metaphor, I would say
that Virgil is like the Fame which he describes:—
“_Mobilitate viget_, _viresque acquirit eundo_.”
Such a sort of reputation is my aim, though in a far inferior degree,
according to my motto in the title-page—_sequiturque patrem non passibus
æquis_—and therefore I appeal to the highest court of judicature, like
that of the peers, of which your lordship is so great an ornament.
Without this ambition which I own, of desiring to please the _judices
natos_, I could never have been able to have done anything at this age,
when the fire of poetry is commonly extinguished in other men. Yet
Virgil has given me the example of Entellus for my encouragement; when he
was well heated, the younger champion could not stand before him. And we
find the elder contended not for the gift, but for the honour (_nec dona
moror_); for Dampier has informed us in his “Voyages” that the air of the
country which produces gold is never wholesome.