By-Ways of Classical Poetry
The Poems of Leonidas of Tarentum. Translated into English
7s. 6d.) •
A VICTORIAN statesman was fond of dwelling upon the long
succession of English poets from Chaucer in the fourteenth century to Tennyson in his own day. An illustrious dynasty, unbroken for 500 years. Here was a true source of national pride : evidence, beyond all challenge, of the essential pith and vitality of the British race. The classical poets—if the Greeks and their Roman imitators may be grouped together—enjoyed a still longer reign. From the misty dawn of Homer to the brilliant noontide of Periclean Athens ; and on through the centuries, without haste, without rest, to the autumn splendour of Augusta* Rome. Still the true succession reached forward ; still the echoes that Homer had first awakened sounded in the ears of men. A literature so vital and so enduring naturally found many forms and tried many experiments. Dr. Marjorie Crump deals with one of them, to which she gives the name of the Epyllion_ The general reader may be excused if he has never heard the word before. It means a little epic, a short, or comparatively short, narrative poem (Dr. Crump accords it the not ungenerous allowance of 500 lines) dealing with " epic " subjects and written in the epic metre. Born at Alexandria in the third century n.c., the Epyllion was a reaction against the portentousness of the orthodox epic tradition. Viewed from a distance, it may be regarded as a passing phase, hardly more than a literary fad ; yet it held the stage for three cen- turies. Its exponents were mainly poets of the secondary order, though some of the most illustrious—Theocritus, Catullus and Virgil—did not disdain its occasional use. Virgil's single effort—the Aristaeus in the fourth Georgic—represents the Epyllion at his highest. But the hand that perfected also destroyed. The Aencid revived the epic tradition, and the Epyllion withered and died.
1)r. Crump's book is stated to be a " Thesis approved for the Degree of Doctor of Literature in the University of London." It can surprise nobody that so able and scholarly a piece of work, based upon reading so extensive and distinguished by so much taste and judgement, should have achieved the object for which it was designed. But it is not an unfair criticism that her book—perhaps inevitably, when its genesis is remembered --is a trifle over-academic. The reader grows weary of the word Epyllion long before he has reached the last page; he has had a surfeit of classification, of the nice distinctions between hymn and mime, pastoral idyll and epic idyll, of the uses of digression or the vagaries of the " aetiological " school. These technicalities too easily grow tedious. They create an atmo- sphere of unreality. Do poets really think of such things ? Dr.
Crump herself recognizes that Theocritus " produced an epyllion rather by chance than by design." One prefers to believe that Catullus and Virgil did the same ; that is perhaps why the writer is at her happiest in dealing with this famous trio : much happier, for example, than in attempting to recon- struct the lost Hycale of Callimachus. In the presence of genius she seems to give herself more scope. Academic trammels drop away before the magic of true poetry. After all, let us .remember that Aeschylus had never heard of a caesura, and that Homer knew no more of " Monro's canon " than of the 'Monroe doctrine.
Mr. Bevan takes us into other fields. He recognizes that the Greek epigram is untranslatable ; yet he makes a valiant attempt to translate it. Mr. Gladstone used to quote an Eton doggerel of his school days : " Didactic, dry, declamatory, dull Big bursar Bothell bellows like a bull."
" Just in the tone of Greek epigram," he declared ; " a sort of point, but not too much point." Leonidas of Tarentum is a fair specimen of his kind. He has always a " sort of point " ; and what has been described as his " sharp lapidary style " seldom fails of its effect. But he simply will not go into English. Mr. Bevan asks that his verses may be judged on their own merits, and not in relation to the Greek original. It is a fair plea ; indeed, it is the only possible plea. The peculiar flavour of the original cannot be reproduced, and the translator makes no attempt to reproduce it. Some of his versions reach a creditable standard. " The sociable lion " is among the best, and there are some charming lines of " Thanks after delivery " towards the end of the book. Mr. Bevan's introduction is both useful and discriminating ; he is entitled to gratitude for providing us with so attractive an edition of a writer whose work deserves to be better known. More generally he contends that modern scholars, however they may " steep themselves in the poetic literature of the Greeks and Latins," can never he sure that their verses would pass muster, by classical standards. Half the art of writing poetry lies in avoiding colloquialisms which, from their everyday associations, must produce a banal effect. r. ais demands an acquaintance with the spoken—not merely the literary—dialect which no modern can possibly acquire in respect of a " dead " language. He can never " feel the finer shades of success as they would he felt by a contemporary." That is the proposition. Its effect is to place English versions of classic poetry in a less equivocal position than their counterpart. The translator , can at least make sure that his English is above reproach.• For the composer of Greek iambics or Latin elegiacs there is no such certainty. He is an artist in the tentative : he can -never be sure of his results. Let him at least console himself
- with the reflection that there is no plenary authority to correct him. No Ovid or Euripides will rise from the grave to tear his verses -into fragments.
The Warden of All Souls is one of a long and distinguished succession. What he calls the " pleasant practice of making translations into Greek and English verse " has had many . eminent votaries. Kennedy and Calverley, Jebb and Walter Illeadlam, are but a few of the names that come to mind. The tradition, let it be said at once, does not suffer in Dr. Pember's hands. His versions are always scholarly, and nearly always graceful. If he does not often touch a note of superlative merit, his general standard is undoubtedly high. On the whole he succeeds better with Latin than with Greek. The .version in hendecasyllables (not the one in elegiacs) of Shelley's " The fountains mingle with the river" is perhap's the best thing in the book. It is worthy of Catullus. With Christina Rosetti's exquisite sonnet' " Remember me," Dr. Pember is hardly so happy ; nor does he quite succeed with Mr. Housman's famous lines on the army of mercenaries. His Sapphics, both Latin and Greek, are first-rate.
The Warden appeals to Scholars to greet his book ." not unbenignly as evidence of the genuine love of the classical models which its writer has striven to imitate." The appeal will not fall on deaf cars ; but it need not have been made ; his work will stand on its own merits.
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