stanza.

to deviate from him and Spenser. They both make hemisticks, (or half verses,) breaking off in the middle of a line. I confess there are not many such in the "Fairy Queen;" and even those few might be occasioned by his unhappy choice of so long a Mr Cowley had found out, that no kind of staff is proper for a heroic poem, as being all too lyrical: yet, though he wrote in couplets, where rhyme is freer from constraint, he frequently affects half verses; of which we find not one in Homer, and I think not in any of the Greek poets, or the Latin, excepting only Virgil; and there is no question but he thought he had Virgil's authority for that licence. But, I am confident, our poet never meant to leave him, or any other, such a precedent and I ground my opinion on these two reasons: first, we find no example of a hemistick in any of his Pastorals or Georgics; for he had given the last finishing strokes to both these poems: but his Æneïs he left so incorrect, at least so short of that perfection at which he aimed, that we know how hard a sentence he passed upon it: and, in the second place, I reasonably presume, that he intended to have filled up all those hemisticks, because in one of them we find the sense imperfect:

Quem tibi jam Trojá

which some foolish grammarian has ended for him with a half line of nonsense:

peperit fumante Crëusa:

for Ascanius must have been born some years before the burning of that city; which I need not prove. On the other side, we find also, that he himself filled up one line in the Sixth Æneïd, the

enthusiasm seizing him, while he was reading to Augustus :

Misenum Eolidem, quo non præstantior alter
Ere ciere viros

to which he added, in that transport, Martemque accendere cantu: and never was any line more nobly finished; for the reasons which I have given in the Book of Painting. On these considerations I have shunned hemisticks; not being willing to imitate Virgil to a fault, like Alexander's courtiers, who affected to hold their necks awry, because he could not help it.* I am confident your lordship is by this time of my opinion, and that you will look on those half lines hereafter, as the imperfect products of a hasty Muse like the frogs and serpents in the Nile; part of them kindled into life, and part a lump of unformed unanimated mud.

I am sensible that many of my whole verses are as imperfect as those halves, for want of time to digest them better: but give me leave to make the excuse of Boccace, who, when he was upbraided that some of his novels had not the spirit of the rest, returned this answer, that Charlemagne, who made the paladins, was never able to raise an army of them. The leaders may be heroes, but the multitude must consist of common men.

I am also bound to tell your lordship, in my own defence, that, from the beginning of the First Georgic to the end of the last Eneïd, I found the difficulty of translation growing on me in every succeeding book for Virgil, above all poets, had a

* Our author has, however, availed himself of this licence in his earlier poetry.

stock, which I may call almost inexhaustible, of figurative, elegant, and sounding words. I, who inherit but a small portion of his genius, and write in a language so much inferior to the Latin, have found it very painful to vary phrases, when the same sense returns upon me. Even he himself, whether out of necessity or choice, has often expressed the same thing in the same words, and of ten repeated two or three whole verses, which he had used before. Words are not so easily coined as money; and yet we see that the credit, not only of banks, but of exchequers, cracks, when little comes in, and much goes out. Virgil called upon me in every line for some new word: and I paid so long, that I was almost bankrupt; so that the latter end must needs be more burdensome than the beginning or the middle; and, consequently, the twelfth Eneïd cost me double the time of the first and second. What had become of me, if Virgil had taxed me with another book? I had certainly been reduced to pay the public in hammered money, for want of milled; that is, in the same old words which I had used before: and the receivers must have been forced to have taken any thing, where there was so little to be had. *

Besides this difficulty (with which I have struggled, and made a shift to pass it over,) there is one remaining, which is insuperable to all translators. We are bound to our author's sense, though with the latitudes already mentioned; for I think it not so sacred, as that one iota must not be added or diminished, on pain of an anathema. But slaves we

* The confusion occasioned by the rules of the mint, then recently adopted, created great inconvenience and distress to individuals. It is often mentioned in the correspondence between Tonson and Dryden.

are, and labour on another man's plantation; we dress the vineyard, but the wine is the owner's: if the soil be sometimes barren, then we are sure of being scourged: if it be fruitful, and our care succeeds, we are not thanked; for the proud reader will only say, the poor drudge has done his duty. But this is nothing to what follows; for, being obliged to make his sense intelligible, we are forced to untune our own verses, that we may give his meaning to the reader. He, who invents, is master of his thoughts and words: he can turn and vary them as he pleases, till he renders them harmonious; but the wretched translator has no such privilege: for, being tied to the thoughts, he must make what music he can in the expression; and, for this reason, it cannot always be so sweet as that of the original. There is a beauty of sound, as Ségrais has observed, in some Latin words, which is wholly lost in any modern language. He instances in that mollis amaracus, on which Venus lays Cupid, in the First Æneid. If I should translate it sweet-marjoram, as the word signifies, the reader would think I had mistaken Virgil: for those village-words, as I may call them, give us a mean idea of the thing; but the sound of the Latin is so much more pleasing, by the just mixture of the vowels with the consonants, that it raises our fancies to conceive somewhat more noble than a common herb, and to spread roses under him, and strew lilies over him; a bed not unworthy the grandson of the goddess.

If I cannot copy his harmonious numbers, how shall I imitate his noble flights, where his thoughts and words are equally sublime? Quem

What modern language, or what poet, can express the majestic beauty of this one verse, amongst a thousand others?

Aude, hospes, contemnere opes, et te quoque dignum

Finge deo.

For my part, I am lost in the admiration of it: I contemn the world when I think on it, and myself when I translate it. *

Lay by Virgil, I beseech your lordship, and all my better sort of judges, when you take up my version; and it will appear a passable beauty when the original Muse is absent. But, like Spenser's false Florimel made of snow, it melts and vanishes when the true one comes in sight. I will not excuse, but justify myself, for one pretended crime, with which I am liable to be charged by false critics, not only in this translation, but in many of my original poems-that I latinize too much.

It

is true, that, when I find an English word significant and sounding, I neither borrow from the Latin, nor any other language; but, when I want at home, I must seek abroad.

If sounding words are not of our growth and manufacture, who shall hinder me to import them from a foreign country? I carry not out the treasure of the nation, which is never to return; but what I bring from Italy, I spend in England: here

* Nevertheless, our author, long before undertaking the translation of Virgil, had given a noble paraphrase of these lines in the Hind's address to the Panther: