HORACE AS A POET.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In the letter published in the last number of the Spectator, Mr. F. Talbot makes the extraordinary statement that, " with a few little exceptions, Horace has never been translated," and makes the still more extraordinary assertion that he " may be regarded as untranslatable " I Now, I have in my possession a little volume by Mr. S. A. Cointaukl (published by Bickers and Son, London, in 1908) containing metrical translations of all the Odes of Horace, selected from the works of no less than thirty-five different writers, the list including such well-known names as Ben Jonson, Sir Philip Sidney, Dryden, Hood, Lord Lytton, Whyte Melville, Mr. Gladstone and Professor Newman. (Milton also gave us a translation of one of the Odes, but it is not included.) Mr. Courtauld, in his preface, also refers to the " very numerous translations " of the poet which he had examined and which made the selection of the best versions a long and rather difficult process. So much for the first part of Mr. Talbot's statement.
As regards the assertion that Horace is untranslatable, it simply fills me with amazement. I do not profess to be much of a scholar, yet I have never experienced any par- ticular difficulty in translating Horace. He seems to me quite as easy to translate as any of the other Latin poets, and he has always been, at any rate in this country, in my opinion the most popular and the most widely read of all of them. His rather confident prediction-- " Exegi monumentum acre perennius " —may therefore be said to have been amply justified.—
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