HORACE' S ODES.* Tens volume, Mr. Cooper tells us, "aims

at illustrating the influence of Horace upon three centuries of English poets and scholars." No writer of a later date than Leigh Hunt is represented in it. Horace undoubtedly has been, and is, the most popular of the Latin poets, and his influence on English poets, and scholars too, as far as they were poets, has been so 'extensive that, as the preface, quoting the late Lord Lytton, says, "There is scarcely a man of letters who has not at one

time or other translated or imitated some of the Odes." But there the influence of the Roman poet has stopped. It has been strong as a charm to please men's minds, but nothing as a power to move them. English poets have written abundant imitations and translations of Horace, but in English poetry there is no sign of him. Every educated man is an admirer of the Odes, but it is likely that no one ever found in them an idea that was new to him. Thoughts and sentiments which are the common property of most men are there. Horace can feel a, comfortable glow of patriotism ; he can feel gratitude to those friends who need no return but gratitude ; he can be in love often, and often recover from it. , So can most of us. And Horace can express such things in poetry such as no one else can write.

G-reater poets have done greater work, but none, perhaps, has

ever done so perfectly all that he intended to do. If Horace tells over again a mythological tale, or if he laments the decline of morality among his countrymen, or if he invites his mistress to his Sabine villa, or if he compliments Maecenas, it is done per- fectly. But that is the best we can say of it. If he does not feel strongly, he says what he feels with complete grace, and with strength exactly sufficing. When he chooses any grand theme, and lacks the grand perception of it which a higher poet would have had, then with him hyperbole does not seem false, --it is his way of getting'at the height of his subject. If his theme is a little one, he feels it all, and writes on it as no other poet could.

Thus, for every one, Horace has his charm ; for poets, that he is so perfect a poet; for others, that he is a poet they can per- fectly understand. This universal appreciation has found its expression in innumerable translations and imitations. The Odes, especially, have been a great deal imitated and translated by poets, but much more by men who were not quite poets. 'These, delighted with the perfect expression of their own best

ideas, and gratified and surprised, perhaps, to find them poetry, have done their best to houour themselves by reproducing it in their own language. But with what success P As Horace founds his claim to a monument more enduring than bronze on having been the first to make Latin run in the Greek lyric metres, so the Englishman who shall succeed in turning Horace Into English which has the flow of the Latin will come near to ranking as a second Horace.

We have, in this volume, Surrey, Dryden, Cowley, Milton, Ben Jouson, Herrick, Congreve, and Cowper, and on a lower platform, Sir William Temple, Addison, Sir Richard Fanshawe, And many others. The poets have succeeded worst. In Dryden's • Horacds Odu, Enigished and hniecoed 61.1 Variou, 114ncis. Selected and arranged by Charles W F. Cooper. London U, Bell and Sons. translations, Horace is hidden by Dryden, in Cowley's by Cowley, in Herrick's by Herrick. In translations by less emi- nent names there may, indeed, be less of Horace, but, as there is nothing else, what there is shows. Take, for example, Dryden's paraphrase of Ode ix., Book I.; whose poetry is this P-

" Behold yon mountain's hoary height, Made higher with now mounts of snow ; Again, behold the winter weight

Oppress the labouring woods below, And streams with icy fetters bound Benumb'd and cramp'd to solid ground."

Any one would know this for Dryden, but who would guess it was Horace P Compare these with four lines from Addison's rendering of Ode iii., Book III.:—

" Should the whole frame of Nature round him break,

In ruin and confusion hurl'd, He, unconcern'd, would hoar the mighty crack, And stand secure amidst a falling world."

Addison, like Dryden, has not aimed at being literal. Each has expanded his ode to double the length of the original. But Dryden has expanded Horace's ode to make it Dryden's, Addison to make it simply English. The last four lines are thus put into two by Professor Conington

"Should Nature's pillar'd frame give way, The wreck would strike ono fearless head."

Two lines of English for two of Horace. They have, indeed, the outward form of the condensation of Horace, but Addi- son's four lines have more of the force which is the result of

condensation in the original. And it may be said generally that the old translators, though they show less skill than has been shown since, in choosing English metres that bear some correspondence to the metres of Horace, and in the delicate

rendering of his delicate turns of expression, yet their transla- tions are more like Horace, because, if they have less of his art, they have more of his spirit. They are not infrequently, how- ever, superior in every quality to the best modern translations. Compare Ode xi., Book III,, as rendered by Professor Conington and Sir Richard Fanshawe. Professor Conington concludes the ode thus :—

" Go ; speed your flight o'er land and wave, While Night and Venus shield you; go, Be blest ; and on my tomb engrave This tale of woe."

Fanshawe writes :—

" By land or sea take thou thy flight,

Cover'd with wings of Love and Night, Go, go, and write, when thou art safe, My epitaph."

Here the old translator is much more like the original in details

than the best of the modern translators. The rhythm is better conveyed, and the whole ode is rendered with as much exactness. In grace, force, and freedom Sir Richard Fanshawe surpasses them all. Taste is the predominant merit in these old trans- lators of Horace, and taste is precisely what is most required for the work. If Horace's words, " Difficile est prolific+ com- munia dicere," were more considered by modern translators of the Odes, perhaps there would be fewer cases of that which is easy reading being translated into language which is only easy writing, and jaunty English would be held to be rather a parody than a translation of light Latin.

It was Horace's taste which enabled him to write so many odes from which you cannot pick out the best and the second- best, because all are best. No one, while reading Horace, can wish for anything better. To be a poet is enough;—

" Quodsi me lyricis vatibits Mseris, Sublimi foriam sidera vortieo!"

The first part of Mr. Cooper's volume consists of translations, the second of imitations and parodies. In the imitations, of course, the poets exhibit best their own quality. Especially worth noting is one by Herrick, and. Marvell's "Ode to Crom- well ;" and two by Chatterton, who had this advantage over the

others, that he did, not know Latin. There are very few good parodies of the Odes, though there are plenty of witty imita-

tions. Among these, some of the best are those of James and Horace Smith.