The idea of translating Catullus in the original metres adopted by the
poet himself was suggested to me many years ago by the admirable,
though, in England, insufficiently known, version of Theodor Heyse
(Berlin, 1855). My first attempts were modelled upon him, and were so
unsuccessful that I dropt the idea for some time altogether. In 1868,
the year following the publication of my larger critical edition[A] of
Catullus, I again took up the experiment, and translated into English
glyconics the first Hymenaeal, _Collis o Heliconici_. Tennyson's Alcaics
and Hendecasyllables had appeared in the interval, and had suggested to
me the new principle on which I was to go to work. It was not sufficient
to reproduce the ancient metres, unless the ancient quantity was
reproduced also. Almost all the modern writers of classical metre had
contented themselves with making an accented syllable long, an
unaccented short; the most familiar specimens of hexameter,
Longfellow's _Evangeline_ and Clough's _Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich_ and
_Amours de Voyage_ were written on this principle, and, as a rule,
stopped there. They almost invariably disregarded position, perhaps the
most important element of quantity. In the first line of _Evangeline_--
_This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,_
there are no less than five violations of position, to say nothing of
the shortening of a syllable so distinctly long as the _i_ in
_primeval_. Mr. Swinburne, in his Sapphics and Hendecasyllables, while
writing on a manifestly artistic conception of those metres, and, in my
judgment, proving their possibility for modern purposes by the superior
rhythmical effect which a classically trained ear enabled him to make in
handling them, neglects position as a rule, though his nice sense of
metre leads him at times to observe it, and uniformly rejects any
approach to the harsh combinations indulged in by other writers. The
nearest approach to quantitative hexameters with which I am acquainted
in modern English writers is the _Andromeda_ of Mr. Kingsley, a poem
which has produced little effect, but is interesting as a step to what
may fairly be called a new development of the metre. For the experiments
of the Elizabethan writers, Sir Philip Sidney and others, by that
strange perversity which so often dominates literature, were as
decidedly unsuccessful from an accentual, as the modern experiments from
a quantitative point of view. Sir Philip Sidney has given in his
_Arcadia_ specimens of hexameters, elegiacs, sapphics, asclepiads,
anacreontics, hendecasyllables. The following elegiacs will serve as a
sample.
_Unto a caitif wretch, whom long affliction holdeth,
And now fully believ's help to bee quite perished;
Grant yet, grant yet a look, to the last moment of his anguish,
O you (alas so I finde) caus of his onely ruine:
Dread not awhit (O goodly cruel) that pitie may enter
Into thy heart by the sight of this Epistle I send:
And so refuse to behold of these strange wounds the recitall,
Lest it might m' allure home to thyself to return._
In these the classical laws of position are most carefully observed;
every dactyl ending in a consonant is followed by a word beginning with
a vowel or _h_--_affl[i]ct(i)(o)n holdeth_, _mom[e]nt (o)f h(i)s
anguish_, _ca[u]se (o)f h(i)s onely_; _affliction wasteth_, _moment of
his dolour_, _cause of his dreary_, would have been as impossible to Sir
Philip Sidney as _mo[e]r(o)r t(e)nebat_, _mom[e]nt(a) p(e)r curae_,
_ca[u]s(a) v(e)l sola_ in a Latin writer of hexameters. Similarly where
the dactyl is incided after the second syllable, the third syllable
beginning a new word, the utmost care is taken that that word shall
begin not only with a syllable essentially short, but, when the second
syllable ends in a consonant, with a vowel: _[o]f th(i)s (e)pistle_,
but not _[o]f th(i)s d(i)saster_, still less _[o]f th(i)s d(i)rection._
The other element of quantity is less rigidly defined; for (1) syllables
strictly long, as _I_, _thy_, _so_, are allowed to be short; (2)
syllables made long by the accent falling upon them are in some cases
shortened, as _r(u)[i]ne_, _p(e)r(i)sh[e]d_, _cr(u)[e]l_; (3) syllables
which the absence of the accent only allows to be long _in thesi_, are,
in virtue of the classical laws of position, permitted to rank as long
elsewhere--_mom[e]nt of his_, _[o]f this epistle_. It needs little
reflection to see that it is to one or other of these three
peculiarities that the failure of the Elizabethan writers of classical
metres must be ascribed. Pentameters like
_Gratefulness, sweetness, holy love, hearty regard,
That the delights of life shall be to him dolorous,
And even in that love shall I reserve him a spite;_
sapphics like
_Are then humane mindes privileg'd so meanly
As that hateful death can abridg them of power
With the vow of truth to record to all worlds
That we bee her spoils?_
hexameters like
_F[i]re n(o) l(i)quor can cool: Nept[u]ne's re[a]lm would not avail us.
Nurs inw[a]rd m(a)l(a)di[e]s, which have not scope to bee breath'd out.
Oh n(o) n(o), worthie sheph[e]rd, worth c[a]n never enter a title;_
are too alien from ordinary pronunciation to please either an average
reader or a classically trained student. The same may be said of the
translation into English hexameters of the two first Eclogues of Virgil,
appended by William Webbe to his _Discourse of English Poetrie_ (1586,
recently reprinted by Mr. Arber). Here is his version of Ecl. I., 1-10.