tering chiefly as curious and grotesque experiments. Abraham Fleming, indeed, gave promise of something better in his 'Bucolikes of Publius Virgilius Maro, with alphabeticall Annotations upon proper nams of Gods, Goddesses, men, women, hilles, flouddes, cities, townes, and villages, &c., orderly placed in the margent. Dravvne into plaine and familiar Englishe, verse for verse' (London, 1575), which is in rhymed fourteen-syllable measure in the style of Phaer. But in 1589 he published another version of the Eclogues, along with one of the Georgics, in which he discarded foolish rime, the nise observation whereof many times darkeneth, corrupteth, peruerteth, and falsifieth both the sense and the signification,' in favour of unrhymed lines of fourteen or fifteen syllables, not very graceful in themselves, and rendered additionally quaint by a strange fashion of introducing into the middle of the text explanatory notes, which form part and parcel of the metre. Thus he makes Virgil compliment his patron on Thy verses, which alone are worthy of The buskins [brave] of Sophocles [I meane his stately stile],' and mentions, among the prognostics of fair weather— 'And Nisus [of Megera king and turned to a falcon] Capers aloft in skie so cleere, and Scylla [Nisus daughter Changed into a larke] doth smart for [his faire] purple haire." The prevalent mania, too, for reviving classical metre, which infected even Sidney and Spenser, took hold, as might be expected, of the would-be translators of Virgil. Webbe, in his Discourse of English Poetrie' (London, 1586), 'blundered,' as he aptly as well as modestly expresses it, upon a hexametrical version of the two first Æglogues,' in which Melibaus tells his 'kidlings' Neuer again shall I now in a greene bowre sweetlie reposed See ye in queachie briers farre a loofe clambring on a high hill, Now shall I sing no Iygges, nor whilst I doo fall to my iunkets, Shall ye, my Goates, cropping sweete flowers and leaues sit about me.' But the most considerable, and by far the most extraordinary, feat of this nature was performed by Richard Stanyhurst, in his First Foure Bookes of Virgil's Eneis translated into English Heroical Verse, with other Poëticll devises thereto annexed' (London, 1583). His remarks on his own translation are a curiosity in themselves, and may remind us of Chapman's 'Mysteries revealed in Homer.' Virgil,' he says, 'in diuerse places inuesteth Iuno with this epitheton, Saturnia. M. Phaer ouerpasseth it, as if it were an idle word shuffled in by the authour to damme vp the chappes of yawning verses. I never to to my remembrance omitted it, as indeed a terme that carieth meate in his mouth, and so emphaticall, as that the ouerslipping of it were in effect the choaking of the Poets discourse, in such hauking wise as if he were throtled with the chincoughe. And to inculcate that clause the better, where the mariage is made in the fourth boke betwene Dido and Aeneas, I adde in my verse Watry Iuno. Although mine Author vsed not the epitheton, Watrye, but onlye made mention of earth, ayer, and fier, yet I am well assured that word throughly conceiued of an hedeful student may giue him such light as may ease him of six moneths trauaile: whyche were well spent, if that Wedlocke were wel understoode.' His practice was not less remarkable than his theory. Phaer had talked of 'Sir Gyas' and 'Sir Cloanthus,' made Isis masquerade as 'Dame Rainbowe,' and turned 'Gallum rebellem' into rebell French.' Stanyhurst (we take the instances given by Warton) calls Corœbus abedlamite'; arms Priam with his sword Morglay,' a blade that figures in Gothic romance; makes Dido's 'parvulus Æneas' into a cockney, a dandiprat hop-thumb,' and says that when Jupiter oscula libavit natæ he 'bust his pretty prating parrot.' But he shall exhibit himself more at length, and somewhat more favourably, in a passage from the end of the First Æneid (v. 736, Dixit, et in mensam," &c.): . 6 Thus sayd, with sipping in vessel nicely she dipped. Thee wine fresh spuming with a draught swild up to the bottom. In passing to the seventeenth century we feel that a change has already set in. The metres adopted are such as commend themselves to modern ears; the language, though varying according to the greater or less skill of the individual writer, is not in general marked by much quaintness or redundancy. Let us take a specimen from the earliest version with which we are acquainted, Dido's Death: Translated out of the best of Latine * * When we wrote the above, we had not met with a translation of the Second Eneid published in 1620 by Sir Thomas Wroth, under the title of "The Destruction Latine Poets into the best of vulgar Languages. By one that hath no name' (London, 1622) Præterea fuit in tectis,' &c. (Book IV., v. 457):— 'In her house of stone A temple too she had, of former spouse, And Snowwhite Wooll adorn'd, whence oft she hears When darke night holds the world. The ellenge Owle The vogue which these translations obtained does not seem always to have been proportioned to their merits. In 1628 were published 'Virgil's Georgicks Englished by Thomas May, Esq.,' and Virgil's Eclogves translated into English by W. L.' (William Lisle). The former, if little read, has been not unfrequently mentioned since; the very existence of the latter has been forgotten.* Yet our readers, if we mistake not, will peruse the following extract from May's heroics with comparative indifference, while they will thank us for selecting two of Lisle's stanzas. (Felix qui potuit,' &c., Georg. II. 490): 'Happy is he that knowes the cause of things, Yea, happy sure is he, who ere has knowen Destruction of Troy, or the Acts of Aeneas,' a copy of which is in the British Museum. Our space will only allow us to say that the metre is Phaer's, but the style more modern. ** An account of Lisle, who was an Anglo-Saxon scholar and antiquary, is given in Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary; but nothing is said of this translation. He appears, however, to have dedicated an edition of a treatise by Elfric to Prince Charles in a copy of verses by way of Eclogue, imitating the 4th of Virgile,' besides being the author of a version from Du Bartas, and of The Fair Ethiopian," which Chalmers calls a long poem of very indifferent merit. Benson, whom we shall have occasion to mention below, says that almost 100 of May's lines are adopted by Dryden with very little alteration. The first two lines of May seem to have been copied by Ogilby. 'What makes rich crops, what season most inclines To plowing th' earth, and marying elms with vines.'-May. Dryden borrows also once at least from Lisle. But of his plagiarisms more below. The The rurall Gods, Sylvanus, and great Pan, "(Ah foolish Fon) whom dost thou seek to shun? Which shee hath builded: but of all the rest, We must confess, however, that Lisle's Eclogues, which are in a variety of metres, contain other passages less attractive than this. Nor should it be forgotten that much of the charm of these stanzas consists in their reminding us of strains which, when Lisle wrote, already belonged to the past, the pastoral poetry of Spenser. May's notes are less sweet, but they are probably more his own; they reach forward, not backward; they contain not an echo of Spenser, but a prophecy of Dryden. The year 1632 saw a complete version of the Eneid by Vicars,* and a translation of the First Book by Sandys. Vicars, a Parliamentary fanatic, is known to the world as a poet only by the savage lines in Hudibras, where he is coupled with Withers and Prynne as inspired with ale and viler liquors to write in spite of nature and his stars.' Sandys is celebrated as the author of a translation of Ovid, which Pope read as a child and (not an invariable consequence with him) praised as a man. There seems to be no merit in Vicars. Sandys is perhaps superior to May, but, like him, he pleases chiefly as the harbinger of better The title of Vicars's work is 'The XII Aeneids of Virgil, the most renowned Laureat-Prince of Latine Poets, translated into English deca-syllables, by lohn Vicars.' Sandys's is added to an edition of his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1632). and entitled, An Essay to the Translation of Virgil's Æneis.' Vol. 110.-No. 219. things in language and versification. Here is a favourable specimen (Est in secessu,' &c., Æn., I. 159): 'Deepe in a Bay an Ile with stretcht-out sides Their browes with dark and trembling woods arayd, Sir John Denham's translation of the Second Eneid is said to have been made in 1636. We know not whether his Passion of Dido for Æneas' was written at the same time, but it seems rather the better of the two. In both, however, Denham is very unequal; a series of vigorous couplets will be followed by passages written in 'concatenated metre,' as Johnson calls it, and disfigured by bad or feeble rhymes. He is fond, too, of engrafting comments and conceits upon his original, as when Dido tells Æneas→→→ 'Thou shouldst mistrust a wind False as thy Vows, and as thy heart unkind.' The Queen's dying speech is a fair example of his better manner (Dulces exuviæ,' &c., En. IV. 651): : 'Dear Reliques whilst that Gods and Fates gave leave, A better translation of this Fourth Book appeared in 1648 by Sir Richard Fanshaw, a friend of Denham's, who does justice to his powers in an excellent copy of verses recommendatory of his version of Pastor Fido. Fanshaw's case is not unlike Lisle's: instead of prosecuting the cultivation of the heroic, he revives that of the Spenserian stanza. The choice was not a happy one under the circumstances: Virgil did not write in periods of nine lines, and Fanshaw, not being a diffuse writer, is led in conse quence |