TRANSLATIONS.

The Fifth ODE of HORACE, Lib. I. *

WHA

HAT slender youth bedew'd with liquid

odours
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,

Pyrrha ? For whom bind'st thou
In wreaths thy golden hair,

* This piece did not appear in the first edition of the year 1645.

1. What sender youth. --) In this measure, my friend and school. fellow Mr. William Collins wrote his admired Ode to Evening ; and I know he had a design of writing many more Odes without rhyme. In this measure also, an elegant Ode was written on the PARADISE Lost, by the late captain Thomas, formerly a student of Christ church Oxford, at the time that Mr. Benson gave medals as prizes for the best verses that were produced on Milton, at all our great schools. It seems to be an agreed point, that Lyric poetry cannot exist without rhyme in our language. The following Trochaics of Mr. Glover arc harmonious, however, without rhyme.

Pride of art, majestic columns,

Which beneath the sacred weight
Of that God's refulgent mansion

Lift your flow'r-insculptur'd heads,
Oh, ye marble-channell’d fountains

Which the swarming city cool,
And, as art directs your murmurs,
Warble your obedient rills ! &c.
Dr. J. WARTON.

Plain in thy neatness ? O how oft shall he

5 On faith and changed Gods complain, and seas

Rough with black winds, and storms

Unwonted shall admire !
Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,
Who always vacant, always amiable

Hopes thee, of flattering gales

Unmindful. Hapless they
To whom thou untry'd seem'st fair. Me in my vow'd
Picture, the sacred wall declares t' have hung

10

Dr. J. WARTON might have added, that his own Ode to Even: ING was written before that of his friend Collins; as was a Poem of his, entitled the ASSEMBLY OF THE PASSIONS, before Collins's favourite Ode on that subject.

There are extant two excellent Odes, of the truest taste, written in unrhyming metre many years ago by two of the students of Christ. Church Oxford, and among its chief ornaments, now high in the church. One is on the death of Mr. Langton who died on his tra. vels: the other is addressed to George Onilow esquire. But it may be doubted, whether there is sufficient precision and elegance in the English language for metre without rhyme. In England's HELICON, there is Oenone's complaint in blank verse, by George Peele, written about 1590. Signat Q. 4. edit. 1614. The verses indeed are heroic, but the whole consists of quatrains. I will exhibit the first stanza.

Melpomene, the muse of tragicke fongs
With mournfull :unes, in stole of dismall huc;
Allitt a filly nymphe to waile her woe,

And leave thy lustie company behind.
V. 5. Plain in thy neatness? - ] Rather, “ plain in your ornaments."?
Milion mistakes the idiomatical use and meaning of Munditiæ. She
was plain in her dress : or, more paraphraltically, in the manner of
adorning herself. The sense of the context is, “ For whom do you;
“ who study no ornaments of dress, thus unaffectedly bind up your
“ yellow locks ?”

A a a

My

My dank and dropping weeds
To the stern God of sea.

13

GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH'.

BRUTUS thus addresses DIANA in the country of

LEOGECIA.

Goddess of shades, and huntress, who at will Walk'st on the rowling* fpheres, and through the

deep ; On thy third reign the earth look now, and tell What land, what seat of rest, thou bidst me seek, What certain seat, where I may worship thee For aye, with temples vow'd, and virgin quires.

To whom, sleeping before the altar, DIANA answers

in a vison the same night. Brutus, far to the west, in th' ocean wide, Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies, Sea-girt it lies, where gyants dwelt of old, Now voyd, it fits thy people : thither bend Thy course, there shalt thou find a lasting seat ; There to thy fons another Troy shall rise, And kings be born of thee, whose dreadful might

· Hist. Brit. i. xi. “ Diva potens nemorum, &c." * Tickell and Fenton read lowring.

Shall

Shall awe the world, and conquer nations bold o.

..

Dante.

Ah Constantine, of how much ill was cause,
Not thy conversion, but those rích domains
That the first wealthy pope receiv'd of thee.

DANTE

Founded in chaste and humble poverty,
'Gainst them that rais'd thee dost thou lift thy horn,
Impudent whore, where haft thou plac'd thy hope?
In thy adulterers, or thy ill-got wealth ?
Another Constantine comes not in haste.

from Milton's Hist. Engl. B. i. PROSE-WORKS, ii. 5. These Fragments of translation were collected by Tickell fiom Milton's PROSEWORKS. More are here added. But the reader is to be informed, that those taken from the Defensio are not Milton's, but are in Richard Washington's Translation of the DEFENSIO into Englisli. Tickell supposing that Milton translated his own Latin Defensio into English, has inserted them among these fragments of translations as the productions of Milton. As they appear in Fenton, and others, I have fuffered them to be retained. Birch has reprinted Richard Washington's translation, which appeared in 1692, 8vo, among our author's Proseworks. Of fingle lines others might have been added from this Eng. lish Defensio. I take this Washington, a lawyer, to be the same that published “ A History of the Ecclefiaftical Jurisdiction of the Kings “ of England, 1688.” It is here first noted which belong to Washington and which to Milton. To complete what others had begun, many are here newly added from Washington.

• Infern. C. xix. See Hoole's ARIOSTO, B. xvii. v.552. vol. ii. P. 271.

From OF REFORMATION in England. PROSE-WORKS, vol, i,

p. 10.

• PARAD. C. xx. Sce Petrarch, Sonn. 108. Expunged in some editions. • From Op REFORMATION, &c. PROSE-WORKS, vol. i. p. 10. Ааа 2

Ariosto. Ariostol.

Then past he to a flowry mountain green,
Which once smelt sweet, now stinks as odiously :
This was the gift, if you the truth will have,
That Constantine to good Silvester gave 5.

Horaceh.
Whom do we count a good man? Whom but he
Who keeps the laws and statutes of the senate,
Who judges in great suits and controversies,
Whose witness and opinion wins the cause? ?
But his own house, and the whole neighbourhood,
Sees his foul inside through his whited skin'.

HORACE k. The

power that did create, can change the scene Of things, make mean of great, and

great of mean:

: The brightest glory can eclipse with might, And place the most obscure in dazling light',

! C. xxxiv. 80. Tickell and Fenton have added some lines from Harrington's version.

& From of REFORMATION, &c. Prose-WORKS, vol. i. p. 1o. h Epist. i. xvi. 40.

From TETRACHORDON, PROSE-WORKS, vol. i. 239. k Op. i. xxxiv. 12.

I From A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE, &c. PROSE-WORKS, i. 451. Washington's Translation.

HORACE.