The Odes of Horace : Englished and Imitated by Various
Hands. Selected and Arranged by Charles W. F. Cooper. (Bell and Sons.) — Mr. Cooper has collected in this volume specimens of the loving labour which six or seven genera- tions of scholars and men of fashion — for Horace used at least to be a favourite with men of fashion—have expended upon the most elegant of Roman poets. There are few readers of the Odes who will not find something new to them in this elegant and tastefully selected volume ; and to the majority of students, it will have many pleasing surprises. How few will be familiar with the two elegant renderings of Bishop Atterbury, with Swift's vigorous translation of " virtu repulsae nescia sordidae ;" with Anna Seward's paraphrases —diffuse, indeed, but admirably smooth—and with the scholarly translations of Wraugham ? We may still think that Professor Con- nington and Sir T. Martin hold their own, and more than hold it, against any of the competitors whom Mr. Cooper evokes from the past ; but we are glad to make the acquaintance of the worthies of a bygone time. A second part contains an excellent choice of imitations and parodies. Horace and James Smith, Christopher Anstey, author of the " Bath Guide," and wittiest of men, and the admirable company who conspired in the pages of the Anti-Jacobin (are our much examined youth ever so brilliant now as these demigods—We CtilOYTES —of the days before class-lists ?) are the most prominent names. Whatever may be the predilections of the scholar, who always reads in the original between the lines of the translations, the general public will certainly find the second part the more amusing. The idea of the book is a happy one, and happily executed.
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