while he was himself (for his last plays were but his dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself, as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it. In his works you find little to retrench or alter. Wit, and language, and humour also in some measure, we had before him; but something of art was wanting to the drama, till he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who preceded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came after those who had performed both to such a height. Humour was his proper sphere; and in that he delighted most to represent mechanic people. He was deeply conversant in the ancients, both Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them; there is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times whom he has not translated in "Sejanus" and "Catiline." But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him. With the spoils of those writers he so represented Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his language, 'twas that he weaved it it too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially perhaps, too, he did a little too much Romanise our tongue, leaving the words which he translated almost as much Latin as he found them; wherein, though he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough comply with the idiom of ours. If I would compare him with Shakspeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakspeare the greater wit. Shakspeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets: Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakspeare. To conclude of him as he has given us the most correct plays, so, in the precepts which he has laid down in his "Discoveries," we have as many and profitable rules for perfecting the stage, as any wherewith the French can furnish us. POETICAL TRANSLATIONS. a A MAN should be a nice critic in his mother tongue before he attempts to translate in a foreign language. Neither is it sufficient that he be able to judge of words and style, but he must be a master of them too: he must perfectly understand his author's tongue, and absolutely command his own: so that to be a thorough translator, he must be thorough poet. Neither is it enough to give his author's sense, in good English, in poetical expressions, and in musical numbers; for, though all these are exceeding difficult to perform, yet there remains a harder task; and it is a secret of which few translators have sufficiently thought. I have already hinted a word or two concerning it; that is the maintaining the character of an author, which distinguishes him from all others, and makes him appear that individual poet whom you would interpret. For example, not only the thoughts but the style and versification of Virgil and Ovid are very different; yet I see, even in our best poets, who have translated some parts of them, that they have confounded their several talents; and by endeavouring only at the sweetness and harmony of numbers, have made them both so much alike, that if I did not know the originals, I should never be able to judge by the copies which was Virgil and which was Ovid. It was objected against a late noble painter, that he drew many graceful pictures, but few of them were like. And this happened to him, because he always studied himself more than those who sat to him. In such translators I can easily distinguish the hand which performed the work, but I cannot distinguish their poet from another. Suppose two authors are equally sweet; yet there is as great distinction to be made in sweetness, as in that of sugar and that of honey. I can make the difference more plain, by giving you (if it be worth knowing) my own method of proceeding, in my translations out of four several poets in this volume - Virgil, Theocritus, Lucretius, and Horace. In each of these, before I undertook them, I considered the genius and distinguishing character of my author. I looked on Virgil as a succinct and grave majestic writer; one who weighed not only every thought, but every word and syllable; who was still aiming to crowd his sense into as narrow a compass as possibly he could; for which reason he is so very figurative, that he requires (I may almost say) a grammar apart to construe him. His verse is everywhere sounding the very thing in your ears, whose sense it bears; yet the numbers are perpetually varied, to increase the delight of the reader, so that the same sounds are never repeated twice together. On the contrary, Ovid and Claudian, though they write in styles differing from each other, yet have each of them but one sort of music in their verses. All the versification and little variety of Claudian is included within the compass of four or five lines, and then he begins again in the same tenor, perpetually closing his sense at the end of a verse, and that verse which they commonly call golden, or two substantives and two adjectives, with a verb betwixt them to keep the peace. Ovid, with all his sweetness, has as little variety of numbers and sound as he; he is always, as it were, upon the hand-gallop, and his verse runs upon carpet-ground. He avoids, like the other, all synalæphas, or cutting off one vowel when it comes before another in the following word; so that, minding only smoothness, he wants both variety and majesty. But to return to Virgil; though he is smooth where smoothness is required, yet he is so far from affecting it, that he seems rather to disdain it; frequently makes use of synalæphas, and concludes his sense in the middle of his verse. He is everywhere above the conceits of epigrammatic wit and gross hyperboles; he maintains majesty in the midst of plainness; he shines, but glares not; and is stately without ambition, which is the vice of Lucan. I drew my definition of poetical wit from my particular consideration of him; for propriety of thoughts and words are only to be found in him; and, where they are proper, they will be delightful. Pleasure follows of necessity, as the effect does the cause, and therefore is not to be put into the definition. This exact propriety of Virgil I particularly regarded as a great part of his character; but must confess, to my shame, that I have not been able to translate any part of him so well, as to make him appear wholly like himself; for, where the original is close, no version can reach it in the same compass. Hannibal Caro's, in the Italian, is the nearest, the most poetical, and the most sonorous, of any translation of the Eneids; yet, though he takes advantage of blank verse, he commonly allows two lines for one of Virgil, and does not always hit his sense. Tasso tells us in his letters that Sperone Speroni, a great Italian wit, who was his contemporary, observed of Virgil and Tully, that the Latin orator endeavoured to imitate the copiousness of Homer, the Greek poet; and that the Latin poet made it his business to reach the conciseness of Demosthenes, the Greek orator. Virgil, therefore, being so very sparing of his words, and leaving so much to be imagined by the reader, can never be translated as he ought in any modern tongue. To make him copious is to alter his character, and to translate him line for line is impossible; because the Latin is naturally a more succinct language than either the Italian, Spanish, French, or even than the English, which, by reason of its monosyllables, is far the most compendious of them. Virgil is much the closest of any Roman poet, and the Latin hexameter has more feet than the English heroic. Besides all this, an author has the choice of his own thoughts and words, which a translator has not; he is confined by the sense of the inventor to cannot * those expressions which are the nearest of his books, which you see Virgil has to it; so that Virgil, studying brevity, imitated with great success in those four and having the command of his own books, which, in my opinion, are more language, could bring those words into a perfect in their kind than even his divine narrow compass, which a translator Eneids. The turn of his verses he has render without circumlocu- likewise followed in those places which tions. In short, they who have called Lucretius has most laboured, and some him the torture of the grammarians, of his very lines he has transplanted into might also have called him the plague of his own works, without much variation. translators; for he seems to have studied If I am not mistaken, the distinguishing not to be translated. I own that, endea- character of Lucretius (I mean of his soul vouring to turn his "Nisus and Eu- and genius) is a certain kind of noble ryalus as close as I was able, I have pride, and positive assertion of his opiperformed that episode too literally; that nions. He is everywhere confident of giving more scope to "Mezentius and his own reason, and assuming an absoLausus," that version, which has more of lute command, not only over his vulgar the majesty of Virgil, has less of his con- reader, but even his patron Memmius; ciseness; and all that I can promise for for he is always bidding him attend, as if myself, is only that I have done both he had the rod over him, and using a better than Ogleby, and perhaps as well | magisterial authority while he instructs as Caro; so that, methinks, I come like him. From his time to ours, I know a malefactor, to make a speech upon the none so like him as our poet and philogallows, and to warn all other poets, by sopher of Malmesbury. This is that my sad example, from the sacrilege of perpetual dictatorship which is exercised translating Virgil. Yet, by considering by Lucretius, who, though often in the him so carefully as I did before my wrong, seems to deal bona fide with his attempt, I have made some faint resem- reader, and tells him nothing but what blance of him; and, had I taken more he thinks; in which plain sincerity, I time, might possibly have succeeded believe, he differs from our Hobbes, who better, but never so well as to have could not but be convinced, or at least satisfied myself. doubt, of some eternal truths which he has opposed. But for Lucretius, he seems to disdain all manner of replies, and is so confident of his cause, that he is beforehand with his antagonists; urging for them whatever he imagined they could HAVING with much ado got clear of say, and leaving them, as he supposes, Virgil, I have, in the next place, to con- without an objection for the future; all sider the genius of Lucretius, whom I this, too, with so much scorn and inhave translated more happily in those dignation, as if he were assured of the parts of him which I undertook. If he triumph before he entered into the lists. was not of the best age of Roman poetry, From this sublime and daring genius of he was at least of that which preceded it; his, it must of necessity come to pass and he himself refined it to that degree of that his thoughts must be masculine, full perfection, both in the language and the of argumentation, and that sufficiently thoughts, that he has left an easy task to warm. From the same fiery temper proVirgil, who, as he succeeded him in time, ceeds the loftiness of his expressions and so he copied his excellences; for the the perpetual torrent of his verse, where method of the Georgics is plainly derived the barrenness of his subject does not too from him. Lucretius had chosen a subject much constrain the quickness of his fancy. naturally crabbed; he therefore adorned For there is no doubt to be made, but it with poetical descriptions, and precepts that he could have been everywhere as of morality, in the beginning and ending ON THE GENIUS OF LUCRE TIUS. * Hobbes, who died in 1679. H poetical as he is in his descriptions, and in the moral part of his philosophy, if he had not aimed more to instruct, in his system of nature, than to delight. But he was bent upon making Memmius a materialist, and teaching him to defy an invisible power: in short, he was so much an atheist, that he forgot sometimes to be a poet. These are the considerations which I had of that author, before I attempted to translate some parts of him. And accordingly I laid by my natural diffidence and scepticism for a while, to take up that dogmatical way of his which, as I said, is so much his character, as to make him that individual poet. As for his opinions concerning the mortality of the soul, they are so absurd, that I cannot, if I would, believe them. I think a future state demonstrable even by natural arguments; at least, to take away rewards and punishments is only a pleasing prospect to a man who resolves beforehand not to live morally. But, on the other side, the thought of being nothing after death is a burden insupportable to a virtuous man, even though a heathen. We naturally aim at happiness, and cannot bear to have it confined to the shortness of our present being; especially when we consider that virtue is generally unhappy in this world, and vice fortunate: so that it is hope of futurity alone that makes this life tolerable, in expectation of a better. Who would not commit all the excesses to which he is prompted by his natural inclinations, if he may do them with security while he is alive, and be incapable of punishment after he is dead? If he be cunning and secret enough to avoid the laws, there is no band of mortality to restrain him; for fame and reputation are weak ties: many men have not the least sense of them. Powerful men are only awed by them as they conduce to their interest, and that not always when a passion is predominant; and no man will be contained within the bounds of duty, when he may safely transgress them. These are my thoughts abstractedly, and without entering into the notions of our Christian faith, which is the proper business of divines. But there are other arguments in this poem (which I have turned into English) not belonging to the mortality of the soul, which are strong enough to a reasonable man, to make him less in love with life, and consequently in less apprehensions of death. Such as are the natural satiety proceeding from a perpetual enjoyment of the same things; the inconveniences of old age, which make him incapable of corporeal pleasures; the decay of understanding and memory, which render him contemptible and useless to others. These, and many other reasons, so pathetically urged, so beautifully expressed, so adorned with examples, and so admirably raised by the prosopopeia of nature, who is brought in speaking to her children with so much authority and vigour, deserve the pains I have taken with them, which I hope have not been unsuccessful, or unworthy of my author: at least I must take the liberty to own that I was pleased with my own endeavours, which but rarely happens to me; and that I am not dissatisfied upon the review of anything that I have done in this author. wwwww SPENSER AND MILTON. [IN epic poetry] the English have only to boast of Spenser and Milton, who neither of them wanted either genius or learning to have been perfect poets, and yet both of them are liable to many censures. For there is no uniformity in the design of Spenser; he aims at the accomplishment of no one action, he raises up a hero for every one of his adventures, and endows each of them with some particular moral virtue, which renders them all equal, without subordination or preference. Every one is most valiant in his own legend; only, we must do him that justice to observe, that magnanimity, which is the character of Prince Arthur, shines throughout the whole poem, and succours the rest when they are in distress. The original of every knight was then living in the court of Queen Elizabeth; and he attributed to each of them that virtue which he thought was most ing or more significant than those in conspicuous in them-an ingenious piece practice; and when their obscurity is of flattery, though it turned not much to taken away, by joining other words to his account. Had he lived to finish his them which clear the sense, according to poem, in the six remaining legends, it the rule of Horace, for the admission of had certainly been more of a piece, but new words. But in both cases a modecould not have been perfect, because the ration is to be observed in the use of model was not true. But Prince Arthur, them; for unnecessary coinage, as well or his chief patron Sir Philip Sidney, as unnecessary revival, runs into affectawhom he intended to make happy by the tion; a fault to be avoided on either marriage of his Gloriana, dying before hand. Neither will I justify Milton for him, deprived the poet both of means his blank verse, though may excuse and spirit to accomplish his design. For him, by the example of Hannibal Caro, the rest, his obsolete language, and the and other Italians, who have used it; for ill choice of his stanza, are faults but of whatever causes he alleges for the abolishthe second magnitude; for, notwithstand-ing of rhyme (which I have not now the ing the first, he is still intelligible, at least after a little practice; and for the last, he is the more to be admired, that, labouring under such a difficulty, his verses are so numerous, so various, and so harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he professedly imitated, has surpassed him among the Romans, and only Mr. Waller among the English. leisure to examine), his own particular reason is plainly this, that rhyme was not his talent; he had neither the ease of doing it, nor the graces of it, which is manifest in his "Juvenilia," or verses written in his youth, where his rhyme is always constrained and forced, and comes hardly from him, at an age when the soul is most pliant, and the passion of love makes almost every man a rhymer, though not a poet. AGAINST THE LAMPOON. It As for Mr. Milton, whom we all admire with so much justice, his subject is not that of a heroic poem, properly so called. His design is the losing of our happiness; his event is not prosperous, like that of all other epic works; his heavenly machines are many, and his human persons THAT form of satire, which is known are but two. But I will not take Mr. in England by the name of lampoon, is a Rymer's work out of his hands: he has dangerous sort of weapon, and for the promised the world a critique on that most part unlawful. We have no moral author, wherein, though he will not allow right on the reputation of other men. his poem for heroic, hope he will grant is taking from them what we cannot reus that his thoughts are elevated, his store to them. There are only two reasons words sounding, and that no man has so for which we may be permitted to write happily copied the manner of Homer, or lampoons; and I will not promise that so copiously translated his Grecisms, and they can always justify us. The first is. the Latin elegancies of Virgil. It is true revenge, when we have been affronted in he runs into a flat of thought sometimes the same nature, or have been anyways for a hundred lines together, but it is notoriously abused, and can make ourwhen he has got into a track of Scripture. selves no other reparation. And, yet His antiquated words were his choice, we know, that, in Christian charity, all not his necessity; for therein he imitated offences are to be forgiven, as we expect Spenser, as Spenser did Chaucer. And the like pardon for those which we daily though, perhaps, the love of their masters commit against Almighty God. And may have transported both too far, in the this consideration has often made me frequent use of them, yet, in my opinion, tremble when I was saying our Saviour's obsolete words may then be laudably prayer; for the plain condition of the revived, when either they are more sound-forgiveness which we beg, is the pardoning H 2 |