it remains, and here it circulates; for, if the coin be good, it will pass from one hand to another. I trade both with the living and the dead, for the enrichment of our native language. We have enough in England to supply our necessity; but, if we will have things of magnificence and splendour, we must get them by commerce. Poetry requires ornament; and that is not to be had from our old Teuton monosyllables: therefore, if I find any elegant word in a classic author, I propose it to be naturalized, by using it myself; and, if the public approves of it, the bill passes. But every man cannot distinguish between pedantry and poetry: every man, therefore, is not fit to innovate. Upon the whole matter, a poet must first be certain that the word he would introduce is beautiful in the Latin, and is to consider, in the next place, whether it will agree with the English idiom: after this, he ought to take the opinion of judicious friends, such as are learned in both languages: and, lastly, since no man is infallible, let him use this licence very sparingly; for, if too many foreign words are poured in upon us, it looks as if they were designed not to assist the natives, but to conquer them. I am now drawing towards a conclusion, and suspect your lordship is very glad of it. But permit me first to own what helps I have had in this undertaking. The late Earl of Lauderdale* sent me over his new translation of the Eneis, which he had ended before I engaged in the same design. Neither did I then intend it: but, some proposals * Richard, fourth earl of Lauderdale, nephew of that respectable minister the Duke of Lauderdale. "He had a fine genius for poetry," says Sir Robert Douglas, in his Peerage of Scotland; "witness his elegant translation of Virgil." being afterwards made me by my bookseller, I desired his lordship's leave that I might accept them, which he freely granted; and I have his letter yet to show for that permission. He resolved to have printed his work, (which he might have done two years before I could publish mine,) and had performed it if death had not prevented him. But, having his manuscript in my hands, I consulted it as often as I doubted of my author's sense; for no man understood Virgil better than that learned nobleman. His friends, I hear, have yet another and more correct copy of that translation by them, which, had they pleased to have given the public, the judges must have been convinced that I have not flattered him. Besides this help, which was not inconsiderable, Mr Congreve has done me the favour to review the Eneïs, and compare my version with the original. I shall never be ashamed to own, that this excellent young man has shewed me many faults, which I have endeavoured to correct. It is true, he might have easily found more, and then my translation had been more perfect. Two other worthy friends of mine, who desire to have their names concealed, seeing me straitened in my time, took pity on me, and gave me the "Life of Virgil," the two prefaces to the "Pastorals" and the "Georgics," and all the arguments in prose to the whole translation; which, perhaps, has caused a report, that the two first poems are not mine. * If it had been true, that I had taken their verses for my own, I might have gloried in Dr Knightly Chetwood and Mr Addison. The former wrote the "Life of Virgil," and the "Preface to the Pastorals;" the latter, the "Essay on the Georgics." See Introductory Notes on these Pieces. But their aid, and, like Terence, have fathered the opinion that Scipio and Lælius joined with me. the same style being continued through the whole, and the same laws of versification observed, are proofs sufficient, that this is one man's work: and your lordship is too well acquainted with my manner, to doubt that any part of it is another's. That your lordship may see I was in earnest when I promised to hasten to an end, I will not give the reasons why I writ not always in the proper terms of navigation, land-service, or in the cant of any profession. I will only say, that Virgil has avoided those proprieties, because he writ not to mariners, soldiers, astronomers, gardeners, peasants, &c. but to all in general, and in particular to men and ladies of the first quality, who have been better bred than to be too nicely knowing in the terms. In such cases, it is enough for a poet to write so plainly, that he may be understood by his readers; to avoid impropriety, and not affect to be thought learned in all things. I have omitted the four preliminary lines of the First Æneid, because I think them inferior to any four others in the whole poem, and consequently believe they are not Virgil's.* There is too great a gap betwixt the adjective vicina in the second line, and the substantive arca in the latter end of the third, which keeps his meaning in obscurity * Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena Ut quamvis avido parerent arva colono, Gratum opus agricolis; at nunc horrentia Martis... The characteristic modesty of our author, as well as the rugged and turgid structure of these lines, have authorised modern critics to conclude, that neither the sense nor expression of these four lines resembles the genuine productions of Virgil. too long, and is contrary to the clearness of his style. Ut quamvis avido is too ambitious an ornament to be his; and Gratum opus agricolis, are all words unnecessary, and independent of what he had said before. Horrentia Martis Arma is worse than any of the rest. Horrentia is such a flat epithet, as Tully would have given us in his verses. It is a mere filler, to stop a vacancy in the hexameter, and connect the preface to the work of Virgil. Our author seems to sound a charge, and begins like the clangor of a trumpet: Arma, virumque cano, Troja qui primus ab oris... scarce a word without an r, and the vowels, for the greater part, sonorous. The prefacer began with Ille ego, which he was constrained to patch up in the fourth line with at nunc, to make the sense cohere; and, if both those words are not notorious botches, I am much deceived, though the French translator thinks otherwise. For my own part, I am rather of the opinion, that they were added by Tucca and Varius, than retrenched. I know it may be answered, by such as think Virgil the author of the four lines, that he asserts his title to the Æneïs in the beginning of this work, as he did to the two former in the last lines of the Fourth Georgic. I will not reply otherwise to this, than by desiring them to compare these four lines with the four others, which we know are his, because no poet but he alone could write them. If they cannot distinguish creeping from flying, let them lay down Virgil, and take up Ovid, de Ponto, in his stead. My master needed not the assistance of that preliminary poet to prove his claim. His own majestic mien discovers him to be the king, amidst a thousand courtiers. It was a superfluous office; and, therefore, I would not set those verses in the front of Virgil, but have rejected them* to my own preface. I, who before, with shepherds in the groves, And, issuing thence, compelled the neighbouring field Manured the glebe, and stocked the fruitful plain, If there be not a tolerable line in all these six, the prefacer gave me no occasion to write better. This is a just apology in this place; but I have done great wrong to Virgil in the whole translation: want of time, the inferiority of our language, the inconvenience of rhyme, and all the other excuses I have made, may alleviate my fault, but cannot justify the boldness of my undertaking. What avails it me to acknowledge freely, that I have not been able to do him right in any line? for even my own confession makes against me; and it will always be returned upon me, Why then did you attempt it?" To which no other answer can be made, than that I have done him less injury than any of his former libellers. What they called his picture, had been drawn at * A Latinism for "throwing back." |
