Tentanaina. By David Slater, M.A. (Blackwell, Oxford. 3s. 6d. net.)—Mr.
Slater has given us under a modest title, which he uses to signify effort rather than attainment, some very good work. He is not wanting in ambition, for he has made a "frontal attack" on some very steep places indeed. Not to speak of modern poems, there is a version of Iliad xxii. 437.67 (Andromache hearing of Hector's death) into Latin hexameters. It is not Mr, Slater's fault that it does not satisfy; it is not in Latin to do so. Aytoun's ballad of " ifInone " is a happier choice, and becomes a pretty Ovidian Epistle. We should like to have had Tennyson's "Roman Virgil," not in Alcaics, which somehow do not seem appropriate, but in Virgil's own metre. We might mention many other noteworthy pieces did space permit. Here is a short specimen from " Row us out to Desenzano, to your Sirmione row," beginning :—
"'Ave' gementem rursus. 'et vale (rater ' Ave' susurrus, luctu adhue inexpleto, Valeque,' ocelle fkliclnura Latinorum. Recentioris nos quldem die proles Mod° hue mode Hine Lyda! lacu.s
Laps( tuemur ; at placens olivetis l'aene incubi argenteaque praenitet Ova."
—Another adventure of the same kind is The Sixth lEneid of Virgil, translated by Robert Whitelaw (G. E. Over, Rugby, 2s. net). Mr. Whitelaw has a hand practised in this kind of work, and his version will be found worth study. It has many felicities, but it might be bettered,—what translation could not? Here is the rendering of a passage made difficult, not by any remoteness of thought, but by the singular compactness of the Latin :—
" Aggeribus sorer Alpinis atque arcs Monoeci deseendene. sorer adversis instructus ebbs."
Mr. Whitelaw has— "From the Alpine summits and Monoecus' shrine, Comes he who made his child the other's wife, Against that other waiting in the plain Who marshals there the armies of the East."
The second line is certainly prosaic, but sorer and getter are un- manageable. We will play for once the part of "an honest critic," to use Dryden's phrase, and hazard a version of our own :—
From Alpine peaks and high Monaco's shrine Comes Julia's sire ; her spouse in adverse lines Marshals th' embattled East.
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