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. 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 : Rome dwindling to a Grecian colony. A barbarous mistress, an outlandish love; A fencer's garb, and on his oil'd neck bears Tralles, and Samos, and a thousand more, Their starving myriads forth; hither they come, The minions, then the lords, of every princely dome, All arts his own the hungry Greekling counts, No, 'twas a Greek, 'twas an ATHENIAN too! All converse with the proud, the upstart train,† Yet now above me sit, before me sign, Their friendship and their faith preferred to mine! 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, 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, Their thoughts are wise, their dispensations just. But that thou may'st (for still 'tis good to prove O THOU, who seest the wants of human kind, This, thou to give thyself may'st well suffice: |