The 2Eneid of Virgil. Books 1. - VI. Translated in English Blank
Verse. By G. K. Rickards, M.A. (Blackwood.)—We are disposed to agree with much that Mr. Rickards says on the subject of translating Virgil. No metre could be so well suited to the majesty of the original as the best quality of blank verse, which seems to us to represent exactly the same literary qualities in which the greatness of the Roman poet consists. We do not doubt that if Milton had translated the ziEneid into the blank verse of "Peradise Lost," if Mr. Tennyson would trans- late it into the blank verse of "The Idylls of the King," we should have such a genuine rendering of a great man as the world has never seen. As we cannot evoke Milton, or compel Mr. Tennyson, we must think of what is possible. Now there is much to be said against rhyme, but it is certainly attractive, whereas of all things mediocre blank verse is the most distasteful. But is Mr. Rickards' blank verse " mediocre "? Per- haps the word is too strong. It is fair ; sometimes it is good ; bat it never commands, it never fascinates. Take this passage, which is as evenly good as anything that we have found. It is the rendering of "Ibant obacuri," &c. (vi. 268-288):— " Along the void unpeopled plain of Hell, Darkling they went, the solitary pair; As when the fitful moon with sickly ray Gleams on the traveller's path in forest dim, When vapours clog the air, and every shape In that weird light looks colourless and pale. Beside the threshold, in the jaws of Hell, Sorrow and narking Cares their couch had made, And wan Disease and melancholy Eld, Base Fear, and Hunger, counsellor of ill, Terrific shapes, appeared; then Toil and Death, And Death's twin-brother Sleep and guilty Joys. Darkening the porch, Wars horrid front was seen ; The Furies on their steely beds, and Strife, Her snaky locks with blood-red fillets bound. Athwart the path an ancient bowery elm Its arms outspread ; there, clinging to the leaves, Swarms of fantastic dreams their covert made.
Around were apparitions strange and births Portentous; Centaurs stabling In the gates, Half.hnman Sepias, and the hundred heads Of Briarens, and Lerna's hissing pest, Chimaeras belching flames, foul Harpy Sends, And Gleryon's threefold shape, and Gorgons dire."
These are in no way remarkable. No one will care to read them again for any music or beauty they possess. Whatever falls short of that is a failure. In Professor Coningtoa's Virgil there are classical passages which one reads again and again and remembers,—that, whatever the defects of the version, is success. To come to verbal criticism, Mr. Rickards' is not faultless. " Sickly " in line 3 is not a good word for maligna ; 'grudging' or 'scanty' would be better ; " carking," again, inadequately renders ultrices ; the graphic epithet demens, which Virgil gives to Discordia, disappears entirely; cruentis, in the next line, should be 'dripping with blood' or 'gory,' rather than 'blood-red.' We might multiply criticism of this kind. "Thus far had Troy's hard fate our race pursued" is grammatically wrong as a rendering of "Hac Trojana twins fuerit fortuns secuta," where fuerit secuta is certainly optative. In another point of view it fails to give the irony of Trojans fortuna. The irony of another passage, "Caste lioet patrui servet Proserpina limen," is certainly lost in,—
Proserpine may guard With fame unstained her consort-uncle's bed."
To give one more instance, how far short do these lines,— "Lo ! at the banquet sits the Fury Queen,
And from the untested food the famished ghosts With brandished torch and voice of thunder scares,"
fall short of the crescendo, rising, as it does, into thunder, of the original,—
.Furiarum maxima juxts.
Aecubat, et prohibet manibus contingere menses, Exsurgitque facem extollens atque intonat ore."
It is when the doomed ones disregard her forbidding voice that she rises and thunders. Mr. Rickards is not the "coming man" among translators of Virgil.
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