to translate a poet literally, and Virgil least of any other; for his
peculiar beauty lying in his choice of words, I am excluded from it by
the narrow compass of our heroic verse, unless I would make use of
monosyllables only, and these clogged with consonants, which are the dead
weight of our mother tongue. It is possible, I confess, though it rarely
happens, that a verse of monosyllables may sound harmoniously; and some
examples of it I have seen. My first line of the “Æneis” is not harsh—
“Arms, and the man I sing, who forced by Fate,” &c.—
but a much better instance may be given from the last line of Manilius,
made English by our learned and judicious Mr. Creech—
“Nor could the world have borne so fierce a flame”—
where the many liquid consonants are placed so artfully that they give a
pleasing sound to the words, though they are all of one syllable. It is
true, I have been sometimes forced upon it in other places of this work,
but I never did it out of choice: I was either in haste, or Virgil gave
me no occasion for the ornament of words; for it seldom happens but a
monosyllable line turns verse to prose, and even that prose is rugged and
unharmonious. Philarchus, I remember, taxes Balzac for placing twenty
monosyllables in file without one dissyllable betwixt them.
The way I have taken is not so strait as metaphrase, nor so loose as
paraphrase; some things, too, I have omitted, and sometimes have added of
my own. Yet the omissions, I hope, are but of circumstances, and such as
would have no grace in English; and the additions, I also hope, are
easily deduced from Virgil’s sense. They will seem (at least, I have the
vanity to think so), not stuck into him, but growing out of him. He
studies brevity more than any other poet; but he had the advantage of a
language wherein much may be comprehended in a little space. We and all
the modern tongues have more articles and pronouns, besides signs of
tenses and cases, and other barbarities on which our speech is built, by
the faults of our forefathers. The Romans founded theirs upon the Greek;
and the Greeks, we know, were labouring many hundred years upon their
language before they brought it to perfection. They rejected all those
signs, and cut off as many articles as they could spare, comprehending in
one word what we are constrained to express in two; which is one reason
why we cannot write so concisely as they have done. The word _pater_,
for example, signifies not only “a father,” but “your father,” “my
father,” “his or her father”—all included in a word.
This inconvenience is common to all modern tongues, and this alone
constrains us to employ more words than the ancients needed. But having
before observed that Virgil endeavours to be short, and at the same time
elegant, I pursue the excellence and forsake the brevity. For there he
is like ambergris, a rich perfume, but of so close and glutinous a body
that it must be opened with inferior scents of musk or civet, or the
sweetness will not be drawn out into another language.
On the whole matter I thought fit to steer betwixt the two extremes of
paraphrase and literal translation; to keep as near my author as I could
without losing all his graces, the most eminent of which are in the
beauty of his words: and those words, I must add, are always figurative.
Such of these as would retain their elegance in our tongue, I have
endeavoured to graff on it; but most of them are of necessity to be lest,
because they will not shine in any but their own. Virgil has sometimes
two of them in a line; but the scantiness of our heroic verse is not
capable of receiving more than one; and that, too, must expiate for many
others which have none. Such is the difference of the languages, or such
my want of skill in choosing words. Yet I may presume to say, and I hope
with as much reason as the French translator, that, taking all the
materials of this divine author, I have endeavoured to make Virgil speak
such English as he would himself have spoken if he had been born in
England and in this present age. I acknowledge, with Segrais, that I
have not succeeded in this attempt according to my desire; yet I shall
not be wholly without praise, if in some sort I may be allowed to have
copied the clearness, the purity, the easiness, and the magnificence of
his style. But I shall have occasion to speak farther on this subject
before I end the preface.
When I mentioned the Pindaric line, I should have added that I take
another licence in my verses; for I frequently make use of triplet
rhymes, and for the same reason—because they bound the sense. And
therefore I generally join these two licences together, and make the last
verse of the triplet a Pindaric; for besides the majesty which it gives,
it confines the sense within the barriers of three lines, which would
languish if it were lengthened into four. Spenser is my example for both
these privileges of English verses; and Chapman has followed him in his
translation of Homer. Mr. Cowley has given in to them after both; and
all succeeding writers after him. I regard them now as the _Magna
Charta_ of heroic poetry; and am too much an Englishman to lose what my
ancestors have gained for me. Let the French and Italians value
themselves on their regularity; strength and elevation are our standard.
I said before, and I repeat it, that the affected purity of the French
has unsinewed their heroic verse. The language of an epic poem is almost
wholly figurative; yet they are so fearful of a metaphor that no example
of Virgil can encourage them to be bold with safety. Sure, they might
warm themselves by that sprightly blaze, without approaching it so close
as to singe their wings; they may come as near it as their master. Not
that I would discourage that purity of diction in which he excels all
other poets; but he knows how far to extend his franchises, and advances
to the verge without venturing a foot beyond it. On the other side,
without being injurious to the memory of our English Pindar, I will
presume to say that his metaphors are sometimes too violent, and his
language is not always pure. But at the same time I must excuse him, for
through the iniquity of the times he was forced to travel at an age when,
instead of learning foreign languages, he should have studied the
beauties of his mother tongue, which, like all other speeches, is to be
cultivated early, or we shall never write it with any kind of elegance.
Thus by gaining abroad he lost at home, like the painter in the
“Arcadia,” who, going to see a skirmish, had his arms lopped off, and
returned, says Sir Philip Sidney, well instructed how to draw a battle,
but without a hand to perform his work.
There is another thing in which I have presumed to deviate from him and
Spenser. They both make hemistichs, or half-verses, breaking off in the
middle of a line. I confess there are not many such in the “Faërie
Queen,” and even those few might be occasioned by his unhappy choice of
so long a stanza. Mr. Cowley had found out that no kind of staff is
proper for an heroic poem, as being all too lyrical; yet though he wrote
in couplets, where rhyme is freer from constraint, he frequently affects
half-verses, of which we find not one in Homer, and I think not in any of
the Greek poets or the Latin, excepting only Virgil: and there is no
question but he thought he had Virgil’s authority for that licence. But
I am confident our poet never meant to leave him or any other such a
precedent; and I ground my opinion on these two reasons: first, we find
no example of a hemistich in any of his Pastorals or Georgics, for he had
given the last finishing strokes to both these poems; but his “Æneis” he
left so incorrect, at least so short of that perfection at which he
aimed, that we know how hard a sentence he passed upon it. And, in the
second place, I reasonably presume that he intended to have filled up all
these hemistichs, because in one of them we find the sense imperfect:—
“_Quem tibi jam Troja_ . . . ” (“Æn.” iii. 340.)
which some foolish grammarian has ended for him with a half-line of
nonsense:—
“_Peperit fumante Creusa_.”
For Ascanius must have been born some years before the burning of that
city, which I need not prove. On the other side we find also that he
himself filled up one line in the sixth Æneid, the enthusiasm seizing him
while he was reading to Augustus:—
“_Misenum Æolidem_, _quo non præstantior alter_
_Ære ciere viros_, . . . ”
to which he added in that transport, _Martemque accendare cantu_, and
never was any line more nobly finished, for the reasons which I have
given in the “Book of Painting.”
On these considerations I have shunned hemistichs, not being willing to
imitate Virgil to a fault, like Alexander’s courtiers, who affected to
hold their necks awry because he could not help it. I am confident your
lordship is by this time of my opinion, and that you will look on those
half-lines hereafter as the imperfect products of a hasty muse, like the
frogs and serpents in the Nile, part of them kindled into life, and part
a lump of unformed, unanimated mud.
I am sensible that many of my whole verses are as imperfect as those
halves, for want of time to digest them better. But give me leave to
make the excuse of Boccace, who, when he was upbraided that some of his
novels had not the spirit of the rest, returned this answer: that
Charlemagne, who made the Paladins, was never able to raise an army of
them. The leaders may be heroes, but the multitude must consist of
common men.
I am also bound to tell your lordship, in my own defence, that from the
beginning of the first Georgic to the end of the last Æneid, I found the
difficulty of translation growing on me in every succeeding book. For
Virgil, above all poets, had a stock which I may call almost
inexhaustible, of figurative, elegant, and sounding words. I, who
inherit but a small portion of his genius, and write in a language so
much inferior to the Latin, have found it very painful to vary phrases
when the same sense returns upon me. Even he himself, whether out of
necessity or choice, has often expressed the same thing in the same
words, and often repeated two or three whole verses which he had used
before. Words are not so easily coined as money; and yet we see that the
credit not only of banks, but of exchequers, cracks when little comes in
and much goes out. Virgil called upon me in every line for some new
word, and I paid so long that I was almost bankrupt; so that the latter
end must needs be more burthensome than the beginning or the middle; and
consequently the twelfth Æneid cost me double the time of the first and
second. What had become of me, if Virgil had taxed me with another book?
I had certainly been reduced to pay the public in hammered money for want
of milled; that is, in the same old words which I had used before; and
the receivers must have been forced to have taken anything, where there
was so little to be had.
Besides this difficulty with which I have struggled and made a shift to
pass it ever, there is one remaining, which is insuperable to all
translators. We are bound to our author’s sense, though with the
latitudes already mentioned; for I think it not so sacred as that one
iota must not be added or diminished, on pain of an anathema. But slaves
we are, and labour on another man’s plantation; we dress the vineyard,
but the wine is the owner’s. If the soil be sometimes barren, then we
are sure of being scourged; if it be fruitful, and our care succeeds, we
are not thanked; for the proud reader will only say—the poor drudge has
done his duty. But this is nothing to what follows; for being obliged to
make his sense intelligible, we are forced to untune our own verses that
we may give his meaning to the reader. He who invents is master of his
thoughts and words: he can turn and vary them as he pleases, till he
renders them harmonious. But the wretched translator has no such
privilege, for being tied to the thoughts, he must make what music he can
in the expression; and for this reason it cannot always be so sweet as
that of the original. There is a beauty of sound, as Segrais has
observed, in some Latin words, which is wholly lost in any modern
language. He instances in that _mollis amaracus_, on which Venus lays
Cupid in the first Æneid. If I should translate it sweet-marjoram, as
the word signifies, the reader would think I had mistaken Virgil; for
these village-words, as I may call them, give us a mean idea of the
thing; but the sound of the Latin is so much more pleasing, by the just
mixture of the vowels with the consonants, that it raises our fancies to
conceive somewhat more noble than a common herb, and to spread roses
under him, and strew lilies over him—a bed not unworthy the grandson of
the goddess.
If I cannot copy his harmonious numbers, how shall I imitate his noble
flights, where his thoughts and words are equally sublime? _Quem_
“ . . . _quisquis studet æmulari_,
. . . _cæratis ope Dedaleâ_
_Nititur pennis_, _vitreo daturus_
_Nomina ponto_.”
What modern language or what poet can express the majestic beauty of this
one verse, amongst a thousand others?
“_Aude_, _hospes_, _contemnere opes_, _et te quoque dignum_
_Finge Deo_ . . . ”
For my part, I am lost in the admiration of it. I contemn the world when
I think on it, and myself when I translate it.
Lay by Virgil, I beseech your lordship and all my better sort of judges,
when you take up my version, and it will appear a passable beauty when
the original muse is absent; but like Spenser’s false Florimel, made of
snow, it melts and vanishes when the true one comes in sight.
I will not excuse, but justify, myself for one pretended crime with which
I am liable to be charged by false critics, not only in this translation,
but in many of my original poems—that I Latinise too much. It is true,
that when I find an English word significant and sounding, I neither
borrow from the Latin nor any other language; but when I want at home, I
must seek abroad. If sounding words are not of our growth and
manufacture, who shall hinder me to import them from a foreign country?
I carry not out the treasure of the nation which is never to return, but
what I bring from Italy I spend in England. Here it remains and here it
circulates, for if the coin be good it will pass from one hand to
another. I trade both with the living and the dead for the enrichment of
our native language. We have enough in England to supply our necessity;
but if we will have things of magnificence and splendour, we must get
them by commerce. Poetry requires ornament, and that is not to be had
from our old Teuton monosyllables; therefore, if I find any elegant word
in a classic author, I propose it to be naturalised by using it myself;
and if the public approves of it, the bill passes. But every man cannot
distinguish betwixt pedantry and poetry; every man, therefore, is not fit
to innovate.
Upon the whole matter, a poet must first be certain that the word he
would introduce is beautiful in the Latin; and is to consider, in the
next place, whether it will agree with the English idiom. After this he
ought to take the opinion of judicious friends, such as are learned in
both languages; and lastly, since no man is infallible, let him use this
licence very sparingly; for if too many foreign words are poured in upon
us, it looks as if they were designed not to assist the natives, but to
conquer them.
I am now drawing towards a conclusion, and suspect your lordship is very
glad of it. But permit me first to own what helps I have had in this
undertaking. The late Earl of Lauderdale sent me over his new
translation of the “Æneis,” which he had ended before I engaged in the
same design. Neither did I then intend it; but some proposals being
afterwards made me by my bookseller, I desired his lordship’s leave that
I might accept them, which he freely granted, and I have his letter yet
to show for that permission. He resolved to have printed his work, which
he might have done two years before I could publish mine; and had
performed it, if death had not prevented him. But having his manuscript
in my hands, I consulted it as often as I doubted of my author’s sense,
for no man understood Virgil better than that learned nobleman. His
friends, I hear, have yet another and more correct copy of that
translation by them, which had they pleased to have given the public, the
judges must have been convinced that I have not flattered him.
Besides this help, which was not inconsiderable, Mr. Congreve has done me
the favour to review the “Æneis,” and compare my version with the
original. I shall never be ashamed to own that this excellent young man
has shown me many faults, which I have endeavoured to correct. It is
true he might have easily found more, and then my translation had been
more perfect.
Two other worthy friends of mine, who desire to have their names
concealed, seeing me straitened in my time, took pity on me and gave me
the life of Virgil, the two prefaces—to the Pastorals and the
Georgics—and all the arguments in prose to the whole translation; which
perhaps has caused a report that the two first poems are not mine. If it
had been true that I had taken their verses for my own, I might have
gloried in their aid; and like Terence, have farthered the opinion that
Scipio and Lælius joined with me. But the same style being continued
through the whole, and the same laws of versification observed, are
proofs sufficient that this is one man’s work; and your lordship is too
well acquainted with my manner to doubt that any part of it is another’s.
That your lordship may see I was in earnest when I premised to hasten to
an end, I will not give the reasons why I writ not always in the proper
terms of navigation, land-service, or in the cant of any profession. I
will only say that Virgil has avoided these proprieties, because he writ
not to mariners, soldiers, astronomers, gardeners, peasants, &c., but to
all in general, and in particular to men and ladies of the first quality,
who have been better bred than to be too nicely knowing in the terms. In
such cases, it is enough for a poet to write so plainly that he may be
understood by his readers; to avoid impropriety, and not affect to be
thought learned in all things.
I have emitted the four preliminary lines of the first Æneid, because I
think them inferior to any four others in the whole poem; and
consequently believe they are not Virgil’s. There is too great a gap
betwixt the adjective _vicina_ in the second line, and the substantive
_arva_ in the latter end of the third; which keeps his meaning in
obscurity too long, and is contrary to the clearness of his style. _Ut
quamvis avido_ is too ambitious an ornament to be his, and _gratum opus
agricolis_ are all words unnecessary, and independent of what he had said
before. _Horrentia Martis arma_ is worse than any of the rest.
_Horrentia_ is such a flat epithet as Tully would have given us in his
verses. It is a mere filler to stop a vacancy in the hexameter, and
connect the preface to the work of Virgil.
Our author seems to sound a charge, and begins like the clangour of a
trumpet:—
“_Arma_, _virumque cano_, _Trojæ qui primus ab oris_,”—
Scarce a word without an _r_, and the vowels for the greater part
sonorous. The prefacer began with _Ille ego_, which he was constrained
to patch up in the fourth line with _at nunc_ to make the sense cohere;
and if both those words are not notorious botches I am much deceived,
though the French translator thinks otherwise. For my own part, I am
rather of the opinion that they were added by Tucca and Varius, than
retrenched.
I know it may be answered by such as think Virgil the author of the four
lines—that he asserts his title to the “Æneis” in the beginning of this
work, as he did to the two former, in the last lines of the fourth
Georgic. I will not reply otherwise to this, than by desiring them to
compare these four lines with the four others, which we know are his,
because no poet but he alone could write them. If they cannot
distinguish creeping from flying, let them lay down Virgil, and take up
Ovid de Ponto in his stead. My master needed not the assistance of that
preliminary poet to prove his claim: his own majestic mien discovers him
to be the king amidst a thousand courtiers. It was a superfluous office,
and therefore I would not set those verses in the front of Virgil; but
have rejected them to my own preface:
“I, who before, with shepherds in the groves,
Sung to my oaten pipe their rural loves,
And issuing thence, compelled the neighb’ring field
A plenteous crop of rising corn to yield;
Manured the glebe, and stocked the fruitful plain
(A poem grateful to the greedy swain),” &c.
If there be not a tolerable line in all these six, the prefacer gave me
no occasion to write better. This is a just apology in this place; but I
have done great wrong to Virgil in the whole translation. Want of time,
the inferiority of our language, the inconvenience of rhyme, and all the
other excuses I have made, may alleviate my fault, but cannot justify the
boldness of my undertaking. What avails it me to acknowledge freely that
I have not been able to do him right in any line? For even my own
confession makes against me; and it will always be returned upon me,
“Why, then, did you attempt it?” To which no other answer can be made,
than that I have done him less injury than any of his former libellers.
What they called his picture had been drawn at length so many times by
the daubers of almost all nations, and still so unlike him, that I
snatched up the pencil with disdain, being satisfied beforehand that I
could make some small resemblance of him, though I must be content with a
worse likeness. A sixth Pastoral, a Pharmaceutria, a single Orpheus, and
some other features have been exactly taken. But those holiday authors
writ for pleasure, and only showed us what they could have done if they
would have taken pains to perform the whole.
Be pleased, my lord, to accept with your wonted goodness this unworthy
present which I make you. I have taken off one trouble from you, of
defending it, by acknowledging its imperfections; and though some part of
them are covered in the verse (as Ericthonius rode always in a chariot to
hide his lameness), such of them as cannot be concealed you will please
to connive at, though in the strictness of your judgment you cannot
pardon. If Homer was allowed to nod sometimes, in so long a work it will
be no wonder if I often fall asleep. You took my “Aurengzebe” into your
protection with all his faults; and I hope here cannot be so many,
because I translate an author who gives me such examples of correctness.
What my jury may be I know not; but it is good for a criminal to plead
before a favourable judge: if I had said partial, would your lordship
have forgiven me? Or will you give me leave to acquaint the world that I
have many times been obliged to your bounty since the Revolution? Though
I never was reduced to beg a charity, nor ever had the impudence to ask
one, either of your lordship or your noble kinsman the Earl of Dorset,
much less of any other, yet when I least expected it you have both
remembered me, so inherent it is in your family not to forget an old
servant. It looks rather like ingratitude on my part, that where I have
been so often obliged, I have appeared so seldom to return my thanks, and
where I was also so sure of being well received. Somewhat of laziness
was in the case, and somewhat too of modesty; but nothing of disrespect
or of unthankfulness. I will not say that your lordship has encouraged
me to this presumption, lest, if my labours meet with no success in
public, I may expose your judgment to be censured. As for my own
enemies, I shall never think them worth an answer; and if your lordship
has any, they will not dare to arraign you for want of knowledge in this
art till they can produce somewhat better of their own than your “Essay
on Poetry.” It was on this consideration that I have drawn out my
preface to so great a length. Had I not addressed to a poet and a critic
of the first magnitude, I had myself been taxed for want of judgment, and
shamed my patron for want of understanding. But neither will you, my
lord, so soon be tired as any other, because the discourse is on your
art; neither will the learned reader think it tedious, because it is _ad
Clerum_: at least, when he begins to be weary, the church doors are open.
That I may pursue the allegory with a short prayer after a long sermon.