CURRENT LITERATURE.
Thirteen Satires of .Tuvenai. Translated into English by H. A. Strong, M.A., and Alexander Leeper, DZ.A. (Macmillan and Co.)— The translators, both Oxford men, and both holding places of dis- tinction in the University of Melbourne, have done their work well. Juvenal does not present many difficulties of construction, nor does he elude, like Virgil, the attempt to grasp his meaning. Still, it is no easy task which Messrs. Strong and Leeper have proposed to them- selves, to give "a rendering of Juvenal which should combine accuracy with some elegance of style." To be free, but not too free, to enjoy liberty, without taking licence, this is the problem which translators have to solve, and in dealing with which the translators have achieved, at least, a considerable success. We cannot pre- tend to have found ourselves always in agreement with them ; but their version strikes us as vigorous, while it is certainly .faithful. We may note a few points which seem open to criticism. " Lamian blood" will hardly convoy any notion to English readers. We should not say "Howard blood," but "the blood of the nomads." So "the blood of the Lamiae " would naturally suggest its meaning, even where the name was unfamiliar. " Bland°, jactare basis " is not well represented by "meanly kiss hands ;" nor quis color," in -"quia color ant quod sit mime genus," by " what pleas to urge." We may give, as a specimen of the translator's style, their excellent rendering of the fine passage, viii., 154-158 (" Arpinas alMs ") :—
" There was another of Arpinum's sons who, in the Volscian high- lands, would sue for a wage, aweary with another's plough, and later on would get the knotty vine-stick broken on his head, if he were lazy, and did his entrenching with a sluggish axe. [" Axe " is more euphonious than pick-axe, but misleading ; the dole bra was wholly unlike an axe, which would be useless in entrenching. Why not "pick P"] Yet this is he who braves the Cimbri, and the crisis of the State's peril, and single-handed shields the city in its scare. So when the ravens, which never yet had lit on huger corpses, winged their way to the Chnbrian carnage, his high-born colleague is honoured with but the second bay. Plebeian were the Decians' souls, ple- beian were dick names; yet these satisfy the Gods below and Mother Earth as ransom for all our Legions, and all our allies,'and all the chivalry of Latium ; for more precious were the Deeii than all they saved."
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