Like Tennyson and Landor, an ever-increasing number are coming to regard blank verse as the proper medium for rendering the classics. It has the variety which is essential to works of length and which English hexameters and couplets usually lack. It is "freighted with all the authority of the greatest tradition in English literature; in it Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth wrote;"1 and from the time of Paradise Lost to that of Hyperion and to our own day it has been indisputably the English epic meter. For these reasons it is generally considered our equivalent for the meter of the Iliad and the Aeneid. Yet owing principally to the difficulty in writing blank verse that is heroic but not Miltonic, it is not the ideal verse-form for the classics of other tongues that some have thought it. Milton's manner is his own, something so different from Homer's or Virgil's or Dante's that his learned diction and the involutions of his style, when transferred to these poets, entirely misrepresent them. Perhaps it is due to his influence that blank verse lacks the rapidity, lightness, and suppleness necessary for an adequate rendering of Homer and Virgil. This is not to say that it need lack these qualities and may not become an ideal medium for the purpose. A great poet whose genius lay in this direction could probably bend the heroic couplet, the hexameter, or the blank verse to his will and give us a masterpiece of translation; but such poets are rare, and it is unlikely that any of them would undertake the task. It will be noticed that part of the Aeneid was translated into blank verse before any of the Iliad, and that Dryden's Virgil preceded Pope's Homer by eighteen years. This precedence of the Roman work over the Grecian continued throughout the eighteenth and, to a lesser degree, the nineteenth century, probably because Virgil is briefer than Homer and is studied more generally. After the renderings of two short passages of the Aeneid by Addison (1704) and an anonymous translator (1726), of the whole poem by Brady (1713–26), and of all Virgil by Trapp (1703-31), the next translation of the We have a measure parodied the hexameter thus: Afar be ambition to follow the Roman, (English Hexameters, in Last Fruit). 1 Sedgwick, Dante, 174. 2 See pp. 104-6 above. In the preface to the second edition of Winter (1726) Thomson translated twelve lines of the Georgics into blank verse. Latin epic was that which Alexander Strahan began to publish in 1739 and completed in 1767. "Mr. Strahan," remarked the Monthly Review, which gave the first six books the dubious praise of being "not inferior to the former translations of Virgil into blank verse,' -"Mr. Strahan endeavours to imitate Milton's manner, as thinking it the only true method of succeeding in a translation of Virgil: he keeps close to his author, in respect to his sense." Here are some typical lines: From hence to Acheron's Tartarean stream The way: a turbid gulph, with whirlpool vast, Bad as this is, it is no worse and not a great deal more Miltonic than may be found in other versions of the time, that, for example, made in 1764 by the Oxford professor of poetry, William Hawkins, which the Critical Review declared to be "the worst garb he [Virgil] ever appeared in." William Mills had even shorter shrift: Read the commandments, MILLS, translate no further, For there 'tis written - Thou shalt do no murther.^ Yet Mills's rendering of the Georgics (1780) is too dull and feeble to be called murder. There is more vigor and more stilted Miltonic inversion (Mills has none at all), but no more poetry or interest, in Capel Lofft's First and Second Georgic, attempted in Blank Verse (1784). The version of the complete Georgics which James R. Deare issued in 1808 seems, on the contrary, to be pleasant if not vigorous or inspired, and is the better for making but little use of Milton's style." 1 ix. 1 (1753). The complete Aeneid is noticed in the Review for November, 1767, where it is called dull. I have not seen Strahan's work. 2 Ib. 2. The tenth and twelfth books of Strahan's version were contributed by William Dobson, who had turned Paradise Lost into Latin and who afterwards put the first book into Greek. In 1757 Dobson translated the first book of Cardinal de Polignac's Latin Anti-Lucretius into stiff, decidedly Miltonic blank verse. 'xvii. 425. I have not seen the work (which included the entire Aeneid, though only half of it was published), but from the extracts in the review it appears to be little if any below the average. The reviewer objected particularly to the expressions "shalt joy thy shrine" and "matter for hereafter joy"; but the other Miltonisms are inoffensive, "gods. . . Auspicious drave the blasts," "the queen her fame Unheeding," "thus fair Venus she bespeaks," "exploit Egregious this." 4 Crit. Rev., 1. 55; an adaptation of Abel Evans's epigram on Trapp. I know these three translations of the Georgics only from the extracts and reviews in the magazines: for Mills, see Crit. Rev., 1. 50-55 (1780); for Lofft, Mo. Rev., lxxii. 345-8 (1785); for Deare, Quart. Rev., i. 69, 76–7 (1809). James Mason's translation of the entire Georgics into blank verse in 1810, and Robert Hoblyn's of the first book in Aside from Trapp's work, the only blank-verse rendering of all Virgil to appear in the eighteenth century was that of Robert Andrews, which Baskerville printed for the author in 1766. It is a singular affair, vigorous, abrupt, condensed, formal, often racy, but tending to fall into a series of separate lines, probably because it is a line-for-line translation. Such a jerky style does not permit elaborate inversions; yet the poem constantly, though only for a few words or phrases at a time, recalls Paradise Lost: Accept, O Sire! whom the Olympic king Thus proclaims worthy the prime meed select. His friendship's dear and monumental pledge.1 It was almost thirty years before Virgil again appeared in blank verse, this time at the hands of James Beresford, whose Aeneid (1794) seems to be no worse than the average, though rather more Miltonic. It is such wearisome reading, however, that one turns with relief to the eccentricities of James Henry's Eneis (1845). A successful physician, Henry left his practice in Dublin to walk with his wife and daughter back and forth across Europe, writing strange poems in stranger meters and examining manuscripts and editions of Virgil. He was one of the greatest of Virgilian scholars, notwithstanding his many peculiarities, such as translating his favorite into a jargon like this: The compaginate Dire, of war's iron portals, shall be closed. Unweeting, Dido from her bounds off-warn.' At the opposite extreme in many respects stands the blank-verse translation of Virgil's works begun by Rann Kennedy and finished 1825, I know only by title. Prior's Miltonic rendering of part of the fourth Georgic (written before 1721), and Richard Cumberland's of part of the third (written about 1745), should also be mentioned. v. 533-8. Andrews went mad soon after his Virgil was published. For his hatred of rime, see p. 325 above. 2 i. 358-66. As if to remove all doubts of his indebtedness to Paradise Lost, he quotes two lines from it on his title-page. The Eneis includes only books one and two. Henry's rendering of the first six books, curiously entitled Six Photographs of the Heroic Times (c. 1850?), I have not seen. Conington (English Translators of Virgil, in Quarterly Review, cx. 109) says it is "not metrical, but rhythmical . . . the rhythm is changed from time to time . . . pages of trochaic time being succeeded by others where anapaests are predominant, and these again by ordinary blank verse, a measure which is preserved through the whole of the Fourth Book." in 1849 by his son Charles, who in 1861 brought out a complete version of his own. The Kennedy translations are readable, clearly Miltonic, but stiff, tame, and prosaic.1 The Works of Virgil, closely rendered into English Rhythm, and illustrated from English Poets (1855–59), by R. C. Singleton, is a curious performance, not a poem, we are warned, but "a mere translation, such as . . . should be required from the schoolboy." 2 One of its principal objects, indeed, was "to help in giving a more poetic turn to the translation of the classical poets by the schoolboy."3 A preference for Anglo-Saxon words, which is one of Singleton's announced principles, results in bastard Spenserio-Miltonisms like "grunsel," "eyne," "steepy," "engrasped," "turmoiled," "eld," "armature," "haught," "eke," "prideful," and "hugeous." Such language, and a stilted, involved style, the result in part of another of his principles, "adherence to the Latin order," —make the work sound as Miltonic as if it had been published a century earlier. This is how Andromache speaks of Pyrrhus: - Who then, on following Leda-sprung Hermione, And Spartan nuptials, me, his handmaid e'en, To be possessed. But him, by mighty love Of his betrothed reft away, enfired, And hounded by the Furies of his crimes, Similar to Singleton's work in its marked Miltonisms and its strange diction is the free translation of the Aeneid that W. J. Thornhill brought out in 1886. The linguistic eccentricities (which include "hight," "steepy," "eld," "shagged with," "eke," "be-mad," "holpen," "the reboant cave reverbs") seem, like the frequent abruptness and undue brevity of style, to be due to a desire for vigor and raciness, but they quite destroy the ease and charm of the Roman poet. One curious feature of this version is the occasional use of Alexandrines; another is the frank introduction of "expressions, 1 The blank-verse translations of the Aeneid by John Miller (1863) and T. S. Burt (1883) I have not seen. 2 Preface, p. i. 3 Ib. vi. The same purpose animated William Sewell (Singleton's successor at Radley school) in the blank-verse rendering of the Georgics which he brought out in 1846 and (after entirely rewriting it) republished in 1854. To judge from the specimen Conington gives (Quart. Rev., cx. 107), it is too Miltonic to be easy or flowing. Sewell's Agamemnon (1846) and his Odes and Epodes of Horace (1850), translated like his Georgics "literally and rhythmically," I have not seen. Aeneid, iii. 465-72. and in some few cases even whole lines, from Milton, Shakspeare, 1 etc.," 1 as in this passage: He spake; and straight the duteus Power prepares ... His winged shoon he ties of downy gold. . . G. K. Rickards's rendering of the first six books of the Aeneid (1871) is abler, more concise, and less Miltonic than Singleton's or Thornhill's; yet in avoiding the "debilitating expansion of the sense" he lost what he himself thought "the highest merit of a poetical translation," that it should "read like an original" and "preserve . . . the manner and spirit of the author." To whom do the following typical lines "read like an original" or suggest the Virgilian ease and grace? 'Tis famed that Daedalus, from Minos' realm Far to the chilly north his flight pursued, He vowed, in homage to the Delian God, Where first he touched the earth, his oar-like wings. 4 Rickards's work was completed in 1872, when Lord Ravensworth published the latter half of the Aeneid (the eleventh book being done by Rickards). The first six books were again translated in 1893 by James Rhoades, who, holding that nothing "savours so much of Vergil as parts of the Blank Verse of Milton and of Cowper," followed all too closely the style and diction of Paradise Lost: Daedalus, flying from Minos' realm, 'tis said, Dared on swift wings to trust him to the sky, Upon his uncouth journey floated forth Toward the chill Bears, and stood light-poised at last On the Chalcidian hill. Here first to earth Restored, he dedicated to thy name, Phoebus, the oarage of his wings. Two years later Sir Theodore Martin printed for private circulation his translation of the sixth book in a blank verse intended to be 1 Preface, p. xvii. Thornhill gives some examples on page xviii; others may be found on pages 195 (line 2), 237 (line 8), etc. 2 Page 129 (book iv). "Downy gold" and "throws his steep flight" are from Paradise Lost, v. 282 (of wings in each case) and iii. 741. vi. 15-20. The passages quoted in the text above are from the preface. vi. 16-22. Rhoades's Georgics translated into English Verse (1881) I have not seen. |