spectacles of its own. “Each age,” as Conington well says in his
preface, “will naturally think that it understands an author whom it
studies better than the ages which have gone before it”; and it is for
this reason, he adds, “that the great works of antiquity require to be
translated afresh from time to time to preserve their interest as part
of modern literary culture.” But it is not alone that each age will
understand an author better than preceding ages; it will understand him
differently; it will see him in another light, from far other points of
view, modified and interpreted by its own spirit. What Heyne says of
the poet is in a measure true of the translator—that he has the genius
of his era, which must necessarily qualify his work. We have sometimes
fancied even that this business of translation was a kind of
metempsychosis through which the poet’s soul shall speak to many
different times and lands through forms and in voices changing to suit
the moods of each. This, of course, is only one of those fantastic
notions which a writer must sometimes be indulged in, if he is to be
kept in reasonable good-humor. But we think we may venture to say that
two nations translating for themselves what antiquity has to say to
them will insensibly find its utterances modified for each of them by
their natural modes of thought. Nay, may we not go further and say that
no two human minds will find precisely the same message in Homer or
Virgil or Horace—so infinite are the gradations of thought, so
innumerable the shades of meaning and suggestion in a word. Of Virgil
this is especially true; for he has, says Prof. Conington, “that
peculiar habit, ... common to him and Sophocles, of hinting at two or
three modes of expression while actually employing one.”
It is just for this reason that repeated translations of a great author
are not only useful but desirable; that, to quote Conington again, “it
is well that we should know how our ancestors of the Revolution period
conceived of Virgil; it is well that we should be obliged consciously
to realize how we conceive of him ourselves.” How true this is no one
can fail to perceive who contrasts Dryden’s method in any given passage
with Conington’s. The sense of Virgil may be given with equal exactness
by each—we say _may_ be, which is rather stretching a point, for, in
respect of verbal fidelity, the two versions are not to be compared—the
interpretation may be equally poetical, but there will remain a subtle
something which stamps each, and which we can only say is the flavor of
the time. Or, again, compare the Abbé Delille’s French version with
Dryden’s English—perhaps a fairer comparison; for both are equally
free, though by no means equally acquainted with their author, and both
to a certain extent belonged to the same school of composition. Nor are
they so very far apart as they seem in point of time; the century or so
which divides them was a very much longer period in England than in
France. Charles II. was nearer to Louis XV. than to George III. in
point of taste. Yet how different from Dryden’s Virgil, or from any
Englishman’s, is Delille’s, even though he does not find in his text
such enchanting gallicisms as Jean Regnault de Segrais could twist out
of the lines,
“Ubi templum illi centumque Sabæo
Thure calent aræ, sertisque recentibus halant”:[176]
“Dans le temple où toujours quelque Amant irrité
Accuse dans ses vœux quelque jeune Beauté.”
This is an extreme case, no doubt, and there are Frenchmen even who
would not be beyond laughing at it. We are not to forget, as we laugh
at it ourselves, that Segrais was not unknown in the Hôtel Rambouillet,
and that although his own poetry was not all of this order, not even
his _Æneid_—Saint-Evremond liked it—he also wrote novels which not even
the Hôtel Rambouillet could read. But when that really able man and
accomplished scholar, Cardinal Du Perron, turns Horace’s lines in the
charming farewell to Virgil (_Carm._ i. 3):
“Ventorumque regat Pater
Obstrictis aliis præter Iapygia,”
into this sort of thing:
“Ainsi des vents l’humide Père
Ton cours heureusement tempere,
Tenant ses enfants emplumez
Si bien sous la clef enfermez
Excepté l’opportun Zephyr,”
we have a version which no doubt seems correct and poetical enough to a
Frenchman, but to an English mind suggests nothing so much as a damp
and aged poultry-fancier locking up his chickens in the hen-house out
of the rain. And a countryman of the cardinal can make nothing more of
the “laughing eyes” of Dante’s Piccarda:
“Ond’ ella pronta e con _occhi ridenti_,”[177]
than
“L’ombre me repondit _d’un air satisfait_!”
as though the celestial phantom had been a small girl bribed with a
tart to answer. To the post-academic Gaul, shivering in the chaste but
chilly shadow of that awful Pantheon of the verbal proprieties, the
“Marguerite aux yeulx rians et verds” whom his forebears loved to sing
would be but a green-eyed monster indeed. Ronsard’s parodies of Pindar
were no worse than Ambrose Philips’ travesties of the deep-mouthed
Theban—the sparrow-hawk aping the eagle—and not much worse, indeed,
than West’s or even Wheelwright’s, or any other imitation of the
inimitable that we have seen. But the badness of the one is thoroughly
French and of his time, even to his bragging that it was his noble
birth which enabled him to reproduce Pindar, wherein Horace, for lack
of that virtue, had failed; the badness of the other as thoroughly
English and of his age. And what more salient instance could be given
of this natural difference in mental constitution, in “the way of
looking at things,” than Voltaire’s treatment of the scene in _Hamlet_
where the sentinel answers the question, “Have you had quiet guard?” by
the familiar household idiom, “Not a mouse stirring”? “_Pas un souris
qui trotte_” the author of _Zaire_ makes it, and proceeds to inform his
countrymen that this Shakspeare was a drunken savage.
Now, while there is no such radical difference between English and
American ways of thought as between English and French ways, there is
still difference enough to justify us in giving place to Mr. Cranch’s
blank-verse _Æneid_, as being _à priori_ another thing from the English
blank-verse _Æneids_ of forty or one hundred and forty years ago. So,
without more ado, let us repeat that these three versions of the last
decade are sufficiently unlike one another or any that have gone before
to warrant attentive notice.
In choosing for the vehicle of his attempt the octosyllabic line—the
well-known metre of Scott’s _Marmion_—Prof. Conington turned his back
intrepidly on all the traditions. Scarcely any rhythm we have would
seem at first blush worse fitted to give the unlearned reader an
adequate idea of the sonorous march of the Latin hexameter or of the
stately melody of Virgil’s verse, of the dignity of his sentiments, or
the noble gravity of his style. For him who uses such a metre to render
the _Æneid_ one half anticipates the need of some such frank confession
as that Ronsard, in a fit of remorse, or perhaps a verbal indigestion
over his own inconceivable pedantry, puts at the end—at the _end_, mark
you—of one of his never-ending series of odes:
“Les François qui mes vers liront,
S’ils ne sont et Grecs et Romains,
En lieu de ce livre, ils n’auront
Qu’un pesant faix entre les mains”—
which for our present purpose we may paraphrase: My excellent reader,
if you don’t know Virgil as well as I do, you will find very little of
him here, and if you do you will find still less. But Professor
Conington soon puts away from us all such forebodings. He gives us, in
spite of his metre, for the most part, in rare instances, by the help
of it, a great deal of Virgil—more, on the whole, than almost any other
of the poet’s translators. He has put the story of the _Æneid_ into
bright and animated English verse which may be read with pleasure as a
poem for itself, and is yet strictly faithful to the sense and spirit
of its original, as close as need be—wonderfully close in many parts—to
its language, often skilfully suggestive of some of the most salient
peculiarities of its form, and only failing conspicuously, where all
translations most conspicuously fail, in rendering the poet’s manner,
because the manner of any poet—and we mean by manner that union of
thought and form of the poet’s way of seeing with his way of saying
things which is the full manifestation of his genius—only failing here
because this part of any poet it is next to impossible to reproduce in
a foreign tongue, and because the vehicle chosen by Prof. Conington, so
opposite in every way to Virgil’s vehicle, increased that difficulty
tenfold. But a translation of a long narrative poem is not like the
translation of a brief lyric. Is the former to be written for those who
understand the original and care for no translation, or for those who,
not understanding the original, ask first of the translator that he
shall not put them to sleep, and, second, that he shall give them all
that his author gives as nearly as possible in the same manner? Two of
these demands Prof. Conington’s version fully meets, and it comes as
near to the third as was consistent with a metre which gave him the
best chance of combining the other two. If any translation of Virgil
can hope to be popular it is his; and we hold to the belief that it
will share with Dryden’s, which, if only for its author’s sake, will
live, the affections of the _unlatined_ English reader for long to
come.
As might be expected, it is in battle-pieces and in scenes of swift and
animated action, to which Scott’s metre naturally lends itself, and
with which it is as naturally associated, that this version chiefly
excels. Take, for example, the onset in the eleventh book:
“Meantime the Trojans near the wall,
The Tuscans and the horsemen all,
In separate troops arrayed;
Their mettled steeds the champaign spurn,
And, chafing, this and that way turn;
Spears bristle o’er the fields, that burn
With arms on high displayed.
Messapus and the Latian force,
And Coras and Camilla’s horse,
An adverse front array;
With hands drawn back they couch the spear,
And aim the dart in full career;
The tramp of heroes strikes the ear,
Mixed with the charger’s neigh.
Arrived within a javelin’s throw,
The armies halt a space; when, lo!
Sudden they let their good steeds go
And meet with deafening cry;
Their volleyed darts fly thick as snow,
Dark-shadowing all the sky.”
The Latin could scarcely be given with more spirit or closeness; though
in neither respect does Morris fall short of his predecessor, from whom
in manner, however, he differs _toto cœlo_:
“But in meanwhile the Trojan folk the city draw anigh,
The Tuscan dukes and all their horse in many a company
Well ordered; over all the plain, neighing, the steed doth fare,
Prancing and champing on the bit that turns him here and here.
And far and wide the lea is rough with iron harvest now,
And with the weapons tost aloft the level meadows glow.
Messapus and the Latins swift, lo! on the other hand,
And Coras with his brother-lord, and maid Camilla’s band,
Against them in the field; and, lo! far back their arms they fling
In couching of the level spears, and shot-spears brandishing.
All is afire with neigh of steeds and onfall of the men.
And now, within a spear-shot come, short up they rein, and then
They break out with a mighty cry and spur the maddened steeds;
And all at once from every side the storm of spear-shot speeds,
As thick as very snowing is, and darkens down the sun.”
It would be hard to say which version is closer to the original.
Conington leaves out the epithet _celeres_ which Virgil bestows on the
Latins, and also—a graver omission—that brother whom Virgil makes
attend him like his shadow (_et cum fratre Coras_) in every
battle-field of the _Æneid_. This fraternal warrior Morris gives us,
indeed, but not very intelligibly, as Coras’ “brother-lord.” On the
other hand, although Morris renders the Latin line for line, he is not
so concise as Conington, who puts Virgil’s fifteen hexameters into
twenty of his short lines as opposed to fifteen of Morris’ long ones.
Virgil has nothing of Morris’ “iron harvest”; here—
“Tum late ferreus hastis
Horret ager, campique armis sublimibus ardent”—
we should give Conington the preference, while Morris excels in
rendering the verse:
“Adventusque virum fremitusque ardescit equorum.”
In Morris’ version four words are to be specially noted: _folk_,
_dukes_, _maid_, and _very_. They contain the key to his method, and we
shall recur to them again.
Our American’s blank-verse here helps him to no greater degree of
fidelity than either of his rivals, while even patriotism must own his
version, as compared with theirs, a trifle tame:
“Meanwhile, the Trojan troops, the Etruscan chiefs,
And all the cavalry approach the walls,
In order ranged. The coursers leap and neigh
Along the fields, and fight against the curb,
And wheel about. An iron field of spears
Bristles afar, and lifted weapons blaze.
Upon the other side the Latins swift,
Messapus, Coras, and his brother come,
Also Camilla’s wing; in hostile ranks
They threaten with their lances backward drawn,
And shake their javelins. On the warriors press,
And fierce and fiercer neigh the battle steeds.
Advancing now within a javelin’s throw,
Each army halted; then, with sudden shouts,
They cheer and spur their fiery horses on.
From all sides now the spears fly thick and fast
As showers of sleet, and darken all the sky.”
The word “cavalry” here is too modern in its associations to suit us
entirely, nor strikes us as highly poetical.
“Wave, Munich, all thy banners wave,
And charge with all thy _chivalry_,”
is the way Campbell put it. Again, the rendering of the line
_Adventusque virum fremitusque ardescit equorum_ is less exact than
Morris’, if not than Conington’s, and much less poetical than either;
and were it not for the printer’s aid, we should be unable to tell such
blank-verse as “Messapus, Coras, and his brother come, also Camilla’s
wing,” from the very prosiest of prose. Mr. Cranch, like Prof.
Conington, omits Camilla’s attribute of _virginis_—though that is,
perhaps, better than to call her, as Dryden does, a “virago”—and turns
Virgil’s snow into sleet, no doubt having in mind Gray’s
“Iron sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darkened air,”
or the “sharp sleet of arrowy shower” in _Paradise Regained_.
It may be of interest to set side by side with these English
translations the French version of Delille. It will show us, at least,
where Mr. Morris went, perhaps, for his “iron harvest”:
“Mais déjà les Troyens, déjà les fiers Toscans
Pour attaquer vers Lausente ont déployé leurs rangs;
Ils marchent; le coursier de sa tête hautaine
Bat l’air, ronge le frein, et bondit dans la plaine;
Les champs sont hérissés d’une moisson de fer,
Et chaque javelot fait partir un éclair.
Et Messape, et Coras et son valeureux frère,
Et la chaste Camille et sa troupe légère,
Se présentent ensemble. On voit de toutes parts
Et s’alonger la lance et s’agiter les dards.
Sous les pas des guerriers les champs poudreux gémissent;
Et soldats et coursiers de colère frémissent.
Enfin, à la distance où le trait peut porter,
Les partis ennemis viennent de s’arrêter:
On s’écrie, on s’élance, et d’un essor rapide.
Chacun pousse en avant son coursier intrépide.
Plus pressés que la neige au retour des hivers
Des nuages de traits en obscurci les airs.”
In a future number we purpose concluding our present examination and
taking a final leave of the translators.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE HOME-RULE CANDIDATE.
_A STORY OF “NEW IRELAND.”_
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE LITTLE CHAPEL AT MONAMULLIN,” “THE ROMANCE OF A
PORTMANTEAU,” ETC., ETC.
CHAPTER II.
NEW IRELAND AND YOUNG ENGLAND.
How glad I felt when morning came, as it brought me nearer to seeing
our fair guest! I gathered a bouquet for her, wet with the kisses of
the lingering night-dew. I flatter myself that my bouquets are
constructed with a tender regard for tone. I have sat for hours in
Paris, upon an upturned empty basket in the Marché aux Fleurs, watching
the _fleuristes_ deftly composing those exquisite poems in color which
serve to render flowers a charming necessity. Upon this occasion I
selected blood-red geraniums as the outer edge, with narrowing circlets
of stefanotis and mignonette, the whole enshrined in a bower of
maiden-hair fern. How lovely she looked when I presented them to her at
breakfast; how enchanting her transparent complexion, that flushed as
she spoke, and crimsoned when she was spoken to! Alphonse Karr speaks
of a similar indefinable charm in his own delightful way: “_Elle avait
ce charme poétiquement virginal, qui est la plus grande beauté de la
femme._” Alas! my bouquet had been forestalled by the gift of a
veritable last rose of summer which Harry Welstone had culled while I
was engaged in imparting some finishing touches to my rather bristly
hair. The words “too late” to meet me on the very threshold of my new
career! It was truly disheartening.
She was attired in a tightly-fitting dress of pure white, adorned by a
series of coquettish blue ribbons, the edgings being of the same color.
Her cavalier collar and gauntlet cuffs finished a toilette which almost
recalled my Virgil, as I could hardly refrain from exclaiming “_O Dea
certe!_”
“Might I ask, if it is not an unparliamentary question, Mr. Ormonde, at
what hour you allowed poor papa to retire to his bed? Was it late last
night or early this morning?” she asked with a droll archness.
“Well, it _was_ rather late, Miss Hawthorne; but as your father was
good enough to favor me with some exceedingly interesting passages in
his senatorial career, the time galloped by at a break-neck pace and we
took no note of it.”
I had already learned to play the hypocrite. O Master Cupid! and this
was thy first lesson.
“Is my memory mocking me, or did I hear awful mention of Irish whisky?”
she laughed.
This enabled me to explain the blunder of my retainer in his desire to
uphold the honor of the family, and to exonerate myself from the
_soupçon_ of having neglected her society for that of the bottle.
Peter’s ideas upon the family _status_ seemed to afford her the
liveliest merriment, and she laughed the silvery laugh with which, old
playgoers tell me, Mme. Vestris used to bring down the house.
“Peter is a character, then?”
“You will find that out before very long, Miss Hawthorne.”
“I do _so_ love characters!”
I ran over my characteristics like a flash, and found them of the
baldest and mildest nature. Not a single strong point came to the
rescue, not a liking or a disliking. Pah! what a dull, drowsy weed;
what a prosy, colorless nobody.
“Peter is a great admirer of the fair sex,” said my mother. “You must
see him on Sunday standing at the chapel gate ‘discoorsin’’ the pretty
girls as they pass in to last Mass.”
“Is he a bachelor?”
“Oh! yes. I have often asked him why he doesn’t marry, and his
invariable reply is, ‘I’d rayther keep looking at them.’”
“Perhaps I might have a chance,” said Miss Hawthorne, with a delicious
coquetry in her manner.
“Not a bit of it, my dear; he would not ally himself to a Saxon for a
crock of gold.”
“He is a hard-hearted wretch, then,” laughed our guest, “and I shall
not endeavor to make a conquest.”
Little did she imagine that she might have uttered _Veni, vidi, vici_
at that particular moment. A poor triumph, though—a paltry victory. I
did not feel myself worthy of powder and shot.
Harry Welstone kept gazing at Miss Hawthorne from out his supremely
handsome eyes. How I envied him those deep, dark, corsair-like organs
of vision, inwardly railing against my own heavy blues! He chatted
with her upon every conceivable topic, planning excursions, arranging
her boating, riding, walking, and even the songs she was to sing,
disposing of her time to his own especial advantage, and leaving me
helplessly out in the cold with the prosy member for Doodleshire. I
could not find a solitary topic to speak upon; at least, just as I
had summoned up courage to “cut in,” as they say at whist, the wind
had shifted and the current of the conversation had taken another
turn, leaving my disabled argosy high and dry. I had spent my most
recent years in the secluded valley of Kilkenley with my mother, my
horses, and my dogs. I had seen little or nothing of the whirl of the
world, and was so purely, so essentially local as to be almost
ignorant of what was going on in the outer circle of life. Of course
I read the _Freeman’s Journal_—generally two days old when it reached
us—and then I merely glanced at the hunting fixtures or the sales of
thoroughbreds at Farrell’s or Sewell’s. Of course I had done some
reading; and of a lighter kind the Waverley Novels and Dickens, the
Titanic Thackeray and a few unwholesome French effusions; but of late
I had read nothing, and, as a consequence, was local to a
contemptuous degree. In what did Peter, my own servant, differ from
me? Merely in the perusal of a few books. He was a better judge of a
horse and—but why proceed? My reflections were all of this melancholy
cast as I listened to dissertations upon Chopin, Schubert, and
Wagner, upon the novelists and poets of the period, upon Gainsborough
hats and Pompadour flounces, upon the relative merits of Rève d’Amour
and Ess’ bouquet. Harry and our fair young guest kept the shuttlecock
going between them, and I was forced to bear the burden of my own
ignorance in a stolid, stupid silence. One chance was offered me
which I took as I would a six-foot wall—flying. The question of
horses came upon the _tapis_, and I vaulted into the saddle. I rode
down Harry and scarcely spared Miss Hawthorne; nor did I draw rein
until I had described _the_ run of last season, from meet to death,
winding a “View-halloo!” that actually caused the teacups to ring
upon their saucers. This blew off my compressed excitement, and,
although very much ashamed, I felt all the better for it. My foot was
on my native heath, and I showed _her_ that my name was McGregor.
“What are you going to do with Mr. Hawthorne to-day?” asked my mother.
“What are _you_ going to do with Miss Hawthorne, mother?” I retorted.
“Oh! Harry Welstone and I have arranged all that. _You_ are not in the
baby-house.”
This was gratifying intelligence with a vengeance. I was told off as
bear-leader to the prosy Parliament man, while Harry was to revel in
the radiance of Miss Hawthorne’s presence. This was grilling. And yet
what could I do or say? My hands were tied behind my back. I was host,
and should pay deference to the respected rites of bread and salt, the
sacred laws of hospitality. A sacrifice was demanded, and in me was
found the victim.
“Could we not manage to unite our forces?” I suggested, in the faint,
flickering hope that a compromise might be effected.
“Impossible!” said Harry.
I could have flung my teacup at his head.
“And why not, pray?” I asked in a short, testy way.
“Because you are to take Mr. Hawthorne over to Clonacooney, and to talk
tenant-right and landlord-wrong with old Mr. Cassidy; then, when
exhausted there, you are bound for the model farm at Rouserstown, and
any amount of steam-ploughing and top-dressing; then you can pay a
flying visit to Phil Dempsey’s hundred-acre field, and show the Saxon
the richness of the land he has invaded; then you are to call for
Father O’Dowd, where you can coal and do Home Rule; and then you may
come home to dinner, where _we_ shall be very happy to receive you.”
And Harry laughed loudly and long at my utter discomfiture—a
discomfiture written in my rueful countenance in lines as heavy as
those laid on the grim visage of Don Quixote by Gustave Doré.
“You are very kind, Welstone—a most considerate fellow. Why not have
arranged for Knobber, or the other side of the Shannon—say Ballybawn,
or Curlagh Island?”
The iron had entered my soul.
“Is not this arrangement a very heavy tax upon Mr. Ormonde’s
good-nature?” exclaimed our fair guest, graciously coming to the
rescue, addressing my mother, who, _par parenthèse_, expressed herself
perfectly charmed with Miss Hawthorne.
“Tax! my dear child? On the contrary, it is just the sort of day my son
will thoroughly enjoy: going about the country, talking second crops,
turnips, and the price of hay and oats. He is devoted to all that sort
of thing, and I doubt if even his duties of gallantry to you, Mabel,
would get the better of his devotion to Mme. Ceres.”
I was about to blurt out something that might possibly have compromised
me on all sides, when, as luck would have it, the M.P. entered.
He stalked into the room as if the division-bell were ringing, and took
his seat as though below the gangway, bowing gravely to the assembled
House. He lifted his cup as he would a blue-book, and handled his knife
as an act of Parliament.
“You will—ahem!—I’m sure excuse my being a little late”—with a
preparatory cough—“but the late sittings of last session have totally
unfitted me for bed until the wee sma’ hours.”
“Surely, papa, you are not going to carry the House of Commons hours
into the romantic glens of Kilkenly?”
“I admit that I ought not to do so, my dear, but, as a great statesman
once observed—I, ahem! quite forget his name at this particular
moment—habit is second nature; and were I to retire early, it would—ha!
ha!—be only for the purpose of quarrelling with one of my best friends,
my _best_ friend—Morpheus.”
“You must find the fatigues of Parliament very great,” said my mother.
“Herculean, madam. My correspondence, before I go down to the House at
all, is a herculean task, and one in which I am very considerably aided
by my daughter.”