THE GEORGICS OF VIRGIL.* ABOUT eleven years ago Mr. Blackmore,

under the title of " A Market Gardener," if we mistake not, published a translation of the first two books of the Georgics; he now completes the work, prefacing the second as he did the first instalment, with an "Apology," in which he complains that what he first gave to the

public,

(" praised by some, by all eschewed,) 'lath stood a decade, but bath not been read."

The complaint expresses the fate which often befalls, and in the nature of things cannot but befall, some of the most meritorious translations. The critics praise, for they see the work well done, and that satisfies them ; but the public, which will not be satisfied unless what they read is brilliant, fluent, idiomatically expressed, all in fact that a faithful translation cannot be except at intervals and by the happiest fortune,—the public, which prefers, and will prefer to the end of time, Pope's splendid travesty of Homer to all the honest scholarly labour of such translators as Worsley and Dart, the public refuses to read. And looking at this version as a casual reader might look at it, dipping into it at hazard and mstimating its qualities of language and metre, reading it, in fact, as one would read an ordinary poem, without taking into account the difficulties which have been overcome, we cannot say that it is absolutely attractive. We take almost at random, that is, avoiding the brilliant episodes, a passage from the first Georgic :- " When cold and wet make prisoner of the hind, No lack of good employment shall he find, To finish jobs at leisure, which, defered Until the busy sunshine, would be slurr'd. Tho ploughman hammers out his batter'd share, Scoops wooden troughs, and brands his fleecy care, Or stamps the tallies on his sacks of corn, Or sharpens stakes and forks with double horn ; While others bend the osier Amerine,

To chock the freedom of the gadding vine: Now weave of bramble shoots your hampers neat, Now parch, now grind upon a stone, your wheat. "Nay e'en when holy festival succeeds, Both right and statute sanction certain deeds. From pious scruples no one hath forborne To lift the sluice or fence the standing corn, To snare the birds, to fire the bramble stook, And plunge the bloaters in the wholesome brook, And oft the driver of the laggard ass

With oil and orchard apples loads his pack, And leaving market, brings a millstone back, A chisell'd stone, or pitch a sable mass."

Put this before the general reader and bid him admire it,—he will shrug his shoulders. It sounds tedious to him. The subject is trivial ; the verse, though it is correct, is not splendid or sonorous. But put it before the scholar who has his Virgil by his side, and he will appreciate its value as a very faithful and felicitous version of the original. One thing ho will note for commendation at once, and that is the precision, so unlike to the vague generalities which satisfy most translators, with which Mr. Blackmore employs his technical terms. " Or stamps the tallies on the sacks of corn," for " numeros impressit aoervis," is a rendering which helps one to realize that the poet was writing about actual farm-work far bet- tor than " numbers his sacks of corn," the phrase by which Messrs. Lonsdale and Lee represent it ; " hampers neat " is a better rens ,dering, again, for " facing fiscina" than "pliant basket," which has a very unreal sound. And this characteristic prevails throughout the book. Mr. Blackmore indeed unites qualifications which, it is possible, have never before come together in a translator of the Georgics ; he adds, that is, a technical and professional knowledge of his subject to adequate scholarship and poetical taste. We 'quote some passages which will justify this praise :— "Nor is the mode to bud and graft the same— For whore the buds (like emeralds in their frame) Pueh'd forth the bark, their filmy jerkins split, A narrow eyelet through the crown is slit; Herein the germ, a stranger, they compress, And teach with juicy rind to coalesce.

To graft,—the knotlees trunks are lopp'd amain, And cleft with wedges deep into the grain, Then fruitful scions are enclosed ; nor long Till a great tree with laughing boughs leaps out, And looks up with astenishineut and doubt, At stranger leaves, and fruit that must be wrong,"

where indeed the technical part is much better than the some- what nerveless version of " miraturque novas frondes et non suit poma."

" A buttery loam, with sugary juices blest, And awarded well, and kindly full of breast— The slope we see, in nether distance sweet, Where mountain valleys trend to waters-meet,

The Georgics of Translated by 11, I Blackmore, M.A., Coll. Exon„ Oxon,

Author of "Lorna Deane," etc. Loudon: baxupsou Low and Oo. 1871, Where runnels melting from the topmost peak Are filtering, drop by drop, a jovial reek, A elope that woos the south at every turn,

And feeds that enemy of ploughs the fern—

This soil will brood in rampant health the vine,

And gushing with a perfect wealth of wino; A mass of grapes in clusters manifold,—

The juice wo sip from flagons and from gold; When the fat Tuscan puffs his altar pipe, And chargers bend beneath the smoking tripe. "Tho colt of gentle breeding treads the plain With loftier step and delicate refrain ; He first to tempt the road or rampant tide, And launch himself upon a bridge untried. At idle sounds he etartoth not in dread ; High-arch'd his neck and tapering is his head; His back his plump, his barrel curtly drawn; His fiery breast luxuriates with brawn. Bright bay and grey a good repute have won, But worst of colour are the white and dun.

Then if afar the clash of arms he hears, Stand still he cannot, up he pricks his ears ; He thrills in every fibre of his frame, His snorting nostrils pour embodied dame ; O'er the right shoulder swoops his clustering mane, His (Manned spine runs broad enough for twain ; He scoops the hard earth, pawing it hi scorn, And thunders with a hoof of massive horn."

This characteristic of Mr. Blackinore's work certainly helps one to judge as we, at least, have never been able to judge before, either from a study of the original or from any translations that have come in our way, of the relative value of the four books com- pared with each other iu their technical rather than their poetical aspect. Our own impression, in which, we venture to think, most readers will share, is that the poet is much more at home in the second of the four, with his vines and timber trees, than he is elsewhere, unless we except the fourth, where, however, he could not fall back on anything like the minute knowledge which modern

observers of the bee have acquired, and where, consequently, the scantiness of his material sends hint sooner than usual to the resource of an episode.

It is only fair to our author to give one or two examples of his manner when he deals with passages which test his poetical powers. Here is his rendering of " Sed neve Medoruw," &es

Virgil's brilliant description of Italy :—

" But neither Median woods of wealth untold,

Nor Gauges fair, nor Hermes red with gold, With Italy may vie ; nor Bactrian grain, Nor Ind, nor Sheba sleek with spicy plain. Our laud no bulls, with snorted fire for breath,

Have plough'd, no dragon's teeth have sown with death : No harvest barb'd with helmet and with spear,—

Our rank and file the serried wheaten ear, Our bloodshed but the Massie vineyard's flow, Where olives reign and sportive cattle low. " Homo proudly cloth the charger paw the plain, Hence snowy flocks and bulls of lordly strain, Bosprent, Olitumnus, with thy stream divine, Lead Roman triumphs to the altar shrine.

Hero constant spring and summer charm the year, Twice ycan the flocks, and twice the fruit-trees bear.

No tigers prowl, no savage lion seed ; No aconites the luckless hand mislead: No serpent monster loops along the ground,

Or coils his scaly stretch in endless spirals round.

" Then add, to all those products of the soil,

Our noble cities and constructive toil.

Our beetling crags our castles' proud array,

And rivers gliding under bastions grey.

Why toll of ocean spread on either side,

Tho wash of upper and of nether tide ?

The lakes so vast, groat Lades, and thee, Benaces, rough and roaring like the sea ? Why tell of ports and barriers of Uterine ? Where sullen surges lash the weather line, While Julien waters murmur sale inside, And Tuscan ripples through Avernus glide."

And here is a passage from the fciurth book, beginning, "Ipso cave, solans aegrutu testudiue amorem ":-

e The minstrel to his hollow shell would mourn, For consolation, under love forlorn;

Sweet wife,' he sang on lonely shores alway, ' Sweet wife,' at day-rise, and departing day!

"Nay e'on the jaws Tsonarian, hell's arcade, And grove in sombre majesty of shade, lie pierced; and met the King of Terrors there, And hearts that cannot molt at human prayer.

" By noble music out of black night led, Came shadows wan, and spectres of the dead As flocking birds the forest cloisters fill, When dusk, or winter storm lowers o'er the hill. There lords and dames advanced in solemn train, Amid stately heroes, quit of life's campaign, With lads, and girls, to less of wedlock doom'd, And youths before their parents' eyes eutomb'd. Black ooze around them, and gaunt sedges grow, Cocytus, sullen lake with waters slow, And Styx ninefold encompasseth their woe."