Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 354, April 1845

Lucretius's magnificent opening has invited Dryden to put forth his happiest strength. The profuse eloquence and beauty of the original is rendered. The passage, which may compete with any piece of translation in the language, is, with Dryden, a fragment: —

"Delight of human kind, and gods above,Parent of Rome, propitious Queen of Love;Whose vital power, air, earth, and sea supplies,And breeds whate'er is born beneath the rolling skies;For every kind, by thy prolific might,Springs, and beholds the regions of the light.Thee, goddess, thee the clouds and tempests fear,And at thy pleasing presence disappear;For thee the land in fragrant flowers is drest;For thee the ocean smiles, and smooths her wavy breast,And heaven itself with more serene and purer light is blest.For when the rising spring adorns the mead,And a new scene of nature stands display'd,When teeming buds, and cheerful greens appear,And western gales unlock the lazy year;The joyous birds thy welcome first express,Whose native songs thy genial fire confess;Then savage beasts bound o'er their slighted food,Struck with thy darts, and tempt the raging flood.All nature is thy gift; earth, air, and sea;Of all that breathes; the various progeny,Stung with delight, is goaded on by thee.O'er barren mountains, o'er the flowery plain,The leafy forest, and the liquid main,Extends thy uncontroll'd and boundless reign;Through all the living regions dost thou move,And scatter'st, where thou goest, the kindly seeds of love.Since, then, the race of every living thingObeys thy power; since nothing new can springWithout thy warmth, without thy influence bear,Or beautiful or lovesome can appear;Be thou my aid, my tuneful song inspire,And kindle with thy own productive fire;While all thy province, Nature, I survey,And sing to Memmius an immortal layOf heaven and earth, and every where thy wondrous power display:To Memmius, under thy sweet influence born,Whom thou with all thy gifts and graces dost adorn;The rather then assist my muse and me,Infusing verses worthy him and thee.Meantime on land and sea let barbarous discord cease,And lull the listening world in universal peace.To thee mankind their soft repose must owe,For thou alone that blessing canst bestow;Because the brutal business of the warIs managed by thy dreadful servant's care;Who oft retires from fighting fields, to proveThe pleasing pains of thy eternal love;And panting on thy breast, supinely lies,While with thy heavenly form he feeds his eyes.When, wishing all, he nothing can deny,Thy charms in that auspicious moment try;With winning eloquence our peace implore,And quiet to the weary world restore."

Excellent English! and excellently representative of the Latin!

Dryden sometimes estranges his language from vulgar use by a Latinism; (he, himself, insists upon this, as a deliberate act of enriching our poor and barbarous tongue;) and in his highest writings, even where he has good matter that will sustain itself at due poetical height, here and there he has touches of an ornamental, imitative, and false poetical diction. But that is not his own style – not the style which he uses where he is fully himself. This is pure English, simple, masculine; turned into poetry by a true life of expression, and by the inhering melody of the numbers. That Lucretian Exordium he must have written in one of his happiest veins – under the sting of the poetical œstrum. It is an instance where he was called to his task by desire.

In his greatest undertaking – his Translation of Virgil – he often had to write when the fervour was low and slack. The task was to be driven on; and it was luck if the best places of his author fell to the uncertain hour of his own inspiration. So possibly we may understand why sometimes, when his original seems to challenge a full exertion of power, he comes short of himself. The weariness of the long labour must often apologise for languor, where the claims of the matter are less importunate. But it is not easy – when culling for comparison some of the majestic or softer strains into which Virgil has thrown his full soul, which he has wrought with his most loving and exquisite skill – wholly to shut the door of belief against the uncharitable suggestion, – that the Translator less livelily apprehended, than you yourself do, some Virgilian charm, which lay away from his own manner of thinking, and feeling, and of poetical art.

The story, so marvellous and pathetic, of the Thracian harper-king, and his bride stung by the serpent, is from of old the own tale of lovers and poets. The heart of the Lover dares the terrific and unimaginable road; and the voice and hand of the Minstrel subdue all impossibilities. Virgil was fortunate in a link, which gave to his Italian Man of the Fields an interest in the antique, strange, and touching Hellenic tradition; and he has improved his opportunity worthily of his theme, of his work, and of himself. The dexterous episode of Aristæus, visited with a plague in his bee-hives, for his fault in the death of Eurydice, ends, and by ending consummates, the poem which took life in the soul of the Mincian ploughboy, and to which the chief artist of Augustan Rome was content in bequeathing the perpetual trust of his fame. Impassioned, profound tenderness, – the creating high and pure spirit of beauty – the outwardly watchful and sensitive eye and ear – with tones at will fetched by listening imagination from the great deep of the wonderful, the solemn, the sublime, – these, and crowning these, that sweet, and subtle, and rare mastery, which avails, through translucent words, to reveal quick or slow motions and varying hues of the now visible mind – which on the stream of articulate sounds rolls along, self-evolving, and changing as the passion changes, a power of music, – these all are surprisingly contained within the Seventy-Five Verses which unfold the anger of Orpheus, now a forlorn and yet powerful ghost, and of the Nymphs, once her companions, for the twice-lost Eurydice.

It is a hard but a fair trial to set the Translator against the best of his author. It is to be presumed that Dryden, matched against the best of Virgil, has done his best. We have not room for the whole diamond, but shall display one or two of the brightest facets. Who has forgotten that shrinking of the awed and tender imagination, which shuns the actual telling that Eurydice died? Which announces her as doomed to die —Moritura! then says merely that she did not see in the deep grass the huge water-snake before her feet guarding the river-bank along which she fled! and then turns to pour on the ear the clamorous wail of her companions.

"Illa quidem, dum te fugeret per flumina præceps,Immanem ante pedes hydrum moritura puellaServantem ripas altâ non vidit in herbâ."

At this first losing of Eurydice, the impetuous, wild wail of the Nymph-sisterhood may, in the verse of the Mantuan, be heard with one burst, swelling and ringing over how many hills, champaigns, and rivers!

At chorus æqualis Dryadum clamore supremosImplerunt montes; flerunt Rhodopeiæ arces,Altaque Pangaea, ac Rhesi Mavortia tellus,Atque Getæ, atque Hebrus, et Actias Orithyia.

That the vivid emphasis of a stormy sorrow – given to a picture of sound in the foregoing verses, by that distinctiveness of the multitudinous repetition – declines in the melodious four English representatives to a greatly more generalized expression, must, one may think, be ascribed to Dryden's despair of reconciling in his own rougher tongue the geography and the music. Nevertheless, the version is evidently and successfully studied, to mourn and complain.

But all her fellow nymphs the mountains tearWith loud lament, and break the yielding air:The realms of Mars remurmur all around,And echoes to the Athenian shores resound.

It is good, but hardly reaches the purpose of the original clamour, so passionate, dirge-like, unearthly, and supernatural – at once telling the death – as they say that in some countries the king's death is never told in words, but with a clangour of shrieks only from the palace-top, which is echoed by voices to voices on to the borders of his kingdom – at once, we say, supplying this point of the relation, and impressing upon you the superhuman character of the mourners, who are able not only to deplore, but likewise mysteriously and mightily to avenge.

The next three lines are also, as might be presumed, at the height, for they describe the paragon of lovers and harpers harping his affliction of love —

Ipse cavâ solans ægrum testudine amorem,Te dulcis conjux, te solo in litore secum,Te veniente die, te decedente, canebat!

Musical, dolorous iteration, iteration! Musical, woe-begone iteration, iteration! What have we in English?

"The unhappy husband, husband now no more,Did, on his tuneful harp, his loss deplore,And sought his mournful mind with music to restore.On thee, dear wife, in desarts all alone,He call'd, sigh'd, sang; his griefs with day begun,Nor were they finish'd with the setting sun."

Studied verses undoubtedly – musical, and mournful, and iterative. The two triplets of rhyme have unquestionably this meaning; and the bold choice of the homely-affectionate, "dear wife," to render the more ornate "dulcis conjux," is of a sincere simplicity, and as good English as may be. We see here a poetical method of equivalents – for "on thee he call'd, sigh'd, sang," is intended to render the urgency and incessancy of Te, Te, Te, Te! But the singular and purely Virgilian artifice of construction in the second and third line, is abandoned without hope of imitation.

Orpheus goes down into hell.

"Tænarias etiam fauces, alta ostia Ditis,Et caligantem nigrâ formidine lucumIngressus, Manesque adiit, Regemque tremendum,Nesciaque humanis precibus mansuescere corda.""Even to the dark dominions of the nightHe took his way, thro' forests void of light,And dared amidst the trembling ghosts to sing,And stood before the inexorable king."

They are good verses, and might satisfy an English reader who knew not the original: albeit they do not attain – how should they? – to the sullen weight of dark dread that loads the Latin Hexameters. Look at that – REGEMQUE TREMENDUM! And then, still, the insisting upon something more! To what nameless Powers do they belong – those unassigned hearts, that are without the experience and intelligence of complying with human prayers?

The infatuation —dementia– which, on the verge of the rejoined light, turns back too soon the head of Orpheus towards her who follows him, is by Virgil said to be

"Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere Manes!"

A verse awful by the measure which it preserves between the human of the first half —ignoscenda quidem– and the infernal of the second half —scirent si ignoscere Manes. It places before us, in comparison, the Flexible, which lives in sunshine upon the earth – and the Inflexible, which reigns in the gloom of Erebus underneath it.

What does Dryden? He takes down the still, severe majesty of Virgil by too much of the Flexible – by a double dose of humanity.

"A fault which easy pardon might receive,Were lovers judges, or could Hell forgive."

It is remarkable that he has himself quoted the line of Virgil with great praise, as one that approaches, within measure, to an Ovidian "turn." He has himself overstepped the measure, and made it quite Ovidian.

The four verses which describe the fault of Orpheus, and the perception of it in hell, are unsurpassed: —

"Restitit; Eurydicenque suam jam luce sub ipsâ,Immemor, heu! victusque animi respexit. Ibi omnisEffusus labor: atque immitis rupta tyranniFœdera: terque fragor stagnis auditus Avernis."

Only note the growing pathos from the beloved name to the naming of the dread act. Eurydicen —suam—jam luce sub ipsâ—immemor—heu!—victusque animi– RESPEXIT. Five links! Look, too, what a long way on in the verse that sin of backward-looking has brought you. There shall hardly be found another verse in Virgil which has a pause of that magnitude at that advance, in the measure. It is a great stretching on of the thought against the law of music, which usually controls you to place the logical in coincidence with the musical – stop; but here you are urged on into the very midst, and beyond the midst, of the last dactyl – a musical sleight which must needs heighten that feeling, impressed by the grammatical structure, of a voluntary delay, – of unwillingness to utter the word fraught with inevitable death – that mortal RESPEXIT! After this, there is here no poured out toil – no clashing and rending – No! here is the deep note of victory – the proclamation sounding out from the abyss that the prize which was carried off is regained. Thrice down – down – as low as the pools of Avernus breaks out a peal —

"Terque fragor stagnis auditus Avernis."

This is the master with whom – and this the language, and this the measure with which – our translator competes – "imparibus armis."

"For, near the confines of ethereal light,And longing for the glimmering of a sight,The unwary lover cast his eyes behind,Forgetful of the law, nor master of his mind.Straight all his hopes exhaled in empty smoke,And his long toils were forfeit for a look.Three flashes of blue lightning gave the signOf covenants broke, three peals of thunder join."

The falling off – the failure at the end is deplorable indeed; yet Dryden recovers himself, and much of what follows is very fine.

The outline of the Iliad interests man's everyday heart. A wife carried off – the retaliation – an invasion or siege – a fair captive withheld from ransom – a displeased God sending a plague – a high prince wronged, offended, sullenly withdrawn to his tent – war prosperous and adverse – a dear friend lost and wailed – a general by his death reconciled – that death avenged – a dead son redeemed by his father, and mourned by his people, – To receive all this sufferance into the heart's depths, wants no specific association – no grounding historical knowledge. By virtue of those anthropical elements – which are, by a change of accidents, one to him and you, Homer, who happens to be a Greek, makes you one, and a Trojan too, or rather you are with him in the human regions, and that fact sufficeth for all your soul's desires. But, though no critic, and unversed in the laws of Epos, which by the way are only discoverable in the poem which he created in obedience to them, and that were first revealed to him from heaven by its inspiring genius – nevertheless, you are affected throughout all your being by those laws, and but by them could not have been made "greater than you know," by the Iliad. For the main action, or Achilleid, though you may not know it, has four great steps. From Achilles' wrong by Agamemnon to the death of Patroclus, is a movement of one tenor. From the death of Patroclus to the death of Hector, is an entirely new movement, though causally bound in the closest manner to that antecedent. The Games and Funeral of Patroclus is an independent action. The Restoration of Hector's body is a dependent, and necessarily springing action, having a certain subsistency within itself. To the whole the seat of moving power is the bosom of Achilles. All the parts have perfect inter-obligation. Cut away any one, and there would be not a perilous gash, but a detruncation fatal to the living frame. There is vital integrity from the beginning to the end. Nowhere can you stop till the great poet stops. Then you obtain rest – not glad rest; for say not that the Iliad ends happily. The spirit of war sits on the sepulchral mound of Hector expecting its prey, and the topmost towers of Ilion, in the gloom of doom, lower with the ruining that shall soon hide Mount Ida in a night of dust.

Forbid it, ye muses all! that we should whisper a word in dispraise of Maro. But for what it is, not for what it is not, we love the Æneid. The wafting over sea from an Asiatic to an Italian soil, and the setting there of the acorn, which by the decree of the Destinies shall, in distant ages, grow up into Rome, and the overshadowing Roman Empire – this majestic theme appeals to the reason, and to the reason taught in the history of the world. It is a deliberate, not an impassioning interest. And how dominionless over our sympathy has the glowing and tender-hearted Virgil, perhaps unavoidably, made the Hero, who impersonates his rational interest! How unlike is this Æneas to that Achilles, round whose young head, sacred to glory, Homer has gathered, as about one magnetic centre, his tearful, fiery, turbulent, majestic, and magnanimous humanities!

Confess we must, reluctantly, that Æneas chills the Æneid. It was not that Virgil had embraced a design greater than his poetical strength. But it was in more than one respect unfortunately, unpoetically, conditioned. That political foundation itself is to be made good by aggressive arms; and by tearing a betrothed and enamoured beautiful bride from the youthful and stately chivalrous prince, her lover, slain in fight against the invaders; whilst the poor girl is to be made over to a widower, of whose gallantry the most that we know is his ill-care of his wife, and his running away from his mistress.

And thus, alas! it cannot be denied, the design of the Æneis is carried through without our great natural sympathies, as respects its end – against them as respects its means. An insuperable difficulty! Did Virgil mistake, then, in taking the subject? One hardly dares say so. The national tradition offers to the national Epic poet the national Epic transaction; and he accepts the offer. In doing so he allies by his theme his own to the Homeric Epos. With all this, however, we do feel that fiery, and all-powerful, and all-comprehensive genius projects the outline of the Iliad upon the canvass; whilst in this poetical history of the Trojan plantation in Italy, we can ascribe to the general disposition and invention hardly more than a prudent and skilful intelligence. But the poetical soul, the creative fire then enters to possess the remainder of the task. Was, after all, a pitched battle not exactly the thing in the world the most kindly to the feelings and the best meted to the understanding of the poet, commissioned to renown with verse the people who fought more, and more successful, pitched battles than any other in the world?

Were Virgil to write now, and you had to allot him his theme, what would it be? A romance of knight-errantry? You would allot him none. You would leave him free to the suggestions of his own delicious spirit. But he thought himself bound to the Latin Epos. To speak in true critical severity, the Æneis has no Hero. It has a HEROINE. And who, pray, is SHE? The seven-hilled Queen of the World. Like another Cybele, with her turreted diadem, and gods for her children, in her arms and in her lap. Herself heaven-descended – Imperial Rome.

The two prophetical episodes – the Muster of the pre-existing ghosts before the eyes of the great human ancestor, Anchises, in his Elysium – and those anticipatory narrative Embossings of the Vulcanian shield, become in this view integral and principal portions of the poem. That reviewing beside that Elysian river, of the souls that are to animate Roman breasts, and to figure in Roman chronicles, gave opportunity to Virgil of one Prophecy that mingled mourning with triumph, and triumph with mourning. Victorious over the Punic – victorious over the Gallic foe – carrying to the temple the arms which he, a leader, stripped from a leader – the third consecrator of such spoils – goes Marcellus. But who is He that moves at the side of the hero? A youth, distinguished by his beauty and by his lustrous arms. The Souls throng, with officious tumult, about him – and how much he resembles his great companion! But on his destined brow sits no triumphal lustre – mists and night cling about his head. Who is it? Æneas enquires – and Anchises would fain withhold the reply. It is the descendant of that elder Marcellus; and promises, were fatal decrees mutable, to renew the prowess and praises of his famed progenitor. Fatal decrees might not change, and the nephew of Augustus, the destined successor of his reign, and the hopes of the Romans – OBIIT. You have often wept over Virgil's verses – here are Dryden's: —

"Æneas here beheld, of form divine,A godlike youth in glittering armour shine,With great Marcellus keeping equal pace;But gloomy were his eyes, dejected was his face.He saw, and wond'ring, ask'd his airy guide,What and of whence was he, who press'd the hero's side?'His son, or one of his illustrious nameHow like the former, and almost the same!Observe the crowds that compass him around;All gaze, and all admire, and raise shouting sound:But hov'ring mists around his brows are spread,And night, with sable shades, involve his head.''Seek not to know (the ghost replied with tears)The sorrows of thy sons in future years.This youth (the blissful vision of a day)Shall just be shown on earth, then snatch'd away.The gods too high had raised the Roman state,Were but their gifts as permanent as great.What groans of men shall fill the Martian field!How fierce a blaze his flaming pile shall yield!What funeral pomp shall floating Tyber see,When, rising from his bed, he views the sad solemnity!No youth shall equal hopes of glory give,No youth afford so great a cause to grieve.The Trojan honour, and the Roman boast,Admired when living, and adored when lost!Mirror of ancient faith in early youth!Undaunted worth, inviolable truth!No foe, unpunish'd, in the fighting-fieldShall dare thee, foot to foot, with sword and shield.Much less in arms oppose thy matchless force,When thy sharp spurs shall urge thy foaming horse.Ah! couldst thou break through Fate's severe decree,A new Marcellus shall arise in thee!Full canisters of fragrant lilies bring,Mix'd with the purple roses of the spring;Let me with funeral flowers his body strow;This gift which parents to their children owe,This unavailing gift, at least, I may bestow!'"

Here is an excellent flow. The sorrow and the pride and the public love which are the life of the original, are all taken to heart by the translator, who succeeds in imparting to you the most touching of poetical eulogies. You find, as usually every where, that the vigorous purpose of the original is maintained, and well rendered, but that certain Virgilian fascinations, which – whether they bewitch your heart or your fancy or our ear, you do not know – are hardly given you back. Thus it might be very hard to say what you have found that you cannot forget again, in such a verse as that which introduces to your eye the subject of the more effusive praise.

"Atque hic Æneas, una namque ire videbatEgregium formâ juvenem, et fulgentibus armis."

Yet you do not again forget that second line.

Dryden's rendering is equivalent for the meaning, and unblameable.

"Æneas here beheld of form divine,A godlike youth in glittering armour shine."

The phrase is even heightened; but it does not loiter, like that other, in your memory. The very heightening has injured the image – the shadow that shone brighter in simple words.

The shadow then thrown across —

"Sed frons læta parum" —

is well given, with a variation, by —

"But gloomy were his eyes."

The lightlessness is feelingly placed where the chief light should be.

The unequalled

"Ostendent terris hunc tantum Fata,"

so fully signifying the magnitude of the gift offered and withdrawn – so sadly the brief promise, and all so concisely, meets with a soft and bright rendering in

"The blissful vision of a day."

But Dryden's "shown on earth," less positively affirms the loss fallen upon the earth, than the Latin "shall show to the nations."

The praise involving the recollection of the manners which were —

"Heu pietas! heu prisca fides! invictaque belloDextera!"

is given with admirable fervour.

"Mirror of ancient faith, in early youthUndaunted worth! inviolable truth!"

As for those three words that smote, as the tradition goes, the heart of the too deeply concerned auditress, the bereaved mother herself, to swooning —

"Tu Marcellus eris!" —

they are no doubt, in their overwhelming simplicity, untransferable to our uncouth idiom; and our ears may thank Dryden for the skill with which, by a "New Marcellus," and an otherwise explanatory paraphrase, he has kept the Virgilian music. Meantime the passionate vehemence of the breaking away from that prophecy of intolerable grief – the call for the bestrewment of flowers —