BOOKS.

LORD LYTTON'S HORACE.*

MANY readers—translators, actual or intended, almost of them- selves make up a public—must have been waiting with interest to see what Lord Lytton would make of the Odes and Epodes of Horace. Horace, besides being the most popular of Roman and, we may say, of classical poets, in one sense defies, in another lends himself to translation. The terse felicity of his language is, indeed, the despair of those who have to search for even tolerable equiva-

lents; but then, on the other hand, the general tone of his thought is not, as it is with Homer, wholly alien to ours. On the contrary, as Lord Lytton observes in his "Introduction," he is

"More emphatically the representative of civilization than any other extant lyrical poet. Though describing the manners of his own time, he deals in types and pictures, sentiments and opinions, in which every civilized time finds likeness and expression."

And Lord Lytton has certainly great qualifications for his task.

The world, indeed, has differed from what we have understood to be his own estimate of his achievements, and thinks that he will live by his romances rather than by his poems. But if he is not a great poet, he has a poetical genius ; he is skilful in the arts of versifi- cation, and few men can write more rhythmical prose. At the same time, he is a genuine lover of the classical, and has caught

its spirit with no little success. Most men would agree that the Last Days of Pompeii is the greatest of his romances, and there he

pictures with rare vivacity and skill the very society of which Horace was pre-eminently the poet. That he would perform his new task to the satisfaction of all judges,—and in Horatian matters such judges are very numerous and very exacting,—that he would come up to the standard which those who can appreciate both what Latin is and what English may be, was not to be hoped; perhaps his success has not been equal, on the whole, to what might have been expected ; that he would do much for his poet, give many fine renderings, and bring out with much force many of his subtler meanings, was certain, and in this respect he has done at least as much as could be looked for. We have no hesitation in saying, before we proceed to detailed criticism, that the translation is one which every lover of Horace may read with profit. We have seldom seen a better illustration of the truth that a good translation is a continuous interpretation.

Lord Lytton uses unrhymed verse, much of the same kind as that which he employed in the Lost Tales of Miletus. This verse he assimi- lates in a degree to the rhythm of the original, not attempting—very wisely, as we think—any use of quantity, but giving such resem- blance as he can by the help of accent. This resemblance is naturally most marked in the renderings of the most characteristic

metres of the original, the alcaic and the sapphic, though he does

not here always use the same rhythm, but makes it iambic or trochaic, according as the tone of the ode is more or less serious. It is obvious that a translator employing this method enjoys great freedom. Blank verse, indeed, easy as it may seem to the un-

initiated, presents difficulties which, at least, equal any that are presented by rhyme ; but unrhymed verse, for which the peculiar rhythm attained by so few is not demanded, ought to be a very easily-wielded instrument indeed. Sometimes, we may say often, Lord Lytton's versification is melodious ; but he does not always move with the grace and freedom which we expect from one who is freed from these fetters ; nor is he as faithful, either in scrupulously giving all that the poet writes, or in severely rejecting all that he does not write, as one not bound by the dire necessities of rhyme should be. The reader shall see without any more delay a specimen of his quality. It is a translation of ii. 7, " Pompei, meorum prime sodalium :"—

" 0 Pompeias, thou chiefest and first of my comrades, Fellow-soldier with me, when our leader was Brutus, In danger's last deadly extreme, Who, back to thine own country gods,— * She Odes and Epodes of Horace. A Metrical Tranalation into English, with Introduction and Commentaries. By Lord Lytton. With Latin Text. London and Edinburgh : Blackwood and Sons. 1889.

"To thine own Tuscan skies, and the rights of the Roman, Hath restored thee, old friend? Ah ! bow often Have we whiled loitering days o'er gay cups, Our wreathed locks bright with Araby's balms?

"With thee did I share field and flight of Philippi,

When I left, not too bravely, behind me, my buckler,—

When valour was broken, and tongues That threatened so loudly, licked dust.

"Swiftly me the god Mercury bore through the icemen.

Buoyed aloft in thick cloud—all secure, yet all trembling—

Thee the whirlpool of battle again Dragged back in the roar of its surge.

"Give to Jove, then, the feast that thou ow'st to his mercy ; Worn with warfare so lengthened, rest under my laurel ; Nor will I allow thee to spare The casks I have destined for thee.

"Ho, slaves! brim the cups, Egypt's cups smooth and wide-lipped, With the soft Music wine, which lulls care in oblivion ; Pour sweets from large shells. Who the first Fresh parsley or myrtle will twine?

"Whom will Venus befriend in the cast for our wine-king ?— As for me, I'm prepared to out-tipple a Thracian : Alt, how sweet to drown reason in joy, For the friend whom I welcome once more! "

In this there is very little, indeed, that offends, though in line 7 there is an unpleasant emphasis on the words "o'er gay cups." This is not an uncommon fault ; so in i. 3, we have "who first to fierce Ocean consigned a frail raft," where both the adjectives seem to jar upon the ear. Let the reader, however, compare with what has just been quoted another specimen of the same rhythm, some stanzas from iii. 3, " Justum an tenacem propositi virum : "— "By this virtue did Pollux and wandering Alcides

Scale, with toil, starry ramparts, and enter on heaven, Whom between now, Augustus reclined,

Quaffs the nectar that purples his lip,—

"By this virtue deservedly, thee, Father Bacchus, Did the fierce tigers draw with necks tamed by no mortal, By this virtue Quirinns escaped, Rapt on coursers of Mars, Acheron.

"Juno having thus spoken words heard with approval By the Gods met in council,—Troy, Troy lies in rains, By a fatal and criminal judge And a false foreign woman o'erthrown ; "Condemned from the day when Laomedon cheated Vengeful Gods of the gnerdon agreed,—forfeit debtor With its people and fraudulent King Unto me and Minerva the pure."

This is anything but successful ; nor is it an unfair specimen of the whole ode, for the subject of which, indeed, the graver iambic rhythm would have been more suitable. The same may be said of 17, "Cur me querelis exanimas tuis ?" Here are the first two stanzas, quite unworthy, we think, both in melody and diction, not only of the original, but of Lord Lytton's unquestionable powers as a translator :—

" Why destroyest thou me with the groan of thy sufferings?

Neither I nor the Gods will let thee die before me.

0 Maecenas, the glory and grace And the column itself of my life!

"Ah! if some fatal force, prematurely bereaving, Wrenched from me the one-half of my soul, could the other Linger on with its dearer part lost, And the fragment of what was a whole ?"

Generally speaking, however, the translator rises with the rise of his original, and is most equal to himself and to his task when his work would seem to be the hardest. Take, for instance, the pas- sage in iii. 25, the simile of the Bacchante looking over the snowy expanse of Thrace. It is one of the finest things in Horace, a real landscape, so rare in ancient poetry. Nor is it inadequately rendered :—

"As the slamberless Bacchante

From the lonely mountain ridges, stricken still with wonder, sees Flash the waves of wintry Hebrus, Sparkle snows in Thracian lowlands, soar barbarian Rhodope, "Such my rapture, wandering guideless, Now where river-margents open, now where forest shadows close, Lord of Naiads, Lord of Monads, Who, with hands divinely strengthened, from the mountain heave the ash.

"Nothing little, nothing lowly, Nothing mortal, will I utter! 0 how perilously sweet 'Tis to follow thee, Lenaens, Thee the god who wreathes his temples with the vine-leaf for his crown."

Here, too, is a fine passage from ii. 13 :— " But the death most to fear is the death we least look for- Ah! how near was I seeing dark Proserpine's kingdom, And the judge of the dead and the seats of the blest, Sappho wailing melodious of loves unreturned. "Ay, and thee, too, with strains sounding larger, Akaens! To thy golden shell chanting of hardships in shipwreck,

And of hardships in exile and hardships in war, While the Shadows admiringly listen to both. "Due to either is silence as hushed as in temples. But more presses the phantom mob, shoulder on shoulder, Drinking into rapt ears the grand lay, when it swells With the burthen of battles and tyrants o'erthrown."

The epithet "phantom" is finely picturesque. And epithets and phrases equally felicitous meet us constantly in the book. So in i. 2, for " Nube candentes humeros amictus" we have the noble line, "with shoulder brightening through the stole of cloud ; " and by way of contrast, in the very next stanza the strange mistake of addressing Venus (Erycina) as Eryx, Eryx being geographi- cally a promontory and mythologically the goddess's own son ; and in the following one, the very poor rendering of " horseless Moor" for "Mann peditis." A translator surely would have been excused for taking the far preferable reading of llfarsi. Horseless Moor is really absurd. To no people on earth is the epithet so little applicable. From the time of Jugurtha to that of Abd-el-Kader they have been known as horsemen. Certain critics have, indeed, explained peditis as meaning "unhorsed," but if it means that, " horseleas " translates it very badly, and peditis itself seems a very forced and awkward mode of expressing unhorsed. It is more agreeable, however, to exhibit some of Lord Lytton's felicities. 1Ve quote some of those that we have marked, selecting them rather on account of their brevity than because they are superior to others which we do not notice :— "Polices tor et amplius

Quos irrupts tenet copula, nee malls Divulaus querimomis Suprema citius solvet amor die :" "Thrice happy, ay, more than thrice happy they Whom one soft bond unbroken binds together, Whose love, secure from bickering and reproach, In life's last moment finds the first that severs."

"Laborantes in uno Penelopen, vitreamque Circen :" "How Penelope vied with the Sea's Crystal Circe, for one human heart."

"Grate protervitas :" "Dear saucy charm."

"Nee tibi vesper° Surgente docedunt amores, Nee rapidum fugiente Belem :"

"The star of the eve,

And the sunrise which chases the star,

Find thy love still lamenting the loss of thy Mystes."

" Neque harum quas colis arbor um, Te praeter invisas cupressos Ulla brevem dominum aequetur :" "One tree alone of all thy woodlands, Loathed cypress, faithful found,

Shall follow to the last the brief-lived lord."

The contrast between "invisas " and "seguetur" is beautifully brought out. So, too, in the familiar

" Virtntem incolumem odimns Sublatam ex °culls quterinius invidi,"

the force of "invidi" comes out with quite novel clearness in "We regret

The virtue dead to wrong some virtue living."

These, again, are good :— " Spissas nemorum comae : " "The thick-grown locks

Of the green forest kings."

(Though here, as elsewhere, we note a tendency to amplify.) " Cremato fortis ab IIio

Jactata Timis aequoribus :" "Cast forth A waif on Tuscan seas From Troy's red crater."

"Luctere, multa proruet integrum Cum laude victorem:" "Wrestle and win, it bears the winner down."

"Curve nec faciem littore dimovet."

"Fixing intent upon the curving shore The unmoving stillness of her wistful eyes." " Solers nune hominem ponere, nunc Daum:" "Now fixed a mortal, now enshrined a god."

We had marked other passages for less favourable comment, but do not care to quote them. Every lover of Horace, we repeat, should study the book ; he will find many blemishes, possibly may think less favourably of it than we do, but he will not think the time of his study lost. We will conclude with one more extract, verses not easily to be matched for their spirited movement, though they paraphrase rather than translate :—

"Ho bon there, a cup ! Brim it fall for the now moon! Ho, boy, there, a cup! Brim it full for the midnight !

Ho, boy, there, a cup! Brim it full—to the health Of him we would honour !—Murena the Augur.

,'Proportioned the bowls are to three or nine measures,

As each man likes best ; the true poet will ever Suit his to the odd numbered muses, and quaff Thrice three in the rapture the Nine give to brimmors.

"But the Grace, with her twin naked sisters, shuns quarrels, And to more than three measures refuses her sanction. Ho! ho ! what a joy to go mad for a time!

Why on earth stops the breath of that fife Berecynthian ?

"And why is that harp so unsocially silent, And the lively Pandean pipe idly suspended?

Quick, roses—and more ! let it rain with the rose ! There is nothing I hate like the hand of a niggard."