Has held thy ear so long, and begg'd so hard,
For some old service done, some new reward?
Apart you talk'd, for that's your special care,
The consort never must the council share.

One gracious word is for a wife too much; [such."
Such is a marriage-vow, and Jove's own faith is
Then thus the sire of gods, and men below,
What I have hidden, hope not thou to know.
Ev'n goddesses are women: and no wife
Has power to regulate her husband's life:
Counsel she may; and I will give thy ear
The knowledge first, of what is fit to hear.
What I transact with others, or alone,
Beware to learn; nor press too near the throne."
To whom the goddess with the charming eyes,
"What hast thou said, O tyrant of the skies!
When did I search the secrets of thy reign,
Though privileg'd to know, but privileg'd in vain?
But well thou do'st, to hide from common sight
Thy close intrigues, too bad to bear the light.
Nor doubt 1, but the silver-footed dame,
Tripping from sea, on such an errand came,
To grace her issue, at the Grecians' cost,
And for one peevish man destroy an host."

To whom the thunderer made this stern reply;
"My household curse, my lawful plague, the spy
Of Jove's designs, his other squinting eye!
Why this vain prying, and for what avail?
Jove will be master still, and Juno fail.
Should thy suspicious thoughts divine aright,
Thou but becoin'st more odious to my sight,
For this attempt: uneasy life to me,

Still watch'd, and importun'd, but worse for thee.
Curb that impetuous tongue, before too late
The gods behold, and tremble at thy fate.
Pitving, but daring not, in thy defence,
To lift a hand against Omnipotence."

[fear:

This heard, th' imperious queen sate mute with
Nor further durst incense the gloomy thunderer.
Silence was in the court at this rebuke:
Nor could the gods, abash'd, sustain their sove-
reign's look.

The limping smith observ'd the sadden'd feast,
And hopping here and there, (himself a jest)
Put in his word, that neither might offend;
To Jove obsequious, yet his mother's friend.
"What end in Heaven will be of civil war,
If gods of pleasure will for mortals jar?
Such discord but disturbs our jovial feast;
One grain of bad, embitters all the best.
Mother, though wise yourself, my counsel weigh;
Tis much unsafe my sire to disobey..
Not only you provoke him to your cost,
But mirth is marr'd, and the good cheer is lost.
Tempt not his heavy hand; for he has power
To throw you headlong from his heavenly tower.
But one submissive word, which you let fall,
Will make him in good humour with us all."
He said no more; but crown'd a bowl, unbid:
The laughing nectar overlook'd the lid :
Then put it to her hand; and thus pursu'd:
This cursed quarrel be no more renew'd.
Be, as becomes a wife, obedient still;
Though griev'd, yet subject to her husband's will.
I would not see you beaten; yet, afraid
Of Jove's superior force, I dare not aid.
Too well I know him, since that hapless hour
When I and all the gods employ'd our power
To break your bonds: me by the heel he drew,
And o'er Heaven's battlements with fury threw.

VOL. IX.

All day I fell: my flight at morn begun,
And ended not but with the setting sun.
Pitch'd on my head, at length the Lemnian ground
Receiv'd my batter'd skull, the Sinthians heal'd

my wound."

At Vulcan's homely mirth his mother smil'd, And smiling took the cup the clown had fill'd. The reconciler-bowl went round the board, Which empty'd, the rude skinker still restor❜d. Loud fits of laughter seiz'd the guests, to see The limping god so deft at his new ministry. The feast continued till declining light:

They drank, they laugh'd, they lov'd, and then
'twas night.

Nor wanted tuneful harp, nor vocal quire;
The Muses sung; Apollo touch'd the lyre.
Drunken at last, and drowsy they depart,
Each to his house; adorn'd with labour'd art
Of the lame architect: the thundering god
Ev'n he withdrew to rest, and had his load.
His swimming head to needful sleep apply'd;
And Juno lay unheeded by his side.

THE LAST PARTING OF

HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.

FROM THE SIXTH BOOK OF THE ILIAD.

THE ARGUMENT.

Hector, returning from the field of battle, to visit Helen his sister-in-law, and his brother Paris, who had fought unsuccessfully hand in hand with Menelaus, from thence goes to his own palace to see his wife Andromache, and his infant son Astyanax. The description of that interview is the subject of this translation.

THUS having said, brave Hector went to see
His virtuous wife, the fair Andromache.
He found her not at home; for she was gone,
Attended by her maid and infant son,
To climb the steepy tower of Ilion:
From whence, with heavy heart, she might survey
The bloody business of the dreadful day.
Her mournful eyes she cast around the plain,
And sought the lord of her desires in vain.

But he, who thought his peopled palace bare,
When she, his only comfort, was not there,
Stood in the gate, and ask'd of every one,
Which way she took, and whither she was gone;
If to the court, or, with his mother's train,
In long procession to Minerva's fane?
The servants answer'd, "Neither to the court,
Where Priam's sons and daughters did resort,
Nor to the temple was she gone, to move
With prayers the blue-ey'd progeny of Jove;
But, more solicitous for him alone,

Than all their safety, to the tower was gone,
There to survey the labours of the field,
Where the Greeks conquer, and the Trojans yield;
Swiftly she pass'd, with fear and fury wild;
The nurse went lagging after with the child."

This heard, the noble Hector made no stay;
Th' admiring throng divide, to give him way;
He pass'd through every street, by which he came,
And at the gate he met the mournful dame.

Guard well that pass, secure of all beside."
To whom the noble Hector thus reply'd.

"That and the rest are in my daily care;
But should I shun the dangers of the war,
With scorn the Trojans would reward my pains,
And their proud ladies with their sweeping trains,
The Grecian swords and lances I can bear:
But loss of honour is my only fear.
Shall Hector, born to war, his birth-right yield,
Belie his courage, and forsake the field?
Early in rugged arms I took delight,

And still have been the foremost in the fight:
With dangers dearly have I bought renown,
And am the champion of my father's crown.
And yet my mind forebodes, with sure presage,
That Troy shall perish by the Grecian rage.
The fatal day draws on, when I must fall;
And universal ruin cover all.

Not Troy itself, though built by hands divine,
Nor Priam, nor his people, nor his line,
My mother, nor my brothers of renown,
Whose valour yet defends th' unhappy town;
Not these, nor all their fates which I foresee,
Are half of that concern I have for thee.
I see, I see thee, in that fatal hour,
Subjected to the victor's cruel power;
Led hence a slave to some insulting sword,
Forlorn, and trembling at a foreign lord;
A spectacle in Argos, at the loom,
Gracing with Trojan fights a Grecian room;
Or from deep wells the living stream to take,
And on thy weary shoulders bring it back.
While, groaning under this laborious life,
They insolently call thee Hector's wife;
Upbraid thy bondage with thy husband's name;
And from my glory propagate thy shame.
This when they say, thy sorrows will increase
With anxious thoughts of former happiness;
That he is dead who could thy wrongs redress.
But I, oppress'd with iron sleep before,
Shall bear thy unavailing cries no more."

་

TRANSLATIONS

FROM

THEOCRITUS, LUCRETIUS, AND HORACE.

PREFACE

CONCERNING MR. DRYDEN'S TRANSLATIONS.

For this last half-year I have been troubled with the disease (as I may call it) of translation: the cold prose fits of it, which are always the most tedious with me, were spent in the history of the League; the hot, which succeeded them, in verse miscellanies. The truth is, I fancied to myself a kind of ease in the change of the paroxysm; never suspecting but the humour would have wasted itself in two or three pastorals of Theocritus, and as many odes of Horace. But finding, or at least thinking I found, something that was more pleasing in them than my ordinary productions, I encouraged myself to renew my old acquaintance with Lucretius and Virgil; and immediately fixed upon some parts of them, which had most affected me in the reading. These were my natural impulses for the undertaking. But there was an accidental motive which was full as forcible. It was my lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse; which made me uneasy till I tried whether or no I was capable of following his rules, and of reducing the speculation into practice. For many a fair precept in poetry is, like a seeming demonstration in the mathematics, very specious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanic operation. I think I have generally observed his instructions; I am sure my reason is sufficiently convinced both of their truth and usefulness; which, in other words, is to confess no less a vanity, than to pretend that I have at least in some places made examples to his rules. Yet, withal, I must acknowledge, that 1 have many times exceeded my commission: for I have both added and omitted, and even sometimes very boldly made such expositions of my authors, as no Dutch commentator will forgive me. Perhaps, in such particular passages, I have thought that I discovered some beauty yet undiscovered by those pedants, which none but a poet could have found. Where I have taken away some of their expressions, and cut them shorter, it may possibly be on this consideration, that what was beautiful in the Greek or Latin, would not appear so shining in the English. And where I have enlarged them, I desire the false critics would not always think, that those thoughts are wholly mine, but that either they are secretly in the poet, or may be fairly deduced from him; or at least, if both those considerations should fail, that my own is of a piece with his, and that if he were living, and an Englishman, they are such as he would probably have written.

For, after all, a translator is to make his author appear as charming as possibly he can, provided he maintains his character, and makes him not unlike himself. Translation is a kind of drawing after the life: where every one will acknowledge there is a double sort of likeness, a good one and a bad. It is one thing to draw the out-lines true, the features like, the proportions exact, the colouring itself perhaps tolerable; and another thing to make all these graceful, by the posture, the shadowings, and chiefly by the spirit which animates the whole. I cannot, without some indignation, look on an ill copy of an excellent original. Much less can I behold with patience Virgil, Homer, and some others, whose beauties I have been endeavouring all my life to imitate, so abused, as I may say, to their faces, by a botching interpreter. What English readers, unacquainted with Greek or Latin, will believe me,

or any other man, when we commend those authors, and confess we derive all that is pardonable in us from their fountains, if they take those to be the same poets whom our Ogilbys have translated? But I dare assure them, that a good poet is no more like himself, in a dull translation, than his carcase would be to his living body. There are many, who understand Greek and Latin, and yet are ignorant of their mother tongue. The proprieties and delicacies of the English are known to few: it is impossible even for a good wit to understand and practise them, without the help of a liberal education, long reading, and digesting of those few good authors we have amongst us, the knowledge of men and manners, the freedom of habitudes and conversation with the best of company of both sexes; and, in short, without wearing off the rust, which he contracted while he was laying-in a stock of learning. Thus difficult it is to understand the purity of English, and critically to discern not only good writers from bad, and a proper style from a corrupt, but also to distinguish that which is pure in a good author, from that which is vicious and corrupt in him. And for want of all these requisites, or the greatest part of them, most of our ingenious young men take up some cry'd-up English poet for their model, adore him, and imitate him, as they think, without knowing wherein he is defective, where he is boyish and trifling, wherein either his thoughts are improper to his subject, or his expressions unworthy of his thoughts, or the turn of both is unharmonious. Thus it appears necessary, that a man should be a nice critic in his mother-tongue, before he attempts to translate a foreign language. Neither is it sufficient that he be able to judge of words and style; but he must be a master of them too: he must perfectly understand his author's tongue, and absolutely command his own. So that, to be a thorough translator, he must be a thorough poet. Neither is it enough to give his author's sense in good English, in poetical expressions, and in musical numbers: for, though all these are exceeding difficult to perform, there yet remains a harder task; and it is a secret of which few translators have sufficiently thought. I have already hinted a word or two concerning it; that is, the maintaining the character of an author, which distinguishes him from all others, and makes him appear that individual poet whom you would interpret. For example, not only the thoughts, but the style and versification, of Virgil and Ovid are very different. Yet I see, even in our best poets, who have translated some parts of them, that they have confounded their several talents; and, by endeavouring only at the sweetness and harmony of numbers, have made them both so much alike, that if I did not know the originals, I should never be able to judge by the copies, which was Virgil, and which was Ovid. It was objected against a late noble painter (Sir P. Lely), that he drew many graceful pictures, but few of them were like. And this happened to him, because he always studied himself more than those who sat to him. In such translators I can easily distinguish the hand which performed the work, but I cannot distinguish their poet from another. Suppose two authors are equally sweet, yet there is a great distinction to be made in sweetness; as in that of sugar, and that of honey. I can make the difference more plain, by giving you (if it be worth knowing) my own method of proceeding, in my translations out of four several poets; Virgil, Theocritus, Lucretius, and Horace. In each of these, before I undertook them, I considered the genius and distinguishing character of my author. I looked on Virgil as a succinct, grave, and majestic writer; one who weighed, not only every thought, but every word and syllable: who was still aiming to crowd his sense into as narrow a compass as possibly he could; for which reason he is so very figurative, that he requires (I may almost say) a grammar a part to construe him. His verse is every where sounding the very thing in your ears whose sense it bears: yet the numbers are perpetually varied, to increase the delight of the reader; so that the same sounds are never repeated twice together. On the contrary, Ovid and Claudian, though they write in styles differing from each other, yet have each of them but one sort of music in their verses. All the versification and little variety of Claudian is included within the compass of four or five lines, and then he begins again in the same tenour; perpetually closing his sense at the end of a verse, and that verse commonly which they call golden, or two substantives and two adjectives, with a verb betwixt them to keep the peace. Ovid, with all his sweetness, bas as little variety of numbers and sound as he he is always, as it were, upon the hand-gallop, and his verse runs upon carpet-ground. He avoids, like the other, all synalæphas, or cutting-off one vowel when it comes before another, in the following word. But to return to Virgil, though he is smooth where smoothness is required, yet he is so far from affecting it, that he seems rather to disdain it; frequently makes use of synalæphas, and concludes his sense in the middle of his verse. He is every where above conceits of epigrammatic wit, and gross hyperboles: he maintains majesty in the midst of plainness; he shines, but glares not; and is stately without ambition, which is the vice of Lucan. I drew my definition of poetical wit from my particular consideration of him: