ART. II.-1. Miltoni Comus. Græcè reddidit GEORGIUS, Baro LYTTELTON. Cantabrigiæ et Londini: 1863. 2. Translations. By Lord LYTTELTON and The Right Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE. London: 1861. 3. Tennyson's In Memoriam.' Translated into Latin Elegiac Verse. By OSWALD A. SMITH, Esq. [Printed for private circulation only.] 1864. 4. Folia Silvulæ, sive Ecloga Pöetarum Anglicorum in Latinum et Græcum conversa, quas disposuit HUBERTUS A. HOLDEN, LL.D., Collegi SS. Trinitatis quondam Socius, Scholæ Regiæ Gippesvicensis Magister Informator. Volumen prius continens fasciculos I. II. Cantabrigiæ : 1865. 5. The Agamemnon of Eschylus and the Bacchanals of Euripides, with passages from the Lyric and Later Poets of Greece. Translated by HENRY HART MILMAN, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's. London: 1865. THE of HE present age may, without hyperbole, be called an age translations, both in and from the classical and the modern languages. In spite of all that has been said of the alleged decline of classical studies, because classical attainments have ceased to be the sole test of literary culture, never has scholarship more sound and varied prevailed in our Universities and schools; never have more accomplished scholars entered annually into the academical arena. The study of language has assumed a broader and more scientific character; and our sense of the beauties of the great masterpieces of classical literature has been rendered more acute by more extendea knowledge of their spirit and significance. Many of the problems of interpretation which had been confined in former times to the higher ranks of scholarship, are now brought down, by good editions of the classics and careful instruction, to the capacity of every fifth-form schoolboy. And whilst it appears For example, Mr. Hayman's elaborate edition of the first six books of the Odyssey'-a work of great critical scholarship and complete knowledge of the Homeric poem. But although Mr. Hayman is described as 'late Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford,' and headmaster of a well-known English school, we doubt whether he can be reckoned among English scholars, so strange and inaccurate is his use of the English language. In the very first page he speaks of the moral sense of the poetas not benumbed by any overruling agency, 'coercive from without, to evacuate the will of its freedom;' in the to us that the study of the languages of antiquity has lost nothing in precision, it has certainly gained largely in its scope and purview. To this cause may be attributed the numerous efforts of the present time, not only to popularise Homer and Virgil by English translations, but to throw into Greek or Latin forms some of the most cherished productions of our own literature. To these last translations we are about more especially to direct our attention. The general improvement in exact scholarship which has marked the last half century in England, commenced with the discoveries made by Porson in the structure of the Greek Iambic measure, and has kept pace with the attention paid to the art of Greek versification. This is a fact, which not even the stoutest assailants of Greek Iambics will venture to deny, although they may ascribe to fortuitous coincidence, what we assign to a subtle relation of cause and effect. The very trammels of metre necessitate the exertion of a great deal of mental ingenuity, and repeated trials of various words and constructions, before the desired end can be attained, a process which reacts upon the converse process of interpretation. It deserves to be remarked that the study and practice of Greek verse composition in this country has been mainly confined to the imitation of the Attic writers. Homer, certainly the greatest Greek poet, and, in the estimation of many, the greatest poet that ever lived, is studied rather as an author to be read and enjoyed, than with a view to the imitation of his language. Nothing is to him aut simile aut secundum. Still the imitation of the grand Homeric verse would not, like the imitation of the Attic writers, materially conduce to a more exact acquaintance with the niceties of the Greek language. These must be sought for in the literature of a more cultivated age, and it is from the poets, philosophers, and orators of the most advanced period of Greek civilisation, that we derive the critical acquaintance we now possess with the language of the New Testament. It was, no doubt, one of the errors and eccentricities of Walter Savage Landor, to suppose that his own pure Latinity would hand his fame down to future ages, uncorrupted by time, long after his writings in fifth page he says, 'Greek scholarship is first uninterruptedly luminous among us from the almost yesterday period of Porson ;' and, in his postscript, I should have preferred making the entire work one of two volumes.' This is the sort of English which might be written at Göttingen by a German Professor, but it is deplorable if it really proceeds from the pen of a scholar educated at Oxford. The the vulgar English tongue should be forgotten. But it was not less the error of Petrarch, who conceived that his Africa would survive his sonnets. The truth is that even the original compositions of modern writers in the ancient languages have the defects of copies. They are modelled on old shapes. They want the instinctive power which at once suggests and evolves idea into expression; and they are read and remembered as curious or pleasing exercises, rather than as creations. same remark applies, of course, à fortiori, to translations. In the preface to Mr. Dayman's elaborate translation of the • Divina Commedia' which has recently been completed with success, that gentleman quotes, with approval, the distinctions originally drawn by A. W. Schlegel between the mechanical form, which may be given from without, and the organical form which is innate and unfolds itself from within. Translations like those before us, from the living into the dead languages, are triumphs of mechanical skill, but it would be vain to seek in them that vital power which stamps an original work of genius in its native growth. The greatness of Milton's English poetry procures a perusal for his Latin poems, which they undoubtedly deserve, but which they would rarely obtain, were it not for this adventitious support. Original modern Latin is in fact at the present day but the shadow of its former self, while translations into and from both Latin and Greek are the mark of the scholar, the amusement of learned leisure, the relaxation of the statesman and the philosopher, and one of the best methods of drilling and exercising the minds of the young for any intellectual exertion requiring acuteness, ingenuity, neatness, or versatility. Such being our views as to the merit of these exercises, we should have pardoned Lord Lyttelton, if he had occasionally stolen a few hours from the graver duties of life to devote them to the Grecian Muses, instead of informing us, in the elegant preface to his translation of Milton's Comus' into Greek verse, that he had composed the latter half of it in the course of his rides and walks about the classic groves of Hagley. And we doubt not that in the wide circle of our readers a certain number will be found grateful to us for placing before them some of the well-known beauties of the English Masque in their Greek form. Comus,' though essentially a romantic drama in its plot and its diction, is cast in the form of the Greek drama. It is evident that it could only have been written by a poet familiar as Milton was with classical tragedy of which, indeed, he has given us a still nobler monument in the Samson Agonistes.' The dialogue is somewhat cold and measured; but the lyrics, having, in effect, their parallel in the choral movements of the Greek drama, are exquisitely genial and animated. We begin our quotations with a passage from the song The star that bids the shepherd fold,' which has been admirably represented by Lord Lyttelton in dancing anapæsts. The English runs: 6 'Meanwhile welcome Joy and Feast, Braid your locks with rosy twine, Rigour now is gone to bed, And Advice with scrupulous head, Strict Age and sour Severity With their grave saws in slumber lie.' The Greek translation is as follows:— χαῖρ ̓ οὖν Θαλία, χαῖρ ̓ Εὐφροσύνα, σοφίαν θρυλοῦσα ματαίαν. In translating line 30 of the Prologue of the Attendant Spirit, it appears to have escaped Lord Lyttelton's observation, that there is an obvious imitation of a passage of the Supplices' of Eschylus (254, 255), in the words, And all that tract that fronts the falling sun.' The text with which Milton was acquainted, viz. 6 καὶ πᾶσαν αἷαν, ἧς δί ̓́Αλγος ἔρχεται Στρυμών τε, πρὸς δύνοντος ἡλίου, κρατῶν might easily have suggested a line more closely resembling the words of the Comus' than what we actually find in Lord Lyttelton's translation, viz. :— πεδίον δὲ τοῦτο πᾶν, πρὸς ἑσπέραν βλέπον. But we think it will be more interesting to our readers, if we place before them a few of the most frequently quoted passages of Comus,' along with their Greek representatives. The beautiful passage A thousand fantasies * Vide Blomf. ad Esch. Prom. 195. Of calling shapes and beck'ning shadows dire, is thus elegantly rendered: μυρί ̓ ἐν μνήμης βάθει μορφαῖσι φάσματ' αθρόαις ἀγείρεται, εἴδωλα προσκαλοῦντα, κοὐκ ὄντων σκιὰ δεινόν τι προσνεύουσα, καὶ καταπτέρων ψιθύρισμα φωνῶν, αἵ τ ̓ ἐπιῤῥήδην λιγὺ κλήζουσιν ἄνδρας, ἐννύχους κατ' ᾐόνας, ψάμμου τε πεδία κἀβρότους ἐρημίας. The following well-known passages will be read with interest in their classical dress: . But such a sacred and homefelt delight, Such sober certainty of waking bliss, I never felt till now,' ἀλλὰ τέρψεως τόσον • I know each lane and every alley green, • And Wisdom's self Oft seeks to* sweet retired solitude, Where with her best nurse, Contemplation, She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings, Were all-to ruffled, and sometimes impaired.' Σοφία ματεύει τὴν ἀπάνθρωπον χλιδὴν, We now proceed to give a longer specimen from the passage commencing It is singular that the expression seek to,' which is used by Massinger as well as Milton, should have been denounced as incorrect English by a journal conducted with the ability of the Pall Mall Gazette.' But the use of the dictionary is as repulsive to some minds as the lima labor et mora to others, and a smart sentence is often accounted well worth a considerable blunder. |