with your friends. Mr. de Choiseuil desires your husband, whom he is better acquainted with, than he is with you, to make you accept of a small flask of essence of roses. More roses have gone to make it, than there are in all the gardens I have sung. My unhappy sight grows dim again; I can write no more, and it makes me a little dull.

FOR THE ANTHOLOGY.

REMARKS ON ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE ROMAN POETS. No. 15.

JUVENAL.

I AM not prepared to make any remarks on Owen's transla- ` tion of Juvenal, and therefore pass to a recent and popular version of this satirist by William Gifford, Esq. My observations on this work will not be very far extended. It has been ably and critically examined, as well in one of our own, as in foreign journals, and its excellences and defects have been sufficiently illustrated.

It must be acknowledged, that Mr. Gifford's versification is sometimes unharmonious, and even harsh; that, like almost every other translator, he too often has recourse to eking words in order to complete his measure, and that his rhymes are frequently imperfect and faulty. There might also be selected from his version a long catalogue of unauthorized exclamations, and of low, and obsolete, and far-fetched terms. He might be asked why he puts into the mouth of Juvenal such phrases as these: O passing strange! tip the wink, damning proofs, come along, &c. or what induced him to adopt such words as nonce, guerdon, orts, maw, tut, amort, &c. some of which are grovelling, and others long since obsolete; and some have been in almost undisturbed repose from the time of Shakespeare or Ben Jonson. The frequent use of triplets should also be remarked as a defect. There is an aspect of poverty in seeing a third line begging a place, already filled, as if it could not find a fellow. It is as awkward as an irregu

* See Literary Miscellany, Vol. ii. p. 171,&c.

larity in a procession, or inequality of numbers in the ranks of a battalion.

Whatever may be the defects of Mr. Gifford's translation, it will hardly be inquired, whether he has excelled his predecessors in the same task. I believe Owen has not been pronounced by any one to be his superiour in the attempt to present Juvenal to the English reader in an appropriate style and manner and as for the motley mixture, the true farrago libelli of Dryden and his associates, though it may be read with pleasure, it is well known, that the authors were more anxious to be witty than to be correct, and more solicitous for sprightliness than for fidelity.

If Mr. Gifford lay under any necessity of making an apology for publishing his version of Juvenal, that which he offered must be deemed satisfactory. It is true, that, in proposing to give the whole of Juvenal, he hazarded something too much, and exposed himself to criticism which his work will not bear, and which we should not wish it to bear. In ascertaining whether he has performed his promise, it is but just that we should suffer him to be the expositor of the text, in which he announces that he is to give the whole of his author. In one place he does indeed assert his determination to render Juvenal entire, and reprobates any thing short of this. I am not very anxious to prove that he is altogether consistent with himself, and the attempt would probably be difficult of accomplishment. But his own explanation exculpates him from any gross violation of his promise.

"Shame and sorrow," says he, "on the head of him, who presumes to transfer the grossness of Juvenal into the vernacular tongue. Though I have given him entire, I have endeavoured to make him speak as he would have spoken, had he lived among us.”

"I have said above that the whole of Juvenal is given this must be understood with a few restrictions. I have sometimes taken the liberty to omit an exceptionable line. These lacu

nae do not in all amount to half a page."

After this explanation we are so far from blaming Mr. Gifford for obscuring some of the grosser images of Juvenal, that we should not pronounce him less faithful to the spirit of his

promise, if he had still more frequently drawn the veil over the disgusting pictures which continually occur.

In the assimilation of style and manner to the original, which is next in importance to a faithful transfusion of the sense, Mr. Gifford has been charged with metrical defects. In harmony of versification, in a dignified and commanding manner of delivering precepts of moral virtue, and in keenness of sarcasm, all of which are characteristicks of Juvenal, his translator has been accounted far inferiour, and has been thought in many instances to have attempted, wholly without success, an imitation of these distinguishing features. But though there is no inconsiderable cause for censure in these particulars, he has on the whole preserved as much of the spirit of his author, as the wearisome work of a translator, and the necessary deference to the more refined character of satire in our times can well admit.

From the third satire, where, in the person of Umbritius, a voluntary and disgusted exile from Rome, the poet utters an animated invective against the vices and corruptions of the city, the following passage is selected.

Sat. III. 58.

Quae nunc divitibus gens acceptissima nostris, &c.
Who flourish now the favourites of the state,

A supple crew, I must forever hate;

Unawed by fear, and unrestrain❜d by shame,

I hasten now to show ;-nor thou my transport blame :
I cannot rule my spleen, and calmly see

Rome dwindling to a Grecian colony.
Grecian! O, no: to this vast sewer compared,
The dregs of Greece are scarcely worth regard.
Long since the stream, that wanton Syria laves,
Has disembogued its filth in Tiber's waves,
Its language, arts; o'erwhelmed with the scum
Of Antioch's streets, its minstrels, harp, and drum.
Hie to the Circus! ye who pant to prove

A barbarous mistress, an outlandish love;
Hie to the Circus! there in crowds they stand,
Tires on their head, and timbrels in their hand.
Father of Rome, behold! thy rustick wears

A fencer's garb, and on his oil'd neck bears
A paltry prize, well pleased, while every land,
Sicyon, and Amydos, and Aleband,

Tralles, and Samos, and a thousand more,
Thrive on his indolence, and daily pour

Their starving myriads forth; hither they come,
And batten on the genial soil of Rome;

The minions, then the lords, of every princely dome,
A flattering, cringing, treacherous, artful race,
Of fluent tongue, and never blushing face;
A Protean tribe, one knows not what to call,
That shifts to every form, and shines in all;
Grammarian, painter, augur, rhetorician,
Geometer, cook, conjurer and physician;

All arts his own the hungry Greekling counts,
And bid him mount the skies ;-the skies he mounts.*
You smile-was't a barbarian then that flew ?

No, 'twas a Greek, 'twas an ATHENIAN too!
Bear with their state who will: but I disdain

All converse with the proud, the upstart train,†
Wretches who, stowed in some dark lighter's womb,
With rotten figs were lately borne to Rome,

Yet now above me sit, before me sign,

Their friendship and their faith preferred to mine!
And is the privilege of freedom lost?

And is it nothing, nothing then, to boast,

That from the first, the breath of life I drew

In Roman air, on Roman olives grew?

But no, the Greek applauds, with winning grace,
His patron's folly, and his Gorgon face;
Admires his voice, that grates upon the ear
Like the shrill scream of wanton chanticleer;
And equals his crane neck and narrow chest
To Hercules, when, straining to his breast
The giant son of earth, his every vein

Swells with the toil, the more than mortal pain.

This is on the whole a faithful translation; though here and there we find a slight and harmless interpolation, and a little filling up for the exigencies of the verse. The passage abounds with a fault in the versification, for which Mr. Gifford has been justly condemned; and it is, if the expression may be allowed, the running of the lines into each other; or the want of * All sciences a fasting Monsieur knows, And bid him go to hell, to hell he goes,

JOHNSON'S LONDON.

The only foundation for this translation in this couplet, is the brief question-Horum ego non fugiam conchylia?

suitable pauses at the end of the verse, occasioned by extending the sense beyond the line or couplet. Where this frequently occurs, or where the experiment is unskilfully managed, the versification becomes prosaick, and destitute of that harmony, which constitutes a peculiar charm of poetry.

The tenth satire, on the vanity of human wishes, closes in a manner solemn and dignified. The satirist gives efficacy to his previous disciplinary chastisement by assuming the style of a purely moral and contemplative poet, and changing his severity for tenderness and benevolence.

Sat. X. 346.

Nil ergo optabunt homines? &c.

Say then, must man, deprived all power of choice,
Ne'er raise to Heaven the supplicating voice ?
Not so; but to the gods his fortune trust :

Their thoughts are wise, their dispensations just.
What best may profit or delight they know,
And real good for fancied bliss bestow;
With eyes of pity they our frailties scan;
More dear to them, than to himself, is man.
By blind desire, by headlong passion driven,
For wife and heirs we daily weary Heaven;
Yet still 'tis Heaven's prerogative to know,
If heirs or wife will bring us weal or woe.

But that thou may'st (for still 'tis good to prove
Thy humble hope) ask something from above;
Thy pious offerings to the temples bear,
And, while the altars blaze, be this thy pray'r.

O THOU, who seest the wants of human kind,
Grant me all health of body, health of mind;
A soul prepared to meet the frowns of fate,
And look undaunted on a future state;
That reckons death a blessing, yet can bear
Existence nobly, with its weight of care;
That anger and desire alike restrains,
And counts Alcides' toils and cruel pains
Superiour to the feasts, the wanton sport,
And morbid softness of the Assyrian court.

This, thou to give thyself may'st well suffice:
The only path to peace through virtue lies.
O Fortune, Fortune! all thy boasted powers
Would shrink to nothing, were but prudence ours:
But man, fond man, exalts thee to the spheres,
And clothes thee in the attributes he fears-?