The Augustan Art of Poetry: Augustan Translation of the Classics

THE AUGUSTAN ART OF POETRY The Works of Virgil (1697), advertising Dryden’s translation and showing Apollo crowning V...

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THE AUGUSTAN ART OF POETRY

The Works of Virgil (1697), advertising Dryden’s translation and showing Apollo crowning Virgil with his laureate wreath.

The Augustan Art of Poetry Augustan Translation of the Classics ROBIN SOWERBY

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Robin Sowerby 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Sowerby, Robin. The Augustan art of poetry: Augustan translation of the classics/Robin Sowerby. p. cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN–13: 978–0–19–928612–6 (alk. paper) ISBN–10: 0–19–928612–4 (alk. paper) 1. Classical poetry—Translations into English—History and criticism. 2. Translating and intepreting—Great Britain—History—18th century. 3. Classical poetry—Appreciation—Great Britain. 4. Classical languages—Translating into English. 5. English poetry—Classical influences. I. Title. PA3012.S69 2006 880.09—dc22 2005029732 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–928612–4 978–0–19–928612–6 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

To Alison

Acknowledgements I would like to thanks the following for permission to reproduce published material: Edinburgh University Library (for the frontispiece from Dryden’s Virgil); the British Library (for a page of Pope’s Homer from MS Add 4007); Pearson Education (for a short extract from my Classical Legacy in Renaissance Poetry) and Edinburgh University Press (for material previously published in article form in Translation & Literature). Much of the book was completed during an extended period of leave supported by the AHRB. I am indebted to my colleague David Reid who read a version of the first chapter and without whose encouragement I might not have continued. Paul Hammond and David Hopkins, Dryden’s most recent editors, supported my application for extended sabbatical leave to the AHRB. The sections of this volume which first appeared in Translation & Literature benefited from the editorial expertise of Stuart Gillespie. The book would not have been published in this form without the active support and encouragement of Andrew McNeillie the Senior Commissioning Editor for English Literature at OUP. My greatest academic debt is one of long standing, to the late H. A. Mason who was the supervisor of my doctoral thesis on ‘Dryden and Homer’. A more personal debt is owed to the book’s dedicatee. R.S. University of Stirling

Contents List of Illustrations Abbreviations A Note on the Texts

ix x x

Introduction

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1. The Art of Poetry: Vida to Pope The Education of the Poet: Setting the Cultural Scene The Virgilian Ars: Disposition of the Poet’s Material The rules of art and poetic inspiration Disposition: clarity, variety, and unity Decorum, nature, and verisimilitude The comparison of Virgil and Homer

The Virgilian Ars: Language and Style

7 11 21 21 24 26 29

36

The figures Poetic diction Imitative harmony

41 45 55

Conclusion to Vida

59

2. The Augustan Ideal: Rhyme and Refinement Early English Classicism

62 62

Humanist beginnings The early argument over rhyme The closed couplet: English and Latin The Latin elegiac couplet Early English couplets The poetic ideal of Augustan Rome

62 66 68 68 72 74

The Early Augustan Aesthetic in English

78

Waller and Denham: sweetness and strength Waller, Denham, and Dryden Vigour refined

The Full Augustan Aesthetic Dryden and Denham on the death of Priam compared Ornament of words: poetic diction How Dryden’s Virgil represents the Latin ideal

Mastery of the Medium: The Continuing Debate about Rhyme

81 101 106

108 108 115 126

128

Contents

viii

Dryden and Addison: rhyme versus blank verse Dryden and Milton

131 140

Appendix: The Continuing Debate about Rhyme

144

3. Augustan Translation of Silver Latin Dryden’s Translation of Persius and Juvenal: Dryden’s Critical Assessment

147

Dryden’s Persius The method and purpose of Dryden in translation Dryden’s Juvenal

153 158 162

Rowe’s Lucan Introduction: Augustan regularization of Lucan Comparison with Marlowe: limitations Augustan strengths: Johnsonian virtues Liberty and tyranny: the moral argument The effectiveness of the mature Augustan couplet

Pope’s Statius The rarefied style Heightening Augustan virtues

4. Augustan Homer Heroic Beginnings: The Episode of Sarpedon The Main Fable: The Anger of Achilles The Art of Pope’s Homer Invention and judgement Imitation and refinement: tradition and method Concentration and unity The heightened style The final polish: the labour of the file

The challenge of the Odyssey Beginnings ‘Proportioning the style’: the plain and the natural Painting the manners: the ‘just moral’ Painting the manners: ‘partly in the nature of a comedy’ Reaction

147

174 174 181 186 194 202

209 212 217 222

228 230 246 257 257 259 272 282 301

310 310 322 324 329 333

Epilogue: Augustans and Moderns

337

Select Bibliography Index

353 361

List of Illustrations The Works of Virgil (1697), advertising Dryden’s translation and showing Apollo crowning Virgil with his laureate wreath (reproduced by kind permission of Edinburgh University Library) Pope’s revisions of the close of Book viii of his translation of the Iliad (MS Add 4007, reproduced by kind permission of the British Library)

frontispiece

302

Abbreviations Brown and Martindale

Dryden, Poems

Dryden, Works

Johnson, Lives Pope, Twickenham Edition

Lucan, The Civil War: Translated as Lucan’s Pharsalia by Nicholas Rowe, ed. Sarah Annes Brown and Charles Martindale (London: J. M. Dent, 1998) The Poems of John Dryden, ed. Paul Hammond and David Hopkins, vols. iii and iv (Harlow: Longman, 2002) The Works of John Dryden, ed. E. N. Hooker and H. T. Swedenberg, 20 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1956– 2002) Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, 3 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 1905) The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, 10 vols. (London: Methuen, 1938–68)

A Note on the Texts For the main Augustan translations and related material most frequently cited, I have used the standard scholarly editions as follows: for Dryden: The Works of John Dryden, ed. E. N. Hooker and H. T. Swedenberg, 20 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1956– 2002) subsequently referred to as Dryden, Works; for Pope: The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, 10 vols. (London: Methuen, 1938–68) subsequently referred to as Pope, Twickenham Edition; for Johnson: Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, 3 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 1905) subsequently referred as Johnson, Lives. Unless otherwise stated, quotations from Greek and Latin authors are from texts in the Loeb Classical Library where there is always a literal version in English on the facing page. Details of these texts are given in the Select Bibliography under the name of the author.

Introduction This book explores the translation of the Roman Augustan aesthetic into a vernacular equivalent in the English poetry of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries and does so by means of translations of the classics. There have been many distinguished studies of the ‘Augustanism’ of English Augustan poets, notably those of Howard Erskine Hill and Howard Weinbrot,1 but such studies have tended to focus upon generic, thematic, or political concerns. Much less direct attention has been given to the speciWcally artistic aspects of Augustanism; indeed there is as yet no full length comparative study of the interrelation between the Roman Augustan aesthetic and its English counterpart, particularly as it is manifested in and through translation, which always plays a central role in larger processes of cultural transmission. I have sought to supply that lack. At a time when most new studies of the period are concerned with issues to do with race, gender, politics, commercialization, and the rise of the novel, the term ‘Augustan’ has very largely fallen out of fashion. It is an assumption of this book that the term is still useful in drawing attention to a dominant set of aesthetic values shared by the main poets of the time and underlying their achievement. The book has its genesis in the claim made by John Dryden in the ‘Postscript to the Æneis’ he added to his Virgil translation of 1697: Somewhat (give me leave to say) I have added to both of them [English language and poetry] in the choice of Words, and Harmony of Numbers which were wanting, especially this last, in all our Poets, even in those who being endu’d with Genius, yet have not Cultivated their Mother-Tongue with suYcient Care; or relying on the Beauty of their Thoughts, have judg’d the Ornament of Words, and Sweetness of Sound unnecessary.2 1 Howard Erskine-Hill, The Augustan Idea in English Literature (London: Edward Arnold, 1983) and Howard D. Weinbrot, Augustus Caesar in ‘Augustan’ England: The Decline of a Classical Norm (Princeton: PUP, 1978). 2 Dryden, Works, vi. 807.

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Introduction

Implicitly, Dryden is claiming to have done for English poetry what Virgil did for Latin in reWning its metre and cultivating its expression. This is, in fact, the achievement accredited to Dryden by Dr Johnson when he remarked that Dryden’s name is venerated by every cultivator of English literature ‘as he reWned the language, improved the sentiments, and tuned the numbers of English poetry’.3 Central to this achievement is Dryden’s conscious desire, signalled in prefaces and allusions from the beginning of his career, to Wnd an equivalent in English of those ideal properties of style that he found embodied in his various classical models, and of these chieXy Virgil. The centrality of Virgil as classical standard is clear for all to see in the account of the Roman poet given by Dryden in the ‘Preface to the Sylvae’ of 1685 when he published his Wrst Virgilian translations: I look’d on Virgil, as a succinct and grave Majestick Writer; one who weigh’d not only every thought, but every Word and Syllable; who was still aiming to crowd his sence into as narrow a compass as possibly he cou’d; for which reason he is so very Figurative, that he requires, (I may almost say) a Grammar apart to construe him. His Verse is every where sounding the very thing in your Ears whose sence 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 . . . Ovid with all his sweetness, has as little variety of Numbers and sound as he: . . . He is every where above the conceipts of Epigrammatick Wit, and gross Hyperboles: He maintains Majesty in the midst of plainess; he shines, but glares not; and is stately without ambition, which is the vice of Lucan. I drew my deWnition of Poetical Wit from my particular consideration of him: For propriety of thoughts and words are only to be found in him; and where they are proper, they will be delightful. Pleasure follows of necessity, as the eVect does the cause; and is not to be put into the deWnition. This exact propriety of Virgil, I particularly regarded, as a great part of his Character.4

Here Virgil is the classical standard by which other poets, Ovid and Lucan, are found wanting. He is the polestar in the light of which Dryden steers a course away from the metaphysical vagaries of his Wrst productions and the uncertain modulation in the verse of such elder contemporaries as Cowley. It may be thought that in his reading and translation Dryden had closer aYnities with other classical writers, notably Ovid, Lucretius, Juvenal, and later Homer but Virgil had a unique place in his poetic pantheon, for Virgil was the pre-eminent poet, a fact marked visually by the grand frontispiece of The Works of 3 Johnson, Lives, OUP, i. 419.

4 Dryden, Works, iii. 6–7.

Introduction

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Virgil in English of 1697 in which the god Apollo bestows his laurel crown on the Roman poet who has his eyes gazing towards the heavens. Dryden would doubtless have acquiesced in T. S. Eliot’s view that Virgil was the classic of all Europe,5 though in a more practical sense than conceived by Eliot, as the supreme stylistic model in his medium of the classical hexameter, the position he has occupied in the educational system wherever Latin has been studied to an advanced level. Both Virgil and Horace in placing their art in the service of the civitas became archetypes of the laureate poet for future ages but Virgil excelled in what was regarded from the Renaissance onwards as the highest of the poetic genres, the heroic poem. There are signs that Dryden’s attitude to the political aspects of Virgil as laureate of Augustus’ Rome became more ambivalent with his own loss of the laureateship in the momentous events of 1688/9.6 Virgil’s apparent support for the regime of Augustus has frequently been controversial even in the period traditionally called Augustan in English7 and certainly in modern times where W. H. Auden is perhaps representative: ‘Behind your verse so masterfully made j We hear the weeping of a Muse betrayed.’8 But whatever reservations have been expressed about Virgil’s politics and the uses to which he put his poetry, his masterfully made verse has seldom been faulted. Dryden’s admiration for Virgil’s Latin artistry was undiminished; Virgil’s Latin style continued to represent an aesthetic ideal. In this admiration Dryden was heir to the Renaissance tradition. The centrality of Virgil to humanist poetics, in the schoolroom, in the academy, and in neo-Latin composition, is nowhere more readily apparent than in the neo-Latin poem De Arte Poetica in three books by Marcus Hieronymus Vida of 15279 which is the subject of the opening chapter of this book. Here Vida codiWes Augustan practice and reproduces in one place what is otherwise scattered throughout commentaries, grammars, rhetorical handbooks, and educational manuals. Starting

5 ‘What is a Classic’ (Address to the Virgil Society in 1944), in T. S. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber, 1957). 6 See his rather guarded defence of Virgil’s political support of Augustus in his ‘Dedication of the Æneis’ in Dryden, Works, v. 281. 7 See Howard D. Weinbrot, Britannia’s Issue: The Rise of British Literature from Dryden to Ossian (Cambridge: CUP, 1995), 39. 8 ‘Secondary Epic’ (1960), in Virgil in English, ed. K. W. Gransden (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996), 282. 9 The De Arte Poetica of Marco Girolamo Vida, ed. Ralph G. Williams, trans. with commentary & with the text of c.1517 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976).

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Introduction

with Invention then moving on to Disposition and Elocution (embracing diction, use of the Wgures, and imitative harmony)10 Vida’s treatise mediates sympathetically the whole of the ancient rhetorical and poetic tradition, the perfection of which he Wnds in the golden Latin artistry of Virgil’s poetry. In Vida’s account of the poetic art, the humanist reception of the Augustan aesthetic is most conveniently embodied and attractively presented in his own artful verse, which in its reWned and allusive style is the very embodiment of the classical precepts it advocates. The centrality of its Augustan classicism for the English Augustans is apparent in the praise accorded to Vida in Pope’s Essay on Criticism: Immortal Vida! on whose honour’d Brow The Poet’s Bays and Critick’s Ivy grow, Cremona now shall ever boast thy Name, As next in Place to Mantua, next in Fame! (ll. 705–8)11

In this opening chapter, use of the Augustan translation made by Pope’s prote´ge´ Christopher Pitt in 172612 alongside Vida’s Latin easily suggests the continuity and connection between the ancient inheritance, the humanist reception of that inheritance, and its neoclassical reWnement in the poetry of Dryden and Pope. In the Renaissance, attempts to adapt the humanist inheritance to the native tradition initiated two critical debates. The Wrst, about the practicality of writing verse on the quantitative principle upon which classical poetry had been constructed, was easily settled by the inadequacy of the results. The second, about the propriety of rhyme which was never used in classical verse but which was the predominant inheritance of medieval vernacular poetry, was never resolved. Rhyme nevertheless continued to predominate in the metre which became the favoured choice in the seventeenth century, the heroic couplet, whose characteristically closed form developed under the inXuence of early translations of the Latin elegiac couplet into English like the Ovidian elegies of Christopher Marlowe. These preliminaries precede the early adoption of the Augustan aesthetic in Jonson and the Tribe of Ben and are set out brieXy in the opening stages of the second chapter, the chief 10 The three divisions of ancient rhetoric; see below, p. 33. 11 Pope, Twickenham Edition, i. 320. 12 Christopher Pitt, Vida’s Art of Poetry Translated into English Verse (London, 1725).

Introduction

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focus of which is Dryden’s relation to his early predecessors in the reWnement of the heroic couplet, Denham and Waller. Their translations of Virgil are used in a comparative analysis with Dryden’s to demonstrate his debt to predecessors, his superiority to them in metrical energy and variety, and the way in which he succeeds in doing justice in his chosen English form to the stylistic ideal represented by Virgil’s Latin. His Virgil represents the culmination of a long dialogue between native practice and the classical tradition and is symptomatic of a more general adoption and adaptation of the classical in the vernacular. The prevalence of the Augustan aesthetic more generally is the subject of the third chapter which treats the translation of post-Augustan classics into English, starting with Dryden’s translations of the silver Latin satirists Persius and Juvenal, going on to consider (at some length) Nicholas Rowe’s Lucan, said by Johnson to be ‘one of the greatest productions of English poetry’,13 and Pope’s early version of Statius, an epic apprenticeship for the later translation of Homer. The analysis speciWcally weighs the balance of gain and loss as post-Augustan Latin poetry is brought within the compass of the Augustan aesthetic. The Wnal chapter is devoted to the culminating poetic achievement of English Augustan poetry, Pope’s translation of Homer. This is the longest chapter as within it is contained much detailed comparative analysis embracing Homer, called by Pope the Muses’ ‘Spring’,14 and Virgil, called by an English Augustan predecessor ‘the sacred Founder of our Rules’,15 and their various translators. Homeric originals are juxtaposed with imitations by Ennius and Lucretius which are in turn reWned by Virgil and translated by Dryden; while the original Greek is translated by Chapman and Pope, often in the light of Virgil’s imitations and in the case of Pope with allusions to Dryden’s Virgil. Pope’s Homer is therefore shown to represent the culmination of a complex interaction between translators in this poetic tradition exempliWed practically in the juxtaposition of appropriate passages. All quotation from Greek and Latin is supported by literal versions so that readers without the original languages can follow the argument. On the one hand the artistic reWnement that Pope absorbs from Dryden and Virgil aligns him with 13 Johnson, Lives, ii. 78. 14 An Essay on Criticism, 127, in Pope, Twickenham Edition, i. 253. 15 The Earl of Roscommon in his Essay on Translated Verse (1685), see Earl of Roscommon, Wentworth Dillon, An Essay on Translated Verse 1685: and Horace’s Art of Poetry Made English 1684 (Menston: Scolar Press, 1971), 22.

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Introduction

Homer against unreWned predecessors such as Ennius, Lucretius (comparatively), and Chapman; on the other, his sophistication of the simpler style of the Greek has a transforming eVect. The focus throughout is on Pope’s application of the Augustan aesthetic he shares with Vida as it aVects his style and moulds his language in diVerent ways in his versions of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. In the course of the chapter there is discussion of contemporary reaction and later objections to Pope’s style. Dr Johnson called Pope’s Iliad ‘a poetical wonder’ and said of Pope that ‘He cultivated our language with such diligence and art that he has left in his Homer a treasure of poetical elegancies to posterity.’16 Posterity, however, seems scarcely to appreciate the richness of this legacy for the poetry of the Augustans is greatly neglected and undervalued. One of the main purposes of this book is to oVer a strong apologia for the reWned artistry of Augustan poetry, and within this particularly for the great translations of Dryden and Pope and the largely unknown translation of Lucan by Rowe. A brief epilogue juxtaposing snippets from acclaimed modern versions with translations from the Augustan period invites the reader to weigh the respective merits of these modern and Augustan versions. 16 Johnson, Lives, iii. 238.

1 The Art of Poetry: Vida to Pope Learning and Rome alike in Empire grew, And Arts still follow’d where her Eagles Xew; From the same Foes, at last, both felt their Doom, And the same Age saw Learning fall, and Rome. With Tyranny, then Superstition join’d, As that the Body, this enslav’d the Mind; Much was Believ’d, but little understood, And to be dull was constru’d to be good; A second Deluge Learning thus o’er-run, And the Monks Wnish’d what the Goths begun. At length, Erasmus, that great, injur’d Name, (The Glory of the Priesthood, and the Shame!) Stemm’d the wild Torrent of a barb’rous Age, And drove those Holy Vandals oV the Stage. But see! each Muse, in Leo’s Golden Days, Starts from her Trance, and trims her wither’d Bays! Rome’s ancient Genius, o’er its Ruins spread, Shakes oV the Dust, and rears his rev’rend Head! Then Sculpture and her Sister-Arts revive; Stones leap’d to Form, and Rocks began to live; With sweeter Notes each rising Temple rung; A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung! Immortal Vida! On whose honour’d Brow The poet’s Bays and Critick’s Ivy grow: Cremona now shall ever boast thy Name, As next in place to Mantua, next in Fame! (An Essay on Criticism (1709), 683–708)1

1 Pope, Twickenham Edition, i. 317–22. The account of Vida in this chapter is much indebted to the excellent commentary in The De Arte Poetica of Marco Girolamo Vida, ed. Ralph G. Williams (New York: Columbia University, 1976).

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The Art of Poetry: Vida to Pope

After praise of Erasmus, the prince of Northern humanists, for his role in reviving the classics and laughing the Middle Ages oV the stage, it is the neo-Latin poet Marcus Hieronymus Vida (c.1480–1566) whom the youthful Alexander Pope in his brilliant and witty shorthand account of the fall of Roman culture and its subsequent revival singles out for especial honour for promoting a poetic Renaissance. Vida is celebrated here both for his poetic and critical achievement; his De Arte Poetica (c.1517), written in Latin hexameters, is the Wrst modern Art of Poetry that like Horace’s Ars Poetica and the later work of Boileau in the same tradition, L’Art poe´tique (1674), oVers critical guidance and encodes in its own practice the creed which it advocates. In linking his birthplace, Cremona, with that of Virgil, Mantua (they are about forty miles apart) Pope is drawing attention to the obvious Virgilian inspiration of Vida’s work and is paying tribute to a pioneering predecessor as he composes his own poetic Essay. This is in part the explanation for what will seem to a modern reader the extravagant juxtaposition of the scarcely immortal Vida with the certainly immortal Raphael and Virgil. Pope’s enthusiasm is perhaps equally or more to be accounted for by the underlying sympathy he feels for the particular critical principles, drawn above all from Virgil’s practice, that Vida is advocating. For Vida’s poetic enthusiasm is indeed a reXection of ‘Rome’s ancient Genius’, particularly as this was mediated through the poetry of Virgil, which he consciously seeks to raise from the dead. Just as Horace wrote his Ars Poetica to be an apologia for his fellow practitioners and to encourage and conWrm the artistic enterprise of Augustan Rome, so Vida hoped to inspire neoLatin imitation of the kind in which he excelled in his Christiad, a poem that puts into practice his own principles in the genre which he rates the highest at the beginning of the poem. To this end he sought to deWne and illustrate the principles underlying Virgil’s practice, and his method of composition. The resulting poetic treatise is well described by the Oxford editor of Vida’s Latin text in 1701. Universam autem carminis condendi rationem libris tribus aggressus ea luce perfudit, quae tantopere ignes minores in Parnassi specula collocatos obruere videtur, ut prope Venusinae lucernae aemula fulgeat: sit altera Horatii, erit altera, nobis saltem, Virgilii Ars Poetica.2 (Having embarked upon a universal method of composing poetry in three books he bathed it in a light which seems to cast into the shade lesser talents stationed on 2 Marci Hieronymi Vidae Poeticorum Libri Tres, ed. Basil Kennet (Oxford, 1701).


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the height of Parnassus to the extent that he shines as a rival to the beacon of Horace: granted that there is one Art of Poetry from Horace, there will be, it seems to us, another from Virgil.)

Reading him nearly two hundred years after his death, Pope does not share his neo-Latin dream3 but values him as a poet-critic whose poetry codiWes and embodies the best Augustan practice which was for the most part also the basis of his own poetic creed. Ever since Petrarch had initiated the humanist drive towards a revival of classical Latin, just as Cicero had been central as a model to the reformation of Renaissance Latin prose so Virgil more than any other poet represented the supreme model of elegant Latinity in verse and, while there were arguments about the manner and merits of imitating Cicero, there was scarcely any controversy about the imitation of Virgil. Nor was the elevation of Virgil a theoretical consideration. In schools and universities his poetry was a cornerstone of the humanist curriculum. The biographer of Vittorino da Feltre (1378–1446), the founder of one of the most famous schools of the early Renaissance, whose disciple Niccolo Lucari taught Vida at Cremona, records the use of Virgil made by this early humanist educator. Virgilium, quem cura et diligentia Smirnaeum vatem superasse dicebat, frequenter publice ac privatim legebat; quod inde spiritum in rebus, motum in aVectibus, decorum in personis, adolescentes magnitudine rerum a poeta scriptarum illecti sumerent, quum rectus, pressus, jucundus, gravis, copiosus rerum omnium scientia habeatur.4 (He frequently used to read Virgil both in public and private and said that he excelled Homer in his care and diligence. That for liveliness of subject matter, for passion in the emotions and for appropriateness of character, the young, enticed by the greatness of the matters written by the poet, might take him as a suitable example, since he may be considered as moral, concise, delightful, serious, and abounding in knowledge of all things.)

Virgil has remained a Wrm favourite of schoolmasters subsequently in grammar schools or wherever Latin has been taught. In the Renaissance, evidence of his ubiquitous use and popularity is to be found in the 3 Pope later edited a neo-Latin collection of poems that had previously appeared in 1684 edited by Francis Atterbury. See Selecta poemata Italorum qui latine scripsit. Cura cuisudam anonymi 1684 congesta, iterum in lucem data, una cum aliorum Italorum operibus, accurante A. Pope, 2 vols. (London: J. P. Knapton, 1740). 4 Battista Platina, ‘Commentariolus de Vita Victorini Feltrensis’, in Cremonensium Monumenta (Rome, 1778), 22.

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number of editions of his poems. Even by the time of Vida’s De Arte Poetica in 1517 not long after the invention of printing there were over Wfty editions of Virgil, more than of any other classical author. The extent to which Vida’s is an art of poetry dominated by Virgil may seem remarkable to a modern reader but the fact is that it has its origin in a cult of the Roman poet that had begun long before Vida. In Vida is the culmination of the Wrst wave of enthusiasm in the early Renaissance for the poetry of Virgil and a poetic record of humanist educational ideals as they centred upon the revival of Latin. Vida’s De Arte Poetica provides a natural starting point for anyone seeking to investigate the aYnity between Roman and English Augustan poetics and indeed their divergence. That this is so is apparent in the English Augustan translation made with the encouragement of Pope by Christopher Pitt, who later went on to translate the Aeneid.5 Written after Pope’s own Essay on Criticism of 1709 and published in 1724, its language and terminology are akin to Pope’s and, to a greater extent than is true of more literal modern versions, Pitt’s couplets with their reminiscences not only of Pope but also of Dryden and other English poets embody in their style the precepts being advocated and so reproduce for an English audience the eVect of the original. The De Arte Poetica is divided into three books, in the Wrst of which Vida deals at length with the very foundation of his subject, the ideal pattern of education that may form and mould the would-be poet. Despite the fact that Vida is a neo-Latin poet whose subject is poetry, a major source of the De Arte Poetica, as of most Renaissance educational manuals, is the prose work of Quintilian, the Institutio Oratoria ‘The Education of an Orator’ (c. ad 96). Quintilian followed Cicero in his rhetorical works (for example the De Oratore of 55 bc) when he propounded the view that the perfect orator must be a cultivated person of wide general education, a man versed in politior humanitas. Consequently the education and training of Quintilian’s orator involves more than the narrowly rhetorical; he advocates wide reading over the whole range of Greek and Roman culture. Vida’s programme of reading is inspired by this tradition. Throughout much of the opening book, particularly from line 215 onwards, he also shows a broad practical concern for the education of the whole person and to that end draws upon another favourite ancient text among humanist 5 Christopher Pitt, Vida’s Art of Poetry Translated into English Verse (London, 1725).

The Education of the Poet

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educators, the De Liberis Educandis of Plutarch (c. ad 50–c. 120). The pupil is to be encouraged to learn other arts, play games, and also look beyond books to a knowledge of the world. This echoes the Horatian injunction: respicere exemplar vitae morumque iubebo doctum imitatorem et vivas hinc ducere voces. (Ars Poetica, 317–18) And I still bid the learned maker look On life and manners, and make those his book, Thence draw forth true expressions. (Ben Jonson, ll. 453–5)6

The uplifting power of poetry is hailed at the close of the book (another Horatian theme in the Ars Poetica, 391 V.); it is an ennobling and civilizing art that can elevate men through the pleasure it gives to the status of the gods. Vida’s rules and recommendations are the expression of humanist ideals about the methods and ends of education and need to be seen in this light. THE EDUCATION OF THE POET: SETTING THE CULTURAL SCENE In the programme of reading and study devised by Vida for the growing poet, Virgil is accorded a central position. The growing boy is then advised to read Greek and to compare Virgil with Homer. This seems to be a conXation of two of the recommendations of Quintilian, the Wrst of which, said by Ben Jonson in his Discoveries to be ‘the best way of informing youth and conWrming man’, became a favourite Renaissance commonplace. Ideoque optime institutum est, ut ab Homero atque Vergilio lectio inciperet, quanquam ad intelligendas eorum virtutes Wrmiore iudicio opus est; sed huic rei superest tempus, neque enim semel legentur. Interim et sublimitate heroi carminis animus adsurgat et ex magnitudine rerum spiritum ducat et optimis imbuatur. (I viii. 5) It is therefore an admirable practice which now prevails, to begin by reading Homer and Vergil, although the intelligence needs to be further developed for 6 Ben Jonson, The Complete Poems, ed. George ParWtt (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), 365–6.

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the further appreciation of their merits: but there is plenty of time for that since the boy will read them more than once. In the meantime let his mind be lifted by the sublimity of heroic verse, inspired by the greatness of its theme and imbued with the loftiest sentiments.

There follows a brief sketch of cultural history revealing the assumptions upon which his recommendations are made here and indeed throughout the work. Homer is the pre-eminent poet of Greece; those nearest in time to him (no other poet is named) share something of his quality. Thereafter a decline sets in. Vida laments the current state of Greece, overcome by the barbarians (the Turks). He then turns to the history of Roman culture, making common cause with the poets of Rome whom he refers to as nostri ‘ours’. Nostri autem ut sanctum divas Helicona colentes Coeperunt primum in Latium transferre, Xuebant Versu incomposito informes, artisque Pelasgae Indociles Musa fundebant carmina agresti Silvicolas inter Faunos. Tunc omne sonabat Arbustum fremitu silvai frondosai. (i. 149–54) But when our Bards brought o’er th’ Aonian Maids From their own Helicon to Tyber’s Shades; When Wrst they settl’d on Hesperia’s Plains, Their Numbers ran in rough unpolish’d Strains. Void of the Grecian Art their Measures Xow’d; Pleas’d the wild Satyrs, and the sylvan Crowd. Low shrubs and lofty forests whilom rung With uncouth Verse, and antiquated Song. (i. 204–11)

Vida is wittily referring to the earliest Latin literature when Rome was still largely an agrarian society. Little of this survives, but there are references to it in later authors. As Latin literature did not eVectively begin until writers in Latin start imitating the Greek classics (after the Romans came into direct contact with Greek culture through their conquest of the Italian Greeks in southern Italy which may be dated from the battle of Tarentum in 271 bc), Vida wittily signals its archaic nature in both its content and style through his rustic imagery and antiquated language: silvai frondosai is an archaic form of the genitive case. This phrase and the sentence in which it occurs are actually the words of Ennius himself as quoted by the later writer Macrobius and recall Quintilian’s own description of the old poet


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(earlier called by the Augustan Ovid, in a phrase echoed by Vida below arte rudis, ‘artistically crude’ (Tristia, ii. 424) ): ‘Ennium sicut sacros vetustate lucos adoremus, in quibus grandia et antiqua robora iam non tantam habent speciem quantam religionem’ (X. i. 88)7 ‘Ennius deserves our reverence, but only as those groves whose age has made them sacred, but whose huge and ancient trunks inspire us with religious awe rather than admiration for their beauty’. Pitt’s ‘whilom’ makes a similar point about the archaic. There may also be an added sophistication in Pitt’s substitution of Satyrs for Fauns, for the word Satyr reminds us of the native Saturnian metre which was widely used before writers adopted the hexameter from the practice of the Greeks. Ennius (239–169 bc), who was nevertheless one of the great founding fathers of Roman culture (Horace calls him pater at Epistolae, I. xix. 7) is then invoked as the pioneer instrumental in naturalizing the Greek hexameter in his Annales, an epic poem that told of the rise of Roman power and the defeat of the Carthaginians by Scipio. Nondum acies, nondum arma rudi pater Ennius ore Tentarat, qui mox Grajo de vertice primus Est ausus viridem in Latio sperare coronam. (i. 155–7) Nor yet old Ennius sung in artless Strains, Fights, Arms, and Hosts embattl’d on the Plains, Who Wrst aspir’d to pluck the verdant Crown From Grecian Heads, and Wx it on his own. (i. 212–15)

His status as a pioneer is reXected in Dryden’s reference to Chaucer as ‘our English Ennius’.8 Vida next alludes favourably to the poetic beauty of Lucretius (c.94–54 or 51 bc) in his De Rerum Natura. Quintilian too mentions Lucretius favourably, though he does not recommend him for his style (X. i. 87) and regards him as having been superseded by Virgil (XII. xi. 27). Although with Lucretius the Latin poets have begun to achieve artistic maturity and Wnally to free themselves of traces of rusticity, this achievement

7 Macrobius, Ambrosii Theodosii Macrobii Saturnalia, ed. Jacob Willis (Lipsiae: Teubner, 1963). 8 Dryden, Works, vi. 807.

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and freedom is not fully realized until the grand consummation and climax of Roman culture in Virgil’s poetry. Atque ita deinde rudes paullatim sumere versus Coeperunt formam insignem, penitusque Latini Agrestem exuerunt morem, liquidissima donec Tempestas veluti caeli post nubila, & imbres Extulit os sacrum suboles certissima Phoebi Virgilius, qui mox, veterum squalore, situque Deterso, in melius mira omne rettulit arte, Vocem, animumque deo similis. (i. 161–8)

Artful in Vida here is the play on Phoebus as god both of light and poetry. This reXects the common Renaissance view that poetry is a form of enlightenment and that Virgil’s appearance on the scene represents the perfect clarity of the purest art. There is a deWnite echo too in Vida’s Latin of Quintilian’s advice to the teacher that ancient authors may be read with proWt once their pupils have acquired judgement, for deterso rudis saeculi squalore (Institutio Oratoria, II. v. 23) ‘after clearing away all the uncouthness of those times’, the robust vigour of earlier writers can be appreciated while the more Wnished style of later times will stand out in contrast. Virgil is here alone invoked as the great reWner of Latin poetry. Only with him are all traces of rust cleaned away and uncouthness Wnally banished. By such Degrees the Verse, as Ages roll’d, Was stamp’d to Form, and took the beauteous Mould. Ausonia’s Bards drew oV from ev’ry Part The barbarous Dregs, and civilis’d the Art. Till, like the Day, all shining and serene, That drives the Clouds, and clears the gloomy Scene, ReWnes the Air, and brightens up the Skies, See the majestic Head of Virgil rise; Phoebus’ undoubted Son!—who clears the Rust Of the rough Ancients, and shakes oV their Dust. He on each Line a nobler Grace bestow’d; He thought, and spoke in ev’ry Word a God. (i. 222–33)

Pitt underscores Vida’s Maronolatry (the cult and worship of Publius Virgilius Maro) by the bold suggestion of a Christian reference in ‘Phoebus’ undoubted Son!’. So great is the idolization of Virgil


15

that Vida contradicts the verdict of Quintilian, otherwise one of his greatest authorities, in giving the palm unambiguously to the Latin poet. date lilia plenis, Pierides, calathis, tantoque assurgite alumno. Unus hic ingenio praestanti, gentis Achivae Divinos vates longe superavit, et arte, Aureus, immortale sonans. stupet ipsa, pavetque, Quamvis ingentem miretur Graecia Homerum. (i. 168–73) To grace this mighty Bard, ye Muses, bring Your choicest Flow’rs, and riXe all the Spring; See! how the Grecian Bards, at distance thrown, With rev’rence bow to this distinguish’d Son; Immortal Sounds his golden Lines impart, And naught can match his Genius but his Art. E’vn Greece turns pale, and trembles at his Fame, Which shades the Lustre of her Homer’s Name. (i. 233–40)

For Quintilian, Homer and Virgil are the pre-eminent poets. As a Latin writer, Virgil is his most obvious point of reference. In fact there are far more citations of his poems and references to Virgil than to any other poet in the Institutio. Nevertheless he gave the palm to Homer and had approvingly cited the verdict of his teacher Domitius Afer when asked which poet comes nearest to Homer: ‘ ‘‘Secundus’’, inquit, ‘‘est Vergilius, propior tamen primo quam tertio’’ ’ (X. i. 86) ‘Virgil comes second, but nearer Wrst than third’. The verdict of Vida here is the Wrst of many instances in the De Arte Poetica in which Greek culture is thoroughly subordinated to the Roman. One of the marked diVerences between the educational programme of Quintilian and those of the Renaissance manuals, including Vida’s, that took their cue from the Roman is the Latin bias in the Renaissance. Quintilian was writing for a Latin audience who still had their children educated predominantly by Greek teachers. He himself is a product of a culture that is genuinely Graeco-Roman. In the Renaissance, long after the split between Latin west and Greek east after which knowledge of Greek died out in the west, those who saw themselves as the natural heirs of the Romans in Italy had little Greek and little real desire to attain it. Vida himself knew no Greek and is a case in point.

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The central and pivotal position in Roman culture occupied by Virgil which is implicit in Quintilian becomes even more apparent through what follows. Haud alio Latium tantum se tempore jactat. Tunc linguae Ausoniae potuit quae maxima virtus Esse, fuit, caeloque ingens se gloria vexit Italiae; sperare nefas sit vatibus ultra. Nulla mora, ex illo in peius ruere res omnia visa, Degenerare animi, atque retro res lapsa referri. (i. 174–9) Twas then Ausonia saw her Language rise In all its Strength and Glory to the Skies; Such Glory never could she boast before, Nor could succeeding Poets make it more. From that blest Period the Poetic State Ran down the Precipice of Time and Fate; Degenerate Souls succeed, a wretched Train, And her old Fame at once drew back again. (i. 242–9)

From this it is clear that Virgil, glorying in the epithet ‘aureus’ ‘golden’, represents the peak of achievement to which Roman culture has been leading and from which it steadily declines. Although the terms ‘golden age’ and ‘silver age’ were not coined till the eighteenth century, the view of Roman culture which gave rise to them and which may be said to be implicit in Quintilian has its origin in a retrospective judgement of their culture by the Romans themselves. First, there is Horace himself in his literary epistles. In what is often known as his ‘Epistle to Augustus’, Horace claimed: ‘venimus summae fortunae’ (Epistolae, II. i. 22) ‘we have come to fortune’s summit’. With hindsight, this assertion might seem the prophetic realization of Roman Augustan achievement. Given the reWnement of Latin poetry in his own verse and that of Virgil, his assessment of the national achievement in the Ars Poetica could also be read as oVering the prospect of a Roman Augustan conquest. nec virtute foret clarisve potentius armis quam lingua Latium, si non oVenderet unum quemque poetarum limae labor et mora. (ll. 289–91)


17

Nor had the Mistress of the World appear’d More fam’d for Conquest, than for Wit rever’d, Did we not hate the necessary Toil Of slow Correction, and the painful File. (Francis)9

Indeed, the Ars Poetica can be read precisely as a vindication of the modern Augustan poetry of Virgil and Varius (and Horace himself ) against conservative Roman taste that continued to value old father Ennius as the second Homer. Greater attention to artistry is the desideratum. Again, in the light of the Roman Augustan achievement, such lines might suggest that the golden age which Virgil proclaimed through prophecy had been restored to Italy by Augustus might also by transference have been realized in poetry, in the golden Latin artistry of the Augustan poets. Unlike Horace, Quintilian writes critically of the modern literary tendencies of his day; his judgement and taste are not in sympathy with his times. He is happy to recommend the reading of the old poets (by which he means the early poets, not Virgil and Horace), despite their style: ‘Sanctitas certe et, ut sic dicam, virilitas ab is petenda est, quando nos in omnia deliciarum vitia dicendi quoque ratione deXuximus’(I. viii. 9) ‘For purity at any rate and manliness, if I may say so, we must certainly go to these writers, since today even our style of speaking is infected with all the faults of modern decadence’. Writing a century after Virgil in what subsequently has been regarded as the silver age of Latin literary culture, Quintilian already exhibits a conservative classicizing tendency; just as he sees the poetic achievement of Roman poets reaching a climax in Virgil, so he regards Cicero as the greatest exponent of Roman oratory and the model to which above all modern orators should return. Unlike the narrow Ciceronians of the Renaissance, justiWably mocked by Erasmus in his dialogue the Ciceronianus (1522),10 Quintilian has a broad-based idea of imitation (similar to that of Erasmus himself ), but he still may be regarded loosely as a Ciceronian. Cicero is by far the most cited authority in the Institutio both in general terms and for particular instances. And as Quintilian

9 In Horace, The Odes, Epodes, Satires and Epistles: Translated by the Most Eminent English Scholars and Poets (London: Arthur Pearson, 1899), 379. 10 Available in The Collected Works of Erasmus, xxviii. Literary and Educational Writings, ed. A. H. T. Levi (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986).

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recommends the reading of prose and verse together for the young pupil, so does Vida. In Vida, too, Cicero, the only prose writer mentioned by name, is the supreme model. Proderit in primis linguam Ciceronis ad unguem Fingere, & eloquii per campos ire patentes. Ille decus Latii, magnae lux altera Romae Ore fundit opes, fandi certisimus auctor, Tantum omnes superns praeclare munere linguae, Quantum iit ante alias Romana potentia gentes. (i. 385–90) First study Tully’s Language and his Sense, And range that boundless Field of Eloquence. Tully, Rome’s other Glory, still aVords, The best Expression and the richest Words; As high o’er all in Eloquence he stood, As Rome o’er all the Nations she subdu’d. (i. 516–21)

Virgilians might be expected to recall here the apocryphal exclamation of Cicero after supposedly having read the Eclogues of Virgil, as recorded in the commentary of the fourth-century grammarian Servius11 [ad Ec. 6.], magnae spes altera Romae, ‘the other hope of mighty Rome’, words applied in Virgil’s Aeneid (xii. 168) to Ascanius the son of Rome’s Wrst hope, Aeneas. Given the perspective of hindsight, there is a pointed propriety in the change from spes, appropriate for Cicero who died long before Virgil’s poetic maturity, to lux which represents his clear achievement. For Vida, the metaphor unites Cicero and Virgil (whom he had likened previously to the Sun-god) as the twin lights of the Latin language and the two great luminaries of Roman culture in the late Republic and the Augustan age. Despite the reference to Cicero here, in Vida, Virgil as a poet is isolated in a stark exaltation. Of his predecessors and contemporaries, apart from Ennius, no other poet, not even Horace, is speciWcally referred to by name, and apart from the clear reference to the De Rerum Natura (Lucretius himself is not named) no other poetic work is named. His successors, whose faults are generalized in such a way as to throw the achievement of Virgil into relief, are summarily dismissed in a few short lines. 11 Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii Carmina Commentarii, ed. G. Thilo and H. Hagen, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1872–1902).


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Hic namque ingenio conWsus posthabet artem: Ille furit strepitu, tenditque aequare tubarum Voce sonos, versusque tonat sine more per omnes. Dant alii cantus vacuos, & inania verba Incassum, sola capti dulcedine vocis, (i. 180–4) One, to his Genius trusts, in ev’ry Part, And scorns the Rules and Discipline of Art. While this, an empty Tide of Sound aVords, And roars and thunders in a Storm of Words. Some, musically dull, all Methods try To win the Ear with sweet Stupidity; UnruZ’d Strains for solid Wit dispense, And give us Numbers, when we call for Sense. (i. 250–7)

Commentators have wondered whether Vida has in his mind in the Wrst instance Ovid, of whom Quintilian remarked that he was ‘nimium amator ingenii sui’ (X. i. 88) ‘unduly enamoured of his own gift’ and in the second instance Lucan, notorious for falling into thunderous bombast. At any rate this is all he has to say of poetry after Virgil before moving on to a lament for the banishment of the Muses by the barbarian invasions and praise of the Medici for their restoration. Here ironically more honour is paid to Greek culture than elsewhere in the poem but it is in reality the Medici who are being lauded for saving Greek classics and giving a home to Greek refugees in the wake of the fall of Constantinople. For his general doctrine Vida draws widely upon his main authorities, Quintilian, Cicero, and Horace, but his chief authority is again Virgil, in whose praise the De Arte Poetica culminates (iii. 554–92). In this extended hymn of praise here, Virgil is the supreme poet, ‘verba deo similis’ (l. 565) ‘a man in language like a god’, the source from whom Vida is happy to confess he wholly derives his inspiration and strength. Virgilii ante omnes laeti hic super astra feremus Carminibus patriis laudes, decus unde Latinum, Unde mihi vires, animus mihi ducitur unde. (iii. 554–6) Here then in Roman Numbers will we rise. And lift the Fame of Virgil to the Skies;

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The Art of Poetry: Vida to Pope Ausonia’s Pride and Boast; who brings along Strength to my Lines, and Spirit to my Song. (iii. 722–5)

This brings to the surface at the end a tribute that is apparent throughout in the language and style of the De Arte Poetica. Although this Maronolatry is very much a Renaissance phenomenon, it is perhaps worth emphasizing at the outset of this part of the work that lauds Virgilian eloquence that it is not a Renaissance invention but something that the Latin humanists inherited from their Roman forebears. Macrobius, a Roman commentator writing in the Wfth century ad, Wnds in the divine Virgil a universal model of eloquence imitative of nature in her inWnite variety and like music, a harmony of discordant elements, a concordia discors. Videsne eloquentiam omnium varietate distinctam? Quam quidem mihi videtur Vergilius non sine quodam praesagio, quo se omnium profectibus praeparabat, de industria permiscuisse idque non mortali sed divino ingenio praevidisse: atque adeo non alium secutus ducem quam ipsam rerum omnium matrem naturam, hanc praetexuit velut in musica concordiam dissonorum. Quippe si mundum ipsum diligenter inspicias, magnam similitudinem divini illius et huius poetici operis invenies. Nam qualiter eloquentia Maronis ad omnium mores integra est, nunc brevis, nunc copiosa, nunc sicca, nunc Xorida, nunc simul omnia, interdum lenis aut torrens: sic terra ipsa hic laeta segetibus et pratis, ibi silvis et rupibus hispida, hic sicca harenis, hic irrigua fontibus, pars vasto aperitur mari. Ignoscite nec nimium me vocetis. Qui naturae rerum Vergilium comparavi. (Saturnalia, V. i. 18–20) (You see—do you not?—that the use of all these varied styles is a distinctive characteristic of Virgil’s language. Indeed, I think that it was not without a kind of foreknowledge that he was preparing himself to serve as a model for all, that he intentionally blended his styles, acting with a prescience born of a disposition divine rather than mortal. And thus it was that with the universal mother, Nature, for his only guide he wove the pattern of his work—just as in music diVerent sounds are combined to form a single harmony. For in fact, if you look closely into the nature of the universe, you will Wnd a striking resemblance between the handiwork of the divine craftsman and that of our poet. Thus, just as Virgil’s language is perfectly adapted to every kind of character, being now concise, now copious, now dry, now ornate, and now a combination of all these qualities, sometimes Xowing smoothly or at other times like a torrent; so it is with the earth itself, for here it is rich with crops and meadows, there rough with forests and crags, here you have dry sand, here again, Xowing streams, and

Virgilian Ars: Disposition of Material

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parts lie open to the boundless sea. I beg you to pardon me and not charge me with exaggeration in thus comparing Virgil with nature, for I think that I might fairly say that he has combined in his single self the diverse styles of the ten Attic orators, and yet not say enough.)

In Vida’s case, a taste for the Roman poet sets the standard and provides the necessary foundation of all true judgement. In An Essay on Criticism (ll. 124–40), Homer is the primary poet, the source of the Rules of Art from whom Virgil learnt what was needful for the proper representation of Nature. For Vida it is Virgil who is eVectively, in the phrase of Roscommon in his Essay on Translated Verse (1683), ‘the sacred Founder of our Rules’. He is, to apply what Pope says of Nature in his Essay ‘At once the Source, and End, and Test of Art’ (l. 73).

THE VIRGILIAN ARS: DISPOSITION OF THE POET’S MATERIAL

The rules of art and poetic inspiration In the second book of the De Arte Poetica Vida takes upon himself the task praescribere leges ‘to lay down rules’ (i. 81) that he had temporarily interrupted to give guidance about the reading and education of the young. These rules are inherited distantly from Aristotle’s Poetics (c.340 bc), a treatise mostly on tragedy (for Aristotle, the highest genre) but with comments on epic too, in which the Greek critic and philosopher oVers a formal analysis of the structural principles of unity derived from Homer and underlying subsequent Greek art. Pope in his review of ancient critics in An Essay in Criticism starts with Aristotle, called the Stagyrite from his birthplace in Stagyra, recognizing that the light cast by his ‘rules’ emanated from the example of Homer called from his supposed birthplace in Asia Minor ‘the Maeonian star’. Such once were Criticks, such the happy Few, Athens and Rome in better Ages knew. The mighty Stagyrite Wrst left the Shore, Spread all his Sails, and durst the Deeps explore; He steer’d securely, and discover’d far, Led by the Light of the Maeonian Star. Poets, a Race long unconWn’d and free, Still fond and proud of Savage Liberty,

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The Art of Poetry: Vida to Pope Receiv’d his Laws, and stood convinc’d ’twas Wt Who conquered Nature, should preside o’er Wit. (ll. 643–52)

Aristotle, often called in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance ‘the philosopher’ because he had systematically originated thought in all branches of the human and natural sciences, is given here almost mythical status as analytical critic and lawgiver in the realm of imaginative literature, wit. His Poetics, which was indeed the foundation of European criticism, was rediscovered in the Renaissance but did not make a real impact until the edition of Robortello in 1548.12 It is doubtful whether Vida made much use of it. The critics of Alexandria, of whom Aristarchus is the most famous, developed the Aristotelian analysis and applied it systematically to all genres to the extent that in their famous library books were arranged generically rather than by author. Most of their work has been lost. However, this Greek tradition Wltered through to the Renaissance by way of Horace’s literary epistles, particularly his Ars Poetica. The grounds of Horace’s special authority as poet-critic are deWned by Pope in a tribute that mimics the attractiveness of his epistolary manner and style. Horace still charms with graceful Negligence, And without Method talks us into Sense, Will like a Friend familiarly convey The truest Notions in the easiest way. He, who Supream in Judgment, as in Wit, Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ, Yet judg’d with Coolness tho’ he sung with Fire; His Precepts teach but what his Works inspire. (ll. 653–60)

He is ‘without Method’ because, unlike Aristotle, he is not writing a formal treatise but embodies his criticism in what is itself a work of art. Judgement here is not merely the critic’s passing of judgements on poetry but the critical faculty itself which is as apparent in Horace’s own poetic output as in his ‘critical’ epistles. In the paradoxical blend of coolness and Wre that is apparent not only in his critical epistles but also

12 See Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961) and Marvin T. Herrick, The Poetics of Aristotle in England (Cornell Studies in English 17; New Haven, 1930).


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in the relation between wit and judgement in his poetry in general, he is his own best example. The rules are not regarded as a human invention so much as a discovery, rather like the laws of physics. As Pope famously expressed it in An Essay on Criticism: Those rules of old discover’d not devis’d, Are Nature still, but Nature Methodiz’d; Nature, like Liberty, is but restrain’d By the same Laws which Wrst herself ordain’d. (ll. 88–91)

Nature, in this context, constitutes the whole nature of things: reality, both human and universal. In the post-Romantic and modern world, the advocacy of rules and precepts may seem to betoken an unduly mechanical attitude to the creative act of poetry. Yet so axiomatic is it in classical and neoclassical theory that nothing can be achieved without the inspiration of the god that this axiom often remains unexpressed or unemphasized. Horace, for example, though he is a poet himself, nevertheless has little to say about what may be called inspiration, other than to ridicule those who have a bad dose of the furor poeticus (Ars Poetica, 295–301). Yet Horace’s own position is quite clear: ‘Tu nihil invita dices faciesve Minerva’ (Ars Poetica, 385) ‘you will say or do nothing if Minerva is unwilling’. Without the goddess, there is little help to be had from a handbook on the Art of Poetry. Poets are both born and made (Ars Poetica, 408– 15). No amount of knowledge of or exercise in the rules can produce poetry without ingenium; equally, the aspiring poet, like the musician, must have knowledge of his craft. This knowledge, Horace’s simile makes clear, is akin to training and must be in place before inspiration comes so that the inspiration can be properly harnessed. The interrelation between ars and ingenium here is actually more subtle than might Wrst be supposed. Vida, unlike Horace, is eloquent on the nature of poetic inspiration and expatiates at length and without irony on the mysteries attendant upon the processes of composition. Sometimes inspiration comes in a great rush, at other times its springs are entirely dry. He recalls one man’s method of summoning the god through recitation of the ancient poets. The method works and inspiration comes. The intensity of Vida’s visionary language describing the visitation of Phoebus Apollo upon the ecstatic poet as he is taken

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over and violently possessed by the god (ii. 429–44) echoes Virgil describing the Sibyl’s possession by the same god in the temple of Apollo. Vida makes a point of using the word poeta, recalling earlier its derivation from the Greek word ‘to make’ (ii. 380–1) when he describes the creative capacity of the poet. The early Romans did not distinguish between the roles of poet and prophet, having the same word for both, vates. The word poeta, like their poetry itself, they took over from the Greeks. For Vida poetry is more than prophetic inspiration, it involves making, the deliberate ordering, or disposition of what comes from the god, according to the principles or praecepta ‘rules’ initiated by the Greeks and perfected by the Roman Augustans. And so he warns his young poet to be wary of poetic inspiration. The eVect of Vida’s own language turns from rapture when he envisages poetic inspiration to restraint when he enjoins its control. This long section (ii. 366–454) warmly celebrating the creative power of the poet and acknowledging the force of the inspiration that is a prerequisite for poetic success sets the context, often ignored subsequently by unsympathetic readers, for his strong advocacy of rules and precepts.

Disposition: clarity, variety, and unity Unlike Horace, the organization of whose Ars Poetica can seem haphazard to the ordinary reader and has occasioned much debate among scholars, Vida has a clear method in his De Arte Poetica as he announces the subject of Book II where he makes the common rhetorical distinction between invention and disposition. Invention, which we might call the imaginative process that gives the poet his subject matter, is regarded as a gift from the gods. The poet must then impose form and order upon the material that comes through the poetic inspiration of the Muse and this ordering, or disposition, is the province of art. This fundamental principle is also treated by Horace at the opening of his Ars Poetica (ll. 38–45). Horace uses the phrase lucidus ordo here (l. 41), ‘clear order’; Vida’s preoccupation in Book II surfaces in the similar phrase pulchri cura ordinis (l. 325) ‘a concern for beautiful order’. Both Horace and Vida are working within the traditional categories of ancient rhetoric divided as it was into the Wve parts: invention, disposition, elocution, memory, and delivery. Memory and delivery are particularly the province of oratory; elocution will be the subject of the third book.


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The meaning of disposition is explained more prosaically by Quintilian. Sed ut opera extruentibus satis non est saxa atque materiam et cetera aediWcandi utilia congerere, nisi disponendis eis collandisque artiWcium manus adhibeatur, sic in dicendo quamlibet abundans rerum copia cumulum tantum habeat atque congestum, nisi illas eadem dispositio in ordinem digestas atque inter se commissas devinxerit. (VII, preface) (But just as it is not suYcient for those who are erecting a building merely to collect stone and timber and other building materials, but skilled masons are required to arrange and place them, so in speaking, however abundant the matter may be, it will merely form a confused heap unless arrangement be employed to reduce it to order and give it connexion and Wrmness of structure.)

The utility of such methodical advice is praised by Pope in a tribute to Quintilian that suggests the nature of his appeal in the Renaissance. In grave Quintilian’s copious Work we Wnd The justest Rules, and clearest Method join’d; Thus useful Arms in Magazines we place, All rang’d in Order, and dispos’d with Grace, But less to please the Eye, than arm the Hand, Still Wt for Use, and ready at Command. (An Essay on Criticism, 669–74)

Earlier in the Essay he had castigated modern critics who from a ‘Love to Parts’ (l. 288) single out aspects of a work for praise while neglecting the whole eVect; the imagery common to these passages, ‘cumulum congestum’ and ‘wild heap’ is a small indication of the common ground between ancient and modern and a clear signal revealing that the judgement of the moderns is to be based upon classical principles enunciated by such as Quintilian. Some to Conceit alone their Taste conWne, And glitt’ring Thoughts struck out at ev’ry Line; Pleas’d with a Work where nothing’s just or Wt; One glaring Chaos and wild Heap of Wit. (ll. 289–92)

For Pope, Quintilian, Horace, and Vida, Wt and proper disposition in a work of art, a proportioning of the parts to the whole in the light of a uniWed theme or vision, is an essential prerequisite for its success.

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In general it may be said that Vida is concerned with the disposition of the poet’s material as exempliWed in the normative epics of Homer and Virgil, for most of his precepts are drawn and illustrated from epic (though there are references to the Georgics as well), whether this is in large matters like narrative technique (such as beginning in the middle of things, recapitulating the past and maintaining suspense or subordinating of episodes to the main action) or to smaller features like the management of similes. Behind this, whether directly, or indirectly, as mediated principally by Horace in his Ars Poetica, is the Aristotelian analysis of the epic form and the classical ideal of unity in a work of art. Within this unity an artful variety is the ideal. In the placing of such excursions as are not strictly necessary in the irreducible plot, the poet shows his masterly disposition of his material (ii. 211–14) by artfully connecting them so that they do not seem like digressions at all. The illustrative examples of artless digression are the Homeric description of Hera’s chariot at Iliad, v. 719 V. and Thersites’ appearance at Iliad, ii. 211 V. The grand example of an artful digression is Virgil’s description of the shield of Aeneas (Aeneid, viii. 626 V.) which continues the prophetic strain of the poem delineating the Werce martial character of the Roman future, and culminating in the depiction of Augustus triumphing over Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium. Although it may technically be considered to be a digression since it is not strictly necessary to advance the plot, because it so clearly connected to the main thematic content of the poem which it extends and enhances, the description of the shield, like the earlier doctrine of the soul relayed in Anchises’ speech, seems fully integrated into the overall structure. No mention is made of the Homeric shield of Achilles on which the Virgilian shield is based, the description of which is not so connected with the main subject of the poem in which it occurs.

Decorum, nature, and verisimilitude Following the classical tradition represented by Horace, the poet is enjoined in his writings to hold a mirror up to Nature; this is the great end to which rules and precepts are ultimately directed (ll. 455– 64). In this instance Nature is to be understood as referring primarily to human nature as in the lines of Horace:


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respicere exemplar vitae morumque iubebo doctum imitatorem et vivas hinc ducere voces. (Ars Poetica, 317–18) And I still bid the learned maker look On life, and manners, and make those his book, Thence draw forth true expressions. (Ben Jonson)

Vida is also echoing the words of Horace on the decorum of characters (Ars Poetica, 156–7). He goes beyond Horace in then talking of a rhetorical decorum; language should be adapted to the nature and to the circumstances of the speaker. The examples of good practice that follow are all from Virgil. His Venus is characterized by her volubility, his Juno by her angry complaints. Turnus is rash and hot-headed and this is reXected in his boastful challenge to Aeneas ‘desertorem Asiae’ ‘the deserter from Asia’ (l. 482). Latinus, by contrast, speaks with calmness and restraint. Dido’s speeches reXect her mood, compassionate and civilized in Wrst greeting the Trojans, savage and bitter when she Wnds them preparing to depart. Alongside the imperative to imitate nature comes the doctrine of verisimilitude. Curandum, ut, quando non semper vera profamur Fingentes, saltem sint illa simillima veris. (ii. 305–6) Since Fictions are allow’d, be sure, ye Youths, Your Fictions wear at least the Air of Truths. (ii. 405–6)

The requirement for verisimilitude follows Horace’s ‘Wcta voluptatis causa sint proxima veris’ (Ars Poetica, 338), though in context Horace goes on to talk about plays where the need for dramatic presentation invites greater realism than in other literary kinds. Vida is brief and does not spell out his meaning with any precision or give speciWc precepts that suggest the limits of fantasy (this is after all a most diYcult topic) but instead makes his meaning clearer by example. The negative example is drawn from Homer. He refers to the objection felt to the long conversation held in the midst of the heat of battle between Glaucus and Diomedes in Iliad, vi. 119–236, which includes the tale of slaying of the Chimaera, the fabulous creature, part lion, part snake, and part goat.

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But his real objection is not to the fabulous stories themselves but to their placing which is a violation of decorum in the disposition of the larger fable, for he goes on to defend the poet’s right to ‘feign’, citing as examples the speaking cattle (Odyssey, xii. 395), the speaking horse (Iliad, xvii. 426), and the speaking prow (Aeneid, x. 228), Wctions which had all been censured by scholars with narrow views about the requirement for versimilitude in poetry. Underlying much of what is said in relation to nature and verisimiltude, and indeed a basic principle permeating the whole of the De Arte Poetica as it permeates the Horatian Ars Poetica to which it alludes, is the classical notion of decorum, in Milton’s words, ‘the grand masterpiece to observe’.13 There is a brief reference in Vida to decorum in the context of morality, when he advises against the inclusion of anything that might make the virgin Muses blush (ii. 526 V.). Here Virgil is the touchstone and standard, commended for the discreet way in which he represents the consummation of the love of Dido and Aeneas in the cave (Aeneid, iv. 160 V.) and for his avoidance of the direct representation of an unequal contest between the boy Troilus and the mighty Achilles, in favour of an indirect allusion when it is the subject of a picture seen by Aeneas on the walls of the temple of Juno at Carthage (Aeneid, i. 474 V.). But to observe decorum for Vida and Horace, and the whole of the rhetorical tradition too, is not to apply a moral standard but to keep to a standard of artistic Wtness. Of course it is not always possible to make an easy distinction between the moral and the aesthetic. Many of the criticisms of Homer made by the Alexandrians, with whom the notion of æ ‘decorum’ originated, are moral as when he is censured for showing the gods and heroes behaving in a bad light, but many are also artistic as when he is criticized for repeating himself or for allowing his similes to become either irrelevant or low. Decorum may be considered to be a requirement, perhaps the chief requirement, for the judicious disposition of the poet’s material. Neither Vida nor Horace uses the word decorum as such, but for Vida it is the value in which Roman poets supremely excel: ‘quid deceat, quid non, tibi nostri ostendere possunt j inventa ex aliis disce’ (ii. 541–2) ‘Our poets can show you what is appropriate and what not; learn invention from others’. Its underlying presence can be felt from the

13 ‘Of Education’ in The Student’s Milton, ed. F. A. Patterson, 2nd edn. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1933), 799.


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very beginning of the Horatian Ars Poetica (ll. 1–13) in the imagery depicting its incongruous opposite.

The comparison of Virgil and Homer In anticipation of the subject of the third book, to underscore and extend what he has said about verisimilitude Vida evokes the expressive power of the poet to make his Wctions real, through enargeia, and turns brieXy for the Wrst time to poetic expression. It is entirely predictable that all the examples chosen to illustrate the creative power of the poetic imagination recall passages in Virgil: the storm that shipwrecks Aeneas at Carthage (Aeneid, i. 34 V.), descriptions of the plague (Georgic, iii. 478 V. and Aeneid, iii. 137 V.), and the eruption of Mount Etna (Aeneid, iii. 570 V.). The general passage extolling the vividness of war scenes in the capture of cities recalls particularly the account of the sack of Troy (Aeneid, ii). Virgil here is implicitly the sole touchstone for poetic excellence. The old distinction with which the second book begins between invention, a gift of the god, and disposition, the province of art, is also latent in the contrast between Homer and Virgil that features prominently in this book. Long before Vida, Homer was deemed to have excelled in invention and Virgil in judgement. This contrast between the two poets is already implicit in the verdict of Quintilian: ‘Et hercule ut illi naturae caelesti atque immortali cesserimus, ita curae et diligentiae vel ideo in hoc plus est, quod ei fuit magis laborandum’ (X. i. 86) ‘And in truth, although we must needs bow before the immortal and superhuman genius of Homer, there is greater diligence and exactness in the work of Virgil just because his task was harder’. The task is harder because Virgil comes after Homer’s invention and the diligence and exactness he shows are part of his exquisite judgement; elsewhere Quintilian praises Virgil for being ‘acerrimi iudicii’ (VIII. iii. 24) ‘of the most acute judgement’. In the Latin-based humanism of the Renaissance, the balance of this verdict in Quintilian tended to tilt very much in Virgil’s favour as might be suggested by the account of Virgil given above attributed to Vittorino da Feltre. According to his biographer Vittorino asserted that Virgil excels Homer in ‘cura et diligentia’, Quintilian’s words, and more remarkably he went on to adapt the adjectival list that Quintilian had applied to Homer ‘laetus ac pressus, iucundus et gravis’ (X. i. 46) ‘luxuriant and concise, sprightly and serious’ to Virgil with one signiWcant change, replacing ‘laetus’ with ‘rectus’ which might be interpreted as ‘moral’ if it refers to content or

30


‘correct’ if it refers to style. It was certainly this artistic ‘correctness’, the product of the most reWned critical judgement, that Renaissance writers came to see embodied in the poetry of Virgil and which Vida recommends to his readers in Book II. Homer is judged to be defective in all the diVerent aspects of disposition that are treated in the second book, while Virgil is held up as the paramount example exemplifying to perfection the twin values of verisimilitude and decorum. Homer’s narrative technique is criticized in two examples in which he is deemed to show an excess of art, ‘nimis arte superbit’ (l. 110). The Wrst is from the Iliad when he interrupts the promised narrative of the combat between Menelaus and Paris with the scene in which Helen points out the Greek leaders to Priam and the old men of Troy from the battlements (ll. 110–18), and the second from the Odyssey when Penelope is made to contrive numerous delays despite her command to the suitors to institute the contest with the bow (ll. 119– 23). Virgil, on the other hand, aVords a good example of the management of suspense in the way that he subtly foreshadows the future through the use of prophecy throughout Aeneas’ journey to Italy (ll. 124–37). The use of prophecy as a foreshadowing device is commended in Homer when the dying Patroclus warns his slayer Hector of his own death (ll. 138–9), though Vida’s commendation of Turnus’ intimation of his impending death occasions much longer and enthusiastic allusion (ll. 140–7). Illustrative examples of artless digression are the Homeric descriptions of Hera’s chariot at Iliad, v. 719 V. and Thersites’ appearance at Iliad, ii. 211 V. The barracking that Thersites gives his elders and betters is imitated in the harangue given by Virgil’s Drances at Aeneid, xi. 343 V. Vida continues ‘Aptior Ausonius Drances’ (l. 186) ‘A more suitable subject is Drances’. Yet here as if recognizing that he may be overstepping the mark, in a rare moment of submission to the Greek, Vida backtracks with an argument that, allowing cultural or at least linguistic diVerence, was much repeated in the course of the battles that raged around Homer’s poetry in the later Renaissance and eighteenth century. Multa tamen Grajae fert indulgentia linguae, Quae nostros minus addeceant graviora sequentes, (ii. 189–90) But, what in our’s would never Wnd a Place [which would not become our poets who treat graver things] The bold Greek Language would admit with Grace. (ii. 253–4)


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Vida absorbs from Virgil that Roman gravity and decorum which he embodies in his imitation and holds up for his reader’s admiration. Homer is found wanting in his disposition of humble or low material particularly in comparisons. Vida cites with approval Virgil’s comparisons of the Trojans to bees (Aeneid, i. 430 V.) and to ants (iv. 402 V.) but makes criticisms, much repeated, to the comparison in Homer in which the Greek forces, as they muster, are compared to Xies Xitting around milk pails (Iliad, ii. 469 V.; Virgil does not imitate this simile when he describes the Italian forces in Book VII) and the Homeric comparison of Ajax stubbornly retreating under pressure to an ass. At non exiguis etiam te insistere rebus Abnuerim, si magna voles componere parvis, Aut apibus Tyrios, aut Troja ex urbe profectos Formicis, Libycum properant dum linquere litus. Sed non Ausonii recte foedissima musca Militis aequarit numerum, quum plurima mulctram Pervolitat; neque enim in Latio magno ore sonantem Arma, ducesque decet tam viles decidere in res. Ne dictis erit ullus honos, si quum actus ab urbe Daunius hostili Teucris urgentibus heros Vix pugna abstitit, similis dicetur asello, Quem pueri laeto pascentem pinguia in agro Hordea stipitibus duris detrudere tendunt Instantes, quatiuntque sudes per terga, per armos: Ille autem campo vix cedere, & inter eundum Saepe hic atque illic avidis insistere malis. Omnia conveniunt, rerumque simillima imago est, Credo equidem; sed turpe pecus, nec Turnus asellum Turnus avis, atavisque potens dignabitur heros. Aptius hanc speciem referet leo, quem neque terga Ira dare, aut virtus patitur, neque suYcit unus Tendere tot contra, telisque obstare sequentum. (ii. 282–303) Sometimes on little Images to fall, And thus illustrate mighty Things by small, With due Success the licens’d Poet dares, When to the Ants the Phrygians he compares, Who, leaving Carthage, gather to the Seas; Or the laborious Tyrians to the bees. But swarming Flies, oVensive Animals, That buzz incessant o’er the smoaking Pales,

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The Art of Poetry: Vida to Pope Are Images too low, to paint the Hosts That roll and blacken o’er Ausonia’s Coasts. The lofty muse who sung the Latian War, Would think such trivial Things beneath her Care. How from his Majesty would Virgil fall, If Turnus, scarce repell’d from Ilion’s Wall, Retiring grimly with a tardy Pace, Had e’er been Wgur’d by the patient Ass! Whom unregarded Troops of Boys surround, While o’er his Sides their rattling Strokes resound; Slow he gives Way, and crops the springing Grain, Turns on each Side, and stops to graze again. In ev’ry point the Thing is just we know, But then the Image is itself too low: For Turnus, sprung from such a glorious Strain, The vile resemblance would with Scorn disdain. With better Grace the Lion may appear, Who, singly impotent the crowd to dare, Repel, or stand their whole embody’d War, Looks grimly back, and rolls his glaring Eye, Despairs to conquer, and disdains to die. (ii. 376–404)

Vida’s objection is not that the comparisons are in any way far-fetched or unnatural; it is a matter rather of artistic decorum. These comparisons violate the dignity that is necessary in the highest kind of poetic endeavour. In such matters of inclusion and exclusion, Virgil’s judgement is held to be the standard and he is the model to be followed. When he comes to discuss verisimilitude, the negative example is again from Homer. The conversation between the Lycian Glaucus and Diomedes (Tydides) at Iliad, v. 123 V. through which they discover that they are bound by obligations as ‘guest-friends’ and therefore chivalrously decline to Wght though they are on opposing sides, is indeed long; it stretches over a hundred lines and includes the unusual story of the slaying of the Wre-breathing Chimaera, a mythical beast, part lion, part snake, and part goat. Homer further oVends in matter of disposition with his repetitions. Gods and Kings give orders to messengers that are then repeated verbatim to their recipients. In the absence of any experience or knowledge of the techniques of oral composition, this simply seemed a narrative defect. Virgil’s use of summary is again the model.


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The climax of Vida’s Book II and the end to which all has been leading is the injunction to regard the Roman poets ‘nostri’ as the embodiment of artistic decorum. Since only Virgil is accorded serious treatment in the De Arte Poetica, Virgil is eVectively the model whose poetry is the guide to ‘quid deceat’ ‘what is decorous’. Quid deceat, quid non, tibi nostri ostendere possunt. Inventa ex aliis disce: & re plurima Achivos Consulere hortamur veteres, Argivaque regna Explorare oculis, & opimam avertere gazam In Latium, atque domum laetum spolia ampla referre. Haud minor est adeo virtus, si te audit Apollo, Inventa Argivum in patriam convertere vocem, Quam si tute aliquid intactum inveneris ante. Aspice ut insignis peregrino incedat in auro Fatidicae Mantus, & Minci Wlius amnis, Fulgeat ut magni exuvias indutus Homeri, Nec pudet. egregias artes ostenderit esto Graecia, tradiderit Latio praeclara reperta, Dum post in melius aliunde accepta Latini Omnia rettulerint, dum longe maxima Roma Ut belli studiis, ita doctis artibus omnes, Quod Sol cumque videt terrarum, anteiverat urbes. (ii. 541–57) This, from our bright Examples you may trace, To write with Judgement, Decency, and Grace; From others learn Invention to increase, And search in chief the glorious Sons of Greece; For her bright Treasures Argos’ Realms explore, Bring home triumphant all her gather’d Store, And with her Spoils enrich the Latian shore. Nor is the Glory of Translation less, To give the Grecian bards a Roman Dress, If Phoebus’ gracious Smiles the Labour Crown, Than if some new Invention were your own. Mincio’s and Manto’s glorious son behold, Th’immortal Virgil, sheath’d in foreign Gold, Shines out unsham’d, and towers above the Rest, In the rich Spoils of godlike Homer dress’d. Let Greece in Triumph boast that she imparts

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The Art of Poetry: Vida to Pope To Latium’s conqu’ring Realms her glorious Arts: While Latium’s Sons improve her best Designs, Till by Degrees each polish’d Labour shines, While Rome advances now in Arts, as far Above all Cities, as of old in War. (ii. 727–47)

Virgil’s triumphant appearance unashamedly dressed in spoils stripped from Homer (the image is itself a Virgilian reminiscence of the vision of Hector dressed in the spoils of Achilles at Aeneid, ii. 275) comes as the natural outcome of Vida’s own disposition of his material in Book II and indeed throughout the De Arte Poetica so far. Homer has not been entirely denigrated; this would have been to deny the evidence of the Romans themselves and to make too crude a case. But despite his inclusion as the great original inventor and despite some favourable citation of examples of his art as well as of his invention, his defeat at the end has been well prepared for by the consistent way in which his faults are seen to be corrected and his defects remedied by the unerring judgement and superior artistry of Virgil. In this account of Vida the Greeks are wholly subordinated and subject to a Roman triumph. Yet this account of things not only simpliWes the verdict of the Roman grammarians but reverses the verdict of the Roman Augustans themselves, including the clear signal given by Vida’s paragon, Virgil. excudent alii spirantia mollius aera, (credo equidem), vivos ducent de marmore voltus; orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus describunt radio et surgentia sidera dicent: tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento (hae tibi erunt artes) pacique imponere morem, parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. (Aeneid, vi. 847–53) Let others better mold the running Mass Of Mettals, and inform the breathing Brass; And soften into Flesh a marble Face: Plead better at the Bar; describe the Skies, And when the Stars descend, and when they rise. But, Rome, ’tis thine alone, with awful sway, To rule Mankind; and make the World obey; Disposing Peace, and War, thy own Majestic Way.


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To tame the Proud, the fetter’d Slave to free; These are Imperial Arts, and worthy thee. (Dryden, ll. 1168–77)

The triumphal imperialist tone here, as Anchises in his review of the Roman future explains the historical mission of Rome to his son Aeneas, has always obscured what is in reality an admission on the part of Rome’s chief poet of cultural inferiority to the Greeks. Roman arts are to be the practical ones of government and ruling. Although Virgil, in mentioning only scultpture, oratory, and science, does not openly admit literary inferiority, the implications of his eloquent silence are clear. Horace is more open in his recognition of Roman cultural inferiority and is ironic at the expense of the plodding materialism of the Romans. Grais ingenium, Grais dedit ore rotundo Musa loqui, praeter laudem nullius avaris. Romani pueri longis rationibus ansem discunt in partes centum diducere. (Ars Poetica, 323–6) Greece had Genious, Greece had Eloquence, For her ambition and her end was Fame; Our Roman Youth is bred another way, And taught no arts but those of Usury; (Roscommon)

Indeed his Ars Poetica is a clarion call to the Romans to aspire to Greek standards and to emulate the Greeks in all things: ‘vos exemplaria Graeca j nocturna versate diu versate diurna, (ll. 268–9) ‘Consider well the Greek Originals, j Read them by day and think of them by night’ (Roscommon). His judgement is that Roman literature lacks the artistic polish that might give it the superiority over the Greeks that Roman arms had achieved. nec virtute foret clarisve potentius armis quam lingua Latium, si non oVenderet unum quemque poetarum limae labor et mora. (Ars Poetica, 289–91) Nor should we be less famous for our Wit, Than for the force of our Victorious Arms; But that the time and care, that are requir’d

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The Art of Poetry: Vida to Pope To overlook, and Wle, and polish well, Fright Poets from that necessary Toyl. (Roscommon)

Although he is the chief proponent of Augustan values, Horace does not therefore give to the Augustan age the ringing endorsement of Vida, who, writing after the consolidating judgement of Time and using the criteria of Horace, pronounces as accomplished fact what in Horace is held out as a fair prospect still to be fully achieved. In a limited sense, therefore, in heralding the literary achievement of the Augustan age, Vida is not doing violence to the judgement of Horace but vindicating it. But in a larger view what he says of the relation between Greek and Roman culture is reductive and narrow. Horace recommends the Greek masterpieces to his Roman audience not merely as rich sources of the greatest invention but as models of the highest artistry. Vida’s language clearly echoes Horace: ‘egregias artes ostenderit esto j Graecia, tradiderit Latio praeclara reperta’ ‘Greece showed the way in the excelling arts: so be it. Grant her that she transmitted illustrious material to Latium’. This recalls the wittily deprecating verdict of Horace in his ‘Epistle to Augustus’: ‘Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis j intulit agresti Latio’ (ll. 156–7) ‘Greece, the captive, made her savage victor captive, and brought the arts into rustic Latium’. But the eVect of the echo highlights the gulf between the Roman Augustan and his modern imitator. Vida’s assertion that, though the Greeks had shown the way, the Romans had improved and perfected all that they found in Greek culture could never have been made by the Roman Augustans themselves and that Vida can make this assertion so boldly and without the least hint of qualiWcation suggests a certain limitation in the Latin-based humanism of the Renaissance. For it is not as if Vida is untypical; on the contrary, it is diYcult to Wnd in the sensibilities of Western humanists the kind of hard evidence of a real appreciation for the beauties of Greek literary culture that is only too apparent in their feeling for the poets, orators and historians of Rome.

THE VIRGILIAN ARS: LANGUAGE AND STYLE After invention and disposition comes the third element of traditional rhetorical analysis, elocution, that is attention to matters of language

Virgilian Ars: Language and Style

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and style. This is the subject of the Wnal book of the De Arte Poetica and the climax of its concerns. Nunc autem linguae studium, moremque loquendi, Quem vates, Musaeque probent, atque auctor Apollo, Expediam, curam extremam, Wnemque laborum. Discendum, indicia, & verborum lumina quae sint Munere Pieridum lustrandis addita rebus. (iii. 1–5) What Style what Language suits the Poet’s Lays, To claim Apollo’s and the Muses’ Praise, I now unfold; to this last bound I tend, And see my promis’d Labours at an End. First then, with care a just Expression choose, Led by the kind Indulgence of the Muse, To dress up ev’ry subject when you write, And set all Objects in a proper Light. (iii. 1–8)

Vida’s own language here is denser and more suggestive than his translator’s and it will be worth teasing out some of its implications. The Latin phrase ‘linguae studium’ may simply be taken to be ‘the study of language’, the hard and humdrum discipline and extreme care (‘curam extremam’) that must form the basis of progress in literary endeavours, but may also suggest more warmly the enthusiasm as well as the absolute dedication and linguistic precision necessary for real success in composition or literary appreciation, the end point of all our labours: ‘Wnemque laborum’. In this phrase, there is a play on the literal and Wgurative meanings of ‘Wnem’ ‘end’; Vida is coming to the Wnal stage of his Art of Poetry, to the end in which he discloses the kind of speech that gratiWes the Muses which is the whole purpose of his undertaking. Perhaps he is also gesturing towards the achievement of what for Vida is a larger goal, suggested in the buried allusion to the question asked of Jupiter by Venus, mother of Aeneas: ‘quem das Wnem, rex magne, laborum?’ (Aeneid, i. 241) ‘what end are you granting, mighty king, to these labours?’. Jupiter envisages a great end: ‘imperium sine Wne dedi’ (l. 279) ‘I have granted dominion without end’. It is surely not fanciful to see a transference from Jupiter’s projected end of an eternal Roman dominion for the descendents of Aeneas to Vida’s ‘Wnemque laborum’ suggesting his aspiration towards a Roman literary revival in neo-Latin. The wordplay and allusion give a sophistication to

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Vida’s style which lifts it up above the commonplace in thought and expression. The condensed summary of the book’s doctrine in the second sentence points to Vida’s primary concerns. First he treats the Wgures, ‘indicia’ (ll. 24–169), a rich resource which are the poet’s chief means to varied expression, and then word choice (ll. 170–354), where he oVers what proves to be a liberal attitude to poetic diction. He maintains here the traditional distinction of all ancient rhetorical theory between res content, and verba, style. This is not a distinction that recommends itself in post-Romantic and modern times but it is diYcult to continue the discussion of literature for long without falling into it, even if it is recognized that ultimately it is invalid, for it can be a useful distinction for practical reasons, and it would be folly to dismiss the validity or utility of pre-Romantic theory solely on this account. Pitt introduces in his translation here a metaphor commonly used to express the relation between content or sense and style in his phrase ‘To dress up ev’ry Thought’. Pope had used the same metaphor in An Essay on Criticism (1709: ‘Expression is the Dress of Thought’ (l. 318)) and For diV’rent Styles with diV’rent Subjects sort As several Garbs, with County, Town, and Court. (ll. 322–3)

But overall the translation, despite its expansiveness, fails to render ‘indicia’ at all and does not tease out all that is implied in Vida’s condensed metaphors. The word ‘lumina’, literally ‘lights’, can by tranference in the context of rhetorical theory refer to the Wgures as ‘ornaments’ and is so used by both Cicero and Quintilian; ‘lumina verborum’ therefore can suggest the illuminating Wgurative associations of words, as well as suggesting the light cast by their appropriate choice and use. The metaphorical application of ‘lumen’ here expresses the purpose of ornament in poetry. These ‘lumina’ are to be added to things (‘rebus’) by the gift of the Muses (that is if they are chosen and used with poetic sensitivity) for the illustration or clariWcation of these things (‘lustrandis addita rebus’). The dictionary deWnition of the verb ‘lustro’ begins with the primary meaning ‘to purify’ going on ‘to examine’ before coming to ‘clarify’. There is much more to Vida’s Latin therefore than is suggested by Pitt’s to ‘set all Objects in a proper Light’, which is only a part of a larger aspiration towards what may be suggested by the


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somewhat mystifying phrase, ‘purity of diction’. Vida wants his charges, once they have steeped themselves in the study of language and poetic expression, to search diligently for words that clarify and illustrate the things they are seeking to express, having examined and puriWed those things in the process, so that things, res, are in fact modiWed by words, verba, in the act of composition. The process is not mechanical because it is a gift, but like any gift it can be improved with practice. Ingenium must be nurtured and brought to a full Xowering by Ars. Poets are both born and made. The phrase lumina verborum is contrasted with its opposite ‘verborum tenebras’ in the humorous picture that follows the injunction to avoid obscurity (‘brevis esse laboro, j obscurus Wo’ (ll. 25–6) ‘I labour for brevity, I become obscure’, Horace had warned in his Ars Poetica). Verborum in primis tenebras fuge, nubilaque atra. Nam neque (si tantum fas credere) defuit olim Qui lumen jucundum ultro, lucemque perosus Obscuro nebulae se circumfudit amictu; Tantus amor noctis, latebrae tam dira cupido. Ille ego sim cui Pierides dent carmina Musae Lumine clara suo, externae nihil indiga lucis. (iii. 15–21) In chief, avoid Obscurity, nor shroud Your Thoughts and dark Conceptions in a Cloud; For some, we know, aVect to shun the Light, Lost in forc’d Figures, and involv’d in Night, Studious and bent to leave the common Way, They skulk in Darkness, and avoid the Day. Oh! May the sacred Nine inspire my Lays To shine with Pride in their own native Rays; (iii. 21–8)

Various candidates have been suggested by commentators for the dark poet including the silver Latinist Persius (ad 34–62), of notoriously strained expression, and the Greek Lycophron (early second century bc). Vida himself aspires to be a poet who is self-evidently clear and does not need his meaning to be explained by a subtle or learned interpreter. This must surely have been the case for his early humanist readers.

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Clarity in expression is the great end of poetic art, too, for Pope. But true Expression, like th’unchanging Sun, Clears and improves whate’er it shines upon, It gilds all Objects, but it alters none. (An Essay on Criticism, 315–17)

The gilding that does not alter objects is to be distinguished from the adornment that ‘gilds the lily’. Proper gilding enables objects to be seen in their true light, cleared of the darkness and obscurity that impedes the viewer’s vision. It is Wtting that Vida does not make a mystery of the means which may lead to this clarity; it is within the scope of the individual will, because it is a matter of looking inward and achieving self-knowledge. So great is the variety of expression that the individual may try a thousand ways of revealing and clarifying the conceptions that arise in the mind. Nec tamen id votis optandum denique magnis. Ipse volens per te poteris; vis daedala fandi Tot se adeo in facies, tot se convertit in ora, Mille trahens varia secum ratione colores. Mille modis aperire datur mentisque latebras, Quique latent tacito arcani sub pectore motus. Si tibi, dum trepidas, non hac successerit, & lux Non datur hinc, te verte alio, lumenque require Nunc hac, nunc illac, donec diVulserit ultro, Claraque tempestas coelo radiarit aperto. (iii. 22–31) For this we need not importune the Skies, In our own Power and Will the Blessing lies. Expression, boundless in extent, displays A thousand Forms, a thousand several Ways; In diV ’rent Garbs from diV ’rent Quarters brought, It makes unnumber’d dresses for a Thought; Such vast Varieties of Hues we Wnd To paint Conceptions, and unfold the Mind! If e’er you toil, but toil without Success, To give your Images a shining Dress, Quit your Pursuit, and choose a diV’rent Way, Till, breaking forth, the voluntary Ray Cuts the thick Darkness, and lets in the Day. (iii. 29–41)


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Striking here is vigorous evocation of the potential variety of ‘vis daedala fandi’ ‘the artfully-wrought power of speech’ which is the individual’s inheritance and which the individual may cultivate to open up, ‘aperire’, what is hidden in the mind, ‘mentis latebras, Quique latent tacito arcani sub pectore motus’ ‘and the secret impulses that lie hidden in the silent heart’. Again there is nothing essentially mechanical about this; on the contrary what is envisaged as coming to the fore in the act of successful composition is nothing less than a revelation of the hidden inner self. The resulting radiant clarity which cuts through the dark expresses what previously has been unarticulated, bringing to the surface what is latent in the human heart. In this view, the act of composition may be regarded as a form of self-discovery. This is a noble conception both of the poetic process and of the end which it serves; it demonstrates that at their best humanist poetics look beyond mechanical exercises, clever exhibitionism, and slavish imitation of the classics according to ruleridden formulae, and it is one that can stand scrutiny in any age.

The figures In what he has said and goes on to say about the Wgures, the lumina that facilitate the expression of what is hitherto unarticulated, Vida regards awareness of their variety and practice in their application as essential for successful poetic expression (iii. 32–43). Their successful application will imitate nature in producing an inWnite variety of forms for expressive eVect. The Wgures are therefore envisaged as providing the means not of saying the same thing in diVerent ways but of reproducing in a moving artistic form a linguistic variety that will correspond to a similar variety in the created universe. Vida proceeds to exemplify this variety in his own verse, describing a representative number of the main Wgures and illustrating their use and eVect in his descriptions, beginning with the most fundamental poetic Wgure of metaphor. As the De Arte Poetica seeks to teach by example, the treatment of the Wgures is not such as might be found in a technical treatise on the subject, such as the later Tudor rhetoric books like The Art of Rhetoric (1553) of Thomas Wilson or the Art of English Poesy (1589) of George Puttenham;14 the metaphor is not named but its application and eVect are described by example, war being imaged as a raging elemental force and vice versa. 14 Available in G. Gregory Smith (ed.), Elizabethan Critical Essays, 2 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 1904).

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The Art of Poetry: Vida to Pope Usque adeo passim sua res insignia laetae Permutantque, juvantque vicissim, & mutua sese Altera in alterius transformant protinus ora. Tum specie capti gaudent spectare legentes: Nam diversa simul datur e re cernere eadem Multarum simulacra animo subeuntia rerum. (iii. 58–63) Thus in a vary’d Dress the Subject shines, By Turns the Objects shift their proper Signs; From Shape to Shape alternately they run, To borrow Others’ Charms, and lend their own; Pleas’d with the borrow’d charms, the readers Wnd A Crowd of diV’rent Images combin’d, Rise from a single Object to the Mind. (iii. 81–7)

The relation between vehicle and tenor is ingeniously described as an interchange that stimulates the reader’s mind with a multiplicity of interrelated imagery. Vida gives metaphor a prominence that it does not have in the Ars Poetica of Horace, who does not mention it directly at all. In view of the currency that has been given and is still given to T. S. Eliot’s unfortunate description of neoclassical poetry as ‘the poetry of statement’,15 it is worth stressing that Vida, reXecting the ancient inheritance, Wnds unsurprisingly that use of metaphor should be the primary source of the rich variety that constitutes poetry’s chief delight. The use of metaphor is linked in Vida’s account to the progress of language and civilization. Hanc vulgo speciem propriae peniuria vocis Intulit, indictisque urgens in rebus egestas. Quippe ubi se vera ostendebant nomina nusquam, Fas erat hinc, atque hinc transferre simillima veris. Paullatim accrevere artes, hominumque libido; Quodque olim usus inops reperit, nunc ipsa voluptas Postulat, hunc addens verborum rebus honorem. (iii. 94–100) From Wrst Necessity the Figure sprung, For Things, that would not suit our scanty Tongue, When no true Names were oVer’d to the View, 15 T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays (London: Faber, 1951), 315–16.


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Those they transfer’d that border’d on the true; Thence by Degrees the noble Licence grew, The Bards those daring Liberties embrac’d, Through Want at Wrst, through Luxury at last: They now to alien things, at Will, conWrm The borrow’d Honours of a foreign Term. (iii. 119–27)

In expressing the idea that metaphor began as a necessity before becoming a luxury that was valued for its own sake, Vida echoes but goes beyond Cicero in his De Oratore: ‘Tertius ille modus transferendi verbi late patet; quem necessitas genuit inopia coacta et angustiis, post autem delectatio iuncunditasque celebravit. Nam ut vestis frigoris depellendi causa reperta primo, post adhiberi coepta est ad ornatum etiam corporis et dignitatem, sic verbi translatio instituta est inopiae causa, frequentata delectationis’ (III. xxxviii. 155) ‘The third method in our list, the use of metaphor, is of wide application; it sprang from necessity due to the pressure of poverty and deWciency, but it has been subsequently made popular by its agreeable and entertaining quality. For just as clothes were Wrst invented to protect us against cold and afterwards began to be used for the sake of adornment and dignity as well, so the metaphorical employment of words was begun because of poverty, but was brought into common use for the sake of entertainment.’ While Cicero uses clothes to illustrate his point, Vida illustrates civilized progress with a grander comparison drawn from building. Sic homines primum venti vis aspera adegit, Vitandique imbres stipulis horrentia tecta Ponere, & informi sedem arctam claudere limo: Nunc altae aeratis trabibus, Pariisque columnis RegiWco surgunt aedes ad sidera luxu. (iii. 101–5) So Man, at Wrst, the rattling Storm to Xy, And the bleak Horrors of the wint’ry Sky, Rais’d up a Roof of Osiers o’er his Head, And clos’d with homely Clay the slender Shed: Now, regal Palaces, of wondrous Size, With brazen Beams, on Parian Columns rise, That heave the pompous Fabrick to the Skies. (iii. 127–33)

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The resulting image conveys unambiguously the desirability of this progress and shows no embarrassment about luxury. His Renaissance aYrmation of the idea of progress perhaps contrasts a little with the more ambiguous Roman view. Lucretius, for example, in his account of the growth of civilization, while concluding with the view that time brings progress in all areas of life including poetry and painting, also records the trouble caused by the desire for luxuries and remarks that there is no harm in doing without purple vestments inwrought with gold (De Rerum Natura, v. 1427). In Virgil too, there is a more ambiguous attitude to luxury. Dido entertains Aeneas at Carthage in a setting of great luxury and beauty, but Fame puts it about that the pair are wasting their time in luxury, ‘luxu’, (Aeneid, iv. 193) and the phrase ‘regiWco luxu’, used conWdently by Vida here to reXect the splendour of a magniWcent building, is used by Virgil to describe the banquets which the Furies withhold from the felonious Titans in Tartarus (Aeneid, vi. 605). The aesthetic, therefore, informing the De Arte Poetica, is the expression of an unambiguous delight in ornamentation in poetry which is recommended wholeheartedly. The chief souces of this ornamentation, ornatus, are the Wgures and choice of words. The treatment of the Wgures exhibits that delight in ornamentation which for Vida is an essential ingredient of good art. His recommendation of the virtues of repetition, anaphora, includes an example in an allusion to Virgil. Quid sequar ulterius, quanta dulcedine captas Detineant aures, vocem quum rursus eamdem Ingeminant, modo non verborum cogat egestas? Pan etiam Arcadia neget hoc si judice praesens, Pan, etiam Arcadia dicam te judice vanum. (iii. 143–7) But now to mention farther I forbear. With what strong Charms they captivate the Ear; When the same Terms they happily repeat, The same repeated seem more soft and sweet. This, were Arcadia Judge, if Pan withstood, Pan’s Judge, Arcadia, would condemn her God. (iii. 183–8)


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The lines alluded to in Virgil are: Pan etiam, Arcadia mecum si iudice certet, Pan etiam Arcadia dicat se iudice victum. (Eclogue, iv. 58–9) If Pan too challenged me, with Arcady as judge, Pan too, with Arcady as judge, would own defeat.

Vida does not merely repeat the lines of his allusion but adapts them to his purpose and so puts them to work. He therefore uses Virgil to reinforce a precept he exempliWes in a witty and creative way. This attractive feature of the De Arte Poetica is well described by Vida’s Oxford editor of 1701, who adapts a line of Virgil (changing ‘dedit’ ‘he gave’ to ‘gerit’ ‘he wears’) and applies it to Vida himself: ‘chlamydemque auro gerit intertextam’ (Aeneid, viii. 176) ‘he wears a mantle interwoven with gold’, where the mantle is Vida’s style and the gold is Virgilian intertextual allusion as here. He continues: ‘Dum praeceptis immoramur, exempla subeunt’ ‘while we linger over precepts, examples come up before us’. In the case of comparisons (ll. 163–8), Vida delivers a very brief precept to the eVect that they should be concise and to the point. Commentators have detected a buried allusion to the familiar criticism of Homer’s ‘long-tailed’ similes, that go oV at a tangent developing a picture that is independent of the point of comparison. In this case, unusually, he does not oVer a speciWc example. None is needed for the work is studded with such pointed comparisons, some of which have already been cited. Once again he is his own best example.

Poetic diction On word choice and poetic diction, Vida recommends a deWnite strategy or ratio, based on two interrelated though slightly divergent classical principles, the Wrst of which asserts very deWnitely that there is such a thing as poetic diction and the second which requires words to be chosen according to the principle of decorum according to which they are to be Wtted to the various kinds or genres. Jamque age verborum qui sit delectus habendus, Quae ratio: nam nec sunt omnia versibus apta, Omnia nec pariter tibi sunt uno ordine habenda.

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The Art of Poetry: Vida to Pope Versibus ipsa etiam divisa, & carmina quantum Caminibus distant, tantum distantia verba Sunt etiam inter se, quamvis communia multa Interdum invenies versus diVusa per omnes. Multa decent scenam, quae sunt fugienda canenti Aut divum laudes, aut heroum inclyta facta. (iii. 170–8) But now pursue the Method, that aVords The Wttest Terms, and wisest Choice of Words. Not all deserve alike the same Regard, Nor suit the godlike Labours of the Bard; For Words as much may diVer in Degree, As the most various Kinds of Poetry. Though many a common Term and Word we Wnd Dispers’d promiscuously through ev’ry Kind, Those that will never suit th’heroic Rage, Might grace the Buskin, and become the Stage. (iii. 218–27)

As Vida is concerned mainly with heroic poetry, for him the highest kind, and has little to say of dramatic poetry or even the two other genres in which Virgil excelled, the pastoral and the georgic, his ratio, or method, is not altogether systematic in applying the principle of decorum. Nevertheless this principle very strongly underlies what he has to say of poetic diction. His precepts may be related to what Cicero and Quintilian have to recommend for the formation of the oratorical grand style but, above all, they are grounded in the example of Virgil and what could be divined of the principles of selection that underlay the diction particularly of the Aeneid. What may be stressed here is the inXuential potency of the Virgilian example as much in the method he is seen to have adopted as in the style that results, though, of course, had the style not been so admired the method would not have not have recommended itself so powerfully. Vida is now dealing with fundamental elements in the poet’s preparation as he comes to sharpen the craftsman’s awareness of the basic raw materials at his disposal and gives advice on how they may be best selected. His recommendations, codifying classical practice, are worth detailed examination. Reading is to be wide. For a neo-Latin audience, the ancients who are to provide the staple of the poet’s vocabulary are the classical poets, so that this injunction is in line with the general classical revival in the Renaissance. Conversely, there is probably a rejection here of much of post classical Latin.


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Tum quamvis, longe si quis supereminet omnes Virtutem ex illo, ac rationem discere fandi Te jubeam, cui contendas te reddere semper Assimilem, atque habitus gressusque eYngere euntis, Quantum fata sinunt, & non aversus Apollo. (iii. 188–92) If o’er the Rest some mighty Genius shines, Mark the sweet Charms and vigour of his Lines. As far as Phoebus and the heav’nly Powers Smile on your Labours, make his Diction yours. Your Style by his authentic Standard frame, Your Voice, your Habit, and Address, the Same. (iii. 239–44)

This must suggest Virgil again, in Pitt’s phrase the ‘authentic Standard’. But Vida is not the kind of extreme imitator that Erasmus mocks in his Ciceronianus, one who will not countenance use of words that do not have the authority of the master. In what must refer to the Renaissance practice of the commonplace book or Xorilegium, he recommends culling words and phrases from a wide variety of poets (iii. 193–5). Throughout the De Arte Poetica, as throughout the classical tradition generally, the stock of existing poetry is held to be common property. There is no worry about charges of plagiarism. The golden treasury is there for the taking. Nec dubitem versus hirsuti saepe poetae Suspensus lustrare, & vestigare legendo, Sicubi se quaedam forte inter commoda versu Dicta meo ostendant, quae mox melioribus ipse Auspiciis proprios possim mihi vertere in usus Detersa prosus prisca rubigine scabra. (iii. 196–201) Nor would I scruple, with a due Regard, To read sometimes a rude unpolish’d Bard; Among whose Labours I may Wnd a Line, Which from unsightly Rust I may reWne, And with a better Grace, adopt it into mine. (iii. 249–53)

The process of adoption recommended here comes from knowledge of Virgil’s own reWnement of previous Roman authors apparent in the writings of the Roman grammarians, particularly of Macrobius in the

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Saturnalia. When he is illustrating Virgil’s relation to his Roman predecessors, Macrobius praises Virgil for his artistic judgement in improving the old writers of Rome: ‘Denique et judicio transferendi et modo imitandi consecutus est, ut, quod apud illum legerimus alienum, aut illius esse malimus, aut melius hic, quam ubi natum est, sonare miremur’ (VI. i) ‘Finally he [Virgil] achieved through his judgement in translation and his manner of imitation the result that what we read in him that belongs to another, we prefer to be his, or we marvel that it sounds better here than where it was born’. Macrobius uses the two key concepts of Wrst translation (derived from ‘translatus’, the past participle of ‘transfero’ ‘I bring across, transfer’) and secondly imitation in close proximity and probably is not seeking to make a clear distinction between them, since ‘translate’ in its modern sense would not be used to describe the reWnement of style within the same language. Observation and analysis of Virgil’s practice resulted in the discovery and dissemination of a method which might be tried with neo-Latin or equally in the vernacular. The golden words of the ancients, their ‘aurea dicta’ (l. 211) are to be made our own. Earlier when treating disposition Vida had commended the Latin poets for plundering Greek inventions and bringing home their treasures (‘gazam’ ii. 544), and had hailed Virgil dressed in Homeric spoils (‘exuvias’ ii. 551); so here in the more speciWc context of words and phrases would-be poets are exhorted to plunder the poetic tradition and bring home its treasures ‘gazam’ (l. 195) and use their spoils ‘exuvias’ (l. 213): ‘nec pudet interdum alterius nos ore locutos’ (l. 216) ‘nor should we be ashamed of having spoken with another’s tongue’. Various ways of using the words of the ancients are now rehearsed. When stealing from polished poets, the advice is to disguise the theft by a change of word order. Some authors reveal their thefts (‘furta’) openly and use familiar words in a new context giving them a wholly diVerent meaning. Others steal with a view to emulation and improvement. Two similes that follow show that Virgil is the unexpressed example here. Ceu sata mutatoque solo felicius olim Cernimus ad coelum translatas surgere plantas. Poma quoque utilius succos oblita priores Proveniunt; sic regna Asiae, Trojaeque penates, Transtulit, auspiciis Phrygiis melioribus heros In Latium, quamvis (nam Divum fata vocabant) Invitus, Phoenissa, tuo de litore cessit. (iii. 231–7)


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So Trees, that change their Soils, more proudly rise, And lift their spreading Honours to the Skies; And, when transplanted, nobler Fruits produce, Exalt their Nature, and ferment their Juice. So Troy’s fam’d Chief the Asian Empire bore, With better Omens, to the Latian Shore; Though from thy realm, O Dido, to the Sea Call’d by the Gods reluctantly away; (iii. 296–303)

The Wrst simile provides an unmistakable allusion to the subject matter of the Georgics, the cultivation and improvement of wild Nature. By transference, literary transplanting (Vida’s word is ‘translatos’) can produce improvement in things ‘male condita’ (l. 229) ‘ill fashioned’. There is also a verbal allusion to Virgil’s line ‘pomaque degenerant sucos oblita priores’ (Georgic, ii. 59) ‘the fruits [of trees that grow from chance dropped seeds] forgetful of the olden Xavour degenerate’, that is, uncultivated Nature left to her own devices is subject to automatic deterioration, the rather gloomy view that pervades the Georgics. Vida has stolen Virgil’s words but disguised his theft by using them to express a quite diVerent meaning, thus cleverly illustrating one of his earlier precepts for those who can dig out this buried allusion. The second simile reads the theme of the Aeneid Wguratively so that the movement from Troy to Latium represents the translation (Vida’s word is ‘transtulit’, the verb from which translation is derived) of Homeric material into Latin, a happy transfer that brings improvement. Here the allusion to Aeneas’ words to Dido in Hades ‘invitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi’ (Aeneid, vi. 460) ‘unwillingly, O Queen, I went from your shores’ is unmistakable and openly made. The eVect of this allusion to the tragic encounter that might have wrecked this transfer may draw attention to Vida’s emulation of Virgil but also highlights Virgil’s triumphant appropriation of his sources, for Virgil here has adapted to his own purposes a comic line from Catullus (‘Invita o regina tuo de vertice cessi’ ‘I left your head unwillingly, O Queen’, said by the lock parted from the head of Berenice) creating something new in the process. In these similes, each Virgilian work has itself become a metaphor, for which the Latin term is translatio, for the cultivation and improvement that should take place through the act of composition. Virgil, therefore, was a model who sanctioned a mode of composition in which the poetic tradition might be openly plundered with impunity.

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Virgilian imitation of Homer is so obvious that its nature and its propriety occasioned debate from the very beginning. It is recorded in the ancient lives that when criticized for his ‘furta’ ‘thefts’ from Homer, Virgil gave the reply that it was easier to steal Hercules’ club than to steal one verse of Homer. In the long comparison between the two poets Macrobius asserts ‘Quid quod et omne opus Virgilianum velut de quodam Homerici operis speculo formatum est?’ (V. ii. 13) ‘Indeed the whole Virgilian work [the Aeneid ] has been made as if in a mirror’s image of Homer’s work’. ‘Quid enim suavius, quam duos praecipuos vates audire idem loquentes? Quia cum tria haec ex aequo impossibilia judicentur, vel Jovi fulmen, vel Herculi clavam, vel versum Homeri subtrahere . . . hic [Virgil] opportune in opus suum, quae prior vates dixerat [Homer], transferendo, fecit, ut sua credantur’ (V. iii) ‘What could be sweeter than to hear two pre-eminent poets uttering the same thing? Because although three things are judged to be equally impossible, to take from Jove his thunderbolt, from Hercules his club and from Homer a verse, . . . Virgil has made by translation what the former poet had uttered so much his own that it is believed to be his’. As Renaissance commentators rediscovered the extent and detail of Virgil’s allusions to Homer and to other Roman poets, the truth of Macrobius’ judgement was inescapable and Virgil’s method of composition was vindicated. Most of his precepts are delivered impersonally but when he comes to talk of allusion, the personal note has particular point. Saepe mihi placet antiquis alludere dictis, Atque aliud longe verbis proferre sub isdem. Nec mea tam sapiens per se se prodita quisquam Furta redarguerit, quae mox manifesta probabunt Et nati natorum, & qui nascentur ab illis. (iii. 257–61) I like a fair Allusion nicely wrought; When the same Words express a diV’rent Thought. And such a Theft true Critics dare not blame, Which late posterity shall crown with Fame. (iii. 328–31)

The De Arte Poetica is a tissue of such thefts (there is one in the Wnal line which reproduces Aeneid, iii. 98), openly made and often wittily adapted to a new context as recommended here in the wordplay on


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the Latin ‘alludere’, which means literally ‘to sport with’ as well as in literary contexts ‘to allude’. The foundation of a good poetic style, therefore, is a thorough grounding in the classics whose style as well as subject matter is to be regarded as common property. But this will not suYce. The poet will have new things to express ‘nondum ulli audita’ (l. 266) ‘not yet heard by anyone’ for which new expressions will be needed. Coinages are therefore encouraged and foreign imports in Vida’s example, from the Greeks. Sic quondam Ausoniae succrevit copia linguae: Sic auctum Latium, quo plurima transtulit Argis Usus; & exhaustis Itali potiuntur Athenis. Nonne vides, mediis ut multa erepta Mycenis Graja genus fulgent nostris immixta, nec ullum Apparet discrimen? eunt insignibus aequis Undique per Latios & civis, & advena tractus. Jamdudum nostri cessit sermonis egestas. Raro uber patriae, tibi raro opulentia deerit. Ipse suis Cicero thesauris omnia promet, Auctoresque alii nati felicibus annis Omnia suYcient, nec solis crede poetis. (iii. 276–87) So Latium’s Language found a rich Increase, And grew and Xourish’d from the wealth of Greece; Till Use, in Time, had riX’d Argos’ Stores, And brought all Athens to th’ Hesperian Shores. How many Words from rich Mycenae come, Of Greek Extraction, in the Dress of Rome, That live with ours, our Rights and Freedom claim, Their nature diV’rent, but their Looks the same? Through Latium’s Realms, in Latium’s Garb they go, At once her Strangers, and her Natives too. Long has her Poverty been Xed, and long With Riches has she grac’d her Tongue. Nor search the Poets only, but explore Immortal Tully’s inexhausted Store; And other Authors, born in happier Days, Shall answer all your Wants, and beautify your Lays. (iii. 350–65)

The assimilation of Greek and Latin, recorded in Vida’s authorities and in the Roman grammarians, and brought about by Roman supremacy in the

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Mediterranean world, has resulted according to Vida in a natural equality where ‘nec ullum j Apparet discrimen’ ‘no discrimination is apparent’ and where native and foreign wear the same garb indistinguishably. Pitt’s version gives more emphasis to the Roman conquest. But the result is the same; the native Latin poverty of which Lucretius had once complained when he talked in a phrase echoed here of ‘patrii sermonis egestas’ (De Rerum Natura, i. 832) has long been eliminated through acquired wealth resulting in great abundance, ‘copia’ (l. 276). Vida’s language here reXects a humanist conWdence in Renaissance Latin now that it had been purged of medieval accretions and restored to the classical purity of which Cicero is the great, though not exclusive, exemplar. The language of Cicero’s copious style, in its vocabulary and syntax, sets the general standard for prose usage and expressiveness (as it does in Erasmus’ De Copia (1512)) while Virgil’s selection and modiWed poetic usage serves as the general standard for poetic imitation. Despite the obvious classicism here, there is, too, a recognition throughout this section that language cannot be static if new things are to be expressed and some awareness that just as classical Latin was a cultural fusion and the product of particular historical forces so the modern use of classical Latin must be responsive to changes in history and sensibility if it is to serve the needs of the present. For vernacular writers, applying what is said to their own developing languages, the message is clearer. The history of the growth of Latin may hold the key to the growth of the vernacular, with new coinages and foreign imports being the way to innovation. There is a further even more liberal message for the moderns, whether writing in Latin or the vernacular, in what follows. Saepe etiam vidi veterum inter carmina vatum Barbarico versus cultu, gazaque superbos; Belgicaque immisit trans Alpes esseda Gallus In Latium, et longe Macedum venere sarissae: Et metuam ne deWciat me larga supellex Verborum, angustique premat sermonis egestas? (iii. 288–93) Oft, in old Bards, a Verse above the Rest Shines, in barbaric Spoils and Trophies drest; Thus Gaul, her victor’s Triumph to complete, Supplies those Words that paint her own Defeat; And vanquish’d Macedon, to tell her Doom,


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Gives up her Language with her Arms to Rome. Then can we fear with groundless DiYdence A want of Words that shall express our Sense? (iii. 361–8)

In this witty and clever passage (which is not quite so witty and clever in the translation), there are three words that do not have a Graeco-Roman origin: ‘gaza’ ‘treasure’, from the Persian, used twice in Virgil (Aeneid, i. 119; v. 40) and by Vida himself (see above); ‘esseda’ ‘two wheeled warchariots’, a Celtic word found in Virgil (Georgic, iii. 204); and ‘sarissae’ ‘long Macedonian lances’ used by Ovid (Metamorphoses, xii. 466). The authority of the classical poets, therefore, sanctions even the use of ‘barbaric’ vocabulary in modern writing. After brieXy endorsing the use of archaisms, periphrasis, compound words, and the adaptation of proper names, all of which show a concern for linguistic beauty in poetry, Vida comes to one of the central tenets of the classical tradition in rhetoric and poetic theory, Wrst enunciated by the elder Cato in the famous imperative rem tene et verba sequentur ‘hold to your matter and the words will follow’ and equally well known from Horace’s Ars Poetica: ‘verbaque provisam rem non invita sequentur’ (l. 311) ‘words will not follow unwillingly when matter is at hand’. Sed neque, verborum causa, vis ulla canentem, Consilium praeter, cogat res addere inanes, Nomina sed rebus semper servire jubeto, Omnia perpendens versus resonantia membra. Verba etenim quaedam ignarum te fallere possunt, Ni vigiles, mandatum & munus obire recusent, Furenturque operi clam sese, & inertia cessent, Cetera dum labor exercet concordia jussus, Quaeque suus: tantum illa dabunt numerumque sonumque. Atque ideo quid ferre queant, quid quaeque recusent Explorare prius labor esto, et munera justa Mandato, ac proprium cunctis partire laborem. Obscuros aliter crepitus, & murmura vana Miscebis, ludesque sonis fallacibus aures. (iii. 329–42) Let things submit to Words on no Pretence, But make your Words subservient to your Sense; Nor for their sake admit a single Line, But what contributes to the main Design. Through ev’ry Part most diligently pierce,

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The Art of Poetry: Vida to Pope And weigh the Sound and Sense of ev’ry Verse. Unless your strictest Caution you display, Some Words may lead the heedless Bard away; Steal from their duty, and desert their Post, And skulk in Darkness, indolently lost; Or, while their proper Parts their Fellows ply, Contribute nought but Sound and Harmony. This to prevent, consult your Words; and know How far their Strength, Extent, and Nature go. To all their Charges and their Labours Wt; To all, their several Provinces of Wit. Without this Care, the Poem will abound With empty Noise, and impotence of Sound; Unmeaning Terms will crowd in ev’ry Part, Play round the Ear, but never reach the Heart. (iii. 407–26)

This echoes too Horace’s abhorrence of ‘versus inopes rerum nugaeque canorae’ (Ars Poetica, 322) ‘verses devoid of matter and sounding triXes’. The same cardinal principle is asserted by Pope and is the ground of much of his argument in relation to the inadequacies of contemporary criticism. Others for Language all their Care express, And value Books, as Women Men, for Dress: Their praise is still—The Stile is excellent: The Sense, they humbly take upon Content. Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound, Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found. (An Essay on Criticism, 305–10)

Vida is echoing too the requirement laid upon the true poet by Horace for the most rigorous judgement and self-criticism in the choice of words. At qui legitimum cupiet fecisse poema, cum tabulis animum censoris sumet honesti: audebit, quaecunque parum splendoris habebunt, et sine pondere erunt, & honore indigna feruntur, verba movere loco. (Epistolae, II. ii. 109–13) But how severely with themselves proceed The Men, who write such Verse as we can read?


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Their own strict Judges, not a word they spare That wants or Force, or Light, or Weight, or Care. (Pope, ‘The Second Epistle of the Second Book of Horace Imitated’, 157–60)

Horace’s word ‘censor’ is a strong one, indicative of the need in his credo for the creative talent, ‘ingenium’ ‘wit’ to be disciplined by the critical faculty, ars ‘judgement’. Related to this is his injunction ‘nonumque prematur in annum’ (Ars Poetica, 388) ‘let it [your poem] be kept for nine years’ and his advice that the self-criticism of the poet be supplemented by the judgement of a candid friend, advice echoed at the end of both the De Arte Poetica (iii. 466 V.) and An Essay on Criticism (l. 729 V.) where William Walsh is warmly commended for his performance of that oYce for the young Pope. In this instance Pope had practised what he preaches and the classical recommendation is enforced by his own example. Despite his emphatic enjoining of sense before words, unlike Horace and Pope, Vida adds a modifying rider. Nec tamen interdum vacuas, animoque carentes Addubitem ipse volens incassum fundere voces, Verbaque quae nullo fungantur munere sensus. (iii. 343–5) Yet would I sometimes venture to disperse Some Words, whose Splendour should adorn my Verse; (Words that to Wit and Thought have no Pretence, And rather vehicles of Sound than Sense;) Till in the gorgeous Dress the Lines appear, And court with gentle Harmony the ear. (iii. 432–7)

He does not give examples, but perhaps he has in mind lines such as the following where Virgil makes verbal music out of beautiful proper names: ‘Glauco et Panopeae et Inoo Melicerti’ (Georgic, i. 437) or ‘Amphion Dircaeus in Actaeo Aracyntho’ (Eclogue, ii. 24).

Imitative harmony The culminating precept of this book on style, in which the poet-critic admits his readers to the innermost sanctuaries of the Muses, is the doctrine hinted at earlier in the brief allusion to the Wgure of enargeia (ii. 367 V.) that the sound must be an echo of the sense.

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The Art of Poetry: Vida to Pope Multa adeo incumbunt doctis vigilanda poetis. Haud satis est illis utcunque claudere versum, Et res verborum propria vi reddere claras: Omnia sed numeris vocum concordibus aptant, Atque sono quaecunque canunt imitantur, & apta Verborum facie, & quaesito carminis or. (iii. 364–9) For many a painful Task, in ev’ry Part, Claims all the Poet’s Vigilance and Art. Tis not enough his Verses to complete, In Measure, Numbers or determin’d Feet; Or render Things, by clear Expression bright, And set each Object in a proper Light: To all, proportion’d Terms he must dispense, And make the Sound a Picture of the Sense; The correspondent Words exactly frame, The Look, the Features, and the Mien, the same. (iii. 359–68)

The most famous part of the De Arte Poetica is the long section that follows (ll. 373–454) in which Vida illustrates this doctrine of imitative harmony in his own verse with frequent allusions to well-known passages in Virgil. The doctrine Wnds its most famous restatement and illustration in Pope True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance, As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance. Tis not enough no Harshness gives OVence, The Sound must seem an Eccho to the Sense. Soft is the Strain when Zephyr gently blows. And the smooth Stream in smoother Numbers Xows; But when loud Surges lash the sounding Shore, The hoarse, rough Verse shou’d like the Torrent roar, When Ajax strives, some Rock’s vast Weight to throw, The Line too labours, and the Words move slow; Not so when swift Camilla scours the Plain, Flies o’er th’unbending Corn, and skims along the Main. (An Essay on Criticism, 362–73)

In the provision of his own examples, Pope clearly has the section of Vida in mind, just as Pitt has Pope’s lines in mind when he translates Vida in the wake of Pope, as the following selections will illustrate:


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Carmine nec levi dicenda est scabra crepido. Tum, si laeta canunt, hilari quoque carmina vultu Incedunt, laetumque sonant haud segnia verba. (iii. 402–4) Thus in smooth Lines, smooth Subjects we rehearse, But the rough Rock roars in as rough a Verse. If gay the Subject, gay must be the Song, And the brisk Numbers quickly glide along. (iii. 516–19) Hic melior motuque pedum, & pernicibus alis, Molle viam tacito lapsu per levia radit: Ille autem membris, ac mole ignavius ingens Incedit tardo molimine subsidendo. (iii. 373–6) With rapid Feet and Wings, without Delay, This swiftly Xies, and smoothly skims away: That, vast of Size, his Limbs huge, broad, and strong, Moves pond’rous, and scarce drags his Bulk along. (iii. 468–71) Verba etiam res exiguas angusta sequuntur, Ingentesque juvant ingentia: cuncta gigantem Vasta decent, vultus immanes, pectora lata, Et magni membrorum artus, magna ossa, lacertique. Atque adeo, siquid geritur molimine magno, Adde moram, & pariter tecum quoque verba laborent Segnia. (iii. 411–17) When Things are small, the Terms should still be so: For low Words please us, when the Theme is low. But when some Giant, horrible and grim, Enormous in his Gait, and vast in ev’ry Limb, Stalks towering on; the swelling Words must rise In just Proportion to the Monster’s Size. If some large Weight his huge Arms strive to shove, The Verse too labours; the throng’d Words scarce move. (iii. 524–31)

Vida recalls in his Latin Virgil’s description of the Xeet-footed Camilla, while Pope in his English is prompted by Vida to recall the translation of the same passage in Dryden.

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The Art of Poetry: Vida to Pope sed proelia virgo dura pati, cursuque pedum praevertere ventos. illa vel intactae segetis per summa volaret gramina nec teneras cursu laesisset aristas, vel mare per medium Xuctu suspensa tumenti ferret iter celeris nec tingueret aequore plantas. (Aeneid, vii. 806–11) Mix’d with the Wrst, the Werce Virago fought Sustain’d the Toils of Arms, the Danger sought: Outstrip’d the Winds in speed upon the Plain, Flew o’er the Fields, nor hurt the bearded Grain: She swept the Seas, and, as she skim’d along Her Xying Feet unbath’d on Billows hung. (Dryden, Æneis, vii. 1098–1103)

Pope’s lines, something of a tour de force, soon became famous in their own right and the subject of critical comment. Dr Johnson remarked that Pope seemed to have transplanted the idea from Vida ‘into a soil less adapted to its Nature, and less favourable to its Increase’ (that is, imitative or representative harmony is easier to achieve in Latin quantitative versiWcation than in English): From these Lines, laboured with great Attention, and celebrated by a rival Wit [Addison], may be judged what can be expected from the most diligent Endeavours after this Imagery of Sound. The Verse intended to represent the whisper of the Vernal Breeze, must surely be confessed, not much to excel in Softness or Volubility; and the smooth Stream, runs with a perpetual Clash of jarring Consonants. The Noise and Turbulence of the Torrent is, indeed, distinctly imaged; for it requires very little Skill to make our Language rough. But in the Lines, which mention the eVort of Ajax, there is no particular Heaviness or Delay. The Swiftness of Camilla is rather contrasted than exempliWed. Why the Verse should be lengthened to express Speed, will not easily be discovered. In the Dactyls used for that Purpose by the Ancients, two short Syllables were pronounced with such Rapidilty, as to be equal only to one long; they, therefore, naturally exhibit the Act of passing through a long Space in a short Time. But the Alexandrine, by its Pause in the midst, is a tardy and stately Measure; and the Word unbending, one of the most sluggish and slow which our Language aVords, cannot much accelerate its Motion.16 16 Rambler, no. 92 (2 Feb. 1751), in John Bernard (ed.), Pope: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), 358–9.

Conclusion to Vida

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On a Wrst reading, most readers will be seduced by Pope, but all Johnson’s reservations have point: the Xow of the stream here, for example, has not the softness of his later line in the Rape of the Lock ‘Smooth Xow the Waves, the Zephyrs gently play’ (canto ii. 51). It is perhaps true that Pope more often describes than represents in sound here. Johnson, too, is acute about diVerences between the English and Latin. To vernacular poets, though, Vida’s lines oVered a challenge to which Pope rose successfully in many instances in his Homer translation. CONCLUSION TO VIDA Despite Pope’s enthusiasm, the verdict of Time has not been sympathetic to Vida. In post-Romantic times, the anti-classical reaction has been particularly sharp in relation to those neoclassical critics who have attempted to mediate classical theory and practice to the modern world. The neo-Latinist is an easier target than the classical originals on which the neo-Latinist draws. Nor has Vida been protected, like Horace, Dryden and Pope, by an indubitable poetic achievement elsewhere which might be seen to vindicate his critical principles. With hindsight, too, the limitations of the De Arte Poetica are all too apparent, most obviously in the neglect of the Greek tradition and the elevation of the Roman Augustans above and beyond the classical Greeks, a verdict which now seems largely the consequence of ignorance and that has been generally reversed since the late eighteenth century. In particular the conWdent belief in the superiority of Virgil over Homer in early humanist judgement seems largely partisan. The homogeneous Augustan aesthetic of the early humanists is blind to the merits of other diVerent criteria that might be brought to bear upon the comparison between Homer and Virgil. Its persistence had consequences that will be discussed later in relation to the English Augustan version of Homer by Pope. Furthermore, the Maronolatry of the work brings with it a narrow version of Roman Augustanism that omits reference to Virgil’s leading contemporaries. Even within the Virgilian corpus, the emphasis is almost exclusively upon epic, indicative of the high aspirations of Renaissance literary culture but also suggesting another limitation. In these respects, it may be felt that the neo-Latin version of Roman Augustanism is a narrower phenomenon than Augustanism in its actual historical Roman form. Nevertheless, whatever its limitations, the De Arte Poetica is an attractive and in its own way broad-based and wide-ranging mediation

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of the Roman ars to the modern world. In the Wrst place, unlike so many textbook accounts of ‘neoclassicism’, it sets its doctrines in the widest cultural frame. With the opening emphasis on the methods and ends of humanist education, it promotes the nurturing and cultivation of poetic sensibility in the growing individual and in the wider literary culture of the time it looks forward to a literary revival, thus striking the true classical note in the Renaissance, where going back to the classical model and example was to serve the needs of new creation in the present. The close interrelation in the De Arte Poetica between poetry and rhetoric, inherited from the Romans, grounds both disciplines in broad culture (wide reading and knowledge of history and philosophy as well as of literature) and in Nature, that is, knowledge both of the external world and human society and of the inner world of human heart and the workings of the mind. This gives general point and the widest human context to the particular precepts. Vida has the predictable emphasis on the rules of art and such classical concepts as unity, clarity, verisimilitude, and decorum, but also shows how these in themselves are as nothing unless they are integrated with other values. The generous celebration of the creative power of the poet comes before the main praecepta; that inspiration is necessary is axiomatic: ars and ingenium are mutually interindependent. Poets must be both born and made. The emphasis on unity and order in a work of art is complemented by an equal stress on the need for variety. Verisimilitude is not to exclude the exercise of fancy. There is a vigorous defence of the poet’s right to ‘feign’ and no objection to Fancy as such; Wctions must simply Wt within the overall structure, a matter of artistic Wtness and decorum. In the climax of the treatise, dealing with elocution, it is clear that the relation between verba and res is not mechanical. The poet in the search for proper expression will Wnd that things are changed by his Wndings. The act of composition is, in fact, a form of self-discovery in which the hidden inner self is revealed and made manifest. Successful composition involves self-exploration and new self-knowledge. Clarity, therefore, is not a superWcial virtue but is born of rigorous self-searching. When it comes to the Wgures, the central Wgure which constitutes the very essence of poetry is the metaphor. Use of the whole gamut of the various Wgures will replicate in poetic form the variety and diversity of Nature herself. There is an unambiguous delight in the ornamentation required by poetry but poets must keep hold to their matter and not be beguiled by words. When it comes to actual word choice, poets are to be guided

Conclusion to Vida

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by tradition, by reading in the best authors both in verse and prose (and not merely Virgil—Vida adopts Quintilian’s broad-based view of imitation), and by careful selection according to the decorum of the genre in which they are working. But recognizing that culture does not stand still and with the Roman absorption of Greek culture in mind, Vida defends without reservation the poet’s right to new coinage and foreign importation. In the famous section on imitative harmony is the clearest exempliWcation of the ideally interdependent relation of words and things. It is worth emphasizing in conclusion, in view of the Maronolatrous tendency of the whole work, that it is not imitation of Virgil’s poetry itself that is recommended to the poet but imitation of Virgil’s method as it can be gleaned from examination of the Roman grammatical tradition. The commentators show that Virgil plundered his poetic predecessors, both native and foreign, in both content and style. As a neoclassical poet imitating Homer and reWning native practice, Virgil was a poetic exemplar par excellence for poets in neo-Latin (and in the vernacular). In the De Arte Poetica Vida is preoccupied almost exclusively with heroic poetry and therefore with Virgil’s relation to Homer. But knowledgeable readers might see that the Virgilian method applied equally in the Georgics where the Greek model was Hesiod and in the Eclogues similarly based on the Greek pastorals of Theocritus. Though he is not mentioned by Vida, the neoclassic method was also exempliWed in Horace both as a reWner of Lucilius in his sermones (the satires and epistles) and as a translator of the Greek lyric tradition in his odes, where he could be seen to have naturalized Greek metres in his Sapphics, Alcaics, and Asclepiads and adapted traditional lyric themes and modes to Roman purposes. Both major Augustans represent the same kind of cultural model. Finally, Vida’s work is attractively persuasive because of the style and spirit in which it is written. The precepts are artfully embodied in its form, arrangement, conduct, and style. Above all, Vida’s verse communicates an intelligent enthusiasm for poetry in general and a deep and inward appreciation of the beauty of Virgilan artistry in particular, so that readers are always aware that rules are but a means to an end. The dry-as-dust learning of the Roman grammatical and critical tradition that had sought to explain Virgil’s method and had attached itself to the Virgilian corpus is transformed in the light of this enthusiasm. Paradoxically, in its Wnal eVect it is an inspirational work.

2 The Augustan Ideal: Rhyme and ReWnement EARLY ENGLISH CLASSICISM

Humanist beginnings Humanism made its Wrst signiWcant impact in Britain at the court of Henry VIII1 and it was in this period that Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (?1517–47) made his ground-breaking translation of the second and fourth books of the Aeneid (favourite school texts recounting the sack of Troy and the encounter of Aeneas with Dido) using for the purpose the unrhymed iambic pentameter, hitherto unknown in English. The introduction of blank verse, therefore, may reasonably be said to have been prompted by the desire to raise the dignity of the English language by providing a workable English equivalent of the Latin hexameter as perfected by Virgil. In the narrative, through the use of enjambement between lines and variation of pauses within lines, Surrey is able to convey something of the rhythm and movement of Virgil’s periodic style. As wrastling windes, out of dispersed whirl BeWght themselves, the west with southern blast, And gladsom East proud of Auroraes horse; The woods do whiz; and fomy Nereus Raging in furie, with threeforked mace From bottoms depth doth welter up the seas; So came the Grekes. (Aeneid, ii. 531–7, translating 416–19)2 1 See H. A. Mason, Humanism and Poetry in the Early Tudor Period (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959). 2 Certain Bokes of Virgiles Aenaeis turned into English meter by the right honorable Lorde Henry Earle of Surrey (London: Richard Tottel, 1557), B5v.

Early English Classicism

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In the speeches there are intimations of rhythmical Xexibility and rhetorical power later to be achieved by subsequent dramatists perfecting the medium. O wreched citizens, What so great kind of frensie fretteth you? Deeme ye the Grekes our enemies to be gone? Or any Grekish gifts can you suppose Devoid of guile? Is so Ulysses known? Either the Grekes ar in this timber hid, Or this an engine is to anoy our walles, To view our toures, and overwhelm our towne. Here lurkes some craft. Good Troyans, geve no trust Unto this horse; for what so ever it be, I dred the Grekes, yea when they oVer gyftes. (Aeneid, ii. 56–66, translating 42–9)3

The abandonment of rhyme in heroic or narrative verse was a momentous event in the history of English metrics, a return to a classical standard that did not go unheeded or unheralded. Roger Ascham in The Scolemaster (1570) made common cause with earlier writers in attacking the practice of rhyme. They wished as Virgil and Horace were not wedded to follow the faultes of former fathers . . . but by right Imitation of the perWt Grecians had brought Poetrie to perWtnesse also in the Latin tong, that we Englishmen likewise would acknowledge and understand rightfully our rude beggarly ryming, brought Wrst into Italie by Gothes and Hunnes, whan all good verses and all good learning to were destroyd by them, and after carryd into France and Germanie and at last receyved into England by men of excellent wit in deede, but of small learning and lesse iudgement in that behalfe (‘Of Imitation’)4

Ascham went further in his classicism, hoping for English imitation of classical verse based on quantity, though he appears to rule out quantitative hexameters and gives his reason. In deed, our English tong, having in use chieXy words of one syllable which commonly be long, doth not well receive the nature of Carmen Heroicum bicause dactylus, the aptest foote for that verse, conteining one long and two short, is seldom found in English; and doth also rather stumble than stand upon 3 Ibid., A2v. 4 In G. Gregory Smith (ed.), Elizabethan Critical Essays, 2 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 1904), i. 29–30.

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The Augustan Ideal: Rhyme and ReWnement

Monasyllabis. . . . And although Carmen Exametrum doth rather trotte and hoble than runne smothly in our English tong, yet I am sure our English tong, will receive carmen Iambicum as naturallie as either Greke or Latin.5

In the debate about metrics which engaged English practitioners, English monosyllables might be defended with pride by those who favoured customary practice, such as George Gascoigne writing Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Ryme in English (1575).6 On the other hand, more thoroughgoing classicists, like Spenser’s friend Gabriel Harvey, concerned to reform English metrics on classical lines, argued for a full revival of quantitative verse in the hexameter as well. Among the attempts at quantitative hexameters was a version of the Wrst four books of the Aeneid by Richard Stanyhurst who says in his preface that he had been prompted by Ascham who in The Scholemaster ‘dooth wish thee Universitie students too applie theyre wittes in bewtifying oure English language with heroical verses, I held no Latinist so Wt, too geeve thee onset on, as Virgill, who, for his peerelesse style and matchlesse stuV, dooth beare thee prick and price among al thee Roman poets’.7 Unfortunately Stanyhurst’s verse is no better than his prose; it hobbles and trots, to use the words of Ascham, whose aspirations Stanyhurst appears to have misunderstood. Now manhood and garboils I chant and martial horror. I blaze thee captayne Wrst from Troy cittie repairing, Lyke wandring pilgrim to famosed Italy trudging And coast of Lavyn: soust with tempestuus hurlwind, On land and sailing by gods predestinate order: But chiefe through Iunoes long fostred deadlye revengment. . . . . . . . . . . . . My muse shew me the reason, what grudge or what furie kindled Of gods the princesse through so curs’d mischevus hatred Wyth sharpe sundrye perils too tugge so famus a captaine Such festred rancoure doo sayncts celestial harbour?8

The inadequacy of this attempt was apparent to his contemporaries who ridiculed it. Puttenham is highly critical of Stanyhurst’s metrics and, commenting on the phrase ‘to tugge so famus a captaine’, is eloquent on 5 In Smith (ed.), Elizabethan Critical Essays, i. 30. 6 Ibid. 51. 7 Ibid. 137. 8 Richard Stanyhurst, The First Foure Bookes of Virgil’s Aeneis: Translated into English Heroicall Verse (London: Henrie Bynneman, 1583).


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the indecency of the word ‘tugge’. In dismissing this experiment, Puttenham argued that there was an essential antipathy between classical and English prosody.9 The debate about quantity in English verse had a deWnite resolution; those who had advocated its introduction lost because nobody was impressed by the results of those who attempted it. By the time Thomas Campion wrote his Observations on the Art of English Poesie in 1602, this practical failure had consigned the debate to history. The Heroicall verse that is distinguisht by the Dactile hath bene oftentimes attempted in our English toong, but with passing pitifull successe; and no wonder, seeing it is an attempt altogether against the nature of our language. For both the concurse of our monasillables make our verses unapt to slide, and also, if we examine our polysillables, we shall Wnd few of them, by reason of their heavinesse, willing to serve in place of a Dactile.10

These observations are familiar, though there is perhaps a new conWdence in the vernacular here. Campion went on to observe a further incompatibility between English and Latin. Besides, our English monasillables enforce many breathings which no doubt greatly lengthen a verse, so that is no wonder if for these reasons our English verses of Wve feete hold pace with the Latines of sixe.11

Campion was not hostile to the classics; quite the contrary, but his observations represent the hard-won lesson learnt by classically inclined Elizabethans that there were essential incompatibilities between classical and English prosody. The lesson about this incompatibility became the prevailing orthodoxy, in a clear recognition of cultural and linguistic diVerence, as enunciated by Edward Bysshe in The Art of English Poetry (1702): The structure of our verses, whether Blank or in Rhyme, consists in a certain Number of Syllables; not in Feet compos’d of long and short syllables, as the verses of the Greeks and Romans. And tho’ some Ingenious Persons formerly puzzled themselves in prescribing Rules for the quantity of English Syllables, and, in Imitation of the Latins, compos’d Verses by the measure of Spondees, Dactyls, etc., yet the Success of their Undertaking has fully evinc’d the Vainness of their Attempt, and given ground to suspect that they had not thoroughly weigh’d what the Genius of our Language would bear; nor reXected that each

9 In Smith (ed.), Elizabethan Critical Essays, ii. 178. 10 Ibid. 333. 11 Ibid. 335.

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Tongue has its peculiar Beauties, and what is agreeable and natural to one, is very often disagreeable, nay, inconsistent with another.12

This basic lesson, learnt the hard way in the early days of classical imitation, and taken for granted in the Augustan period, has sometimes been forgotten in later times by those who seem to look for the reproduction in English of the eVects of classical metre.

The early argument over rhyme The argument over quantity among the Elizabethans was soon settled, not so the argument about rhyme. Rhyme was introduced into poetry in the early Middle Ages, in the Latin of Church hymns. In the humanist account of the history of poetry that we Wnd in Ascham it was associated with barbarism and cultural decline. But by the time of the Renaissance, it had also become the norm. The revival of classical values brought with it arguments about the necessity for and propriety of rhyme. The most well-known debate involved Campion and Daniel, but before that Puttenham in a chapter of his Arte of English Poesy (1589) entitled ‘Of Proportion in Concord, Called Symphonie or Rime’ oVered the following sympathetic deWnitions and analysis: For wanting the currantnesse of the Greeke and Latine feete, in stead thereof we make in th’ ends of our verses a certain tunable sound: which anon with another verse reasonably distant we accord together in the last fall or cadence, the eare taking pleasure to heare the like tune reported and to feel his returne. And for this purpose serve the monasillables of our English Saxons excellently well, because they do naturally and indiVerently receive any accent, & in them, if they Wnish the verse, resteth the shrill accent of necessitie, and so doth it not in the last of every bisyllable, nor of every polisillable word.13

He goes on to say that rhyme came by way of ‘barbarous soldiers’ from the camp to the court and thence to the schools: ‘and yet the Greekes and the Latines both used a maner of speach by clauses of like termination, which they called ›Øºı [homoioteleuton], and was the nearest that they approched to our ryme, but is not our right concord’.14 Both these points, that English with monosyllables lends itself to rhyme and that the use of rhyme might be regarded as something like the 12 Edward Bysshe, The Art of English Poetry (London: Knaplock, 1702), 1. 13 In Smith (ed.), Elizabethan Critical Essays, ii. 80. 14 Ibid. 81.


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classical practice of a recurring metrical pattern at the end of line (as in hexameters), defend vernacular practice. In his Observations in the Art of English Poesie (1602), Thomas Campion, despite his own practice in A Booke of Ayres and elsewhere, argued strongly against the need for it and composed a number of poems in various metres without it, including one of his most famous, the lyric ‘Rose-cheeked Laura’, in the Sapphic metre, of which he says ‘the number is voluble’15 which is deWned in the OED as ‘moving rapidly and easily, with a gliding or undulating movement’. One of the reasons for the failure of its opponents to make much headway against the prevailing popularity of rhyme, apart from a natural resistance to changing customary practice, was the perception that English without it did not have much ease of Xow. This is admitted in one of the poems that Campion composed in support of unrhymed verse. Goe, numbers, boldly passe, stay not for ayde Of shifting rime, that easie Xatterer, Whose witchcraft can the ruder eares beguile. Let your smooth feete, enur’d to purer arte, True measures tread. What if your pace be slow, And hops not like the Grecian elegies? It is yet gracefull, and well Wts the state Of words ill-breathed and yet not shap’t to runne.16

This verse does Xow gracefully, with three eVective enjambements, pausal variation, and a suYcient number of disyllables and one trisyllable to give a lilting rhythmic lift. The lines here represent eVectively the aspiration to a ‘purer art’ of unrhymed verse. Replying to Campion, Samuel Daniel in A Defence of Ryme (1603) states the case for the status quo. It is interesting to reXect that the dramatic verse of Marlowe and Shakespeare, which might have been expected to settle the question that unrhymed verse was a viable possibility, does not feature in the arguments of these two practising poets. But, whatever he thought of Shakespeare, we should remember that for Daniel there was no vernacular verse without rhyme that had ‘the approbation of many ages’.17 To judge by general poetic output, Daniel’s view and preference predominated in his own time and for most of the seventeenth century. 15 Ibid. 348.

16 Ibid. 335–6.

17 Ibid. 362–3.

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The closed couplet: English and Latin The poetic Xowering of the late Elizabethan age promoted the vernacular conWdence of which it was itself the product. Sweet poesie Will not be clad in her supremacie With those straunge garments (Romes Hexameters), As she is in English: but in right prefers Our native robes, put on with skilful hands (English heroics) to those antick garlands. ‘Hymnus in Cynthiam’, 86–9118

Whether Chapman here has in mind the fourteener he used for the translation of the Iliad or the decasyllabic couplets he adopted later for the translation of the Odyssey, in either event ‘English heroics’ meant something very diVerent from the classical hexameter. Increasingly in the seventeenth century English heroics meant one metre, not the blank verse that had been introduced by Surrey, but the heroic couplet, particularly in the closed form made popular by Marlowe translating Ovid’s elegies and by Ben Jonson in his epigrams and epistles. This early shaping of the heroic couplet, which became the dominant metre of the English Augustans, was greatly inXuenced by the classical example of the Roman Augustan elegiac couplet as mediated chieXy by Ovid.

The Latin elegiac couplet The derivation of the word elegy is uncertain; scholars think it may be connected with a word for the Xute that was used to accompany recitations of poems written in the elegiac metre. In antiquity the word is associated primarily with the metre, and not with any one of the diVerent kinds of poem for which it might be used. In early Greek times it is used for convivial, historical, or military poems and for dedications as well as for epitaphs and laments with which the word has come to be associated in English. Ovid’s reWnement of the form (which he inherited from previous practitioners at Rome such as Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus) deWned its Augustan practice and became the norm for all future imitation. Ovid, therefore, as a classical 18 The Poems of George Chapman, ed. Phyllis Brook Bartlett (New York: Russell & Russell, 1941), 41–2.


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model for good elegiac practice had a practical importance second only to Virgil in his establishment of the norm for good hexameter practice. The Amores, probably his earliest collection of poems, opens with a humorous description of the metrical form in which the love elegy is cast: arma ar ˘ gra˘vı nu˘me˘ro – vı˘o˘lenta˘qu˘e bella˘ pa˘rabam ede˘re˘, mate˘rı˘a jj conve˘nı˘ente˘ mo˘dıs. par e˘ra˘t ınfe˘rı˘or vers us – rısısse˘ Cu˘pıdo eûn dıcı˘tu˘r at atqu um jj s urrı˘pu˘ısse˘ pe˘dem. (I. i. 1–4) (I was preparing to sing of arms and violent wars in a weighty metre, with my matter suited to my measure. The following verse was equal to the former— Cupid is said to have laughed and to have stolen one foot.)

The poet berates the interfering god and protests: c um be˘ne˘ s urrexıt vers u no˘va˘ pagı˘na˘ prımo, atte˘nu˘at nervos jj proxı˘mu˘s ılle˘ me˘os; nec mı˘hı˘ mate˘rı˘ aêst nu˘me˘rıs le˘vı˘orı˘bu˘s apta˘, a ut pu˘e˘r a ut longas jj compta˘ pu˘ella˘ co˘mas as. (I. i. 17–20) (My new page with the Wrst verse [the hexameter] rose well, the next [the pentameter] took away my strength, nor do I have material suitable for lighter numbers, either a boy or a girl with long and well-groomed hair.)

Cupid then obligingly transWxes him with an arrow so that he becomes a suitable subject for the form (as yet he still has no object for his aroused passion). sex mı˘hı s urga˘t o˘p us nu˘me˘rıs, ın quınqu˘e re˘sıda˘t; ferre˘a˘ c um ves estr ıs jj bella˘ va˘lete˘ mo˘dıs! cınge˘re˘ lıto˘re˘a flaventı˘a˘ tempo˘ra˘ my rto, M usa˘, pe˘r u nden os jj emo˘du˘lan da˘ pe˘des! (I. i. 27–30) (May my work rise in six numbers [feet] and fall back again in Wve. Iron wars with your measures, farewell. Surround my golden temples with your myrtle that loves the shore, O Muse, that must be measured out in elevens!)

The hexameter is not subject to any new restrictions when it is the Wrst line of a couplet. That is to say, the Wnal two feet must be a dactyl (a long

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and two short syllables, tum ti ti) and spondee (two long syllables, tum tum) or trochee (a long and a short syllable, tum ti) respectively, but there may be any mixture of dactyls and spondees in the Wrst four. The lightness of touch required by Ovid’s sense of the form in the love elegy is a consequence of the preponderance of dactyls over spondees where there is a choice in the Wrst four. In only two of the six quoted hexameters is the number of dactylic and spondaic feet equal; in two, the ratio is three to one, and in two, four to nil. Flexibility remains in the use of the caesura which usually, as in all cases here, comes in the third foot (strong) but may also come in the second and fourth (weak). Pauses of sense, of course, do not necessarily coincide with the metrical caesura; in no case here is there any such obvious coincidence. In the pentameter, the metrical pattern of the second half of the line is invariable; no spondees or elisions are allowed and there is a clear medial break between the two halves. Again this is a metrical break but not necessarily a break in sense. This is the basic pattern for the form established by the Greeks and taken over, like all their metres, by the Romans. But in adopting the Greek metre, Roman elegists gradually adapted it. In Latin elegiacs, the couplets (as here) are usually closed in that, while enjambement between the hexameter and pentameter is common (as in the opening couplet), the syntax and sense is rarely carried over from couplet to couplet. This was not the case to the same extent in the form as used by the Greeks. Also, Ovid, following a practice partially introduced by Propertius, makes the Wnal word of the pentameter (in all but a handful of cases) invariably a disyllable, whereas in Greek elegy there was no syllabic restriction here. This has the eVect of sharply attenuating the rhythm of the pentameter into a predictably falling cadence. Organized in this way, the classical elegiac couplet, particularly in its Roman form, has an inbuilt rocking see-saw motion. The diVerent rhythms of the hexameter and the pentameter eVect the major rise and fall of the form artfully reXected in the third of the quoted couplets (lines 17 and 18). The rising rhythm of the hexameter is accentuated in line 17 by the positioning of the two dactylic disyllables bene and nova encircling the spondaic weight of surrexit versu. The rhythmical attenuation and fall of the pentameter in line 18 is accentuated by the weight of the sense and rhythm in the verb, noun, and spondee of attenuit nervos, all coming in the Wrst half of the line. In the two halves of the pentameter, too, is a subsidiary bilateral rocking movement on either side of the medial axis. The


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metre is cleverly described and exempliWed in the following couplet of Coleridge: In the hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column In the pentameter aye falling melody back.19

In the lines quoted there is great metrical variety, with enjambement between the hexameter and pentameter in the opening pair. Only in one line (27) is there a strong pause in sense at the caesura (and this is not the medial strong caesura but the weaker caesura of the fourth foot). The Xexible word order of Latin in which nouns and adjectives can be separated at the beginning and end of lines makes possible a cohesive Xuency well illustrated in the Wnal couplet. But it is not diYcult to see that this metrical and rhythmical arrangement will encourage a distinctive rhetorical patterning in which line is played oV against line, as in 17–18 and 27–8 and where half-lines can also be emphatically contrasted in a chiastic arrangement, as in the following example: pars adaperta fuit, altera clausa fenestrae; quale fere silvae lumen habere solent, qualia sublucent fugiente crepuscula Phoebo, aut ubi nox abiit, nec tamen orta dies. (I. 5. 3–6) (part of my window was open, the other part was closed; such light as woods are wont to have, or the faint glow of twilight when the sun is setting, or when night has gone and the day is not yet here.)

In the Wrst and Wnal lines there is a strong pause at the medial caesura and on either side a deliberate antithesis between open and shut and night and day. With the antithesis comes a natural syntactical balance and parallelism. The intervening lines have a quite diVerent rhythm and movement; they are ‘full-resounding’ with no intermediate pause and although the Wrst couplet is end-stopped, the sense clearly continues over into the next so that overall Xuency is maintained by this variety, for too many lines like 1 and 4 in proximity would create a predictable rocking-horse monotony. The challenge of the Roman elegiac consists in precisely this achievement of metrical variety within a highly disciplined regularity. The development of the metre was prompted by and itself promoted the virtuoso’s delight in verbal artistry. 19 ‘The Ovidian Elegiac Metre Described and ExempliWed’, in Coleridge, Poetical Works, ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge (Oxford: OUP, 1969), 308.

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Early English couplets The rhyming decasyllabic couplet has a long history; it is used by Chaucer and other older writers, but their couplets, though good, in the words of Gascoigne, for ‘a merie tale’,20 were judged to be deWcient by the Elizabethan metrists because they were careless about the use of the caesura. Both Gascoigne and Puttenham were of the opinion that there should be a caesura or break in the iambic line after the fourth syllable. Moreover, Chaucer’s couplets are not predominantly closed nor do they follow the classical couplet in their characteristic rhetorical arrangement. The Wrst couplets to exhibit these characteristics are eleven poems by Nicolas Grimald included in Tottel’s Miscellany of 1557.21 Eight of these are translations of Latin elegiac verse from Ovid, Martial, and neo-Latin poets. However, the Wrst couplets of quality that made the Ovidian form fashionable were Marlowe’s translations of Ovid’s Amores, probably completed in the 1580s. These translations exhibited the exciting possibilities of the couplet form in a genre that provided a witty and erotic alternative to the Petrarchan sonnet. We may believe that the poems made their impact by virtue of this happy decorum of content and form, for the sophisticated and witty verbal play admirably expresses the libertine playfulness of their subject. In summer’s heat, and mid-time of the day, To rest my limbs upon a bed I lay; One window shut, the other open stood, Which gave such light as twinkles in a wood, Like twilight glimpse at setting of the sun, Or night being past, and yet not day begun. Such light to shamefast maidens must be shown, Where they may sport and seem to be unknown. Then came Corinna in a long loose gown, Her white neck hid with tresses hanging down, Resembling fair Semiramis going to bed, Or Lais of a thousand wooers sped. I snatched her gown; being thin the harm was small,

20 Smith (ed.), Elizabethan Critical Essays, i. 56. 21 On the development of the couplet, see G. P. Shannon, ‘Nicholas Grimald’s Heroic Couplet and the Latin Elegaic Distich’, PMLA 45 (1930), 532–42; R. C. Wallerstein, ‘The Development of the Rhetoric and Metre of the Heroic Couplet, especially in 1625–1645’, PMLA 50 (1935), 186–93; William B. Piper, The Heroic Couplet (Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1969).


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Yet strived she to be covered therewithal, And striving thus as one that would be cast, Betrayed herself, and yielded at the last. Stark naked as she stood before mine eye, Not one wen in her body could I spy. What arms and shoulders did I touch and see, How apt her breasts were to be pressed by me! How smooth a belly under her waist saw I, How large a leg, and what a lusty thigh! To leave the rest, all liked me passing well; I clinged her naked body, down she fell. Judge you the rest; being tired she bade me kiss; Jove send me more such afternoons as this. (i. 5)22

The couplets are predominantly end-stopped with strong masculine rhymes and distinct though varied caesurae. The syntax involving balance and antithesis that is so characteristic in the later Augustan couplet is particularly marked in the third and sixth lines. It may be doubted whether anyone had written couplets in English before with such neat parallelism, such elegant precision, such terse deWnition, and such witty and teasing verbal play. Directly in this tradition are Marlowe’s own Hero and Leander and Donne’s Elegies. Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy, Until I labour, I in labour lie. (‘To his Mistress Going to Bed’, 1–2)23

The aesthetic appeal of Ovid, whether he is using the elegiac couplet or the classical hexameter, may be suggested by Drayton’s praise of the couplet translation of the Metamorphoses made by George Sandys in 1626. Then dainty Sands that hath in English done Smooth sliding Ovid, and hath made him run With so much sweetnesse and unusuall grace, As though the neatnesse of the English pace, 22 Christopher Marlowe, The Complete Poems and Translations, ed. Stephen Orgel (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 118. 23 John Donne, The Complete English Poems, ed. A. J. Smith (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 124.

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The Augustan Ideal: Rhyme and ReWnement Should tell the Jetting Lattine that it came But slowly after, as though stiV and lame. (ll. 157–62)24

Something of this elegance is captured in Sandys’s rendition of the speech of Narcissus. I like and see: but yet I cannot Wnd The lik’t and seene. O Love, with error blind! . . . . . . . As oft as I to kisse the Xood decline So oft his lips ascend, to close with mine; You’ld thinke we toucht, so small a thing doth part Our equall loves! Come forth whate’er thou art, Sweet Boy, a simple Boy beguile not so From him that seeks thee, whither would’st thou go?25

The impact of the Roman aesthetic upon English may be appreciated by juxtaposing the graceless Tudor translation of these same lines published in 1567 by Arthur Golding. I see and am full faine, Howbeit that I like and see I can not yet attaine: So great a blindnesse in my heart through doting love doth raigne. . . . . . . . . . . For looke how oft I kisse the water under, So oft againe with upwarde mouth he riseth towarde mee. A man would thinke to touch at least I should yet able bee. It is a triXe in respect that lettes us of our love. What wight soever that thou art come hither up above. O pierlesse piece, why dost thou mee thy lover thus delude? Or whiter Xiste thou of thy friende thus earnestly pursued? (‘The Third Booke’, 559–61, 565–71)26

The poetic ideal of Augustan Rome Roman Augustan values were well appreciated in England long before what has come to be known as the Augustan period. There is a powerful 24 ‘To my Most Dearely-Loved Friend Henery Reynolds Esquire, of Poets and Poesie’, in Drayton, Works, ed J. William Hebel, 5 vols. (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1931– 41), iii. 226–31. 25 George Sandys, Ovid Metamorphoses Englished: Oxford 1632 (New York: Garland, 1876), 91. 26 Ovid’s Metamorphoses: The Arthur Golding Translation 1567, ed. John F. Nums (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 76.


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representation of Augustan Rome in Ben Jonson’s comical satire The Poetaster, a play written in 1601 in the so-called war of the theatres and directed by Jonson against his rivals, Marston and Dekker. The poetaster Crispinus (Marston) who together with Demetrius (Dekker) have ‘most ignorantly and foolishly and . . . maliciously gone about to deprave and calumniate the person and writings of Quintus Horatius Flaccus here present [as Jonson himself ] poet and priest of the muses; . . . taxing him falsely of self love, arrogancy, impudence, railing, Wlching by translation etc.’ (V. iii. 224–8)27 is brought to book in a tribunal conducted in the presence of Augustus and presided over by Virgil as chief poet of Rome sitting at Caesar’s right hand. In the comic denouement, Horace administers pills to the poetaster which force him to vomit up his ‘crudities’ (V. iii. 522), most of which are expressions culled from his plays. He is then given a programme of reading ‘a strict and wholesome diet’ with which to reform and reWne his style by Virgil, the master stylist himself: Look you take Each morning of old Cato’s principles A good draught next your heart. That walk upon Till it be well digested, then come home And taste a piece of Terence, suck his phrase Instead of licorice; and at any hand, Shun Plautus and old Ennius, they are meats Too harsh for a weak stomach. Use to read (But not without a tutor) the best Greeks: . . . . . . . You must not hunt for wild, outlandish terms To stuV out a peculiar dialect, But let your matter run before your words. (V. iii. 524–32, 537–9)

The Greek and Latin references represent the humanists’ idea of the reading that might have been the basis of Virgil’s own, beginning with the chaste speech of Cato the censor, the very incarnation of the old Roman virtue, whose doctrine ‘rem tene et verba sequentur’ (‘hold to your matter, the words will follow’) underlies the injunction ‘let

27 Ben Jonson, Poetaster, ed. Tom Cain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 235.

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your matter run before your words’, which turns up again in Horace’s Ars Poetica: verbaque provisam rem non invita sequentur (l. 311) And where the matter is provided still, There words will follow, not against their will. (Jonson’s translation, ll. 443–4)28

Terence is particularly singled out as a model for the comic playwright as on the testimony of Cicero, no less, and Caesar, he wrote Latin that was pure; his language is associated with the reWned colloquialism of the great and the good. The recommendations put into Virgil’s mouth here can suggest that the cult of Virgil in the Renaissance could have farreaching inXuence encouraging a classical standard in all writing, not simply in the genres in which Virgil wrote himself. A modern verdict concludes that most of the ‘Crispinisms still seem wrong to us’: ‘Jonson’s satire . . . shows how deeply in touch he was with the fundamental tendency of English style. That satire of Crispinus is not a mere episode in the Stage Quarrel: it is one of the important steps towards the establishment of standard literary English.’29 Prior to this, before Virgil enters, there is an extended eulogy of him put into the mouths of his fellow poets which is worth citing at length for what it suggests about an ethical dimension to the Augustan aesthetic: Horace I judge him of a rectiWed spirit By many revolutions of discourse (In his bright reason’s inXuence) reWned From all the tartarous moods of common men; Bearing the nature and similitude Of a right heavenly body: most severe In fashion, and collection of himself, And then as clear, and conWdent, as Jove. Gallus And yet so chaste and tender is his ear In suVering any syllable to pass That he thinks may become the honoured name Of issue to his so examined self That all the lasting fruits of his full merit 28 Ben Jonson, The Complete Poems, ed. George ParWtt (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), 365. 29 Arthur King, The Language of Satirised Characters in ‘Poetaster’ (Lund: G. C. K. Gleerup, 1941), 62.


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In his own poems, he doth still distaste: As if his mind’s piece, which he strove to paint Could not with Xeshly pencils have her right. . . . . . . . . Tibullus . . . That which he hath writ Is with such judgement laboured and distilled Through all the needful uses of our lives That could a man remember but his lines He should not touch at any serious point But he might breathe his spirit out of him. . . . . . . . . Horace His learning labours not the school-like gloss That most consists in echoing words and terms, And soonest wins a man an empty name: Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance Wrapped in the curious generalities of arts: But a direct and analytic sum Of all the worth and Wrst eVects of arts. And for his poesie ’tis so rammed with life That it shall gather strength of life with being And live hereafter, more admired, than now. (V. i. 100–15, 118–23, 129–38)

In the play, his fellow poets are speaking of Virgil the man, but in such a way that the man and the poet are interchangeable and inseparable. The spectators of the play are being instructed (or reminded) of what for Jonson was a central humanist proposition: that good art is the product of a good life in which self-examination and knowledge of the world are equally vital. The reWnement of language with which Virgil has always been associated is also the reWnement of sensibility and spirit. It has to do with the application of thought and reason in the widest sense. The weighing of syllables is not simply an aesthetic deliberation but one that involves the most rigorous self-scrutiny in assessing the relation of words to things. The judgement in which Virgil is deemed to have excelled is not only that of the disciplined artist but also of the man who knows about life and manners; Virgil is both arbiter elegantiae and arbiter morum and this is reXected in his role in the play. The idea of the poet and of poetic composition here is very much in line with that of Vida. The main distinction in the play is between poet and poetaster but there is a secondary distinction within the Augustan poets with which the plot is greatly concerned. The Wrst act opens in the home of the

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youthful Ovid labouring under diYculties because of the opposition of a materialist and philistine parent who wishes him to study the law. We hear him recite one of the Amores (a translation by Jonson) in which the poetic calling is vindicated: ‘me let bright Phoebus swell j With cups full-Xowing from the Muses’ well’ (I. i. 77–8). Later in the play he is the prime mover in the organization of a masquerade in which he plays Jupiter and his lover Julia, the daughter of the emperor, plays Juno in a banquet of the gods. For this he earns the wrath of Caesar and is banished from Rome for indecent and blasphemous behaviour. Maecenas and Horace both press Caesar to be merciful but to no avail. To Horace, the informant against Ovid ‘prey[s] upon the life of innocent mirth j And harmless pleasures, born of noble wit’ (IV. viii. 12–13). Ovid’s libertinism is not therefore condemned by his fellow poets but the overall eVect is to subordinate it within the Augustan hierarchy. In subject matter and style, Ovid remained, in theory at least, a lesser model and authority. Jonson oVers couplet translations of all three major Augustans. In addition to the elegy referred to above, there are translations from Horace (a defence of satire constituting Act III scene v) and Virgil (the account of Fame (IV. ii. 55–97) from the Aeneid ) in the course of the play. But a literal method of translation did not allow him to do justice in practice to his Augustan ideals. The resulting poetry is wooden and stilted. THE EARLY AUGUSTAN AESTHETIC The early decades of the seventeenth century saw a growth of conWdence in vernacular forms and expression. Sir John Beaumont does not start ‘Concerning the True Form of Poetry’ (1625) with the Graeco-Roman perspective embraced by earlier Tudor humanists like Ascham but writes his history conWdently as an Anglo-Saxon. In her true form his vernacular Muse aspires to a strong even Xow (the ‘milky torrent’ to which he aspires does not perhaps have the dignity of Denham’s later Thames30 but the aspiration is similar) and she relishes rhyme: He makes sweet musick, who in serious lines Light dancing tunes and heavy prose declines: When verses like a milky torrent Xow They equall temper in the poet show. 30 See below, p. 94.

Early Augustan Aesthetic in English

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He paints true formes, who with a modest heart, Gives lustre to the worke, yet covers art. Uneven swelling is no way to fame, But solid joining of the perfect frame: So that no curious Wnger there Wnd The former chinkes or nailes that fastly bind. Yet most would have the knots of stitches seene, And holes where men may thrust their hands between. On halting feet the ragged poem goes With accents, neither Wtting verse or prose: The stile mine eare with more contentment Wlls In lawyers’ pleadings, or phisicians bills. For though in termes of art their skill they close, And joy in darksome words as well as those: They yet have perfect sense more pure and clear Than envious Muses, which sad garlands weare Of dusky clouds, their strange conceits to hide From humane eyes: and—lest they should be spi’d By some sharpe Oedipus—the English tongue For this their poore ambition suVers wrong. In ev’ry language now in Europe spoke By Nations which the Roman Empire broke, The relish of the Muse consists in rime, One verse must meete another like a chime. Our Saxon shortnesse hath peculiar grace In choice of words, Wt for the ending place, Which leave impression in the mind as well As closing sounds, of some delightful bell:31

This last couplet clearly favours the rhyming couplet as the best means (by virtue of simple joining) to the desired end in English. Rhymes are to be strong and in successive couplets to be distinct from one another, as they are in Beaumont’s management throughout the poem. This poem has an honoured place in literary history because it is regarded as one of the earliest expressions of the stylistic ideals that were to dominate English poetry in the later seventeenth century. There is a rejection here of Elizabethan ornamentation and metaphysical obscurity. Classical pedantry is scorned too, but equally the ideals of the new style have their origins in the classical aesthetic informing such as the De

31 The Poems of Sir John Beaumont, ed. A. B. Grosart ([Blackburn], 1869) 118–19.

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Arte Poetica and doubtless imbibed by Beaumont ‘a son of Ben’ from his literary guide and mentor Ben Jonson. In fact it is possible to see in his poem a shorthand version of all the main elements of the Art of Poetry as they are laid out in full in Vida. There is the appeal to Nature, an emphasis on unity (in the Wgure of the well-made frame), on clarity (against ‘terms of art’, ‘darksome words’, ‘strange conceits’, and esoteric head-in-the-clouds mystiWcation), on decorum and Wtness, on control in the use of comparisons, on purity of phrase and economy of expression (holding to matter rather than words) in contemporary language without aVecting archaisms or classical pedantry, on forceful rhetoric, and there is even, to cap it all, an evocation of what is the climax of Vida’s Wnal book, the doctrine of sound echoing sense: These outward ashes keepe those inward Wres Whose heate the Greeke and Roman works inspires: Pure phrase, Wt epithets, a sober care Of metaphors, description cleare, yet rare, Similitudes contracted smooth and round, Not vext by learning, but with Nature crown’d, Strong Wgures drawne from deep invention’s springs, Consisting less in words, and more in things: A language not aVecting ancient times, Nor Latine shreds, by which the pedant climes. A noble subject which the mind may lift To easie use of that peculiar gift, Which poets in their raptures hold most deare, When actions by the lively sound appeare.

Given common misconceptions about ‘neoclassicism’, it is worth noting that what Beaumont says about the ‘sober care j Of metaphors’ is to be balanced by his desire for ‘Strong Wgures drawne from deep invention’s springs’, rhetorical Wgures, that is, of arrangement and sense, including metaphor. Strong metaphors are to be Wttingly applied; the sobriety consists in the application not in the invention itself. Beaumont is his own example with the vivid metaphor of the ‘perfect frame’ and the strong personiWcations of the ‘ragged poem’ and ‘envious Muses’. The measure in these lines, despite their powerful advocacy of vernacular means, is still the classical standard, for it is the ‘inward Wres’ of the Greek and Roman works that inspire the poet’s muse. The neat antithesis of the ‘outward ashes’ that constitute the elements of the English style is not perhaps as felicitous an expression as the context requires but


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the antithetical phrase does suggest that the desired formal elements are in themselves dead, simply a means to an end. It is vital that there be no mistaking of the means but the challenge is to use them creatively. Beaumont’s poem is a perfect illustration of the way in classical ideals were grafted onto native elements resulting in a new modernizing blend which worked with and not against the grain of the native stock in the interests of a vigorous new growth.

Waller and Denham: sweetness and strength In a famous retrospective at the beginning of his career Pope singles out Waller along with Sir John Denham: praise the Easie Vigor of a Line Where Denham’s Strength and Waller’s Sweetness join. (An Essay on Criticism, 360–1)32

In his later apologia for reWned culture in his modernization of Horace’s ‘Epistle to Augustus’, Pope implicitly associates Waller with the inauguration of the English Augustan age: Britain to soft reWnements less a foe, Wit grew polite and Numbers learn’d to Xow Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join The varying verse, the full resounding line, The long majestic march and energy divine. (ll. 265–9)33

In view of this well-established poetic lineage, the translations of Virgil by Waller and Denham, both of which were consulted by Dryden when he embarked upon his own Virgil, hold a special interest for anyone charting the history of the establishment of the English Augustan aesthetic. The primary meaning of polite, the word allied here by Pope to wit, as given in Johnson’s Dictionary is smooth; polish suggests a superWcial shine. The word is associated then as now with good manners. Waller (1606–87), who began writing in the 1620s, wrote short complimentary love poems, the most famous of which is the beautiful lyric ‘Go lovely rose’ and courtly panegyrics variously addressed over his long

32 Pope, Twickenham Edition, i. 280.

33 Ibid. iv. 217.

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poetical and political career to Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, and Charles II. He is a minor poet who is now remembered, if he is remembered at all, for his polite address; none of his poems has a great theme or a searching engagement with the issues of his turbulent times. That Waller should be allotted such a pivotal role in Augustan reWnement has therefore had the eVect of devaluing that reWnement from the start, associating the term and the process with enervation and superWcial Xuency. The smooth sweetness of Waller was particularly valued by the young Pope; he is among the English poets he imitated as a boy and he was suYciently enamoured of a version of one of these imitations, ‘Of a Lady singing to her Lute’,34 to reprint it in his Works of 1717. Pope’s tribute to Waller’s artistry is therefore heartfelt. Indeed comparisons have often been made with the youthful Pope’s metrical management in his Pastorals and Windsor Forest. However, Waller as an Augustan reWner is only at the beginning; he is like the young Pope starting with his Pastorals or, to use an appropriate ancient analogy, the young Virgil starting with his Eclogues. Virgil and Pope both went on to do greater things. Assuming the mantle of the poet/critic Horace in his ‘Epistle to Augustus’, Pope in his maturity is both highlighting and subordinating Waller’s signiWcance. Waller prepares the way for another greater than himself. There is great force in the adversative ‘but’ after the mention of Waller. The whole force of Pope’s praise is in fact directed to Dryden who gave the couplet variety and dignity, and, above all, energized the medium. By the time of Johnson’s Lives of the Poets in the late eighteenth century, the contribution of these two precursor poets to the Augustan canon had become a commonplace: ‘The ‘‘strength of Denham’’, which Pope so emphatically mentions, is to be found in many lines and couplets, which convey much meaning in few words, and exhibit the sentiment with more weight than bulk’ (‘Life of Denham’).35 ‘By the perusal of Fairfax’s translation of Tasso, to which, as Dryden relates, he confessed himself indebted for the smoothness of his numbers, and by his own nicety of observation, he had already formed such a system of metrical harmony as he never afterwards much needed, or much endeavoured to improve’ (‘Life of Waller’).36 Johnson, explaining Pope, repeats the testimony and inherits the judgement of Dryden. Pope’s

34 Pope, Twickenham Edition. vi. 7. 35 Johnson, Lives i. 79–80. 36 Ibid. 251.


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celebrated formulations neatly highlight the merits of the two predecessors acknowledged by Dryden himself and go beyond this to deWne Dryden’s own contribution to English poetry. In singling out Waller and allotting him an honoured place, Pope in this as in so much else is following in Dryden’s footsteps. Dryden consistently invokes Waller throughout his writings, calling him ‘the Father of our English Numbers’.37 Speaking of rhyme he says: ‘the Excellence and Dignity of it were never fully known till Mr. Waller taught it; He Wrst made Writing easily an Art: First shew’d us to conclude the Sense, most commonly, in Distichs; which, in the Verse of those before him, runs on for so many Lines together, that the Reader is out of Breath to overtake it’.38 As we have seen, Waller is not strictly the Wrst to write closed couplets, but it is what Dryden subsequently says of Waller’s contribution that marked him out for the Augustans: ‘Well placing of Words for the sweetness of pronunciation was not known till Mr. Waller introduc’d it.’39 The emphasis here must be on the well placing, that is phrasing, rather than simply the choice of individual sweet-sounding words. It is the arrangement of words that promotes metrical harmony: ‘many besides myself have heard our famous Waller own, that he deriv’d the Harmony of his Numbers from Godfrey of Bulloign, which was turn’d into English by Mr. Fairfax’40 from the Italian of Tasso in 1600. In The Art of Poetry of 1683 in which Soame/Dryden adapt Boileau’s Art poe´tique to English literary history and circumstances, Waller is given an extended panegyric: Our ancient Verse (as homely as the Times) Was rude, unmeasur’d, only Tagg’d with Rhimes: Number and Cadence, that have Since been Shown, To those unpolish’d Writers were unknown. (ll. 111–14)

Fairfax and Spenser are the precursors, then: Waller came last, but was the Wrst whose Art Just Weight and Measure did to Verse impart;

37 ‘Preface to Walsh’s Dialogue Concerning Women’ (1691), in Dryden, Works, xx. 3. 38 ‘Dedication to the Rival Ladies’ (1664), in Dryden, Works, viii. 100. 39 ‘Defence of the Epilogue’ (1672), in Dryden, Works, xi. 210. 40 ‘Preface to the Fables’ (1700), in Dryden, Works, vii. 25. There are examples in Johnson’s ‘Life of Waller’, in Lives, i. 296–300.

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The Augustan Ideal: Rhyme and ReWnement That of a well-plac’d Word could teach the force, And shew’d for Poetry a nobler Course: His happy Genius did our Tongue ReWne, And easie Words with pleasing Numbers joyn: His Verses to good method did apply, And chang’d harsh Discord to Soft Harmony. All own’d his Laws; which, long approv’d and try’d, To present Authors may be now a Guide. Tread boldly in his Steps, secure from Fear, And be, like him, in your Expressions clear. (ll. 131–42)41

In English literary history Waller has, for Dryden, the kind of deWnitive place accorded to Virgil in the Latin. He writes of Spenser: ‘His verses are so numerous, so various and so harmonious, that only Virgil whom he professly imitated, has surpassed him amongst the Romans; and only Mr Waller among the English.’42 The contemporary estimate seems to gain added conWrmation from what are later reported as the words of Waller himself about his general intentions: ‘When he was a brisk young spark, and Wrst studied in poetry, me thought, said he, I never saw a good copy of English verses; they want smoothness; then I began to essay.’43 In commendatory verses written on Roscommon’s translation of Horace’s Art of Poetry (1684), Waller sounds the Augustan note and passes the Augustan verdict upon his native Britain: Britain, whose Genious is in Verse exprest Bold and sublime, but negligently drest; Horace will our superXuous Branches prune, Give us new rules, and set our Harp in tune; Direct us how to back the winged Horse, Favour his Xight, and moderate his force. (ll. 7–12)44

This is a conWdent assertion of the need for the moderating application of the Roman ars. In Poems to the Memory of Edmund Waller, Thomas Rymer writes of Waller’s contribution: 41 Dryden, Works, ii. 127–8. 42 ‘Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire’ (1693), in Works, iv. 14. 43 As reported by John Aubrey: Aubrey’s Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (London: Secker and Warburg, 1960), 308. 44 Printed before the translation, see Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, An Essay on Translated Verse 1685; and Horace’s Art of Poetry Made English 1684 (Menston: Scolar Press, 1971).


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This northern speech reWned to that degree, Soft France we scorn, nor envy Italy: But for a Wt comparison must seek In Virgil’s Latin, or in Homer’s Greek.45

Three years after Waller’s death, his Wrst editor Francis Atterbury in 1690 accorded the reWning Waller a pivotal role in the establishment of England’s Augustan age: ‘He undoubtedly stands Wrst in the list of reWners. . . . for I question whether in Charles II.’s reign English did not come to its full perfection; and whether it has not had its Augustan age as well as the Latin.’ Waller started writing in the reign of Charles II’s grandfather but as Atterbury justly notes: ‘it is a surprising reXection, that between what Spenser wrote last, and Waller wrote Wrst, there should be not much above twenty year’s distance; and yet the one’s language, like the money of that time, is as currant now as ever; whilst the other’s words are like old coins, one must go to an antiquary to understand their true meaning and value. . . . Were we to judge barely by the wording, we could not know what was wrote at twenty, and what at fourscore.’46 The truth of this can be acknowledged three hundred years later. On Spenser’s language we may recall here the celebrated verdict of Ben Jonson (d. 1637) in Discoveries that ‘aVecting the ancients [Spenser] writ in no language, yet I would have him read for his matter; but as Virgil read Ennius’.47 This is not wholly inconsistent with the views of Dryden. He, like Atterbury and Jonson, must have regarded much of Spenser’s diction as antiquated but, unlike Jonson, Dryden found much to admire in his metrical management. Atterbury’s analysis of Waller’s contribution to English poetry, which has the force of contemporary witness, is worth quoting at length: We are no less beholden to him for the new turn of verse which he brought in, and the improvement he made in our numbers. Before his time men rhymed indeed, and that was all; as for the harmony of measure, and that dance of words which good ears are so much pleased with, they knew nothing of it. Their poetry then was made up almost entirely of monosyllables; which when they come together in any cluster, are certainly the most harsh, untuneable things in the world. If any man doubts this, let him read ten lines in 45 Poems to the memory of that incomparable Poet Edmund Waller Esquire . . . by several hands (London, 1688). 46 Atterbury’s preface is printed in The Poems of Edmund Waller, ed. G. Thorn Drury (London: Lawrence & Butler, 1893), pp. xxii–xxxi. 47 Ben Jonson, Complete Poems, ed. ParWtt, 428.

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Donne, and he will be quickly convinced. Besides, their verses all ran into one another, and hung together, throughout a whole copy, like the hooked atoms that compose a body in Des Cartes. There was no distinction of parts, no regular stops, nothing for the ear to rest upon; but as soon as the copy began, down it went like a larum, incessantly; and the reader was sure to be out of breath before he got to the end of it: so that verse, in those days, was but downright prose tagged with rhymes. Mr Waller removed all these faults, brought in more polysyllables, and smoother measures, bound up his thoughts better, and in a cadence more agreeable to the nature of the verse he wrote in; so that wherever the natural stops of that were, he contrived the little breakings of his sense so as to fall in with them; and, for that reason since the stress of our verse lies commonly upon the last syllable, you will hardly ever Wnd him using a word of no force there. I would say, if I were not afraid the reader would think me too nice, he commonly closes with verbs, in which we know the life of language consists. Among other improvements we may reckon that of his rhymes, which are always good, and very often the better for being new. He had a Wne ear, and knew how quickly that sense was cloyed by the same round of chiming words still returning upon it. . . . This he understood very well; and therefore, to take oV the danger of a surfeit that way, strove to please by variety and new sounds.48

And so, after his remarks on Waller’s diction, Atterbury singles out for comment the greater harmony of his verse brought about by the use of polysyllables, his use of a regular caesura, his harmonization of units of sense to the natural rhythm of his metrical line, his emphatic rhyming (with a predilection for verbs), and his avoidance of the same rhyme words in close juxtaposition. Atterbury is writing at time when the mature Augustan couplet, as energized by Dryden, was now the norm. His analysis reXects contemporary taste and the criteria he is applying are derived from the best in contemporary practice. The reWnement he is talking about is unlikely to have been wrought by a single poet, but that does not necessarily invalidate or diminish the interest of his remarks.

Waller’s sweetness Let us test this in relation to Waller’s translation of Virgil (Wrst published in 1658) at a moment in the story of Dido which readily invites harmony of numbers. Waller does not disappoint: 48 Atterbury’s preface in Poems of Waller, pp. xxiv–xxvi.


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Now was the time, when weary mortalls steep Their carefull temples in the dew of sleep; On seas, on earth, and all that in them dwell, A deathlike quiet, and deepe silence fell; But not on Dido, whose untamed mind Refus’d to be by sacred night conWn’d; (translating iv. 522–30)49

This has ease and Xow; the sense is concluded in distichs; the rhymes are strong and emphasize crucial aspects of the sense (sleep, the falling into sleep, Dido’s unconWned mind); there is a regular caesura coming variously after the fourth or Wfth syllable; the underlying rhythmical iambic pattern is predominantly regular and strong but does not obtrude at the expense of easy apprehension of the meaning. There is one monosyllabic line (the third) which is slowly digniWed (further digniWed by its biblical echo) but not clogged in movement or harsh in sound. This and subsequent examples bear out Atterbury’s analysis except perhaps in one respect. There are many disyllables here but no polysyllables, if that is taken in its literal meaning, that is words comprising many syllables (i.e. more than two). Polysyllabic words certainly occur in Waller but sparingly. Polysyllabic vocabulary is in fact more to be associated with the ‘aureate’ style of earlier times (often occurring in longer metrical units like the fourteener) than with the diction of Waller or Dryden or Pope. Waller’s virtues are only too apparent in comparison with previous couplet versions of the same passage, the earliest of which is to be found in Dido’s Death anonymously translated and published in 1622: Twas night, and in the world limbs weary tooke Sweete rest; no winds woods or sea’s raging shook When starres were turn’d halfe down, and every Weld Was still; beasts, painted birds, and all that held

49 First published in 1658 by Humphrey Moseley under the title The Passion of Dido for Æneas with the rider ‘As it is Incomparably exprest in the Fourth Book of Virgil, Translated by Edmund Waller and Sidney Godolphin Esqrs’. Waller’s portion of this joint translation appeared subsequently in the 1664 edition of his poems and is included in The Poems of Sidney Godolphin, ed. William Dighton (Oxford: OUP, 1931), 49–55: Godolphin died in 1643 so that Waller’s translation may be supposed to have been made before then, though it may have been revised later: see p. xxxix for the editor’s account. The text here is that of the 1658 edition which has no page or line numbers. It is also available in Poems of Waller, ed. Drury, 157–61.

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The Augustan Ideal: Rhyme and ReWnement Large liquid Lakes, or bush-rough thickets lay Asleepe in silent night, toyls of the day Forgetting, at hearts ease but not in mind, Unhappy Dido; she no sleep could Wnd, Her brest no rest, her sight no night receiv’d, But care encreas’d.50

From this, it emerges that Waller achieved his harmony in translation by giving himself room enough to write idiomatic English; he does not feel obliged to translate every word or phrase but has gone for the general sense and mood. The more literal version here is produced with great strain. The Latinate word order in ‘limbs weary’ goes against the native grain and obfuscates the sense in the interests of maintaining an iambic rhythm. In the interests of rhythm or emphasis, Waller also frequently inverts normal word order or varies it as in the phrase ‘to be by sacred night conWn’d’ but never in such a way as to impair sense or render it obscure. Here the delayed completion of the verb ‘conWn’d’ impels the reader to the end of the line where the sense is emphatically completed in the concluding rhyme. The earlier translation is diYcult to follow throughout, even with sympathetic punctuation. Whose heart is at ease and what is the contrast with the mind? Surely Dido is uneasy in heart and mind. The translator is not up to the task but nevertheless the stylistic pattern to which he aspires is nothing like Waller’s characteristic management of what we can call the Augustan couplet. He does not seek to conWne his sense to the distichs; the style is periodic with pronounced enjambement within and between couplets. The rhyme words are predominantly strong (except for ‘Weld’/‘held’) but are not used to emphasize anything important in the sense. The pattern of the caesura is more varied and less regular. The last full line here has Wallerian balance; otherwise it is diYcult to see how the translator is using his chosen form to convey his meaning eVectively or with clear emphasis. A further contrast is provided by Vicars in 1632: And now ’twas night, when weary limbs at ease Slept sweetly, woods were still, and calm the seas, And now starres course came to their middle height, And every Weld and bird and beast, by night, 50 Dido’s Death: Translated out of the best of Latine Poets, into the best of vulgar Languages: By one that hath no name (London: Walter Burre, 1622), no pagination or line numbers.


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And every liquid lake, and whatsoe’er The wide sharp thorny countrey coasts did beare, Lay still all fast asleep, devoid of cares, Their slumbering hearts forgetfull of aVaires. But woeful Dido’s heart no nap could take Not all the night one nod or wink could make. Her cares increase51

With napping, nodding, and winking there is a frightful deviation here from the high register required in the translation of an heroic poem. But this mean and inelegant version is easier to read, has more rhythmical Xow and uses the couplet form diVerently. The distichs stand out; the reader is invited to pause for the most part at the end and there is some attempt at balanced phrasing in the Wnal two couplets. But the rhyme words do not, like those of Waller, emphasize important aspects of the sense, and the need to rhyme takes its toll in the third distich, where the positioning of ‘whatsoe’er’ at the end (for a feeble rhyme) dislocates the sense, since grammatically it needs to govern ‘every liquid lake’ as well as ‘The wide sharp thorny country’. Yet it might be said that the rhyme words are used to bind the utterance more obviously and more successfully than in the earlier version. Nevertheless, Vicars may also be said to illustrate what Dryden had in mind when he talks of verse that was no better than prose tagged with rhyme. The same might be said of another lame version, that of Sir Robert Stapylton of 1634. ’Twas night, And wearied bodies suck’t-in sleepes delight; To their mid-revolution starres were come: Woods, Welds, the beasts, and gaudy birds were dumb, Both those about the fennes, and those that keepe The bushes, neasted in still Night, with sleepe Allay’d their cares, and hearts from labour free: But not aZicted Dido.52

In the rhythm of the opening (down to ‘dumb’) there is an attempt at smoothness to reXect the sense, but there is little reason in the rhymes 51 The XII. Aeneids of Virgil, . . . Translated into English deca-syllables by J Vicars (London, 1632), 109. 52 Dido and Aeneas: The Fourth Booke of Virgil’s Æneis, trans. Sir Robert Stapylton (London: William Cooke, 1634), Dv.

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that follow; the sense does not unfold easily and there is little harmony between meaning and metrical management. In Denham’s early manuscript version of 1636, the style is more periodic than Vicars (and even than Stapylton) with a predominant pattern of enjambement. ’Twas night: all creatures to desired ease Decline their spiritts: woods & raging seas Were silent: while the moving heavens rowle The Welds were quiet: beasts & painted fowle With sleepe asswage their labours: those as well Which keep the liquid lakes as they which dwell On hills: but Dido never can dispose Her restlesse limbs to pleasing sleepe nor close Her wakeful eies: her thoughts admitt no rest Her cares redouble; 53

This does not have Waller’s harmony but shows considerable rhetorical strength and grip. After the earlier versions of 1622 and Vicars, there is a refreshing clarity in the grammar, syntax, and sense, and unlike Stapylton Denham eVectively proportions his units of sense to the metre so as to produce continuity and emphasis. In the third couplet, the syntax and the rhyme together with the enjambement work well to propel the movement forward. Some of the rhyme words underscore the sense, most particularly ‘ease’ contrasted with ‘raging seas’, ‘dispose’, and ‘close’. In these instances, rhyme aids sense and movement so that the poet is using his chosen form creatively for emphasis. The best part of the passage is the contrasting restlessness of Dido; ‘dispose’, a digniWed Latinate word of high register for epic, is well chosen for its literal meaning. The repetition of the possessive pronoun emphasizes the contrast with what has gone before. With this example from Denham, we may conclude that the kind of harmony that Waller achieved, through balanced phrasing and even periods, is only really possible where there is a pronounced tendency to couplet closure. It is one thing to illustrate this new metrical harmony in a passage where the sense makes it obviously desirable and quite another test to

53 Lucy Hutchinson, ‘Commonplace Book’, Nottinghamshire Archives, MS DDHU 1, p. 61. There is no punctuation in the manuscript; the colons have been added to aid the reading.


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see how it works in passages of turbulence whether in descriptions of dynamic action or in the representation of strong emotions. A dynamic passage in the short extract of Virgil translated by Waller features the sounds emanating from the temple dedicated to Sychaeus and Dido’s disturbing dreams that follow. First, the early 1636 version by Denham: there was in her Court A temple, where she wonted to resort Devoutly to Sicheus ghost & mournd With milk-white Xeeces & fresh Xowers adornd: Hence did proceed shrill voices: hence she heard Her husband’s voyce, when duskie night appeard From the house top—the solitary owle In mourning accents & long sighes did howle: Then calling to her mind old prophecies Of dreadfull things to come new fears arise: Æneas seeming in her dreadfull dreames To follow & pursue her: then she seemes To be forlorne forsaken left alone, And seeking Carthage in a land unknowne: Like Pentheus whom th Eumenides aVright Who saw two sunns Thebes doubling in his sight Or like Orestes to whose fearfull view His mother seemd with Wrebrands to pursue And black envenomd adders at the gate Revengefull troopes of snake-haird furies sat: Possest with furie and opprest with cares, Resolvd to die, she time and means prepares: (translating iv. 457–75)54

In these couplets exhibiting a variable tendency to closure, there are signs of strain in the rhymes. The order of the clauses in the Wrst sentence is slightly awkward, caused doubtless by the rhyming of ‘mourned’ with ‘adorned’. An owl does not howl. The use of a trisyllable (‘prophecies’), where the accent falls on the Wrst syllable therefore precluding a strong rhyme, is rare in couplet verse of this kind, indeed rare in Denham himself. Following Virgil, Denham has a visually arresting image of the Furies at the end but the couplet in which he

54 Ibid. 58–9. No punctuation, except possibly the dash in line 7.

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has cast it is relatively weak because the rhymes, even allowing for diVerences in pronunciation, do not seem strong; the rhyme words certainly do not highlight emphatically anything important in the sense. On the other hand the rhymes from ‘dreams’ down to ‘pursue’ are not only strong in sound but propel the verse by highlighting words that are important in the sense. Such is the case in the Wnal couplet which is also strong in its balanced phrasing. Waller by contrast is much more accomplished and assured in the use of rhyme: there is no dislocation of the sense which Xows easily in units readily grasped and easily sequential. Besides, there stood, as sacred to her Lord, A marble Temple which she much ador’d, With snowy Xeeces and fresh garlands crown’d; Hence ev’ry night proceeds a dreadfull sound; Her husband’s voyce invites her to his Tomb, And dismall Owls, presage the ills to come. Besides, the prophecies of Wizards old Increast her terrour, and her fall foretold; Scorn’d, and deserted, to her self she seems And Wnds Aeneas cruell in her dreames. So to mad Pentheus, double Thebes appears, And furies howl in his distempered eares Orestes so, with like Distraction tost, Is made to Xy his Mother’s angry ghost. Now grief and fury to their height arrive; Death she decrees, and thus does it contrive. (translating iv. 457–73)

The rhyme words here (generally nouns and verbs), for the most part, comprise words that elucidate the developing narrative. We may suppose that Waller’s method of composition followed that later described by Dryden when he stressed the interrelation of rhyme and sense in the process of composition: ‘A good Poet never establishes the Wrst line till he has sought out a rhyme as may Wt the sense, already prepared to heighten the second.’55 However, what may be immediately striking after Denham is the diVerence in length. Denham has three more couplets, not because he is expansive but because he has included more of the Virgilian original. Conversely, Waller shows a tendency to 55 From An Essay on Dramatick Poesy (1668), in Dryden, Works, xvii. 69.


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summary and concision. In this he might be said to allow himself more latitude than Denham, though it is not latitude in the sense suggested by Dryden in the following celebrated deWnition, for which Waller’s translation seems not the best example: The second way [the Wrst being metaphrase, and the third imitation], is that of Paraphrase, or Translation with Latitude, where the Authour is kept in view by the Translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly follow’d as his sense; and that too is admitted to be ampliWed, but not alter’d. Such is Mr. Waller’s translation of Virgil ’s Fourth Æneid.56

Waller is coherent and cohesive throughout. There is forward movement in ‘proceeds’, ‘invites’, ‘presage the ills to come’, and ‘prophesies’ that ‘her fall foretell’. This is neatly packed together. In the two similes, the lines move smoothly but the sense is dynamic as Pentheus is aZicted with howling furies and Orestes is tossed about in distraction. Here there is deftness in the word choice, particularly in the interaction of the two polysyllabic Latinate words with the surrounding monosyllables: ‘distempered’ suggests both physical and mental disturbance, and while the ‘distraction’ is primarily mental, there is the root meaning of physical drawing away which Wts in admirably with the Xight and disturbance of Orestes. The bad temper is picked up in the anger of the ghost. There is an interlocking harmony of metre and sense, verbal harmony at its most expressive. Nevertheless, for all its virtues there is some limitation here which becomes apparent when we see (from Denham’s fuller version) what Waller has missed out. He makes no attempt to represent the ghoulish sound of the owl and his imagery in the simile is small-scale. Denham’s version lacks both the harmony of Waller and the reWned artistry of his diction but he gives fuller pictures of the physical atmosphere of the night-time, of Dido’s disturbed and forsaken state, and of the fearsome forces ranged against Orestes. On the central question concerning harmony and reWnement, it might be asked here whether Waller’s achievement is bought at the expense of a toning down of the original, which, if it is, might bode ill for Augustan translations following his lead in couplet organization. Do the primacy of Waller’s rules for the couplet, his pruning of superXuities, and his artistic control entail a diminution of the energy of the original and a limitation in expressive range? The answer in Waller’s case may

56 In the ‘Preface to Ovid’s Epistles’ (1680), in Dryden, Works, ii. 114.

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well be in the aYrmative. This being so, might this limitation demonstrated here in the translation of Virgil be emblematic of a more general diminution necessarily entailed in all couplet writing as it imposes the same strict form and controlling aesthetic on the poet’s original matter and Wrst thoughts? The best couplet composition of Waller’s fellow early Augustan John Denham (which is not represented in the examples already discussed) may suggest that that this diminution is not inevitable.

Denham’s strength Oh could I Xow like thee, and make thy stream My great example as it is my theme! Though deep, yet clear, though gentle yet not dull; Strong without rage, without o’erXowing full. (Cooper’s Hill (1642), 189–92)57

This aspiration and its embodiment in the famous description of the Thames, which is acknowledged to embody the neoclassical ideal of the couplet and was constantly cited by his Augustan successors, marks out Denham as an early pioneer of the Augustan style. Denham began his poetic career by translating Virgil. The manuscript of his version of most of Books II to VI of the Aeneid can be dated to 1636 when he was only 21. Twenty years later in 1656 he revised part of this translation for publication. In the preface accompanying his translation of a substantial part of Aeneid, II, entitled ‘The Destruction of Troy’, Denham claimed for himself the status of a pioneer. His method of translation is to allow for a new manner. In the preface he laments the injury done to Virgil by previous translators and continues: ‘the hope of doing him more right, is the only scope of this Essay, by opening up this new way of translating this Author, to those whom youth, leisure, and better fortune makes Wtter for such undertakings’.58 This short essay oVers a classic statement in its kind for the Augustan way of translating that was developed by Dryden,59 who in turn was said by Johnson to have laid down the 57 The Poetical Works of Sir John Denham, ed. Theodore Howard Banks, 2nd edn. (Hampden, Conn: Archon Books, 1969), 77. In appendix E (343–51) Banks records Imitations and references to the ‘Thames’ couplet in the Augustan period. 58 Ibid. 158–9 for the text of this preface. 59 In the ‘Preface to Ovid’s Epistles’ (1680), in Dryden, Works, ii. 117–18.


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‘just rules and examples of translation’ and ‘shewed us the true bounds of a translator’s liberty’.60 The new way was consciously to reject verbal Wdelity on the grounds that ‘Poesie is of so subtile a spirit, that in pouring it out of one Language into another, it will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be not added in the transfusion, there will remain nothing but a Caput mortuum, there being certain Graces and Happinesses peculiar to every Language . . . if Virgil needs speak English, it were Wt he should speak not only as a man of this Nation, but as a man of this age.’ This allows the translator more liberty than had been assumed by Surrey, Marlowe, and Sandys; it is a liberty he had earlier praised when he commended Fanshawe upon his translation of Guarini’s Pastor Fido of 1648: That servile path thou nobly dost decline Of tracing word by word, and line by line. Those are the labour’d births of slavish brains, Not the eVects of Poetry, but pains; Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness aVords No Xight for thoughts, but poorly sticks at words. A new and nobler way thou dost pursue To make Translations and Translators too. They but preserve the Ashes, thou the Flame, True to his sense, but truer to his fame.61

Though he may not be as original as he claims, Denham’s is one of the Wrst and certainly the clearest of early pleas in English for what Dryden later called ‘translation with latitude’,62 for, like Dryden, Denham claims a poet’s licence with regard to omission and addition: ‘Where my expressions are not so full as his, either our Language, or my Art were defective (but I rather suspect myself;) but where mine are fuller than his, they are but the impression which the often reading of him, hath left upon my thoughts; so that if they are not his own Conceptions, they are at least the results of them.’ In the translation itself, Denham shows a new-found conWdence in English and in his chosen medium for translation, the heroic couplet. His conWdence in the new manner is apparent from the beginning. His deployment of the couplet is by no means uniform, as the previous

60 Johnson, Lives, i. 422 and 469. 61 Poetical Works of Denham, ed. Banks, 143–4. 62 Dryden, Works, ii. 117–18.

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examples drawn from his early translation of 1636 in relation to Waller may indicate, but there is a pronounced tendency towards closure and a predilection for strong rhymes. In the following extract from the boxing match in Book V (also composed in 1636), the management of emphasis brings out the contrast between the two Wghters and the interaction between them. The strong metrical stresses coincide with what needs to be stressed in the sense; similarly important aspects of the sense are emphasized by most of the rhyme words (all nouns and verbs) which are strongly resounding: Then good Æneas both their arms & hands With equall arms invests: they without feare Their brawny bodies on their tiptoes reare: Aloft into the ayre their armes they throw, Joyne hand to hand & blow exchange for blow And drawing back their heads the strokes avoyd: Dares a fresh & vigorous youth enjoyd And so excell’d in nimblenesse and speed: In strength & bulk Entellus did exceed But his faint knees with trembling age did quake And all his joints his panting breath did shake: They many blows exchange: give wound for wound: Their hollow brests & sides the strokes resound; Their weapons Xie about their ears & brows, And crack each others jaws with ponderous blows: (translating v. 424–36)63

The expression is clear, vigorous, and direct; there is the occasional latinate word (invests, resounds) imparting dignity but it is the rhythmical management and syntax (with several verbs delayed to the end of lines thus propelling the reader forward) that successfully lifts the utterance above the level of ordinary prose. The controlling eVect of the metrical form approximates to the ideal: ‘strong without rage, without o’erXowing full’. Even where there is enjambement, Denham shows in this early translation a tendency to resolve his periods in full resounding lines, as in the next example when Aeneas arrives in Hades at the area reserved for those who have committed suicide: The next those pensive wretches held, which slew Themselves, and cast away their lives t’ eschew 63 Hutchinson, ‘Commonplace Book’, 83–4.


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The hated light, how faine would they againe Returne to want & toil! but Fates restrayne, And th’ unrenavigable Stygian sound, Whose nine times winding streams their mansion bound. (translating vi. 434–9)64

The Wnal line beautifully captures in its sound and movement the inexorable Wnality of their conWnement. Both these extracts are taken from the version of 1636. The version of the later books is surer, as he evidently improved with practice. When in his maturity he came to revise the version of the earlier books for publication, his revisions invariably strengthen his expression, as in the following narrative of the Trojan capture of the Greek Sinon who is the agent of their downfall: Meane while, with shouts & cries before the King A youth in chaines the Trojan shepheards bring Who Wrst himselfe then us he did betray At once the taker & at once the prey Firmly prepared and of th’ event secured Or of this death or his desire assured (1636; translating ii. 57–62)65 Meanwhile a fetter’d pris’ner to the king With joyful shouts the Dardan Shepherds bring, Who to betray us did himself betray At once the Taker and at once the Prey, Firmly prepar’d, of one event secur’d Or of his Death or his Design assur’d. (1656; ll. 55–60)66

The adjective ‘joyful’ in 1656 shows an ironic awareness and the greater sophistication of the third line more neatly expresses the purposeful treachery of Sinon (further picked up in ‘design’ rather than ‘desire’), giving an added charge to the already Wne antithesis of the next line. In the Wnal couplet, small changes sharpen the clarity of the alternative outcomes attendant upon Sinon’s reception. The balanced expression, already in place in 1636, is improved by a

64 Ibid. 120. The translation of Book VI is punctuated. 66 Poetical Works of Denham, ed. Banks, 162.

65 Ibid. 6.

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tightening of its rhetorical structure that renders the sense more emphatically. The later revisions of the earlier version in ‘The Passion of Dido for Aeneas’ published in 1668 are more far reaching and bolder. O wretched love to what dost thou enforce Poore mortall wights: againe she hath recourse To tears & prayers, againe to cruell love Submits herselfe (1636; translating iv. 412–15)67 Ah cruel Love! To what thou dost inforce Poor Mortal Breasts? again she hath recourse To Tears and Prayers; again she feels the smart Of a fresh wound from his tyrannic Dart. (1668: ll. 112–15)68

A heightened sense of the cruelty of love’s power is given more emphatic expression in the couplet form. Dido’s passionate rhetoric is accordingly more forceful and stinging: Æneas at length she greets: Canst thou dissemble such a crime & Xy Out of our land by stealth perWdiously: Could not the love the plighted troth the hand Of diing Dido, thy attempts withstand: And in the depths of winter darest thou The billows of the foaming Ocean plow: Hadst thou not sought a land a coast unknowne And followd after kingdoms not thine owne If Troy were to her ancient glorie brought, Should Troy againe through surging seas be sought: Fliest thou from me (1636; translating iv. 305–14)69 The Queen with rage inXam’d Thus greets him, thou dissembler wouldst thou Xye Out of my arms by stealth perWdiously? Could not the hand I plighted nor the Love, 67 Hutchinson, ‘Commonplace Book’, 57. 68 Poetical Works of Denham, ed. Banks, 184. 69 Hutchinson, ‘Commonplace Book’, 52–3.


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Nor thee the Fate of dying Dido move? And in the depth of Winter and the night Dark as thy black designs to take thy Xight, To plow the raging Seas to Coasts unknown, The Kingdom thou pretendst to not thy own; Were Troy restor’d, thou shouldst mistrust a wind False as they Vows, and as thy heart unkind. Fly’st thou from me? (1668; translating ll. 20–31)70

The earlier version is strong but the couplets of the revised version deliver a more impassioned rage. The sense is improved and with it the form in which it is cast. If we look to changes in the sense Wrst, the accusing Dido in the second version makes us feel her emotion and her deep sense of betrayal much more strongly. ‘Out of my arms’ is more personal than ‘Out of my land’. Her appeal in the next couplet ‘Nor thee the fate of dying Dido move’ is more simply emotional than the weaker earlier version ending with the more impersonal ‘thy attempts withstand’. In the earlier version when Dido asks how Aeneas can brave the ocean in the depth of winter, her question is limited to the issue of physical safety. In the revision, she accuses him of trying to sneak oV at an unexpected time and in the middle of the night; the imported simile ‘Dark as thy designs’ puts Aeneas in a very bad light as a scheming rogue. Her contempt for his supposed mission is shown in the imported ‘thou pretendst to’ qualifying the kingdom to which he is sailing. There is a real sting imparted to the Wnal couplet in the revised version which returns to the issue of trust and betrayal with her statement that even if Troy were restored, Aeneas would ‘mistrust’ the treacherous winter wind. Within this is also an appeal to stay. The Wnal imported similes (‘False as they Vows, and as thy heart unkind’) take us to the heart of the matter highlighting her sense of his treachery and heartlessness. The revision has succeeded in condensing much more sense into the same number of lines. Every word counts and this applies particularly to the rhyme words which are not only emphatic in sound but also emphasize important points in the developing rhetoric, starting with Xight and ending in heartlessness. In the earlier version, this cannot be said to the same extent, particularly in the case of ‘withstand’, ‘thou’, ‘plow’,

70 Poetical Works of Denham, ed. Banks, 182.

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‘brought’, ‘sought’. In 1668, Denham is composing after he has acquired through practice greater poetical mastery of his medium and in the wake of growing vernacular conWdence in relation to translation of the classics. ‘The Passion of Dido for Aeneas’ was published near the time when Abraham Cowley in the preface to his Pindaric Odes strongly advocated the need for a conscious addition of ‘wit and invention’71 if translation is to be successful. Even comparatively small changes can have a transforming eVect: And ye o Tyrians with immortal hate Persue his race: this service dedicate To my beloved ashes: let there be Betweene our seeds no league nor amitie Let some revenger from my ashes rise That may infest the Trojan colonies, Invading them with Wre & sword: at length When time to our endeavours shall adde strength, Let seas & shores to shores be opposite And armes to armes & lett our oVspring Wght’ (1636; translating iv. 622–9)72 And ye oh Tyrians with immortal hate Pursue his race, this service dedicate To my deplored ashes; let there be ’Twixt us and them no League nor Amity; May from my bones a new Achilles rise, That shall infest the Trojan Colonies With Fire, and Sword, and Famine; when at length Time to our great attempts contributes strength; Our Seas, our Shores, our Armies theirs oppose And may our Children be for ever Foes. (1668; ll. 201–10)73

What is immediately noticeable here is the greatly improved conclusion to Dido’s Wnal imprecation. The earlier version ends abruptly whereas in 1668 Dido concludes with weighty deliberation on a note of high solemnity in language worthy of a powerful queen. In both cases the rhyme words are emphatic in the sense but ‘And may our Children be

71 The Poems of Abraham Cowley, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge: CUP, 1905), 155. 72 Hutchinson, ‘Commonplace Book’, 64–5. 73 Poetical Works of Denham, ed. Banks, 187–8.


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for ever Foes’ in its sense (emphasizing eternity), its solemn music (the long vowel sounds completing a pattern set by the repetition of ‘our’), and its grand cadence (where the word order demands that the line be read as a whole) has a potent Wnality that makes ‘and let our oVspring Wght’ seem by comparison lame and anticlimactic. Denham, a royalist, learnt to endow his queen with becoming dignity and to write in a style that emulates the majesty of old father Thames. Dido had never spoken like this in English before.

Waller, Denham, and Dryden Comparison of their Virgil translations may explore further the continuing evolution of the couplet and suggest both the debt owed by Dryden to predecessors and his surpassing originality in his deployment of the form. Dryden’s nightpiece, twice the length of Waller’s, has all the smoothness and sweetness of his predecessor’s metrical harmony but uses it to evoke an extended idyll beyond anything sustained by Waller. ’Twas dead of Night, when weary Bodies close Their Eyes in balmy Sleep, and soft Repose: The Winds no longer whisper through the Woods, Nor murm’ring Tides disturb the gentle Floods. The Stars in silent order mov’d around, And Peace, with downy wings, was brooding on the ground. The Flocks and Herds, and parti-colour’d Fowl, Which haunt the Woods, or swim the weedy Pool; Stretch’d on the quiet Earth securely lay, Forgetting the past Labours of the day. All else of Nature’s common Gift partake; Unhappy Dido was alone awake. (iv. 757–68)

In his version of the disturbed Dido, cited earlier from Waller’s translation, Dryden maintains Waller’s virtues and also supplies his deWciencies; he retains his metrical harmony with balanced phrasing and end-stopped couplets but is more Xexible in his rhythmical arrangement (with more varied caesuras). The resulting translation is fully adequate to the matter of the original; it is strong in aural and visual

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imagery. In the case of the owl we hear in the subtle mixture of repeated ‘o’ and ‘a’ sounds the ominous foreboding note of nocturnal sounds: Oft, when she visited this lonely Dome, Strange Voices issu’d from her Husband’s Tomb: She thought she heard him summon her away; Invite her to his Grave; and chide her stay. Hourly ’tis heard, when with a bodeing Note The solitary Screech-Owl strains her throat, And on a Chimney’s top, or Turret’s hight, With Songs obscene, disturbs the Silence of the Night. (iv. 667–74)

The last line here with its extra foot (an alexandrine) disturbs the rhythmical pattern and causes the reader to linger over the disturbed silence. Like Pentheus, when, distracted with his Fear He saw two Suns, and double Thebes, appear: Or mad Orestes, when his Mother’s Ghost Full in his Face infernal Torches tost; And shook her snaky locks: he shuns the sight, Flies o’er the Stage, surpris’d with mortal fright: The Furies guard the Door; and intercept his Xight. (iv. 681–7)

Dryden has found Waller useful; his ‘distraction’ contributed to the mad fear of Pentheus and his rhyme of ‘ghost’ with ‘tossed’ is vividly transformed when the latter word from being primarily abstract in Waller is made straightforwardly and dynamically physical by Dryden. In the triplet, Dryden has allowed himself a metrical liberty at the close of the similes, with three strong rhymes (in both sound and sense): ‘sight’ leading to ‘fright’ and the thwarted desire for ‘Xight’ in which the sense of entrapment in Orestes and therefore Dido is Wnely Wgured in a far more dramatic (and visual) climax than is achieved by Waller or, for that matter, by Denham as well. Although they both published translations from Book IV, there is very little overlap in the matter translated by Denham and Waller, only a few lines in fact. Nevertheless a comparison can be made between them in relation to Dryden in their two versions of the moment when Aeneas proves obdurate in the face of pleas from Dido’s sister Anna. Here Wrst is Waller: All this her weeping sister doth repeat To the stern man, whom nothing could intreat, Lost were her pray’rs, and helpless were her tears


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Fate, and great Jove, had stopt his gentler ears, As when loud winds, a well-grown oak would rend Up by the roots, this way and that they bend His reeling trunk, and with a boist’rous sound Scatter his leaves, and strew them on the ground, He Wxed stands, as deep his roots doe lie Down to the centre, as his top is high; No less on ev’ry side the heroe prest Feels love and pity shake his noble breast And down his cheeks though fruitless tears do roll Unmov’d remains the purpose of his soul. (translating iv. 437–49)

Denham: Thus she intreats; such messages with tears Condoling Anne to him, and from him bears; But him no Prayers, no Arguments can move, The Fates resist, his Ears are stopt by Jove; As when Werce Northern blasts from th’ Alpes descend From his Wrm roots with struggling gusts to rend An aged sturdy Oak, the ratling sound Grows loud, with leaves and scatter’d arms the ground Is over-layd; yet he stands Wxt, as high As his proud head is raised towards the Sky, So low towards Hell his roots descend. With Pray’rs And Tears the Hero thus assail’d, great cares He smothers in his Breast, yet keeps his Post, All their addresses and their labour lost. (The Passion of Dido for Aeneas, 138–51)

Metrically, Waller is certainly the smoother of the two. Both translators vary the pauses with particular eVect in the simile to render the wild movement of the wind battling against the tree but Waller is the more regular of the two, starting and concluding with Xuid lines that are predominantly end-stopped. In Denham, there is more enjambement throughout and the double enjambement delaying the introduction of the tree cuts across the couplet form more dramatically than anything in Waller. Denham, too, has a full stop after the fourth foot (after ‘descend’). As far as ‘sweetness’ and ‘strength’ goes, it is worth reXecting that these qualities may be seen in the translators’ respective interpretations of the Latin: metrical management reXecting perhaps a diVerence in temperament and disposition. Although the ‘hero’ has to remain obdurate, Waller evokes a ‘gentler’ Aeneas who, like the reeling tree, is a victim, shaken by

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love and pity and shedding copious tears. Indeed, in one manuscript version,74 the tree itself is feminized, despite the fact that the oak is masculine in Latin, perhaps to suggest vulnerability. The sensitivity gives great emphasis to the resolution of the Wnal line. Denham by contrast is much more robust; the oak, deliberately highlighted by the double enjambement, is ‘sturdy’ and, despite the racket around him ‘stands Wxt’ with his head held ‘proud’. The tears are those of his assailant, Dido’s sister. Aeneas shows nothing on the surface. He ‘smothers’ his ‘cares’ which might even be tactical worries as much as emotional distress in view of the military associations in the following phrase ‘yet keeps his Post’. It cannot be said that either reading is wrong for the Wnal clause ‘lacrimae volvuntur inanes’ (iv. 449) is open to interpretation: the tears could be those of Aeneas, or Anna or both. Having read both these predecessors, Dryden in his expansive version has something of both. This mournful message, Pious Anna bears, And seconds with her own, her Sister’s Tears. But all her Arts are still employ’d in vain; Again she comes, and is refus’d again. His harden’d Heart nor Pray’rs nor Threatnings move; Fate, and the God, had stop’d his Ears to Love. As when the Winds their airy Quarrel try; Justling from ev’ry quarter of the Sky; This way and that, the Mountain Oak they bend, His Boughs they shatter, and his Branches rend; With Leaves, and falling Mast, they spread the Ground, The hollow Vallies echo to the Sound: Unmoved, the Royal Plant their Fury mocks; Or shaken, clings more closely to the Rocks: Far as he shoots his tow’ring Head on high, So deep in Earth his Wx’d Foundations lie; No less a storm the Trojan Heroe bears; Thick Messages and loud Complaints he hears; And bandy’d Words, still beating on his Ears. Sighs, Groans and Tears proclaim his inward Pains But the Wrm purpose of his Heart remains. (iv. 632–52) 74 ‘they bend j her reeling trunke, and with a boystrous sound j scatter her leaves, and strew them on the ground, j she Wxed stands’: this is the version as it appears in Dighten’s edition of Godolphin; see n. 48, above.


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Despite having a ‘harden’d Heart’, Dryden’s Aeneas here sheds tears. In Virgil, there is an antithesis between ‘mens’ (l. 490) ‘mind’ or ‘will’ and ‘pectore’ (l. 448) ‘the heart’. None of the translators quite does justice to this, but like Waller, Dryden produces a Wne climactic line. The oak is magniWed with an elevated touch, characteristic of Dryden but alien to the earlier Augustans, in the periphrastic personiWcation ‘Royal Plant’, further extended in the phrase ‘tow’ring Head’. Symbolic associations are therefore intensiWed but there is also more precise physical detail in Dryden. All the translators have sound eVects, Denham more than Waller but there is much more sound and fury in Dryden not only in relation to the wind and tree with the additional line in which the sound echoes in the vallies but also in the storm of complaint raised by the women. As to metre, Dryden throughout exhibits the easy Xuency of Waller; in fact, rhythmically he is smoother with more obvious pauses at the end of lines and with more ‘full resounding lines’ (Wve to Waller’s two). Waller uses enjambement throughout the simile; to get his variety of movement, Dryden eschews enjambement in favour of much greater pausal variation within lines. Waller by contrast has little pausal variation. All but two of his lines have a pause after four or Wve syllables while Dryden in the simile has pauses after two and six or three syllables and sometimes has no pause at all. Avoidance of persistent enjambement has the eVect of allowing the rhyme words to have maximum impact for their clarifying emphasis. All three translators have strong rhymes but Dryden is best by far in their management. In Dryden’s metrical and rhythmical management in this passage there is nothing to impede the rapid onward Xow. Pausal variation, as well as enjambement, is a source of rhythmical variety in Denham but Denham far from being smooth is often awkward and abrupt, as in his second line or in his eleventh and twelfth where strong pauses towards the end of lines halt the Xow and incapacitate the rhyme. Juxtaposition of these versions shows that Dryden has Waller’s smoothness and metrical sweetness but also that he has much more strength and physical energy than Waller, as much energy as Denham manages in his simile but maintained beyond it. In Dryden here there is indeed an ‘Easie Vigor’ ‘where Denham’s Strength and Waller’s Sweetness join’. In Dryden too, there is a more varying verse than we Wnd in Waller, in two respects. He is bold in his use of the alexandrine and the triplet, thus varying the basic couplet pattern. And within the couplet he has a more variable use of the caesura.

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Vigour reWned Dryden’s achievement in the heroic couplet therefore is the culmination of a process of reWnement analogous to the process that had led to Virgil’s reWnement of the Latin hexameter.75 It necessarily involves all aspects of the poetic art even though it is usually referred to as the ‘reWnement of our numbers’. That reWnement enables more vigorous expression may be suggested from Dryden’s translation of the extract from the boxing match cited earlier in the 1636 version of Denham (itself vigorous and poised): Then just Æneas equal arms supply’d, Which round their Shoulders to their wrists they ty’d. Both on the tiptoe stand, at full extent, Their arms aloft, their Bodies inly bent; Their Heads from aiming Blows they bear afar; With clashing Gauntlets then provoke the War. One on his Youth and pliant Limbs relies; One on his Sinews, and his Gyant size. ) The last is stiV with Age, his Motion slow, He heaves for Breath, he staggers to and fro; And Clouds of issuing Smoak his Nostrils loudly blow. Yet equal in Success, they ward, they strike; Their ways are diV’rent, but their Art alike. Before, behind, the blows are dealt; around Their hollow sides the ratling Thumps resound. A Storm of Strokes, well meant, with fury Xies, And errs about their Temples, Ears, and Eyes. Nor always errs; for oft the Gauntlet draws A sweeping stroke, along the crackling Jaws. (v. 564–82)

Dryden has taken more advantage of the latitude allowed to the neoclassical translator (he has two more couplets than Denham) to give a more precise picture of the boxers’ artistry. In his Xexible metrical management and syntactical variation, there is more ducking and weaving. On the one hand, he oVers something quite realistic: what seems like an indiscriminate slugging match conceals an underlying artistry. The modiWcation ‘Nor always errs’ credibly evokes the spectacle of an even Wght (they are ‘equal in Success’) in which some of the 75 This reWnement is exempliWed in detailed analysis of passages in Chapter 4 under the headings ‘Imitation and Refinement’ and ‘Concentration and Unity’, pp. 259–82.


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apparently random erring blows hit home. At the same time, this is an epic Wght involving a Wghter who has grappled with Hercules. Entellus is ‘of Gyant size’; ‘Clouds of Smoak’ issue from his nostrils (a daring hyperbole this); they ‘provoke a War’ and there is a ‘Storm of Strokes’. Dryden’s language has more hyperbolic and metaphoric touches than Denham’s, raising the encounter almost beyond the merely mortal. It is wonderfully dynamic and Xuent; even when he breaks the usual pattern by having a strong stop before the rhyme word, there is nothing awkward. ‘Before, behind, the blows are dealt; around j Their hollow sides the ratling Thumps resound’. The eVect is twofold: Wrst to highlight the preposition ‘around’ (deftly following on from the earlier prepositions ‘behind’ and ‘before’) which intensiWes the action and secondly to intensify the sound eVects where the rhyme with ‘resound’ creates a fully resounding line in which sound energetically echoes sense. In his revised version of ‘The Passion of Dido for Aeneas’, Denham endows the queen with a regal Wnale. The language of Dryden’s Dido has a more even dignity while containing a more deliberate and thoroughgoing hatred extending even to the Trojan name: These are my Pray’rs, and this my dying Will: And you my Tyrians ev’ry curse fulWll. Perpetual Hate, and mortal Wars proclaim, Against the Prince, the People, and the Name. These grateful OV’rings on my Grave bestow, Nor League, nor Love, the hostile Nations know: Now, and from hence in ev’ry future Age, When Rage excites your Arms, and Strength supplies the Rage: Rise some Avenger of our Lybian Blood, With Fire and Sword pursue the perjur’d Brood: Our Arms, our Seas, our Shores, oppos’d to theirs, And the same hate descend on all our Heirs. (iv. 893–904)

There are several additional sophistications not in Denham. In ‘perjur’d Brood’, Dido relates Aeneas’ betrayal to the perjury of his nation who had refused to pay the gods for their help in building their walls, and in ‘our Lybian Blood’ is a dual reference, to the Carthaginian nationality but also to Dido herself about to shed her own blood on the pyre. The context of her imminent death has been apparent from the beginning in

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her ‘dying Will’ (this is her heartfelt last will and testament) and is continued in the ‘mortal Wars’ and reference to ‘my Grave’. About the future, Dido is emphatic: ‘ev’ry future Age’ carries the notion of endless repetition. The alexandrine that follows, with its deliberate repetition of ‘Rage’, looks deliberately to this future but also expresses Dido’s settled emotion in the present. If we think of her present, it also reminds us of the strength of purpose necessary for her suicide. Her utterance is calmly cohesive. She began by declaring her ‘dying Will’; she ends with the willed hatred of her Wnal line, where ‘descend’ is brilliantly apposite as her curse transmits her hatred as a legacy to her descendants. This heavily accented fully resounding Wnal line makes a more emphatic climax even than the forceful Wnal line of Denham: ‘And may our children be forever foes’. Underneath the digniWed regality of this highly controlled utterance smoulders an implacable rage and hatred. As in Virgil, the utterance contrives to be general (we know that Hannibal is being alluded to) but it is also deeply personal. This kind of sophistication is way in advance of anything in the early Augustans. THE FULL AUGUSTAN AESTHETIC

Dryden and Denham on the death of Priam compared76 In his ‘Postscript to the Æneis’, Dryden with a sure eye to his posthumous reputation summed up what he considered to be his contribution to English poetry in the following terms: For, what I have done, Imperfect as it is, for want of Health and leisure to Correct it, will be judg’d in after Ages, and possibly in the present, to be no dishonour to my Native Country; whose Language and Poetry wou’d be more esteem’d abroad, if they were better understood. Somewhat (give me leave to say) I have added to both of them in the choice of Words, and Harmony of Numbers which were wanting, especially the last, in all our Poets, even in those who being endu’d with Genius, yet have not Cultivated their Mother-Tongue with suYcient Care, or relying on the Beauty of their Thoughts, have judg’d the Ornament of Words, and sweetness of Sound unnecessary. (Works, vi. 807)

Denham was one of Dryden’s predecessors who was ‘endu’d with Genius’, who, as an early reWner of the couplet, might have taken issue with Dryden here. But Denham’s achievement is patchy; his virtues are not sustained. And his virtues themselves are more limited than Dryden’s as 76 This section was Wrst published as ‘Augustan Dryden’ in John Dryden: Classicist and Translator in Translation & Literature, 10 (2001), 51–66.

The Mature Augustan Aesthetic

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comparison between their Virgil translations will show. Dryden himself almost invites this comparison, for he concluded his translation of the death of Priam with a direct borrowing of a whole line from Denham (acknowledged in a note) at the end of the episode when the Trojan king lies ‘A headless carcass, and a nameless thing’ (ii. 763: v. 403).

Metrical harmony and variety There is a very little point to be made about the opening lines of their translations of Aeneid, ii. 506–58: ‘Now Priams fate perhaps you may enquire’ (Denham), ‘Perhaps you may of Priam’s Fate enquire’ (Dryden). The change of word order and emphasis that Dryden brings to Denham brings with it a more even accentuation which gives the line in Dryden both more lilt and a more regular underlying beat. There is throughout a greater metrical certainty and assurance in Dryden, but Dryden’s claim was for sweetness of sound and metrical harmony. The prevailing sweetness of sound is most clearly demonstrated where perhaps it might be least expected in the brutal climax of Priam’s death. If we compare the two translations, it is apparent that the underlying harmony is not such as to detract from the impact of what is being described; paradoxically the horror is intensiWed. Denham Wrst: So through His Sons warm bloud, the trembling King he drew To th’Altar; in his hair one hand he wreathes; His sword, the other in his bosom sheaths. (ll. 538–41)

Now Dryden: With that he dragg’d the trembling Sire Slidd’ring through clotter’d Blood, and holy Mire, ) (The mingl’d Paste his murder’d Son had made,) Haul’d from beneath the violated Shade; And on the Sacred Pile, the Royal Victim laid. His right Hand laid his bloody Fauchion bare; His left he twisted in his hoary Hair; ) Then, with a speeding Thrust, his Heart he found: The lukewarm Blood came rushing through the wound, And sanguine Streams distain’d the sacred Ground. (ii. 748–57)


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What is less than four lines in Denham has been expanded to fully ten lines including two triplets in Dryden with much more speciWc and repellent physical detail; but the digniWed rhythm, marked here by subtle eVects of alliteration and assonance ‘The mingl’d Paste his murder’d Son had made’, as in Homer and Virgil, sustains the elevated tone even in the least elevated moments of the epic and honours Priam, the royal victim, in the gross indignity of his death, with a kind of poetic dignity. There is pathos but also dignity as the lukewarm blood is transmuted into the generalized formula of the ‘sanguine Streams’ at the end. ‘Yet his Numbers are perpetually varied, to increase the delight of his Reader’,77 Dryden said of Virgil. There is too greater metrical variety in Dryden than Denham which can be demonstrated in the following juxtaposition of their version of the pursuit of Polites by Pyrrhus. First Denham: Mean while Polites one of Priams sons Flying the rage of bloudy Pyrrhus, runs Through foes & swords, & ranges all the Court And empty Galleries, amaz’d and hurt, Pyrrhus pursues him, now oertakes, now kills, And his last blood in Priams presence spills. (ll. 518–23)

Now Dryden: Behold Polites, one of Priam’s Sons Pursu’d by Pyrrhus, there for safety runs. Thro’ Swords, and Foes, amaz’d and hurt, he Xies Through empty Courts, and open Galleries: Him Pyrrhus, urging with his Lance, pursues; And often reaches, and his thrusts renews. The Youth transWx’d, with lamentable Cries Expires, before his wretched Parent’s Eyes: (ii. 718–25)

Denham is impressive and leads the way. Dryden has taken from him several doublets ‘Through foes & swords’, ‘amaz’d and hurt’, ‘the Court and empty Galleries’ and rearranged them, again allowing himself more

77 In the ‘Preface to the Sylvae ’, in Dryden, Works, iii. 6.


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scope by turning Denham’s six lines into eight. One little reWnement on Denham is Dryden’s well-vowelled line ‘Through empty Courts, and open Galleries’. Is it fanciful to hear in the collocation of like but slightly varied ‘o’ sounds an echoing eVect that helps to suggest the distance covered in this ghastly chase? But the main point to stress in this example concerns metrical variety. It is not simply a question of Dryden having greater variety in his distribution of pauses. The danger, intricacy, and length of the pursuit are heightened in Dryden by a greater suppleness in the syntax and word order. Denham’s syntax is simple and straightforward. In one long sentence, while Polites runs, Pyrrhus pursues him, overtakes him, and kills him in Priam’s presence; the sense is extended over six lines. In Dryden, the sense is contained in each couplet. The focus moves from Polites to Pyrrhus, back to Polites, and on to Priam. The phrase ‘Pursu’d by Pyrrhus’ interrupts his run for safety. In the next line the subject is delayed till the Wnal foot, ‘he Xies’. The Wrst line of the ensuing couplet is Latinate in its word order; there is a suspension of the sense with the object coming before the subject and an interrupting clause before the main verb at the end ‘pursues’ so that the reader is propelled forward with Polites. Although Polites is the object, the word order gives him primacy and links him to the previous couplet. There is a similar eVect in the line ‘Whom, gasping at his feet, when Priam saw’. Poetical syntax gives variation, suspension, forward movement, and backward connection.

Ornament of words ‘Virgil had a stock, which I may call almost inexhaustible, of Wgurative, elegant, and sounding words’, remarked Dryden in his ‘Dedication of the Æneis’.78 His greater dexterity in Wnding an English equivalence and in his choice and placement of words (twin aspects of ‘ornament’ in this context) can be illustrated in a comparison of the poets’ descriptions of the altar and the tree that constitute the setting in which the action takes place. First Denham: There stood an Altar open to the view Of Heaven, near which an aged Lawrel grew, Whose shady arms the household Gods embrac’d; (ll. 502–4)

78 Works, v. 333.


112 Now Dryden:

Uncover’d but by Heav’n, there stood in view An Altar; near the hearth a Lawrel grew; Dodder’d with Age, whose Boughs encompass round The Household Gods, and shade the holy Ground. (ii. 700–3)

Three lines in Denham become four lines in Dryden who brings out the Wgurative signiWcance of ‘ara’ in the Latin (the word is stressed in Virgil with ‘ara’ in lines 513 and 514 and then ‘altaria’ in line 515) because, of course, the killing of Priam on the altar has sacriWcial eVect) by translating it as ‘hearth’ in its second appearance: in Latin, the word ‘ara’ has warm associations: ‘pro aris et focis pugnare’ ‘to Wght for altars and Wres, for one’s dearest possessions’; in English, an altar is a cold word, but hearth is certainly warm, in its literal meaning and its Wgurative associations. The laurel is in the Latin ‘veterrima’ (l. 513) ‘very old’; Denham’s ‘aged’ becomes in an inspired touch on the part of Dryden, ‘Dodder’d’, which has both literal and Wgurative signiWcance at the same time. The literal meaning as given in the OED is: ‘Having lost the top or branches through age or decay’ but Dryden uses doddered to link with the doddery Priam’s age, an imaginative licence derived from Virgil’s description of Priam ‘trementibus aevo . . . umeris’ (ii. 509–10) ‘with shoulders trembling with age’. But the feebleness implied in doddered is immediately countered by the beautifully digniWed description of the tree’s boughs in a line and a half that have all the musicality of a Keats or Tennyson: ‘encompass’ is a digniWed, elegant, and sounding word. Here are Dryden’s ‘well-vowelled words’, used not gratuitously but for a purpose, to evoke the sacred dignity of the setting, a dignity that is about to be rudely violated. Not all Dryden’s words are chosen for their elegance, however. When the women take refuge at the altar, Dryden translates the Latin ‘amplexae’ ‘embrace’ by the vernacular ‘hug’: ‘Their Images they hugg’ (l. 707), which captures better than the more formal ‘embrace’ their emotional desperation. Dryden’s digniWed style, largely the eVect of word order and rhythm, does not exclude, in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘the native thew and sinew of the English language’,79 a judgement equally about rhythm

79 In a letter to Robert Bridges, 6 Nov. 1887; see Gerard Manley Hopkins, Selected Letters, ed. Catherine Phillips (Oxford: OUP, 1990), 265.


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and word choice. In fact elegance is not the main criterion in Dryden’s choice of words. ‘Dodder’d’, ‘slidder’d’, ‘clotter’d’—these are not elegant words though they are sounding ones. The decorum of sound, where sound echoes sense, takes precedence over mere elegance. Though it would be dangerous to generalize about the diction of such a long work from such a short extract, it is worth noting that generalized formulaic diction like the ‘sanguine streams’ is little in evidence here. Ornament is provided by sound and by the use of words that have both a literal and a Wgurative signiWcance, the notable example here being ‘dodder’d’ but there are others.

Rhetorical Wgures In his postscript, Dryden does not refer to the Wgures but in his various pronouncements upon the Roman poets Virgil is again his model, particularly in respect of his restraint in their use, to what he calls Virgil’s ‘judicious management of the Figures’.80 ‘He is everywhere above the conceits of epigrammatic wit and gross hyperboles’.81 A notable hyperbole in Dryden occurs early on when he is describing the arming of Priam. His feeble shoulders scarce the weight sustain: ) Loaded, not arm’d, he creeps along, with pain; Despairing of Success; ambitious to be slain! (ii. 697–9)

This triplet culminates in an alexandrine that seems to have been worked up from the hint provided by Denham’s ‘Not for their Fate, but to provoke his own’ (l. 501), taking the future participle ‘moriturus’ (l. 511) as meaning not merely doomed to die but also as expressing motive, with the intention to die. It is certainly not an unmeaning or needless alexandrine though perhaps we would not miss it if it had not been there. The triplet as a whole emphasizes the feebleness and futility of the exercise and brings out the human plight of Priam. In his heroic plays and sometimes in his panegyrics, Dryden produced hyperboles that are indubitably gross. Here Virgilian restraint is sacriWced a little in the interests of physical and emotional emphasis. Later the feebleness of Priam is again emphasized in hyperbolic language when the javelin that he throws ‘Xutt’ring, seemd to loiter 80 Dryden, Works, v. 326.

81 Ibid. ii. 242.

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as it Xew’ (l. 743) before faintly tinkling on the shield. Dryden allowed his imagination to draw out pictorially what may only be implied in the Latin. Compared with Denham, Dryden’s verse has a Wgurative richness, and this is true also of Pope and of the later Augustans generally, which is a means of drawing out the sense and giving added pictorial expressiveness. To sum up, what Dryden has done in a variety of ways (involving metrical reWnement, the use of poetical syntax, attention to diction and sound, deployment of the Wgures) is to add the ornaments of poetry to the comparatively bald substructure of Denham; in a word he has endowed him with ornatus, ornament of language. Virgil was particularly associated with the term in the Renaissance and his poetic style, in the comparison that was often made with the simpler style of Homer, was frequently distinguished from the Greek by virtue of its greater ornamentation. This is what lies behind the censure of Homer in the likes of Vida’s De Arte Poetica. Ornatus and its derivatives are frequently used by Cicero when he is referring to all the Wgures of rhetoric,82 whether Wgures of sense, of arrangement, or of sound, by which language is made forceful and emphatic. In all ancient rhetorical theory, and therefore in all literary and poetic theory in the Renaissance that takes its cue from the rhetorical tradition, this ornamentation comprised of these Wgures is never an end in itself but always a means to the greater end of clear and emphatic expressiveness. This is the justiWcation for what Dryden calls his greater ‘ornament of words’, and what we may call the full Augustan aesthetic. What he has made clearer and more emphatic than Denham is the feebleness of old Priam, the sense of violation that his death over the altar entails, and the ugly horror of it all. In pursuit of his aims in translation, Dryden took full advantage of the method laid out by early predecessors such as Denham himself. In one sense, he was not aiming to reproduce Virgil’s distinguishing poetic character in his English version. When he had begun translation he concluded that this was impossible: ‘Virgil, therefore, being so very sparing of his words, and leaving so much to be imagin’d by the Reader, can never be translated as he ought, in any modern Tongue. To make him Copious is to alter his Character, and to Translate him Line for Line

82 e.g. ‘oratoria ornamenta dicendi’ in Cicero, Brutus, 75. 261.


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is impossible . . . Virgil is much the closest of any Roman poet, and the Latin Hexameter, has more Feet than the English Heroick.’83 From what has preceded it is only too apparent that Dryden has made Virgil copious in his translation, making his pictures fuller, his judgements sharper, and his rhetoric more highly charged. In his later ‘Dedication’ to the full translation, where he speaks of ‘the sober retrenchments of his Sense, which always leaves somewhat to gratiWe our imagination, on which it may enlarge at pleasure’,84 he puts this problem arising from Virgil’s density of expression in more positive and more sophisticated terms. ‘But having before observ’d, that Virgil endeavours to be short, and at the same time Elegant, I pursue the Excellence, and forsake the Brevity. For there he is like Ambergreace, a Rich Perfume, but of so close and glutinous a Body, that it must be open’d with inferiour scents of Musk or Civet, or the sweetness will not be drawn out into another Language.’85 What is a matter of necessity can also be cause for congratulation.

Ornament of words: poetic diction The claims that Dryden made in his ‘Postscript to the Æeneis’ relating to harmony of numbers and ornament of words are largely endorsed by Johnson in his ‘Life of Dryden’: ‘Some improvements had already been made in English numbers; but the full force of our language was not yet felt; the verse that was smooth was commonly feeble. If Cowley had sometimes a Wnished line, he had it by chance. Dryden knew how to chuse the Xowing and the sonorous words, to vary the pauses and adjust the accents, to diversify the cadence, and yet preserve the smoothness of his metre. . . . What was said of Rome adorned by Augustus may be applied by easy metaphor to English poetry embellished by Dryden . . . He found it brick and left it marble.’86 This magisterial sentence is eVectively the conclusion of Johnson’s ‘Life’, in the body of which he elaborates on Dryden’s artistry, particularly in regard to his ‘happy combination of words’: Every language of a learned nation necessarily divides itself into diction scholastick and popular, grave and familiar, elegant and gross; and from a nice distinction of these diVerent parts, arises a great part of the beauty of style . . .

83 ‘Preface to the Sylvae’, in Dryden, Works, iii. 7–8. 84 Dryden, Works, v. 326. 85 Ibid. 330. 86 Johnson, Lives, i. 446, 469.

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There was . . . before the time of Dryden no poetical diction: no system of words at once reWned from the grossness of domestick use and free from the harshness of terms appropriated to particular arts. Words too familiar or too remote defeat the purpose of a poet. From those sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily receive strong impressions or delightful images; and words to which we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on themselves which they should transmit to things. Those happy combinations of words which distinguished poetry from prose had been rarely attempted; we had few elegancies or Xowers of speech: the roses had not yet been plucked from the bramble or diVerent colours had not been joined to enliven one another. It may be doubted whether Waller and Denham could have over-borne the prejudices which had long prevailed, and which even then were sheltered by the protection of Cowley. The new versiWcation, as it was called, may be considered as owing its establishment to Dryden; from whose time it is apparent that English poetry has had no tendency to relapse to its former savageness. The aZuence and comprehensiveness of our language is very illustriously displayed in our poetical translations of ancient writers . . . 87

Johnson reinforces his view when he discusses the later translation of Homer in his ‘Life of Pope’: ‘Pope searched the pages of Dryden for happy combinations of heroick diction; but it will not be denied that he added much to what he found.’88 The later Romantic and Victorian reaction to such ‘happy combinations of heroick diction’ warrants further examination of Dryden’s practice in his Virgil. Two cautionary comments are perhaps necessary at the outset. As the framing of Johnson’s remarks suggests, poetic diction necessarily involves the combination of words and their placing within the metrical line (care over which had prompted Dryden’s praise of Waller), not simply their selection and choice, and so is really inseparable from the handling of metre and rhythm and even from the deployment of rhetorical Wgures. Secondly, comments about Dryden’s poetic diction necessarily have to be illustrated on a small scale with select quotation. But the Æneis is over 13,000 lines long and Dryden’s practice varies according to his subject matter.

87 Johnson, Lives, i. 420–1.

88 Ibid. iii. 238.


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The dignity of Dryden’s style may be typically represented by this highly wrought simile of the eagle and the snake: So stoops the yellow Eagle from on high, And bears a speckled Serpent thro’ the Sky, Fastening his crooked Tallons on the Prey: The Pris’ner hisses thro’ the liquid Way; Resists the Royal Hawk; and, tho’ opprest, She Wghts in Volumes and erects her Crest; Turn’d to her Foe, she stiVens ev’ry Scale, And shoots her forky Tongue, and whisks her threat’ning Tail. Against the Victour, all Defence is weak; The imperial Bird still plies her with his Beak: He tears her Bowels, and her Breast he gores, Then claps his Pinions, and securely soars. (xi. 1105–1116, translating ll. 751–6)

The ample dignity and extended elevation is even more apparent when contrasted with the more literal versions of predecessors: So with a serpent a swift Eagle Xies, Wreath’d in her Feet and Talons, through the Skies; The wounded Snake winding, himself defends, Bristling his Scales, a hissing Tongue extends: She with her Beak and Pounces tears, and eats, And the soft Air with spreading Pinions beats; (Ogilby89) As when an Eagle high his course does take, And in his griping talons, bears a Snake, A thousand folds the Serpent casts and high Setting his speckled Scales, goes whistling thro’ the skie, The fearless Bird, but deeper gores his prey, And thro’ the Clouds he cuts his airy way, (StaVord90) As when an Eagle with a Serpent Xies, Fix’d in his Tallons through the lofty Skies; She winds and turns, and stretches out along, 89 The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro, trans. John Ogilby (London, 1684), 373, no line number. 90 From ‘The Episode of the Death of Camilla Translated out of the Eleventh Book of Virgil’s Æneids’ by Mr. StaVord in Sylvae (London: Tonson, 1685), 489.

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The Augustan Ideal: Rhyme and ReWnement Erects her Scales and hisses with her Tongue; He grows more Cruel to his struggling Prey, And gores her deeper in his airy way. (Lauderdale, xi. 830–591)

Dryden’s version contains an example of three features of his style that have been criticized: the most noticeable to a modern reader will be the Latin usage ‘Volumes’ for coils, a word that in Dr Johnson’s phrase ‘draws attention to itself ’ and away from the thing described, a poetical usage that is not in fact coined by Dryden but is found as early as Crashaw and as late as Shelley (in Milton, too, Sin is ‘Voluminous and vast’ at Paradise Lost, ii. 652) so would hardly have been unfamiliar to Dryden’s Wrst readers. Nevertheless, Dryden anticipated criticism: ‘I will not excuse but justiWe my self for one pretended Crime, with which I am liable to be charg’d by false Criticks, not only in this Translation but in many of my Original Poems; that I latinize too much. ’Tis true, that when I Wnd an English word, signiWcant and sounding, I neither borrow from the Latin or any other Language: But when I want at home, I must seek abroad. . . . if we will have things of MagniWcence and Splendour, we must get them by commerce. Poetry requires Ornament, and that is not to be had from our old Teuton Monosyllables; therefore if I Wnd any Elegant Word in a Classick Author, I propose it to be naturaliz’d, by using it myself: and if the Publick approves of it, the Bill passes.’92 His defence, in drawing attention to his theory, may well have made him more vulnerable to critical attack. In his actual practice, not many of his Latinisms stand out perhaps because many of them have since been naturalized to the point when they are hardly perceived to be foreign. And we should be wary of discriminating against one of the major sources contributing to the rich and comprehensive variety of the English language. There is an obvious contrast here with Milton whose style contains many more Latinisms that have not been so assimilated. The second case concerns ‘stock’ phrasing particularly associated with the heroic verse of Dryden and Pope. There are several phrases in the eagle simile that constitute what Johnson has in mind 91 The Works of Virgil, trans. into English Verse by Richard, Earl of Lauderdale (London: Lintot, [1709]). Lauderdale’s translation evidently circulated in manuscript. On the relation between Dryden and Lauderdale and their translations see Arthur Sherbo, ‘Dryden and the Fourth Earl of Lauderdale’, Studies in Bibliography 39 (1986), 199–210. 92 Dryden, Works, v. 335–6.


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when he talks of ‘happy combinations of heroic diction’; these usually consist of a noun with a qualifying adjective. Far more of Dryden’s nouns are qualiWed by adjectives than is the case with the more literal versions. The combinations may be thought of as akin to the noun/ epithet formulae that are the basic building blocks of Homeric epic and of the tradition that through Virgil descended from him. But in only one case here can the result be properly called formulaic, that of the ‘liquid way’, which is adapted from Spenser in the Faerie Queene ‘And with her pinions cleaves the liquid Wrmament’ (III. iv. 49). Just as Dryden rarely new-coined a Latinism but may have revived ones that had already been used, so he rarely invented such formulae but took them over from the epic tradition in which they are a time-honoured feature of the high style. A key question must relate to the frequency of their occurrence. Wrenched out of context and collected together in an unsympathetic list, it may seem that such formulae are overused to the detriment of overall linguistic precision in the management of sense, but in fact their occurrence in a poem of over 13,000 lines is comparatively rare. And even those phrases that, not unfairly, can be called formulaic are often subtly varied and adapted to context by Dryden and Pope as GeoVrey Tillotson has demonstrated in his study of the specialized poetic diction of the period.93 Here in the eagle simile, all the other adjectives (in bold) have particular descriptive point in context and are not properly to be designated formulaic. These two features of his style came with his conscious desire to align his style with English epic predecessors, chief of whom he reckoned to be Spenser and Milton.94 Thirdly, the adjective ‘forky’ recalls instances where Dryden did newcoin words in making a number of adjectives ending in ‘y’ to aid the iambic rhythm and give a lilt and lift to what otherwise might have been monosyllabic lines. Here ‘forky’ hardly seems a fault but goes quite easily with the snake’s tongue. In the simile, the heightening style designates the eagle as ‘a Royal Hawk’ and ‘The imperial Bird’; wings are ‘Pinions’ (as in Ogilby) and claws are ‘Talons’ (as in all three predecessors) but none of the words chosen are inappropriate for the physical reality of the tussle being 93 See GeoVrey Tillotson, Augustan Studies (London: Athlone Press, 1961), chs. 1 and 2 on ‘Augustan Poetic Diction’. 94 ‘Spencer and Milton are the nearest in English to Virgil and Horace in the Latine; and I have endeavour’d to form my Stile by imitating their Masters.’ Dryden, Works, v. 326.

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described. The snake may be called a ‘serpent’, as it is in StaVord and Lauderdale (no ordinary snake, it is a ‘draconem’ (l. 751) in the Latin); but her responses as she ‘hisses’, ‘erects her Crest’, ‘stiVens every Scale’, ‘shoots her forky Tongue’, and ‘whisks her threat’ning Tail’ are absolutely snake-like. Dryden’s translation of the simile is much richer in noun/adjective combinations than the versions of his predecessors and in this the simile is a touchstone for the translation as a whole. Indeed the eighteenth century has been called ‘ the century of the adjective’95 and such adjectival enhancement has been particularly associated with the inXuence of Virgil96 as mediated by Dryden’s translation. But while adjectives certainly enrich the description, the style is not dependent upon them. Any adjectival heightening in Dryden is subordinate to the overall eVect of the dynamic movement created by the many verbs in which the simile abounds. The grand vigour of the resulting picture actually needs no defence at all. Johnson is surely right that the new versiWcation, and with it the more eVective selection and placing of words that it entailed, which had been partially achieved by predecessors such as Denham and Waller, was enforced by the potency and consistency of Dryden’s example in original poems and in his various translations, the most inXuential of which because of the prestige of its genre, its monumental scale, and the authority of the original in humanist poetics, was the Virgil translation. In constructing an heroic poem in English that might have an equivalent eVect to that of the Latin, Dryden therefore allowed himself considerable freedom and latitude in his use of the Wgures, his word choice, and his imagery. The following example, in the translation of the simile comparing the souls of the dead as they mingle after having drunk the waters of Lethe to bees in springtime, illustrates this tendency in its best eVect. About the Boughs an Airy Nation Xew, Thick as the humming Bees, that hunt the Golden Dew; In Summer’s heat, on tops of Lillies feed, And creep within their Bells, to suck the balmy Seed. The winged Army roams the Fields around; The Rivers and the Rocks remurmur to the sound. (vi. 958–63) 95 Sylvia Adamson, ‘Literary Language’ in Roger Lass (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language, iii. 1476–1776 (Cambridge: CUP, 1999), 619. 96 Tillotson, Augustan Studies, 35–6.


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The extent of Dryden’s embellishment becomes clear when his translation is juxtaposed with the Latin: hunc circum innumerae gentes populique volabant; ac veluti in pratis ubi apes aestate serena Xoribus insidunt variis et candida circum lilia funduntur, strepit omnia murmure campus. (vi. 706–8) (about it [Lethe] innumerable nations and peoples were hovering and just as when the bees in the meadows in cloudless summertime settle on the manycoloured Xowers and pour round the white lilies; all the Welds murmur with the sound.)

In his translation of the sonorous opening line, Dryden has raised the poetic stakes with the incorporation of an elegant periphrasis, not in the Latin, ‘Airy Nation’, which is then picked up in the ‘winged Army’ describing the bees, another imported periphrasis which has no equivalent in the Latin. This metaphorical expression, perhaps a discreet hyperbole, adds dignity and with the verb ‘roams’ cleverly unites the bees with the activity of the Xitting spirits. At the same time this Wgurative or rhetorical heightening is matched by a Wlling out of the literal physical content of the simile in which the bees’ activity is more speciWcally and sensuously imagined as they ‘hunt’, ‘feed’, creep within’, and ‘suck’, whereas in the Latin they simply settle and pour round. The Wnal line in English provides an equivalent to the rich sound of the four Wnal words in the Latin and is musically responsive to the humming of the bees at the opening of the simile. ‘Harmony of numbers’ in this line and indeed in the whole passage is obvious. If we are looking here for ‘ornament of words’ the most obvious examples comprise the happy combinations of noun/adjective phrases describing the spirits and the bees, which are Wgurative both as periphrases and because of their metaphorical content. The dignity of the style is raised accordingly but not in such a way as to become more abstract at the expense of the literal and the physical. This short example may suggest a larger truth about Dryden’s Virgil in which Wgurative enhancement goes hand in hand with physical intensiWcation. If we consider the actual choice of words throughout the extract, including the most ornamental parts of it, the basic elements are simple and ordinary enough; ‘Boughs’ and ‘remurmur’ are perhaps more the stuV of poetry than of prose but both words might perfectly well be used in prose. The eVect of the passage derives simply from the placing of the words and

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their combination in the metrical line, though, that being said, it is not in fact a simple matter at all. Comparison with Denham has shown that the style of Dryden’s Virgil is consistently embellished with all the ornaments of the grand style. The two similes featuring the eagle and the bees are also highly wrought and embellished beyond more literal versions. But the formula ‘embellished with all the ornaments of the grand style’ has all the wrong associations if it suggests merely a concern with superWcial beauty and grandeur of eVect. The point cannot be overstressed that in Dryden’s translation the ‘ornaments’ are a means to the greater end of expressive eVect; the horror of Priam’s death, the strangely exhilarating tussle between the eagle and the snake, and the beauty of the gathering of purged souls (in contrast to the horror of much that has preceded in the narrative of Hades) are all vividly enhanced by the translator for the reader’s appreciation of the visual eVect. One Wnal example may serve to illustrate Dryden’s virtues at a seminal point in the later narrative as Turnus kills the young Pallas. Now with full Force his Spear young Pallas threw; And having thrown, his shining Fauchion drew: The Steel just graz’d along the Shoulder Joint, And mark’d it slightly with the glancing Point. Fierce Turnus Wrst to nearer distance drew, And poiz’d his pointed Spear before he threw: Then, as the winged Weapon whiz’d along; See now, said he, whose Arm is better strung. The Spear kept on the fatal Course, unstay’d By Plates of Ir’n, which o’er the Shield were laid: Thro’ folded Brass, and tough Bull-hides it pass’d, His Corslet pierc’d, and reach’d his Heart at last. In vain the Youth tugs at the broken Wood, The Soul comes issuing with the vital Blood: He falls; his Arms upon his Body sound; And with his bloody Teeth he bites the Ground. (x. 667–82, translating x. 474–89)

The only word here that might be alien to a modern reader is ‘Fauchion’, translating ‘ensem’, a more poetic word than the commoner ‘gladius’ in the Latin. The English word, derived from vulgar Latin and commonly used in the Middle Ages, similarly became a more poetic word for ‘sword’ and was used as such well into the nineteenth century. There are some twelve noun/adjective combinations but the only


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instance in which the adjective does little work is in the phrase ‘shining Fauchion’ which is a direct translation of ‘fulgentem . . . ensem’ (x. 475) where the participle similarly adds little of import to the sense. Otherwise, the adjective in every phrase contributes to the overall meaning: ‘full’, ‘young’, ‘glancing’, and ‘Fierce’ either intensify or clarify with precision the nouns they qualify. The action is very precisely rendered throughout. When Turnus ‘poiz’d his pointed spear’, the additional adjective underscores not only the noun but the verb, contrasting with the ‘glancing point’ of the spear of Pallas and suggesting the more purposeful aim of the stronger Turnus. The spear becomes a ‘winged Weapon’, a periphrasis not in the Latin but one that enhances the narrative in two ways, Wrst by its part in a line where sound echoes sense to suggest the speed of the thrust, and secondly by the metaphorical comparison with the progress of an arrow which is brilliantly taken up in Turnus’ metaphor in the next line when ‘See now, he says, whose Arm is better strung’. In the Latin his words refer to the weapon ‘aspice, num mage sit nostrum penetrabile telum’ (l. 481) ‘see whether our weapon be the more piercing!’; Dryden’s Turnus more directly prides himself on the strength of his right arm. Even the phrase ‘fatal Course’ (a Drydenian addition) which in some contexts might well be simply formulaic, is charged with signiWcance in this most fatalistic narrative where just before this, Jupiter has sadly recalled the death of his son Sarpedon and remarks that soon Turnus awaits the call of fate. In the phrase ‘vital blood’, which is a condensed version of the two Latin nouns ‘sanguis animusque’ (l. 486) ‘blood and soul’, the literal meaning of a common adjective derived from the Latin root ‘vita’ ‘life, gives an added charge, particularly since the blood comes not from Pallas’ mighty chest, ‘pectus . . . ingens’ in the Latin (l. 485), but from the very heart. In this line the participle ‘issuing’ is also particularly well chosen not only for sound but also for sense, since it is the right word for the physical ‘blood’ and for the more intangible ‘soul’. The Wnal couplet translates Virgil’s variation of the familiar resounding Homer formula concluding the death of a warrior b ; Iæ b Æ K ÆPfiH ‘he fell with a crash, and his armour rang upon him’. Virgil’s ‘ore cruento’ (l. 489) ‘with bloody mouth’ is made even more speciWc: Dryden makes the death of Pallas more violent and repugnant as ‘with his bloody teeth he bites the ground’. Typically, Dryden’s additions and intensiWcations heighten the physical action which is precisely visualized and rendered with a forceful clarity. When Dryden’s translation is read independently as English poetry (in Dryden’s own formula, following Denham, as the

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kind of poetry that Virgil himself might have written had he been born an Englishman in the translator’s time), there is nothing here to impede the understanding or to halt the Xow of the verse which in its style and expression is entirely self-consistent and constitutes a seamless whole. What on analysis might be called ornamentation, in the experience of reading does not draw attention to itself in any ostentatious display of verbal ingenuity or rhetorical Xourishing. At his best, Dryden achieved what he admired above all in Virgil, an exact propriety of words and things. In neoclassical theory it is axiomatic that words be decorously related to the things they are seeking to express and describe; this is the ultimate criterion by which to judge the validity of the aesthetic entailed in Dryden’s desire for ‘ornament of words’. The poetry of Virgil, as we have seen, provides the classical touchstone for the achievement of propriety in the relation of words to things. This propriety is nowhere better illustrated than in the translation of the Georgics, Virgil’s poem on farming in four books treating the cultivation of crops, trees, animals, and bees. Virgil has drawn out the Rules of Tillage and Planting into Two Books, which Hesiod has despatcht in half a one; but has so rais’d the natural rudeness and simplicity of his Subject with such a signiWcance of Expression, such a Pomp of Verse, such variety of Transitions and such a solemn Air in his ReXections, that if we look on both Poets together we see in one the plainness of a down-right Country-man, and in the other, something of a Rustic Majesty, like that of a Roman Dictator at the Plow-Tail. He delivers the meanest of his Precepts with a kind of Grandeur, he breaks the Clods and tosses the Dung about with an air of gracefulness.97

These last words may have been prompted by passages in the Wrst Georgic: But if the Soil be barren, only scar The Surface, and but lightly print the Share, When cold Arcturus rises with the Sun; Lest wicked Weeds the Corn should over-run In wat’ry Soils; or lest the barren Sand Shou’d suck the Moisture from the thirsty Land. Both these unhappy Soils the Swain forbears And keeps a Sabbath of alternate Years: That the spent Earth may gather heart again; 97 From ‘An Essay on the Georgics’ supplied for Dryden’s Virgil by Joseph Addison, in Dryden, Works, v. 151.


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And, bettered by Cessation, bear the Grain. At least where Vetches, Pulse, and Tares have stood, And Stalks of Lupines grew (a stubborn Wood:) Th’ ensuing Season, in return, may bear The bearded product of the Golden Year. For Flax and Oats will burn the tender Field, And sleepy Poppies harmful Harvests yield. But sweet Vicissitudes of Rest and Toyl Make easy Labour, and renew the Soil. Yet sprinkle sordid Ashes all around, And load with fat’ning Dung thy fallow Ground. Thus change of Seeds for meagre Soils is best; And Earth manur’d, not idle, though at rest. . . . . . . . . . Nor is the ProWt small the Peasant makes; Who smooths with Harrows, or who pounds with Rakes The crumbling Clods: nor Ceres from on high Regards his Labours with a grudging Eye; Nor his, who plows across the furrow’d Grounds And on the Back of Earth inXicts new Wounds: For he with frequent Exercise Commands Th’ unwilling Soil, and tames the stubborn Lands (Georgic, i. 100–21, 137–44, translating i. 67–83, 94–9)

In the Wrst six lines, ornament is provided by the star sign, by the animation of the weeds, and by the vivid activity of the barren sand. Dryden’s happy addition of the swain keeping ‘a Sabbath of alternate years’ is the most daring Wgure in the passage used to bring out its main point, and helped by the extension of Wgurative language in the ‘unhappy Soils’ and ‘the spent Earth’ that will ‘gather Heart again’. The language is then plain until the climactic periphrasis: ‘the bearded product of the Golden Year’ where the imagery is both pictorial and Wgurative in suggesting proWtable fruitfulness, thus emphasizing a major theme of the work. The rest of the passage reverts to the plain style for plain precept, and throughout Dryden has followed Virgil in using the basic vocabulary of prose: in particular, ‘Vicissitude’ and ‘Cessation’ are not the kind of words that occur in the Æneis. In the second passage, after the play on ‘proWt’ (similar to that on ‘product’), the language is plain until the chain of Wgurative verbs—‘inXicts’, ‘Commands’, and ‘tames’—which develops Virgil’s ‘imperat arvis’ (l. 99) ‘he gives orders to the Welds’. Again the Wgurative language emphasizes one of the main georgic themes, the dominion of man in the cultivation of nature. It may


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be said that the art of the georgic consists very much in a judicious control of transitions from the plain to the Wgurative and its decorum in a matching of language to subject wherein the Wgurative is reserved expressly to highlight main themes. In these respects, the translation is fully answerable to the language of the original.

How Dryden’s Virgil represents the Latin ideal Towards the end of his long ‘Dedication of the Æneis’ Dryden expresses the hope that he has ‘copied the Clearness, the Purity, the Easiness and the MagniWcence of his Stile’ (Works, v. 331). Readers of Virgil in all periods might agree about the magniWcence of Virgil’s style, but the other virtues located by Dryden might cause pause for thought particularly with those who have struggled with Virgil at school. What exactly does he mean? What lies behind this shorthand and innocent-looking formulation may be suggested by reference to the very handy summary of the Graeco-Roman rhetorical tradition oVered by Richard Lanham in his excellent compendium A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms under the heading ‘Style: the four virtues’: Theophrastus, in his lost On Style, isolated four virtues, which Cicero used in the De Oratore as the basis for his discussion of style. 1. Purity (correctness) 2. Clarity 3. Decorum (that which is Wtting to time, place etc.) 4. Ornament The Rhetorica Ad Herennium oVers three categories: 1. Elegantia a. latinitas (correctness: good Latin) b. explanatio (clarity) 2. Compositio (avoiding harsh sounds clashes and excessively Wgured language; making the style uniformly polished). Quintilian oVers a threefold division: ‘Style has three kinds of excellence, correctness, lucidity, and elegance (for many include the all-important quality of appropriateness under the heading of elegance).’ 3. Dignitas (embellished by a variety of Wgures tastefully used).


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In all these schemes, of course, each virtue like each level of style, has a corresponding vice. A great many other virtues and vices have been suggested; they all seem reducible to the four of Theophrastus.98

It is not diYcult to relate Dryden’s four terms in his praise of Virgil to what is inherent in these schemes and to see that a great deal lies behind them. These ideals and norms are not simply the property of Virgil or of the Roman Augustan period but are a shorthand summation of the classical legacy in both rhetoric and poetry more generally. Virgil is in a sense merely a touchstone for an ideal that transcends his example. It is also equally apparent that where these ideals and norms are subverted in the poetry of the silver age by writers such as Lucan and Persius, their translators, for example Dryden in the case of Persius and Rowe in the case of Lucan, are bound to bring errant originals back within the compass of these classical norms which remain canonical throughout the eighteenth century. Purity relates to what Puttenham says about language in a chapter devoted to the subject in The Arte of English Poesie (1589):99 ‘Ye shall therefore take the usuall speech, of the court, and that of London within lx. myles, and not much above.’ This is to be educated English avoiding both the expressions of ‘poore rusticall and uncivill people’ and also ‘termes so ill aVected brought in by men of learning as preachers and schoolemasters, and many straunge termes of other languages by Secretaries and Marchaunts and travailours, and many darke wordes and not usuall nor well sounding, though they be dayly spoken in Court’. He ends this most interesting discussion by quoting famous lines from Horace: multa renascuntur quae iam cecidere cadentque quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus, quem penes arbitrium est & ius et norma loquendi. (Ars Poetica, 70–2) Much phrase that now is dead, shall be revived; And much shall die, that now is nobly lived, If custom please; at whose disposing will The power, and rule of speaking resteth still. (Jonson (c.1620), ll. 101–4) 98 Richard A. Lanham, A Handbook of Rhetorical Terms: A Guide for Students of English Literature (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 115–16. 99 In Smith (ed.), Elizabethan Critical Essays, ii. 150.

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The Augustan Ideal: Rhyme and ReWnement Many which we approve for current now, In the next Age out of request shall grow: And others which are now thrown out of doors, Shall be reviv’d, and come again in force, If custom please; from whence their vogue they draw, Which of our Speech is the sole Judg and Law. (Oldham (1681), ll. 123–8) Use may revive the obsoletest Words, And banish those that now are most in Vogue; Use is the Judge, the Law, and rule of Speech. (Roscommon (1684), p. 6)

Easiness probably embraces not only Virgil’s metrical ease and but also an ease of style arising from its decorum where decorum can be deWned as the proper harmony of matter and manner. Decorum is again present in magniWcence, for Virgil’s grand manner in his Aeneid (and Dryden is talking about his translation of the epic) is perfectly adapted to his grand epic theme. MASTERY OF THE MEDIUM: THE CONTINUING DEBATE ABOUT RHYME Throughout the seventeenth century, there had been a lively debate about the respective merits of rhyming couplets and blank verse. Much of this debate centred upon the drama; was it natural for speakers on the stage in a literary form that by its very nature demanded a more naturalistic imitation of life, for characters to speak in rhyme? The advantages which Rhyme has over Blanck Verse, are so many, that it were lost time to name them. Sir Philip Sidney, in his Defence of Poesie gives us one, which in my Opinion, is not least considerable; I mean the help it brings to Memory. . . Then in the quickness of Reparties . . . it has so particular a Grace, and is so aptly Suited to them, that the suddain Smartness of the Answer, and the Sweetness of the Rhyme, set oV the beauty of each other. But that beneWt which I consider most in it . . . is, that it Bounds and Circumscribes the Fancy. For Imagination in a Poet is a faculty so Wild and Lawless, that, like a High-ranging Spaniel, it must have Cloggs tied to it, least it outrun the Judgment. The great easiness of Blanck Verse, renders the Poet too Luxuriant; . . . But when the diYculty of Artfull Rhyming is interpos’d, where the Poet commonly conWnes his Sence to his Couplet, and must contrive that Sence

Mastery of the Medium

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into such Words, that the Rhyme shall naturally follow them, not they the Rhyme: the Fancy then gives leisure to the Judgment to come in; . . . that which most regulates the Fancy, and gives the Judgment its busiest Employment, is like to bring forth the richest and clearest Thoughts. (‘Dedication to the Rival Ladies’ (1664))100

If Shakespeare’s dramatic verse did not impress itself with the force of classical example on the poetry of the seventeenth century, all was changed with the advent of Paradise Lost in 1667, with its powerful manifesto in which Milton, even though he is able to cite the example of the best English tragedies, is conscious that he is a pioneer, going against the grain of the inherited native tradition. The Measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; Rime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set oV wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac’t indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse then else they would have exprest them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish Poets of prime note have rejected Rime both in longer and shorter Works, as have also long since our best English Tragedies, as a thing of it self, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt Numbers, Wt quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one Verse to another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good Oratory. This neglect then of Rime so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar Readers, that it rather is to be esteemd an example set, the Wrst in English, of ancient liberty recoverd to Heroic Poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of Rimeing.101

Milton’s argument is enforced by the example of his own practice. Paradise Lost opened the eyes of the literary world to the heroic potentialities of blank verse. Thereafter it was seen to be a viable alternative to the heroic couplet, both in the drama, and also for narrative verse. In fact it became the culminating aspiration of the Earl of Roscommon in his Essay on Translated Verse (1684). At the end of the second edition of this Essay, written in rhyming couplets, he appended a summary of part of the battle in heaven, written in blank verse, before concluding with 100 In Dryden, Works, viii. 101. 101 The Poetical Works of John Milton, i. Paradise Lost, ed. Helen Darbyshire (Oxford: OUP, 1952), 3–4. Other quotations from Milton are from this edition.

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the fervent wish that he might live to see the day when English poetry, having dispensed with rhyme, which he names as one of the chief faults of English verse, might achieve the sublime pitch of Latin: O might I live to hail the Glorious day And sing loud Pæans thro’ the crowded way. When in Triumphant State the British Muse, True to her self, shall barb’rous aid Refuse; And in the Roman Majesty appear, Which none know better, and none come so near.102

Dryden in his new interest in translation was generally enthused by the Earl’s poem and wrote for it commendatory verses in which, after tracing the history of translation from Greece to Rome and acknowledging the humanist argument that rhyme represents a cultural decline and fall, he puts forward an eloquent poetic defence of the art of rhyme. It may have been the invention of a barbarous age, but like many other inventions it has been improved by time and become a ‘fair barbarity’. Whether the fruitful Nile, or Tyrian Shore, The seeds of Arts and Infant Science bore, ’Tis sure the noble Plant, translated Wrst, Advanc’d its head in Grecian Gardens nurst. The Grecians added Verse, their tuneful Tongue Made Nature Wrst, and Nature’s God their song. Nor stopt Translation here; For conquering Rome With Grecian Spoils, brought Grecian Numbers home; Enrich’d by those Athenian Muses more, Than all the vanquish’d World cou’d yield before. ’Till barb’rous Nations and more barb’rous Times Debas’d the Majesty of Verse to Rhimes; Those rude at Wrst: a kind of hobbling Prose: That limp’d along, and tinckl’d in the close: But Italy reviving from the trance Of Vandal, Goth, and Monkish ignorance, With pauses, cadence, and well vowell’d words, And all the Graces a good Ear aVords, Made Rhyme an Art, and Dante’s polish’d page Restor’d a silver, not a golden Age: Then Petrarch follow’d, and in him we see, 102 Roscommon, Essay on Translated Verse, 26.


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What Rhyme improv’d in all its height can be; At best a pleasing sound, and fair barbarity: (‘To the Earl of Roscommon, on his excellent Essay on Translated Verse’)103

This is a strong defence to the challenge posed by Milton, but it probably counted for little against the power of Milton’s example. That power is suggested by one of the characters in Joseph Spence’s dialogue on Pope’s Odyssey of 1726. Looking back at the history of heroic poetry, he records the view that once Spenser had been seduced by foreign example rhyme might have continued to appear the natural choice for epic, had it not been for the example of Milton: This Italian Taste of your Tasso’s and Ariosto’s led away the Wrst Poet of our Nation, who attempted anything toward an Epick; and probably we shou’d to this Day have thought it the only proper for our Language, had it not happily been disdain’d by the Genius of Milton who chose to follow the true old Roman manner, it was Milton who Xung oV our Fetters104

Dryden and Addison: rhyme versus blank verse After Milton many English readers have probably imagined that the ideal medium for the translation of classical epic should be blank verse. Unfortunately, we do not have any actual translation of epic into blank verse composed by a poet with the talent of Milton to put beside the translations of Dryden and Pope. Nevertheless even an unequal contest may be instructive. In 1704, Joseph Addison took up the challenge in ‘Milton’s Stile Imitated, in a Translation of a Story out of the Third Aeneid’.105 Addison had previously translated Book I of the Georgics into rhyming couplets and was later to contribute successful translations of Ovid for the couplet version by several hands edited by Samuel Garth in 1717, so that imitation of Milton must have been in the nature of an experiment. As a poet, Addison is a variable minor talent. The point of the following comparison is not simply to prove that Dryden is a better poet but to argue that a poet in command of his medium, even if the medium itself 103 Ibid., p. A2; also, Dryden, Works, ii. 172. 104 Spence is referring to Spenser: Joseph Spence, An Essay on Pope’s Odyssey (1726– 1727) (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1968) [in 2 parts], i. 125–6. 105 Available in Virgil in English, ed. K. W. Gransden (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996), 160–4.

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is considered inferior, will be more adequate to the original, provided, of course, what even opponents of rhyme will concede, that the medium concerned is not obviously unheroic. In the nineteenth century Matthew Arnold rejected the ballad metre as a medium for the translation of classical epic as well as the heroic couplet in favour of an as yet unrealized ideal. Yet he conceded that the couplets of Pope in his Homer translation were excellent in their kind.106 Whether or not we agree with Arnold and Wnd the kind inferior, excellence in the kind is better than an attempt in Miltonic blank verse that is only partially successful, even if that partial success allows us to imagine something better. At Wrst sight this particular episode may seem an odd choice for Addison’s experiment. It occurs in the narrative of his wanderings from Troy given by Aeneas to Dido and it is the Wnal extended episode before the fatal events of their love aVair. Achaemenides is one of the companions of Odysseus who had been mistakenly left behind in the Cyclops’ cave after the rest of the Greeks through the clever ruse of Odysseus had eVected their escape. He tells Aeneas that he has been the sole human inhabitant on this island peopled by the monstrous Cyclopes for three months. As Aeneas is following in the footsteps of Odysseus, so Virgil is following Homer. In Homer the famous encounter with the Cyclops is narrated by Odysseus himself to the Phaeacians. It is designed to raise the hero in his audience’s estimation and to illustrate the superior qualities of his humanity and his intelligence as he outwits the monstrous man-eating Cyclops. It contains bloodthirsty and disgusting details (Joseph Spence thought the picture of the drunken Cyclops was the most indecorous narration in Homer107) but it is redeemed by Odysseus’s triumph and by Homer’s Odyssean wit in the contrivance of the story. In Virgil, there is no corresponding note of triumph nor is there any exciting human action or display of human wit or ingenuity. Achaemenides, like Aeneas who is telling his story, is a passive victim aZicted by past horror and present terrors, both seen and unseen, as he seeks to avoid the island’s monstrous inhabitants. As a Greek who has fought at Troy, he recognizes that he might meet his fate at the hands of the Trojans but says he is happy that at least he will die by human hands. The Trojans, of course, have no hesitation in taking pity 106 Matthew Arnold, On the Classical Tradition, i. The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), 109. 107 Spence, Pope’s Odyssey, ii. 147.


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on him, so that there is an underlying benevolent humanity but the overwhelming impression created by the encounter is of human impotence in the face of the unspeakable; fear, desolation, terror, and pathos predominate. The attraction of the episode for Addison may perhaps be surmised from his Wlling out of the reaction of the human participants to the threat of the monstrous Cyclopes as they advance towards the departing ships at the end of the episode. In the Latin, the reaction of Aeneas and his companions is expressed in a single word, ‘trepidi’; in the translation, ‘we stood j Amazed, be sure, a sudden horror chill j Ran through each Nerve, and thrill’d in ev’ry Vein’. Here the trepidation has been magniWed not merely to include horror but also amazement; the fear is no longer straightforward but produces a thrill which may suggest the kind of complicated mingling of pleasure and pain that, preWguring Burke, Addison later writes about when he discusses taste and the pleasures of the imagination in 1712. To set the inhuman scene, Virgil’s narrative starts artfully with the description of Etna and brief allusion to the fable that the movements of the Titan Enceladus, imprisoned by Jove underneath the mountain, were responsible for its eruptions. Here is Addison’s version of the celebrated opening. Lost in the gloomy Horror of the Night We struck upon the Coast where Aetna lyes, Horrid and waste; its Entrails fraught with Fire: That now casts out dark Fumes and pitchy Clouds, Vast Show’rs of Ashes hov’ring in the Smoak; Now belches molten Stones and ruddy Flame Incenst, or tears up Mountains by the roots, Or slings a broken Rock aloft in Air. The bottom works with smother’d Fire, involv’d In pestilential Vapours, Stench, and Smoak. (ll. 1–10)

He starts oV well; the movement of the verse gives emphasis where it is desired with the climactic enjambed phrase ‘horrid and waste’. Thereafter, though the general picture is clear enough, the grammar and syntax become muddled, nor do pauses in the verse help to illuminate the sense. Is it the Wre or the mountain that casts out dark fumes and belches molten stones? Perhaps it matters little, but in the next clause neither the Wre nor the mountain can tear up mountains by the root. The subject of ‘tears’ must be understood to be Etna as volcanic force.

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An imaginative leap over and above the syntax is needed to supply this meaning which does not emerge easily from the translation. But it is the last sentence beginning with ‘The bottom works’ (is the bottom the subject or the object of the mountain understood?) that gravitates towards the bathos into which Sir Richard Blackmore profoundly and irredeemably sunk in his description of the volcano, here mocked by Pope in The Art of Sinking (1727): Is there a Passage in all Virgil more painted up and labour’d than the Description of Ætna in the Third Aeneid? –horriWcis juxta tonat Aetna ruinis interdumque atram prorumpit ad aethera nubem, turbine fumantem piceo, et candente favilla, attollitque globos Xammarum, et sidera lambit; interdum scopulos avulsaque viscera montis erigit eructans, liquefactaque saxa sub auras cum gemitu glomerat, fundoque exaestuat imo. [iii. 571–7] (I beg Pardon of the gentle English Reader, and such of our Writers as understand not Latin) But lo! how this is taken down by our British Poet, by the single happy Thought of throwing the Mountain into a Fit of the Cholic. Ætna, and all the burning Mountains, Wnd Their kindled Stores with inbred Storms of Wind Blown up to Rage, and roaring out, complain, As torn with inward Gripes, and torturing Pain: Lab’ring, they cast their dreadful Vomit round, And with their melted Bowels, spread the Ground. (Prince Arthur) HORACE, in search of the Sublime, struck his Head against the Stars, but Empedocles, to fathom the Profound, threw himself into Ætna; And who but would imagine our excellent Modern had also been there, from this description?108

A Wne line divides the sublime from the ridiculous, but with the example of Blackmore before us, we can perhaps give Addison the beneWt of the doubt here. 108 In Selected Prose of Alexander Pope, ed. Paul Hammond (Cambridge: CUP, 1987), 186–7.


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Dryden does not, like Addison, deliberately seek to evoke an atmosphere of horror but what he conveys, is conveyed vividly and easily: The Xagging Winds forsook us, with the Sun; And, weary’d, on Cyclopean Shores we run. The Port capacious, and secure from Wind, Is to the foot of thundring Ætna joyn’d. ) By turns a pitchy Cloud she rowls on high; By turns hot Embers from her entrails Xy; And Xakes of mountain Flames, that lick the Skie. Oft from her Bowels massy Rocks are thrown, And shiver’d by the force come piece-meal down. Oft liquid Lakes of burning Sulphur Xow Fed from the Wery Springs that boil below; (Æneis, iii. 744–54)

The simple rhetorical patterning with repetition of ‘By turns’ and ‘Oft’ provides a clear structure to the utterance. There is never any doubt here about the syntactical relations of the parts to the whole and the meaning is elucidated with the ease and Xow of the most accomplished and emphatic couplet style. In Addison, there are some vivid touches of physical horror: Disconsolate, forlorn, within the cave He left me, giant Polypheme’s dark cave; A dungeon wide and horrible, the walls On all sides furr’d with mouldy damps, and hung With clots of ropy gore, and human limbs, His dire repast; (ll. 65–70)

With this penchant for horror, the normally polite Addison is not, like many later eighteenth-century Miltonizing poets, inhibited by epic dignity or by his sense of the Miltonic sublime to the extent that he cannot use low words, as when the mountain ‘belches’ (l. 6) and later when we Wnd the Cyclops ‘snoring in his Den’ and ‘Belching raw Gobbets from his Maw’: The Giant, gorg’d with Flesh, and Wine, and Blood, Lay stretcht at length, and snoring in his Den, Belching raw Gobbets from his Maw, o’er-charg’d With purple Wine and cruddl’d Gore, confus’d. We gather’d round, and to his single Eye,

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The Augustan Ideal: Rhyme and ReWnement The single Eye that in his Forehead glar’d Like a full Moon, or a broad burnisht Shield, A forky StaV we dext’rously apply’d, Which in the spacious Socket turning round, Scoopt out the big round Gelly from its Orb. (ll. 85–94)

There is no recoil in the translation from the horror here; ‘cruddl’d’ and ‘Gelly’ are particularly repellent. But the couplet version has a consistent dramatic immediacy both in the narrative and in the rhetoric of the speeches that is only intermittent in the Miltonic imitation: but now the Sun With orient Beams had chas’d the dewy Night From Earth and Heav’n; all Nature stood disclos’d. When looking on the Neighb’ring Woods we saw The Ghastly visage of a Man unknown, An uncouth Feature, Meagre, Pale and Wild, AZiction’s soul and terrible Dismay Sate in his looks, his Face impair’d and worn With marks of Famine, speaking sore Distress. His Locks were tangled, and his shaggy Beard Matted with Filth, in all things else a Greek. He Wrst advanc’d in haste, but when he saw Trojans and Trojan Arms, in mid Career Stopt short, he back recoil’d as one surpriz’d: But soon recov’ring speed, he ran, he Xew Precipitant, and thus with piteous Cries Our Ears assail’d: (ll. 26–42) Scarce had the rising Sun the day reveal’d; Scarce had his heat the pearly dews dispell’d; When from the Woods there bolts, before our sight, Somewhat, betwixt a Mortal and a Sprite: So thin, so ghastly meagre, and so wan, So bare of Xesh, he scarce resembled Man. This thing, all tatter’d, seem’d from far t’ implore Our pious aid, and pointed to the Shore. We look behind; then view his shaggy Beard; His cloaths were tagg’d with Thorns, and Filth his Limbs besmear’d: The rest, in Meen, in habit, and in Face,


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Appear’d a Greek: and such indeed he was. He cast on us, from far, a frightful view, Whom soon for Trojans and for Foes he knew: Stood still, and paus’d; then all at once began To stretch his Limbs, and trembled as he ran. Soon as approach’d, upon his Knees he falls, And thus with Tears and Sighs for pity calls: (ll. 768–85)

As we have seen, the closed couplet inherently encourages various forms of balance, either between its two lines, or within individual lines. The balance readily expresses itself in opposition, resulting, in its most pronounced form, in the rhetorical Wgure of the antithesis. But the balance inherent in the form expresses itself in a multiplicity of ways and degrees below this extreme. In argument, the form encourages dialectical thinking; in narrative, it encourages dramatic opposition, as the composing poet is perpetually alert to pairings, whether in parallel or in opposition. The need to link up couplets Xuently into paragraphs also encourages tight rhetorical structures that extend beyond the individual couplet even when the couplets are predominantly closed, as they are in this passage where, though the sense may be carried over from couplet to couplet, there are no pronounced enjambements. As he repeated ‘By turns’ and ‘Oft’ above, so here at the beginning Dryden has a dynamic syntactical structure across couplets that binds them together. The repetition of ‘Scarce’ with the responding conjunction ‘When’ makes the appearance of Achaemenides more urgent than it is in Addison. The urgency is well caught in the action of the verb ‘bolts’, and by its position in the line. There is, too, far more interaction between the stranger, his appearance, and his actions on the one side and the Trojans and their reactions on the other. In this couplet, the appearance of Achaemenides is immediately balanced by the Trojan reaction to it, which turns on the antithesis between ‘Mortal’ and ‘Sprite’. In Addison one thing comes after another; in the Wrst half of the passage the Trojans observe the unknown man whom we see from their point of view, then in the second part he runs towards them. In Dryden, he bolts from the wood and is observed. Then he points to the shore; the Trojans look behind, then look at him again. The encounter in Dryden enacts the element of mutual surprise. He appeared a Greek (a well-chosen word, containing both literal and Wgurative, seeming and being) and in reality he was. Again, this couplet

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in its dualism gives us the process of recognition and its conWrmation. Then comes Achaemenides’ complementary recognition of the Trojans: ‘frightful’ is another well-chosen word containing both the fright he feels for the Trojans, now recognized as enemies, and the fright caused to them by his scarcely human appearance. The next couplet has a condensed syntactical structure (He was so thin . . . that), with an emphatically repeated intensitive ‘so’ giving great emphasis where it is needed when the sense is Wnally resolved in: ‘he scarce resembled Man’. Compare here Addison’s line ‘The Ghastly visage of a Man unknown’ where the Miltonic inversion gives emphasis to the obvious fact that he was unknown to the Trojans (something that does not warrant emphasis), while in Dryden’s couplet the emphasis is where it should be, on the fact that he scarcely seemed human. This seeming (in a chain of three verbs ‘scarce resembled’, ‘seemed’ and ‘appeared’) makes Achaemenides a much more uncanny Wgure in Dryden than in Addison. ‘This thing, all tatter’d’ in its simple direct diction is far more expressive of both Achaemenides’ state and the Trojans’ incomprehension and horror than anything in Addison whose resort to abstract nouns (aZiction, dismay, famine, distress) dilutes the immediacy of the encounter with over-interpretation. Dryden gives greater emphasis to his dishevelled and unpleasant appearance than Addison with a strong alexandrine which has concrete particulars that speak for themselves. The previous couplet also captures the fundamental antithesis in the story between destitution ‘This thing, all tatter’d’ and benevolence, ‘pious aid’, an antithesis occurring again in the Wnal couplet between ‘Tears and Sighs’ and ‘pity’. The antithesis is ignored in both cases by Addison. The allusion to piety here, though imported into Virgil, is not incidental in Dryden but goes to the heart of the thematic content of the episode which turns on the larger antithesis between the monstrous and the human. There is a secondary antithesis between Trojan and Greek, but this episode makes a Wtting climax to Aeneas’ wanderings because in it we see that the claims of piety override those of country and nationality. Put simply, against the threat of the monstrous Cyclops, Greek and Trojan are seen to share a common human bond. Pity is a fundamental constituent of piety. The episode, which has its origin in Homer but which is most unHomeric as it is conceived in Virgil, is linked to the larger structure and vision of the Aeneid through this central theme of piety of which it is a test for the Trojans, one that they pass sympathetically. Dryden translating the whole picks this up and emphasizes it. Addison in his extract is less sensitive to this underlying theme of the poem and his version as a whole is less pathetic than Dryden’s as a consequence, for he is more


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interested in one side of the antithesis between the human and the inhuman, anticipating in his concentration on the ghoulish and the monstrous the later eighteenth-century predilection for the Gothic. Dryden is consistently better than Addison because he uses his chosen medium more expressively to do fuller justice to the content of his original. Perhaps the only weak phrase in Dryden is ‘To stretch his Limbs’ for to run. Conversely, Addison has some success; here he is good at rendering the stopping and starting of Achaemenides—‘he back recoiled as one surpriz’d’—where the sinewy syntax in the manner of Milton seems to recoil upon itself with great propriety, until it is marred by another Miltonism at the end with the somewhat pompous Latinism ‘Precipitant’, which in this context seems precious. No such preciosity mars Dryden’s diction here. Given that he is translating the whole, it is to be expected that Dryden will be more attuned to the thematic content of Virgil than Addison, but the latter’s unsure grip is evident in the way he chooses to end his extract. As the Trojans sail quickly away, the Cyclopes gather on the shore, towering like the tallest trees. In Dryden’s version: We saw their stern distorted looks, from far, And one-ey’d Glance, that vainly threatned War. A dreadful Council, with their heads on high; The misty Clouds about their Foreheads Xy: Not yielding to the towring Tree of Jove, Or tallest Cypress of Diana’s Grove. (ll. 889–94)

Addison elaborates the simile in a fanciful way that produces a restful and digniWed image that is quite at variance with the fraught situation which gave rise to the simile: So stands a Forrest tall of Mountain Oaks Advanc’d to mighty growth: the Traveller Hears from the humble Valley where he rides The hollow Murmurs of the Winds that blow Amidst the Boughs, and at a distance sees The shady tops of Trees unnumber’d rise, A stately prospect, waving in the Clouds. (ll. 139–45)

This ending is simply nonsensical, going indecorously against the grain of the translator’s interest in what has preceded it.

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From even this brief analysis, Dryden’s superiority to Addison emerges clearly and may be expressed in two ways. In the Wrst place, he is consistently master of his own medium whereas Addison, writing in imitation of Milton’s style, is more variable in sustaining a style that is self-consistent. Sometimes his syntactical inversions in the manner of Milton work well, sometimes they are clumsy. His mixture of Latinate and vernacular elements is not always harmonious. Secondly, Dryden uses his medium to mediate his material, the medium is never an end in itself but always a means to an end. In the Achaemenides episode, his style brings out the antithesis between the human and the inhuman in exactly the way demanded of the original. Additionally, it may be said that Dryden’s verse has a consistent metrical Xuency, a syntactical clarity, and a rhetorical emphasis (which all go hand in hand) that make him much easier to read. Until there is a strong poet of comparable ability using blank verse, his couplet translation will remain the best available, whatever is the prejudice, for or against his couplet form.

Dryden and Milton To juxtapose Dryden and Addison is to put Dryden alongside the ghost of Milton. In his appreciative essays on Paradise Lost, written before Milton had the indubitable classic status which these essays helped to establish, Addison identiWes passages in Milton which he feels are particularly derived from Virgil. There is a deWnite echo of Virgil in what follows. Comparison between Milton and Dryden in relation to Virgil does not allow any easy distinction to be made between the two: Fast we found, fast shut The dismal Gates, and barricado’d strong; But long ere our approaching heard within Noise, other than the sound of Dance or Song, Torment, and lowd lament, and furious rage. (Paradise Lost, viii 240–4)

We can see, even from this snippet, that ‘the mighty mouthed inventor of harmonies’109 hardly needed the music of rhyme to bind his verse. There is a kind of rolling sound pattern, with repetition (fast), internal rhyme (strong/long), and actual rhyme (strong/song), and long ‘o’ sounds 109 ‘Milton’, in The Poems of Tennyson, ed. Christopher Ricks, 2nd edn., 3 vols. (Harlow: Longman, 1987), ii. 625.


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interspersed throughout in each line: ‘found’, ‘barricadoed’, ‘approaching’, ‘sound’, ‘loud’. The verbal music is subtle but evident, as in Virgil. porta adversa, ingens, solidoque adamante columnae, vis ut nulla virum, non ipsi exscindere bello caelicolae valeant; stat ferrea turris ad auras, Tisiphoneque sedens, palla succincta cruenta, vestibulum exsomnis servat noctesque diesque. hinc exaudiri gemitus, et saeva sonare verbera, tum stridor ferri tractaeque catenae. (Aeneid, vi. 552–8) (There before him stood a huge gate with columns of solid adamant so strong that neither the violence of men nor of the heavenly gods could ever uproot them in war, and an iron tower rose into the air where Tisiphone sat with her blood-soaked dress girt up, guarding the entrance and never sleeping, night or day. They could hear the groans from the city, the cruel crack of the lash, the dragging and clanking of iron chains.)

Before citing Dryden, it is worth observing that Virgil’s period here proceeds in fairly even metrical units. There are only two enjambements, between the second and third and the sixth and seventh lines. There are deWnite and varied caesurae. In all the line endings, apart from the regular dactylic rhythm, there are collocations of sound (almost inevitable in a highly inXected language with case endings); ‘a’ and ‘m’ in the Wrst, ‘e’ in the second, ‘r’ and ‘a’ in the third, ‘a’ and ‘c’ in the fourth, a real chime in the repeated ‘esque’ in the Wfth, ‘s’ and ‘a’ in the sixth, and Wnally ‘t’ and ‘a’ and another climactic chime in the repetition of ‘ae’ in the seventh. These collocations of sound at the end of individual lines, with the repeated lilting rhythm of the tum ti ti tum tum ending, constitute something like internal rhyming. Were there to be rhyming between lines as well there would be altogether too much chiming similarity. It is not diYcult to see how well a period like this might be represented in the rhyming couplet. The verbal music of the Latin hexameter endings is not, of course, the same as the regular rhyme of the English couplet; but English couplet rhyming does oVer a kind of musical equivalence. Wide is the fronting Gate, and rais’d on high With Adamantine Columns, threats the Sky. Vain is the force of Man, and Heav’ns as vain, To crush the Pillars which the Pile sustain. Sublime on these a Tow’r of Steel is rear’d;

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The Augustan Ideal: Rhyme and ReWnement And dire Tisiphone there keeps the Ward: Girt in her sanguine Gown, by Night and Day, Observant of the Souls that pass the downward way: From hence are heard the Groans of Ghosts, the pains Of sounding Lashes, and of dragging Chains. (Æneis, vi. 744–53)

The inexorable and terrible power of hell is more strongly evoked in Dryden’s extended translation here than in Milton’s brief echo of the Latin original. The couplet version has not only more sublimity but also more Xuency. Its movement is more in accord with the natural rhythms of English; Milton’s syntax is perplexed and makes for diYcult reading. It is easy to see from this snippet why he has been accused of forcing the language against its natural grain. But this is hardly one of his purple passages. If we adduce a more pleasing example, the juxtaposition of the two English poets works diVerently. As Bees In springtime, when the Sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth thir populous youth about the Hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and Xowers Flie to and fro, or on the smoothed Plank, The suburb of their Straw-built Cittadel, New rubd with Baume, expatiate and confer Their State aVairs. (Paradise Lost, i. 768–75)

The movement of this digniWed period is natural and easy; the syntax and rhythm contributes to the evolving picture of the bees pouring out in clusters. Editors have noted parallels with some of the many allusions to bees in Virgil. Here is Dryden’s version of a famous simile in which the industrious Carthaginians are compared to bees in springtime: Such is their Toyl, and such their buisy Pains, As exercise the Bees in Xow’ry Plains; When Winter past, and Summer scarce begun, Invites them forth to labour in the Sun: Some lead their Youth abroad, while some condense Their liquid Store, and some in Cells dispence. Some at the Gate stand ready to receive The Golden Burthen, and their Friends relieve. All, with united Force, combine to drive The lazy Drones from the laborious Hive;


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With Envy stung, they view each other’ Deeds; The fragrant Work with Diligence proceeds. (Æneis, i. 598–609)

The regularity of the structure here reXects regularity in the sense, for Dryden is less interested in the bees themselves than in what the bees may represent allegorically. As he makes a moral point about industry, cooperation, and competitiveness, the bees take on human characteristics in a fuller and more extended way than in Milton. In a later simile, though, discussed above,110 the rhythm and movement of the period genuinely reXect nature, conveying the roving Xight and sound of the humming bees, as the souls of the dead are compared to bees. Of the three similes, this last is most sensuous and evocative of nature. In weighing the merits of Milton and Dryden, where they are both writing well, the importance of the debate about the respective merits of blank verse and rhyme recedes. 110 See above, p. 120.

APPENDIX 1

Appendix: The Continuing Debate about Rhyme It may come as something of a surprise that, after the labour of his Virgil translation, Dryden gives the palm unambiguously to blank verse, talking as Milton had done of the hindrance of rhyme.111 But whatever doubts he may have had about rhyme, they did not change his practice; he continued to use the couplet in his last poems (the Fables) so that all his translations of the classical hexameter were made into the heroic couplet, which despite the example of Milton remained the most popular metre for narrative verse until the nineteenth century. After Milton, poets and critics alike might be in two minds, as in the notable case of Joseph Spence, an ardent admirer of Pope, who nevertheless in his dialogue on Pope’s Odyssey of 1726 has one of his speakers put the case against rhyme with force and conviction.112 Nevertheless, the popularity of the heroic couplet in what may loosely be described as its Augustan form over such a long period in poets as diverse as Marlowe and Ben Jonson at one end to Samuel Johnson and Crabbe at the other must be ascribed to something more than mere fashion. Milton unambiguously resisted it (except in a few early non-narrative poems), but otherwise few poets were immune to the lure of rhyme which seemed the natural way to achieve metrical harmony in the native tradition. Even in the nineteenth century, there are some strange survivals. Despite his preference for blank verse in the Prelude and cognate poems, it is remarkable that when he came to translate Virgil, Wordsworth did so in rhyming couplets.113 These apparent contradictions are indicative of a genuine uncertainty not only between poets but within them about the merits and demerits of rhyming verse that was given new impetus by the successful example of Milton and continued throughout the eighteenth century. The arguments for and against are Wnely balanced in a comparison between Milton and Dryden made by Robert Lloyd in 1760 when the vogue for Miltonizing was at its height alongside the continuing popularity of the heroic couplet. Weak imitation of Milton (what Eliot called his bad inXuence) did not cause Lloyd to be blind to the merits of the great originator who is judged to be harmonious without rhyme if he is read with due discrimination. Some Milton-mad (an aVectation Glean’d up from college education) Approve no verse, but that which Xows In epithetic measur’d prose, 111 Dryden, Works, v. 324. 112 Spence, Pope’s Odyssey, i. 117–36; in this long discussion of the pros and cons of rhyme, Spence cites the testimony of Dryden just quoted. 113 Wordsworth’s version is discussed in the Epilogue below, pp. 341–4.

The Continuing Debate about Rhyme

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With trim expressions gaily drest Stol’n, misappl’d, and not confest, And call it writing in the stile Of that great Homer of our isle. Whilom, what time, estoons and erst So prose is oftentimes beverst Sprinkled with the quaint fantastic phrase, Uncouth to ears of modern days, Make up the metre which they call Blank, classic blank, their all-in-all. Can only blank admit sublime? Go read and measure Dryden’s rhyme. Admire the magic of his song, See how his numbers roll along, With ease and strength and varied pause, Nor cramped by sound nor metre’s laws. Is harmony the gift of rhyme? Read, if you can, your Milton’s chime; Where taste, not wantonly severe, May Wnd the measure, not the ear. As rhyme, rich rhyme, was Dryden’s choice, And blank has Milton’s nobler voice, I deem it as the subject’s lead, That either measure will succeed; That rhyme will readily admit Of fancy, numbers, force, and wit; But though each couplet has its strength, It palls in works of epic length. (Robert Lloyd, 1762) 114 While it can be demonstrated that the best writers of couplets compose in paragraphs rather than in individual couplets, Lloyd’s contention that it palls over a long stretch must be tested by individuals themselves. Against this verdict of Lloyd may be put the experience of Samuel Johnson in his ‘Life of Milton’ where he expresses the opposite view that blank verse ‘tires by long continuance’. Johnson, himself a rhymer, puts the case for rhyme and against blank verse rather more powerfully than it had been put in the earlier period by Daniel, yet he almost recants at the end. ‘Rhyme’, he says, truly, ‘is no necessary adjunct of true poetry.’ But, perhaps, of poetry as a mental operation, metre or musick is no necessary adjunct; it is, however, by the music of metre that poetry has been discriminated in all languages, and in languages melodiously constructed with a due proportion of long and short syllables, metre is suYcient. But one language cannot communicate its rules to 114 The Poetical Works of Robert Lloyd (London: T. Evans, 1774).

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another; where metre is scanty and imperfect, some help is necessary. The musick of the English heroick line strikes the ear so faintly, that it is easily lost unless all the syllables of every line co-operate together; this co-operation can only be obtained by the preservation of every verse unmingled with another as a distinct system of sounds; and this distinctness is obtained and preserved by the artiWce of rhyme. The variety of pauses, so much boasted by the lovers of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet to the periods of a declaimer; and there are only a few happy readers of Milton who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or begin. ‘Blank verse’, said an ingenious critick, seems to be verse only to the eye.’ Poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English poetry will not often please; nor can rhyme ever be safely spared but where the subject is able to support itself. Blank verse makes some approach to that which is called the ‘lapidary style’; has neither the easiness of prose nor the melody of numbers, and therefore tires by long continuance. Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as precedents, not one is popular; what reason could urge in its defence has been confuted by the ear. But whatever be the advantage of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wish his work to be other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than imitated. He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank verse, but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme.115

How interesting that Johnson can contemplate a kind of poetry without metre (free verse) and even without music (some highly intellectualized modern writing). But for Johnson, as for most poets and readers before the twentieth century, it is an axiom that poetry is a melodic arrangement of language that is akin to music. SigniWcant too here is Johnson’s assumption that reading poetry means reading it out loud.116 How widespread the practice of reading poetry aloud might have been in his or earlier times it is impossible to say, but what can be said with certainty is that in a pre-visual age both poets and readers were far more sensitively attuned to the musical properties of the language than are most readers today and that as a consequence they were generally far more discriminating when it comes to particular musical eVects. Hence the predilection for rhyme stems not as an unsympathetic modern judgement might hastily suppose from any insensitivity to repetitious collocations of sound. Quite the contrary is the case, in fact; Dryden in his history of rhyme makes a just distinction between vulgar tinkling rhyme that simply holds together language that would otherwise be hobbling prose and the developed art of rhyme that makes an appeal to the discriminating ear in complementing the subtle management of ‘pauses, cadence and well vowell’d words’. Our assumption today should be that the ears of poets and their audiences of earlier times were rather more alert than ours are to intricacies and subtleties in the art of rhyming. 115 Johnson, Lives, i. 192–4. 116 ‘When I read this Æneid to many of my friends, in company together, most of them quarrel’d at the word falsify’d as an Innovation in our Language.’ Dryden’s note here on viii. 1094 (Works, vi. 828) is clear evidence that he tried out his translation on an audience of his peers.

3 Augustan Translation of Silver Latin DRYDEN’S TRANSLATION OF PERSIUS AND JUVENAL: DRYDEN’S CRITICAL ASSESSMENT When he came to translate the two chief satirists of the silver age Persius and Juvenal, Dryden did not surrender any of his essential Augustan principles. Addressing his patron, the Earl of Dorset, himself a satirist, at the opening of his long Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1693), his touchstone in a thorough depreciation of preAugustan English satire is Virgil: Donn alone, of all our Countrymen, had your Talent; but was not happy enough to arrive at your VersiWcation. And were he Translated into Numbers, and English, he wou’d yet be wanting in the Dignity of Expression. That which is the prime Vertue, and chief Ornament of Virgil, which distinguishes him from the rest of Writers, is so conspicuous in your Verses that it casts a shadow on all your Contemporaries;1

The praise of Dorset indirectly articulates a desire for artistically reWned satire; at the end of the Discourse the praise of Boileau asserts the dignity of the genre and associates it unusually with the majesty of the heroic of which it is said to be a subspecies: This I think . . . to be the most Beautiful, and the most Noble kind of Satire. Here is the Majesty of the Heroique, Wnely mix’d with the Venom of the other, and raising the Delight which otherwise would be Xat and vulgar, by the Sublimity of the Expression . . . Had I time, I could enlarge upon the Beautiful 1 Dryden, Works, iv. 6; Dryden, Poems, iii. 317. The Discourse is a very long piece which is not easy to digest or Wnd one’s way around; the Longman editors in the above edition have provided an excellent thematic digest at the beginning and also copious notes on Dryden’s relation to his sources. This is therefore by far the easiest edition and the reason for cross-referencing here. The text, for consistency, is from Works though there are occasional references to the notes to the satires in Poems, the text of which is in a separate volume (iv).

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Augustan Translation of Silver Latin

Turns of Words and Thoughts, which are as requisite in this, as in Heroique Poetry it self; of which this Satire is undoubtedly a Species.2

In the body of the Discourse itself, he even argues that Virgil himself had the potential for satire.3 The proximity of the digniWed and the satiric in Virgil might be suggested by parts of his own translation: Some Patriot Fools to pop’lar Praise aspire, Or Public Speeches, which worse Fools admire, While from both Benches, with redoubl’d Sounds, Th’ Applause of Lords and Commoners abounds. Some thro’ Ambition, or thro’ thirst of Gold, Have slain their Brothers, or their Country sold: And leaving their sweet Homes, in Exile run To Lands that lye beneath the Sun. The Peasant, innocent of these Ills, With crooked Ploughs the fertile Fallows tills; And the round Year with daily Labour Wlls. (Georgic, ii. 730–40)4

Since there is no ridicule here, passages of this kind may not strictly be regarded as satire, but Virgil’s talent for what might be called moral diatribe brings him and his translator near to the genre and suggests the possibility that Virgil might well have been a model for high-Xown satire with dignity. Augustan satire already had its proponent and exemplar in Horace, whom, taken as a whole (that is, including his lyric performance) Dryden admired as second to none. Rather startlingly, and perhaps inconsistently, he even at one point rates him above Virgil himself: If it be only argu’d in general, which of them was the better Poet; the Victory is already gain’d on the side of Horace. Virgil himself must yield to him in the delicacy of his Turns, his choice of Words, and perhaps the Purity of his Latin.5 2 Dryden, Works, iv. 84; Poems, iii. 441. 3 Eclogue, iii. 26–7: ‘Was it not you, ignoramus, who at the cross-roads used to murder a wretched tune on a srannel-straw?’ Dryden, Works, iv. 64; Poems, iv. 414. The editors quote too Dryden’s comment on Mercury’s words about women in Æneis, iv. 569–70, ‘the sharpest Satire in the fewest words that ever was made on Womankind’ (Works, v. 299). 4 Dryden, Works, v. 204–5. 5 Dryden, Works, iv. 58; Poems, iii. 405. Purity may be variously deWned as precision, aptness to its subject, and clarity to the reader’s understanding (see H. James Jensen, A Glossary of John Dryden’s Critical Terms (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969).

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Virgil’s well-known adoption of ‘Graecisms’ and the remark in the ancient life of Donatus that he had been criticized in antiquity for ‘cacozelia’,6 a controversial term usually translated as ‘aVected expression’, may account for his being found wanting here in ‘purity of Latin’ for which, in the Renaissance and beyond, he was more usually reckoned to be the chief authority. Augustan purity, however, remains the ideal. As satirist, Horace himself was only too conscious of his role in reWning native practice. It was in the context of his reWnement of his predecessor Lucilius, the ‘inventor’ of the genre at Rome, that he deWned the Augustan satirical ideal: est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures; et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe iocoso, defendente vicem modo rhetoris atque poetae interdum urbani, parcentis viribus atque extenuantis eas consulto, ridiculum acri. fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat res. (Satire, I. x. 9–15) (There must be brevity that the thought may Xow and not be impeded by words that burden weary ears: and there is a need for a style, now grave now gay, sustaining the part now of orator and poet, and sometimes of the wit moderating his strength and controlling it with purpose. Joking cuts through knots more eVectively and better than vituperation.)

Here in a nutshell is the Horatian ideal stressing equally satiric and artistic control as the satirist takes upon himself the various roles of rhetorician, poet, and man of the world (‘urbanus’, worldly wit), varying his tone and mode of attack and not simply being a censorious scourge. At the time of the Discourse, the critical consensus amongst those comparing the ancient satirists favoured Horace over Juvenal, and Dryden himself in an earlier verdict had given the preference to Horace ‘if to laugh and to rally is to be preferred to railing and declaiming’ but the actual practice and performance of Horace when compared to that of Juvenal left him less than fully satisWed: But, after all, I must confess, that the Delight which Horace gives me, is but languishing. . . . Where he barely grins himself . . . he cannot provoke me to any 6 See H. D. Jocelyn, ‘Vergilius Cacozelius (Donatus Vita Vergilii 44)’, in Francis Cairns (ed.), Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar, 2nd vol. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1979).

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Laughter. His Urbanity, that is his Good Manners, are to be commended, but his Wit is faint; and his Salt; if I may dare to say so, almost insipid. Juvenal is of a more vigorous and Masculine Wit; he gives me as much Pleasure as I can bear; He fully satisWes my Expectation; he Treats his Subject home: his Spleen is rais’d and he raises mine: I have the Pleasure of Concernment in all he says. . . . Add to this, that his Thoughts are as just as those of Horace, and much more Elevated. His Expressions are Sonorous and more Noble; his Verse more numerous and his Words are suitable to his Thoughts, sublime and lofty. . . . When there is anything deWcient in Numbers, and Sound, the Reader is uneasie, and unsatisW’d . . . And this being the manifest defect of Horace, ’tis no wonder that Wnding it supply’d in Juvenal, we are more Delighted with him. And, besides this, the Sauce of Juvenal is more poignant to create in us an Appetite of Reading him. The Meat of Horace is more nourishing: but the Cookery of Juvenal more exquisite; so that, granting Horace to be the more general Philosopher; we cannot deny, that Juvenal was the greater Poet, I mean in Satire.7

Dryden’s experience of Juvenal makes good the testimony of one of his authorities in the Discourse, the great Latinist Scaliger: ‘Juvenalis candidus ac satyricorum facile princeps. Nam eius versus longe meliores quam Horatiani: sententiae acriores, phrasis apertior’ (Poetices Libri Septem8) ‘Juvenal is open and easily the Wrst of satirists. For his verses are better than Horace’s: his sententiae are sharper and his expression more open’. The condensed expression of Horace sometimes makes him diYcult to construe. And his hexameter practice in his sermones diVers from that of Virgil and Ovid; his tone and pitch, though varied, is predominantly conversational and rarely rises to the majesty of the heroic. Juvenalian satire in Dryden’s account represents in its more ambitious poetic reach a fulWlment of Roman satiric potential and an achievement beyond Horace.9 Even so, Dryden could not give up the Augustan model so easily: Holiday says, A perpetual Grinn, like that of Horace, rather angers than amends a Man. I cannot give him up the Manner of Horace in low Satire so easily: Let the Chastisements of Juvenal be never so necessary for his new kind of Satire; let him declaim as wittily and as sharply as he pleases; yet the most delicate touches of Satire consist in Wne Raillery.10

7 Dryden, Works, iv. 65; Poems, iii. 411. 8 Scaliger quoted in D. Junii Juvenalis et A. Persii Flacci Satirae, ed. Ludovicus Prateus (London, 1684). 9 Dryden, Works, iv. 64; Poems, iii. 413. 10 Dryden, Works, iv. 70; Poems, iii. 422.


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He then cites as an example of this Wne raillery his own portrait of ‘Zimri’ from Absalom and Achitophel of 1681. This might lead us to expect some interplay between the Augustan ideal and the Juvenalian alternative in his translation of Juvenal. In the case of Persius, the judgement is clearer and unwavering: Persius, obscure but full of Sense and Wit, AVected Brevity in all he writ (Dryden, The Art of Poetry (1683), 381–2)

Horace had recommended brevity in deWning his satirical ideal (above) but warned of its pitfalls in his Ars Poetica: ‘brevis esse laboro, obscurus Wo’ (l. 26) ‘I labour to be brief, I become obscure’. Obscurity in Persius was notorious: First, then for the Verse, for neither Casaubon himself, nor any for him, can defend either his Numbers or the Purity of his Latin. Casaubon gives up this point for lost; and pretends not to justiWe either the Measures or the Words of Persius: he is evidently beneath Horace and Juvenal in both. Then, as his Verse is scabrous, and hobbling and his Words not everywhere well chosen, the purity of Latin being more corrupted than in the time . . . of Horace who writ when the Language was in the heighth of its perfection, so his diction is hard, his Figures are generally too bold and daring; and his Tropes, particularly his Metaphors, insuVerably strain’d. In the third place, notwithstanding all the diligence of Casaubon . . . yet he is still obscure: Whether he aVected not to be understood, but with diYculty; or whether the fear of his safety under Nero, compell’d him to this darkness in some places; or that it was occasioned by his close way of thinking, and the brevity of his Style and crowding of his Figures; or lastly, whether after so long a time many of his Words have been corrupted, and many Customs, and Stories relating to them, lost to us; whether some of these Reasons, or all, concurr’d to render him so cloudy; we may be bold to aYrm, that the best of Commentators can but guess at his Meaning, in many passages: And none can be certain that he has divin’d aright. After all, he was a Young Man, like his Friend and Contemporary Lucan: Both of them Men of extraordinary Parts, and great acquir’d Knowledge, considering their Youth. But neither of them had arrived to that Maturity of Judgment, which is necessary to the accomplishing of a form’d poet.11

Persius in particular is believed to have been Donne’s authority for the notion that satire ideally should be rough in tone, riddlingly obscure, 11 Dryden, Works, iv. 51; Poems, iii. 393.

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and replete with dark conceits. Such a notion of ancient satire (always a diYcult form for modern readers even now) was widespread amongst the Elizabethans: witness Donne’s contemporary Joseph Hall writing in his Virgidemiae12 of 1599: Some say my Satyrs over-loosely Xow, Nor hide their gall inough from open show; Nor, ridle-like, obscuring their intent: But packe-staVe plain, uttring what thing they ment; Contrarie to the Roman ancients, Whose wordes were short, & darksome was their sence. Who reads one line of their harsh poesies, Thrise must take his winde, & breathe him thrice: (Lib. III Prologue, 1–8)

Elsewhere Hall speaks of Juvenal’s ‘soure and crabbed face’.13 It was not until the later seventeenth century that there was a full appreciation of the artistry of the form. The attraction of Persius had never been his style but his substance; in his steady maintenance of a Stoic outlook and philosophy, he fulWlled at least one of the major requirements held necessary for the practising poet in Horace’s Ars Poetica: scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons. rem tibi Socraticae potuerunt ostendere chartae (ll. 309–10)

Or in the expanded updated version of Horace by Oldham (1681): Good sense must be the certain standard still To all that will pretend to writing well: If you’l arrive at that, you needs must be Well vers’d and grounded in Philosophy: (Horace His Art of Poetry, Imitated, 494–7)14

12 Joseph Hall, The Poems of Joseph Hall, ed. Arnold Davenport (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1969), 33. 13 Ibid. 99. 14 Oldham, The Poems of John Oldham, ed. Harold F. Brooks and Raman Selden (Oxford: OUP, 1987), 104.


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Persius, therefore, might get approval for coming at least halfway towards the Horatian ideal: omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci lectorem delectando pariterque monendo (Ars Poetica, 343–4) But he, that has the knack of mingling well What is of use with what’s agreeable, That knows at once how to instruct and please, Is justly crown’d by all mens suVrages: (ll. 555–8 in Oldham’s version)

‘Satire is of the nature of Moral Philosophy; as being instructive’;15 on such a deWnition, Dryden, in the Discourse, Wnds that Persius fulWls this requirement better than Horace himself. But on the question of style, his faults are consistently maintained by his translator who recorded that he had cost him ‘more labour and more time, than Juvenal ’:16 If his fault [Horace’s] be too much lowness, that of Persius is the hardness of his Metaphors, and obscurity: And so they are equal in their failings of their Stile; where Juvenal manifestly Triumphs over both of them.17

Dryden’s Persius The opening satire of Persius comprises a defence of his satire within the framework of a general condemnation of contemporary tendencies in the enervate rhetorical culture of Nero’s Rome, where most poetry in the public recitations is ‘All Noise, and empty Pomp, a storm of words, j Lab’ring with sound, that little Sence aVords’ (ll. 36–7) ‘Like Labeo’s Iliads, in whose Verse is found j Nothing but triXing care and empty sound’ (ll. 96–7). To pass the Poets of Patrician Blood, What is’t the common Reader takes for good? The Verse in fashion is when Numbers Xow, Soft without Sence, and without Spirit slow: So smooth and equal that no sight can Wnd 15 Dryden, Works, iv. 55; Poems, iii. 400. 16 Dryden, Works, iv. 50; Poems, iii. 393. 17 Dryden, Works, iv. 58; Poems, iii. 404.

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Augustan Translation of Silver Latin The Rivet, where the polish’d piece was join’d; So even all, with such a steady view, As if he shut one Eye to level true. Whether the Vulgar Vice his Satyr stings, The Peoples Riots, or the Rage of Kings, The gentle Poet is alike in all; His Reader hopes no rise and fears no fall. (ll. 121–32)

In this taxing of the prevailing taste, Dryden’s translation unmistakably recalls Denham’s famous couplet comprising the Augustan ideal: ‘Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull, j Strong without rage, without o’erXowing full’.18 The critique of verse that is ‘soft without Sence’ and all polish and smoothness anticipates the mockery of similar enervation in Pope’s later Essay on Criticism (see especially ll. 305 V. and 337 V.). The Augustan aesthetic, like any other, can be misapplied. Persius continues his scorn for contemporary tastes by ridiculing those who pour over the ancients and recommend them to their children. This results in a ‘sartago loquendi’ (l. 80) ‘a hotch-potch of language’, presumably an injudicious mixture of old and new; whether this mixture corrupts the fathers or the sons or both is not entirely clear. Dryden has recast the whole passage and written something that makes very clear sense to his English audience: Some, love to hear the Fustian Poet roar, And on some Antiquated Authours pore, Rummage for Sense, and think those only good Who labour most, and least are understood. When thou shalt see the Blear-Ey’d Fathers Teach Their Sons this harsh and mouldy sort of Speech; Or others new aVected ways to try Of wanton smoothness, Female Poetry; One wou’d enquire from whence this motley Stile Did Wrst our Roman Purity deWle: For our Old Dotards cannot keep their Seat; But leap and catch at all that’s obsolete. (ll. 149–60)

The two couplets describing the alternative vice of aVected ‘Female Poetry’ (like the enervated stuV alluded to earlier in the poem) are 18 See p. 94, above.


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additions so that there are two undesirable alternatives, the old and the new, on either side of a lost ‘Roman Purity’. Ironically, the obscure and diYcult Persius is made Wrst to denounce those who think those only good ‘Who labour most and least are understood’ (an addition to the Latin) and then to become a spokesman for ‘Roman Purity’ (equally an addition), despite the quite correct assertion in the Discourse that the purity of his Latin cannot be defended by even the most partial admirer of his poetry (Casaubon). Roman purity may be a rather dark notion for some English readers but its meaning is soon made manifest in terms that anyone bold enough to pick up a translation of Persius will readily appreciate. When Persius’ interlocutor, having given samples of current poetry written in a high style on mythological subjects (some of which have often been identiWed as coming from Nero who had poetic pretensions himself ), asks, in apparent desperation for something that will meet with the satirist’s approval ‘What if I bring j A Nobler Verse? Arms and the Man I sing’, the satirist replies: Why name you Virgil with such Fops as these? He’s truly great; and must for ever please: Not Werce, but awful is his Manly Page; Bold is his Strength but sober is his Rage. (ll. 192–5)

The second couplet, deWning manly Roman strength against the decadent ‘eVeminate’ enervation of most silver Latin, is an addition. The note of the Longman editors on lines 188–91 in which Virgil is introduced helps to clarify Dryden’s purpose and emphasis: ‘Commentators diVer as to whether this is spoken by Persius or the friend, and as to whether it is a pejorative comment on the doggerel or on Virgil. Dryden departs from the Latin to make Persius praise Virgil unambiguously.’19 Persius has been transformed to bring him Wrmly into line with Augustan values. There is nothing in the Persian Art of Poetry, implicit here, that might be disapproved of by Horace himself. The actual style adopted by Dryden’s Persius in practice proves to be clear in its syntax and straightforward in its diction. It is metrically polished and, unlike the smooth verse that is the object of attack, packed with sense and meaning. Its mockery is sharp and witty. 19 Dryden, Poems, iv. 149.

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The most well-known pointer to the Persian style occurs in Satire V addressed by Persius to his old Stoic teacher Cornutus. Dryden reinvents the exchange in the light of his own debt to his schoolmaster Dr Busby, to whom he dedicates the poem. When the interlocutor characterizes the Persian style, it is also reinvented accordingly: verba togae sequeris iunctura callidus acri ore teres modico, pallentis radere mores doctus et ingenuo culpam deWgere ludo. (v. 14–16) (You follow everyday expression, skilful in clever combinations of words with a rounded but modest style, knowing how to lash vicious manners and to censure faults with well-mannered jesting.)

Dryden’s translation of this description of Persius’ style diVers widely from the Latin. Soft Elocution does thy Stile renown; And the sweet Accents of the peaceful Gown: Gentle or sharp, according to thy choice, To laugh at Follies, or to lash at Vice. (v. 19–22)

Soft, sweet, and gentle are not adjectives usually employed to describe the style of Persius and diVer markedly from Dryden’s own prose description cited earlier. The note on ‘iunctura callidus acri’ in the Delphin edition draws attention to a common understanding of the phrase as ‘scitum ac robustam verborum compositionem, non mollem aut rhythmicam, qualia Neroni aVectata’ ‘skilful and strong verbal composition, not soft or smooth, such as aVected by Nero’. Instead of the interpretation provided by the commentators, in these two elegant couplets, he has developed the Augustan import of the Latin ‘teres’: ‘well-turned’, ‘smooth’, ‘polished’, ‘elegant’. The Latin word ‘acri’, translated ‘clever’ in the literal version above, also has the dictionary deWnitions of ‘sharp’, ‘stinging’, ‘dazzling’, ‘pungent’, ‘violent’, ‘acute’, and the phrase has often been understood to be a defence on the part of the poet for the distinctiveness of his own style (put in the mouth of his Stoic teacher who might be expected to appreciate its pointedness) that embraces consciousness of its harshness. An example of the diYculty of Persius’ style occurs shortly after this when the poet urges his friend to continue to test his mettle in


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condensed language that contains a strained combination of ideas: ‘pulsa dinoscere cautus j quid solidum crepet et pictae tectoria linguae (ll. 24–5) ‘strike it [‘animae’, ‘my soul’] being careful to note what part makes a solid sound, and what is the external decoration of a painted tongue’. A dislocating mixture of the non-physical (the soul) and the concrete idea in the command ‘strike’ is followed by metaphors mixing sound in the clause ‘quid solidum crepat’ ‘what sounds solid’ and then vision in the phrase ‘pictae tectoria linguae’ ‘the coverings of a painted tongue’. There is an inconcinnity in the sense here. In his prose discussion of Persius, Dryden has this to say about hard metaphors: In defence of his boistrous Metaphors, he [Casaubon] quotes Longinus, who accounts them as instruments of the Sublime: Fit to move and stir up the AVections, particularly in Narration. To which it may be reply’d, That where the Trope is far-fetch’d and hard, ’tis Wt for nothing but to puzzle the Understanding,20

Accordingly, hard metaphors are made easier in the translation. ’Tis not, indeed, my Talent to engage In lofty TriXes, or to swell my Page With Wind and Noise; but freely to impart, As to a Friend, the Secrets of my heart: And, in familiar Speech, to let thee know How much I love thee; and how much I owe. Knock on my Heart; for thou hast skill to Wnd If it sound solid, or be Wll’d with Wind. (v. 27–34)

The soul has been regularized to the heart and the metaphorical language in the Wnal line is considerably easier to ingest. ‘Yet, for once, I will venture to be so vain, as to aYrm, That none of his hard Metaphors or forc’d Expressions are in my Translation.’21 Most English readers will allow the vanity and greet the aYrmation with gratitude. For ‘hard metaphors’ or ‘forced expressions’ are incompatible with what Dryden’s Persius here describes as ‘familiar Speech’. Addressed to his old schoolmaster such infelicities would indeed be an indecorous impertinence inviting memories of Dr Busby’s ‘dreadful Wand’. The conWding tone and theme here anticipates both what Pope has to say of Horace’s 20 Dryden, Works, iv. 54; Poems, iii. 398. 21 Dryden, Works, iv. 54–5; Poems, iii. 399.

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manner in his literary epistles and the language in which he later speaks in the defence of his satire in the Horatian Imitations: Horace still charms with graceful Negligence, And without Method talks us into Sense; Will, like a Friend familiarly convey, The truest Notions in the easiest way; (An Essay on Criticism, 653–6) I love to pour out all myself, as plain As downright Shippen, or as old Montagne. In them, as certain to be lov’d as seen, The Soul stood forth, nor kept a Thought within; (‘The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace Imitated’, 51–4)22

The ease is not only a consequence of a reWning of the Wgurative language but also of a more general harmonizing wrought by the Augustan style. In the Latin as well as inconcinnity in the sense there is a marked inconcinnity in the grammar and syntax. The inWnitive ‘dinoscere’ ‘to distinguish’ governs both the clause ‘quod crepat solidum’ and the noun phrase ‘pictae tentoria linguae’. Such inconcinnity of grammar and syntax whereby parallel constructions are consciously avoided and which in verse tends to lead to metrical inconcinnity as well is a general feature of silver Latin not only in verse but also in prose (particularly notable in the historian Tacitus) and is certainly a general feature of Persius’ style and a cause of its diYculty and lack of ease. The natural tendency of the closed Augustan couplet in its characteristic patterning is to encourage a balance of syntax and phrasing which is not generally tolerant of such inconcinnity. This tendency is not compromised by the translator in any artiWcial desire to imitate what Dryden in his prose account of Persius calls his ‘scabrous and hobbling’ verse.

The method and purpose of Dryden in translation The common way which we have taken, is not a Literal Translation, but a kind of Paraphrase; or somewhat which is yet more loose, betwixt a Paraphrase and an Imitation.23

22 Dryden, Poems, iv. 9.

23 Dryden, Works, iv. 87; Poems, iii. 446.


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Dryden’s clear distinctions between metaphrase, paraphrase, and imitation are well known; so too his shorthand formula which seems to sum up his own method ‘translation with latitude’. This less wellknown account of his method occurring at the conclusion of the Discourse, however, well describes what we have seen to be his practice with Persius. He approaches his original very much in the spirit advocated by Horace for successful imitation and keeps to his Augustan formula: nec verbo verbum curabis reddere Wdus interpres, nec desilies imitator in artum, unde pedem proferre pudor vetet aut operis lex. (Horace, Ars Poetica, ll. 133–5) For, being a poet, thou mayst feign, create, Not care, as thou wouldst faithfully translate, To render word for word: nor with thy sleight Of imitation, leap into a strait, From whence thy modesty or poem’s law Forbids thee forth again thy foot to draw. (Jonson, ll. 189–94)24

‘Not to imitate servilely, as Horace saith, to catch at vices, for virtue’, so Jonson glossed this passage in his Discoveries,25 meaning that the imitator should not be so slavish as to feel the need to follow an original in its faults as well as its virtues. Consequently Dryden amends Persian vices, the obscurity, the scabrous verse, the hard diction, and the overstrained Wgures and strained metaphors. He endows him instead with the great Augustan virtues of clearness, purity, and ease. At the same time, his Persius speaks in accents that are plain, downright, and direct: Thou, if there be a thou, in this base Town, Who dares with angry Eupolis, to frown; He, who, with bold Cratinus is inspir’d With Zeal, and equal Indignation Wr’d; Who at enormous Villainy, turns pale, And steers against it with a full-blown Sail, Like Aristophanes; let him but smile 24 Jonson, The Complete Poems, ed. George Parfitt (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), 359. 25 Ibid. 448.

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Augustan Translation of Silver Latin On this my honest Work, tho writ in homely Stile: And if two Lines or three in all the Vein Appear less drossy, read those Lines again. May they perform their Author’s just Intent, Glow in thy Ears, and in thy Breast ferment. (‘The First Satyr’, 249–60)

Though not ‘drossy’, this is certainly a version of the sermo pedestris. The vindication of Dryden’s method and approach may be suggested by the immediate contemporary reaction of Congreve: Thou great Revealer of dark Poesie. Those sullen Clouds, which have for Ages past, O’er Persius’ too-long-suVf ’ring Muse been cast, Disperse, and Xy before thy sacred Pen, And, in their room, bright Tracks of Light are seen. . . . . . . . . Old Stoick Virtue, clad in rugged Lines, Polish’d by you, in Modern Brillant shines . . . . . . . . So now, whatever Praise, from us, is due, Belongs not to Old Persius, but the New. For still Obscure, to us no Light he gives; Dead in himself, in you alone he lives. So stubborn Flints their inward Heat conceal ’Till Art and Force th’unwilling Sparks reveal; But thro’ your Skill, from these small Seeds of Fire, Bright Flames arise, which never can Expire.26

The force of art in Dryden’s version casts ‘Old Stoick Virtue’, the essential substance of Persius till then disregarded, into a new radiant light, so fulWlling the sacred duty of the artistic expression in the later formulation of Pope: True Expression, like th’ unchanging Sun, Clears, and improves whate’er it shines upon, It gilds all Objects, but it alters none. (An Essay on Criticism, 315–17)

As a friend to Dryden, Congreve is not necessarily a neutral witness but there is no evidence to suggest that before Dryden translated him, 26 The Complete Works of William Congreve, ed. Montague Summers, 4 vols. (London: Nonesuch Press, 1923), iv. 23–4.


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Persius, if regarded at all, was regarded as anything other than a ‘dark’ author in English. Dryden’s thinking and practice as a translator came at a time of maximum interest in and debate about the ways in which the classics might be brought to bear upon modern culture. The formal imitation had already been imported from France and taken English root in the output of Rochester and Oldham. In translation, Roscommon’s Essay on Translated Verse (1684),27 the Wrst treatise of its kind, is an indication of the high status accorded to works of translation in the 1680s. Contemplating the translator’s task, Roscommon writes: Each Poet, with a diVerent Talent writes, One Praises, One instructs, Another Bites. Horace did nere aspire to Epick Bays, Nor lofty Maro stoop to Lyrick Lays. Examine how your Humour is inclin’d, And which the Ruling Passion of your Mind; Then, seek a Poet who your way do’s bend, And chuse an Author as you chuse a Friend. United by this Sympathetick Bond, You grow Familiar, Intimate and Fond; Your thoughts, your Words, your Stiles, your Souls agree, No Longer his Interpreter, but He. (pp. 6–7)

This is a seductive injunction oVering a Xattering possibility but it wholly ignores diVerences in language and culture which preclude such close identiWcation of styles and words, let alone souls. Dryden wrote complimentary verses on Roscommon’s Essay and was again complimentary in the ‘Preface to the Sylvae’ of 1685, but his own Wrst thoughts on translation written a little earlier are more discriminating and think the matter through. Nor must we understand the Language only of the Poet, but his particular turn of Thoughts, and of Expression, which are the Characters which distinguish and, as it were, individuate him, from all other writers. When we are come thus far, ’tis time to look into our selves, to conform our Genius to his, to give his thought either the same turn, if our tongue will bear it, or if not, to vary but the dress, not to alter or destroy the substance. (‘Preface to Ovid’s Epistles’ (1680))28 27 Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, An Essay on Translated Verse 1685; and Horace’s Art of Poetry Made English 1684 (Menston: Scolar Press, 1971). 28 Dryden, Works, i. 118.

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Unlike Roscommon, Dryden contemplates here the possibility that ancient thoughts and modern expression may be incompatible. In the ‘Preface to the Sylvae’ he begins what he has to say about translation with a strongly worded plea for the need on the part of translators to have due regard for the ‘proprieties and delicacies’ of their mother tongue. Thus diYcult it is to understand the purity of English, and critically to discern not only good Writers from bad, and a proper stile from a corrupt, but also to distinguish that which is pure in a good Author from that which is vicious and corrupt in him. . . . Thus it appears necessary that a Man shou’d be a nice Critick in his Mother Tongue before he attempts to Translate a foreign Language.29

This is in line with the injunction to the poet in the Soame/Dryden Art of Poetry:30 The smoothest Verse, and the exactest Sence Displease us, if ill English give OVence: A barb’rous Phrase no Reader can approve; Nor Bombast, Noise or AVectation Love. In short, without pure Language what you Write Can never yield us ProWt or Delight. (ll. 157–62)

Dryden’s great example in his translations to his contemporaries consisted in his achievement, unique in the history of English literature, in fulWlling all the demands he requires from the translator in the Sylvae preface, so that he delivers the substance of his various originals in a newly acquired purity of English responsive to stylistic diVerences between them and between the language of these originals and his own.

Dryden’s Juvenal The rhetorical climax of the Discourse is a vindication of Juvenal as the supreme Roman satirist. Unlike Persius, Juvenal had a more obvious afterlife in English. In his anti-Catholic satire, the Elizabethan Hall imagines the ghost of Juvenal (who came from Aquinum) returning to contemporary Rome to Wnd ample material for renewed scorn: Who says these Romish pageants been too high To be the scorn of spiteful poesy? . . . . . . . . 29 Dryden, Works, iii. 5.

30 Ibid. ii. 128.


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When once I think if carping Aquine’s spright To see now Rome, were licensed to the light, How his enraged ghost would stamp and stare, That Caesar’s throne is turned to Peter’s chair. (i. 1–2, 9–12)

Here he is the type of the vehement satirist stamping and staring in scornful dismissal of modern degeneracy. For the Elizabethans, encouraged by a derivation of the word satyr from satyrs and the ancient satyr play, the Roman satirists all in varying degrees represented a tradition that satire should be metrically harsh, rough in tone, and riddlingly obscure. In the Augustan period, Horace was admired for his ‘reWned raillery’ and came to the fore as chief satirical model for urbane satire, but Juvenal continued to have his adherents. In the 1680s John Oldham modernized them both in his imitations. Oldham’s idea of satire as evidenced in his translations of Horace and of Juvenal is far removed from that of the Elizabethans, but his performance is rougher than that of Dryden, as memorably expressed by Dryden himself in his tribute to him after his early death in 1683: What could advancing Age have added more? It might (what Nature never gives the young) Have taught the numbers of thy native Tongue. But Satyr needs not those, and Wit will shine Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line. (‘To the Memory of Mr. Oldham’, 12–16)31

Despite this indulgence to his young friend, in his own performance, satire is raised to new artistic heights. What is the eVect of the greater artistic reWnement in Dryden? Is there a diminution in the satirical force of the sharpest exponent of the genre? In the Discourse, after fairly unambiguous preferential praise of Juvenal, Dryden unexpectedly backtracks (see above) citing his own portrait of ‘Zimri’ as an example of the ‘reWned raillery’ that he associates with Horace. Yet his chief inspiration for his ‘Zimri’ portrait is Juvenal’s ‘Graeculus esuriens’ (iii. 78) ‘the hungry Greekling’ in his satire concerning the current state of Rome. In Oldham’s forceful imitation of the satire, the Greekling becomes, appropriately enough, a Frenchman. 31 Ibid. i. 175.

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Comparison between the translation, here quoted Wrst, and the imitation may throw light on the nature and eVect of Dryden’s greater Augustan reWnement. Quick Witted, Brazen-fac’d, with Xuent Tongues Patient of Labours, and dissembling Wrongs. Riddle me this, and guess him if you can, Who bears a Nation in a single Man? A Cook, a Conjuror, a Rhetorician, A Painter, a Pedant, a Geometrician, A Dancer on the Ropes, and a Physician. All things the hungry Greek exactly knows: And bid him go to Heav’n, to Heav’n he goes. (iii. 133–41)32

On ‘dissembling’ the Longman editors refer to a gloss in the OED ‘pretending not to notice’;33 this is part of the complaisance by which he worms his way into the society of the great. Ready of Wit, harden’d of Impudence, Able with ease to put down either H [ains,] Both the King’s Player, and the King’s Evidence: Flippant of Talk, and voluble of Tongue, With words at will, no Lawyer better hung: Softer than Xattering Court-Parasite, Or City-Trader, when he means to cheat: No Calling or Profession comes amiss, A needy Monsieur can be what he please, Groom, Page, Valet, Quack, Operator, Fencer, Perfumer, Pimp, Jack-pudding, Juggler, Dancer: Give but the word; the Cur will fetch and bring, Come over to the Emperor, or King: Or, if you please, Xy o’er the Pyramid, Which [Asto]n and the rest in vain have tried. (ll.108–22)34

The contemporary references at the beginning and end may have been clear to Oldham’s Wrst audience but are such as to occasion the kind of lengthy notes which accompany and encumber the text of Juvenal in the translations of Holyday and Stapylton, about which Dryden justly 32 Dryden, Works, iii. 119. 33 Poems, iv. 27. 34 The Poems of John Oldham, ed. Brooks and Selden, 249–50.


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complains in the Discourse. It is probably no coincidence that they are part of the weakest couplets in the overall portrait. Oldham’s imitation is vigorous with some excellent lines but, after Dryden, we miss the overall artistic control. It goes on too long and is not suYciently varied in rhythm; its central line ‘A needy Monsieur can be what he please’ is decidedly Xat and some of the rhymes (including those of this couplet) are weak. Variety is introduced in Dryden’s second couplet with the posing of the riddling question that invites the reader to pause and reXect and introduces a note of complicating perplexity. Oldham oVers unvaried indicative denunciation. Dryden’s list in the central triplet does not contain as much as Oldham’s couplet but it is more discriminating in that all its activities and professions require talent and knowledge and together are more all-encompassing. Oldham’s Frenchman turns his hand to various lower-class occupations (he is a groom and a page); he is a fake (a quack) and is a criminal (a pimp). The poet is more straightforwardly dismissive in his chastisement, calling him a ‘cur’ in an eVective couplet towards the end. In Dryden’s central triplet, the alliteration, the anaphoric eVect of the repeated indeWnite article, and the chiming multisyllabic rhyming deliver something more deliberate, more pleasing to the ear, and more versatile in eVect which is appropriate to the theme which seeks to evoke the versatility of the Greek. There is not the simply scornful chastisement that we Wnd in Oldham. Instead the artistry of the language works to enhance the artistry of the ‘Quick Witted’ Greek’s performance. This is subtle wit. In the climactic couplet the precision of emphasis in ‘All things the hungry Greek exactly knows’ is Wnely discriminating in its exactitude, paying tribute to the all-encompassing knowledge already established, but then the tribute is devalued in the Wnal line ‘And bid him go the Heav’n, to Heav’n he goes’ which emphasizes his compliance and servitude. While Oldham Xails about (and this becomes very obvious when the imitation is read as a whole) Dryden has not only greater Xuency but a more discriminating and controlled attack. Artistic control inevitably makes the satire more controlled, though this control does not necessarily diminish its force; on the contrary the eVect may be the reverse. The praise accorded to his Persius extended to his Juvenal in this contemporary testimony of Joseph Addison: Thou teachest Persius to inform our isle In smoother Numbers and a clearer Stile, And Juvenal, instructed in thy page,

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Augustan Translation of Silver Latin Edges his Satyr and improves his Rage. Thy Copy casts a fairer Light on all, And still out-shines the bright Original.35

Addison even goes as far as to suggest not merely that Dryden’s is the best English version that casts its original in a clearer light (this may easily be allowed) but also that the translation is actually better than the original. In what sense might it be argued that the translator has improved Juvenal’s rage? Let us begin at the beginning, juxtaposing the translation and the notes provided by Dryden with the original. Phrases in the Latin not obviously translated and the main additions in Dryden’s translation are highlighted in bold. Semper ego auditor tantum; numquamne reponam, Vexatus toties rauci Theseide Codri? Impune ergo mihi recitaverit ille togatas, Hic elegos? impune diem consumperit ingens Telephus? aut summi plena iam margine libri Scriptus & in tergo necdum Wnitus Orestes? Nota magis nulli domus est sua quam mihi lucus Martis et Aeoliis vicinum rupibus antrum Vulcani. Quid agunt venti, quae torqueat umbras Aeacus, unde alius furtivae devehat aurum Pelliculae, quantas iaculetur Monychus ornos, Frontonis platani convulsaque marmora clamant Semper et adsiduo ruptae lectore columnae: Expectes eadem a summo minimoque poeta. Et nos ergo manum ferulae subduximus, et nos Consilium dedimus Sullae, privatus ut altum Dormiret; stulta est clementia, cum tot ubique Vatibus occurras, periturae parcere chartae. Cur tamen hoc potius libeat decurrere campo Per quem magnus equos Auruncae Xexit alumnus, Si vacat ac placidi rationem admittis, edam. Still shall I hear, and never quit the Score, Stun’d with hoarse (1) Codrus Theseid o’er and o’er? Shall this man’s Elegies and t’ other’s Play Unpunish’d Murther a long Summer’s day? Huge (2) Telephus, a formidable page, 35 Joseph Addison, Miscellaneous Works, ed. A. C. Guthkelch, 2 vols. (London: Bell, 1914), i. 3.


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Cries Vengeance, and (3) Orestes’ bulky rage Unsatisfy’d with Margins closely writ Foams o’er the Covers, and not Wnish’d yet. No man can take a more familiar note Of his own Home, than I of Vulcan’s grot, Or (4) Mars his Grove, or hollow winds that blow From Ætna’s top, or tortur’d Ghosts below. I know by rote the fam’d Exploits of Greece; The Centaurs fury, and the Golden Fleece. Through the thick shades th’ Eternal Scribler bauls, And shakes the Statues on their Pedestals. The (5) best and worst on the same Theme employs His Muse, and plagues us with an equal noise. Provok’d by these incorrigible Fools, I left declaiming in pedantick Schools; Where, with Men-boys, I strove to get Renown, Advising (6) Sylla to a private Gown. But, since the World with Writing is possest, I’ll versify in spite, and do my best To make as much waste Paper as the rest. 1. Codrus, or it may be Cordus, a bad Poet, who wrote the Life and Actions of Theseus. 2. Telephus the Name of a Tragedy 3. Orestes another Tragedy 4. Mars his grove. Some Commentators take this Grove to be a Place where Poets were us’d to repeat their Works to the People; but more probably, both this and Vulcan’s Grott, or Cave, and the rest of the Places and Names here mention’d, are only meant for the Common Places of Homer in his Iliad and Odyssey. 5. The best and the worst that is the best and worst Poets 6. Advising Sylla This was one of the Themes given in the Schools of Rhetoricians, in the deliberative kind; Whether Sylla should lay down the Supreme Power of Dictatorship, or still keep it.

The opening poem, putting the poet’s satire in its contemporary context, expresses the satirist’s motivation and sets the tone for what is to come. Nearly all that is in Juvenal Wnds some representation in Dryden except the naming of the patron. The location in which the recitation takes place is still a great house but the hyperbolic eVect which ‘shakes the Statues on their Pedestals’ has been toned down a little with the removal of any reference to the plane trees and the broken columns. On the other hand the line ‘Through the thick shades th’ Eternal Scribler

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bauls’, perhaps suggested by ‘umbras’ in the mythological description but otherwise not directly corresponding to the Latin, picks up the imported allusion to the long summer’s day in the fourth line in such a way as to heighten the poet’s sense of unmitigated gloom prompted by the noise of the recital, which is strongly marked by the emphatic ‘bauls’. Although the target of the poet’s protest remains recitation, there is a slight shift of emphasis from oral performance to writing, which may be regarded as a discreet modernization for a world in which poems were not so frequently performed in public, with the importation of ‘a formidable page’ at the beginning and the replacement of ‘lectori’ by ‘Scribler’ towards the end. The turgidity of the contemporary literature being mocked in the opening stages is considerably heightened with the dynamic personiWcation imported with the additions of ‘Murther’, ‘rage’, ‘unsatisfy’d’, ‘cries Vengeance’, and ‘foams’. The list of themes and topoi made familiar by mythological poets is summarized but the signiWcance of the list is clariWed in the additional line ‘I know by rote the fam’d Exploits of Greece’. The additional phrase at the close of the Wrst paragraph ‘plagues us with an equal noise’ harks back to the opening couplet and sums up succinctly the poet’s mood and the nature of his complaint. The additional line in the next paragraph moves us forward and clariWes what is by contrast an abrupt and an oblique transition in the Latin: ‘et nos ergo manum ferulae subduximus’ (l. 15) ‘well, I too have slipped my hand from under the cane’, meaning, presumably, something like ‘I too have been caned at school (for inadequacies in the Wrst stages of rhetorical training) and graduated to college where I have practised rhetoric in stock exercises such as that involving Sulla’. The implication is that most contemporary poetry is conventionally rhetorical and on conventional subjects. We may compare the criticism of Persius (see above) to the eVect that people who can scarcely compose a simple description now attempt epic: Hourly we see some Raw, Pin-feather’d thing Attempt to mount, and Fights and Heroes sing; Who, for false quantities, was whipt at School But t’other day, and breaking Grammar Rule. (i. 133–6)

The transition in Juvenal is diYcult because the historical Wgure of Sulla bears no direct relation to the various mythological subjects and topics to which the satirist has been alluding in the opening paragraph. If the


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example had been Hercules and the debate about whether to choose pleasure or virtue, the mind of the reader need not strain to make the connection. Dryden, who had read previous versions and the various Latin commentaries upon which they are based, chose to make the transition clearer by making a direct link between ‘the incorrigible Fools’ just described, and the declamations of the schools. He then makes the satirist’s personal history clearer too and more rich in implication with the assertion ‘I left declaiming in pedantick Schools’ followed by an additional line that intensiWes the mockery of such rhetoric which is merely to gratify the vanity of ‘Men-boys’. The apparently honest confession in the renunciation of rhetoric here is not without irony given the talent for declamatory rhetoric for which Juvenal has always been famous. ‘Let the Chastisements of Juvenal be never so necessary for his new kind of Satire; let him declaim as wittily and sharply as he pleases’, Dryden had exclaimed in the Discourse.36 It is precisely this witty and sharp declamation that he is deploying characteristically in this opening satire. The sequence of Juvenal’s thought is again abrupt when he goes on to say ‘stulta est clementia, cum tot ubique j vatibus occurras, periturae parcere chartae’ (ll. 17–18) ‘mercy is foolish, when you come across so many poets everywhere, to the paper that is doomed to perish anyway’. The opening clause about mercy is omitted in favour of a clear syntactical connection at the beginning ‘But since’ which makes Juvenal easier to follow and marks an apparently logical stage in the argument. The Wnal triplet delivers a complicatedly witty (anti)climax out of Juvenal’s ‘periturae chartae’ ‘paper doomed to perish’ which is a perverse fulWlment of this apparent logic. Scorn for the opposition in the condensed expression of the Wrst line where ‘possest’ means ‘occupied to the point of madness’, comes to a potently charged and condensed witty climax with the assertion ‘I’ll versify in spite’. This answers the basic question of the opening line in Juvenal ‘numquamne reponam?’ ‘and shall I not retaliate?’; his verse will be the appropriate retaliation in spite of the world and to spite that world in a spiteful requital. The satirist honestly reveals himself here in all his spiteful ‘glory’. The mock honesty and humility (he has pretensions only to verse not poetry) is then continued in the Wnal line and a half which ringingly concludes the (anti)climax puncturing any hint of severity, and intensifying the irony, for we do not 36 Dryden, Works, iv. 70; Poems, iii. 422.

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really believe that he has such a low estimate of his own purpose and abilities, particularly when they are being shown to such clever eVect in this opening salvo. Dryden has organized a Wne rhetorical climax where there is not one at all in the original. In this he was helped partly by the habit of thinking and organizing in couplets (with the occasional triplet for added emphasis) and perhaps partly in this instance by the paragraphing in the texts he was using. Where modern texts make no paragraph break till line 22, Dryden’s texts had breaks at lines 14 and 18 and then not subsequently till line 45. In the earlier Soame/Dryden Art of Poetry there is a complaint that Juvenal ‘Too far did stretch his sharp Hyperbole’ (l. 384). Here Dryden has not essentially fought shy of the hyperbole; on the contrary he has intensiWed it in evoking the turgidity of the scribblers. It is true that with the omission of the plane trees and broken columns there is some pruning, but the basic hyperbole remains with the shaking of the statues on their pedestals caused by the bawling voice. The slight pruning of the mythology is a diVerent matter, more to do with copiousness and redundancy. ‘If a Fault can be justly found in him; ’tis that he is sometimes too luxuriant, too redundant’.37 But the strain in Juvenal, certainly in this opening and, it might be argued, more generally, does not result from forced hyperbole but from the oblique and abrupt transitions in his thought, a matter of organization rather than of imagery or emphasis. In a typically Augustan fashion, Dryden clariWes the argumentative structure within which the hyperbole functions so that Juvenalian expression can be conveyed with greater ease. In The Art of Poetry, after fulsome praise of Waller not only as the Wrst great reWner of English but as a model for present writers, the climactic injunction for the would-be poet is to sort out the sequence of his thoughts: Tread boldly in his Steps, secure from Fear, And be, like him, in your Expressions clear. If in your Verse you drag, and Sence delay, My Patience tires, my Fancy goes astray, And from your vain Discourse I turn my mind, Nor search an Author troublesom to Wnd. There is a kind of Writer pleas’d with Sound, Whose Fustian head with clouds is compass’d round; 37 Dryden, Works, iv. 63; Poems, iii. 412.


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No Reason can disperse ’em with its Light. Learn then to Think, e’re you pretend to Write. As your Idea’s clear, or else obscure, Th’ Expression follows perfect, or impure. What we conceive, with ease we can express, Words to the Notions Xow with readiness. (ll. 141–54)

In English the injunction addresses the vice of ‘wordiness’ in the poet; it seems also to be a renewal of the Horatian ideal as articulated in his satire: est brevitate opus, ut currat sentential, neu se impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures; (Satire, I. x. 9–10) (There must be brevity that the thought may Xow and not be impeded by words that burden weary ears.)

It is not surprising then that Dryden has acted on his own advice and has sorted out and clariWed the sequence of Juvenal’s thought, and therefore of his own as he translates him, to render the original with greater ease and Xow. The literal version of Stapylton makes an instructive contrast: Shall I but hear still? never quit the score? Vext with hoars Codrus Theseide o’re & o;re? Shall he unpuinisht read to me long Plays? He elegies? huge Telephus whole days Unpunisht spend? or vast Orestes, writ Oth’ sides, indorsed too, and not Wnisht yet? No man his own house better knows, than I The Grove of Mars and Vulcan’s Grotto, nigh The Æolian CliVs: what stirs the winds, What pains Aeacus inXicts on souls. What thief obtains The Golden Fleece, what fair Yong-ashes Xy From Centaurs hands; these Fronto’s plane-tree And Marble pillars with Werce reading burst, Y’have these from the best Poets, and the worst. We therefore from the Ferula have took Our hand, and those vain Hortatives forsook Wherein we counsell’d Sylla to become A private man and sleep secure at home.

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Augustan Translation of Silver Latin Since most you meet are Poets, to forbear Paper that must be spoil’d, fond pitty ’twere.38

In the light of this (or as a result of its darkness) we can acknowledge Dryden’s claim: We make our Authour at least appear in Poetique Dress. We have actually made him more Sounding, and more Elegant, than he was before in English: And have endeavour’d to make him speak that kind of English which he wou’d have spoken had he liv’d in England, and had Written to this Age.39

And so he speaks clearly and delivers himself with ease in verse that is harmonious and sonorous. But as it is delivered by Dryden, the satire, precisely because it is communicated with greater ease, also comes over more sharply than previously in English and, it might be argued, with greater ease and clarity than it appears in the Latin. We may believe that Addison was not simply oVering a polite compliment when he argued that Dryden’s ‘copy’ not merely cast the original in a fairer light but actually outshines it. It is as a result of Dryden’s Augustan virtues that this silver Latin poet is mediated so successfully in English. Dryden’s method did more than represent Juvenal with greater ease and clarity than he had ever appeared in English before: Juvenal speaks through Dryden with a rhetorical force and a sophisticated wit on a grand scale consonant with his sense of the epic dignity of satire. This is only too apparent in his version of Messalina (obvious additions highlighted). The good old Sluggard but began to snore, When from his side up rose th’ Imperial Whore: She who preferr’d the Pleasures of the Night To Pomps, which are but impotent delight; Strode from the Palace, with an eager pace To cope with a more Masculine Embrace: MuZ’d she march’d, like Juno in a Clowd, Of all her Train but one poor Wench allow’d; One whom in Secret Service she cou’d trust, The Rival and Companion of her Lust. To the known Brothel-house she took her way: And for a nasty Room gives double pay; 38 Sir Robert Stapylton, Juvenal’s Sixteen Satyrs (London: Peter Parker, 1673), 3. 39 Dryden, Works, iv. 89; Poems, iii. 449.


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That Room in which the rankest Harlot lay. Prepar’d for Wght, expectingly she lies, With heaving Breasts, and with desiring Eyes. [The fair unbroken Belly lay display’d Where once the brave Britannicus was laid. Bare was her Bosom, bare the Weld of Lust, Eager to swallow every sturdy Thrust.] Still as one drops, another takes his place, And baZed, still succeeds to like disgrace. At length, when friendly darkness is expir’d, And every Strumpet from her Cell retir’d, She lags behind, and, lingring at the Gate, With a repining Sigh, submits to Fate: All Filth without, and all a Fire within, Tir’d with the Toyl and unsated with the Sin. Old Caesar’s Bed the modest Matron seeks; The steam of Lamps still hanging on her Cheeks In Ropy Smut; thus foul and thus bedight, She brings him back the Product of the Night. (vi. 163–89, incl. 177a–d)

The eVect of the portrait as a whole is diYcult to pin down. One thing is certain: Dryden is not writing as a censorious scourge of villainy in the manner of an Elizabethan satirist.40 Nor, on the other hand, is it wholly without judgement which is present in the ‘unsated . . . Sin’. What he oVers is a credible picture of obsessive and compulsive behaviour, which has its comic aspects but is also pitiable. In this respect, as also in its wit, it could be said to have been composed by a man of the world, urbanus; the movement between the comic and the pitiable also fulWls a requirement of the Horatian ideal: et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe jocoso, defendente vicem modo rhetoris atque poetae interdum urbani (Satire, I. x. 11–13) (and there is a need for a style, now grave now gay, sustaining the part now of orator and poet, and sometimes of the witty man of the world)

40 See my comparison with the imitation by the Elizabethan Hall in Robin Soweby, The Classical Legacy in Renaissance Poetry (London and New York: Longman, 1994), 368–73.

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Even though Dryden does not use ‘low’ words to describe the sexual activity, it cannot be said that the Messalina portrait with its frank indecency is an instance of ‘reWned raillery’ in the way that the phrase has often been understood and seems to be understood by Dryden himself in the Discourse. But there is an artistic reWnement controlling the material by virtue of which here, as elsewhere in this version, Juvenal in Augustan dress is saved from mere ranting and railing and gnashing his teeth. But Dryden says he admires Juvenal more than Horace because of his high tone which he Wnds akin to epic. This is surely what, in the Wnal analysis, distinguishes the Messalina portrait from anything in the sermo style of the translation of Persius. Although Messalina herself is not heroized, she is, like Juno to whom Dryden compares her, larger than life. Like Lucan’s Cato (exempliWed in the next section), she is one grand if gruesome hyperbole. Taking this into consideration, we can see what Dryden meant when he regarded Juvenalian satire as a species of epic. There is a curious grandeur of conception in Juvenal which Wnds a willing equivalent in Dryden’s rendering. This mingling of a high tone and solemn rhythmic certainty with less than edifying content is a feature exploited with great success in various ‘mock epic’ poems in the neoclassical period and with no better success than was achieved in diVerent ways by Dryden himself in MacFlecknoe and Absalom and Achitophel. ROWE’S LUCAN

Introduction: Augustan regularization of Lucan He [Virgil] is every where above conceipts of Epigrammatic Wit, and gross Hyperboles: He maintains Majesty in the midst of plainness; he shines but glares not; and he is stately without ambition, which is the vice of Lucan. (Dryden, ‘Preface to the Sylvae’)41 Strong and glowing Colours are the just resemblances of bold metaphors, but both must be judiciously apply’d; for there is a diVerence betwixt daring and foolhardiness. Lucan and Statius often ventured them too far, our Virgil never. (Dryden, ‘A Parallel Betwixt Poetry and Painting’)42

Virgil here is the acknowledged standard by which his successors in what has been called from the eighteenth century onwards the literature of the 41 Dryden, Works, iii. 7.

42 Ibid. xx. 73.

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‘silver age’ are found wanting. Dissatisfaction with post-Augustan poetry was felt by the Romans themselves. The verdict of Quintilian, a near contemporary, that Lucan was a writer more suitable for imitation by orators than by poets, ‘magis oratoribus quam poetis imitandus’43 highlights his declamatory style, overly inXuenced by the rhetorical tendencies fostered in the schools and the taste for showy recitation in the culture of imperial Rome. The traditional contrast as marked here by Dryden has stressed Virgil’s judicious restraint in the use of the Wgures of rhetoric as against Lucan’s over-indulgence and excess. Lucan and Statius were both translated in the Augustan period and the versions of Lucan by Rowe in 1718 and of Statius by Pope in 1712 are among the best versions of these silver Latin poets that have ever been made. What, if any, are the consequences of the dichotomy between the Augustan aesthetic generally espoused by the age in which these translators worked (for which the deWning touchstones are Virgil and Horace) and rather diVerent aesthetic of the silver Latin originals who were in reaction against their Roman Augustan predecessors? Writing some eighty years after Virgil’s death in the reign of Nero, Lucan’s historical epic on the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, variously known under the title of the De Bello Civili and the Pharsalia, has generally been judged by the standard of Virgil’s Aeneid to which it has been unfavourably compared in its subject matter (using history rather than myth) and its style (being overheated and strained). James Welwood, writing in the preface to the Wrst edition of Rowe’s translation, has a version of this comparison: It must be own’d he is in many Places obscure, and hard, and therefore not so agreeable, and comes short of the Purity, Sweetness and delicate Propriety of Virgil. Yet it’s still universally agreed among both Ancients and Moderns that his Genius was wonderfully Great, but at the same time too Haughty and Headstrong to be govern’d by Art, and that his Stile was like his Genius, learn’d, bold, and lively, but withal too Tragical and Blustering.44

The title page of the translation interestingly contains an epigraph about civil war not from Lucan but from Virgil’s Aeneid (vi. 833): Ne tanta animis assuescite bella Neu patriae validas in viscera vertite vires. 43 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, x. i. 91. 44 Lucan’s Pharsalia, trans. into English Verse by Nicholas Rowe (London: Jacob Tonson, 1718 [1719]), p. xvi; Lucan, The Civil War: Translated as Lucan’s Pharsalia by Nicholas Rowe, ed. Sarah Annes Brown and Charles Martindale (London: J. M. Dent, 1998), p. lxvii; henceforth cited as Brown and Martindale.

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(Do not harden your hearts to such wars. Do not turn your strong hands against the Xesh of your fatherland.)

These words are addressed by Aeneas’ father Anchises in an apostrophe to Caesar and Pompey as he shows his son the roll-call of his illustrious Roman descendants. The epigraph is highly appropriate to the theme of Lucan’s poem but also evokes the master-poem that has overshadowed its Roman successors and in so doing indirectly highlights a potential incongruity between the silver Latin poem being translated and the English style to which the translator aspires, for which the epigraph is a touchstone. For it is not as if the Augustan Rowe is particularly attuned to what Welwood calls the ‘blustering’ style of his original. DiVerences between Lucan on the one hand and Virgil and Rowe’s aesthetic on the other may be suggested by examination of the opening proposition. Bella per Emathios plus quam civilia campos, Iusque datum sceleri canimus populumque potentem In sua vitrici conversum viscera dextra, Cognatasque acies, et rupto foedere regni, Certatum totis concussi viribus orbis In commune nefas, infestisque obvia signis Signa, pares aquilas et pila minantia pilis. (Of wars across Emathian plains, worse than civil wars, and of legality conferred on crime we sing, and of a mighty people attacking its own guts with victorious sword-hand, of kin facing kin, and once the pact of tyranny was broken, of conXict waged with all the forces of the shaken world for universal guilt, and of standards ranged in enmity against standards, of eagles matched and javelins threatening javelins.)

This is very diVerent in scope and style from the opening of the Aeneid with its elevated theme involving the bringing of civilization from Troy to Rome. Of Virgil’s opening line Dryden wrote: ‘Our Author seems to sound a Charge, and begins like the clangour of a Trumpet; arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris. Scarce a word without an R, and the Vowels for the most part sonorous.’45 Lucan’s opening line manages to be more straightforward in its diction, using ‘bella’, ‘wars’ rather than a metonymy ‘arma’, and to be more hyperbolic 45 In ‘Dedication of the Æeneis’, in Dryden, Works, v. 338.

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with the phrase ‘plus quam civilia’. The sense is suspended to the end of the line and not completed until ‘canimus’ in the second half of the second line. His opening does not have the easy swing or the ringing rhythm of Virgil’s line. There is assonance and an internal rhyme (Emathios/campos) but Lucan is not sounding a trumpet call; far from being sonorous, the opening proves to be something of a mouthful: ‘iusque datum sceleri’, a phrase that delays the main verb ‘canimus’ (which is in an unemphatic position in the line), does not, and is not meant to, sound pleasant. In each subsequent line there is at least one strong word with negative associations that cumulatively convey his bleak vision: ‘viscera’ (entrails), ‘rupto’ (broken), ‘concussi’ (shaken), ‘nefas’ (the forbidden), ‘minantia’ (threatening). The Wnal two lines are particularly ugly in their sound. Lucan is not writing smooth harmonious verse. A comparison might suggest itself between Lucan’s third line and the second line from the Virgilian epigraph which both contain the word ‘viscera’. The strong pattern of alliteration in Virgil and its predominantly dactylic rhythm make his line much smoother and more easily Xowing than Lucan’s line which is heavier with more spondees and less alliteration. If Virgil is the poetic standard, then there might be said to be something almost anti-poetic about Lucan. Rowe has not emulated the harsh sound and frequently abrupt rhythm of Lucan’s style. His couplets are harmonious and smooth in the English Augustan manner. Emathian Plains with Slaughter cover’d o’er, And Rage unknown to Civil Wars before, Establish’d Violence and lawless Might, Avow’d and hallow’d by the Name of Right, A Race Renown’d, the World’s victorious Lords, Turn’d on themselves with their own hostile Swords, Piles against Piles oppos’d in impious Fight, And Eagles against Eagles bending Flight, Of Blood by Friends, by Kindred, Parents, spilt, One common Horror and promiscuous Guilt, A shatter’d World in wild Disorder tost, Leagues, Laws, and Empire, in Confusion lost, Of all the Woes which Civil Discord bring, And Rome o’ercome by Roman arms, I sing.

What might seem like a direct imitation of the Latin ‘Piles against Piles oppos’d in impious Fight’ is rather a reminiscence of Dryden’s imitation of this line in The Hind and the Panther, with a careful attention to

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alliteration and assonance that makes it smoothly melliXuous and quite unlike the Lucanian original: That was but civil war, an equal set, Where Piles with piles and eagles Eagles met. (‘The Second Part’, 160–1)46

Conversely, Dryden’s second line with the deliberately ugly repetition of eagles achieves the same kind of choked eVect that we Wnd in Lucan. A further feature of Lucan’s opening paragraph that diVerentiates its style from that of Virgil is its paratactical arrangement and its lack of climax.47 The opening was criticized by a Roman grammarian for repetition and lack of development. In the Wrst seven verses at the beginning of the poem he has done nothing but paraphrase the words ‘wars . . . worse than civil’. Count up the phrases in which he rings the changes on this . . . Annaeus, what end will there be? (Fronto)48

In fact, Lucan builds up a picture by virtue of a list which provides more than a paraphrase. For instance ‘cognatas acies’ alludes to the fact that Caesar and Pompey were related through marriage (Pompey had married Caesar’s daughter Julia ) so that their war could indeed be regarded as more than civil; ‘rupto foedere regni’ refers to the breaking down of the First Triumvirate in which Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus had divided rule of the Roman world between them. Elucidation of these phrases requires some familiarity with the historical background which perhaps explains why Rowe translating for a general readership chose to omit them from his translation. The six Latin lines that follow the opening therefore do much more than simply ring the changes in a paraphrase of ‘wars worse than civil’. Nevertheless it is easy to see why this opening sentence came to be criticized; it does seem that it could go on for ever. There is no obvious syntactical, rhetorical, or indeed rhythmical climax, for it does not does not have ease and Xow, and the sentence like much 46 Dryden, Works, iii. 145. 47 Recent writers on Lucan have suggested that this stylistic feature springs from Lucan’s attititude to the theme of civil war as nefas and infandum, the unutterably unspeakable: see J. C. Bramble, ‘Lucan’ in E. J. Kenny and W. Clausen (eds.), The Cambridge History of Latin Literature (Cambridge: CUP, 1982), 551 V.; Jamie Masters, Poetry and Civil War in Lucan’s Bellum Civile (Cambridge: CUP, 1992), 124; Charles Martindale, Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge: CUP, 1993), 71. 48 Quoted by Martindale in his introd. to Brown and Martindale, p. xxix.

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of Lucan is quite diYcult to construe (Welwood calls him obscure and he is certainly a more diYcult author than Virgil). Having given his main verb in the second line, the rest of the structure is loosely connected by the participles ‘conversum’ and ‘certatum’ and then by a pile-up of nouns until the sentence suddenly stops. This feature of Lucan’s style which recurs frequently has been related by sympathetic modern critics to the sense of disorder and disconnection consequent upon the theme of civil strife. It is not a feature that commended itself to his translator who, as he freely admits, frequently reorders his material to produce the kind of rhetorical climax that is a particular feature of the couplet style of the English Augustans. Rowe’s comment on the opening declares: This First Period contains a Proposition of the whole Work, the Civil War; and I would only observe once for all that as Readers, who compare it with the Original, may see that I have transpos’d the Order of it in the Translation, and that on purpose I have taken the same Liberty in many other Places of this Work; especially where I thought such transpositions would give an Emphasis and a Strength to the latter End of the Period.49

Virgil’s proposition ends with the climactic line and half: ‘genus unde Latinum, j Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae’ (i. 5–7). In his translation Dryden aspires to a grand climax, concluding with a full resounding long majestic march: From whence the Race of Alban Fathers come And the long Glories of Majestic Rome. (ll. 9–10)

Rowe’s climax with its surer rhyme could in this respect be said to be even stronger: Of all the Woes which Civil Discord bring, And Rome o’ercome by Roman arms, I sing.

This is neat, balanced, sonorous, and harmonious, all that Lucan is not.50 It also shares those hard-won virtues of clarity, purity, ease, and a

49 Rowe’s footnotes are included by Brown and Martindale in their edition. 50 On Lucan’s style and versiWcation, see Lucan, M. Annaei Lucani Pharsalia, ed. C. E. Haskins, introd. W. E. Heitland (London: Bell, 1887), pp. lxiii–cxxxi and Lucan, Civil War VIII, ed. Ronald Mayer (Warminster, 1981), 10.

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tendency to magniWcence that Dryden claimed he had managed to copy in his translation of Virgil.51 The smoothing out is not simply a matter of syntax and rhythm. There is also a smoothing out of vocabulary and metaphor. Perhaps the boldest linguistic Wgure in Lucan’s opening is the application of ‘viscera’ (literally the ‘bowels’ or ‘entrails’) to the ‘populum potentem’ where the word is both metaphorical but also literal, for the world’s most powerful people could be said quite literally to have torn out their entrails on the Welds of Pharsalus. ‘Turn’d on themselves with their own hostile Swords’ is considerably less visceral in its eVect than the ‘gut-wrenching’ phrase of the original. In the climactic battle where the Roman people turn on themselves, the word occurs again and again Rowe does not render its full eVect. Lucan tells us that Caesar addressed his troops as follows: In plebem vetat ire manus monstratque senatum; Scit, cruor imperii qui sit, quae viscera rerum, Unde petat Romam, libertas ultima mundi Quo steterit ferienda loco. (vii. 578–81) (He forbids them to go against the common people, he points out the senators. For he knows where the blood of the empire runs, the guts of its machine; he knows on what side to assault Rome and where liberty must be struck now making her last stand on earth.)

Rowe turns indirect narrative into direct speech and in so doing misses the indirect suggestiveness of the pregnant phrase ‘viscera rerum’: Strike home, he cries, and let your Swords erase Each well-known Feature of the kindred Face; Nor waste your Fury on the vulgar Band— See! where the hoary, doating Senate stand; There Laws and Right at once you may confound, And Liberty shall bleed at ev’ry Wound, (vii. 831–6)

The cold calculating political purpose of Lucan’s Caesar here, admirably brought out in the bold Wgurative use of ‘cruor’ and ‘viscera’ (so apposite in the context of the actual battle) through which he is shown to be clear-sightedly attacking the vitals of the Roman state, has been replaced 51 ‘Dedication of the Aeneis’, in Dryden, Works, v. 33.

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by a more superWcial rhetorical Xourish which is less focused and single-minded. Rowe’s Caesar enunciates a clear general theme of Lucan’s poem—the horror of brother Wghting brother and father Wghting son in civil war—but for Caesar the war is a means to an end. Even he does not openly, or even secretly, delight in killing fellowRomans. The image in which ‘the hoary, doating Senate stand’, even if we take this principally to mean ‘make their stand’ is not greatly felicitous in the heat of battle. The force of the Wnal couplet which to some extent renders Lucan’s metaphor is weakened as a result. And does it make any sense to have Caesar openly appealing to his soldiers to confound ‘Law and Right’ and overthrow liberty? Did he and his soldiers happily see themselves as a lawless gang of criminals? However we answer that, it is clear that the visceral eVect of the original, whether that be understood to arise from bold ‘gut-wrenching’ expression or from the inner meaning conveyed by his strong metaphors, is often, as here, beyond the poetic reach of Rowe’s more conWned style and limiting judgement.

Comparison with Marlowe: limitations Some sense of Rowe’s strengths and limitations can be illustrated in comparison with Marlowe’s version of ‘Lucan’s First Book’, entered in the stationer’s register in 1592 and published in 1600, for which considerable claims have also been made.52 Marlowe’s roughly metaphrastic version has the same number of lines as Lucan’s original.53 Following this method, the result is inevitably rather hit and miss, though there are more hits than misses. Apart from the diYculty presented by the dense brevity of the original made possible by the highly inXected character of the Latin language, the classical hexameter, with its six feet, will always contain more matter than can be accommodated in the English pentameter, with Wve. The Wrst passage shows Marlowe at his best in his characterization of Caesar in his translation of a passage that is the source of the most famous allusion to Lucan in English literature in Marvell’s Horatian ode, where the representation of the restless Cromwell, ‘the war’s and fortune’s son’ who ‘urged his active

52 Charles Martindale, ‘Paradox, Hyperbole and Literary Novelty in Lucan’s De Bello Civili’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 23 (1976), 46. 53 Marlowe’s translation can be found in Christopher Marlowe, The Complete Poems and Translations, ed. Stephen Orgel (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 185–207.

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star’ and ‘like the three-forked lightning did through his own side his active way divide’ recalls that of Lucan’s Caesar.54 Caesar’s renown for war was less, he restless, Shaming to strive but where he did subdue; When ire or hope provoked, heady and bold, At all times charging home, and making havoc; Urging his fortune, trusting in the gods, Destroying what withstood his proud desires, And glad when blood and ruin made him way: So thunder which the wind tears from the clouds, With crack of riven air and hideous sound Filling the world, leaps out and throws forth Wre, AVrights poor fearful men, and blasts their eyes With overthwarting Xames, and raging shoots Alongst the air, and, nought resisting it, Falls, and returns and shivers where it lights. (Marlowe, ll. 145–58)

Rowe’s more expansive version is twice the length of Marlowe’s whose greater dynamism is obvious. He gets to the point more sharply than Rowe. His Caesar is more obviously ‘the war’s and fortune’s son’, ‘charging home, and making havoc’, ‘Urging his fortune’, ‘Destroying what withstood his proud desires’, and making his way through ‘blood and ruin’. In the simile that likens Caesar to the force of lightning, the energy is reXected in the strong vocabulary and the varied distribution of pauses and emphasis. In the Wnal line with its four strongly stressed verbs, ‘shivers where it lights’ provides a Wne climax; ‘lights’ being both light up and alight, while shiver primarily is the splitting eVect of the Xash but also secondarily the shivering eVect it has upon the ‘poor fearful men’ whom it aVrights. Here is Rowe’s version of the same passage: But Caesar’s Greatness and his Strength, was more Than past Renown and antiquated Pow’r; ’Twas not the Fame of what he once had been, Or Tales in old Records or Annals seen; But ’twas a Valour, restless, unconWn’d, Which no Success could sate nor Limits bind; 54 See ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’, in Andrew Marvell, Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. Robert Wilcher (London: Methuen, 1986), 57.

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’Twas Shame, a soldier’s Shame, untaught to yield, That blush’d for nothing but an ill-fought Field; Fierce in his Hopes he was, nor knew to stay, Where Vengeance or Ambition led the Way, Still prodigal of War whene’er withstood, Nor spar’d to stain the Guilty Sword with Blood; Urging Advantage he improv’d all Odds, And made the most of Fortune and the Gods; Pleas’d to o’erturn whate’er with-held his Prize, And saw the Ruin with rejoicing Eyes. Such, while Earth trembles and Heav’n thunders loud, Darts the swift Lightning from the rending Cloud; Fierce thro’ the Day it breaks, and in its Flight The dreadful Blast confounds the gazer’s Sight; Resistless in its Course delights to rove, And cleaves the Temples of its Master Jove: Alike where-e’er it passes or returns, With equal Rage the fell Destroyer burns; Then with a Whirl full in its Strength retires, And recollects the Force of all its scatter’d Fires. (Rowe, i. 272–97)

All Rowe’s individual lines are strong in their expression and resounding in their rhythm. His rendering of ‘In sua templa furit’ where ‘templa’ seems to refer to the region of the sky from which the lightning emanates as ‘And cleaves the Temples of its Master Jove’ is Wnely sophisticated with a play on ‘temples’ which might be on the sky god’s forehead in a personiWcation (suggesting an unspeciWed region of the heavens) or literally places of his worship on earth. Yet the sum of the lines has less energy than Marlowe. His style and manner here are perhaps a little leisurely for the matter in hand. Quintilian calls Lucan ‘concitus et ardens et sententiis clarissimis’ (Institutio Oratoria, X. i. 90) ‘Wery and passionate and remarkable for the grandeur of his general reXections’. This Wery passionate poetic character is particularly reXected in his (unfavourable) presentation of the unconstitutional militarism of Caesar. The balance and harmony of Rowe’s Augustan style tends often to moderate the force of this Wre; the diVerent aesthetic operating in his chosen form and style tends to regularize the Latin’s bold singularity. Comparison of a second passage is also to Marlowe’s advantage. For the understanding of this it is necessary to know something of Roman

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divination practices. When making an animal sacriWce, the liver is the important organ; one side of it relates to the good inXuence and wellbeing of friends, the other to the animosity and hostility of enemies. The Pharsalia is replete with ghastly omens, and gruesome religious practices that are designed to intensify the abomination of the civil war and to ratchet up the horror. After Caesar has crossed his Rubicon and is advancing swiftly towards Rome, in the wake of various unnatural prodigies an Etruscan seer performs the ritual sacriWce of a bull to read the entrails. Marlowe Wrst. No vein sprang out, but from the yawning gash, Instead of red blood, wallowed venomous gore. These direful signs made Arruns stand amazed, And searching farther for the gods’ displeasure, The very colour scared him; a dead blackness Ran through the blood, that turned it all to jelly, And stained the bowels with dark loathsome spots; The liver swelled with Wlth, and every vein Did threaten horror from the host of Caesar: A small thin skin contained the vital parts; The heart stirred not, and from the gaping liver Squeezed matter; through the caul the entrails peered, And which (aye me) ever pretendeth ill, At that bunch where the liver is, appeared A knob of Xesh, whereof one half did look Dead and discoloured, th’ other lean and thin. (Marlowe, ll. 613–28) The gushing Veins no chearful Crimson pour, But stain with pois’nous Black the sacred Floor. The paler Prophet stood with Horror struck, Then with a hasty Hand the Entrails took, And sought the angry Gods again, but there Prognosticks worse and sadder Signs appear: The pallid Guts with Spots are marbl’d o’er, With thin cold Serum stain’d and livid gore; The Liver wet with putrid Streams he spy’d, And Veins that threaten’d on the Hostile Side; Part of the heaving Lungs is no where found, And thinner Films the sever’d Entrails bound; No usual Motion stirs the panting Heart, The chinky vessels ouze on every part;

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The Cawl, where wrapt the close Intestines lye, Betrays its dark Recesses to the Eye. One Prodigy superior threaten’d still, The never-failing Harbinger of Ill: Lo! by the Wbrous Liver’s rising Head, A second Rival Prominence is spread; All sunk and poor the friendly Part appears, And a pale, sickly, withering Visage wears; While high and full the adverse Vessels ride, And drive, impetuous, on their purple tide. (Rowe, i. 1049–72)

Rowe is more accurate than Marlowe in his rendering of the part played by the liver in divination towards the end in which one side was interpreted for friends and the other for enemies. From Lucan’s ‘venasque minaces j Hostili de parte’ (i. 621–2) ‘boding veins in its hostile part’ Marlowe, whether through misunderstanding or deliberate change, has transferred hostility to the ‘host of Caesar’, recalling the context of the threat facing Rome.55 And it cannot be said that Rowe has squeamishly sought to disguise the physical horror in inappropriate diction. There are not only entrails but ‘Guts’ and ‘Intestines’ here; ‘marbl’d’ is not a poeticism but is a term for variegated colouring used in natural history and pathology (OED); ‘Serum’ in one deWnition in the OED is ‘blood-serum, the greenish yellow liquid which separates from the clot when blood coagulates’. The adjective ‘chinky’ may not sound particularly felicitous but any infelicity arises not from its meaning or register but from its form. Nevertheless, the simple horror that is the whole point of the exercise is much more strongly felt in and conveyed by Marlowe’s version which is a great deal more straightforwardly repulsive. This is partly because the earlier version is not burdened with slightly formal expression like ‘Betrays its dark Recesses to the Eye’. The neat antithesis in the opening couplet between ‘chearful crimson’ and ‘pois’nous Black’ might seem eVective enough until put alongside Marlowe’s opening with its remarkable verb ‘wallowed’.56 Rowe’s ‘sacred Floor’ (not in the Latin) is a distractingly digniWed touch and the adjective ‘cheerful’, even in the negative, does not help to set the appropriate tone. But the greatest infelicity is in the climax in 55 On this see Roma Gill, ‘Marlowe, Lucan and Sulpitius’, Review of English Studies, ns 24 (1983), 405. 56 On this see ibid.

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the last three couplets. In the phrases ‘rising Head’, ‘Visage wears’, and ‘drive impetuous’ the animation comes very near to inappropriate personiWcation. Marlowe has no animation; in his ending, ‘the knob of Xesh’ (more directly horrid than Rowe’s ‘rival prominence’) is inert. In Rowe’s climax where the animated ‘Vessels’ ‘drive impetuous on their purple Tide’ is the one indubitable poetic formula at the end and it is indecorous in context. If Caesar had been approaching by sea in command of a Xeet the language might have found its justiWcation in a witty (but strained) parallel suggesting the imminent threat from his vessels. But as it is, the heightened expression verges on the absurd. Marlowe is better at giving a sense of the physically monstrous.

Augustan strengths: Johnsonian virtues Rowe’s version achieved great praise from the most judicious of sources not prone to outbursts of ill-considered enthusiasm: The version of Lucan is one of the greatest productions of English poetry, for there is perhaps none that so completely exhibits the genius and spirit of the original. Lucan is distinguished by a kind of dictatorial or philosophical dignity, rather, as Quintilian observes, declamatory than poetical; full of ambitious morality and pointed sentences, comprised in vigorous and animated lines. This character Rowe has very diligently and successfully preserved. His versiWcation, which is such as his contemporaries practised, without any attempt at innovation or improvement, seldom wants either melody or force. His author’s sense is sometimes a little diluted by additional infusions, and sometimes by too much expansion, but such faults are to be expected in all translations, from the constraints of measures and dissimilitude of languages.57

In his own words Dr Johnson is very largely repeating the classical verdict of Quintilian; as a declamatory poet himself, he reXects the taste of the century and does not, like most moderns, use the Roman verdict to Lucan’s disadvantage. His positive appreciation of Rowe’s Roman virtues suggests that to the poets and translators of the neoclassical period the continuity between the poets of Augustan Rome and their successors could be as important as any modiWcation wrought to the Augustan style by those who followed in the silver age. The appearance of the epigraph from Virgil on Rowe’s title page which might suggest the incongruity described at the beginning of this section, might also suggest the way in which Lucan’s epic was seen to have been written, 57 Johnson, Lives, ii. 77.

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not in opposition to Virgil’s, but between its lines. Lucan’s epic faces the indignity of civil war between the sons of Rome upon which the digniWed Anchises, pater Romanus supreme, mournfully declines to dwell. For the modern reader Johnson’s verdict enforces the obvious truth that a neoclassical version of Lucan composed by a genuine poet, even if toned down, will necessarily be nearer to essential qualities in the original than any modern translation. Finally, the description of Lucan’s merits contained within Johnson’s verdict, even if it might be modiWed by a modern reader, accurately pinpoints those qualities in Rowe’s translation that distinguish it as the best complete version available. A passage of moral and political analysis from the Wrst book where Rowe indubitably excels Marlowe embodies the moral dignity of which Johnson speaks so highly. To Rome the vanquished earth her tribute paid, And deadly treasures to her view display’d; Then truth and simple manners left the place, While riot reared her lewd, dishonest face; Virtue to full Prosperity gave way, And Xed from Rapine and the Lust of Prey. . . . . . . . . That Age, by honest Poverty adorn’d, Which brought the manly Romans forth, is scorn’d. Where ever ought pernicious does abound, For Luxury all Lands are ransack’d round, And dear-bought Deaths the sinking State confound. The Curii’s and Camilli’s little Field To vast extended Territories yield, And foreign Tenants reap the Harvest now, Where once the great Dictator held the plow. (Rowe, i. 302–7; 315–23)

There is a strong underlying sense of reproach at the loss of the old Roman virtue nurtured in honest poverty and now debauched by the luxuries of ‘full prosperity’. The economic and social changes accompanying this analysis of moral decline are well to the fore and vividly present in the moving Wnal couplet evoking the legendary icon of Roman patriotism, Cincinnatus, a former consul and general, who, according to the story, was ploughing his Welds in retirement when called upon by the Senate to save the state in an emergency caused by a threat from marauding Gauls. Appointed dictator on a temporary basis, having dealt with the emergency, he then dutifully returned to his

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farm and to the simple country life he led there. Part of his greatness as dictator arises from his constitutional renunciation of power; here there is an implicit contrast with Caesar. The rhythm and assurance of the full resounding Wnal line ensure that he is honoured appropriately in a truly noble fashion. Rowe has clariWed and intensiWed the moral theme here, for Cincinnatus is not mentioned by Lucan, who simply has the Curii and Camillus, names less well-known to English readers. Here in Rowe are the Augustan virtues to which Dryden aspired in his translation of Virgil: the clearness, purity, ease and magniWcence. These can be thrown into relief by juxtaposition with Marlowe’s version here, which seems by comparison conspicuously lacking in ease and Xow, and clarity and dignity. When Fortune made us lords of all, wealth Xowed, And when we grew, licentious and rude; The soldiers’ prey and rapine brought in riot; Men took delight in jewels, houses, plate, And scorned old sparing diet, and ware robes Too light for women; Poverty (who hatched Rome’s greatest wits) was loathed, and all the world Ransacked for gold, which breeds the world decay; And then large limits had their butting lands, The ground which Curius and Camillus tilled Was stretched unto the Welds of hinds unknown. (Marlowe, ll. 161–71)

There is a conspicuous lack here, particularly towards the end, of clarity, purity, and ease, which is not merely the result of the diVerent state of the language but is largely a consequence of the cramping metaphrastic method, predominant at the time of writing, adopted by the translator. Nor is its lack of magniWcence to be explained by its early date, for the author of the ‘mighty line’58 heroically deployed in Tamburlaine was intrinsically capable of rising to something approaching the dignity and gravity frequently inhering in the rhetoric of Lucan’s Latin. The strengths of Rowe’s version, its steady and digniWed declamation and its moral quality, perhaps not aiming as high as Lucan’s but felt and conveyed with some intensity nevertheless, may be illustrated in parvo 58 Ben Jonson’s phrase in ‘To the Memory of My beloved, the Author Mr William Shakespeare’, 30; see Ben Jonson, The Complete Poems, ed. George ParWtt (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), 264.

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in the translator’s rendering of the climax of the episode featuring Curio, a former tribune in Caesar’s pay who had fought his master’s cause at Rome and then, after having been expelled, encouraged the warlord when he was uncertain whether to march on Rome. In preliminary Wghting in Africa before the main events of the war, he is cornered ‘And tho’ thus driv’n to Death, he met it well, j And in a Crowd of dying Romans fell’ (iv. 1251–2). He is then addressed by the poet in an apostrophe which soon turns into an address to the reader. Now what avail thy pop’lar Arts and Fame, Thy restless Mind that shook thy country’s Frame; Thy moving Tongue that knew so well to charm And urge the madding Multitude to arm? What boots it, to have sold the Senate’s Right, And driv’n the furious Leaders on to Fight? Thou the Wrst victim of the War art slain, Nor sha’t thou see Pharsalia’s fatal Plain. Behold ye potent troublers of the state, What wretched Ends on cursed Ambition wait! See! Where, a prey unbury’d Curio lyes To ev’ry Fowl that wings the Libyan Skies. (iv. 1253–64)

Curio is an example of great promise and talent perverted to evil ends and ironically becomes one of the Wrst victims of the conXict he had done much to promote. Corrupted by ambition, his career to some extent preWgures that of Caesar himself, and provides Lucan with an occasion for pointed political moralizing which is both general and particular. Rowe brings his ambition, implied but not directly mentioned by Lucan in the lines being translated, speciWcally to the fore. The moral dimension here is more obviously to the fore than in the passage of the sacriWce discussed above. The rhetorical questions and exclamation are emphatically delivered. Potential admirers are commanded to attend to his example in a magisterial style that, we may believe, must have recommended itself strongly to the author of ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’. The poetic voice is not as strong as Johnson’s but it is Wrm and in command of the material; matter and manner harmonize without strain. Lucan then praises the best part of Curio’s life and potential before it was overtaken by ambition but ends with a damning verdict contriving a rhetorical climax in which his transgression transcends that of Rome’s

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more powerful villains: ‘emere omnes, hic vendidit urbem’ (iv. 824) ‘they bought their country, he sold it’. Much to the ruin of the State was done, When Curio by the Gallick Spoils was won, Curio, the hope of Rome, and her most worthy Son. Tyrants of Old, whom former Times record, Who rul’d and ravag’d with the murd’ring Sword, Sylla, whom such unbounded Pow’r made proud; Marius and Cinna, red with Roman blood; Ev’n Caesar’s mighty Race who lord it now, Before whose Throne the Subject Nations bow, All bought that Pow’r which lavish Curio sold, Curio, who barter’d Liberty for Gold. (iv. 1284–94)

Rowe has highlighted some of the oppositions in Lucan. He has imported the phrase ‘the hope of Rome’ which is reminiscent of Virgil where Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, is thus heralded and so adds an element of pathos underscoring Curio’s inversion of the patriotic archetype: Rome (simply the city in Lucan) is here betrayed by her ‘most worthy Son’. Civil war as the ultimate familial betrayal is a Lucanian theme to which Rowe fully responds throughout.59 The witty inversion whereby the Roman is captured by foreign spoils is directly from the Latin but there is an additional opposition between ‘the Gallick Spoils’ and Rome which emphasizes the ignobility of Curio’s betrayal. The patriotic sentiment which highlights this betrayal is contained in an alexandrine which concludes a triplet and is given a special emphasis accordingly. The greater opposition in the quoted passage is between ‘Tyrants’ at the beginning of the long Wnal sentence and ‘Liberty’ in the Wnal line, neither of which words is in the Latin being translated. The condensed antithesis of bought and sold in the Latin that constitutes Lucan’s Wnal contemptuous dismissal of Curio is not rendered by Rowe with quite the same force, as the antithesis in English, Wnely emphasized in the balance of the penultimate line, is spread over a whole couplet. We can put this down to what Johnson aptly calls ‘the constraints of measures and dissimilitude of language’ but the last line does not simply repeat and emphasize the idea contained in the Wrst, for it expands the idea by introducing the theme of liberty, the greatest issue of the poem. 59 See the many passages where he emphasizes parricide.

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And there is further compensation in the expansion at the end, for in his own couplet style Rowe has organized a Wne rhetorical climax. The syntax and grammar are suspended over four couplets until they are resolved at the end, thus propelling the reader forward to the Wnal couplet which proves to be a strong one for more than one reason. The repetition of Curio here echoes a similar repetition at the beginning. In the overall arrangement ‘Curio, the hope of Rome, and her most worthy Son’, itself a strong line of some pathos, Wnds an echo in the last dismissive line ‘Curio, who barter’d Liberty for Gold’, an echo in which the whole tragedy of Curio and of Rome is contained. This echoing repetition is not prompted directly by anything in the Latin. Moreover the strong rhyme words of the last couplet emphasize simply and precisely the main thematic point: Curio has sold his country for gold. In an analysis that started from Lucan’s Latin, it would doubtless be possible to show that Rowe had failed to render some of its linguistic subtleties or complexities. But the point to stress here is that Rowe is writing at his best in a style that is self-consistent, convincing and responding to essential Lucanian moral and political themes. There is no redundancy in his language; for example, all the epithets, often a telltale sign of unease when a translator is line Wlling and not deeply engaged, are apposite and telling: ‘murd’ring’, ‘unbounded’, ‘red’, and particularly the Wnal ‘lavish’ are not simply formulaic, they constitute les mots justes. On its own terms, this passage has a consistent poetic force that has not always been true of other passages examined earlier and is certainly not true either of the version of Thomas May (1627)60 which makes an instructive contrast: Oh happy Rome, and Romans happier farre, Would but the gods above as carefull be To keepe, as to revenge our liberty. Unburied Curio’s noble Xesh is food For Libyan birds: but (since t’will doe no good To conceale that, which from time’s injury Fame still will vindicate) we’ll give to thee The praise that to thy life does appertaine. Rome never nurtur’d a more able man, Nor one to whom (whilest good) the lawes ow’d more; But vice then hurt our city, when the store 60 Thomas May, Lucan’s Pharsalia: The Whole Ten Bookes (London: T. Jones and J. Marriot, 1627), n.p.

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Augustan Translation of Silver Latin Of wealth, Ambition, riot had declin’d To the worst part his yet unsettled minde, And changed Curio the states fates controul’d Brib’d by the spoiles of France, and Caesars gold. Though potent Sylla, and Werce Marius, Cinna, and Casars line gott rule ore us By sword: to whom did such power ever fall? This man sold Rome, the other bought it all.

There is only one line ‘Brib’d by the spoiles of France, and Caesars gold’ that is rhythmically eVective in oVering some sort of rhetorical equivalence to the declamatory power of the original. Otherwise the verse form does not begin to oVer any kind of rhetorical structure that can deliver the moral point with force. The rhetorical character of Lucan identiWed from the beginning by Quintilian and admired by Johnson is well represented by his Augustan translator in the speeches in which the dramatis personae present themselves in a variety of moods but always with a high consciousness of their intended audience. A case in point is the death speech of Pompey when, having Xed to Egypt, he realizes he is about to be betrayed. On his barge, Pompey sees what is coming and faces his end like a true Roman. Unmov’d and Wrm he Wx’d him on his seat And dy’d, as when he liv’d and conquer’d, great. Meanwhile, within his equal parting Soul, These latest pleasing thoughts revolving roll: In this my strongest Tryal, and my last, As in some Theatre I here am plac’d; The Faith of Ægypt and my Fate shall be A Theme for present Times and late Posterity. Much of my former Life was crown’d with Praise, And Honours waited on my early Days: Then fearless, let me this dread Period meet, And force the World to own the Scene compleat. Nor grieve, my Heart! by such base Hands to bleed: Who ever strikes the Blow, ’tis Caesar’s Deed. (viii. 836–49)

The opening line here emphatically renders his physical and mental constancy, while the second is an addition that draws out the signiWcance of the moment, playing as Lucan often does, on Pompey’s

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unoYcial title ‘Magnus’. In the next couplet the additional epithets ‘equal’ and pleasing’ point up his Stoicism and the satisfaction he derives from it, which is then made more conscious by Rowe in two respects. In the Latin it is the narrator not Pompey who speaks of the trial in the phrase ‘seque probat’ (viii. 620) ‘he proves himself ’. Secondly, while Lucan’s Pompey says that future time will gaze at the boat in which he is being murdered, Rowe omits mention of the boat and instead places him Wguratively in the theatre (recalling the association of Pompey with his theatre made in the opening book61). In the Latin he adjures himself to think of his future reputation ‘nunc consule famae’ (l. 624); since he has until now always been successful, ‘men do not know, unless you prove it by your death, whether you were able to endure adversity’. He is aware that his whole reputation is on the line. Rowe’s Pompey, paradoxically, is more conWdently assertive: ‘And force the World to own the Scene compleat’, while suggesting that the end is the completion of the drama, also obliterates any worry that the world may be ignorant of his courage. With the additional notion that he will become a ‘Theme’ for posterity and the additional self-congratulation in his recognition that he has been ‘crown’d with Praise’, Pompey is more self-consciously playing his part. The speech continues but enough of it has been quoted to illustrate the ease with which Rowe embraced Lucan’s self-dramatizing rhetoric in the speeches of his characters, and how enthusiastically he also embraced the Stoicism to which that rhetoric so often gives expression. Despite the couplet style and the weaker poetic voice, there is something here to remind us of Shakespeare’s digniWed self-dramatizing Romans bestriding the world stage like colossi deeply conscious of their role as public Wgures playing to an audience and only too conscious of their public image. And something too to remind us of T. S. Eliot’s conclusion in his essay on Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca62 that ‘a kind of self consciousness’ and ‘an attitude of self-dramatisation at moments of tragic intensity’ was the chief legacy bequeathed by Lucan’s uncle to the Elizabethan stage. The theatricality of Lucan found an echo in Rowe the dramatist and Rowe the admirer of the Stoic philosophy that underlies the positive Roman values represented in the poem. 61 At i. 133. 62 In T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays (London: Faber, 1951), 129.

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Liberty and tyranny: the moral argument Lucan’s moral argument had a strong political appeal to those who, like his Whig translator, supported the Parliamentary and Protestant succession guaranteed in the Bill of Rights of 1689, particularly in the reign of Queen Anne when the liberties then gained might have seemed to be in danger when her Tory ministers were negotiating with the King over the water. It was at this time that Rowe began his long engagement with Lucan.63 The contemporary resonance in the translation is strongly felt in his rendering of Lucan’s apostrophe to the sun on the morning of the fatal day at Pharsalus. Why shines he now? why lends his golden Light, To these worse Parricides, and more accursed Sight? But Chance guides all; the Gods their Task forego, And Providence no longer reigns below. (vii. 671–4)

And then Lucan makes a sardonic joke: there is justice after all in their self-inXicted humbling when the gods have to admit the Caesars into their company. Rowe continues in his apostrophe: Yet they are Just, and some Revenge aVord, While their own Heav’ns are humbled by the Sword, And the proud Victors, like themselves, ador’d; With rays adorn’d, with Thunders arm’d they stand, And Incense, Prayers, and SacriWce demand, While trembling, slavish superstitious Rome Swears by a mortal Wretch that moulders in a Tomb. (vii. 675–81)

Needless to say, the powerful sting in the invective at the end, derives from the scornful anti-Catholic satire of the Protestant translator, who is able, by the enhancement wrought by this parallel between a degenerate Rome worshipping the Caesars and Catholic Rome idolizing saints, to be fully answerable to the sense of outraged protest in Lucan’s Latin. The satirical note itself here is not inappropriate to Lucan’s poem. The aYnity of the Pharsalia with satire was noted by James Welwood

63 On this see Alfred William Hesse, Nicholas Rowe’s Translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia 1703–1718: A Study in Literary History [dissertation] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950), ch. 2.

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when he records in his preface that Lucan was a friend of the satirist Aulus Persius: It’s no wonder that two Men whose Genius’s were so much alike, should unite and become agreeable to one another; For if we consider Lucan critically we shall Wnd in him a strong Bent towards Satyr. His Manner, it’s true, is more declamatory and diVuse than Persius’, but Satyr is still in his View, and the whole Pharsalia appears to me a continued Invective against Ambition and unbounded Power.64

Although some modern commentators have detected hidden Lucanian admiration for Caesar (on the analogy that the dynamism of Milton’s Satan makes him the true hero of Paradise Lost), there is no evidence for this modern reading in Rowe or indeed anywhere in the traditional reception of the poem. In the traditional reading, the Pharsalia is held to assert an unambiguous moral argument about liberty and tyranny.65 Indeed his translation is at its best where he is able to respond most fully and forcefully to this moral argument. That argument puts Lucan and his translator well within one of the keynote deWnitions of satire oVered by Dryden in his introductory essay on satire, where the account of Persius’ satire is prefaced by the following remark: ‘Satire is of the nature of moral philosophy, as being instructive.’66 In Cato, the poem has a strong central character with a moral and philosophic message deeply congenial to the temper of the times, as the general success of Addison’s play (produced in the last year of the reign of Queen Anne), cutting across party lines, might suggest. Rowe was certainly inspired to his best performance by Cato who is made to speak in Johnson’s phrase with ‘a kind of dictatorial or philosophical dignity’ (additions are in bold): Fellows in arms! whose Bliss, whose chiefest Good, Is with Rome’s defence and Freedom bought with Blood, You, who, to die with Liberty, from far, Have follow’d Cato in this fatal War, Be now for Virtue’s noblest Task prepar’d, For Labours many, perillous and hard. 64 Rowe, Lucan’s Pharsalia (London: 1718), p. ii; Brown and Martindale, p. 1. 65 Commenting on the translation, Henry Cromwell, an elderly and Tory mentor of Alexander Pope, remarked ‘he is so errant a Whig that he strains even beyond his author, in passion for liberty, and aversion to tyranny.’ Letter to Pope of 5 Nov. 1710, in The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn, 5 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 1956), i. 102. 66 Dryden, Works, iv. 55; Poems, iii. 400.

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Augustan Translation of Silver Latin Think thro’ what burning Climes, what Wilds we go: No leaWe Shades the naked Desarts know, No silver Streams through Xowery Meadows Xow; But Horrors there and various Deaths abound, And serpents guard th’unhospitable ground. Hard is the Way, but thus our Fate demands! Rome and her Laws we seek amidst these Sands. Let not those who, glowing with their Country’s Love, Resolve with me these dreadful Plains to prove, Nor of Return nor Safety once debate, But only dare to go, and leave the rest to Fate. Think not I mean the Dangers to disguise, Or hide ’em from the cheated Vulgar’s Eyes, Those, only those, shall in my Fate partake, Who love the Daring for the Danger’s sake, Those who can suVer all that worst can come, And think it what they owe themselves and Rome. If any yet shall doubt, or yet shall fear; If Life be more than Liberty his Care; Here, e’er we journey further let him stay, Inglorious let him like a Slave obey, And seek a Master in some safer Way. (ix. 640–67)

There are notable additions. In the opening and indeed throughout this passage, Lucan’s Cato does not say anything about freedom. Nor does the concept of fate, a basic Stoic tenet, occurring three times in Rowe, come into the Latin. Rowe’s Cato is making a strongly philosophical appeal. The patriotic note is heightened in the opening where ‘Bliss’ and chiefest Good’ (a term with a philosophical dimension) are expansions prompted by the single word ‘placuit’, an impersonal verb, without any necessary philosophical implications, meaning those to whom ‘it has been pleasing’. This heightening is continued in the additional clause ‘glowing with their Country’s Love’. Conversely an additional couplet at the end highlights the inglorious alternative of cowardly slavery. But the enhanced philosophical patriotism does not mute or dilute the soldier’s appeal. The frank admission of hardship and danger comes strongly to the fore. The additional couplet evoking pleasant things which they will not encounter in the desert is an example of a rhetorical technique used frequently elsewhere in Lucan: ‘negative antithesis’. In the rhetoric of the speech its ‘Xowery poeticality’ is in direct contrast to the perils and dangers of the inhospitable desert: Rowe is able to exploit a feature of his

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own style, a tendency to poetic enhancement, to excellent eVect. Danger and daring go hand in hand, Wnely united in the ringing line ‘who love the Daring for the Danger’s sake’. But this appeal is not ultimately buccaneering. ‘And think it what they owe themselves and Rome’ is another resounding line that puts duty to the fore, not just patriotic duty but duty to the self. Lucan’s words have been adapted here: in the Latin Cato asks for men who are attracted by the risks, ‘men who think it glorious and worthy of a Roman to endure even the worst, with me as their witness’. The general emphasis on glory in Rowe’s speech is balanced here more consciously than in Lucan by the appeal to duty. All in all, the speech is a powerful amalgam, philosophic, political, patriotic, and soldierly, dynamically balanced in measured couplets. One of the most memorable moments in the poem is the response of Cato to the request both from the natives and one of his own lieutenants that he consult the oracle of Jupiter Ammon to which he and his troops have arrived en passant as they make their way through the desert. Cato refuses, rejecting the oracle as the product of superstition and asserting in reply that it could not tell anything which he does not already know. Where would thy fond, thy vain Enquiry go? . . . . . . . . Or if this world, with all its Forces join’d, The universal Malice of Mankind, Can shake or hurt the brave and honest Mind? If stable Virtue can her Ground maintain, While Fortune feebly threats and frowns in vain? . . . . . . . . Are these, my Friend the Secrets thou wou’dst know, Those Doubts for which to Oracles we go? ’Tis known, ’tis plain, ’tis all already told, And horned Ammon can no more unfold. (ix. 958, 967–71, 976–9)

This is the kind of moral argument in which Rowe’s couplet style excels. The resolution of a series of carefully deliberated rhetorical questions in the Wnal couplet here is particularly Wne. The last couplet translates a single line in Lucan: ‘scimus, et hoc nobis non altius inseret Hammon’ (ix. 572) ‘we know, and Ammon will not plant the knowledge deeper in us’. The tripartite structure of the penultimate line is emphatic in breaking the previous pattern and the sense of the line is plain,

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downright, and direct. The epithet ‘horned’ (a disyllable) introduces a hint of contempt, perfectly deXating the local deity who can be understood to be the product of credulous idolatry. He continues in this vein: From God deriv’d, to God by Nature join’d, We act the Dictates of his mighty Mind, And, though the Priests are mute and Temples still, God never wants a Voice to speak his will. . . . . . . . . Canst thou believe the vast eternal Mind Was e’er to Syrts and Libyan sands conWn’d? That he would chuse this Waste, this barren Ground, To teach the thin Inhabitants around, And leave his Truth in Wilds and Desarts drown’d? (ix. 980–3, 989–93)

In Lucan Cato says ‘even if the temple were silent’; there is no mention of priests. Rowe’s own note attests to the Protestant spirit in which he read and translated this passage (and the whole encounter of which it is a part): ‘I cannot but observe here how Wnely our Author, in this Passage, reprehends the Folly of those who are fond of and believe in a local Sanctity, as if one Part of the World were holier than another, and the Ubiquity of the Divine Nature were conWn’d to a particular Place. But, thank God, the Foppery of Pilgrimages is out of Fashion in England, or at least those who are weak enough to travel from one country to another in search of holiness are wise enough to own it amongst us.’67 Let those weak Minds, who live in Doubt and Fear, To juggling Priests for Oracles repair; One certain Hour of Death to each decreed My Wxt, my certain Soul from Doubt has freed. The Coward and the Brave are doom’d to fall, And when Jove told this Truth, he told us all. (ix. 1000–5)

Stoic determinism, not incompatible with Protestant belief, and entailing a contemptuous dismissal of superstition and weakness, provides the doctrinal basis for the sense of freedom and certainty enunciated here. The style of this utterance is accordingly assured, assertive, and determined and as such Wts perfectly the character and beliefs of the speaker. 67 Rowe, Lucan’s Pharsalia, 47; Brown and Martindale, p. 411.

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The enlightened translator is much more eVective and convincing in his rejection of superstition and religious scruple than in his attempts to render the hocus-pocus of Roman religious practices in the earlier part of the poem. Here another example from Book IX may serve to indicate how deeply imbued with the Catonic spirit is the whole poem. In the desert, Cato’s army encounter the Psylli, a local tribe who alone have developed an immunity to the snakes that otherwise have depopulated the desert. Each newborn child is tested with poison in its infancy. Then comes the following simile: Utque Jovis volucer, calido cum protulit ovo Inplumes natos, solis convertit ad ortus; Qui potuere pati radios et lumine recto Sustinuere diem, caeli servantur in usus, Qui Phoebo cessere, iacent. (ix. 902–6) (As the bird of Jove turns his unfeathered eaglets, when hatched from the warm egg, to face the rising sun—those who prove able to endure the beams, and can gaze without Xinching straight at the light, are kept alive for the service of the god; but those whom the sun has mastered are neglected.) So when Jove’s Bird on some tall Cedar’s Head Has a new Race of gen’rous Eaglets bred, While yet unplum’d within the Nest they lye, Wary she turns them to the eastern Sky, Then, if unequal to the God of Day Abash’d they shrink and shun the potent Ray, She spurns ’em forth and casts ’em quite away: But if with daring Eyes unmov’d they gaze, Withstand the Light, and bear the golden Blaze, Tender she broods them with a Parent’s Love, The future Servants of her Master Jove. (ix. 1542–52)

Rowe’s enhancement of the Lucanian original in parvo here (notable additions are marked in bold) is almost emblematic of the greater enhancement in the poem as a whole. The noble note is struck at the beginning with the addition of the tall cedar and the epithet ‘gen’rous’ highlighting the dignity of this most powerful of birds, who at the end will be in the service of Jove himself. With the addition of Jove at the end, Rowe has reordered the emphasis so that the climax, represented in

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a ringing line, is positive, while it is negative in Lucan who concludes with the rejection of the unworthy, starkly evoked in the plain ‘iacent’. The personiWcation, scarcely present in the original, heightens the tender maternal care lovingly bestowed upon her oVspring by the mother-bird. But this is no sentimental simile designed like many of Virgil’s to arouse pathos. The youngsters have to prove themselves worthy Wrst. They have to be daring and unmoved, to withstand and to bear. Otherwise their mother will spurn them as we may believe Volumnia would have spurned her man-child Coriolanus if he had shown the slightest weakness. There is an unsentimental unblinking toughness at the centre of the simile, a toughness which, because of the personiWcation, verges on cruelty. The starkness of Lucan’s simile is ameliorated but its cruelty, though contained, is still apparent. Although it is applied to a foreign people, it could equally well express something about the Roman character that Wnds its apotheosis in the extremity of Cato that is ringingly endorsed by the translator. The underlying Stoicism gives to this passage as to the version as a whole the philosophical dignity so admired by Johnson. If Cato is unambiguously the positive moral example, his polar opposite is Caesar who is the chief object of the poem’s invective throughout. The Xavour of this invective can be illustrated in a passage where Caesar is associated with his conquering predecessor, Alexander the Great. After the defeat of Pompey, when Caesar lands in Egypt, the Wrst thing that he does is to visit Alexander’s tomb. Lucan here uses the incident to deliver a sharp diatribe against unbounded power. The moral issue is quite clear-cut and the rhetoric unambiguous. Rowe is in complete sympathy with the general debunking of the Alexander-myth and the translation is vigorous, direct, and sharp: There the vain Youth who made the World his Prize, That prosp’rous robber, Alexander, lies, When pitying Death, at length, had freed Mankind, To sacred Rest his Bones were here consign’d— His Bones that better had been toss’d and hurl’d With just Contempt around the injur’d World. . . . . . . . . If e’er our long-lost Liberty return, That carcass is reserv’d for public Scorn; Now it remains a Monument confest How one proud man could lord it o’er the rest. . . . . . . . .

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His ruthless Sword lay’d human Nature waste, And Desolation followed where he pass’d. . . . . . . . When Nature’s Hand his wild Ambition stay’d. With him that Pow’r his Pride had lov’d so well, His monstrous Universal Empire, fell. (x. 32–7, 40–3, 50–1, 66–8)

The arresting phrase ‘prosperous robber’ captures Lucan’s satirical tone exactly. The attack in the Latin is more violent than the English: ‘gladiumque per omnes j Exegit gentes’ (x. 30–1) ‘he drove his sword home to the breast of every nation’ is moderated in translation: ‘His ruthless Sword lay’d human Nature waste’, but the translation has a greater moral weight that amply compensates for any diminution in the physical forcefulness of the image. The scornful style is assured throughout and magisterially deals Alexander a mortal blow in the Wnal lines which in the measured gravity of their style anticipate what Dr Johnson perfected in his version of Juvenal’s tenth satire ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’. Earlier in this section it was argued that Rowe is inferior to Marlowe in his evocation of prodigious physical horror. Psychological horror, however, is well within his grasp as, for example, when he describes the uneasy sleep of the victors after the battle is over. Each, as his Hands in Guilt have been embrew’d, By some pale Spectre Xies all Night pursu’d. In various Forms the Ghosts unnumber’d groan— The Brother, Friend, the Father and the Son: To ev’ry Wretch his proper Phantom fell, While Caesar sleeps the gen’ral Care of Hell. Such were his Pangs as mad Orestes felt, E’er yet the Scythian Altar purg’d his Guilt; Such Horrors Pentheus, such Agave knew, When his Rage Wrst came, and she when hers withdrew. Present and future Swords his Bosom bears, And feels the Blow that Brutus now defers. Vengeance in all her Pomp of Pain attends, To Wheels she binds him, and with Vulturs rends, With Racks of Conscience and with Whips of Fiends. (vii. 1095–1109)

Rowe rises to this evocation of psychological horror more successfully, it might be argued, than in the passages of physical horror in the ‘Gothic’

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parts of poem. The speciWc reference to Brutus is an importation; Caesar only has general intimations of vengeance in the Latin. The line ‘While Caesar sleeps the gen’ral Care of Hell’, loosely related to ‘omnes in Caesare manes’ (vii. 776) ‘the ghosts of all the dead came to Caesar’, is particularly potent, playing on the meaning of ‘care’ which is primarily here ‘worry’ or ‘anxiety’ or ‘burden’ but which in the context of the full phrase ‘Care of Hell’ must also evoke its more normal opposite ‘care of heaven’. Momentarily Caesar is marked out as the chosen instrument of dark powers, the inverse of Aeneas or Christ. The strong Wnal triplet in which Caesar is aZicted with the torments of a guilty conscience is a response to the mythological parallels alluding to Pentheus and Agave (very precisely delineated by Rowe). The triplet expands what is contained in a mere half-line ‘hunc infera monstra Xagellant’ (vii. 783) ‘the monsters of hell scourged him’, with reference to Brutus and so forth. Lucan is less emphatic in his imagery of punishment, for he has, typically, a complicating hyberbolic anticlimax, Wnding that Caesar’s guilt falls short, for Pompey is still alive at this point. Rowe eschews this complication and goes instead straightforwardly in his high style for full, eVective, and deserved torment in language that is emphatic in rendering the villainous Caesar’s guilt. Rowe, then, is at his best as a moral, satiric, and didactic poet rendering with passionate rhetorical force the poem’s central moral antithesis.

The eVectiveness of the mature Augustan couplet The Augustan couplet, given the pronounced tendency to balanced antithesis in its characteristic organizational patterning, is a highly eVective medium for the emphatic representation of the various oppositions that are basic to the moral and thematic structure of the original. The eVectiveness may be tested in a comparison between Rowe and Ben Jonson in their translation of one of the most notorious speeches of the whole poem in which the courtier Pothinus urges Ptolemy to sanction the murder of Pompey in the interests of political expediency. The speech is a long one and Jonson’s translation is conWned to the Wrst section of it in which Pothinus sets out his general philosophy. Like Rowe, Jonson also used the rhyming couplet, a coincidence which may serve to throw the characteristics and the eVectiveness of the mature Augustan style into bold relief.

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First the early version: Just and Wt actions Ptolemy (he saith) Make many hurt themselves; a praised faith Is her own scourge, when it sustains their states Whom fortune hath depressed; come near the fates And the immortal gods; love only those Whom thou seest happy; wretches Xee as foes. Look how the stars from earth, or seas from Xames Are distant, so is proWt from just aims. The main command of sceptres soon doth perish If it begin religious thoughts to cherish; Whole armies fall swayed by those nice respects; It is licence to do ill protects Even states most hated, when no laws resist The sword, but that it acteth what it list. Yet ware; thou mayst do all things cruelly; Not safe, but when thou doest them thoroughly: He that will honest be may quit the court, Virtue and sovereignty, they not consort. That prince that shames a tyrant’s name to bear, Shall never dare do anything but fear. (Jonson)68

Basically, Jonson is quite diYcult to understand. It is doubtful whether anyone who did not already know the meaning of the lines from elsewhere (the original or another translation) could really understand what is being said in the Wrst four and a half lines. The religious theme in the phrase ‘a praised faith’, a literal translation of ‘laudata Wdes’ (viii. 485) which is usually taken to mean something like ‘loyalty which we are in the habit of praising’ rather than, as Jonson seems to take it, a religious faith, is promisingly picked up when it ‘Is her own scourge’ but then clashes with the mysterious injunction to ‘come near the fates j And the immortal gods’ where ‘come near’ is an awkward rendition of ‘accede’ (l. 486) which is better in a literal rendering ‘accede’ or ‘yield to’ the fates that have given Caesar victory. The speech clariWes with the snappy injunction contrasting the ‘happy’ and ‘wretches’. The next two self-contained couplets are surer and the Wnal line of the second makes good ‘the religious thoughts’ that Jonson picks up from his 68 ‘A Speech out of Lucan’, in Ben Jonson, Poems, ed. Ian Donaldson (London: OUP, 1975), 341.

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interpretation of ‘laudata Wdes’. The best lines follow in the enjambed section enunciating the doctrine of the sword. But the next couplet when the speaker turns to address Ptolemy is elliptical in expression and obscure in its syntax. ‘He that will honest be may quit the court’ is direct and telling but the couplet is then spoiled by the awkward grammatical ellipse in the conclusion ‘they not consort’. The Wne sententious couplet at the end, contrasting ‘prince’ and ‘tyrant’, ‘shames’ ‘dare’ and ‘fear’, is an emphatically condensed expression of realpolitik worthy of a Sejanus or a Macro and well directed to appeal to the weakness of the fearful Ptolemy. But the translation overall is very uneven in its success. Now Rowe: To strictest Justice many Ills belong. And Honesty is often in the Wrong, ChieXy when stubborn Rules her Zealots push To favour those whom Fortune means to crush. But thou, O royal Ptolomy! be wise: Change with the Gods, and Xy whom Fortune Xies. Not Earth from yon high Heav’ns which we admire, Not from the watery Element the Fire, Are severed by Distinctions half so wide As Interest and Integrity divide. The mighty Pow’r of Kings no more prevails, When Justice comes with her deciding Scales. Freedom for all Things and a lawless Sword Alone support an Arbitrary Lord. He that is cruel must be bold in Ills, And Wnd his Safety from the Blood he spills. For Piety and Virtue’s starving Rules, To mean Retirements let them lead their Fools, There may they still ingloriously be good— None can be safe in Courts who blush at Blood. (viii. 657–76)

Rowe is much more obviously transparent in meaning. There is ease and Xow in the syntactical and metrical arrangement and a stylistic consistency and evenness throughout that is lacking in Jonson. The opening sententious couplet is Wnely poised between paradox and sense. The superlative ‘strictest’ draws the sting of the paradox in which ills are said to emanate from justice; too much even of a good thing might well be harmful. The inversion in the next line is bold for we expect honesty to be the best policy but the thought is kept within the bounds of reason by

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the modifying adverb ‘often’. There is an implicit appeal to reason in the next couplet with scorn for stubborn zealots. This is a much more deadly utterance overall than Jonson’s because of its origin in apparent reasonableness and its seemingly moderate tone. How urbane is the courtier in his polite advice to royal Ptolemy to be wise! And how authoritative his own wisdom delivered in such a measured style. The nub of the issue which almost escapes notice in Jonson’s distinction of ‘proWt from just aims’ is inescapable in Rowe because of the rhetorical build-up in the syntax of the next two couplets which, with the ‘Not’, ‘Not so’, ‘As’ construction, is carefully designed to deliver the basic antithesis between Interest and Integrity (better chosen abstracts than Jonson’s) with maximum impact and transparency. In Jonson the main point is quite soberly stated: proWt is distant from just aims as earth is distant from the stars or Wre from water. This accurately expresses the condensed thought of Lucan’s sententia ‘Sidera terra, j Ut distant et Xamma mari, sic utile recto’ (viii. 488) ‘As the stars are far from the earth and Wre from water, so far is the expedient from what is right’. Rowe has made the utterance much more hyperbolic, overreaching both Jonson and Lucan, in arguing not as they do that interest and integrity are as distinct as earth and the stars but that they are actually more distinct. Yet the hyperbole is contained within the control of neatly balanced antithetical phrasing as distinctions are drawn between earth and heaven and water and Wre. This control gives the utterance authority, so that the emphatic conclusion seems only too persuasive. The Wnality of the distinction being drawn that will not brook contradiction is delivered by strongly emphatic rhyme words ‘wide’ and ‘divide’ whose strength resides not only in sound but in meaning, for the whole point being made about integrity and interest precisely concerns the wide divide between them. Nowhere does Jonson make his rhymes work for such emphasis. Rowe’s couplet style is unerring in the precision with which it delivers basic antithetical themes. The antithesis between interest and integrity is directly stated; in each of the Wve couplets that follow is an exploration of an aspect of the basic antithesis in an argument that develops from it. All are sententiae that could be extracted and have independent meaning, but there is a progressive sequence. More could be said, but it is strikingly clear that Pothinus in Rowe is much more open, direct, and frank about spilling blood than he is in Jonson. He is similarly more scornful in his dismissal of virtue, which in itself is not scorned in Jonson and Lucan, but which emerges as little more than folly here where the speaker is quite

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shameless in his contempt for ‘starving Rules’ and ‘mean Retirements’ (perhaps in the context of ‘Piety’ suggesting the monastic vocation) and where goodness is held to be inglorious, an inferior choice, highlighting the contrast with the court, the source of all human glory. The Wnal line repeats the paradoxical interdependence between safety and blood but introduces a barbed twist in the Wnal arresting phrase ‘blush at Blood’. This might be blush for shame or carry the implication of squeamishness, a weakness of which the addressee, Ptolemy, would doubtless not wish to be accused. Indirectly it is an appeal to the ‘boy king’ Ptolemy to stand up and be a man in defence of his own safety. The speech continues as Pothinus addresses the particular situation but he has now delivered himself of his essential philosophy and this is the extent of Jonson’s translation. Jonson as a translator is usually a Wdus interpres adopting a metaphrastic method; here he is as metaphrastic as ‘the constraint of measures and dissimilitude of languages’ will allow. Lucan’s sententiously condensed style in this speech is able to exploit all those tendencies to brevity that come easily in Latin and are a general feature of silver Latin authors like Seneca and Tacitus. The stabbing staccato style of this speech in Lucan is in fact the equivalent in poetry of the ‘Senecan’ prose style favoured by Jonson, Bacon, and others in the earlier part of the seventeenth century. It is worth noting that Rowe, who adopted a diVerent method, and as an English Augustan lived in an age that had long rejected the pointed brevity that is particularly a characteristic of Senecan prose, nevertheless does not take any more lines to translate this passage; both poets render the same original in ten couplets. But how much more eVective is Rowe’s exploitation of the verse form and how much denser in meaning it is as a consequence. The couplet style with its characteristic patterns of rhetorical arrangement could be a most appropriate medium for rendering and pointing up the discord of what Rowe translates in the poem’s proem as ‘A shattered World in wild Disorder tost’ (i. 11). It might seem something of a paradox that while the Augustan couplet is always associated with balance, harmony, and the reconciliation of opposites, the two Augustan poems that have most successfully survived their times, Pope’s Rape of the Lock and his Dunciad, both treat in diVerent ways diVerent kinds of moral confusion and disorder. Such confusion and disorder is the stuV of Lucan’s poem. Here in Patrician tents Plebeians rest, And regal Couches are by RuYans press’d,

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There impious Parricides the Bed invade, And sleep where late their slaughter’d Sires were laid. (vii. 1080–3)

The wild disorder of a world shattered by civil discord is well represented in the strong antithetical expression of these two couplets. In the Wrst is an upheaval and inversion of the general social and political order, well supported within the individual lines by the balancing of opposites united by the use of alliteration; while the more personal and familial inversion of the second couplet, almost Oedipal for a modern reader, varies the antithetical pattern as one line is played oV against another. The impiety of the parricides is truly marked by the verb ‘invade’, which is not merely a digniWed Latin substitute for ‘go in’ but is an aggressive word highly appropriate in context conveying a wilfully perverse inversion of norms inherent in the parricide. Rowe is fond of the word parricide: the deWnition in the OED is pertinent: ‘one who murders his father or either parent or other near relative; also, the murderer of any one whose person is held sacred; transf one who is guilty of treason against his country’. The eVective delivery of the lines derives from mastery of the English form into which the Lucanian content has been cast; that form in its rhetorical structures is independent of the diVerent structure of the original as it is arranged in the Latin hexameter. The Augustan couplet is an excellent medium for what might be called moral discourse. To put things simply, all questions of morality, however sophisticated, juxtapose contrary arguments and positions as in the speech of Pothinus. Pothinus in arguing for ‘interest’ has to rebut or denigrate the case for ‘integrity’. Antithesis is ingrained in moral discourse. But in narrative passages this is not necessarily so. However, there is surprisingly little pure narrative in Lucan and what narrative there is, is constantly directed towards moral commentary and often made subordinate to it. At the start of the main battle, when the armies are deploying arrows, Lucan makes a sharp antithesis between the eVectiveness of arrows and the sword but the point of the contrast is a moral one about guilt and innocence not a military one that is designed to convey any sharp sense of an actual happening: Now Xit the thrilling Darts through liquid Air, And various Vows from various Masters bear; Some seek the noblest Roman Hearts to wound, And some to err upon the guiltless Ground,

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Augustan Translation of Silver Latin While Chance decrees the Blood that shall be split, And blindly scatters Innocence and Guilt. But random Shafts too scanty Deaths aVord— A Civil War is Business for the Sword, Where Face to Face the Parricides may meet, Know whom they kill, and make the Crime complete. (vii. 712–21)

Antithesis abounds in Rowe’s translation. There are various weak oppositions here in the opening couplets describing the eVect of the arrows with which the Wghting begins. However, the opposition suddenly becomes strong in the couplet which makes a sharp distinction between the random eVectiveness of arrows and the sword. The Wnal couplet accounts for the eVectiveness of the sword in civil war not for any obvious military reason but on a quite shocking psychological basis which makes criminals of all the combatants, innocent or guilty. The passage is very subtly orchestrated as a sequence, starting like the arrows in a more diVuse and detached style which turns with the adversative ‘But’ in the penultimate couplet and becomes shockingly plain and direct in the Wnal three lines. These are an expansion of the Latin which in a literal translation is ‘the sword alone suYces in civil war and leads the hand to the Romans’ vitals’, where the Latin word for vitals is viscera. ‘Know whom they kill’ has a chilling eVect worthy of Lucan and the Wnality of cadence underscores the sense of completion in this Wnal line in which the crime itself is complete. Though, in its imagery, the translation is not as ‘visceral’ in eVect as the Latin, its antithetical rhetoric emphasizing the moral dimension produces a shock eVect fully answerable in this instance to the more physical shock of the original. This shock eVect which is a recurring design in Lucan’s narrative can be well delivered by the concentrated antitheses in Rowe’s couplets: Hence foul Confusion and Dismay succeed, The Victors murder, and the Vanquish’d bleed, The weary Hands the tir’d Destroyers ply, Scarce can These kill so fast as Those can die. (vii. 767–70)

Balanced antithetical phrasing and expression need not necessarily enforce antitheses. In this passage it brings both sides together, emphasizing, in the second and fourth lines, the strong verbs: ‘murder’, ‘bleed’, ‘kill’, and ‘die’.

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Nevertheless, the Pharsalia is a poem in which in its traditional interpretation there is a clear-cut moral antithesis between tyranny and liberty often on the surface and generally underlying the presentation of events. Its underlying moral scheme, more than is true of the Iliad or the Aeneid, constantly prompts antithetical juxtapositioning. You ask what provocation I have had? The strong antipathy of good to bad. (Pope, ‘Epilogue to the Satires: Dialogue II’, 197–8)

This antipathy, so much a part of the satirist’s motivation, is clearly apparent in Lucan’s translator, and Wnds forceful expression in the form and characteristic rhetorical patterning of the mature Augustan couplet. POPE’S STATIUS Pope’s seems to have translated the Wrst book of Statius’s Thebaid in his very early youth when he was learning his craft and giving himself a practical classical education by translating the classical poets. He then subsequently revised it for publication in 1712.69 Looking back in his maturity on the innocence of those early years, Pope echoed Ovid: As yet a Child, nor yet a Fool to Fame, I lisp’d in Numbers for the Numbers came. (An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, 127–8)70 saepe pater dixit ‘studium quid inutile temptas Maeonides nullas ipse relinquit opes’ . . . . . . . . sponte sua carmen numeros veniebat ad aptos, et quod temptabam dicere versus erat. (Tristia, IV. x. 21–2, 25–6) (Often my father said ‘you are attempting a useless task; Homer himself left no money.’ Of their own accord the song used to come to Wt numbers and what I attempted to say was verse.)

Pope was luckier than Ovid, having an encouraging father and luckier than the mythically indigent Homer as he was later to admit: ‘(thanks to 69 Pope, Twickenham Edition, i. 408.

70 Ibid. iv. 104–5.

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Homer) since I live and thrive j Indebted to no Prince or Peer alive.’71. The numbers that he lisped in were, of course, in the form of the reWned Augustan couplet (almost exclusively the metre of all his subsequent poetry); the Ovidian reminiscence here, whether conscious or not, is telling in its aYnity. Moreover, he came in relation to the English couplet, essentially reWned by Dryden, rather as Statius himself had come in relation to the classical hexameter after its Augustan reWnement by Virgil. As Statius paid homage to Virgil, the acknowledged master, so Pope in his ‘Epistle to Augustus’ (1736) acknowledges the unique position of Dryden in English literary history: We conquer’d France, but felt our captive’s charms; Her Arts victorious triumph’d o’er our Arms: Britain to soft reWnements grew less a foe, Wit grew polite and Numbers learned to Xow. Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join The varying verse, the full resounding line, The long majestic march and energy divine. (ll. 263–9)72

The Twickenham editors here quote Pope’s words to Spence: ‘I learned versiWcation wholly from Dryden’s works; who had improved it much beyond any of our former poets; and would, probably, have brought it to its perfection, had not he been unhappily obliged to write so often in haste.’ He then goes on to argue that ‘Ev’n copious Dryden, wanted, or forgot j The last and greatest Art, the Art to blot’ (ll. 280–1). Pope is always associated with ‘correctness’, with having given the inherited form its Wnal polish. And a similar question has been posed about Pope as about Statius: did he over-reWne? If the Twickenham editors are right in their well-argued proposition that Pope’s early translating activity was Wrst and foremost a practical exercise in which he was teaching himself, not only about the workings of the language of the originals but also how to master the basic elements of his craft in English composition, his choice of Ovid and Homer needs no explanation, but why did he choose Statius? His later headnote ‘The Translator hopes he needs not apologize for his Choice’ sounds defensive. His Wrst original poems were pastorals modelled very 71 ‘The Second Epistle of the Second Book of Horace’, 68–9 in Pope, Twickenham Edition, iv. 169. 72 Pope, Twickenham Edition, iv. 216.

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much after Virgil but as Dryden had translated the whole of Virgil, Pope may have felt it better to look elsewhere to an author as he says himself hitherto largely untranslated. Statius was, in fact, a fairly obvious choice, for he has always been regarded as a Wne versiWer, second in Latin epic only to Virgil himself, to whose coat-tails his reputation in his subsequent afterlife has always been attached. Unlike Lucan, Statius does not obviously transgress the norms; his Thebaid is wholly mythological, reinstates the divine machinery of epic, and generally works within what were regarded in the Renaissance as the generic requirements of the heroic poem. He has his own distinct subject, the fratricidal strife between the sons of Oedipus over the kingship of Thebes but readers of Statius will Wnd themselves constantly recalling not only Virgilian language and style but also in the shaping of various narrative motifs much of the inherited tradition in epic. But Statius has aYnities with other silver Latin poets. Like Lucan and Seneca, his theme and vision are ultimately negative and bleak. The Wrst act of the poem is the curse directed by Oedipus towards his sons for their impiety. Punishment, not reward, is the general theme and punishment by Jupiter, the agent of fate, involves not only the Thebans but also the Argives who are comparatively blameless. Though he has traditionally been regarded as second only to Virgil in the craftsmanship of his verse, as a silver Latin poet, Statius has always been relegated to the second rank and sometimes been dismissed entirely. His style has been criticized for being over-cultivated; the extreme criticisms of enervate repetitious mythological narrative to be found in Persius and Juvenal have been felt to apply in more moderated form to the epic performance of Statius, who published his Thebaid in 91–2 ad after Persius and before Juvenal. His poem has often been praised for its style, but what of its substance? Where Virgil and Lucan have instantly apprehensible grand themes relating to the foundation of Rome and Republican liberty, can it be said that the Thebaid really has a great theme? At the opening, the poet does not help his cause by Wrst telling his audience what he will not sing about for the Wrst eighteen lines. After announcing his subject, he then launches into another digression for a further sixteen lines until he returns to his proposition. Finally at line 46 (line 69 in Pope) the narrative begins with Oedipus pronouncing a curse on his neglectful sons. The opening does, of course, establish much by way of a general troubled atmosphere and raises the prospect of fratricidal strife between the sons of Oedipus but it also has all the characteristics of a narrative style that has caused his

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reWned verse to be criticized for being the vehicle of a mannerist sensibility in which everything is elongated and overplayed. If Pope made his Wrst attempts at forging an epic style via Statius, he did so from what has been considered to be one of the weakest and most rareWed starting points in the epic inheritance.

The rareWed style Pope was well aware of Statius’ limitations; in letters to Henry Cromwell the mentor to whom he submitted the Wrst version of the translation, he calls him ‘none of the Discreetest poets tho he was the best VersiWer Next Virgil ’73 and he criticizes the style for frequent hyperbole and tautology.74 What did Pope make of the rareWed style of Statius? After Polynices has left Thebes and is making his way towards Argos, there is an extended description of the coming of night in a purple passage that will test a translator. Iamque per emeriti surgens conWnia Phoebi Titanis late, mundo subvecta silenti, Rorifera gelidum tenuaverat aera biga: Iam pecudes volucresque tacent, iam somnus avaris Inrepsit curis pronusque ex aethere nutat, Grata laboratae referens oblivia vitae. Sed nec puniceo rediturum nubila caelo Promisere iubar, nec rarescentibus umbris Longa repercusso nituere crepuscula Phoebo: Densior a terris et nulli pervia Xammae Subtexit nox atra polos. (i. 336–46) (But now the moon [Titanis] rising far and wide through domain of Phoebus [the sun], who had completed his task, borne upward through a silent world, with her dewy chariot had thinned the cold air; now birds and beasts are hushed, and sleep stole over the greedy cares of men, and, stooping down, nods from the upper sky, bringing sweet oblivion of careworn life. Yet no clouds in the reddening sky gave promise that the light will return, nor as the shadows became less distinct did a long-lasting twilight gleam with sunlight reXected back; black night, blacker from the earth upwards and impervious to the light of any Xame, veiled the poles.)

73 Pope, Correspondence, i. 37.

74 Dated 10 June 1709: ibid. 63–4.

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To summarize simply: at the setting of the sun the darkness that ensues is not illuminated by any twilight redness in the sky (the shepherd’s delight that promises a Wne morrow) but made denser by vapours (mist or fog) rising from the earth. Although the moon has taken over from the sun, she is not said to be shedding light but is cooling the earth. The passage is a prelude to a vicious storm that ominously accompanies the Wnal stages of the journeys of Polynices and Tydeus and their arrival at Argos. Their arrival is followed immediately by their Wght and subsequently by their marriages to the daughters of Adrastus which will shatter the peace of his Argive kingdom. So the description adumbrates the dark theme of the poem to which it gives an appropriate atmospheric colouring, and therefore cannot be dismissed simply as an overornamented version of the kind of epic description of the setting of the sun we are familiar with in a simpler form in Homer and in a slightly more ornate form in Virgil. But it is certainly true that its relation to the overall thematic content is not as immediately obvious as such descriptions in Virgil where, for example, a brief description of a new dawn appropriately marks the arrival of the Trojan ships at the coast of Italy (vii. 25–6) or where a description of the peace of the coming night that puts an end to the cares of the day (of which there is a clear echo in Statius here) is used to highlight by sharp and immediate contrast the restless careworn Dido who alone is unable to sleep (iv. 522–9). The three lines relating to rest and sleep (ll. 339–41) are beautifully crafted in themselves but, though they expand the idea of ‘mundo . . . silenti’ ‘the silent world’, they do not obviously connect by analogy or contrast with the main point of the description which concerns chilling darkness or with the larger human context in which this whole description is set. Also, in the description of the encroaching gloom, although there is no tautology, the negative description of the absent light is obviously longer than it need have been for no very obvious reason. This lack of strong narrative connection and purpose is one of the charges commonly levelled at silver Latin poets. It is written in a sophisticated and highly wrought style that combines both traditional mythological imagery relating to the alternating chariot-driven progress through the sky of the sun and moon and quasi-scientiWc terminology starting with the thinning of the atmosphere accomplished by the cooling moon and continued in the contrast between ‘rarescentibus’ ‘made thinner’ and ‘densior’ ‘thicker’, both being applied to the atmosphere at the end. The diction is precise, even ‘rorifera’ ‘dew-bearing’ modifying the chariot is not merely ornamental

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given reference to the vapours that intensify the gloom at the end. There are only two words that are not found in prose: ‘Titanis’ (rare, according to the dictionary) and ‘rarescentibus’. The syntax is not diYcult and these harmonious lines have ease and Xow. As translator Pope for the most part is obliged to render what is given: ’Twas now the Time when Phoebus yields to Night, And rising Cynthia sheds her silver Light, Wide o’er the World in solemn Pomp she drew Her airy Chariot, hung with Pearly Dew; All Birds and Beasts lye hush’d; Sleep steals away The wild Desires of Men, and Toils of Day, And brings, descending thro’ the silent Air, A sweet Forgetfulness of human Care. Yet no red Clouds, with golden Borders gay, Promise the Skies the bright Return of Day; No faint ReXections of the distant Light Streak with long Gleams the scatt’ring Shades of Night; From the damp Earth impervious Vapours rise, Encrease the Darkness and involve the Skies. (ll. 474–87)

In the Wrst half of his version, perhaps because Statius himself makes rather weak connections between the parts of his descriptive narrative, Pope has been seduced by the melliXuous harmony of the Latin into translating merely the surface at the expense of the underlying sense. In the Latin, the real climax of the introduction of the moon is expressed in the words ‘gelidum tenuaverat aera’ ‘had made the air thin and cold’ which is not apparent at all in Pope’s rendering where the moon ‘sheds her silver Light’ (irrespective of the darkness that is to come) rising ‘in solemn Pomp’ drawing her chariot ‘hung with Pearly Dew’, where the latter phrase is a poetical beauty enhancing the moon’s beauty by its Wgurative association with precious stones rather than an elegant way of introducing the idea of a damp evening mist. The Latin is doing something more than paint a picture of the moon rising in beauty. Pope’s poetic manner is reminiscent of Milton in his celebrated description on the coming on of evening in Paradise Lost. On the other hand in the second phase of this passage, which treats the eVect of sleep on nature and the human world, Pope is at his best. His importation of the ‘wild Desires’ has thematic point, given the lust for power that drives Eteocles and Polynices, while the action of sleep in stealing them away

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(almost against human will) is an imaginative response to ‘inrepsit’ ‘crept upon them’. The suspension of the sense, which is not concluded till the Wnal word of the next couplet, and the management of rhythm enables a continuously falling cadence highly appropriate to the deadening eVect of sleep. The sweet Xuency of ‘A sweet Forgetfulness of human Care’ directly renders the sense and Wnality of the elegantly balanced ‘grata laboratae referens oblivia curae’. The Wnal three couplets are fully responsive to the sense of the Latin, each marking a stage in the encroachment of the darkening gloom. There is no strong colour in the Wrst and no faint reXections in the second which is particularly delicate in its evocation of the Wnal eVects of twilight of which there are said to be none here, as the shades scatter before the coming darkness which is made all-engulWng by the three emphatic words ‘impervious’, ‘Encrease’ and ‘involve’ in the third and Wnal couplet. If we survey the translation of this passage as a whole on its own merits, it falls straightforwardly into two parts, the Wrst positively emphasizing beauty and the gift of sleep while the second, marked by the adversative ‘Yet’, introduces negatives and enveloping darkness. For all that he may miss something at the opening, the translator is at home in the poetic world of the original. For this world is continuous with his reading of Virgil and Pope’s English predecessors Milton and Dryden. The aestheticized style of the Latin is, therefore, by no means alien. A second example may serve to suggest that the slight adjustments wrought by his recasting of the material into the couplet verse form could have an enhancing eVect. On the arrival of his guests in whom he recognizes the fruition of fate, Adrastus formally addresses the night to seek conWrmation of the divine will: Nox, quae terrarum caelique amplexa labores Ignea multivago transmittis sidera lapsu, Indulgens reparare animum, dum proximus aegris Infundat Titan agiles animantibus ortus, (i. 498–501) (night, who, having embraced the labours of the earth and the heavens, send the Wery stars on their diverse roaming courses, indulgent refresher of the mind, until the next sun brings energetic uprising upon troubled mortality)

The literal version at the end here is a less than successful attempt to render the neat and clever play whereby the Latin ‘ortus’ is both the rising of the sun and the rising of animate life that wakes refreshed with

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new vigour to the sun of a new day. The adjective ‘aegris’ ‘troubled’ is commonly attached to mortality in such digniWed invocations but is not simply formulaic as it reverberates with ‘labores’ ‘troubles’ in the opening line to express an undercurrent of universal sadness. As ever, the language is carefully wrought and the verse is stately and rhythmically Xuent. There is a pleasing aesthetic beauty characteristic of Statius and reminiscent of Virgil that we do not Wnd in Lucan. There is no impropriety in the expression but this invocation, although it marks an important moment in the plot when Adrastus recognizes the will of the gods, is perhaps somewhat extended. There might be considered to be some irony in the circumstance that Wnds Adrastus seeking enlightenment from the night (and it is true that this moment is a fateful one for the king, his family, and his people), but any such irony is not easily signalled by any pointers in the Latin. The content of this invocation which tells us what we already know about the night and the stars and about the night’s capacity for refreshment of souls is not incisively related to any thematic content and could be said to be oVered to the reader for the sake of its own beauty. It certainly inspired the translator to heightened poetic expression: Goddess of Shades, beneath whose gloomy Reign Yon spangled Arch glows with the starry Train, You who the Cares of Heav’n and Earth allay, Till Nature quicken’d by the Inspiring Ray, Wakes to new Vigor with the rising Day. (ll. 583–7)

Pope does not quite capture the Wnesse of Statius’ Latin for which he would have had to be more expansive, but the second line responds to the aesthetic glow of the original. The more obvious personiWcation of night as a goddess who reigns and has a ‘starry Train’ again follows a characteristic Miltonic magniWcation. But the triplet that comes after admirably captures the dual complexity in the Latin ‘ortus’ in a vigorous rendering that contrasts with the greater world-weariness of the original. The organization of the lines makes the contrast between night and day sharper, giving more emphasis to the new day in the climactic line of the triplet. This little snippet may suggest that while silver Latin could well encourage a conscious aestheticism in translators or those who modelled themselves upon it, Pope’s youthful imagination was Wred to vigorous expression by the high style of the Latin.

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Heightening The digniWed and ceremonious solemnity in the epic is, if anything, heightened in Pope’s translation. That this is so is apparent in the translation of the most solemn moment in the epic introducing the council of the gods that he made for the published version of 1712. At Iovis imperio rapidi super atria caeli Lectus concilio divum convenerat ordo Interiore polo. spatiis hinc omnia iuxta, Primaeque occiduaeque domus et fusa sub omni Terra atque unda die. mediis sese arduus infert Ipse deis, placido quatiens tamen omnia vultu. Stellantique locat solio; (ll. 197–203) (But by command of Jove the chosen order of the gods had convened in council over the halls of the swift-moving sky at its inmost depth. From here all things are equally far, the rising and setting domains and the earth and sea spread beneath endless day. He himself moves loftily in the midst of the gods, causing all to shake yet with a serene countenance, he places himself on a starry throne.) And now th’Almighty Father of the Gods Convenes a Council in the blest Abodes: Far in the bright Recesses of the Skies, High o’er the rowling Heav’ns, a Mansion lyes, Whence, far below, the Gods at once survey The Realms of rising and declining Day, And all th’ extended Space of Earth, and Air, and Sea. Full in the midst, and on a starry Throne, The Majesty of Heav’n superior shone; Serene he look’d, and gave an awful Nod. And all the trembling Spheres confess’d the God. (ll. 273–83)

The power and dignity of the father is enhanced as he becomes the convening subject in the opening couplet. The dignity of the station of the gods is enhanced by the commanding spaciousness of their ‘blest Abodes’; the simple eVect of the positioning of the adjectives ‘far’ and ‘high’, the prepositional phrase ‘far below’ and the verb ‘survey’ begin to create ‘th’ extended Space’ while the kingly metaphor in ‘Realms’ makes the homely Latin ‘domus’ more splendid, enhancing in its turn the

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majesty of the description and of the gods who are superior to that majesty. In the spacious Wnal line of the triplet, an alexandrine with its extra foot, the form is used to embody and enact the idea. The phrasing in the Latin is severely interlocked; the grand spaciousness is all due to the translator. The exact setting of the gods for ancient and modern alike must be a little problematic. Any description needs in some way to embody the sublime. Pope’s elevated spaciousness does exactly this, and does so, it can be said, much better than the Latin. He has also rearranged the order of the Latin in his next two couplets and changed its meaning in the process. In Statius, the language asserts Jove’s superiority to the other deities. He causes them to quake a little at his majesty even though he is serene of countenance. This is perhaps the best eVect of majesty in the quoted passage in the Latin, a true eVect of powerful majesty. But Pope has gone one better, for it is not the gods that quake but climactically the very spheres that tremble. As he has also introduced the nod of Jupiter (there is no nodding in the Latin) the hyperbole reminds us of the famous passage in Homer’s Iliad where the nod of Zeus ratiWes fate, a passage that is supposed to have inspired the sculptor Pheidias when he conceived his great statue of Olympian Zeus that was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The hyperbole, therefore, is not in the least forced. The full-blown but not overblown dignity that Pope eVortlessly achieves in the heavenly sphere is replicated to some extent at the court of Adrastus as he organizes entertainment for his visitors, Polynices and Tydeus. Here the status of the king is enhanced when his ‘ministri’ (l. 515) become slaves; he and his guests are elevated above the rest of the court who are at ‘an awful distance’ (additions in bold): The King once more the solemn Rites requires, And bids renew the Feasts, and wake the Fires. His Train obey; while all the Courts around With noisie Care and various Tumult sound. Embroider’d Purple cloaths the golden Beds; This Slave the Floor, and that the Table spreads; A third dispels the darkness of the night, And Wlls depending Lamps with Beams of light; Here Loaves in Canisters are pil’d on high, And there, in Flames the slaughter’d Victims fry. Sublime in Regal State, Adrastus shone, Stretch’d on rich Carpets, on his iv’ry Throne;

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A lofty couch receives each princely Guest; Around, at awful Distance, wait the rest. (ll. 603–16)

The style is accordingly grand, particularly so in the couplet describing the lighting of the lamps which translates ‘ast alii tenebras et opacem vincere noctem j Adgressi tendunt auratis vincula lychnis’ (ll. 520–1) ‘but others setting about to vanquish the shadows and gloomy night stretch chains for gilded lanterns’. In the Latin the elegant line expressing the intention of the servants verges on both redundancy (providing a statement of the obvious which we do not need to know) and hyperbole in the metaphors ‘adgressi’ and ‘vincere’. Pope, in giving us action not intention and dispensing with the metaphors, is more direct in his expression which is not made less direct by the importation of the Latinate ‘depending’ in its literal meaning of ‘hanging down’. He is also more direct in the next line with his ‘Loaves’ translating the periphrastic phrase ‘perdomitam saxo Cererem’ (l. 524) ‘Ceres that has been crushed by stone’. In this instance the translator represents the dignity of the original by changes to its substance (the physical elevation of Adrastus) while moderating the preciosity of the style in the interests of more vigorous and direct expression. Similarly in the previous examples he had rendered the new day more vigorously than Statius and is more vigorously emphatic about the majesty of Jupiter. Here in parvo is the moderating tendency of Pope’s Augustan style, which does not, as a general rule, emulate the excessive reWnement of Statius’ silver Latin. The sheer vigour of Pope’s management of his form precludes over-niceties. The heightening of style traditionally demanded of epic is traditionally shown to best advantage in the description of art objects designed not to exhibit function but to appeal richly to the senses. When Adrastus entertains his guests, he orders his servants to bring the vessel honoured by custom and time for such ceremonious occasions. This small ecphrasis describing the artistry of this vessel is an occasion for the poet to show his artistic appreciation through his skill in word-painting. postquam ordine mensae Victa fames, signis perfectam auroque nitentem Iasides pateram famulos ex more poposcit, Qua Danaus libare deis seniorque Phoroneus Adsueti. tenet haec operum caelata Wguras: Aureus anguicomam praesecto Gorgona collo Ales habet, iamiamque vagas—ita visus—in auras

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Augustan Translation of Silver Latin Exsilit; illa graves oculos languentiaque ora Paene movet vivoque etiam pallescit in auro. Hinc Phrygius fulvis venator tollitur alis, Gargara desidunt surgenti et Troia recedit, Stant maesti comites, frustra sonantia lassant Ora canes umbramque petunt et nubila latrant. (ll. 538–50)

(After their hunger had been satisWed in due course of the meal, the son of Iasus [Adrastus] as was customary asked the servants for the goblet, shining with gold and decorated with Wgures, with which Danaus and the elder Phoroneus had been accustomed to oVer libations to the gods. This was engraved with Wgures. All golden, the winged youth held up the snake-haired Gorgon with her neck severed, and was almost, so it seemed, on the point of Xight into the wandering breeze; she almost moves her heavy eyes and her drooping lips and even grows pale in the living gold. Here the Phrygian hunter is raised on golden wings; as he rises the hill of Gargaga and Troy recede; his comrades stand sadly around; in vain the dogs weary their barking throats, they chase the shadow and bark at the clouds.)

Much can be gleaned from this short extract about Pope’s method and approach to translation and his interest in the original. The two little vignettes capture dynamic moments in their respective stories featuring Perseus at the moment of his triumph in cutting the Gorgon’s head and the Trojan Ganymede at the moment of triumph or disaster, when he is carried oV by Jove’s eagle to become cupbearer to the gods. The dynamism is apparent in the way in which the poet suggests a moving scene as the Gorgon’s face seems to register an expression and Perseus is about to jump into the air, while in the second scene we have the perspective of the receding landscape which itself cleverly suggests the depth of perspective given by the artist to his embossed Wgures. As in the case of the archetypal ecphrasis, the description of the shield of Achiles in Homer, the static object is made vivid by dynamic description of movement, intensiWed in this instance by the barking dogs snatching at the clouds at the end. The Banquet done, the Monarch gives the Sign To Wll the Goblet high with sparkling Wine, Which Danaus used in sacred Rites of old, With Sculpture grac’d, and rough with rising Gold. Here to the Clouds victorious Perseus Xies; Medusa seems to move her languid Eyes, And, even in Gold, turns paler as she dies.

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There from the Chace Jove’s tow’ring Eagle bears On golden Wings, the Phrygian to the Stars; Still as he rises in th’ Ætherial Height, His native Mountains lessen to his Sight; While all his sad Companions upward gaze, Fix’d on the Glorious Scene in wild Amaze, And the swift Hounds, aVrighted as he Xies, Run to the Shade, and bark against the Skies. (ll. 633–47)

In his translation, Pope has made things clearer for his readers by identifying Perseus and Medusa and by ascribing the eagle to Jove, thereby immediately bringing the story of Ganymede to the mind of anyone who has heard it before. At the opening he has dispensed with Phoroneus an unknown Wgure whose presence in the narrative is hardly missed. The point of the allusion to him and to Danaus is made explicit in the phrase ‘sacred Rites of old’ which renders ‘accustomed to oVer libations to the gods’. The opening four and a half lines, which set the scene in the Latin, are represented in two condensed couplets. The two descriptions in the Latin which say very much the same thing (‘signis perfectam auroque nitentem’ and ‘tenet haec operum caelata Wguras’) are reduced to one: ‘With Sculpture grac’d, and rough with rising Gold’ where the Twickenham editors75 detect a reminiscence of Dryden’s line in his Æneis ‘Accept this Goblet rough with Wgur’d Gold’ (v. 704). This explains the use of ‘rough’, which clearly did not clash for contemporary readers in its associations with the grace of the Wgures embossed on the goblet itself. The four lines that Statius devotes to the Wrst picture are contained in a triplet in Pope who has shortened the description given of the impression made by Perseus who seems about to take oV in Statius but actually ‘Xies’ in Pope. While this gives added energy, there is some loss in the lingering eVect created in the Latin, which pays tribute to the artist’s expressive ability. The triumph of Perseus is made explicit with the importation of the epithet ‘victorious’ in a line that is emphatic and fast-moving. The paradox in the appearance of the Gorgon’s face makes a gracefully expressed climax in the translation as it does in the original. The most radical change in Pope comes with the picture of Ganymede where four lines in the Latin are expanded to four couplets in English. The eagle is enhanced not only by the addition 75 Pope, Twickenham Edition, i. 436.

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of Jove but by the additional epithet ‘tow’ring’ which impresses its size as it moves upward to the skies. The translation gives a fuller picture of the eagle’s Xight. The change of perspective is given a full line in the translation as it is in the original but the ‘upward gaze’ of the onlookers in the next line increases the impression of gathering height. With the additional line ‘Fix’d on the Glorious Scene in wild Amaze’, we are made to visualize the moment through the eyes of the onlookers. The Latin ‘umbram’ might suggest that the dogs are chasing the shadow but equally Pope’s reading, which he explains with ‘aVrighted as he Xies’ is quite possible and one that admits the presence of fear, so that all in all, we have the various ingredients of the sublime at the end: glory, transport, and fear. This Wlling out here is of the emotional response produced by the scene; it is not an over-aestheticized account of the beauty of the goblet. Pope has his eye on the human reactions, on the overall human eVect that is the product of the artistic representation and design. His translating art is not for its own sake, not for the cultivation of style, but for what it can deliver of the human content of the original poem. Art is the means to an end, for, as he would later put it in An Essay on Criticism, Nature is ‘at once the Source and End and Test of Art’ (l. 73). But Art is Nature’s handmaid, and there are two further features of Pope’s artistry that are worth remarking. Whether by accident or design, or simply as a consequence of the poet’s energetic concentration upon the scene, there are numerous words throughout the passage that work together to impress the sense of elevation and upward movement upon the mind: ‘high’, ‘rising’, ‘Xies’, ‘tow’ring’, ‘rises’, ‘height’, ‘upward gaze’. These repetitions, even if only perceived subliminally, give cohesion and focus to the translation. Secondly, in the four couplets describing Ganymede all the rhyme words emphasize the amazing sight caused by his Xight. Rhyme similarly supplies cohesion in the delivery of the sense and, as it is handled by Pope, is a major factor in the exercise of artistic control. The end of Pope’s art, therefore, as it is deployed in the management of his couplets, is the emphatic rendering of the thematic content of the original, of its sense and meaning.

Augustan virtues In his couplet style Pope inherited the Augustan values of clearness, purity, and ease; magniWcence, particularly if this is understood not

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merely as the maintenance of a grand tone but also as that elevated quality that results from a mastery of the various Wgures of sense and arrangement that are associated with the grand style, also came easily to the youthful translator as we have seen. A Wnal contrast between the respective merits of the silver Latin original and the Augustan English translation may throw Pope’s Augustan virtues into clearer relief and facilitate some general remarks. Statius gets into his stride at the opening of his poem with his dramatic introduction of Oedipus whose curse is instrumental in setting the plot in motion. Impia iam merita scrutatus lumina dextra Merserat aeterna damnatum nocte pudorem Oedipodes longaque animam sub morte tenebat. Illum indulgentem tenebris imaeque recessu Sedis inaspectos caelo radiisque penates Servantem tamen adsiduis circumvolat alis Saeva dies animi, scelerumque in pectore Dirae. Tunc vacuos orbes, crudum ac miserabile vitae Supplicium, ostentat caelo manibusque cruentis Pulsat inane solum saevaque ita voce precatur. (ll. 46–55) (Having already probed deep his impious eyes with his righteous hand, Oedipus had covered his shame now damned to eternal night, and was maintaining his life in a long-drawn-out death. But, though he gave himself up to the darkness and the uttermost seclusion of his dwelling keeping his household chamber unobserved of the sky or the sun’s rays, the savage daylight of the mind with unwearied wings Xitted about him, and the avenging furies of his crimes assail his heart. Then he shows those empty eyes, the bloody and pitiable punishment of his life, to heaven and with blood-stained hands beats the hollow earth and oVers this prayer in savage accents.)

Overall, with its suspension of the sense and use of subordinating participles, the Latin is complex in its arrangement, dense in its meaning, and quite diYcult to construe. At the beginning the judgement against Oedipus is clear, for the hand that plucked out his impious eyes is described as being ‘merita’ ‘praiseworthy’ and he is said to have buried his ‘pudorem’, his ‘shame’, which is ‘damnatum’ ‘lost in’ but also ‘damned to’ eternal night. This double signiWcance in the word ‘damnatum’ is replicated in the participle ‘scrutatus’, literally meaning ‘having investigated’ but which here must also bear a Wgurative meaning, something like ‘having probed into’ which in fact contains both Oedipus’

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self-scrutiny and the gouging out of the eyes that was a consequence of this self scrutiny. The Latin is densely packed and sophisticated. The second sentence, over four lines, is complex in its arrangement. The participle ‘indulgentem’ seems charged in meaning with a slightly ironic suggestion of enjoyment; ‘penates’, literally ‘the indwelling gods of the household’, must be primarily a Wgurative expression for simply ‘the home’ but, as it is being used in the context of this great violator of household sanctities, one that retains something dislocating from its literal signiWcance. A critical movement in the sense is marked by the adversative ‘tamen’ ‘however’ which balances what has gone before against what is to come in the rest of the sentence. Although he is hidden from the day, yet there is no escape from ‘saeva dies animi’, a Wne phrase, ‘the savage daylight of the mind’. The imagery that associates not only the Furies with unwearied wings (quite regular) but also the day is daring at least, if not over-bold and strained. On the other hand the balancing contrast between the mind and the heart, embracing both intellect and feeling, is well made. The original has been quite radically transformed in Pope’s translation: Now wretched Oedipus, depriv’d of Sight, Led a long Death in everlasting Night; But while he dwells where not a chearful Ray Can pierce the Darkness, and abhors the Day; The clear, reXecting Mind, presents his Sin, In frightful Views, and makes it Day within; Returning Thoughts in endless Circles roll, And thousand Furies haunt his guilty Soul. The Wretch then lifted to th’ unpitying Skies Those empty Orbs, from whence he tore his Eyes, Whose Wounds yet fresh, with bloody Hands he strook, While from his Breast these dreadful Accents broke. (ll. 69–80)

The transformation is partly the natural result of what Dr Johnson called ‘the constraint of measures and dissimilitude of languages’.76 Although, as we have seen, couplet writing can involve long complex rhetorical structures extending over many lines, subordination through participial use and the complex interlocking of phrasing that we Wnd in the Latin are not features naturally encouraged in native English or by 76 Johnson, Lives, ii. 77.

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the English Augustan couplet in its characteristic patterning. Syntax and phrasing are easier in English than in the Latin. The easy clarity of Pope’s version, in contrast to the diYcult Latin (probably for good Latinists too) is immediately striking. This is due in large measure to the translator’s judgement about where to put the main emphasis in the passage as a whole, which, as a consequence, has been considerably reordered in English. The density of expression of the Latin vocabulary at the beginning, highlighted above in ‘scrutatus’, ‘damnatum’, ‘indulgentem’, and ‘penates’, Wnds no equivalent in English. The opening couplets in Pope are straightforwardly declaratory of Oedipus’ physical condition and place. The judgement in ‘impia’, ‘pudorem’, and ‘damnatum’, has been moved to the centre in the ‘Sin’ presented to his mind and in the haunting of his ‘guilty Soul’. But while the opening is simpliWed and contracted, the central contrast between outer darkness and inextinguishable inner daylight has been intensiWed and expanded. The Wrst Wve and a bit lines of the Latin are contained in two couplets while the adversative sentence beginning with ‘tamen’, which extends over barely two lines in the Latin, is expanded to two whole couplets in English. Moreover, the syntax is easier because of the clear advance signal given with ‘But while’ in the third line, whereas ‘tamen’ is comparatively hidden in the Latin. In the two couplets that highlight the inescapable guilt of Oedipus, the most dubious phrase in the Latin ‘adsiduis . . . alis’ attached to ‘saeva dies animi’ has given rise to the Wne line ‘Returning Thoughts in endless Circles roll’ which gives psychological depth and credibility with its suggestion of an ineluctable cycle. The furies, which additionally ‘haunt’ him, are given a full resounding line for emphasis, and sound in English like an allegorical expression for guilt. The English word ‘furies’ translating the Latin ‘Dirae’, being nearer to fury, with its suggestion of passionate anger (appropriate here for Oedipus who is about to curse his sons) is well chosen, connecting to the poem’s main theme. Worth note in this connection is Pope’s translation of the opening ‘a sacred Fury Wres j My ravish’d Breast’ where the Latin word is ‘calor’ ‘warmth’. Pope was attuned to the ‘fury’ of Statius as he would later be attuned to the emotional content of the Iliad. The most striking phrase in the Latin ‘saeva dies animi’ is translated by an equally striking phrase in the English ‘The clear reXecting Mind’ with its memorable but easy play on two meanings of ‘reXecting’, ‘thinking upon’ and ‘presenting back’ as in a mirror. This is just the sort of play made by Statius in words like ‘scrutatus’ at the opening but occurring in the expression of the

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climactic idea upon which the whole passage is constructed and enabling further cohesive emphasis as it reverberates with ‘presents’ and with ‘returning’ that follow it. The emotional range of the translation is made greater than the Latin by the importation of some sympathy for Oedipus as victim. At the beginning, the ‘wretched Oedipus’ is presented as pitiable and after the evocation of his guilt, he is again ‘a wretch’ who lifts his hands to ‘th’unpitying Skies’. This complicates the expression of what is straightforward guilt in the Latin. A further change towards the end intensiWes the horror too. In the Latin, Oedipus strikes the hollow ground, whereas in the translation there is further self-laceration as he strikes his eyes again. This is a highly eVective change, since the second striking of the eyes is not only physically horrid but represents the continuing psychological horror of his inescapable guilt as in a futile gesture he attempts to eliminate the ‘frightful Views’ of his ‘clear reXecting Mind’. Just as he had intensiWed the human reaction to Ganymede, so here all his changes work to intensify the plight of Oedipus in the reader’s mind. There may be some individual loss of detail in what he has chosen not to elaborate, but his judgement overall is unerring in what he has done. He has tightened up the original according to a governing aesthetic that gives it greater expressive cohesion and unity of design, and thus made Statius accord more with the ‘classical’ virtues that are the requirement of Vida and of the classical tradition of which he is representative and which Xows from him and the humanist inheritance of the early Renaissance. The ingredients of that aesthetic include precise word choice and harmoniously Wtting imagery. Judging him by this standard, Pope found Statius to be ‘none of the discreetest poets’, where the lack of discretion is akin to lack of judgement which Pope seeks to amend and supply in his version. The delivery of the aesthetic in its English Augustan form entails complete mastery of the art of rhyme. In theoretical discussion, the phrase ‘the hindrance of rhyme’ among practising poets is something of a cliche´. But when it is used with the kind of assurance of a virtuoso that Pope shows here, it not only provides verbal harmony but is also a wonderfully clarifying aid in the evolution of the sense. The classical aesthetic which he has put into practice here Wnds memorable expression a little later when Pope put into order his theoretical thoughts about the classical ideal in An Essay on Criticism. In Wit as Nature, what aVects our Hearts, Is not th’ Exactness of peculiar parts;

Pope’s Statius ’Tis not a Lip, or Eye, we Beauty call, But the joint Force and full Result of all. Thus when we view some well-proportioned Dome, (The World’s just Wonder and ev’n thine O Rome!) No single parts unequally surprize; All comes united to th’ admiring eyes; No monstrous Height, or Breadth, or Length appear; The Whole at once is Bold and Regular. (ll. 243–52)77

77 Pope, Twickenham Edition, i. 267.

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4 Augustan Homer If silver Latin had to be accommodated to Augustan norms, then what of the challenge represented by Homer, persistently depreciated by Vida in the De Arte Poetica? Pope hailed ‘Immortal Vida’ in An Essay on Criticism but also revalidated the supremacy of Homer who is championed as the Muses’ ‘Spring’: Be Homer’s Works your Study and Delight, Read them by Day and meditate by Night, Thence form your Judgment, thence your Maxims bring And trace the Muses upward to their Spring; Still with It self compar’d his Text peruse; And let you Comment be the Mantuan Muse. When Wrst young Maro in his boundless Mind A work t’outlast immortal Rome design’d, Perhaps he seem’d above the Critick’s Law, And but from Nature’s Fountains scorn’d to draw: But when t’examine ev’ry part he came, Nature and Homer were, he found, the same; Convinc’d, amaz’d, he checks the bold Design, And rules as strict his labour’d Work conWne, As if the Stagyrite o’erlook’d each Line. Learn hence for Ancient Rules a just Esteem, To copy Nature is to copy them. (ll. 124–40)

In this injunction Homer is locked inseparably into the Augustan aesthetic as its very source and origin but he is not seen here as he was seen by Vida and by so many in the earlier Renaissance as a primitive original whose Greek is later reWned and perfected in the Latin tradition by Virgil. Rather Virgil is the poet who labours diligently to copy Nature according to Homer’s rule. Critical, that is theoretical justice, is being done to Homer here, as the bias of early Latin-based humanism is corrected.

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There are several factors contributing to this new state of aVairs, chief among which is the rediscovery, through Boileau’s translation, of the critical insights of Longinus in his treatise on the sublime. Before the appearance of the French Traite´ du Sublime (1674),1 Longinus had been regarded, if regarded at all, as just another rhetorician. In his introduction, however, Boileau makes the critical distinction between sublimity and the sublime style, explaining that by ‘Sublime’ Longinus does not mean what orators call the sublime style ‘mais ce merveilleux qui frappe dans le discours, et qui fait qu’un ouvrage enleve, ravit, transporte’.2 After bringing forward the divine Wat at the opening of genesis as an example of the true sublime, he deWnes the principal source of the sublime as ‘Elevation d’esprit naturelle’, a Wery natural spirit which is the mark of a great soul: ‘nous devons, autant qu’il nous est possible, nourir noˆtre esprit du Grand, et le tenir touˆjours plein et enXe´, pour ainsi dire, d’une certaine Werte´ noble et geńe´reuse’.3 The second most vital source of the sublime and equally a gift of nature, is deWned with similar clarity of expression in the French: ‘Le seconde consiste dans le Pathetique: j’entends par Pathetique, cet Enthousiasme, et cette vehemence naturelle qui touche´ et qui e´meut.’4 In both passages Boileau has Wlled out the Greek importing into the Wrst the metaphor of Wre and into the second the notions of enthusiasm and natural vehemence. By the time that Pope in his Essay on Criticism could say of Longinus that ‘he is himself that great Sublime he draws’ (l. 680), Boileau’s insights had crossed the channel and with them currency is given to two new critical terms now associated through Longinus with Homer, the sublime and the pathetic. Alongside this new strain existed an older strain of formalistic criticism brought to a climax by Le Bossu in his Traite´ du Poe`me E´pique (1675)5 in which Homer is reconciled with the Rules. Although he shows no inXuence from the new critical insight associated with Longinus, he is reverential in his attitude to Homer, taking refuge in all the traditional defences that had been devised to accommodate Homer within the Renaissance canon. Allegory can reveal the deep meaning of Homer’s gods; violations of decorum are the consequence of the 1 Œuvres comple`tes de Boileau, ed. Charles H. Boudhors, 7 vols. (Paris: Socie´te´ Les Belles Lettres, 1942), iv. Dissertation sur la Joconde; Arrest Burlesque; Traite´ du Sublime. 2 Ibid. 45. 3 Ibid. 61. 4 Ibid. 59. 5 Stuart Curran (ed.), Le Bossu and Voltaire on the Epic (Gainsville, Fla.: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1970).

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primitive times in which Homer lived and are excused with reference to parallel passages in the Old Testament. His elaboration of the Horatian tag ‘Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi’ (Epistolae, I. ii. 14) ‘When the kings go mad the Greeks reap the consequences’ into the formal moral that the Iliad had been conceived to urge upon the Greeks the perils of discord brought the poem acceptably within the compass of ‘utile dulci’. Pope mocked his treatise in his ‘Receit to Make an Epick Poem’6 but nevertheless defers to its authority in his Preface of 1715. These two strains could and often did exist side by side and even within the same critic as in the case of Rapin in his ‘Comparaison d’Home`re et de Virgile’ Wrst composed in 1669 when Boileau’s manuscript was circulating amongst his circle and subsequently revised.7 Rapin castigates Homer for lack of artistry in the traditional way while praising particular episodes such as the combat between Hector and Ajax and the last parting of Hector and Andromache in terms that recall Boileau. The new French enthusiasm for Homer did not make much inpact in France. In ‘La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes’, initiated by Charles Perrault in his attack on the ancient classics, chieXy Homer, given before the French Academy in 1688 and pursued in his Paralle`le des anciens et des modernes8 of the same year, the feebleness of the defence9 shows how shallow-rooted was the new taste for Homer and how inadequate were most of the traditional ways of reading the Greek. When Pope started his Homeric endeavours, therefore, Homer was a controversial Wgure whose artistic status was contested. HEROIC BEGINNINGS: THE EPISODE OF SARPEDON The elements of Pope’s Homeric style were essentially in place in his earliest translation, ‘The Episode of Sarpedon’ from the twelfth and 6 ‘A Receit to make an Epick Poem’, Guardian, vol. i no. 78 (London, 1714), Wednesday, 10 June 1713. 7 Rene´ Rapin, Les Comparaisons des Grands Hommes de l’Antiquite´, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Abraham Wolfgang, 1685), i. 125–9 for traditional criticisms and i. 140, 147–8 for his praise of the last parting. 8 Charles Perrault, Paralle`le des anciens et des modernes, 4 vols. (Paris: J. -B. Coignard, 1688–97). Most of Perraults’s detailed criticisms of Homer’s lack of ‘la politesse’ are to be found in Dialogue III: see esp. pp. 24 V., 60–3, and 73–4. 9 On this see Noe´mi Hepp, Home`re en France au xvii sie`cle (Paris: Klinksieck, 1968), 521 V.

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sixteenth books published in 1709 (composed perhaps two years earlier when Pope was 19).10 Here is already established the normative pattern for the style and method of the fuller version of the Iliad that was yet to come. Thus Hector, great in Arms, contends in vain To Wx the Fortune of the fatal Plain, Nor Troy cou’d conquer, nor the Greeks wou’d yield, ’Till bold Sarpedon rush’d into the Field; For mighty Jove inspir’d with Martial Flame His God-like Son, and urg’d him on to Fame. In Arms he shines, conspicuous from afar, And bears aloft his ample Shield in Air, Within whose Orb the thick Bull-hides were roll’d, Pondrous with Brass, and bound with ductile Gold; And while to pointed Jav’lins arm his Hands Majestick moves along, and leads his Lycian Bands. So prest with Hunger, from the Mountain’s Brow, Descends a Lion on the Flocks below; So stalks the Lordly Savage o’er the Plain, In sullen Majesty, and stern Disdain: In vain loud Mastives bay him from afar, And Shepherds gaul him with an Iron War; Regardless, furious, he pursues his way; He foams, he roars, he rends the panting Prey. Resolv’d alike divine Sarpedon glows With gen’rous Rage, that drives him on the Foes. He views the Tow’rs, and meditates their Fall; To sure Destruction dooms the Grecian Wall; Then casting on his Friend an ardent Look, Fir’d with the Thirst of Glory, thus he spoke. (ll. 1–26)

This diVers markedly from the following literal version: And not even then might the Trojans and glorious Hector have broken in the gates of the rampart, and the long door-bar, had not Zeus of the counsels driven his own son Sarpedon, upon the Argives, like a lion among the horn-curved cattle. Presently he held before him the perfect circle of his shield, a lovely thing of beaten bronze, which the bronze-smith hammered 10 Included with other early translations in Pope, Twickenham Edition, i. 447.

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out for him, and on the inward side had stitched ox-hides in close folds with golden staples clean round the circle. Holding this shield in front of him, and shaking two spears, he went onward like some hill-kept lion, who for a long time has gone lacking meat, and the proud heart is urgent upon him to get inside of a close steading and go for the sheepXocks. And even though he Wnds herdsmen in that place, who are watching about their sheepXocks, armed with spears, and with dogs, even so he has no thought of being driven from the steading without some attack made, and either makes his spring and seizes a sheep, or else himself is hit in the Wrst attack by a spear from a swift hand thown. So now his spirit drove on godlike Sarpedon to make a rush at the wall and break apart the battlements. And now he spoke in address to Glaukos, son of Hippolochus. (Richmond Lattimore, xii. 290–309)11

A note accompanying the full translation published in 1717 comments on the style and purpose of the opening description. ‘The Poet here ushers in Sarpedon with Abundance of Pomp: He forces him upon the Observation of the Reader by the Greatness of the Description, and raises our Expectations of him, intending to make him perform many remarkable Actions in the Sequel of the Poem, and become worthy to fall by the Hand of Patroclus.’12 The changes that Pope made to the sense of Homer as it is expressed in the literal version are designed to reproduce that abundance of pomp and to captivate the reader’s observation by the forcefulness of the description. Accordingly, his translation method is similar to that of Dryden and Denham. The 1709 version was changed very little when he incorporated it into the full translation in 1717. In Homer, Zeus simply drives Sarpedon on; in Pope, Jove inspires his martial spirit and urges him on to fame. In Homer he carries a shield which is then described; Pope brings out the implication ‘In Arms he shines, conspicuous from afar’; his appearance and position as leader are emphasized in the concluding line of the opening paragraph: ‘Majestick moves along, and leads his Lycian bands’. The Homeric simile that follows has two possible outcomes; either the lion will rend the Xock or he will be hit by the spear of the defending shepherd. In the translation, 11 Richmond Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951). 12 Pope, Twickenham Edition, viii. 94.

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there is only one outcome as the lordly lion ‘in sullen Majesty and stern Disdain’ successfully invades the sheepfold regardless of all that shepherd can do. Failure is not a possibility. The all-conquering resolution of the hero is magniWed accordingly. Sarpedon’s emotions and motivation are made explicit by Pope. He ‘glows j With gen’rous Rage’. The assurance of the lion is reXected in the ‘sure Destruction’ with which he ‘dooms the Grecian wall’. The heated metaphor is continued in the ‘ardent Look’ as he addresses Glaucus ‘Fir’d with the Thirst of Glory’. The emphatic couplets with their insistently strong rhythms and the elevated diction create the abundant pomp. But it is not all pomp and circumstance and certainly not continuously the pomp and circumstance of a slow majestic march; the opening description is also full of fervour and enthusiasm. There is an abundance of dynamic action and emotion created by emphatically placed strong verbs, culminating in ‘He foams, he roars, he rends the panting Prey’. The subject here is the lion but Pope, who habitually heightens the congruity between Homer’s similes and the surrounding narrative, makes the climax of the simile express something about the hero and the hero in this passage as elsewhere in the epic is not reluctant (or squeamish) but Wred up and eager for the Wght. Pope’s heroes properly reXect Homer’s in experiencing æÆ, or the joy of battle. Here, in Chapman’s phrase, is ‘the Bodie’s fervour’.13 Pope is said to have been enraptured as a boy by Ogibly’s folio version replete with its magniWcent plates.14 His own Homer began in youthful enthusiasm (he was only 21 when he published this episode) and it may be conjectured that it captures both his youthful idealism reXected in Sarpedon’s speech that follows and, poignantly, given his own invalidity, an infectious youthful appreciation of physical vigour. It has often been felt that he might have been better suited for the translation of Virgil, the great Augustan model, but it was Homer not Virgil that Wrst took hold of his boyhood imagination and his enthusiasm continued into adult life. The speech itself, in which the hero’s motivation is explicitly explored, is a magniWcent piece of stately rhetoric, grand and digniWed;

13 In the introductory poem to his translation of the Odyssey: Chapman’s Homer, ii. The Odyssey ed. Allardyce Nicoll, 2nd edn. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), 4. 14 Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes and Characters of Books and Men: Collected from Conversation, ed. James M. Osborn, 2 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 1965) i., nos 29–30.

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the manner and tone express an assured deliberation achieved through the balanced regularity of its structure, through its clarity of emphasis, and through the decorum of its diction Wtting both speaker and subject. Even Matthew Arnold in his Lectures on Translating Homer admitted that ‘Nothing could better exhibit Pope’s prodigious talent; and nothing, too, could be better in its own way’. Pope’s note in the later edition of 1717 points to its generosity and nobleness: it includes ‘Justice, in that he scorns to enjoy what he does not merit; Gratitude, because he would endeavour to recompense his Obligations to his Subjects; and Magnanimity, in that he despises Death, and thinks of nothing but Glory’.15 Why boast we, Glaucus, our extended Reign, Where Xanthus’ Streams enrich the Lycian Plain, Our num’rous Herds that range the fruitful Weld, And Hills where Vines their purple Harvest yield, Our foaming Bowls with purer Nectar crown’d, Our Feasts enhanc’d with Music’s sprightly Sound? Why on these Shores are we with Joy survey’d, Admir’d as Heroes, and as Gods obey’d? Unless great Acts superior Merit prove And vindicate the bounteous Pow’rs above? ’Tis ours the Dignity They give, to grace; The Wrst in Valour, as the Wrst in Place: That when with wondring Eyes our Martial Bands Behold our Deeds transcending our Commands, Such, they may cry, deserve the Sov’reign State, Whom those that Envy dare not Imitate! Cou’d all our Care elude the greedy Grave, Which claims no less the Fearful than the Brave, For Lust of Fame I shou’d not vainly dare In Wghting Fields, nor urge thy Soul to War. But since, alas, ignoble Age must come, Disease, and Death’s inexorable Doom; The Life which others pay, let Us bestow, And give to Fame what we to Nature owe; Brave tho’ we fall, and honour’d if we live; Or let us Glory gain, or Glory give! (ll. 27–52)

15 Pope, Twickenham Edition, viii. 94.

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The highlighted couplet in its neat antitheses brilliantly summarizes the main tenor of Sarpedon’s argument, while at the same time representing it in a form admirably adapted to its subject, for the language has dignity with grace. Moreover, despite the fervour with which the hero had been introduced, the language of his speech is not exaggerated; its tone is moderate and urbane. Both in its recognition of duties that come with privilege and in its assertion of an eVortless superiority, its poise is Wnely aristocratic. In these harmonious couplets, there is an easy polish, urbanity, and poise, all the hallmarks of mature Augustan artistic reWnement. In his 1709 headnote Pope pays a well-mannered tribute to the version of the speech published by a predecessor which he has clearly made use of in his own version: ‘He [Sarpedon] incites Glaucus to second him in this Action by an admirable Speech, which has been render’d in English by Sir John Denham after whom the Translator had not the Vanity to attempt it for any other reason, than that the Episode must have been very imperfect without so Noble a part of it.’16 In the 1717 edition, Pope wrote: ‘I ought not to neglect putting the reader in mind that this speech of Sarpedon is excellently translated by Sir John Denham, and if I have done it with any spirit, it is partly owing to him.’17 Thus to Glaucus spake Divine Sarpedon, since he did not Wnd Others as great in Place, as great in Mind. Above the rest, why is our Pomp, our Power? Our Xocks, our herds, and our possessions more? Why all the Tributes Land and Sea aVords Heap’d in great Chargers, load our sumptuous boards? Our chearful Guests carowse the sparkling tears Of the rich Grape, while Musick charms their ears. Why as we pass, do those on Xanthus shore, As Gods behold us, and as Gods adore? But that as well in danger, as degree, We stand the Wrst; that when our Lycians see Our brave examples, they admiring say, Behold our Gallant Leaders! These are They Deserve the Greatness; and un-envied stand: Since what they act, transcends what they command.

16 Pope, Twickenham Edition. i. 449; Denham’s version was published in 1668. 17 Ibid. viii. 96.

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Augustan Homer Could the declining of this Fate (oh, friend) Our Date to Immortality extend? Or if Death sought not them, who seek not Death, Would I advance? Or should my vainer breath With such a Glorious Folly thee inspire? But since with Fortune Nature doth conspire, Since Age, Disease, or some less noble End, Though not less certain, doth our days attend; Since ’tis decreed, and to this period lead A thousand ways, the noblest path we’ll tread; And bravely on, till they, or we, or all, A common SacriWce to Honour fall.18

With marked enjambement and less regular patterning in the syntax, this lacks the ease, gracefulness, and harmony of Pope. Denham makes an awkward start; the imported gloss (from Chapman’s version) explaining the reason for the speech is not immediately clear. The reader has to decide whether ‘great in place’ refers to position in the Wghting or place in the aristocratic order. The opening couplet of the speech itself is awkward in its word order and weak in its emphasis and rhyme. The next couplet is well articulated; Pope drew on it for Clarissa’s speech in The Rape of the Lock. But ‘tears’ of the grape in the next sounds like a forced rhyme. How much more sweetly does Pope evoke the joys of the aristocratic life so rich in colour and sound. Thereafter Denham improves as he comes to answer the opening questions by giving strongly argued expression to the honour code rising to a convincing climax which evidently had real meaning for this royalist poet and presumably represented the attraction of the speech in the Wrst instance. Its strength can be located in both its sense and tone. The plangent note in Pope ‘Cou’d all our Care elude the gloomy Grave [changed in 1717 from ‘greedy Grave’ in 1709]’ has no place in Denham who appeals more strongly to reason with his three rhetorical questions (beginning ‘Could the declining’) by which Sarpedon enforces the determination of his own example. Part of Denham’s strength includes a sophistication not in Homer: ‘Or should my vainer breath j With such a Glorious Folly thee inspire’. There is a mature recognition of both vanity in the impulse to glory and its folly expressed in a sharp oxymoron (the elements of which 18 Included in Appendix F, ‘Pope’s Translations of Homer and his Predecessors’, Twickenham Edition, x. 541.

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come from Chapman) that translates the simpler expression of the Greek into the modern world and oVers a multiple perspective upon it. The recognition of folly signiWcantly modiWes the utterance as an expression of the ideal. For Pope there is no question of folly (he is more serious) but he follows Denham’s hint of vaingloriousness. In both poets the heroic impulse is presented in a more complicated way than in Homer. Such complication is necessarily inevitable in bridging the distance between the values and attitudes of a simpler aristocratic warrior culture and those of a more sophisticated modernity. Two years before in 1707, this speech, which can so readily be made to express the creed of the English gentleman, had been translated by P. A. Motteux: Distinguish’d thus, since we the World controul, Let’s bravely claim Preheminence in Soul; Rush on the Foe, and striding o’er the Slain, Mow with our Swords a Passage through the Plain. . . . . . . . But Princes in the School of Glory nurs’d, The First in Valour, as in Rank the Wrst; Who greater yet by Vertue, than by Birth, Can justiWe their Title by their Worth. Princes, who boldly, for the Common Good, Wade o’er to Conquest through the Purple Flood; To Groves of Spears oppose a single Shield, Exert the Hero, and maintain the Field.19 (ll. 9–12, 21–8)

This has a balanced structure and uses the caesura in the mature Augustan manner, but it lacks harmony, poise, and decorum. A defect in sensibility results in artistic failure. Most obviously, there is too much conscious exertion and exaggeration, a straining after eVect with unsuitable hyperboles, the result of which is an unappealing egotism. Nearly all discussions of Pope’s translation are drawn to this speech, partly for the reasons that drew Pope to it in the Wrst instance (it is a deWning moment of the poem) and undoubtedly because of the more famous parodic version of it that he composed to express the moral of The Rape of the Lock in 1717. But the speech is only a prelude, a part of what is an episode of vigorous action, vigorously conveyed by Pope and 19 Included in Appendix F, ibid. 572.

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containing as its climax the Wrst signiWcant death, artistically speaking, in the poem. The Iliad is a poem of deaths, so it will be worth considering the translation of the death scene in some detail here. The towring Chiefs to Wercer Fight advance, And Wrst Sarpedon tost his weighty Lance, Which o’er the warrior’s Shoulder took its Course, And spent, in empty Air, its dying Force. Not so Patroclus’ never-erring Dart; Aim’d at his Breast, it pierced the mortal Part Where the strong Fibres bind the solid Heart. Then as the stately Pine, or Poplar tall, Hewn for the Mast of some great Admiral, Nods, groans, and reels, ’till with a crackling Sound It sinks, and spreads its Honours on the Ground; Thus fell the King; and laid on Earth Supine, Before the Chariot stretch’d his Form divine: He grasp’d the Dust, distain’d with streaming Gore, And, pale in Death, lay groaning on the Shore. So lyes a Bull beneath the Lion’s Paws, While the grim Savage grinds with foamy Jaws The trembling Limbs, and sucks the smoking Blood; Deep Groans and hollow Roars rebellow thro’ the Wood. Then to the Leader of the Lycian Band, The dying Chief address’d his last Command. Glaucus, be bold, Thy Task be Wrst to dare The glorious Dangers of destructive War, To lead my Troops, to combate at their Head, Incite the Living, and supply the Dead. Tell ’em, I charg’d them with my latest Breath, Not unreveng’d to bear Sarpedon’s Death. What Grief, what Shame must Glaucus undergo, If these spoil’d Arms adorn a Grecian Foe? Then, as a Friend, and as a Warrior, Wght; Defend my Corps, and conquer in my Right; That taught by great Examples, All may try Like thee to vanquish, or like me to die. He ceas’d; the Fates supprest his lab’ring Breath And his Eyes darken’d with the Shades of Death: Th’ insulting Victor with Disdain bestrode The prostrate Prince, and on his Bosom trod; Then drew the Weapon from his panting Heart, The reeking Fibres clinging to the Dart;

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From the wide Wound gush’d out a Stream of Blood, And the Soul issu’d in the purple Flood. (ll. 281–321)

The parts in bold are all deWnite additions to a literal version of Homer’s text. There are no signiWcant omissions in this narrative which is, like Dryden’s Æneis, expansive throughout. The expanded language relating to the weapons at the beginning is carefully wrought. Sarpedon’s spear, which misses, is ‘tost’, is ‘weighty’ (it is shining in Homer), and ‘spent its dying Force’. Pope’s epithet has point, suggesting that it might be diYcult to wield; the verb ‘tost’ might suggest that it was not well targeted and its failure is well caught in the phrases ‘empty air’ and ‘dying Force’, this latter reverberating well in a life and death struggle. Patroclus’ arrow, on the other hand, which hits its target is said to be ‘never-erring’ and is ‘aim’d’. The word choice is precise and appropriate. The Homeric æ ‘the heart and parts about the heart’ is rendered in a physically vivid phrase; ‘where the strong Fibres bind the solid Heart’ is toughened up from Chapman’s ‘where life’s strings close about the solid hart’ (xvi. 445), where the toughening is both metrical and in the sense. Heartstrings might be metaphorical as well as physical; if there is a metaphorical suggestion with Wbres it must suggest physical or moral strength as in the phrase ‘moral Wbre’. But it is primarily physical and wholly physical when at the end ‘the reeking Fibres’ cling to the dart; ‘reeking’ is an addition which heightens the repellent physical reality of the moment of death. Once again the diction has physical precision; it is not evasive, periphrastical, or generalized. The personiWcation of the tree (unpersoniWed in Homer) intensiWes the connections between the content of the simile and the point to which it is compared in the manner of Virgil and Milton. The dynamic verbs can apply to both tree and hero; the metaphorical expression ‘spreads its Honours on the Ground’, where the metaphor images the leafy crown and reXects on the honourable hero, is the most pronounced poetical liberty on the part of the translator in the whole passage. The picture of the bleeding Sarpedon grasping the dust and groaning fully renders what is in the Greek. In the second simile, there is a considerable change. In Homer the lion is lordly; here he is a ‘grim Savage’. Pope has momentarily taken sides against the Greeks; later Patroclus is ‘insulting’ which besides the literal physical meaning derived from the Latinate root of attacking also has the force of the more familiar modern metaphorical usage. But the most striking change is the vivid extension of the lion’s savagery as it

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grinds limbs and sucks blood. The lion is only doing what lions do but the imagery puts before our eyes and alongside the human action a basic picture of nature in the raw. The expansions render the pictorial element in the narrative of Sarpedon’s death more vivid than would be the case in a version without them. Though there are what might be called ‘epic formulae’ of the kind that epic poets from Homer onwards have always employed, in phrases like ‘streaming Gore’, ‘Shades of Death’, and ‘purple Flood’, and though there are many words with digniWed Latin roots, the diction overall is precise and particular. Pope has enriched the pictorial element in his narrative but there are equally marked changes in the death speech of Sarpedon. Pope calls the speech a ‘last Command’ and it is obviously more commanding in its tone and content than the original. The command is not only to Glaucus, as in Homer, but is extended by the translator to go through the ranks to the Lycians who are exhorted to revenge the hero’s death. It is more self-assertive too. Glaucus is exhorted to ‘conquer in my Right’. But most obviously Sarpedon’s words hark back to his earlier great speech of heroic resolve. There is a deliberate congruity between them. The dangers of war are ‘glorious’ and it is a belief in setting a glorious example, to conquer or to die, that inspires Sarpedon in his dying breath. Pope’s Sarpedon is more conscious than Homer’s that the manner of his dying is precisely this glorious example. He is almost a spokesman here for the Renaissance theory of epic: the episode as a whole provides, in Sidney’s phrase, a clear ‘speaking picture’20 of leadership by example, an illustrious example for future imitation. In the Sarpedon episode, therefore, Pope gives convincing expression to the heroic impulse not only in Sarpedon’s great speech but throughout the narrative of his actual conduct. Like the other heroes, Sarpedon is wholeheartedly committed to glory and battle; and Pope is imaginatively engaged on Sarpedon’s side. His Augustan style is consistently expansive in two ways; in the admirable expressions of Dr Johnson,21 he ‘colours the images’ and ‘points the sentiments’ of the Homeric original. The pictorial quality of the poem, particularly in descriptive set pieces, has often been noted.22 But the powerful visualization is pervasive in the narrative. As to pointing the sentiments, this is exactly what happens in 20 An Apology for Poetry, in G. Gregory Smith (ed.), Elizabethan Critical Essays, 2 vols. (Oxford; OUP, 1904), i. 165. 21 Johnson, Lives, iii. 240. 22 Peter J. Connelly, ‘Pope’s Iliad: Ut Pictura Translatio’, Studies in English Literature, 21 (1981), 439–55.

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the speeches; pointing comes easily in the rhetorical dynamic of the Augustan couplet. There is a third kind of expansion in conjunction with sound as much as with visualization or pointed rhetoric. At the end of the completed translation in a ‘poetical index’ which includes a section on versiWcation ‘Expressing in the Sound the Thing describ’d’23 (for Vida the culminating poetic art) are two passages from this episode. The Wrst is actually a revision made in 1717 where the verse represents ‘A confused Noise’ as Sarpedon leads the onslaught on the gates of the rampart. The Greek Mnestheus calls for assistance in vain: In vain he calls; the Din of Helms and Shields Rings to the Skies, and ecchos thro the Fields, The brazen Hinges Xy, the Walls resound, Heav’n trembles, roar the Mountains, thunders all the Ground. (xii. 407–10)

The literal version reads: ‘so great a din was there, and the noise went up to heaven of struck shields, and helmets with crests of horsehair and of the gates, for all of them had been closed’ (xii. 337–40). The ‘brazen Hinges’ and the last line are imported for sound eVects. This is packed full of noise; the alexandrine with its three dynamic verbs (‘roar’ having particular emphasis by position) is indeed weighty in sound echoing sense. Emphasis is also achieved by a further device whereby the iambic rhythm is broken by an emphatically accented Wrst word (as in the case of ‘Rings’ and ‘Heaven’), which is akin to the force of enjambement in the classical hexameter. But these expansive tendencies are matched by a contrary tendency to concentration of eVect, well illustrated in the representation that follows of the impasse between Greeks and Trojans as they Wght over the wall. In Pope’s version bold type shows the prominent phrases he has added, amounting to over a quarter of the passage; in the literal translation that follows, bold type shows the prominent phrases omitted by Pope from the Homeric narrative, amounting to about half of the total. As on the ConWnes of adjoyning Grounds, Two stubborn Swains with Blows dispute their Bounds; They tugg, they sweat; but neither gain, nor yield,

23 Pope, Twickenham Edition, viii. 608.

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Augustan Homer One Foot, one Inch, of the contended Field: Thus obstinate to Death, they Wght, they fall; Nor these can keep, nor those can win the Wall. Their manly Breasts are pierc’d with many a Wound, Loud Strokes are heard, and ratling Arms resound, The copious Slaughter covers all the Shore, And the high Ramparts drop with human Gore. As when two Scales are charg’d with doubtful Loads, From Side to Side the trembling Balance nods, [(While some laborious Matron, just and poor, With nice Exactness weighs her woolly Store)] ’Till poiz’d aloft, the resting Beam suspends Each equal Weight; nor this nor that, descends. So Conquest loth for either to declare, Levels her Wings, and hov’ring hangs in Air. (ll. 157–72, parenthesis added in 1717)

But as two men with measuring rods in hand contend about the landmark stones in a common Weld, and in a narrow space contend each for his equal share, so did the battlements hold these foes apart, and over them they struck the bull’s hide shields about one another’s chests, the round shields and Xuttering bucklers. And many were wounded in the Xesh by the pitiless bronze, both whenever anyone turned and his back was left bare as they fought, and many clean through the shield itself. Everywhere the walls and battlements were spattered with blood of men from both sides, from Trojans and Achaeans alike. But even so they could not put the Achaeans to rout, but both sides held their ground, as a careful woman, who labours with her hands at spinning, holds the balance and raises the weight and the wool in either scale, making them equal, so that she may win a meagre wage for her children; so evenly was strained their war and battle till Zeus granted the greater glory to Hector, Priam’s son, who was the Wrst to leap inside the wall of the Achaeans. (xii. 421–38)

Of the Wrst simile, Pope’s later note has this to say: ‘This Simile, says Eustathius, is wonderfully proper; it has one Circumstance that is seldom to be found in Homer’s allusions; it corresponds in every Point with the Subject it was intended to illustrate: the Measures of the two Neighbours represent the Spears of the Combatants; The ConWnes of the Fields, shews that they engag’d hand to hand; and the Wall which divides the Armies gives us a lively Idea of the large Stones that were Wx’d to determine the Bounds of adjoining Fields.’24 So tight-knit is the

24 Pope, Turicknham Edition. 100.

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utterance and such is the correspondence (even greater than in Homer) that at Wrst it is not apparent where the simile ends and the main narrative resumes. The tight-knit correspondence is achieved by virtue (or its opposite) of omission of much detail concerning weapons and the circumstances in which the warriors are wounded. This Wrst simile (unchanged from 1709) also features with the heading ‘A hard-fought Spot of Ground’ under the entry ‘VersiWcation’ in the poetical index added to the complete translation. The verbal arrangement of the couplets in the simile, with the close juxtaposition of paired phrases, predominantly monosyllabic, creates the eVect of hard-fought eVort. Pope’s responsiveness to the general tumult is also apparent in the additional emphasis highlighting the sound of the battle (l. 164). The result in English gives a powerful rendition of essential features of the Homeric narrative emphasizing the physical impasse of an evenly fought contest and the noisy tumult of war. There is a similar congruity of eVect between simile and the main narrative in the second example again greatly marked up in the translation. The woman is omitted altogether in 1709. When she is admitted in a parenthesis in 1717 her motives are eliminated to concentrate on the translator’s chief interest in the simile which is in the weighing of the scales, greatly expanded upon not only in the simile itself to emphasize the evenly balanced contention but also in the subsequent narrative where conquest ‘Levels her Wings, and hov’ring hangs in Air’. Pope improved the Wnal couplet in the completed version to ‘So stood the War, till Hector’s matchless Might j With Fates prevailing, turn’d the Scale of Fight’ (xii. 527–8); in both versions, however, there is a sophistication quite beyond the simplicity of the original Greek. In the Wrst simile, therefore, the concentration of the congruity is achieved largely by omission of detail, in the second largely by addition. In both cases the eVect of concentration aimed for is an Augustan tendency for which Virgil was traditionally the touchstone and Homer provided the negative example. A further general conclusion may suggest itself at this point. While expansion in Dryden is generally a matter of opening up the density of Virgil’s expression, Pope’s expansion of Homer is often directed at the opposite eVect of tightening up the ‘laxity’ of the Homeric narrative style in the interests of a more cohesive artistic decorum. The decorum of Homer’s similes which had traditionally been found wanting both in respect of their Wttingness within the narrative in which they occur and their actual content often containing images of ‘low’ or

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ordinary life was newly attacked by the moderns in ‘La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes’ who ridiculed the apparent simplicity of the Homeric poems in both content and style. The decorum of Pope’s style in this episode which tightened up his narrative also raised its register in this simile in which the Greek phrase ªıc æBØ IºŁ (l. 433) ‘an honest woman who works by her hands’ becomes ‘some laborious Matron, just and pure’. Here the digniWed words of Latinate roots seem a little inXated through a concern to keep up the dignity of epic. Occasionally the pomp and majesty of Pope’s grand style can hit a false note. Heroic elevation, however, does not preclude a gentler more human touch apparent as the moment of Sarpedon’s death draws near. Sarpedon’s death is marked by unusual divine interest when his father Jupiter, addressing Juno, momentarily considers suspending fate. The Hour draws on; the Destinies ordain, My God-like Son shall press shall press the Phrygian Plain: Already on the Verge of Death he stands, His Life is ow’d to Werce Patroclus’ Hands. What Passions in a Parent’s Breast debate! Say, shall I snatch him from Impending Fate; And send him safe to Lycia, distant far From all the Dangers and the Toils of War; Or to his Doom my bravest OV-spring yield. And fatten, with Celestial Blood, the Field? (ll. 227–36)

Juno, a supporter of the Greek cause, warns him against such a course but suggests that Sleep and Death can convey the body of Sarpedon back to Lycia, his native land. Jupiter reluctantly agrees but as the moment arrives sheds tears of blood. This passage, as later notes appended to the 1717 translation testify, had been the occasion of earnest debates about the relation of Jupiter to fate. When he later came to translate the Wrst book, Pope had resort to reWned allegorizing relating the gods to aspects of fate in order to mitigate the scandal of Homer’s comically bickering Olympians. Here he has no diYculty with the serious talk between Jupiter and Juno. The Olympian perspective gives added pathos. While Homer’s god in his speech makes no direct mention of his paternal relation to ‘my God-like Son’ and ‘bravest OVspring’, Pope very obviously draws attention to it: ‘What Passions in a Parent’s Breast debate!’ At the end of his speech Homer’s phrase

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‘whether I now should subdue him at the hands of Patroclus’ is expressed in a more jarring metaphor becoming ‘fatten, with Celestial Blood, the Field’. The cruelty of war is apparent in what seems like a momentarily heartless reference to Sarpedon’s celestial blood. But all is not as it seems. Juno persuades him that he cannot rescue Sarpedon, then, twenty lines later the Cloud-Compeller overcome, Assents to Fate, and ratiWes the Doom. Then, touch’d with Grief, the weeping Heav’ns distill’d A Show’r of Blood o’er all the fatal Field. The God, his Eyes averting from the Plain, Laments his Son, predestin’d to be slain, Far from the Lycian shores, his happy Native Reign. (ll. 254–60)

Here the ‘Celestial Blood’ proves to be of heavenly origin coming from Jupiter himself. Underlying the apparent heartless cruelty is pity and pain. The averting of the gaze is Pope’s addition. Whether or not readers consciously remember the phrase ‘Celestial Blood’ from the god’s previous speech, the oblique connection bears witness to the remarkable cohesiveness of his translation. The divine machinery intensiWes the sense of ineluctable destiny and, paradoxically, the Olympian perspective here puts the heroic death in a wider human context. Even heroes are someone’s sons. After the death Jupiter orders Apollo to cleanse and beautify the body of Sarpedon (‘O’er all his Limbs Ambrosial Odours shed’ (l. 328)) before conveying it to Sleep and Death who are to take it back to Lycia. Pope adds a couplet of pathos to his speech: These unavailing Rites he may receive These, after Death, are All a God can give! (ll. 334–5)

He changed this in 1717: What Honours Mortals after Death receive, Those unavailing Honours we may give! (xvi. 821–2)

The second version preserves the god’s apparent power; but the essential addition with the stress on ‘unavailing’ which marks up the pathos is the

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same. The heroic note in Pope does not exclude pity; in fact in the greater Iliad this is understatement. In eighteenth-century terms his translation has both the sublime and the pathetic. THE MAIN FABLE: THE ANGER OF ACHILLES25 The Sarpedon episode doubtless appealed to the youthful idealism of the translator but, though it augured well for a successful version of the whole, the larger version presented a diVerent and more diYcult challenge that is not merely a consequence of the labour involved in tackling a poem on the scale of the Iliad but arose more radically from the basic theme of the poem’s irreducible plot centred upon the anger of Achilles. Put simply there is nothing in the episode of Sarpedon that runs counter to the heroic expectations and aspirations of contemporary readers but the tragic plot centred upon a hero whose glory is distinctly tarnished in the course of the action represented a challenge to all the idealizing tendencies traditionally associated with epic from the Renaissance onwards. How successfully does Pope’s Augustan style render the anger of Achilles and cope with the central thematic content of the poem? No account of the translation that fails to confront this central question can begin to be adequate. Juxtaposition of Pope’s translation with a literal version can illuminate the nature of his involvement with the poem’s main character and through him with the poem’s main thematic content. The pivotal turning point in the plot comes when the Greeks are in desperate straits after the success of Hector in his assault on the Greek camp and the ships. Most of the Greek leaders have now been wounded. At this point Patroclus oVers the sharpest and most feeling analysis of Achilles’ character. Their Pain, soft Arts of Pharmacy can ease, Thy Breast alone no Lenitives appease. May never Rage like thine my Soul enslave, O great in vain! unproWtably brave! Thy Country slighted in her last Distress,

25 This section was Wrst published in ‘The Decorum of Pope’s Iliad’, Translation and Literature, 13/1 (2004), 49–79.

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What Friend, what Man, from thee shall hope redress? No—Men unborn, and Ages yet behind, Shall curse that Werce, that unforgiving Mind. O Man unpitying! If of Man thy Race; But sure thou spring’st not from a soft Embrace . . . . . . . . So rough thy Manners, so untam’d thy Mind. (xvi. 38–47, 53) About these the healers skilled in many herbs, are busied, seeking to heal their wounds; but you are impossible to deal with, Achilles. Never on me let such wrath lay hold, as the wrath you cherish, you whose valour causes harm! How will any other yet to be born have proWt of you, if you do not ward oV loathsome destruction from the Argives? Pitiless one, your father was not, it appears, the horseman Peleus . . . since your mind is unbending. (xvi. 28–33, 35)

The highlighted phrases, mostly additions, help to give emphasis to the translation of three carefully chosen Homeric epithets IÆ (l. 29) ‘untreatable’, ‘impossible to deal with’, ÆØÆæ (l. 31) ‘having valour that causes harm’, and I (l. 35) ‘harsh’, unbending’. The second of these, in particular, the oxymoronic ‘baneful valour’, encapsulates not just an attribute of Achilles but also its eVect: it threatens to be the ruin of himself, his friends, and his country. The introduction into the translation of the patriotic appeal in ‘country slighted’ and the ironic question ‘What Friend, what Man, from thee shall hope redress?’ intensify the case against the rough-mannered Achilles. Given our knowledge of the outcome, the question strikes home: Achilles’ stubborn insistence on redress will result in the destruction of his friend. Patroclus then rather dangerously hints that Achilles’s behaviour is prompted by fear of an oracle or by his goddess mother’s prompting. Achilles shows his true mettle in his reply. Patroclus! thy Achilles knows no Fears; Nor words from Jove, nor Oracles he hears; Nor ought a Mother’s Caution can suggest; The Tyrant’s Pride lies rooted in my Breast. My Wrongs, my Wrongs, my constant Thought engage, Those, my sole Oracles, inspire my Rage: I made him Tyrant; gave him Pow’r to wrong Even me; I felt it, and shall feel it long. The Maid, my black-ey’d Maid, he forc’d away,

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Augustan Homer Due to the Toils of many a well-fought Day; Due to my Conquest of her Father’s reign; Due to the Votes of al the Grecian Train. From me he forc’d her; me, the bold and brave; Disgrac’d, dishonour’d, like the meanest Slave. (xvi. 68–81)

(Ah me, Zeus-born Patroclus, what a thing hast thou said! I care about no oracle that I know of, nor has my queenly mother declared to me anything from Zeus; but the dread grief comes on heart and soul, when a man is minded to rob one who is his equal, and take from him his prize, since he surpasses him in power. Dread grief is this to me, since I have suVered woes at heart. The girl the sons of the Achaeans chose out for me as a prize, and whom I won with my spear when I had sacked a well-walled city, her has lord Agamemnon taken back from my arms, the son of Atreus, as though I were some refugee, without rights. (xvi. 49–59) )

The Greek, ÆNÆæ is balanced here by ÆØe ¼ (l. 53) ‘dread grief’. In the headnote to Book XVI, Pope remarks: ‘The pathetic of Patroclus’s speech is Wnely contrasted by the Fierte´ of that of Achilles’. In the literal version, that Werte´, that haughty pride (also a key word in Boileau’s deWnition of the sublime,26 is hardly apparent; in Pope it is only too apparent as it is Wnely brought out by the rhetorical structure, with insistent repetition of the personal pronoun, and of the key words ‘wrong’ and ‘due’, and by the emphatic rhetorical climax in the Wnal couplet in which epithets are balanced against each other to bring out the intense feeling of dishonour felt by one who is fully conscious of his own worth. The imported third line ‘The Tyrant’s Pride lies rooted in my Breast’ is a masterstroke; it reinforces Patroclus’ charge concerning the tyranny of rage: ‘May never Rage like thine my Soul enslave’ (where ‘enslave’ is an imported metaphor); it also gets to the root of the matter for, although Achilles is referring to Agamemnon, the listener inevitably also associates ‘The Tyrant’s Pride’ momentarily with Achilles himself. Once again Pope is translating the parts in the light of the whole and bringing added coherence as a consequence. The imported couplet that follows, ‘I made him Tyrant; gave him Pow’r to wrong j Even me; I felt it, and shall feel it long’ is not simply repetition of the main idea. It oVers both reasoned analysis of the objective situation that shows its origin in justice (in line with the underlying magnanimity of Achilles as 26 See above, p. 229.


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highlighted by Pope in the opening quarrel) and also deliberate self analysis of his current feelings. It also clearly deWnes what is at issue. Though Achilles says he loved Briseis in Book IX,27 the real question concerns the power relations between the main protagonists. The whole speech is a remarkable combination of reason, feeling, and steadfast unyielding will. It shows Achilles’ error in a complicated light. How then does Pope represent the poem’s central pathos, the eVect of the calamitous loss of Patroclus upon Achilles? Is he successful in maintaining the decorum of Achilles’ character in the supreme crisis? When news has reached him, in a long conversation with Thetis comes the Wrst recognition of error: Ah then, since from this miserable Day I cast all hope of my Return away, Since unreveng’d, a hundred Ghosts demand The Fate of Hector from Achilles’ hand; Since here, for brutal Courage far renown’d, I live an idle Burden to the Ground, (Others in Council fam’d for nobler Skill, More useful to preserve, than I to kill) Let me—But oh! ye gracious Pow’rs above! Wrath and Revenge from Men and Gods remove: Far, far too dear to ev’ry mortal Breast, Sweet to the Soul, as Hony to the Taste; Gath’ring like Vapours of a noxious kind From Wery Blood, and dark’ning all the Mind. Me, Agamemnon urg’d to deadly Hate; ’Tis past—I quell it; I resign to Fate. Yes—I will meet the Murd’rer of my Friend, Or (if the Gods ordain it) meet my End. The Stroke of Fate the bravest cannot shun: . . . . . . . Let me, this instant rush into the Fields, And reap what Glory Life’s short Harvest yields. Shall I not force some widow’d Dame to tear With frantic Hands her long dishevell’d Hair? Shall I not force her Breast to heave with Sighs, And the soft Tears to trickle from her Eyes? Yes, I shall give the Fair those mournful Charms— In vain you hold me—Hence! My Arms, my Arms! 27 ix. 342–3 and Pope, ix. 453.

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Augustan Homer Soon shall the sanguine Torrent spread so wide, That all shall know, Achilles swells the tide. (xviii. 129–47, 153–62)

Now, therefore, since I will not return to my dear native land, nor prove in any way a light of deliverance to Patroclus or to my dear comrades, those many who have been slain by noble Hector, but sit here by the ships, a proWtless burden on the earth—I who in war am such as is no other of the bronze-clad Achaeans, though in council there are others better—may strife perish from among gods and men, and anger that sets a man to rage, though he be very wise, and that, sweeter far than trickling honey, increases like smoke in the breasts of men; just as now but the lord of men Agamemnon, moved me to rage. But these things we will let be as past and done, for all our pain, curbing the heart in our breasts because we must. Now therefore will I go out so that I may catch Hector, the slayer of that dear head; as for my death, I will accept it when Zeus is minded to bring it to pass, and the other immortal gods. . . . But now let me win glorious renown, and set many a one among the deep-bosomed Trojan and Dardanian women to wipe the tears from her tender cheeks with both hands, and to moan ceaselessly; and let them know that long have I kept apart from the war. Seek not then to hold me from battle, though you love me; you will not persuade me. (xviii. 101–16, 120–6)

In his earlier speech to Patroclus, Achilles had talked of his deep-rooted feelings of resentment. The feeling here, now that he abjures wrath ‘dark’ning all the Mind’ (in Homer it rises like smoke), is darkly coloured. His self-critique is harsher in Pope than in Homer; his courage is ‘brutal’ and is reckoned to be less useful than the ‘nobler Skill’ of wise counsel. There is perhaps an echo here of Patroclus’ exclamation ‘Oh great in vain!’. The disturbance in his mind is marked more clearly than it is in the literal version by the syntactical build-up of causal conjunctions (‘since’) that is then broken oV and negated after ‘Let me’. The abjuring of anger paradoxically leads to a refocusing of his baneful wrath towards the enemy and the almost gleeful anticipation of the suVering he will cause to the women of Troy (extended from three lines in Homer to Wve lines here, the last of which is heavily sarcastic with its reference to ‘mournful Charms’). In his new resolve to go after his friend’s ‘Murd’rer’, the heroic resolution expressed in the famous speech of Sarpedon earlier in the poem is Wltered through a darkened consciousness. The graciously balanced couplets of Sarpedon’s speech and its self-conscious nobility are not reproduced here. The predominantly regular syntax is broken and the rhythm disjointed as Achilles


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addresses himself and asserts his intentions with a Werte´ far beyond that of the elegantly restrained Sarpedon. The insistent rhetorical questions and the emphatically repeated ‘shall’ bear witness to his continuing indomitable will. Despite the self-laceration at the opening, the speech ends with characteristic self-assertion made more prominent in Pope by the abrupt dismissal of any appeal from his mother who is subordinated in a diVerent climax containing an imported hyperbole that carries conviction as it looks forward to his heroic confrontation with the god Scamander in Book xxi. Once again a particular moment is rendered more forceful by anticipation of what is to come in a reference that gives added coherence to the translation. These passages concerning the wrath have been speeches where it might be expected that Pope as translator will be most successful. What of Achilles in action? Are his distinguishing characteristics successfully maintained in passages of vigorous and brutal narrative? The question may be answered with reference to the two short representative extracts that follow, each of which is accompanied by the translator’s appreciative prose comment on the original. Nor less unpity’d young Alastor bleeds; In vain his Youth, in vain his Beauty pleads: In vain he begs thee with a Suppliant’s Moan, To spare a Form, in Age so like thine own! Unhappy Boy! no Pray’r, no moving Art E’er bent that Werce, inexorable Heart! While yet he trembled at his Knees, and cry’d, The ruthless Falchion op’d his tender Side; The panting Liver pours a Flood of Gore, That drowns his Bosom, till he pants no more. (xx. 537–46, translating 463–72) I confess it is a Satisfaction to me, to observe with what Art the Poet pursues his Subject: The opening of the Poem professes to treat of the Anger of Achilles, that Anger draws on all the great Events of the Story: And Homer at every Opportunity awakens the Reader to an Attention to it, by mentioning the EVects of it: So that when we see in this place the Hero deaf to Youth, and Compassion, it is what we expect: Mercy in him would oVend, because it is contrary to his Character. (on l. 541)

The additions highlighted in bold exploit the opposition between the ‘ruthless’ and the ‘tender’ that is contained in the antithetical line that is third from the end. Neither adjective is directly present in the Greek,

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nor is any reference to the beauteous form of the ‘unhappy Boy’. In Homer, ‘the liver slipped out, and the dark blood welling out from it Wlled his chest, and darkness enfolded his eyes as his breath failed.’ (xx. 469–72). The terror of the moment is enhanced in Pope as the boy’s trembling (also an addition) is picked up in the panting of the liver and the breath; the pitiable horror, far from being mitigated, is intensiWed. The balance here is towards the pitiable; in the second example, at the close of the book, the balance tilts towards the terrible: So the Werce Coursers, as the Chariot rolls, Tread down whole Ranks, and crush out Hero’s Souls. Dash’d from their Hoofs while o’er the Dead they Xy, Black, bloody Drops the smoaking Chariot die; The spiky Wheels through Heaps of Carnage tore; And thick the groaning Axles dropp’d with Gore. High o’er the Scene of Death Achilles stood, All grim with Dust, all horrible in Blood: Yet still insatiate, still with Rage on Xame; Such is the Lust of never-dying Fame! (xx. 581–90, translating 498–503) I cannot close the Notes upon this Book, without observing the dreadful Idea of Achilles, which the Poet leaves upon the mind of the Reader. He drives his Chariot over Shields and mangled Heaps of Slain: The Wheels, the Axel-tree, and the Horses are stain’d with Blood, the Hero’s Eyes burn with Fury, and his Hands are red with Slaughter. A Painter might form from this Passage the Picture of Mars in the Fulness of his Terrors. . . .

The scene is dramatically visualized in Pope. The dynamic verbs (all additions) make vivid the action of horses and chariot wheels as they crush the living and the dead. The three imported epithets are particularly well chosen: ‘smoaking’ intensiWes the speed, ‘spiky’ horribly suggests the piercing of torn Xesh while ‘groaning’, referring primarily to the noise of the chariot-wheels, also evokes the painful groans of the victims. The dramatic image of Achilles riding high in the chariot is entirely Pope’s visualization; out of Homer’s simpler climax—‘But the son of Peleus pressed on to win glory, and with gore were his invincible hands bespattered’ (xx. 502–3)—Pope has painted an image of terribilita` in the grand manner of the high Renaissance. The resulting picture is not pretty: raising and heightening in Pope, it can be generally said, do not result in the amelioration of anything important in Homer but are the means by which ‘True Expression like th’unchanging Sun, j Clears


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and improves whate’er it shines upon’; such expression ‘gilds all Objects, but it alters none’.28 In the Wnal couplet, the imported ‘Xame’ is consonant with the imagery of Wre and light with which Achilles is insistently associated, while in the last line the Greek word for glory ŒF (l. 502) becomes ‘the Lust of never-dying Fame’ in a transformation which suggests the darker side of the heroic impulse. Here may be adduced a remark upon Homer’s faults from Pope’s Preface, ‘But after all it is with great Parts as with great Virtues, they naturally border on some Imperfection; and it is hard to distinguish exactly where the virtue ends or the Fault begins.’29 In the portrait of his Achilles overall, the line between virtue and fault is often similarly Wne. The Preface, famous for its enthusiastic endorsement of Homer’s invention, of his vivida vis animi, of his Wre and rapture—‘every thing moves, every thing lives, and is put in Action’—perhaps also suggests another truth about the translation, for Pope goes on to say: ‘’Tis, however remarkable that his Fancy, which is everywhere vigorous, is not discover’d immediately at the beginning of his Poem in its fullest Splendor: It grows in the Progress both upon himself and others, and becomes on Fire like a Chariot-Wheel, by its own Rapidity.’30 It is certainly true that Pope in his translation was Wred to best eVect in the later stages of the poem. The tragic climax in the twenty-second book provoked Pope to unwonted personal testimony: ‘Terror and Pity are here wrought up in Perfection, and if the Reader is not sensible of both in a high degree, either he is utterly void of all Taste, or the Translator of all Skill, in Poetry. . . And indeed thro’ the whole Book this wonderful Contrast and Opposition of the Moving and the Terrible, is perpetually kept up, each heightening the other: I can’t Wnd words to express how so great beauties aVect me.’31 The terrible eVect of anger reaches a climax in the response of Achilles to Hector’s request before the Wnal combat that they make a pact whereby the victor releases the body of the slain for burial in the customary manner (as Hector himself had agreed when he challenged the Greeks to single combat earlier in the poem (vii. 84) ). Achilles will have none of it: Talk not of Oaths (the dreadful Chief replies, While anger Xash’d from his disdainful Eyes) 28 29 30 31

An Essay on Criticism, ll. 315–16 in Pope, Twickenham Edition, i. 274. Pope, Twickenham Edition, vii. 12–13. Ibid. 4. The Wrst sentence occurs in the introductory note and the second in the note on l. 37.

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Augustan Homer Detested as thou art, and ought to be, Nor Oath nor Pact Achilles plights with thee: Such Pacts, as Lambs and rabid Wolves combine, Such Leagues, as Men and furious Lions join, To such I call the Gods! One constant state Of lashing Rancour and eternal Hate: No Thought but Rage, and never-ceasing Strife, Till Death extinguish Rage, and Thought, and Life. (xxii. 333–42)

Hector, talk not to me, curse you, of covenants. As between lions and men there are no oaths of faith, nor do wolves and lambs have hearts of concord but plan evils continually against one another, so it is not possible for you and me to be friends, nor will there be oaths between us till one or the other has fallen, and glutted with his blood Ares, the warrior with tough shield of hide. (xxii. 260–72)

His rhetoric here ‘One constant state j Of lashing Rancour and eternal Hate’ is a mixture of the overblown and the truly alarming in the allconsuming extremity of the additional couplet that follows. Achilles is ranting but also convincing in the manner of an angry ranting man who is beside himself. When the dying Hector renews his request, he is even more savage, and here it is necessary to quote the literal version Wrst: ‘I wish that somehow wrath and fury might drive me to carve your Xesh and myself eat it raw because of what you have done, as surely as there lives no man that will ward oV the dogs from your head.’ (xxii. 346–7). The savagery of the image is a little softened in the translation. Could I my self the bloody Banquet join! No—to the Dogs that Carcase I resign. (xxii. 438–9)

Remarking on the earlier speech of Achilles Pope had noted: ‘tho’ Achilles be drawn with a great Violence of Features, yet the Picture is undoubtedly like him; and it had been the utmost Absurdity to have soften’d one Line upon this Occasion, when the Soul of Achilles was all on Wre to revenge the Death of his Friend Patroclus. I must desire the Reader to carry this Observation in his Memory, and particularly in that place, where Achilles says he could eat the very Flesh of Hector (though I have a little soften’d it in the Translation) v. 438’ (on l. 317). Both the softening in the translation and the contradiction in the prose are slight. The point to emphasize is the remarkable degree to which Pope has embraced rather than evaded the baneful wrath of Homer’s magniWcently terrible Achilles.


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There is one aspect to his representation of Achilles that constitutes a more signiWcant change to the original than this very slight softening here. It is not in the way of softening but of balancing and is signalled in his prose comment above. At the moment when his spear has delivered the fatal blow, Achilles addresses the fallen Hector as follows: At last is Hector stretch’d upon the Plain, Who fear’d no Vengeance for Patroclus slain: Then Prince! you should have fear’d, what now you feel; Achilles absent, was Achilles still. Yet a short space the great Avenger stay’d, Then low in Dust thy Strength and Glory lay’d. Peaceful He sleeps, with all our Rites adorn’d, For ever honour’d and forever mourn’d: While cast to all the Rage of hostile Pow’r, Thee, Birds shall mangle, and the Dogs devour. (xxii. 415–24) Hector, you thought, I suppose while you were stripping Patroclus, that you would be safe, and had no thought of me while I was away, you fool. Far from him a helper, mightier far, was left behind at the hollow ships, I, who have loosed your knees. You will dogs and birds tear at horribly, but to him will the Achaeans give burial. (xxii. 331–6)

The opening four lines of his speech in Pope climax in a line that typically expresses that Werte´ with which the translator has so successfully endowed him elsewhere. This continues in the triumphant selfconWdent tone of the additional next couplet. But then the succeeding couplet honouring Patroclus takes us into new emotional territory not actually expressed here in Homer and puts before us the motivating power behind Achilles’ dreadful rage. When Pope celebrated the wonderful mixture of the moving and the terrible in this book, he doubtless had primarily in mind the contrast between the dreadful rage of Achilles and the plight of the Trojans Wgured in Priam’s painful foreboding fear before Hector meets Achilles and in the painful laments of the Trojan women after Hector’s death. But he has also highlighted in his translation the contrast and opposition of the moving and the terrible, each heightening the other, within Achilles as well. Witness here his address of apparent triumph directed to the Greeks: But what is Troy, or Glory what to me? Or why reXects my Mind on ought but thee

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Augustan Homer Divine Patroclus! Death has seal’d his Eyes; Unwept, unhonour’d, uninterr’d he lies! Can his dear Image from my Soul depart, Long as the vital Spirit moves thy Heart? If, in the melancholy Shades below, The Flames of Friends and Lovers never cease to glow, Yet mine shall sacred last; mine, undecay’d, Burn on through Death, and animate my Shade. Meanwhile ye Sons of Greece! in Triumph bring The Corps of Hector, and your Paeans sing. Be this the Song, slow-moving tow’rd the Shore, ‘Hector is dead, and Ilion is no more.’ (xxii. 481–94)

But why does my heart debate these things with me? There lies by the ships a dead man unwept, unburied—Patroclus; him will I not forget as long as I am among the living, and my knees are quick. And even if in the house of Hades men forget their dead, yet will I even there remember my dear comrade. But now come, singing our song of victory, you sons of the Achaeans, let us go back to the hollow ships carrying this one here. We have won us great glory; we have slain noble Hector, to whom the Trojans made prayer throughout their city as to a god. (xxii. 385–94)

Pope’s note on line 474 reveals his thinking: ‘The Manners of Achilles, and what he has already done for Patroclus, make this very natural. At the same time, this turning oV to the pathetick has a Wne EVect; the Reader in the very Fury of the Hero’s Vengeance, perceives that Achilles is still a Man, and capable of softer Passions.’ This accounts for the quite extraordinary, extravagant, and moving hyperbole, entirely in character (but added to Homer), in which Pope’s Achilles envisages that the Xame of his love for Patroclus will ‘Burn on through Death and animate [his] shade’, made all the more aVecting in the context of the melancholy vision of the ghostly Homeric afterlife evoked here and earlier by Achilles as he envisages the ghosts of his comrades urging him to wreak revenge on Hector.32 The Wre imagery unites these two aspects of Achilles, the interlinked capacity for intense hatred matched, perhaps caused, by an equally intense capacity for friendship and love. For Pope, we may believe, the latter was his great redeeming feature and it is a

32 See above, p. 249.

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conception that works with and not against the grain of the Homeric original. In his Preface, Pope follows Dryden33 in identifying Homer and Virgil with their respective heroes Achilles and Aeneas. ‘When we behold their Battels, methinks the two Poets resemble the Heroes they celebrate: Homer, boundless and irresistible as Achilles, bears all before him, and shines more and more as the Tumult increases; Virgil calmly daring like Aeneas, appears undisturb’d in the midst of the Action, disposes all about him, and conquers with Tranquillity.’34 Applying the analogy, we may suggest that if Pope can present a credible Achilles, then the larger Iliad in which he occurs can also be a success.

THE ART OF POPE’S HOMER

Invention and judgement How much is the success of Pope’s translation to be put down to new invention, or to his judgement in ordering the Homeric material? Dr Johnson’s deWnition of Invention, the subject of the Wrst book of Vida’s De Arte Poetica, as that faculty ‘by which new trains of events are formed, and new scenes of imagery displayed . . . and by which extrinsic and adventitious embellishments and illustrations are added to a known subject’ (‘Life of Pope’) is particularly pertinent in the case of a translation. As a translator inherits his material, the Wrst part of this deWnition seems to be excluded, but the second part relating to embellishment may well apply in the case of non-literal translations. Judgement, largely the subject of Vida’s second book, Dr Johnson deWnes as that faculty ‘which selects from life or nature what the present purpose requires, and by separating the essence of things from its concomitants, often makes the representation more powerful than the reality’. In traditional accounts both qualities are necessary for successful composition. Yet ‘new trains of events’ and ‘new scenes of imagery’ do not necessarily come unordered to the mind, so that these categories which have been so useful in the rhetorical tradition are not, ultimately, so easily

33 In ‘Preface to the Fables’ in Dryden, Works, vii. 30. 34 Pope, Twickenham Edition, vii. 12.

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distinguished. Dryden, for instance, yokes them together: ‘Under this head of invention is placed the disposition of the work, to put all things in a beautiful order and harmony, that the whole may be of a piece’ (A Parallel of Poetry and Painting). Given the degree of addition and sometimes curtailment of the original (as exempliWed above in the translation of the episode of Sarpedon) the relation between invention and judgement in the translation is not easy to determine. Though the translator remains true to the basic thematic content, the whole narrative has been revisualized and reorganized. In truth, it could equally be said that the original has been reinvented or redisposed. No easy distinction is possible. Nor is any easy distinction possible between ‘original’ work and translation of this kind. In his own Essay on Criticism, Pope juxtaposes judgement with wit, which in many deWnitions is akin to invention and he makes a comedy of the uneasy marriage between these two seemingly opposed categories: For Wit and Judgment often are at strife, Tho’ meant each other’s Aid, like Man and Wife, ’Tis more to guide than spur the Muse’s Steed, Restrain his Fury, than provoke his Speed; The winged Courser, like a gen’rous Horse, Shows most true Mettle when you check his Course. (ll. 82–7)

Here we are more conscious of the need for judgement (a decorous concern in an art of poetry that is directed towards criticism), the need to ‘guide’, ‘restrain’, and ‘check’. Nevertheless, in a balancing passage, ‘the gen’rous Horse’, a Wgure for the furor poeticus, is given full rein to circumvent the judgement: Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take, May boldly deviate from the common Track. Great Wits sometimes may gloriously oVend, And rise to Faults true Criticks dare not mend; From vulgar Bounds with brave Disorder part, And snatch a Grace beyond the Reach of Art, Which, without passing thro’ the Judgement, gains The Heart, and all its End at once attains. (ll. 150–7)


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In The Temple of Fame, published in 1713 before the major Iliad translation, the presentation of Homer’s work aligns him with Pegasus, ‘the winged Courser ’: Bold was the Work, and prov’d the Master’s Fire; A strong Expression most he seemed t’ aVect, And here and there disclos’d a brave Neglect. (ll. 193–5)35

Such ‘brave Neglect’ might be thought to have been a severe test for the artist in Pope. The rest of this chapter will seek to put Pope to test in his representation of Homer. But Wrst let us return to the question of invention and judgement and their interrelation in the translator’s art.

Imitation and reWnement: tradition and method Such reorganizing and revisualizing in English Augustan translation can be compared to similar processes of imitation whereby Homeric epic had been ‘translated’ in Roman literature, beginning with Quintus Ennius (239–169 bc) and culminating in the poetry of the Augustan Virgil. In his epic poem the Annales, which celebrated the history of Rome from its foundation to its climactic victory in the Second Punic War, Ennius adopted the dactylic hexameter, Homer’s metre, abandoning the native Saturnian which was never again used for serious purposes in Latin. The Homeric inspiration of the epic is apparent at the opening of the poem in which the spirit of Homer appears to Ennius telling him that he is Homer’s reincarnation. Fragments of the poem survive36 in quotation by other authors which show his ability to exploit the monumental brevity of Latin in grandly resounding single lines, such as the following, referring to Maximus Fabius Cunctator whose delaying tactics had exhausted Hannibal and saved Rome: ‘unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem’37 ‘one man by his delays restored the Roman state’. Virgil incorporated this line almost verbatim into Anchises’ review of the future heroes of Rome: ‘unus qui nobis cunctando restituit rem’ (Aeneid, vi. 846). In the surviving fragments are several imitations of passages in Homer that have also been adapted by Virgil, enabling a comparison between the two Roman poets. Juxtaposition of the original 35 Pope, Twickenham Edition, ii. 256. 36 They are conveniently available with a translation in Remains of Old Latin I Ennius: Caecilius, trans. E. H. Warmington (London: Heinemann, 1967). 37 Ibid. 132.

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Greek of Homer with the Latin of Ennius and reWnement of that Latin by Virgil together with the English translations of the Greek and Latin by Chapman, Dryden, and Pope can throw the artistry of the Augustans, Roman and English, and their interrelation, into clear relief.

Entry into the wood When Ennius came to describe the preparations for burning the dead after the battle of Heraclea in 280 bc, he clearly had before him Homer’s description of the preparations made by the Greeks for the funeral pyre of Patroclus. The same passage is then used again by Virgil when Aeneas has to construct a funeral pyre for his companion Misenus. Ø ˇØ Æ ºı ºŒÆ K æ d K Øæ PºŒı: æe ¼æ PæB Œ ÆPH: ººa ¼ÆÆ ŒÆÆ æÆÆ ØÆ qºŁ: Iºº ‹ c Œf æ Æ ºı ÆŒ , ÆPØŒ ¼æÆ æF łØŒı ÆÆŒ¨Ø ÆºŒfiH KØªØ: Æd b ªºÆ Œıı ÆØ E: a b ØÆ ØÆº `ÆØd Œ Øø: Æd b ŁÆ d ÆF Kº ÆØ Ø Øa ÞøœÆ ıŒ. (Iliad, xxiii. 114–22) (These then went out and in their hands carried axes to cut wood and ropes Wrmly woven, and their mules went on ahead of them. They went many ways, uphill, downhill, sidehill and slantwise; but when they came to the spurs of Ida with all her well springs, they set to hewing with the thin edge of bronze and leaning their weight to the strokes on towering-leafed oak trees that toppled with huge crashing; then the Achaians splitting the timbers fastened them to the mules and these with their feet tore up the ground as they pulled through the dense undergrowth to the Xat land.) ınced unt arbus usta ˘ pe˘r alta˘, se˘c ur˘ıbu˘s cae d unt. qu per pe ce cell unt m agnas e rcus us, excıd˘ıtu˘r ılex, â˘b˘ıes ıtu˘r alta˘, ıtu˘r at fr axın us fran ang˘ atque conster tern˘ per pın us pr oce cer as erv or ort un unt; omne˘ so˘naba˘t arb ust um fre˘m˘ıt u sılv a ı fron ond os aı. (Ennius)38 38 They are conveniently available with a translation in Remains of Old Latin I Ennius: Caecilius, trans. E. H. Warmington (London: Heinemann, 1967) 70.


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(Then strode they through tall timber-trees and hewed With hatchets; mighty oaks they overset; Down crashed the holm and shivered ash outhacked; Felled was the lofty Wr; they wrenched right down Tall towering pines; and every woody tree In frondent forest rang and roared and rustled.) ıtu˘r ˘ın antıquam sılvam sta˘bu˘laâlta˘ fe˘rar um. proc umb unt p˘ıce˘ae , so˘na˘t ıcta˘ se˘c ur˘ıbu˘s ılex frax rax˘ ıne˘ae que˘ tra˘bes cu˘ne˘ıs, et fıss˘ıle˘ robu˘r scınd˘ıtu˘r; advolv unt ıngentes mont˘ıbu˘s ornos. (Aeneid, vi. 179–82) (They pass into the forest primeval, the deep lairs of beasts; down drop the pitchy pines, and the ilex rings to the stroke of the axe; ashen logs and splintering oak are cleft with wedges, and from the mountains they roll in huge rowans.)

There is a certain rugged strength in the Latin of Ennius. His Romans march into the woods and deal with the trees in no uncertain manner, as we might expect the early Romans to deal with any obstacle natural or human standing in their way. The emphatic verbs, eight in all, with insistent Wgurative associations of conquest and overthrow, tell their own story. Here is a blunt assertion of Roman power, and Ennius’ verse is, comparatively speaking, a blunt instrument. Judged by later Augustan practice his verse is irregular in its scansion: the Wnal syllables of ‘securibus’ and ‘fraxinus’, which in Ennius must count as short to make up dactyls, in later Latin would be long by position, followed as they are not by a vowel but by a consonant. In the Wnal line the Wnal obligatory dactyl is dispensed with, though the special eVect thereby obtained is perhaps the most successful feature of the lines and a Wtting conclusion to what has gone before. The handling of the caesura is clumsy too. Even an unpractised ear can detect the roughness of the lines which are made up of a series of weighty blocks united by strong alliteration, strong assonance, and marked by a preponderance of long syllables (italicized). These units are not at all smoothly connected. The rhythm and syntax are abrupt. The reWnement of Ennius wrought by Virgil is Wrst and most obviously a matter of metrics. The rhythmical pattern of his lines is much more subtle. This is partly as a result of the greater lightness of touch given by the use of words with short syllables to make up dactyls. Virgil has thirteen dactyls in four lines to Ennius’ ten in Wve. In so far as it is a mechanical matter, it is also a result of smoother connection between units of sense within and between lines. The abruptness of syntax and rhythm, and consequently of sense, has been eliminated.

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Since the idea of reWnement is so often associated with loss of strength and energy, it is worth stressing from the outset that Virgil’s lines are also much more expressive. How much more sense and meaning Virgil has managed to concentrate in four lines than Ennius has in Wve. Virgil gives us a moving picture from entry into the wood, to the cutting of the trees with axes and wedges, to the rolling down of the trees from the mountains, well suggested in the rolling rhythm of the Wnal clause. Ennius, on the other hand, emphasizes his one ruling idea by insistent repetition as one tree after another is brought low in a grand assault that is magniWed in the noise of the Wnal line. Whereas Ennius builds up to a climax of sound in the chiming rhyme of ‘silvai frondosai’ (an archaic genitive), sound is incorporated in Virgil into the moving picture (his ‘sonat’ comes early in the second line) and his sound eVects are subordinate and subtler. So too is his syntax. This can be illustrated by looking at Virgil’s combination of and apposition of nouns and adjectives. Whereas in Ennius most of the adjectives refer to the might and height of the trees being hewn and there is nothing subtle about their placing, in Virgil’s Wrst line, in a neat balance of clauses, there is a play whereby ‘alta’ suggests both the height of the trees and the depth of the forest. The domestic associations of ‘stabula’ act subtly against ‘silvam’ with which it is in apposition and ‘ferarum’ which is dependent upon it to evoke the mysterious wildness of the forest just entered. The phrase ‘fraxineae trabes’ ‘ashen timbers’ is not just a poetical periphrasis for the straightforward ‘ash’ of Ennius because mention of timbers takes the process of wood-cutting a stage further. The process is further extended in the adjective ‘Wssile’ in which we see the timbers being broken up, so that they may be rolled down the mountain. In Virgil the action progresses not only in the verbs but through the careful choice of noun and adjective. Ennius in what is a simple list of trees uses ‘quercus’ for oak, while Virgil has ‘robur’ which besides the literal primary meaning of oak has the Wgurative meaning of strength or hardness. The condensed and untranslatable phrase ‘Wssile robur’ is a cunning conjunction, a Wne poetical beauty which suggests the climax of eVort in the cutting process as the hardest wood Wnally yields up its strength (helped by the emphatic placing of ‘scinditur’). There is care too in the choice and order of trees. The soft pine woods (by far the most useful for the purpose in hand, a funeral pyre, because of the pitch they contain) come down Wrst while the harder woods need repeated blows of the axe and the application of wedges. Apart from the realistic moving picture of the whole process of wood cutting, there is also in Virgil, in contrast


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to the indiscriminate felling in Ennius, an impression of concentrated application and well-directed eVort. Native Roman strength is controlled and directed, so that while there is indubitable power in old Latin, there is certainly much more poetic energy in Virgil’s reWnement of it. The English Augustan translations of Homer and Virgil by Dryden and Pope are both expansive, Dryden’s more so than Pope’s for there are double the lines in the Virgil translation as Dryden characteristically opens out and unpicks the density of Virgil’s Latin. An ancient Wood, Wt for the Work design’d, (The shady Covert of the Salvage Kind) The Trojans found: The sounding Axe is ply’d: Firs, Pines and Pitch-Trees, and the tow’ring Pride Of Forest Ashes, feel the fatal Stroke; And piercing Wedges cleave the stubborn Oak. Huge Trunks of Trees, fell’d from the steepy Crown Of the bare Mountain, rowl with Ruin down. (Dryden, vi. 261–8, translating Virgil)

It is perhaps surprising to Wnd that Dryden is more morally imperious than Virgil with something of the Wgurative emphasis of Ennius. His Trojans are not like Ennius’ early Romans; the trees are not conquered, but their towering pride does suVer a mighty ruin (hence the Wgure of the ‘steepy crown’ of the mountain now bare of trees). This Wgurative emphasis is a source of grandeur in the lines. At the same time there is great energy in Dryden; he is careful to retain Virgil’s progressively moving picture: the axe is plied, the trees feel the stroke, wedges cleave the oak, and the felled trees are rolled down. The most striking beauty in the Latin, the climactic phrase ‘Wssile robur’, for which there are no words that could give a literal equivalent in English, is rendered by a Wnely balanced line: ‘And piercing Wedges cleave the stubborn Oak’ in which the Wgurative meaning of ‘piercing’ extends the feeling of the previous line. This is a strong ‘full-resounding’ line that in its pattern and movement emphasizes the climactic action in which the hard wood Wnally yields. The overall rhythmical pattern and movement (varied with enjambement and breaks and pauses at diVerent points in the lines) is carefully responsive to the movement of meaning most obviously in the rise to a climax in the cutting of the oaks and in the Wnal couplet where the interrupting clause and the enjambement suspend the sense which is simply and satisfyingly resolved in the roll of the last four words.

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Pope’s version of the fuller Homeric original expands nine lines into fourteen but also omits some of its detail. In this and the examples that follow, in contrast to Dryden who tends to make additions to his original, Pope characteristically contracts. With proper Instruments they take the Road, Axes to cut, and Ropes to sling the Load. First march the heavy Mules, securely slow, O’er Hills, o’er Dales, o’er Crags, o’er Rocks, they go: Jumping high o’er the Shrubs of the rough Ground, Rattle the clatt’ring Cars, and the shockt Axles bound. But when arriv’d at Ida’s spreading Woods, (Fair Ida, water’d with descending Floods) Loud sounds the Axe, redoubling Strokes on Strokes; On all Sides round the Forest hurles her Oaks Headlong, Deep-echoing groan the Thickets brown; Then rustling, crackling, crashing, thunder down. The Wood the Grecians cleave, prepar’d to burn; And the slow Mules the same rough Road return. (Pope, xxiii. 138–51)

The main contraction comes at the end where the Greeks fasten the timbers to the mules and the mules tear up the ground as they pull them on their return. Apart from this, it is worth remarking how energetically Pope has visualized what is going on. His verse is remarkable for its success in ‘expressing in the sound the thing described’, most obviously in the ‘rattle of the clatt’ring Cars, and the shockt Axles’, the repeated sound of the axe strokes, and the thundering noise of the ‘rustling, crackling, crashing’ trees. The more obvious sound eVects are part of a subtle orchestration of rhythm and movement throughout. For instance, the third and Wnal lines enact the slow march of the mules with their succession of heavy accented monosyllables (at least six in each line, however they are read). The slow deliberate progress of the mules is also well conveyed in the regularity of the wholly monosyllabic fourth line with the repetition of ‘o’er’. Pope has aimed for an equivalent of the expressively chiming and internally rhyming third line of the Greek. Variety of emphasis is achieved by breaking the iambic rhythm with a heavily accented opening word (akin to the eVect of enjambement in the classical hexameter) as in ‘Axes’, ‘Jumping’, ‘Rattle’, ‘Loud’, ‘Headlong’. As in Dryden, sound and movement are echoing sense and meaning in the manner highlighted and recommended as the


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highest manifestation of the poetic art by Vida at the end of the De Arte Poetica. Comparison with Chapman’s version throws the Augustan achievement into clear relief: Wood-cutting tooles they bore Of all hands, and well-twisted cords. The Mules marcht all before. Up hill and down hill, overthwarts, and break-necke clifts they past, But when the fountfull Ida’s tops they scal’d, with utmost haste All fell upon the high-hair’d Okes, and down their curled browes Fell busling to the earth, and up went all the boles and bowes Bound to the Mules; and backe again they parted the harsh way Amongst them through the tangling shrubs—and long they thought the day Till in the plaine Weld all arriv’d, (Chapman, ‘The Twenty-Third Booke’, 105–13, translating Homer)

There are sound eVects here; the awkward rhythm is responsive to the sense in a diVerent way, underscoring the diYculty of the enterprise as the mules march ‘overthwarts’ and return ‘through the tangled shrubs’. It is consonant with his poetic method that Chapman has added the idea at the end that ‘long they thought the day’ which he follows with the rhythmically abrupt phrase ‘Till in the plaine Weld all arriv’d’, suddenly halting in mid-line. What Chapman lacks in syntax and rhythm is the ease and Xow of the Augustans which matches the ease and Xow of the classic originals; nevertheless his awkwardly disjointed verse, diYcult to read though it is, does have a vigour that is responsive to the original. It is greatly marred, however, by its infelicitous rendering of that bane of Homeric translators, the traditional epithets: here his literal versions of łØŒı ‘high-haired’ oaks and ºı ÆŒ ‘fountfull’ Ida are simply not in the idiom of English. Pope, remarking on the ‘Peculiarities of Homer’s Diction’ in his preface, singles out the compound epithets, with the comment that they ‘cannot be done literally into English without destroying the Purity of our Language’. The solution he then proposes is circumlocution: ‘as the Epithet N ıºº to a Mountain would appear little or ridiculous translated literally Leaf-shaking, but aVords a majestic Idea in the Periphrasis: The lofty Mountain shakes his waving Woods’.39 Here he has dispensed with the Homeric epithet for the oaks but beautifully expanded the description of Ida into a digniWed couplet that represents an English equivalent 39 From ‘Preface to the Iliad ’, in Pope, Twickenhan Edition, vii. 19.

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of the beauty and harmony of Homer’s Greek that is never to be found in Chapman’s Homer. At the conclusion of his Virgil translation, Dryden, in near despair over his failure to do full justice to Virgil, nevertheless expresses the hope that he has managed to copy ‘the Clearness, the Purity, the Easiness and the MagniWcence of his Stile’:40 these are the qualities that for all their diVerences Virgil shares with Homer and they are qualities that for all their diVerences, as comparison with Chapman shows, Pope and Dryden share with each other and have managed to capture in their versions.

The simile of the horse A second example in which both Ennius and Virgil imitate Homer further illustrates the reWned Virgilian artistry which was so admired in the Renaissance and which was the aspiration of the Augustans in English. ‰ ‹ Ø Æe ¥ IŒ Æ Kd Æfi e IææÆ Łfi Ø ŒæÆø, ØøŁg º ŁÆØ K¨ıææE ÆE, Œı Øø _ łF b Œæ Ø; Id b ÆEÆØ þØ ÆY^ ÆØ_ › IªºÆØ ØŁ , æÆ ªFÆ æØ XŁÆ ŒÆd e ¥ ø. (Iliad, vi. 506–11) (As when some stalled horse who has been corn-fed at the manger breaking free of his rope gallops over the plain in thunder to his accustomed bathing place in a sweet-running river and in the pride of his strength holds high his head, and the mane Xoats over his shoulders; sure of his glorious strength, the quick knees carry him to the loved places and the pasture of horses;) et t um sıcu˘t e˘qu us, quı de prae sep˘ı bu˘s f art us vıncla˘ su˘ıs m agn ıs a˘n˘ım ıs abr up˘ıt; e˘t ınde˘ ˘ la˘ lae ˘ que˘ pra ˘ fert sese campı per cae aeru aeta rata celso pecto˘re˘, sae pe˘ iu˘bam quassat s˘ımu˘l altam; spır˘ıtu˘s ex a˘n˘ım a ca˘l˘ıd a sp um as a˘g˘ıt alb as. (Ennius) (And just as when a horse which, full fattened from the stalls has burst his tether in his high fettle, and away with breast uplifted bears himself over the rich grey-

40 From the ‘Dedication of the Æneis ’ in Works, v. 331.


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green meadows of the plain; and withal again and again tosses his mane on high; and his breath born of his hot temper Xings out white froth). upt ıs f ıs ugıt pra raes ep˘ıa˘ vıncl ıs ıs qual˘ıs, u˘biâbr t and e m lıbe˘r ˘equ us, campoque˘ po˘tıtu˘s a˘perto: aut au ılle^ın past us armenta˘que˘ tendıt e˘quar um aut au adsue uetu ˘ s a˘quae perf u ndı fl um˘ıne˘ noto em˘ıca˘t, arrectısque˘ fre˘mıt cervıc˘ıbu˘s alte l l ux ur˘ıan ans; ud untque˘ ˘ıubae per co colla ˘, pe˘r armos. (Aeneid, xi. 492–7) (even as, when a horse, bursting his tether, has Xed the stalls, free at last, and lord of the open plain, either, mark you! he makes for the pastures and herds of mares, or wont to bathe in the well-known river, he darts forth, and neighs, with head out-stretched high in wanton joy, while his mane plays over neck and over shoulder.)

Notable in Ennius here is weak management of the Wfth foot dactyl. In the Wrst line the conjunction of consonants in the last two words creates heaviness and is unmetrical by later standards. In the second line there is a strong pause within the dactyl which in its abruptness may have been designed to suggest the breaking out of the horse in giving emphasis to ‘abrupit’ but which in impairing the smoothness of the rhythmic Xow does nothing to give any impetus to the movement of the horse in what follows once it has broken out. In the last two lines the rhythmic pattern is again impaired by the disyllables ‘simul’ and ‘agit’. The impairment is not readily explicable, but becomes apparent to the ear when contrasted with the Augustan metrical management of Virgil which eschews such disyllables at this point in the line which weaken the Xow by causing a pause just when the ear expects a rise in the rhythm. Ennius’ lines lack Xuency and do not have what Tennyson called Virgil’s ‘ocean roll of rhythm’.41 In this simile, the lack of Xow is not caused by a lack of dactyls which are plentiful throughout (in the penultimate line there are three and in the Wnal climactic line four, in what seems like an attempt to mimic in the rapid movement of the verse the spirited animation of the horse), but by a deWciency in their management. The Xow is impeded by a dull and prosaic word order, particularly in the like endings of nouns and adjectives occurring in close proximity in the italicized phrases. Only the positioning of ‘altam’ at the 41 ‘To Virgil: Written at the Request of the Mantuans for the Nineteenth Centenary of Virgil’s Death’, in The Poems of Tennyson, ed. Christopher Ricks, 2nd edn., 3 vols. (Harlow: Longman, 1987), iii. 101.

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end of line 4, where it is given an emphasis which underscores the horse’s exhilaration and is suYciently separated from its noun of like ending ‘iubam’, is at all subtle. Although it does not chime like the others, ‘celso pectore’ is another dull phrase which causes a strong pause at the end of the second foot, something avoided in the more polished metrical practice of the Augustans. As Virgil has only sixteen dactyls in six lines, while Ennius has Wfteen in Wve, Virgil’s greater Xuency cannot be put down simply to a greater number of dactyls but springs from greater artistry and control in their management. Virgil’s opening line, like that of Ennius, has only two dactyls, yet the dactylic start gives it a greater lift. It is easy to see that his three dactylic lines are strategically placed to give emphasis to the rush to freedom in line 2 and to the achievement of it in lines 5 and 6. By a suspension of the sense and an inversion of the normal word order of prose, Virgil’s horse makes a dramatic entrance, given emphasis by the coincidence of the horse and the strong third foot caesura: ‘tandem liber equus’. The subordination in the participial clause ‘abruptis vinclis’ (an ablative absolute) gives emphasis to the escape in fugit which is picked up in the adjective ‘liber’ and also suggested in the well chosen and well placed epithet ‘aperto’. The rhythm and sound eVects in ‘campoque potitus aperto’ are sharp and jaunty, suggestive of the horse’s exhilarating gallop. The rhythm slows as the poet contemplates the horse’s alternative destinations but with the emphatically placed dactylic ‘emicat’ gathers speed that is further increased by the repeated use of the enclitic ‘que’, causing the rapidly lilting rhythm that accompanies the fourth foot caesuras in the Wnal two lines. The simile has a clear climax in the emphatically placed ‘luxurians’, an active participle conveying the frisky exhilaration of the wanton horse, the literal and Wgurative associations of which are picked up in ‘ludunt’ and Wttingly concluded in the playful visual imagery of the Xowing mane. What is noticeable in Virgil after Ennius is the greater variety in the grammar, syntax, and word order. Ennius has a past tense in ‘abrupit’ and present tenses elsewhere but otherwise does not use subordination or participial constructions. His word order is wooden and unimaginative. Virgil not only writes with greater Xuency but coordinates metre and meaning for a total eVect. It is diYcult to see quite what Ennius is aiming for in his comparison. Virgil, on the other hand, through emphatic and interlinked phrases achieves an expressive power which takes hold of readers and directs their response.


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And as a faire Steed, proud With ful-given mangers, long tied up and now (his head-stall broke) He breakes from stable, runnes the Weld and with an ample stroke Measures the centre, neighs and lifts aloft his wanton head, About his shoulders shakes his Crest, and where he hath bene fed Or in some calm Xoud washt or (stung with his high plight) he Xies Amonst his femals, strength puts forth, his beautie beautiWes, And like Life’s mirror beares his gate (Chapman, ‘The Sixth Booke’, 543–50) Freed from his Keepers, thus with broken Reins, The wanton Courser prances o’er the Plains: Or in the Pride of Youth o’erleaps the Mounds; And snuVs the Females in forbidden Grounds: Or seeks his wat’ring in the well known Flood, To quench his Thirst, and cool his Wery Blood: He swims luxuriant, in the liquid Plain, And o’er his Shoulder Xows his waving Mane: He neighs, he snorts, he bears his Head on high; Before his ample Chest the frothy Waters Xy. (Dryden, xi. 743–52) The wanton Courser thus, with Reins unbound, Breaks from his Stall, and beats the trembling Ground; Pamper’d and proud, he seeks the wonted Tides, And laves, in Height of Blood, his shining Sides; His Head now freed, he tosses to the Skies; His Mane dishevel’d o’er his Shoulders Xies; He snuVs the Females in the distant Plain, And springs, exulting, to his Fields again. (Pope, vi. 652–9)

A notable thematic change to Homer made by Virgil and reXected in all three translations is the introduction of female interest in the motivation of the stallion. This is imported Wrst into Homer by Chapman whose ‘wanton’ horse ‘Xies j Amonst his females’. The root meaning of ‘wanton’ is undisciplined or unmanageable, highly suitable in context, and applied by Chapman to the horse’s head; any sexual associations, commoner in modern English, are secondary. In Dryden’s Virgilian version, with the application of the adjective more generally to the horse and the introduction of ‘snuVs’, the secondary associations are more prominent and are retained by Pope in whose Homeric version they gain greater prominence in the Wnal climactic couplet. Chapman, despite his persistent slighting of

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Virgil, has largely replaced the Homeric simile with Virgil’s expansion, since he takes over from Virgil the alternative versions of his freedom, either in the water or with the females. Pope retains the substance of Virgil/ Chapman but reorders the narrative so that it is sequential: he bathes Wrst, then makes for the Welds guided by scent of the mares. Dryden also seems to have owed the adjective ‘ample’ to Chapman, whether directly or indirectly through another translator. The neighing too is introduced by Chapman and taken over by Dryden who increases the animal noise with the additional ‘snort’. There is no doubting the physical reality of the horse as he ‘prances’ and seeks the water to cool ‘his Wery blood’ (an importation). Notable in Dryden is a decorous mixture of diVerent rhythms and lexical registers. The iambic rhythm is broken by the emphatic ‘Freed’ with which the simile starts. The prominence given in the Wnal line of Virgil to the enjambed ‘luxurians’ is reXected in the emphatic positioning of the Latinate heavily stressed ‘luxuriant’ coming after the verb before a strong pause, and so reproducing an equivalent sense of ecstatic freedom in a line which is then elegantly rounded oV with a digniWed periphrasis: ‘the liquid plain’ is formulaic but given the associations of horses with solid plains also slightly more appropriately charged than a mere formula. The sounds of this couplet with its liquid consonants and its Xuent movement culminating highly appropriately with a watery suggestion in the ‘waving mane’ express the character of the thing being described and are in marked contrast to the jerky movement of the next line featuring the horse’s head bobbing above the water, with three strong verbs, three repeated pronouns, and a tripartite structure before the Wnal full resounding line in which sound again echoes sense in the Wnal phrase. Dryden’s habit of creating adjectives with the suYx ‘y’ has been much remarked upon and often condemned as an expedient to aid the iambic rhythm but here ‘frothy’ is excellently chosen both for its sense, where it oVers a visual reXection of the dynamic energy of the horse, and for its onomatopoeia extended in eVect in the alliteration of the emphatic rhyme word. Once again Dryden has been more expansive of his original than Pope, whose opening couplet contains a Wne eVect in the use of ‘unbound’ followed immediately by the emphatic ‘Breaks’, breaking the iambic rhythm and in a condensed phrase suggesting the sudden and powerful bounding of the horse into new-found freedom. Pope’s version clearly owes much to predecessors, including the Homeric translation of Thomas Hobbes, which he memorably dismissed as ‘too mean for Criticism’.


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As when a horse, i’ th’ stable pampered, And used to be washed in the river His headstall breaks, or be delivered From that which held him by what means soever; Then proudly he sets up his tail and head, And beats the plain, and with the wind he makes His mane ply in the air dishevelled, Then to the pasture known the way he takes: (vi. 489–96)42

The root meaning of ‘pamper’ is to cram with food or feed luxuriously, so Pope saw it as le mot juste here aptly translating IŒ Æ glossed in the Homeric dictionary as ‘having fed abundantly (on barley) at the manger’. The adjective ‘dishevel’d’, slightly onomatopoeic, is added to Homer for an enhancing visual eVect. As in the case of Dryden’s Virgil, there is a mix of vocabulary ranging from ‘laves’ (given a Latin and an Old English derivation in the OED and commonly used until modern times) to the English staple of ‘beats’ ‘tosses’ and ‘snuVs’. The most eVective word choice must be the position of ‘exulting’ coming immediately after ‘springs’ in the Wnal line, where the Latin root ‘to jump or leap out’ clearly lies at the root of the horse’s joyful exultation. This is a kind of simple sophistication in the Augustans rarely found either before or since. Looking at Chapman’s version in the light of the versions of Dryden and Pope, we may advance some conclusions. All three translators are part of a tradition and their translations are cumulative in eVect, each drawing on something that has gone before. Even the dullest predecessor (Hobbes) can be of use. But while the method of Chapman on the one hand and of Dryden and Pope on the other is comparable and while they all three give themselves freedom in relation to their original, their deployment of that method and use of that freedom produce quite diVerent eVects. The Augustans know what they are doing and achieve coherence and full clarity in their versions. All three have a high conception here of the glorious vigour of the horse; this is achieved by Dryden and Pope in their management of the couplet and in particular phrases such as ‘Pride of Youth’, ‘Wery Blood’, ‘bears his Head on high’ (Dryden) and ‘in Height of Blood’ (Pope). Chapman is imaginative in his response and attempts a grand climax at the conclusion. When the 42 Thomas Hobbes, The Iliads and Odysses of Homer (London: William Crook, 1677).

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horse ‘beautiWes’ his ‘beautie’, the tautology is hardly felicitous but at least there is a clear attempt at heightening. But what is implied by his simile within the simile ‘like Life’s mirror’ is hardly clear. Chapman is readable but only if the reader is prepared to skate over some kind of peculiarity on a regular basis (probably one in every ten lines on a conservative estimate). Here it is diYcult to know what might be implied when the horse ‘Measures the centre’. Chapman has persistent trouble with epithets and quite apart from his notorious penchant for conceits, he has little sense of decorum to save him from the likes of ‘(stung with his high plight) he Xies j Amonst his femals’ which compromises any attempt to glorify the horse with the less than digniWed image of his being stung by a swarm of horseXies.

Concentration and unity Ajax under pressure `YÆ PŒ KØ: Ø ªaæ º Ø Æ Ø ˘ ŒÆd æH IªÆıd ºº: Øc b æd ŒæØ Ø ÆØc º Æºº ŒÆÆc : ºº ÆØd Œa ºÆæ PŁ : › IæØ æe t ŒÆ ÆØb Kø Œ ÆØº; P K Æ I ÆPfiH ºÆØ Kæ º Ø: Æ Ød IæªÆºfiø ¼ ŁÆØ, Œa b ƒ ƒ æg Ł KŒ ºø Þ ¼ ; P fi r IF ÆØ; fi b ŒÆŒe ŒÆŒfiH K æØŒ. (Iliad, xvi. 102–11) (the volleys were too much for Aias, who could hold no longer his place. The will of Zeus beat him back, and the proud Trojans with their spears, and around his temples the shining helmet clashed horribly under the shower of strokes; he was hit constantly on the strong-wrought cheek-pieces, and his left shoulder was tiring from always holding up the big glittering shield; yet they could not beat him out of his place, though they piled their missiles upon him. His breath came ever hard and painful, the sweat ran pouring down his body from every limb, he could Wnd no means to catch his breath, but evil was piled on evil about him.) u nd˘ıque˘ conve˘n˘ıunt ve˘lu˘t ımber tela te ˘ tr˘ıb uno: confıg unt parmam, tınnıt hastıl˘ıbus˘ u mbo


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ae ra rat o so˘n˘ıt u ga˘le˘ae . sed nec po˘te˘ quısquam u nd˘ıqu˘e n˘ıtendo corp us dıscerpe˘re˘ f err o; sempe˘r a˘b undantes hastas frangıtque˘ qua˘tıtque˘: tot um s udo˘r ha˘bet co corp us m ult umque˘ la˘bora˘t, nec respırandı fıt cop˘ı a˘; praepe˘te˘ f erro Hıstrı tela˘ ma˘n u ia˘c˘ıentes soll˘ıc˘ıtabant. (Ennius)43 (From all sides the javelins like a rain-storm showered in upon the tribune, and pierced his buckler; then jangled the embossment under spears, the helmet too with brassy clang; but not one of them, though strain they did from every side, could rend apart his body with the iron. Every time he shakes and breaks the waves of lances; sweat covers all his body; he is hard distressed; to breathe he has not a chance. The iron came Xying as the Histrians cast the spears from their hands to harass him.)

In Virgil the sense of embattlement and struggle is greatly intensiWed. ergo nec clı˘pe˘o iu˘ve˘n ıs s ıs ubsıste˘re˘ tant um nec dextra˘ va˘let, objectıs sıc u nd˘ıqu˘e telıs obru˘˘ıt ur, stre˘p˘ıt ads˘ıdu˘o ca˘va˘ tempo˘ra˘ cırc um tınnıt u ga˘le˘aêt saxıs so˘l˘ıda ae ra˘ f a˘tısc unt dısc ussae que˘ iu˘bae ca˘p˘ıtı nec s uV˘ıc˘ıt u mb o ıct˘ıbu˘s; ınge˘m˘ınant hast ıs et Tr ıs oe˘s e˘t ıpse fu lm˘ıne˘us Mnestheu s; t um toto corpo˘re˘ s ud or lıqu˘ıtu˘r et p˘ıce˘u m, nec respırare˘ po˘tes est as, fl ume˘n a˘gıt, f es ess os qu˘at˘ıt ae ge˘r a˘nhel˘ıtus˘ ar artu s. (Aeneid, ix. 803–11) (therefore, neither with shield nor sword-arm can the soldier hold his own: with such a hail of darts is he overwhelmed on all sides. Round his hollow temples the helmet echoes with ceaseless clash; the solid brass gapes beneath the rain of stones; the horsehair crest is rent from the head, and the shield’s boss withstands not the blows: the Trojans and Mnestheus himself, with lightning force, launch a storm of spears. Then o’er all his body Xows the sweat and runs in pitchy stream, nor has he breathing space; and a sickly panting shakes his wearied limbs.)

Ennius is much more successful than hitherto in managing to convey meaning through metrical management. The four dactyls in the opening line and the brief but vivid simile provide a rapid start. The disyllable in the Wfth foot of the third line allows too much pause in 43 Ennius, Remains of Old Latin, 154.

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pronunciation, while the unAugustan use of a single word in the Wnal line ‘sollicitabant’ does not allow enough; thus in these lines the rising hexameter rhythm is impaired, but otherwise the verses are quite Xuid. There are three enjambements, at the end of the second, third, and seventh lines through which the sense is carried over into the next line thus propelling the verse forward and giving it something of a genuine periodic structure. The use of the enclitic ‘que’ in the Wfth and sixth lines aids rapidity. The transferred epithet ‘aerato’, which in prose would be ‘auratae’ qualifying ‘galeae’ avoids the ugly collocation of sound that disWgures the previous simile. Although this moves and sounds better than the simile, there is a lack of variety in vocabulary with repetitions of ‘undique’, ‘tela’, ‘corpus’ and a near repetition in ‘hastilibus’, and ‘hastas’. The scene is more intensely imagined in Virgil; the beleaguered warrior, who actually manages to stand his ground in Ennius, is on the point of succumbing here. The assault upon his head is more frightening than the assault in Ennius upon his armour. In Virgil too the armour is falling apart and is no longer adequate to the task. Very artful is the contrasting use of ‘cava’ for temples and ‘solida’ for the armour. The plight of the warrior is also conveyed not only in the imagery used but through the metrical management; the sense of toil and strife is a product of the unsettled rhythm and the endless Xow of the verse in which all but one line, the fourth, is enjambed and even here the enclitic ‘que’ in the Wrst word of the Wfth propels the sense forward. There is great rhythmical variation. In the second line the strong pause at the end of the second foot, which in normal Augustan practice would be avoided (caesurae always coming within feet and not at their end) brings the verse to an abrupt halt, but the irregularity here has point, marking the impasse in the warrior’s condition. The crucial factor is emphasized; he has not the strength to carry on. Compare the similar halting eVect following ‘celso pectore’ in Ennius’ simile featuring the horse; there is no good reason for abruptness there. Thereafter the pauses in sense occur at various places in the line, strongly after ‘obruitur’, ‘ictibus’, ‘Mnestheus’ (all at diVerent points in the line) and ‘agit’, and weakly, again variously, elsewhere. Although the passage has an overall metrical Xuency beyond anything in Ennius, it also appropriately suggests diYculty and obstruction. In the fourth line, in which the solid bronze armour gapes open, ‘fatiscunt’ (an excellent choice here for its secondary meaning of ‘become exhausted’), there are two elisions (involving ‘galea’ and ‘solida’) which slow down the reading of the line, for it is not to be supposed that an elided vowel disappears from pronunciation entirely. The eVect of an elision is to


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elongate the phrase in which it occurs. A famous example is Virgil’s line describing the souls of the dead waiting to be wafted over Acheron by Charon; ‘tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore’ (Aeneid, vi. 314) ‘they stretched out their hands in yearning for the farther shore’, where the elongation after ‘ripae’ intensiWes the unfulWlled spiritual yearning. Here the elisions underscore the weariness and fatigue. A second eVect, which is primarily syntactical but the management of syntax is part of metrical management, is the interrupting clause in the penultimate line ‘nec respirare potestas’ which cuts across ‘piceum Xumen’ with deliberate awkwardness to suggest the interruption to regular breathing. There are intricate and subtle sound eVects throughout; suYce it to point out here that breathlessness is underscored in the rhythm, alliteration, and assonance of the Wnal Wve words, particularly in the deliberately ugly sounds of the last three. How bald by comparison seems the statement of Ennius: ‘nec respirandi Wt copia’. Virgil has achieved in his poetic eVects what Vida, describing the Wgure of enargeia, Wnds to be the great end of poetic art, the representation through words of the thing itself. Dryden achieves his ends by diVerent means; whereas in the earlier passage in which the trees were felled, he had been more metaphorical than Virgil, here his language is consistently more speciWc and physical on the surface yet still with an underlying metaphorical suggestion. With Labour spent, no Longer can he wield The heavy Fauchion, or sustain the Shield: O’erwhelm’d with Darts, which from afar they Xing, The Weapons round his hollow Temples ring: His golden helm gives way: with stony blows Batter’d, and Xat, and beaten to his Brows. His Crest is rash’d away; his ample Shield Is falsify’d, and round with Jav’lins Wll’d. The Foe now faint, the Trojans overwhelm: And Mnestheus lays hard load upon his Helm. Sick sweat succeeds, he drops at ev’ry pore, With driving Dust his Cheeks are pasted o’er. Shorter and shorter ev’ry Gasp he takes, And vain EVorts, and hurtless Blows he makes. (Dryden, ix. 1088–1101)

Words like ‘spent’, ‘o’erwhelm’d’, ‘sustain’, ‘Batter’d’, ‘beaten to his Brows’ (browbeaten) are all both physical and Wgurative. At the same time, in

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addition to the naming of all the weapons, the opening is packed with weighty words of hard and straightforward physical reference: ‘wield’, ‘heavy’, ‘Xing’, ‘stony’, ‘Xat’, ‘rash’d away’ (a common expression, now obsolete, for ‘torn away’), ‘ample’, ‘Wll’d’. The opening of Dryden’s defence of his rare coinage ‘falsify’d’ from the Italian meaning ‘was pierced’ is worth quoting here: ‘When I read this Æneid to many of my Friends, in company together, most of them quarrel’d at the word falsify’d, as an innovation in our Language. The fact is confess’d.’44 Evidently Dryden’s language had to stand the test of oral performance amongst his peers, a factor that helps to account for its immediacy and its forceful currency; archaisms and coinages are rare. Doubtless the coinage appealed because, in addition to its precise physical meaning derived from its Italian root, the word inevitably carried a Wgurative suggestion that the shield, no longer shielding, was failing in its purpose. There is a similar sophistication in the preposition ‘round’ that follows, evoking as it must the roundness of the shield in a slightly paradoxical way since the shield was designed to repel javelins not to be Wlled with them. The physical density continues with ‘lays hard load’, ev’ry pore’, ‘pasted o’er’, ‘Gasp’, and ‘Blows’. The unpleasant expression ‘Sick sweat succeeds’ follows on from ‘faint’ and is picked up in ‘drops’; there is something appropriately dislocating in the choice of ‘succeeds’ in the context of imminent collapse and failure, and a similar eVect in the Wnal phrase ‘hurtless Blows he makes’ in which the warrior’s doing is undone. The language is highly wrought and deployed with a sophistication that intensiWes and makes dense the primary surface meaning without in any way diminishing its clarity. This is a rare achievement, and a characteristic Augustan virtue at its best. Pope’s translation of Virgil’s Homeric source is widely divergent. Ajax no more the sounding Storm sustain’d, So thick, the Darts an Iron Tempest rain’d: On his tir’d Arm the weighty Buckler hung; His hollow Helm with falling Javelins rung; His breath, in quick short Pantings, comes, and goes; And painful sweat from all his Members Xows. Spent and o’erpow’red, he barely breathes at most; Yet scarce an Army stirs him from his Post: (Pope, xvi. 130–7)

44 Dryden, Works, vi. 828.


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Homer’s description of the scene is longer than Virgil’s, yet Pope’s version is much shorter than Dryden’s to which it bears no reference where reference might have been expected. He has eliminated from Homer’s account the general lines referring to Zeus at the opening and the evil plight at the end, and also been economical with the detail throughout. Much is accomplished at the opening by the metaphorical density of the ‘sounding Storm’ in which ‘an Iron Tempest rain’d’. The breathlessness is highlighted in an onomatopoeic Wfth line and with a second mention at the end. Most notable is the reorganization of the passage, which in the hyperbole of the Wnal line comes to stress not impending doom but heroic resistance. In the poem as a whole Ajax is consistently cast in the role of stout defender against seemingly overwhelming odds and this is his role in Pope’s version here. This is the end to which the translator’s concentration of the Homeric material is unerringly directed.

The simile of the torrent ŁF ªaæ i ÆfiH ºŁØ KØŒg Øææfiø; ‹ tŒÆ Þø KŒ Æ ª æÆ: e o ¼æ ªæıÆØ KæªªÆØ N Æø Ø, h ¼æÆ !æŒÆ Y Ø Iºøø KæØŁºø KºŁ KÆ; ‹ KØæ fi ˜Øe Zæ: ººa ÆPF æªÆ ŒÆæØ Œº ÆØH. (Iliad, v. 87–92) (since he went storming up the plain like a winter-swollen river in spate that scatters the dikes in its running current, one that strong-compacted dikes can contain no longer, neither the moulded banks of the blossoming vineyards hold it rising suddenly as Zeus’ rain makes heavy the water and many lovely works of the young men crumble beneath it.) et cu et cum moll˘ıs a˘quae fer ert ur na nat ura˘ re˘pente undantı, quam lar arg ıs ıs ımbr˘ıbu˘s au auge ˘t fl um˘ıneâ˘b mont˘ıbu˘s ex alt ıs magnus ıs decursu ur ˘ s a˘q uaı a, fra ragm˘ ına˘ con˘ıc˘ıens sılvar arum, arb usta˘que˘ to tot âr nec va˘l˘ıdı poss unt pontes ve˘n˘ıen ent˘ ıs a˘q uaı vım s ub˘ıtam to˘le˘rare:^˘ıta˘ magn o t urb˘ıdu˘s ımbrı mol˘ıbu˘s ınc urrıt va˘l˘ıd ıs c ıs um vır˘ıbu˘s amn˘ıs. dat so˘n˘ıt u magn o stra rag em, vo volv ıtque˘ su˘b u nd ıs ıs grand˘ıa˘ saxa˘, ru˘ıt qua quıdquam X uct˘ıbu˘s obstat. (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, i. 281–9)

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(as water; which soft as it is, suddenly rolls in overwelling stream when a great deluge of water from the high mountains swells the Xood with torrents of rain, dashing together wreckage of forests and whole trees, nor can strong bridges withstand the sudden force of the coming water, with so mighty a force does the river boiling with rain-torrents rush against the solid piers; it works devastation with loud uproar and rolls huge rocks under its waves, and sweeps away whatever stands in its path.) non sıc, sı agge˘r˘ıbus r upt ıs c ıs um spume pu ˘u˘s amn ıs ıs ex˘ı˘ıt, oppo˘s˘ıtas asque ev˘ıc˘ıt g urg˘ıte˘ m oles es, f ertu˘r ˘ın arva˘ fu˘rens cu˘mu˘lo camposque˘ pe˘r omnıs c um sta˘bu˘l ıs ıs armenta˘ tra˘hıt. (Aeneid, ii. 496–9) (Not with such fury, when a foaming river, bursting its barriers, has overXowed and with its torrent overwhelmed the resisting banks, does it rush furiously upon the Welds in a mass and over all the plains sweep herds and folds.)

There can be no doubt about the ability of Lucretius when he comes to render the power of natural forces; his verse has a matching energy. The sense is carried over the lines with enjambement in all but the fourth and seventh which is highly appropriate given the subject matter. The beginning is slow, with only two dactyls each in the opening three lines. The second and third lines, which might seem a little clumsy in the arrangement of nouns and adjectives, are deliberately heavy to suggest the weight of water that is about to descend; when it does so, wreaking its destruction, there is increasing rapidity, with thirteen dactyls in four lines from the fourth to the seventh. The Wfth line going into the sixth is marked by great Xuency; how well the splitting up of the adjective ‘validi’ and its noun ‘pontes’ propels the reader forward. However, the rapidity of the sixth and most dactylic line is impaired by an elision and an awkward hiatus at the caesura at a weak point in the third foot (between the two short syllables of a dactyl). Compared with the representation of the beleaguered warrior discussed above, these lines of Lucretius can be seen to lack Virgil’s metrical certainty and variety and his clarity of focus and emphasis in expression. The natural energy in Lucretius is somewhat dissipated by unnecessary repetition. The repetition is most apparent in his vocabulary; he uses the nouns ‘aqua’ three times (twice at the end of a line) and ‘imber’ twice and the adjectives ‘magnus’ three times and ‘validus’ twice. But the repetition might be said to stem from a lack of concen-


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tration in imagery and expression. There is much doubling in the patterning and the phrasing which impedes clarity of emphasis. The double climax in the wrecking of the bridges and the piers that hold them up comes to a weak conclusion in the Wnal clause. Virgil’s more economic handling of the same material produces a more concentrated eVect. The progress and eVect of the river’s destructive power in Virgil is enacted in the rhythm and movement of the verse. The simile is a perfect illustration of imitative harmony in Virgil, of his capacity, in Vida’s words, ‘res verborum propria vi reddere claras’ (iii. 336) ‘to render things clear by the proper force of words’. Like Lucretius, Virgil starts oV slowly and with deliberate phrasing, though unlike Lucretius, Virgil avoids like endings in close proximity between words in agreement. The suspension of sense and enjambement gives great emphasis to the verb ‘exiit’. The elision elongates what is already a long-sounding emphatic verb ‘evicit’ ‘overcame’ where the repetition of the preWx e is an assonantal eVect emphasizing the river’s exit or escape. This second line with three dactyls is Xuent but slow in movement due not only to the elision but to the succession of long vowel sounds and heavy consonants. Then in the third line is a dramatic change of tempo with four rushing dactyls providing a furious release as the river, having broken its banks, pours over the Welds and wreaks its destruction over into the fourth foot of the Wnal line. In contrast to Lucretius, every single word and its placing contributes to the total eVect: ‘ruptis’, ‘spumeus’, ‘gurgite’, ‘moles’, ‘furens’, and ‘cumulo’ are all wonderfully expressive in both sound and meaning equally. On the basis of this comparison it might be said that while Lucretius bubbles over indiscriminately Virgil shows unerring purpose and control. Worth remarking too is the management of time and the use of subordination. Whereas Lucretius uses the present tense throughout, Virgil has started with the perfect tense and switches to the present with dramatic eVect. Lucretius has a subordinate clause beginning with ‘quam’ (his syntax is not easy to follow) but otherwise uses coordinate units of sense. With the participial ablative absolute ‘aggeribus ruptis’ Virgil has a double subordination with three temporal layers. This facilitates much greater clarity of sense and emphasis. Masterly subordination is a mark of Virgil’s style; it is a product of his mind and imagination’s organizing power and results in maximum clarity of expression and a sharply focused vision.

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Dryden’s version is brief but eVective: Not with so Werce a Rage, the foaming Flood Roars, when he Wnds his rapid Course withstood: Bears down the Dams with unresisted sway, And sweeps the Cattle and the cots away. (Dryden, ii. 677–80)

The enjambement of sense in the Wrst couplet is made emphatic by the strong monosyllable ‘Roars’ by which the iambic rhythm is disrupted. In the next line the movement is slow with another emphatic monosyllable at the beginning and six heavily accented syllables in the line as a whole. The Wnal line is rapid and full resounding with a regular movement whose Xuency is underscored by virtue of a subtle collocation of vowel and consonants in assonance and alliteration. The discreet personiWcation gives added force to the commanding ‘sway’. Altogether the management of movement and sound underscore the thematic content with due decorum. The concentrated economy of Dryden is only too apparent if contrasted with Chapman’s rendering of the Homeric original drawn upon by Lucretius and Virgil: But as a Xood increast By violent and sodaine showres let downe from hils, like hils Melted in furie, swells and fomes, and so he overWlls His natural channell that beside both hedge and bridge resignes To his rough conXuence, farre spread, and lustie Xourishing vines Drownd in his outrage: (Chapman: ‘The Fifth Booke’, 96–101)

After this Pope’s equally expansive version may come as a surprise. Thus from high Hills the Torrents swift and strong Deluge whole Fields, and sweep the Trees along, Thro’ ruin’d Moles the rushing Wave resounds, O’erwhelms the Bridge, and bursts the lofty Bounds; The yellow Harvests of the ripen’d Year, And Xatted Vineyards, one sad Waste appear; While Jove descends in sluicy Sheets of Rain, And all the Labours of Mankind are vain. (Pope, v. 116–23)

In his note on the passage, Pope remarks:


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This simile is one of those that draw along with it some foreign Circumstances: we must not often expect from Homer those minute Resemblances in every Branch of a Comparison which are the Pride of modern Similes. If that which one may call the main Action of it, or the principal Point of Likeness, be preserved; he aVects, as to the rest, rather to present the Mind with a great Image, than to Wx it down to an exact one. He is sure to make a Wne Picture in the whole, without drudging on the under Parts; like those free Painters who (one would think) had only made here and there a few very signiWcant Strokes, that give Form and Spirit to all the Piece.

Pope then cites the Virgil passage and pronounces it inferior to this Homeric original. It is therefore doubly surprising in the light of this to Wnd that after having oVered a sympathetic defence of Homeric practice he radically changes the ‘foreign Circumstances’ by substituting a diVerent set of them derived from Virgil, not from Virgil’s imitation of this passage but from the storm in the Georgics that destroys the crops. In Homer the emphasis is on the inability to contain the swollen winter stream. Like Lucretius, Homer has a tendency to repeats words for emphasis (here the dykes and the idea of containment occur twice). Pope eradicates the repetition and emphasizes not the inadequacy of the defences but the unstoppable progress of the torrent with the words ‘Deluge’, ‘sweep’, with ‘rushing Wave’ then ‘O’erwhelms’ and ‘bursts’. The greater movement is followed by greater destruction as the storm comes, like Virgil’s Georgic storm, in the autumn at harvest time. The elegant periphrasis ‘The yellow Harvests of the ripen’d Year’ which may be justiWed as Wlling out Homer’s ŒºÆ æªÆ with a more speciWc image, is Wnely contrasted with the inelegant word ‘Xatted’ imported by Pope here to express the sense of waste. His translation of the rain is a variation on Dryden’s line in the Georgic storm ‘Oft whole sheets descend of sluicy Rain’ (i. 437) which emphasizes the destruction by attributing it directly to the god, as ‘Jove descends’. Finally, Pope tightens up the connection of the simile with the surrounding narrative. The only connection in Homer is in the word ŁF ‘he rushed’ or ‘charged’. In Pope Diomedes ‘thunders’, ‘darts’, ‘pours’, and ‘lightens’. So he has tightened up Homer’s narrative in two respects; the simile is made more congruous with the main narrative and its details are made more internally coherent to express the violence of the attack and the destructiveness of its eVect. Concentration, therefore, in Pope’s version of Homer, does not necessarily involve curtailment. Such concentration, sometimes entailing omission of detail, or expansion and reordering as here in the interests of overall congruity and

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cohesion, is the local expression of a larger neoclassical ideal represented in An Essay on Criticism in the classical Wgure of the dome. In Wit, as Nature, what aVects our Hearts Is not th’ Exactness of peculiar Parts; ’Tis not a Lip, or Eye, we Beauty call, But the joint Force and full Result of all. Thus when we view some well-proportion’d Dome, (The World’s just Wonder, and ev’n thine O Rome!) No single Parts unequally surprise; All comes united to th’ admiring Eyes; No monstrous Height, or Breadth, or Length appear; The Whole at once is Bold, and Regular. (ll. 243–52)

The heightened style Although Pope had restored Homer to his pre-eminence in An Essay on Criticism his enthusiastic praise of Vida there might suggest that he shared some of the traditional objections to Homer’s artistry and thematic content despite his energetic rebuttal of the objections of the moderns in the notes appended to the translation. This indeed proves to be the case as the following translation and comment of a simile also criticized by Vida will attest.

Flies and decorum M ıØø ± Øø ŁÆ ºº, Æ¥ ŒÆa ÆŁe ØØ Mº Œı Ø uæfi K NÆæØfiB; ‹ ªºÆª ¼ªªÆ Ø, (Iliad, ii. 469–71) (Just as many tribes of swarming Xies that buzz about the herdsman’s farmstead in the season of spring, when the milk drenches the pails) Thick as in Spring the Flow’rs adorn the Land, Or Leaves the Trees; or thick as Insects play, The wandring Nation of a Summer’s Day, That drawn by milky Steams, at Ev’ning Hours, In gather’d Swarms surround the Rural Bow’rs; From Pail to Pail with busie Murmur run The gilded Legions glitt’ring in the Sun. (ii. 551–7)


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The Lowness of this Image in Comparison with those that precede it, will naturally shock a modern Critick, and would scarce be forgiven in a Poet of these Times. The utmost a Translator can do is to heighten the Expression, so as to render the Disparity less observable: which is endeavour’d here, and in other Places. If this is done successfully the Reader is so far from being oVended at a low Idea, that it raises his Surprize to Wnd it grown great in the Poet’s Hands, of which we have frequent Instances in Virgil’s Georgics. (on l. 552)

The expression has been duly heightened; elegant periphrases abound. Pope’s ‘nation’ may seem unduly grand but is prompted by Homer’s own word ŁÆ (l. 469) ‘tribes’; otherwise, the embellishment is imported by the translator. The humble ‘farmstead’ has been replaced by ‘Rural Bow’rs’ and any oVensiveness associated with the Xies is submerged in their glittering appearance. The little vignette evokes the beauty of a summer’s evening with insects gently humming and colourfully bathed in evening light. If there is any impropriety in the simile as translated it must rest with the humanizing word ‘run’ at the end (can swarms be said to run?), though the word is so quickly absorbed into the next line, ‘The gilded Legions glitt’ring in the Sun’, where the natural and human worlds are conjoined that any impropriety may escape notice. The insect simile is repeated with a little variation later as the warriors throng around the body of Sarpedon. The variation, an example of Homeric decorum, consists in the removal of the word ŁÆ ‘tribes’ which in its Wgurative associations decorously Wtted the assembling Greeks but with its hint of dignity is less suited to the grim context here. ‰ ‹ ıEÆØ ÆŁfiH Ø æø Ø æØªºÆªÆ ŒÆa ººÆ uæfi K NÆæØfiB; ‹ ªºª ¼ªªÆ Ø. (Iliad, xvi. 641–3) (As in a farmstead Xies buzz about the milk pails in the season of spring when the milk drenches the pails) His long-disputed Corpse the Chiefs inclose, On ev’ry Side the busy Combate grows; Thick, as beneath some Shepherd’s thatch’d Abode, The Pails high-foaming with a milky Flood, The buzzing Flies, a persevering Train, Incessant swarm, and chas’d, return again. (xvi. 777–82)

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Augustan Homer

There is some heightening here: ÆŁfiH (l. 642) becomes a ‘thatch’d Abode’, ‘high-foaming’ is high sounding, the milk is digniWed in a periphrasis, the Xies are a ‘Train’, ‘Incessant’ is a digniWed Latinate word, and the adverbial use of the adjectival form is a poetic licence. Such heightening maintains the decorum of Pope’s epic style. But the glittering insects that do not buzz in Pope’s catalogue (though they do in Homer’s) have here become buzzing Xies; the emphasis falls where it should on perseverance and the predominant image is quite natural and rendered without strain. The integration of the simile illustrates a sensitivity to context; the requirements of epic decorum are not met mechanically.

A pastoral moment: calling a spade a spade in tuneful numbers The heightening style need not always involve the use of elegant periphrases as the following example will show. # Icæ Oªe Ie Œæ ºÆ æı Æ ıa ŒÆd Œı o ÆØ Þ ª fi æ d ŒººÆ ø; Iæ K ÆÆ ººø: ıÐ ææ łØÐ –Æ ÆØ OºıÐÆØ: e tŒÆ ŒÆØ ŒºÆæ Ø æfiø Ø æÆºØÐ; ŁØ ŒÆd e ¼ªÆ: (Iliad, xxi. 257–62) (As a man who guides its Xow leads from a dusky spring a stream of water among his plants and garden plots, a mattock in his hands, and clears away the dams from the channel, and as it Xows all the pebbles beneath are swept along, and it glides swiftly onward with murmuring sound down a sloping place and outstrips even him who guides it) So when a Peasant to his Garden brings Soft Rills of Water from the bubbling Springs, And calls the Floods from high, to bless his Bow’rs And feed with pregnant streams the Plants and Flow’rs; Soon as he clears whate’er their passage staid, And marks the future current with his Spade, Swift o’er the rolling Pebbles, down the Hills Louder and louder purl the falling Rills, Before him scatt’ring, they prevent his pains, And shine in mazy Wand’rings o’er the Plains. (xxi. 289–98)

Pope’s diction is very precisely chosen for a speciWc eVect that he highlights in his note: ‘The changing of the Character is very beautiful: No


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Poet ever knew, like Homer, to pass from the vehement and the nervous, to the gentle and agreeable’; it is placed towards the end of the furious encounter of Achilles with the river-god Scamander. It is, in the event, very simple and straightforward in sound and sense. The word ‘prevent’ has its regular primary meaning still in use in Pope’s time, ‘anticipate’ or ‘go beforehand’, a meaning now obsolete but not then an obscure Latinism. Both ‘Rills’ and ‘purl’ are the staple of eighteenth-century poetic diction but are beautifully deployed here for their liquid sound. There is a simple Xuency about the line in which the spade occurs at the centre of the simile; a gently bubbling Xuency is indeed the eVect achieved by the varied movement and succession of present participles deployed at diVerent points in the Wnal four lines. The ‘mazy Wand’rings’ of the Wnal line may perhaps be regarded as a periphrasis but is decorously expressive in its sound of the thing being described. There is a heightening of the Homeric original but it is achieved here not by elevated diction but simply by developing and extending the representation of the sound and increasingly rapid movement of the water. At the end of his note on the simile, Pope cites Virgil’s imitation of the passage in his Wrst Georgic; he enriched his own version by taking phrases from Dryden’s. deinde satis Xuvium inducit rivosque sequentis et, cum exustus ager morientibus aestuat herbis, ecce supercilio clivosi tramitis undam elicit? illa cadens raucum per levia murmur saxa ciet scatebrisque arentia temperat arva. (Georgic, i. 106–10) (next brings to his crops the rills of the stream he guides, and when the scorched land swelters, the green blades dying, lo! from the brow of the hillside channel draws out the water? This, as it falls, wakes a hoarse murmur amid the smooth stones, and with its gushing streams slakes the thirsty Welds.) And call the Floods from high, to rush amain With pregnant Streams, to swell the teeming Grain. Then when the Wery Suns too Wercely play, And shrivell’d Herbs on with’ring Stems decay, The wary Ploughman, on the Mountain’s Brow, Undams his Watry Stores, huge Torrents Xow; And, ratling down the Rocks, large moisture yield, Temp’ring the thirsty fever of the Field: (Georgic, i. 155–62)

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But how diVerent are the sound eVects in Dryden in a passage which highlights the extremes of the drought with strong metaphors. Pope’s language, by contrast, is more literally employed and the sound eVects deliberately more gentle. It is a mistake to imagine that the literary echoes in Pope necessarily detract from immediacy of eVect. Poetical expression includes sound as well as meaning. ‘Musick’, says Dryden, ‘is inarticulate Poesie’;45 among the excellencies of Pope, therefore, must be mentioned the melody of his metre. By perusing the works of Dryden he discovered the most perfect fabrick of English verse, and habituated himself to that only which he found the best; in consequence of which restraint his poetry has been censured as too uniformly musical, and as glutting the ear with unvaried sweetness. I suspect this to be the cant of those who judge by principles rather than perception; and who would even themselves have less pleasure in his works if he had tried to relieve attention by studied discords, or aVected to break his lines and vary his pauses.46

Johnson’s editor, George Birkbeck Hill, glosses ‘musical’ here with three quotations from Pope’s conversations with Spence: ‘The great rule of verse is to be musical’; ‘There is this diVerence, among others, between soft and sweet verses; that the former may be very eVeminate, whereas the latter are not so at all’; ‘There is a sweetness that is the distinguishing character of pastoral versiWcation. The fourth and Wfth syllables, and the last but two, are chieXy to be minded; and one must tune each line over in one’s head to try whether they go right or not.’47 In this passage the fourth syllable in all the lines is naturally accented on a pivotal word in the evolving sense: ‘Peasant’, ‘Water’, ‘Flood’, ‘pregnant’, ‘clears’, ‘future’, ‘rolling’, ‘louder’, scatt’ring’, ‘mazy’. There are no pauses after the fourth syllable but a run on to the Wfth, on which, though the accentuation is naturally weaker in every case, the voice does not drop signiWcantly, thus ensuring smoothness in the rhythm. In the accented eighth syllable, the accent falls naturally in the verse where it would be expected in prose: ‘Garden’, ‘bubbling’, ‘bless’, ‘Plants’, ‘passage’, ‘with’, ‘down, ‘falling’, ‘preveńt’, ‘o’er’. In Dryden’s Georgic passage the fourth and eighth syllables are heavily accented in all but one case (the eighth of the Wnal line) but as a more dynamic action is being represented, there are more varied pauses throughout. 45 In ‘Preface to Tyrannic Love’ (1670), ibid. x. 109. 46 Johnson, Lives, iii. 148. 47 Joseph Spence, Observations Anecdotes and Characters of Books and Men, ed. James Osborn (Oxford: OUP, 1966), i. 174 (no. 397), 176 (nos. 405, 402).


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Within the overall verbal harmony, there is a remarkable variety. Pope’s pastoral moment follows a passage of furious action in which Achilles and the river god Scamander are locked in combat: Now bursting on his Head with thund’ring Sound, The falling Deluge whelms the Hero round: His loaded Shield bends to the rushing tide; His Feet, upborn, scarce the strong Flood divide, Slidd’ring, and stagg’ring. On the Border stood A spreading Elm, that overhung the Flood; He seiz’d a bending Bough, his Steps to stay; The Plant uprooted to his Weight gave way, Heaving the Bank, and undermining all; Loud Xash the Waters to the rushing Fall Of the thick Foliage. The large Trunk display’d Bridg’d the rough Flood across: The Hero stay’d On this his Weight, and rais’d upon his hand, Leap’d from the Chanel, and regain’d the Land. Then blacken’d the wild Waves; the Murmur rose; The God pursues, a huger Billow throws, And bursts the Bank, ambitious to destroy The Man whose Fury is the Fate of Troy. (xxi. 263–80)

Juxtaposition of the two passages, identiWed by Pope in his note as ‘the vehement and the nervous’ and ‘the gentle and the agreeable’ illustrates an aspect of Pope’s artistry that, following Dryden, he had been concerned to cultivate from the beginning of his poetic career. It is not enough that nothing oVends the Ear, that the Verse be (as the French call it) Coulante; but a good Poet will adapt the very Sounds, as well as the Words to the things he treats of. So that there is (if one may express it so) a Style of Sound; As in describing a gliding stream the Numbers shou’d run easy & Xowing, in describing a rough Torrent or Deluge, sonorous & swelling, & so of the rest. This is evident everywhere in Homer and Virgill, and nowhere else that I know to any observable degree.48 . . . [Thi]s, I think, is what very few observe in Practise and is undoubtedly of wonderful force in imprinting the Image on the Reader: We have One excellent Example of this in our Language, Mr Dryden’s Ode on St. Cecily’s day, intitled Alexanders Feast, or the Power of Musick. 48 Pope here cites examples from Vida’s De Arte Poetica: To Henry Cromwell, 25 Nov. 1710: The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn, 5 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 1956), i. 108.

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Holy garbage The simplicity of Homeric manners, particularly as they related to customs and practices of an archaic social order alien to the more enlightened times of the Renaissance, had traditionally caused problems for readers and translators alike. This was acutely highlighted in Pope’s time in the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns. Pope’s general disagreement with the ˇæÆÆ49 of Homer’s stoutest defender, the French translator Madame Dacier who idealized Homeric simplicity which she saw as parallel to the patriarchal world of the Old Testament, is well documented.50 Some Homeric matter had always presented particular diYculty: witness the squeamishness of the Earl of Roscommon in An Essay on Translated Verse of 1685. But foul Descriptions are OVensive still, Either for being Like, or being Ill. For who, without a Qualm, hath ever lookt, On Holy Garbage, tho by Homer cookt? Whose Rayling Hero’s, and whose wounded Gods, Make some suspect, He snores, as well as Nods. (pp. 9–10)

Roscommon’s meaning is later explained by Charles Gildon in 1721: ‘By foul descriptions, I Wnd that his Lordship means the descriptions of the sacriWces of the Ilias, etc, . . . tho’ the holy garbage might nauseate a hero in a French romance, who do nothing but love and Wght, yet those in Homer were eating and drinking, as well as Wghting heroes.’51 The French translator de la Valterie had omitted such details in his prose translation of 1681.52 When Pope came to translate the sacriWce made by the Greeks to appease the wrath of the angry Apollo, he had before him the earlier version of Dryden, of which he was critical in his notes (because he believed Dryden had mistaken the ‘antiquities’). The two versions make an instructive contrast. 49 Pope’s own word for Madam Dacier’s enthusiasm in his note at xvi. 1032. 50 See Howard D. Weinbrot, ‘ ‘‘What Must the World Think of Me’’ Pope, Madame Dacier, and Homer: The Anatomy of a quarrel’ in Howard D. Weinbrot, Peter J. Schakel, and Stephen E. Karian (eds.), Eighteenth-Century Contexts: Historical Inquiries in Honor of Phillip Harth (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), 183–206. 51 Charles Gildon, The Laws of Poetry . . . Explain’d and Illustrated (London: W. HinchliVe & J. Walthoe, 1721), 303–4. 52 de la Valterie, L’Iliade d’Home`re, 2 vols. (Paris: C. Barbin, 1681).


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Now when the solemn Rites of Pray’r were past, Their salted Cakes on crackling Flames they cast. Then, turning back, the SacriWce they sped: The fatted Oxen slew, and Xea’d the Dead, Chop’d oV their nervous Thighs, and next prepar’d T’involve the lean in Cauls, and mend with Lard. Sweet-breads and Collops, were with Skewers prick’d About the Sides; imbibing what they deck’d. The Priest with holy Hands was seen to tine The cloven Wood, and pour the ruddy Wine. The Youth approach’d the Fire, and as it burn’d On Wve sharp Broachers rank’d, the Roast they turn’d; These Morsels stay’d their Stomachs; then the rest They cut in Legs and Fillets for the Feast; Which drawn and serv’d, their Hunger they appease With sav’ry Meat, and set their Minds at ease. Now when the rage of Eating was repell’d, The Boys with generous Wine the Goblets Wll’d. The Wrst Libations to the Gods they pour: And then with Songs indulge the Genial Hour, Holy Debauch! Till Day to Night they bring, With Hymns and Paeans to the Bowyer King. At Sun-set to their Ship they make return, And snore secure on Decks, till rosy Morn. (ll. 627–50)53

Dryden’s rendering, whatever its ‘accuracy’, is energetically engaged in the physical business of the sacriWce and the meal. As the Greeks ‘indulge the Genial Hour’, there is no sense of strain in the translation. Pope’s attitude is only too clear in his note on the Greek: ‘It is not made to shine in Poetry: All that can be done is to give it Numbers, and endeavour to set the Particulars in a distinct View. But if we take it in another Light, and as a Piece of Learning, it is valuable for being the most exact Account of the ancient SacriWces any where left us.’54 His version diVers markedly from Dryden’s, not merely in any interpretation of the ‘antiquities’ but in the decorum of its pitch and style. And now the Greeks their Hecatomb prepare; Between their Horns the salted Barley threw,

53 ‘The First Book of Homer’s Ilias’, in Fables (1700), in Dryden, Works, vii. 54 Pope’s note on the sacriWce at l. 600 of his translation.

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Augustan Homer And with their Heads to Heav’n the Victims slew; The Limbs, they sever from th’inclosing Hide; The Thighs, selected to the Gods, divide: On these, in double Cauls involv’d with Art, The choicest Morsels lay from ev’ry Part. The Priest himself before his Altar stands, And burns the OV’ring with his holy Hands, Pours the black Wine, and sees the Xames aspire; The Youth with Instruments surround the Fire: The Thighs thus sacriWc’d, and Entrails drest, Th’ Assistants part, transWx, and roast the rest: Then spread the Tables, and Repast prepare, Each takes his Seat, and each receives his Share. Now when the Rage of Hunger was represt, With pure Libations they conclude the Feast; The Youths with Wine the copious Goblets crown’d, And pleas’d, dispense the Xowing Bowls around. With Hymns Divine the joyous Banquet ends, The Paeans lengthen’d ’till the Suns descends: The Greeks restor’d the grateful Notes prolong; Apollo listens, and approves the Song. (ll. 599–621)

Pope’s sacriWce is more nearly conceived as ‘a Piece of Learning’, an ordered ritual that earns Apollo’s approval. Dryden is much more speciWc about the ‘particularities’. In Dryden the thighs are ‘nervous’; Pope instructs us that they were ‘selected to the Gods’. He omits mention of one of the more ‘disgustful’ details, the Œ , the fat caul in which the thighs are wrapped, Dryden’s ‘lard’; instead the cauls are ‘involv’d with Art’. In Dryden the youths turn the meat on Wve sharp broachers, Pope makes no attempt to render the ºÆ (Wvepronged forks) but weakly generalizes: ‘The Youths with Instruments surround the Fire’. Dryden’s Xames physically ‘crackle’, Pope’s Wguratively ‘aspire’. In Pope’s version the entrails are ‘drest’, whereas Homer says quite directly that they were eaten, KÆ , as they are in Chapman. Pope has not rendered the eating of the entrails either despite claiming to be more accurate about the antiquities of the passage than Dryden. Dryden was more interested in the meal than the sacriWce, even though he had before him the more literal versions of Ogilby and Hobbes, in which the details are fully rendered and explained. The sacriWce comes Wrst, for Apollo is a power to be appeased, but is closely followed by the merry round in which respect for Apollo and mortal


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pleasure are inextricably confused. In the actual meal, Pope’s emphasis is on the orderly preparation, Dryden’s on the appeasing of hunger. Typical is the contrast between Pope’s general and elegant ‘Repast’ and Dryden’s speciWc and appetizing ‘sav’ry Meat’. Pope’s is a ‘joyous banquet’ but his feast very deWnitely begins and ends in piety. Dryden, on the other hand, has taken great liberties with this passage: his feast becomes a ‘Holy Debauch’ after which the participants, well indulged, ‘snore secure on Decks, till rosy Morn’, a detail not in Homer and inconceivable in Pope. This, together with the ‘Skewers’, ‘cloven Wood’, and the ‘Broachers’, seems to have derived from a reading of the most earthy version of Homer in his century James Scudamore’s Homer a` la Mode.55 The snore is a comic touch; otherwise he has taken common words from the kitchen to render common things. From the overall tone of Dryden’s version emerges the conviction that Homer’s heroes ‘were eating and drinking as well as Wghting heroes’. The characterization of Homer that he makes in comparison with Virgil in his ‘Preface to the Fables’, is pertinent here: ‘The chief Talent of Virgil was Propriety of Thoughts, and Ornament of Words: Homer was rapid in his Thoughts, and took all the Liberties both of Numbers, and of Expressions, which his Language, and the Age in which he liv’d allow’d him.’56 These liberties, certainly in Dryden if not in Homer, were not always congenial to Pope whose sense of epic dignity doubtless required the sense of decorum that Dryden himself had declared necessary in a heroic poem in his earlier ‘Dedication of the Æneis’ where he had repeated the commonplace that ‘even the least portions’ of heroic poems ‘must be of the Epick kind; all things must be Grave, Majestical and Sublime’57 (there is no snoring in Virgil).

Divine comedy The gravest threat to epic decorum in Homer, however, comes from the scandalous behaviour of his fully anthropomorphic gods (also alluded to by Roscommon58) which had caused oVence from Plato onwards. As he came to translate the quarrel scene on Olympus in the opening book, Pope had before him the animated version of Dryden which again 55 Dryden’s ‘Skew’rs’, ‘cloven Wood’, ‘Broachers’, and the additional ‘Snore’ seem to have been derived from Scudamore; see Homer a` la Mode (Oxford: R. Davis, 1664), 55. 56 Dryden, Works, vii. 28. 57 Ibid. v. 267. 58 Of Homer Roscommon writes: ‘Whose Rayling Hero’s and whose wounded Gods j Make some suspect, He Snores as well as Nods’, Essay on Translated Verse, p. 10.

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provides an instructive contrast with his own. Dryden’s Juno, the wife who suspects the motives of her amorous husband, is richly sarcastic in her interrogation of Jove, who is forced to play the role of heavy-handed husband in reply. Author of Ills, and close Contriver Jove, Which of thy Dames, what Prostitute of Love, 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 is a Marriage-Vow, and Jove’s own Faith is such. 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 pow’r to regulate her Husband’s Life: Counsel she may; and I will give thy Ear The Knowledge Wrst, of what is Wt to hear. What I transact with others, or alone, Beware to learn; nor press too near the Throne. (ll. 725–40)

Pope is clear-sighted and straightforward about the alternative he oVers. The gods and goddesses being describ’d with all the Desires and Pleasures, the Passions and Humours of mankind, the Commentators have taken a Licence from thence to draw not only moral Observations, but also Satyrical ReXections out of this part of the Poet. . . . Mr. Dryden has translated all this with the utmost Severity upon the Ladies, and spirited the whole with satirical Additions of his own. But Madam Dacier . . . seems willing to give the whole Passage a more important Turn, and incline us to think that Homer design’d to represent the Folly and Danger of prying into the Secrets of Providence. ’Tis thrown into that Light in this Translation, not only as it is more noble and instructive in general, but as it is more respectful to the Ladies in particular.59

In Pope’s more digniWed version, the insinuation about marital inWdelity (which does have its origin in Homer, even if Dryden has marked it up) is wholly suppressed : Say, artful Manager of Heav’n (she cries) Who now partakes the Secrets of the Skies? Thy Juno knows not the Decrees of Fate, 59 His note on l. 698.


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In vain, the Partner of Imperial State. What fav’rite Goddess then those Cares divides, Which Jove in Prudence from his consort hides? To this the Thund’rer: Seek not thou to Wnd The sacred Counsels of Almighty Mind: Involv’d in Darkness lies the great Decree, Nor can the Depths of Fate be pierc’d by thee. What Wts thy Knowledge, thou the Wrst shall know; The Wrst of Gods above and Men below: But thou, nor they, shall search the Thoughts that roll Deep in the close Recesses of my Soul. (ll. 698–711)

While adopting Madame Dacier’s ‘more noble and instructive’ reading, Pope admits that Dryden’s interpretation was traditional even if he was giving added emphasis to the comedy. Madame Dacier oVered a traditional way out of a traditional dilemma (allegory), for Pope correctly observes that all the commentators were in agreement about the satirical nature of this part of the poem, even if they communicate a feeling of being let down by the lack of high seriousness. It was partly for such a conception of the gods that Plato had banished Homer from his ideal Republic, that Longinus had found him guilty of indecorum, and that some of the early Church Fathers had accused the poet of impiety.60 It may be thought that this is a fault. It will certainly seem so to modern readers who are less burdened with a sense of the scandal of Homer’s gods. In the context of what he has achieved as a whole, however, the fault is not generally disabling in the manner of some fundamental fault in poetic workmanship and style. On Homer’s faults, Pope takes the Longinian view that a genius with faults is to be preferred to a faultless mediocrity.61 We might apply the same reasoning to his translator. And it is not as if the translator is consistent in the fault for his version of the long episode featuring the deception of Jupiter is not shackled by embarrassment. Often, too, the gods of Pope’s Homer are magniWcent in their presence.

Divine splendour: rich various artiWce The heightening style into which Pope recasts Homer involves, it has been shown, a concentration in which some particularities are frequently 60 Longinus, On the Sublime, ix. 7; The Exhortation to the Greeks, 28 V., 36, 49, 51 V. in Clement of Alexandria, trans. G. W. Butterworth (London: Heinemann, 1919). 61 Longinus, On the Sublime, xxxiii, xxxvi. 1–2; see Pope’s note on Iliad, xvi. 1032.

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omitted and a tightening up of Homer’s looser narrative style with some reordering and expansion for emphasis. The result is often an elaborate sophistication of the simpler Greek, as the translator aims to do justice in English to the grand style of the original. The Homeric description of Athene disrobing and donning the aegis is in the grand style and it is justly represented by Pope in his grandest style, thrown into sharp relief in comparison with the literal version. Pallas disrobes; her radiant Veil unty’d, With Flow’rs adorn’d, with Art diversify’d, (The labour’d Veil her heav’nly Fingers wove) Flows on the Pavement of the Court of Jove, Now Heav’n’s dread Arms her mighty Limbs invest, Jove’s Cuirass blazes on her ample Breast; Decked in sad Triumph for the mournful Field, O’er her broad Shoulders hangs his horrid Shield, Dire, black, tremendous! Round the Margin roll’d, A Fringe of Serpents hissing guards the Gold: Here all the Terrors of grim War appear, Here rages Force, here tremble Flight and Fear, Here storm’d Contention, and here Fury frown’d; And the dire Orb portentous Gorgon crown’d. (v. 904–17) But Athene, daughter of Jove who bears the aegis, let fall on her father’s Xoor her soft robe, richly embroidered, that she herself had fashioned, and put on the tunic of Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, and arrayed herself in armour for tearful war. Around her shoulders she Xung the tasselled aegis, fraught with terror, all around which Rout is set as a crown, and on it is Strife, on it Valour, and on it Assault, that makes the blood run cold, and on it is the Gorgon, head of the terrible monster, terrible and awful, a portent of Zeus who bears the aegis. (v. 733–42)

The translation has a preponderance of digniWed Latinate words. Athene’s robe, in the Greek ØŒº, is ‘made in various colours’; in English, it is ‘laboured’ and ‘with Art diversiWed’. In The Temple of Fame, published by Pope in 1713, there is a golden column upon which the image of Virgil stands: Finish’d the whole, and labour’d ev’ry Part, With patient Touches of unweary’d Art. (ll. 197–8)62 62 Pope, Twickenham Edition, ii. 256.


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The statue is worked at with slow patience; the process may be wearying but the result is ‘unwearied art’. The expression here is subtle and condensed and is an appropriate tribute to a poet who has habitually been praised, like Pope, for his cultivated artistry. In the English description of the robe and shield there is a comparable elaboration which is not simply a matter of expansion and addition (highlighted words and phrases) but of a subtle metamorphosis whereby the original is adorned with a succession of sophisticated touches (marked by phrases in bold) that both diversify the original and, paradoxically, make it concentrated in eVect. The goddess is substantially embodied from the beginning with a subliminal feminine suggestiveness in ‘disrobes’ and ‘untied’, and in the description of the veil ‘With Flow’rs adorn’d’, while ‘mighty Limbs’, ‘ample Breast’, and ‘broad Shoulders’ directly suggest the powerful physical Wgure of the warrior goddess. This Wgure is made prominently regal by the following cluster of words: ‘radiant’, ‘Court’, ‘invest’, ‘blazes’, ‘decked’, ‘Gold’, ‘Orb’, ‘crown’d’. Of all this only ‘shoulders’ and ‘crown’d’ come directly from the Greek. There are various sophistications that have an enhancing eVect. The choice of ‘invest’ is greatly apt given its associations with clothing and with the formal assumption of power. In putting on the aegis, the goddess is clothed in power. There is almost an oxymoron in ‘sad Triumph’, underscoring and complicating Homer’s phrase º ÆŒæıÆ (v. 737). Given that the aegis is fringed, ‘horrid’ (literally ‘bristling’ from the Latin) is highly apt and given the shape of the shield ‘round the Margin roll’d’ is doubly apt, reXecting the sinuosity of snakes as well as the shape of the shield. The line featuring the snakes, ‘A Fringe of Serpents hissing guards the Gold’, is a most felicitous addition taken from Virgil’s description of the aegis at Aeneid, viii. 435. The ‘Fringe’, associated with hair and therefore with movement, starts the animation (putting us in mind of the usual image of the Gorgon’s tasselled shield) continued in ‘hissing’ where the inversion of normal word order gives the adjective an adverbial function with ‘guards’. The guarding of the gold by serpents (like the dragons that guard the golden apples of the Hesperides) is an archetypal mythical motif, sophisticated in the restrained wit of its application to the precious metal from which the shield is made. The crowning sophistication results from the reordering of the Greek at the end. The ‘Terrors of grim War’ are manifest not only in the abstracts as in Homer but in the additional action of the verbs: ‘rages’, ‘tremble’, ‘storm’d’, ‘frown’d’. Since rage produces fear, ‘Force’ comes Wrst in Pope. But the major reordering is the transference

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of ‘crown’d’ from the beginning of the abstracts to the end where it provides a climactic image in which the Gorgon is highlighted at the centre of the ‘orb’ of the shield. In this Wnal line the word order and rhythm excellently underscore the sense. The Latinate ‘portentous’, Homer’s æÆ (l. 742), is a portentous-sounding word as it straddles the ‘dire Orb’ and the ‘Gorgon’ both of which it modiWes. In his note on this passage, Pope paraphrases the observation of Homer’s Byzantine commentator Eustathius ‘that the Ancients mark’d this Place with a Star, to distinguish it as one of those that were perfectly admirable. Indeed there is a Greatness and Sublimity in the whole Passage, which is astonishing and superior to any Imagination but that of Homer, nor is there any that might better give occasion for that celebrated Saying, that he was the only Man who had seen the Forms of the Gods, or the only Man who had shewn them.’63

The master-craftsman The most extended and elaborate showpiece of the artist’s craft in Homer is the description of the great shield made for Achilles by Vulcan, divine artist and blacksmith. The description celebrates the creative talent of the god as he makes the most of his various metals that constitute his raw materials to highlight his images and bring them to life. Then Wrst he form’d th’ immense and solid Shield; Rich, various ArtiWce emblaz’d the Field; Its utmost Verge a threefold Circle bound; A silver Chain suspends the massy Round, Five ample Plates the broad Expanse compose, And god-like Labours on the Surface rose. There shone the Image of the Master Mind: There Earth, there Heav’n, there Ocean he design’d; Th’ unweary’d Sun, the Moon compleatly round, The starry Lights that Heav’n’s high Convex crown’d; (xviii. 551–60)

Here is the literal version of Richard Lattimore for contrast. First of all he forged a shield that was huge and heavy, elaborating it about, and threw around it a shining triple rim that glittered, and the shield strap was cast of silver. 63 Pope’s note on l. 904.


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There were Wve folds composing the shield itself, and upon it he elaborated many things in his skill and craftsmanship. He made the earth upon it, and the sky, and the sea’s water, and the tireless sun, and the moon waxing into her fullness and on it all the constellations that festoon the heavens. (xviii. 478–85)

There are several words relating to the process of the shield’s manufacture: in Pope ‘form’d’, ‘emblaz’d’, ‘Labours’ rising on ‘the Surface’, and ‘design’d’. Additionally these words express the artistry of the god directly alluded to in ‘ArtiWce’ and ‘Image’ and indirectly supported by ‘compose’. There are also clusters of words that have to do with the size and shape of the shield. It is ‘solid and immense’; its dimensions are further suggested in ‘its utmost Verge’, ‘massy’, ‘ample’, and ‘broad Expanse’. Its shape is said to be circular in the third line; circularity is picked up in ‘massy Round’, ‘compleatly Round’, and Wnally in ‘Heav’n’s high Convex crown’d’. There is no mistaking the physicality of the shield as a large round solid object. The most aptly striking word in Pope is the digniWed ‘emblaz’d’: there is Wre in this which is highly appropriate given that the blacksmith is at his forge. There is also light in it, which is picked up in ‘shone’ and ‘starry Lights’. There are two entries for ‘emblaze’ in the OED, the Wrst gives the meaning ‘to illuminate’ or ‘to cause to glow’. The second associates the word with heraldry and includes the meanings ‘to inscribe conspicuously’ and ‘to make resplendent’. In this manifestation the word is associated with chivalry, magniWcence, and power; above all, it has to do with art and fame. All these associations are appropriate for the context here and these associations are picked up in various interlocking clusters as described. What is striking about Pope’s version is its remarkable concentration and cohesion. The literal version produces many words of manufacture but is conspicuously less rich in other ways. Comparison with Chapman’s version shows that Pope took hints from his predecessor (borrowings in bold): And Wrst he forg’d a strong and spacious shield Adornd with twenty severall hewes; about whose verge he beate A ring, three-fold and radiant, and on the backe he set A silver handle; Wve-fold were the equall lines he drew About the whole circumference, in which his hand did shew (Directed with a knowing mind) a rare varietie.

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For in it he presented earth, in it, the sea and skie, In it, the never-wearied Sunne, the Moone exactly round And all the starres with which the browes of ample heaven are crownd. (xviii. 430–8)

Where twenty comes from and quite how it is be imagined that the shield has as many as ‘twenty. . . hewes’, it is diYcult to say. Otherwise Chapman’s is a good version which gives a clear impression of the artisan-god at work, hammering at his forge, measuring and planning. The superior and more reWned artiWce of Pope’s god is easily apparent. The shining clarity of his imagery and its mutual reinforcement, its magniWcence and weight are such as to restore to the word ‘artiWce’ the more positive sense in which the word was received prior to the nineteenth century. There follow descriptions of the various scenes depicted on the shield. They are not realistic representations of a static engraving but are conveyed energetically as if they are happening before our eyes. They comprise: two cities, one at peace, one at war, images of country life, the ploughed Weld, the vineyard, a herd of cattle attacked by a lion, a sheepfold, and Wnally the sprightly dance of youths and maidens gay. Two examples from Pope’s version may suggest something of the way in which the translation represents the shield’s ‘rich, various ArtiWce’. In the city at war there is a lengthy description of a battle before a besieged city. It concludes as follows. There Tumult, there Contention stood confest; One rear’d a Dagger at a Captive’s Breast, One held a living Foe, that freshly bled With new-made Wounds; another dragg’d a dead; Now here, now there, the Carcasses they tore; Fate stalk’d amidst them, grim with human Gore. And the whole War came out, and met the Eye; And each bold Figure seem’d to live or die. (xviii. 619–26) And Hate was there with Confusion among them, and Death the destructive; she was holding a live man with a new wound, and another one unhurt, and dragged a dead man by the feet through the carnage. The clothing on the men’s shoulders showed strong red with the men’s blood. All closed together like living men and fought with each other and dragged away from each other the corpses of those who had fallen. (xviii. 535–60)


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Pope has changed and reorganized the Homeric material. The general impression made by the abstracts Hate, Confusion, and Death (Tumult, Contention, and Fate in Pope) frames the particular images of the Wghting, enhanced by the striking image of the raised dagger (imported by Pope). The abstracts are personiWed in both the original and the translation but the grimly stalking Fate provides a dramatic climax in Pope. The abstract highlights but does not replace particularization, and the abstract itself provides a chilling physical image. What the Homeric bard ultimately appreciates most is the way in which his artist-god has brought the scene to life; the Wghters all closed together ‘like living men’. The real climax of the scene in the translation is precisely this perception dramatically represented in the richly inspired concluding couplet in which the literal and the Wgurative, and the general and the particular, are mutually combined. Following after the stalking Fate, the whole war coming out is partly another abstract encapsulating all the Wghting that has gone before but also suggesting a climax as the war becomes total and all-consuming. But with ‘met the Eye’, we have the inescapable visual impact made by the scene which is so impressive in its depicted energy that it vividly acts upon the eye which is actively drawn to it and not merely a passive recipient. In the Wnal line the bold Wgures are simultaneously the audacious Wghting men and the Wgures in bold relief on the shield. The Wnal couplet Wnds its climax in the god’s artistry and highlights his highlighting in a sophisticated way that transcends the simplicity of the original. Yet the Wnal line in an assured and straightforward way pays a simple tribute to the eVectiveness of the artistic illusion. Contrasting to this dynamic picture of the confused tumult of war is the beautiful idyll represented in the vineyard and the song and dance of the grape-pickers: Next, ripe in yellow Gold, a Vineyard shines, Bent with the pond’rous Harvest of its Vines; A deeper Dye the dangling Clusters show, And curl’d on silver Props, in order glow: A darker Metal mixt, intrench’d the Place, And Pales of glitt’ring Tin th’ Enclosure grace. To this, one Pathway gently winding leads, Where march a Train with Baskets on their Heads, (Fair Maids, and blooming Youths) that smiling bear The purple Product of th’ Autumnal Year. To these a Youth awakes with warbling Strings,

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Augustan Homer Whose tender Lay the Fate of Linus sings; In measur’d Dance behind him move the Train, Tune soft the Voice, and answer to the Strain. (xviii. 651–64)

He made on it a great vineyard heavy with clusters, lovely and in gold, but the grapes upon it were darkened and the vines themselves stood out through poles of silver. About them he made a Weld-ditch of dark metal, and drove all around this a fence of tin; and there was only one path to the vineyard, and along it ran the grape bearers for the vineyard’s stripping. Young girls and young men, in all their light-hearted innocence, carried the kind sweet fruit away in their woven baskets, and in their midst a youth with a singing lyre played charmingly upon it for them, and sang the beautiful song for Linos in a light voice, and they followed him, and with singing and whistling and light dance-steps of their feet kept time to the music. (xviii. 561–72)

In the opening sequence the rhyme words ‘shines’, ‘show’, ‘glow’, and grace’, none of which is a translation of anything in the Greek, point up a bright and graceful clarity, with the Wnal emphasis on grace. A graceful dignity was the hallmark of Sarpedon’s rhetoric and it is the governing aesthetic of this description. As this is a description of a work of art representing reality rather than a direct representation of reality itself, deliberate artiWce is wholly decorous. This is indeed a more arty version of the vineyard than Pope’s earlier version in the Gardens of Alcinous, itself idealized. In both he visualizes ranks of vines in order, though here they ‘glow’ which evokes both the brightness of the ripe grapes in the sun and their glittering appearance against the ‘yellow gold’ of the shield where they have been highlighted by a ‘deeper dye’. Other words not from the original, ‘Bent’, ‘pond’rous’, ‘dangling’, and ‘curl’d’, draw attention to the fulsome shape of the clusters highlighted on the shield. The four diVerent metals, gold, silver, tin, and something darker are all in Homer but the emphatically placed ‘mixt’ (not in the Greek) keeps the craftsmanship of the god before our eyes, further evident in the Wne sophistication of ‘intrench’d’ which both refers to the furrow made by the artist-god’s engraving and represents the Weld-ditch of Homer. ‘Intrench’d’ is a more digniWed word than the common ditch but its double usage here shows Pope’s heightening style to its best advantage. There is perhaps some heightening too in ‘Pales’ by which the more


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common fence (present in the Gardens of Alcinous) is avoided but, intriguingly, there is a citation in Johnson’s Dictionary suggesting that, in a world that knew more about shields and heraldry than we do, it might be an appropriately precise choice in context: ‘The pale is the third and middle part of the scutcheon, being derived from the chief to the base, or nether part of the scutcheon, with two lines.’ The highlighting of the ripe clusters of grapes is further marked in Pope’s version by the climactic line ‘The purple Product of th’ Autumnal Year’ where ‘Product’ echoes to ‘Harvest’ in the opening line. In the depiction of the ‘natural’ world on the shield there is greater order in Pope with various interlocking verbal clusters that make his style cohesive and rich but this is not a generalized order achieved at the expense of the particular; rather the poet’s selection, like that of the artist-god, from the material provided by his original can simply be regarded as a means whereby essential features of the original are given clear and emphatic expression. In the human sphere, the greater formality of Pope’s picture, and of the art of which that picture is emblematic, is apparent in the more formal ‘March’ of the grape-pickers who are in a ‘Train’. There is some loss of spontaneity here. Yet the march is accounted for by the repositioning of the baskets onto their heads. The dance too is ‘measured’ and the whistling (which is allowed, actually imported, in the case of the Cyclops) is dispensed with. In Homer the young people are IÆºa æ (l. 567) which is glossed as ‘frisking’ or ‘lighthearted’. In Pope they behave with more dignity, rather like the characters in his pastorals and the diction is more digniWed accordingly: they ‘answer to the Strain’. Yet the representation of their behaviour Wts in with the graceful dignity which has gone before and the whole passage is entirely self-consistent. The measured lines in which the poet’s voice is softer are in marked contrast to the dynamic lines describing the tumult of war and serve to illustrate the variety of the rich artiWce that is emblazoned on the divinely crafted shield.

The final polish: the labour of the file64 In his long account of the growth of the Homer translation in the ‘Life of Pope’,65 Dr Johnson gives extracts from a manuscript containing 64 The phrase is a translation of the Latin ‘limae labor’ to be found in Horace’s Ars Poetica, 291. 65 Johnson, Lives, iii. 112–26; the nightpiece is quoted with variants at pp. 124–5.

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Pope’s revisions of the close of Book viii of his translation of the Iliad


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earlier versions of several passages of the Iliad, one of which is the celebrated ‘nightpiece’ that has become one of the most well-known passages from the poem as it became the subject of discussion, usually hostile to Pope, among the Romantic poets and in Matthew Arnold’s Lectures on Translating Homer.66 Comparison of the earlier lines with the Wnished product can serve to illuminate both the poetical method and character of Pope’s artistry. The Trojan warriors have beaten back the Greeks to their fortiWcations before the ships and, as night falls, they light their camp Wres on the Trojan plain. At this point Homer introduces a Wve-line simile, the bare bones of which can be seen in the literal version by Richmond Lattimore: As when in the sky the stars about the moon’s shining are seen in all their glory, when the air has fallen to stillness, and all the high places of the hills are clear, and the shoulders out-jutting, and the deep ravines, as endless bright air spills from the heavens and all the stars are seen, to make glad the heart of the shepherd. (viii. 555–9)

The literal version does not necessarily suggest what Pope saw in the simile; for this we may Wrst go to the appreciative prose description in the notes that accompany the version: This Comparison is inferior to none in Homer. It is the most beautiful Nightpiece that can be found in Poetry. He presents you with a Prospect of the Heavens, the Seas and the Earth: the Stars shine, the Air is serene, the World enlighten’d and the Moon mounted in Glory.67

The seas are not actually mentioned by Homer and in the Wgurative emphasis Pope makes explicit what he took to be the implicit meaning, which he translated in his version. The Troops exulting sate in order round, And beaming Fires illumin’d all the Ground. As when the Moon, refulgent Lamp of Night! O’er Heav’ns clear Azure spreads her sacred Light,

66 Matthew Arnold, On the Classical Tradition, i. The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arbold, ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), 111. 67 Pope’s note on l. 687.

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Augustan Homer When not a breath disturbs the deep Serene; And not a Cloud o’ercasts the solemn Scene; Around her Throne the vivid Planets roll. And Stars unnumber’d gild the glowing Pole, O’er the dark Trees a yellow’r Verdure shed, And tip with Silver ev’ry Mountain’s Head; Then shine the Vales, the Rocks in Prospect rise, A Flood of Glory bursts from all the Skies: The conscious Swains, rejoicing in the Sight, Eye the blue Vault and bless the useful Light. (viii. 685–98)

Homer’s scene has been imaginatively extended, embellished, and transformed. The growth in his imaginative involvement can shed some light on his artistic processes. In the opening Pope’s Wrst thoughts centre upon stillness and shining, brightness and lustre: As when in Stillness of the silent Night, As when the Moon in all her Lustre bright

The changes he made give a sharper idea of the moon shining in darkness. Refulgent is not simply a digniWed Latinism, for it appropriately expresses the idea of reXection in the light of the moon: As when the Moon, refulgent Lamp of Night, O’er Heavns clear azure sheds her silver Light pure spreads sacred

In the second couplet of the simile, his thoughts again turned Wrst to the quality of the moonlight, to its trembling lustre and to the Xood of golden colour it sheds: As still in Air the trembling Lustre stood, And o’er its golden border shoots a Xood.

In the revision there is a radical change to quietness, solemnity, and deep serenity (the deep of course also refers to the sea) When no loose Gale disturbs the deep Serene, And no dim Cloud o’ercasts the solemn scene.

At this stage we may note the change in epithet from ‘silver’ to ‘sacred’ in the second line of the opening couplet. As the idea of a sacred and solemn serenity took hold, it is underscored by the lulling smoothness


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induced by rhythmical changes and the removal of the unnecessary epithets ‘loose’ and ‘dim’: When not a Breath disturbs the deep Serene, And not a Cloud o’ercasts the solemn Scene.

‘Not a Breath’ is a much more delicate touch than ‘no loose Gale’. In the third couplet the change is not so radical: Around her silver Throne the planets glow, And Stars unnumberd trembling beams bestow

becomes in the revision: Around the Throne the vivid planets roll, And Stars unnumberd gild the glowing Pole.

Energy is heightened in the Wrst line through the introduction of movement around a Wxed point; the change has the eVect of enhancing the dignity and centrality of the moon more eVectively than the comparatively inert epithet ‘silver’; ‘vivid’ improves on ‘glow’ by sharpening the connection between the moon and the moonlit planets. (The fact that the planets do not revolve around the moon is immaterial; at night they may be imagined to do so.) In the second line ‘gild the glowing Pole’ gives the mind and ear something more distinct than the phrase it replaces, harking back to the sharp clarity in the ‘clear Azure’ (here ‘pure’ is judiciously rejected in favour of ‘clear’ on the grounds both of sense and sound). In the fourth couplet Pope’s expression is made neater and more pointed: Clear Gleams of Light

o’er the dark Trees are seen, o’er the dark Trees a yellow sheds, And tip with silver all the Mountain Heads. Forest

In the revision: O’er the dark Trees a yellower green they shed, gleam verdure And tip with silver every Mountain’s Head.

In the Wrst line the simple antithesis of ‘clear’ and ‘dark’ is improved upon with the addition of the more daring ‘yellower verdure’ to express the paradoxical quality of moonlight, but the phrase is less bold and

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more subtle than ‘yellower green’ since verdure more obviously includes vegetation as well as colour. In the Wfth couplet the improvement is radical: The Valleys open, and the Forests rise. All Nature stands revealed before our Eyes

becomes The Vales appear, the Rocks in prospect rise, A Flood of Glory bursts from all the Skies.

The opening up of the scene as the moonlight spreads is Wnely suggested in ‘the Rocks in prospect rise’. We may note here the change of ‘shed’ to ‘spreads’ in the Wrst line of the simile; in the Wnal version of the whole there is a gradual spreading of the light, brought to a dramatic climax here with the ‘Flood of Glory’, recalling a phrase rejected in the second couplet, ‘shoots a Flood’. A Wnal change to ‘Then shine the Vales’ improves further by drawing attention to the time sequence and by giving emphasis to the increasing light in ‘shine’. In the completed version, movement and colour advance in delicate stages. The light ‘spreads’ in the Wrst couplet; in the second movement is suspended; in the third it is advanced with the ‘vivid’ planets and the starlight that ‘gilds’ the ‘glowing’ pole; in the fourth there is more colour with the comparative ‘yellower’ and the silver light on the mountains, but the movement is still delicate with the verbs ‘shed’ and ‘tip’; Wnally the valleys ‘shine’ and then comes the strongest burst in the ‘Flood of Glory’. In the Wnal couplet of the simile there is also radical change: The conscious Shepherd, joyful at the Sight, Eyes the blue Vault, and numbers every Light.

becomes The conscious Swains, rejoicing at the Sight, Shepherds, gazing with delight, Eye the blue Vault, and bless the vivid Light. glorious useful

Here the modern reader may perhaps regret this change in the Wrst line, but must be grateful that Pope amended the infelicity of the second. The Wnal thought ‘useful’ extends the signiWcance of Pope’s emphasis in the simile upon the ‘vivid’ and the ‘glorious’. That the shepherds should ‘bless the useful light’ makes explicit the spiritual meaning with which


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he invests the scene, but this meaning is subsidiary and perhaps incidental, as the testimony of Byron, who had in mind the hostile criticism of Wordsworth and Coleridge on these lines, might suggest: ‘it is no translation, I know, but it is not such a false description as asserted. I have read it on the spot; there is a burst and a glow about the night in the Troad, which makes ‘‘the planets vivid’’ and ‘‘the pole glowing’’. The moon is—at least the sky is, clearness itself; and I know no more appropriate expression for the expansion of such a heaven o’er the scene . . . than that of a ‘‘Xood of glory’’.’68 Finally it may be noted that Pope did not abandon the Wrst thoughts, images, and words that the simile had prompted. When he goes on to describe the eVect of the Wres, the reXected light ‘glimmers’, ‘gleams’, and ‘trembles’, and the Wres ‘shoot a shady Lustre’; but as he imagined the whole scene more powerfully and more precisely he separated the gradually evolving clarity in the natural scene from the Xickering evanescent half-light in the human sphere to which it is related: So many Flames before proud Ilion blaze, And lighten glimm’ring Xanthus with their Rays. The long ReXections of the distant Fires Gleam on the Walls, and tremble on the Spires. A thousand Piles the dusky Horrors gild And shoot a shady Lustre o’er the Field.

In the highlighted phrases (all additions to Homer) Pope artfully evokes behind the present scene the future doom of Xaming Troy. The ‘dusky Horrors’ cast by the ‘Piles’ (Wres) are no mere poetical cliche´. There is a poignant contrast, most delicately suggested, between the peace, serenity, and order of this night and the trembling terror of that future night, and between the exultant mood of the Trojan troops fresh from their triumph and eagerly expectant in their shining armour: The Troops exultant sate in order round . . . And ardent Warriors wait the rising Morn.

and what awaits them when proud Ilion falls. The embellishment of Homer is not gratuitous artiWce but the product of the poet’s 68 From a letter to Leigh Hunt of 1815, cited in Upali Amarasinghe, Dryden and Pope in the Early Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: CUP, 1962), 206–7. See also pp. 104–5 for the verdicts of Southey and Wordsworth, and F. W. Bateson and N. A. Joukousky (eds.), Alexander Pope: A Critical Anthology (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971), 189 for the verdict of Coleridge.

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imaginative involvement with the great moral and psychological drama of the Iliad vividly present in every line he translates. Johnson oVers these specimens for everyone who ‘delights to trace the mind from the rudeness of its Wrst conceptions to the elegance of the last’ and so that the reader of Pope’s Iliad may see ‘by what gradations it advanced to correctness’. This latter is a cold word which when applied to eighteenth-century poetry has not usually helped its reputation subsequently. But we may recall that Pope, who is always held to be the most ‘correct’ of poets, ridiculed the ‘correctly cold’ in An Essay on Criticism (ll. 239–52), and in these lines of the Homer translation, though there is certainly a masterly polishing up in matters of metre, sound, and diction, what is striking is that there is a gradually evolving conception of the whole as the poet sorts out precisely what picture and feeling he wishes to conjure up and as he Wnds the best words to express them. It is, as Johnson suggests, conceptions that change not merely the surface as Pope’s imaginative engagement with the raw material of Homer deepens. The method of composition that may be deduced here seems to bear out what Johnson has to say of it in his ‘Life of Pope’: Of compositions there are diVerent methods. . . . It is related of Virgil, that his custom was to pour out a great number of verses in the morning, and pass the day in retrenching exuberances and correcting inaccuracies. The method of Pope, as may be collected from his translation, was to write his Wrst thoughts in his Wrst words, and gradually to amplify, decorate, rectify and reWne them.69

The Wnished result here and in the examples discussed in this chapter, it may be argued, vindicates what Johnson has to say of Pope’s faculties generally: Pope had, in proportions very nicely adjusted to each other, all the qualities that constitute genius. He had Invention . . . by which extrinsic and adventitious embellishments and illustrations are connected with a known subject . . . He had Imagination, which strongly impresses on the writer’s mind, and enables him to convey to the reader, the various forms of nature, incidents of life, and energies of passion . . . He had Judgement which selects from life or nature what the present purpose requires, and by separating the essence of things from its concomitants, often makes the representation more powerful than the reality: and he had colours of language always before him, ready to decorate his matter with every grace of elegant expression, as when he accommodates his diction to the wonderful multiplicity of Homer’s sentiments and descriptions.70 69 Johnson, Lives, iii. 218.

70 Ibid. 247.


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Not all readers have felt this about Pope and this ‘nightpiece’ has been a particular target of attack, most notably from Matthew Arnold in his Lectures on Translating Homer who quotes the Wnal lines from ‘So many Xames before proud Ilion blaze’ and comments: It is for passages of this sort, which, after all, form the bulk of a narrative poem, that Pope’s style is so bad. In elevated passages he is powerful, though not in the same way, as Homer is powerful; but in passages of plain narrative, where Homer is still powerful and delightful, Pope, by the inherent defect of his style, is ineVective and out of taste. Wordsworth says somewhere, that wherever Virgil seems to have composed ‘with his eye on the object’, Dryden fails to render him. Homer invariably composes ‘with his eye on the object’ whether the object be a moral or material one: Pope composes with his eye on his style, into which he translates his object, whatever it is. That, therefore, which Homer conveys to us immediately, Pope conveys to us through a medium. He aims at turning Homer’s sentiments pointedly and rhetorically; at investing Homer’s descriptions with ornament and dignity. A sentiment may be changed by being put into a pointed and oratorical form, yet it may still be very eVective in that form; but a description, the moment it takes its eyes oV that which it is to describe, and begins to think of ornamenting itself, is worthless.71

Since the researches of Milman Parry into the techniques and methods of oral composition, we are perhaps more conscious than Arnold that Homer too manipulates a medium. But that Homer with his naked way of speaking and his profusion, in the words of Boileau ‘de tants d’images naives des choses’72 is more plain and direct than Pope is undeniable. It is undeniable too that Pope in his translation of Homer, in Johnson’s words ‘points his sentiments’ and ‘colours his images’.73 It is undeniable that Pope recasts Homer into a medium (the Augustan couplet) that has its own aesthetic ideal and demands. It is also true that Pope seeks to endow Homer with dignity and ornament, though here distinctions have to be drawn between true and false dignity and superWcial and enhancing ornament. Ornament in particular is a tricky word. This is where Arnold, for all his apparent reasonableness, begins to go wrong and can be called to account for superWcial generalization. But on the critical point about ornament in descriptive passages, Arnold, following Wordsworth, is almost always wrong as Wordsworth himself was wrong about Dryden in the Wrst place. Many of the passages discussed in this 71 Arnold, On the Classical Tradition, 111. For a discussion of Wordsworth judgement of Dryden see the Epilogue, below. 72 Œuvres comple`tes de Boileau, iv. 66. 73 Johnson, Lives, iii. 240.

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chapter have been descriptive or have contained substantial descriptive elements. The one thing that close examination must have demonstrated is that Pope constantly has ‘his eye on the object’. This in itself is a less felicitous phrase than it might at Wrst seem. Whether the reader Wnds the results of the translator’s imaginative engagement ‘ineVective and out of taste’ is, of course, another matter. It is not unfair to point out that for all his critical sagacity evidenced in his deWnition of Homer’s grand style and his rebuttal of the ignoble Newman, Arnold expressed the opinion elsewhere that Dryden and Pope were not true poets at all but wrote versiWed prose.74 Anyone who believes this, whatever his authority, is not going to be a very reliable judge or guide for readers of Augustan poetry in the twenty-Wrst century. Finally, at the close of his analysis of Pope’s genius, Johnson remarks that Pope had ‘colours of language’ always before him ‘as when he accommodates his diction to the wonderful multiplicity of Homer’s sentiments and descriptions’.75 Even if the reader feels half inclined to be persuaded that there is some truth in what Arnold says about the nightpiece, this is only one passage in a translation of great diversity in which success is in the nature of things bound to be variable. THE CHALLENGE OF THE ODYSSEY

Beginnings Among the earliest Homeric translations of the young Pope are two extracts from the Odyssey. The Homeric description of the Gardens of Alcinous oVered a subject dear to Pope’s heart. He published a translation of it in 1713 which he subsequently incorporated verbatim in the complete version of the Odyssey in 1725.76 In his ‘Preface to the Iliad ’ he likens Art to a ‘prudent steward managing the riches of Nature’ and goes on to liken Homer’s work to a wild paradise.77 In the garden, ‘Nature to Advantage dresst’,78 the Augustan translator was on home ground, so to speak, and this version might suggest that the Odyssey oVered an easier challenge after the energy and Wre of the Iliad. 74 ‘Dryden and Pope are not classics of our poetry, they are classics of our prose’, from his introduction to The English Poets, ed. T. H. Ward (London: Macmillan, 1880) in Bateson and Joukovsky (eds.), Pope: a Critical Anthology, 249–52. 75 Johnson, Lives, iii. 247. 76 Pope, Twickenham Edition, vi. 103. 77 Ibid. vii. 3. 78 His description of ‘True Wit’ in An Essay on Criticism, 297.

The Challenge of the Odyssey

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Close to the gates a spacious garden lies, From storms defended and inclement skies: Four acres was th’ allotted space of ground, Fenc’d with a green enclosure all around. Tall thriving trees confess’d the fruitful mold; The red’ning apple ripens here to gold, Here the blue Wg with luscious juice o’erXows, With deeper red the full pomegranate glows, The branch here bends beneath the weighty pear, And verdant olives Xourish round the year. The balmy spirit of the western gale Eternal breathes on fruits untaught to fail: Each dropping pear a following pear supplies, On apples apples, Wgs on Wgs arise: The same mild season gives the bloom to blow, The buds to harden, and the fruits to grow. Here order’d vines in equal ranks appear With all th’ united labours of the year, Some to unload the fertile branches run, Some dry the black’ning clusters in the sun, Others to tread the liquid harvest join, The groaning presses foam with Xoods of wine. Here are the vines in early Xow’r descry’d, Here grapes discolour’d on the sunny side, And there in autumn’s richest purple dy’d. Beds of all various herbs, for ever green, In beauteous order terminate the scene. Two plenteous fountains the whole prospect crown’d; This through the gardens leads its streams around, Visits each plant, and waters all the ground: While that in pipes beneath the palace Xows, And thence its current on the town bestows; To various use their various streams they bring, The people one, and one supplies the king. (vii. 142–75) Just outside the entrance to the courtyard, surrounded by a wall, lies a large orchard of four acres—pears and pomegranates, apple trees with glossy fruit, sweet Wgs and luxuriant olives. Their fruit never fails nor runs short, winter and summer alike. It comes at all seasons of the year, and there is never a time when the west wind’s breath is not assisting, here the bud, and there the ripening fruit; so that pear after pear, apple after apple, cluster on cluster of grapes, and Wg upon Wg are always coming to perfection.

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In the same enclosure there is a fruitful vineyard, in one part of which is a warm patch of level ground, where some of the grapes are drying in the sun, while others are being gathered, or trodden in the wine-press, and on the foremost rows hang unripe bunches that have just dropped their blossom or show the Wrst faint tinge of purple. Beyond the furthest row, vegetable beds of various kinds are neatly laid out, luxuriantly productive all the year round. In the garden are two springs; one Xows in channels to all parts of it; the other, starting next to it, Wrst provides a watering-place for the townspeople and then runs under the courtyard gate towards the great house itself. (vii. 112–32)

From the phrases highlighted in bold it is possible to see at a glance how much the original (represented by the literal version) has been embellished. Inventive touches have a heightening and clarifying eVect, though the style is perfectly adapted to the subject and is at a diVerent pitch from passages such as the glittering Iliadic nightpiece. One phrase that perhaps deserves sympathetic comment is ‘confess’d the fruitful mold’, for Pope has been the victim of an obsolescence in meaning that he could not have predicted. One of the meanings of ‘mold’ in the OED is ‘soil rich in organic matter and suitable for the cultivation of plants’; ‘confess’d’ can mean simply ‘declare openly’. Otherwise the propriety of expression throughout will be obvious to a modern reader. At the outset the paradisal impression is heightened by the introduction of the green enclosure comprising tall trees keeping out inclement weather. This evokes the traditional image of the garden of Eden, conWrmed when the reordering of the fruit gives the apples prominence and further suggested by the ‘eternal’ ‘balmy spirit [that] breathes on fruits untaught to fail’; failure comes with the fall. Yet the associations of ‘allotted’ and ‘fence’ keep the language within the realm of everyday realities. In fact the whole description is grounded in reality, for the enclosure of trees provides the shelter that is a necessary Wrst stage in the making of a garden and the rich mould provides fertile soil for cultivation. The translator has envisaged what goes into the making of the garden from the large trees providing shelter for the smaller more delicate trees for fruit, to the cultivation of vines and Wnally herbs. Pope introduces both colour in the epithets and movement in the verbs. The glowing of the pomegranate is not simply a poetic heightening but a realistic representation of this most exotically attractive of fruits. With ‘red’ning’, ‘ripens’, ‘o’erXows’, and ‘deeper red’ there is an incremental sequence continued and completed in the fullness of the pomegranate and the branch bending beneath the weight of the pear. The verb ‘Xourish’ in the Wnal line of the list of fruits is doubly apt


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having a literal as well as a Wgurative signiWcance, the latter providing a summary and summation of what the fruits represent, while ‘round the year’ leads eVortlessly on to the next thought developed throughout the succeeding six lines. The order of the fruits therefore as it occurs in the translation is not haphazard but is so orchestrated as to facilitate a developing picture of ever increasing fruitfulness. Homer’s picture develops by accumulation but not in such an orderly way. This developing picture is what the viewer or reader sees, for as the next lines make clear in this magical garden of the Phaeacians, the fruitfulness is actually constant. This constancy is made artfully apparent in the dynamic organization of the two couplets that follow. The Wrst couplet has diVerent sets of pairings, the Wrst line having a clear antithesis in ‘dropping’ and ‘following’, while the second has a balance of a diVerent order, an evenly divided line united by the repeated preposition and the verb which governs both halves and is emphatic by position. The additional couplet that follows repeats and extends the idea with a diVerent rhetorical structure having a neat antithesis between ‘mild’ and ‘harden’ but does not rely on pairings, having instead a packed tripartite structure comprising three inWnitives in a rising sequence with ‘blow’ and ‘harden’ leading to the climactic Wnality of ‘grow’. The full completion of the sense concludes emphatically on the rhyme word. A great deal of organization has gone into this Popean garden. Yet the organization is not so prominent as to be obtrusive; we are as conscious, as we are in Homer, of variety and profusion. It is tempting here to cite Pope’s aesthetic ideal which not only embraces landscape but expresses the underlying aesthetic that is manifested in his manipulation and management of the couplet form: ‘Where Order in Variety we see, j And where, though all things diVer, all agree’:79 an ordered harmony which contains the world’s variety. This organization continues in the exuberant picture of the fruitful vineyard that follows. It begins in a balanced line where the emphasis falls on ‘ordered’ and ‘equal ranks’ and is followed by a telling addition ‘With all th’ united labours of the year’. This introduces human eVort and the ideal of unity neither of which is in Homer. This is followed through with the human subjects unloading, drying, and treading, resulting in another addition, the most hyperbolic line in the whole description, appropriately expressing the most fruitful result of the labours in the garden: ‘The groaning presses foam with Xoods of wine’. Pope envisages 79 Windsor Forest, 15–16 in Pope, Twickenham Edition, i. 149–50.

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a fruition beyond what is in the Greek. Then comes a recapitulation of the earlier idea of simultaneous and continuous growth, in a more orderly sequence than in Homer, with Wrst the vines ‘in early Xow’r’, then the half-ripe grapes ‘discolour’d’ and Wnally the full autumnal ripeness of ‘richest purple’. In this sequence, with the negative associations of ‘discolour’d’ and ‘dy’d’ and the mention of autumn (none of which comes from the Greek) there may be a complicating counterpoint to the main theme of eternal fruitfulness, a hint of another world of decay and death excluded from this Wctional mythical paradise of the Phaeacians. That is very much a matter for individual perception but what cannot be denied is that the rhetorical organization of the whole passage describing the vineyard is very marked and much more developed than it is in the Greek. After the initial couplet, there is a series of three ‘Some’, Some’, Others’ followed by a climactic line, a pattern which is repeated in ‘Here’, ‘Here’, and ‘there’ followed by a line that is doubly climactic by virtue of image and sense and by its position as the Wnal line of a triplet. The ‘beauteous order’ of the herbs which then ‘terminate the scene’ is a reXection of the order that Pope has introduced in his translation of the garden into his eighteenth-century English style. Nature is methodized in the garden but the Homeric garden itself has been methodized in the translation. The English style is ordered but not too formal like the French style that it replaced. These eVects of organization that have so far been described are not obvious: ars est celare artem; they only become apparent under analysis that deliberately seeks to unveil the labour that has made possible and is reXected in the beauty of the Wnished product. And the scene has not quite terminated yet, for it is completed by the description of the two fountains. The diVerent functions of the pair of fountains are well Wtted to contrasting and balanced phrasing in the usual manner of the Augustan couplet but the description also makes us conscious of variety, Wrst in the tripartite structure in which the Wrst fountain with its waters ‘leads’, ‘visits’, and ‘waters’ and secondly in the imported line ‘To various use their various streams they bring’ which neatly uses its balanced structure through emphatic repetition to stress variety. This line also highlights what is implicit in the Greek, the principle of utility. There is no question of art for art’s sake here; Pope took most seriously the Horatian proposition omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci80 ‘he gets all the votes who has been able to mix the 80 Ars Poetica, 343.


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what is useful with what is pleasing’. These fountains serve a purpose, a purpose which is simply appreciated in appropriate diction. The epithet ‘plenteous’ is related to function as much as to appearance; beauty is added afterwards in ‘the whole prospect crown’d’. The discreet personiWcation enables the fountain to be busily useful as it ‘leads its streams’, ‘visits’, and ‘waters’. In the case of the second fountain, Pope has embellished the Greek with the addition of ‘pipes’, a very useful ornamentation with a social dimension as the fountain graciously ‘bestows’ its waters to the townsfolk, beneWcently providing a public utility through eVective plumbing, as man harnesses natural resources to eVective general use. Dignity is imparted in the word ‘bestows’ but ‘current’ with great propriety expresses the water’s movement; there is a judicious mixture here of the useful and pleasing in the word choice itself. There is an equal propriety and dignity in the Wnal phrase ‘supply the king’. The provision of a plenteous water supply is one of the factors which makes this garden Wt for a king. The passage follows Homer in oVering a straightforward description of the garden but in his imaginative recreation of it Pope has also allowed for the perspective of the viewer, with intermittent reference, all highlighted in rhyme words, to our perception of the scene: ‘arise’, ‘appear’, ‘ descry’d’, and Wnally the climactic and digniWed phrase ‘the whole prospect crown’d’ actively engage the participation of the viewer and reader. This is a subtlety and sophistication beyond the Greek. We see the results without necessarily being very conscious of all that has gone into its making through the prudent stewarding of nature’s riches, or in the plainer language of Renaissance and eighteenth-century criticism, through the exercise of the poet’s Judgement. The description of the gardens is a single and uniWed set-piece; the second extract that the young Pope chose to translate, The Arrival of Ulysses in Ithaca81 from the thirteenth book, composed about 1707 and written and published in 1713, is a longer and more varied narrative which covers a pivotal moment in the plot of a poem whose central concern is the hero’s return home. It also marks the transition from the mythical world of romance that Ulysses is leaving behind, as the Phaeacians transport him on one of their magic ships and land the sleeping hero on the Ithacan shore in the middle of the night, to the more realistic setting of Ithaca where he encounters the goddess Athene 81 Pope, Twickenham Edition, i. 463.

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in disguise as a shepherd and conceals his identity by telling the Wrst of his Cretan tales. Just as the Sarpedon episode sets the representative style of the Iliad, so this translation, embracing both romantic and realistic elements, does the same for the Odyssey. When he later came to write the postscript to the completed Odyssey published in 1726, Pope makes very clear distinctions between the respective themes and styles of the two Homeric poems, contrasting ‘the elevated spirit’ of the Iliad, with the ‘just moral’ of the Odyssey. The latter with its narrative style and familiar dialogue was pitched at a diVerent level, but ‘where it cannot support a sublimity, it always preserves a dignity or at least a propriety’.82 He concluded that he had found the task of translating the Odyssey much the harder. Indeed the true reason that few Poets have imitated Homer in these lower parts, has been the extreme diYculty of preserving that mixture of Ease and Dignity essential to them. For it is as hard for an Epic Poem to stoop to the Narrative with success, as for a Prince to descend to be familiar, without diminution to his greatness.83

The Odyssean narrative too is a vehicle for the poet’s idealism. The Sun descending, the Phaeacian train Spread their broad sails, and launch into the Main: At once they bend, and strike their equal Oars, And leave the sinking Hills and less’ning Shores. While on the Deck the Chief in Silence lies, And pleasing Slumbers steal upon his Eyes. As Wery Coursers in the rapid Race, Urg’d by Werce Drivers thro’ the dusty Space, Toss their high Heads, and scour along the Plain; So mounts the bounding Vessel o’er the Main: Back to the stern the parted Billows Xow, And the black Ocean foams and roars below. Thus with spread Sails the winged Gally Xies; Less swift, an Eagle cuts the liquid Skies: Divine Ulysses was her Sacred Load, A Man, in Wisdom equal to a God. Much Danger, long and mighty Toils he bore, In Storms by Sea, and Combats on the Shore: All which soft Sleep now banish’d from his Breast; Wrapt in a pleasing, deep, and death-like Rest. 82 Pope, Twickenham Edition, x. 386.

83 Ibid. 389.


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But when the morning Star with early Ray Flam’d in the Front of Heav’n, and promis’d Day, Like distant Clouds the Mariner descries Fair Ithaca’s emerging Hills arise. (ll. 1–24)

At the outset there is less particular in detail here than the Greek in which the Phaeacian sailors stow food and drink in the ship and set down a rug on the deck for Ulysses to sleep on. They then loose the haulser from the pierced stone. These details are omitted but there is the compensation of an addition in the picture of the ‘sinking Hills and less’ning Shores’. This is neatly matched by a further corresponding pictorial addition at the end as the mariners catch sight of ‘fair Ithaca’s emerging Hills’. The additions provide an elegant and realistic symmetrical frame for the journey. The similes contained within are vigorously rendered. The most telling heightening expressing Pope’s idealism occurs in the presentation of the hero: Divine Ulysses was her Sacred Load, A Man, in Wisdom like a God.

This translates: ¼ æÆ æı Æ ŁE KÆºªŒØÆ Æ (l. 89) ‘carrying a man having counsels similar to the gods’. ‘Divine’ and the ‘Sacred Load’ are additions. To have counsels or plans like the gods may imply wisdom or it may imply noble thoughts (which are not necessarily always wise) or, given the nature of Homer’s gods, simply powerful thoughts. In the Renaissance tradition Pope’s hero is wisdom incarnate. All these couplets in this opening sequence are lucid, harmonious, and easy. They emphasize what the narrative demands: the swiftness of the journey, the heroic character of Ulysses and his profound sleep (this latter in a couplet with a particularly soothing Wnality of cadence). They have dignity with grace, and vigour where appropriate. The Augustan translator embellishes the simpler Greek but the resulting style is not overdone. Pope’s idealizing style is well shown in his descriptions and pictures. In his version rugged Ithaca becomes something of a rural paradise: The rugged Soil allows no level Space For Xying Chariots, or the rapid Race; Yet not ungrateful to the Peasant’s Pain, SuYces Fulness to the swelling Grain; The loaded Trees their various Fruits produce,

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Augustan Homer And clustring Grapes aVord a gen’rous Juice; Woods crown our Mountains, and in ev’ry Grove The bounding Goats and frisking Heyfers rove; Soft Rains and kindly Dews refresh the Field, And rising Springs Eternal Verdure yield. (ll. 122–31)

The impact of ‘rugged’ is neutralized by all the fullness of the succeeding epithets which together have a clearly ameliorating eVect: ‘swelling’, ‘loaded’, ‘various’, ‘clustring’, ‘gen’rous’, ‘bounding’, ‘frisking’, ‘soft’, ‘kindly’, ‘rising’, and ‘Eternal’; the verbs also suggest fruitfulness: ‘produce’, ‘aVord’, ‘crown’, ‘refresh’, and ‘yield’. The Homeric description in which there are only two phrases with epithets ‘plentiful corn’ and ‘rich dew’ and no metaphors is bare by comparison. The recognition of home is not just an emotional moment in Homer, it is also religious. Odysseus kisses the earth and addresses a prayer to the nymphs of the cave of Phorcys where he has landed, promising to give them gifts as before if Athene grants him life. So spake the Goddess, and the Prospect clear’d The Mists dispers’d, and all the Coast appear’d: The King with Joy confess’d his Place of Birth, And, on his Knees, salutes his Mother Earth; Then, with his suppliant Hands upheld in Air, Thus to the Sea-green Sisters sends his Prayer. All hail! Ye Virgin Daughters of the Main; Ye Streams, beyond my Hopes beheld again! To you once more your own Ulysses bows, Attend his Transports, and receive his Vows. If Jove prolong my Days, and Pallas Crown The growing Virtues of my youthful Son, To you shall Rites Divine be ever paid, And grateful OV’rings on your Altars laid. (ll. 234–47)

The emotional signiWcance is intensiWed in the translation with the personiWcation of the earth as mother and the mention of his place of birth. The religious element is more formal too. Where Odysseus simply kisses the earth, Ulysses ‘confessed his Joy’ ‘on his Knees’ with ‘suppliant Hands’. Odysseus prays simply; Ulysses invokes the Naiads with a bow and oVers ‘Vows’. The order of the prayer is reversed (Odysseus promises gifts if Athene does her part) culminating with


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greater religious solemnity in the promise of ‘Rites Divine’ in which the simple gifts become ‘grateful OV’rings’ laid on altars. The moment is indeed a sacred one; the whole passage in the translation has the whiV of Catholic ritual. Pope chose to end his translation here on an aYrmative moment of joyous and solemn celebration and thanksgiving for the safe return of the hero to his native land. This is the culmination of his idealizing style and an indication of what moved his poetical imagination in his engagement with the Greek and drew him to the episode in the Wrst instance. Before this, having been deposited asleep on the shore in the middle of the night and not knowing where he is, in an encounter with Athene disguised as a shepherd boy, he Wnds it necessary to assume a false identity and account for his presence with a quantity of treasure in a place that is unknown to him. After Athene has told him he is in Ithaca, he then invents the Wrst of a number of Cretan tales: Oft have I heard, in Crete, this Island’s Name, And ’twas from Crete, my Native Soil, I came; Self-banish’d thence, I sail’d before the Wind, And left my Children and my Friends behind. From Werce Idomeneus’ Revenge I Xew, Whose Son, the swift Orsilochus, I slew, (With Brutal Force he seiz’d my Trojan Prey, Due to the Toils of many a bloody Day.) Unseen I scap’d; and favour’d by the Night, In a Phoenician Vessel took my Flight; For Pyle or Elis bound; but Tempests toss’d, And raging Billows drove us on your Coast: In Dead of Night an unknown Port we gain’d, Spent with Fatigue, and slept secure on Land; But ere the Rosie Morn renew’d the Day, While in th’ Embrace of pleasing Sleep I lay, Sudden, invited by auspicious Gales, They land my Goods, and hoist their Xying Sails. Abandon’d here, my Fortune I deplore, A hapless Exile on a Foreign Shore. (ll. 140–59)

This is delivered in a straightforward and plain narrative style. But it is quite radically changed from the original in two interrelated respects. It is much curtailed and in this shortened version Ulysses represents

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himself in a more positive light than in Homer. Here is a literal version84 of the speech in full. I heard the name of Ithaka, when I was in wide Crete, far away, across the sea; now I myself have come here with these goods that you see, but leaving as much again to my children. I have Xed, an exile, because I killed the son of Idomeneus, Orsilochus, a man of swift foot, who in wide Crete surpassed all other mortal men for speed of his feet. I killed him because he tried to deprive me of all my share of the plunder from Troy, and for the sake of it my heart suVered many pains: the wars of men; hard crossing of big waters; for I would not do his father favor, and serve as his henchman in the land of Troy, but I led others, of my own following. I lay in wait for him with a friend by the end of the road, and struck him with the bronze headed spear as he came back from the Welds. There was a very dark night spread all over the sky, nor did anyone see me, nor did anyone know of it when I stripped the life from him. But then when I had struck him down with the sharp bronze, I went at once to a ship, and supplicated the lordly Phoenician men, and gave them spoil, to stay their eagerness, and asked them to carry me and to set me down in Pylos or shining Elis where the Epeians are lords; but it happened that the force of the wind beat them away from those places, greatly against their will; it was not as if they wished to deceive me. So, driven oV those courses, we came in her, by night, and rowed her hastily into the harbor, nor was there any thought in us of the evening meal, much though we wanted it, but all of us came oV the ship as we were, and lay down; then, weary as I was, the sweetness of sleep came upon me, while they, taking all the possessions out of the hollow hull, set them ashore on the sand, and close to the place where I was lying, and they embarking, went on their way to strongly settled Sidon; but I, grieving at heart, was left behind here. (xiii. 256–86)

Some of the curtailment may be for purely aesthetic reasons. For instance, we can catch in this tale something of what might be called Homer’s ‘talkative’ style , for which he had traditionally been criticized, his garrulity. The fact that Orsilochus was such a good runner is not greatly to the point, given that Odysseus kills him in ambush at night. 84 Richmond Lattimore, The Odyssey of Homer (New York: HarperCollins, 1975).


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Pope omits this circumstantial detail in a kind of tightening up of the narrative that we Wnd in the rest of the Homer translation. But the main conclusion overall must be that far more than aesthetic reasons are involved. The speaker in the Homeric narrative puts himself in a distinctly unheroic light. Pope does not enter wholeheartedly into this; in fact his response is to mitigate any diminution of the heroic eVect and to put the speaker in a better light. Pope makes Orsilochus ‘Brutal’ for which there is no warrant in the text and successful in his seizure of Odysseus’ booty, whereas in the Greek he was trying to deprive him of the spoils by unspeciWed means. And the motivation is more complex in Homer; the speaker says he was in rebellion against Idomeneus’ authority raising the possibility that there was some issue of rightful claim to the spoils in the eyes of Idomeneus and his son. In Pope we have to conclude that it was simple greed which provides straightforward provocation and a more readily justiWable motivation for the killing. In Homer it is very clear that the killing is by ambush of an unarmed man under the cover of night. Pope omits this; we do not know how his speaker confronted Orsilochus, merely that he escapes unseen, a detail that might show oV his skill in the enterprise. In Homer the speaker has Xed after the homicide. In Pope he is ‘self-banish’d’, which has the dignity of autonomous choice. Pope’s speaker is less preoccupied with his treasure. The context dictates that there has to be a mention of it, for Athene has come upon him as he is taking an inventory of his possessions having suspected that the Phaeacians have played a trick on him and may have taken some of them back, but there is no mention of the goods at the beginning of the speech. In the invented tales in the Ithacan narrative, Odysseus in order to sustain his disguise represents himself repeatedly as a materialist adventurer (little more than a pirate) who has fallen down on his luck. This is a realistic strategy on his part and an eVective narrative device in the wellmade plot, but was an aspect of the poem that caused his Augustan translators some embarrassment. In donning his disguise and sustaining its deception, the heroic prince might seem to suVer ‘diminution of his greatness’. It may be thought that as this early translation is simply a Wrst attempt it would later be revised. In fact Pope did not change a word of this version when he inserted it into the completed translation of Odyssey published ten years later. This perhaps raises a central diYculty about the translation. After spending six years translating the Iliad, was Pope wearying of the task? He employed two collaborators, Elijah Fenton, who translated Books I,

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IV, XIX, and XX and William Broome, who compiled the notes and translated Books II, VI, VIII, IX, XII, XVI, XVIII, and XXIII, before submitting their work to Pope for revision and correction. Does the curtailment of the Cretan tale suggest that there were aspects of the poem, particularly in the Ithacan narrative in the second half, that were less congenial to Pope?

‘Proportioning the style’:85 the plain And the natural Whatever the answer to the preceding question might be, in the ‘Postscript to the Odyssey’, Pope oVered a vigorous defence of the poem against the strictures of Longinus who had judged it to be the work of Homer’s old age when he was in decline. Within that defence, he is insistent about the merits of the style of the original and about the eVorts made to Wnd an equivalent in English. There is a real beauty in an easy, pure, perspicuous description even of a low action . . . the representations of common, even domestic things, in clear, plain and natural words, are frequently found to make the liveliest impression on the reader. The question is, how far a poet, in pursuing the description or the image of an action can attach himself to little circumstances, without vulgarity or triXing? what particulars are proper, and enliven the image; or what are impertinent and clog it? . . . The great point of judgement is to distinguish when to speak simply, and when Wguratively. . . . low actions of life cannot be put into a Wgurative style without being ridiculous, but things natural can. Metaphors can raise the latter into dignity, as we see in the Georgicks.86 Whoever expects here the same pomp of verse, and the same ornaments of diction, as in the Iliad; he will, and he ought to be disappointed. . . . To preserve the true character of Homer’s style in the present translation, great pains has been taken to be easy and natural. The chief merit I can pretend to, is, not to have been carried into a more plausible and Wgurative manner of writing, which would have better pleased all readers, but the judicious ones.87

The Homeric bard repeatedly shows appreciation of things that are well made. The bed of Odysseus as described in the penultimate book is beautifully inlaid with gold and ivory and thereby has a beautiful

85 The phrase is from Pope’s ‘Postscript to the Odyssey’, in Twickenham Edition, x. 389. 86 Ibid. 387. 87 Ibid. 389.


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appearance but what Odysseus takes pride in when describing the making of it is his skill in its manufacture, his handicraft. This skill of the hero matches the skill of his creator in Wtting things together well, both skills being reXected in the Greek word ±æÆ. Post-Homeric epic heroes rarely take pride in manufacturing skills and princes in a diVerent social structure sometimes have little in the way of practical ability at all, so that passages of the epic which show pleasure and appreciation of plain simple handicraft have presented diYculty to poets translating into the high style of epic. The aversion to particularities and humble details in Homer is well documented in the Renaissance when Homer was often felt to have sunk below the dignity required for both his heroes and the style deemed appropriate for the epic genre. The Odyssey with its domestic scenes was an obvious target of censure. The English Augustan style that is naturally elevated has been said to be at its weakest when it has to stoop low in passages of plain description. How then does Pope fare in such places? Pope’s prose shows a Wne appreciation of the diVerent characters of the two epics and the pitch of their respective styles. He also discriminates between the vulgar and the natural. Does his verse match the appreciation and discrimination expressed in his prose? If he cannot stoop to plain description, then the whole translation will be blighted. This then is an appropriate Wrst question. The building of Ulysses’ raft will be a test case. Now toils the Heroe; trees on trees o’erthrown Fall crackling round him, and the forests groan: Sudden, full twenty on the plain are strow’d, And lopp’d, and lighten’d of their branchy load. At equal angles these dispos’d to join, He smooth’d, and squar’d ’em, by the rule and line. (The wimbles for the work Calypso found) With those he pierc’d ’em, and with clinchers bound. Long and capacious as a shipwright forms Some bark’s broad bottom to out-ride the storms, So large he built the Raft: then ribb’d it strong From space to space, and nail’d the planks along; These form’d the sides: the deck he fashion’d last; Then o’er the vessel raised the taper mast, With crossing sail-yards dancing in the wind; And to the helm the guiding rudder join’d. (With yielding osiers fenc’d, to break the force

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Augustan Homer Of surging waves, and steer the steady course) Thy loom, Calypso! for the future sails Supply’d the cloth, capacious of the gales. With stays and cordage last he rigg’d the ship, And roll’d on leavers, launch’d her in the deep. (v. 310–32)

Once the hero gets to work lopping, lightening, smoothing, and squaring, there is no doubting the close engagement with practical details. ‘Wimble’, an old word taken from Chapman’s version, is straightforwardly a boring-tool. ‘Clincher’, ‘one or that which clinches’ in a number of instances cited in the OED is particularly associated with shipbuilding. The process is properly and fully described in plain and direct detail. There is an appropriate simile as in Homer but little metaphor. ‘Ribb’d’ might be considered metaphorical but is so appropriate in context that it is not noticed as such and is equivalent to the noun Æ Ø (l. 252) ‘braces’ or ‘ribs’ in the Greek. The Wrst noticeable metaphor comes with Wtting of the sail-yards at the end which in an enhancing phrase added to the Greek are appropriately visualized as ‘dancing in the wind’. This is a beautiful eVect but it does not interfere with the manufacturing process which continues with nautical terms until the vessel is completed with ‘stays and cordage’ and ‘roll’d on leavers’ into the ‘deep’, the Wnal word being virtually the only one that might be found in passages of high poetic register. The epithets are all appropriate; ‘taper’, for example, ‘diminishing in size’ is still used as an adjective in Pope’s time. The only heightening might be seen in a favourite word of Pope, the Latinate ‘capacious’, occurring twice; in the Wrst instance referring to the size of the raft it expresses the vessel’s capacity, in the second phrase ‘capacious of the gales’ it again aggrandizes but there is appropriateness in the emphasis on the sheer size of the sails. The picture is predominantly plain but it is also energetic with many well-placed dynamic verbs which show oV the practical talents of the polytropic hero eagerly setting about the task in hand.

Painting the manners: the ‘just moral’ The Odyssey is a moral and political work, instructive to all degrees of men and Wlled with images, examples and precepts, of civil and domestic life. . . . In some points (and those the most essential to an Epic Poem) the Odyssey is confessed to excel the Iliad; and principally in the great end of it, the Moral.88 88 From the Postscript to the Odyssey in Pope, Twickenham Edition, x. 382, 385.


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The greatest moral imperative of the poem, recognized, with the single exception of the Cyclops, by all including the suitors, is the requirement to give hospitality to the visiting stranger. This is the test of character throughout the poem. Nestor and Menelaus treat the visiting Telemachus with exquisite good manners. When he expresses the wish to depart, Menelaus eloquently deWnes the Greek ideal: If with desire so strong thy bosom glows, Ill, said the King, shou’d I thy wish oppose; For oft in others freely I reprove The ill-tim’d eVorts of oYcious love; Who love too much, hate in the like extream, And both the golden Mean alike condemn. Alike he thwarts the hospitable end, Who drives the free, or stays the hasty friend; True friendship’s laws are by this rule exprest, Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. (xv. 75–84)

In balancing opposites the couplets equably express in their very form the golden mean that is their theme. It is in the second half of the poem, when Ulysses is disguised as a beggar, that the moral theme comes home. The practical and realistic aspects of Eumaeus as pigman or swineherd, ı , caused the Augustan translators some problems; more than once he is digniWed almost ludicrously with the title ‘Monarch of the Swains’. When he tells the visiting stranger about Ulysses’s holdings, circumlocution becomes necessary. The Homeric phrase ıH ı ØÆ ‘droves of pigs’ (xiv. 101) is inXated to ‘lodgements for the tusky herd’ (xiv. 124). But his moral role as the good steward, loyal to his master, ‘benevolent’ (l. 131) to the stranger and full of righteous anger against the proXigate usurping suitors provoked no such embarrassment. When recalling his master, he speaks with plain and direct feeling in a moving speech : But he whose name you crave Moulders in earth, or welters in the wave, Or food for Wsh, or dogs, his reliques lye, Or torn by birds are scatter’d thro’ the sky. So perish’d he: and left (for ever lost) Much woe to all, but sure to me the most. So mild a master never shall I Wnd: Less dear the parents whom I left behind,

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Augustan Homer Less soft my mother, less my father kind. Not with such transport wou’d my eyes run o’er, Again to hail them in their native shore. As lov’d Ulysses once more to embrace, Restor’d and breathing in his natal place. That name, for ever dread, yet ever dear, Ev’n in his absence I pronounce with fear; In my respect he bears a Prince’s part, But lives a very Brother in my heart. (xiv. 154–70)

At the end, Pope’s couplets point up the distinction between respect for the prince and love as for a brother, but his speech is not ornamented. It simply clariWes in a credible way a balance between the pull of natural aVection and the inevitable distance that must exist in the social order between servant and master. When the stranger invokes the gods as he is about to prophesy the master’s return, additions and changes of emphasis (in bold) clarify what engaged Pope’s imagination in the poem’s moral themes. Thou Wrst be witness, hospitable Jove! And ev’ry god inspiring social love! And witness ev’ry household power that waits Guard of these Wres, and angel of these gates! Ere the next moon increase, or this decay, His ancient realms Ulysses shall survey, In blood and dust each proud oppressor mourn, And the lost glories of his house return. (xiv. 183–40)

The happy ending of the poem reasserts the normative values of Homeric civilization represented in Pylos, Sparta, and Phaeacia, expressed here in the ideal of ‘social love’, an aspect of which is made manifest in the warm interchange of benevolent feeling between master and servant. The gods that allow and encourage the hero’s return are themselves benevolent; each household power that, like everyone else in the poem ‘waits’, can be invoked as an ‘angel’ at the gates. Ulysses, who in the Greek ‘will come back to his home and will punish all who dishonour his wife and his noble son’ (xiv. 163–4), in the translation comes as liberator against the ‘proud oppressor’ in a return that will justly restore the ‘lost glories’ of his ‘ancient realms’. The invocation, elevated and emphatic, starts with the social and ends with the political, more pointedly than in the Greek.


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When later at the palace, Antinous, the leader of the suitors, has taunted Eumaeus for deliberately inviting a beggar to join their feast, his speech in reply points out the foolishness of Antinous’ reasoning (embellishments in bold): Thy passion, Prince, belies thy knowing mind. Who calls, from distant nations to his own, The poor, distinguish’d by their wants alone? Round the wide world are sought those men divine Who publick structures raise, or who design; Those to whose eyes the Gods their ways reveal, Or bless with salutary arts to heal; But chief to Poets such respect belongs, By rival nations courted for their songs; These States invite, and mighty Kings admire, Wide as the sun displays his vital Wre. It is not so with Want! how few that feed A wretch unhappy, merely for his need? Unjust to me and all that serve the state, To love Ulysses is to raise thy hate For me, suYce the approbation won Of my great mistress, and her god-like son. (xvii. 459–75)

Homer asks: ‘Who would of his own accord approach and invite a wandering stranger in unless he were a craftsman who works for the whole community, a prophet, a physician, a carpenter, or even a divine minstrel who can give pleasure with his songs? For all the world over such guests are welcomed, whereas nobody would call a beggar to eat up his food’ (xvii. 383–6). Pope has warmed to the description of those distinguished people who do public good. First in his list ahead of the prophet who comes Wrst in Homer are public benefactors; such a man ‘who plants like Bathurst or who builds like Boyle’89 (no mere carpenters), then the prophet who reveals the gods’ truth can easily be the eighteenth-century divine; the healer blesses with salutary arts but the poet is most honoured of all, particularly as ‘These’ seems to be continuing the poets’ praise, the ‘vital Wre’ possibly referring Wguratively to the poets’ creativity as well as literally to the rays of the sun. In the general elevation, even Eumaeus who merely represents himself as one

89 ‘Epistle to Burlington’, 178, in Pope, Twickenham Edition, III. ii. 149.

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of his master’s servants in the original becomes a servant of the state. The elevated language evokes Pope’s ideal social order that, although knowing that he would never be courted by the King, he was to applaud and Wght for in the moral crusade of his later moral essays and Horatian imitations. When, in the suitor-slaying, the poet makes his successful appeal to be spared, he promises Ulysses fame, saying that he was only amongst the suitors by force. The role of poet is pointedly clariWed and asserted in a general Augustan way that Pope in the additional Wnal line and a half seems to have made very personally applicable to himself and moulded in his own self-image: Save then the Poet, and thyself reward; ’Tis thine to merit, mine is to record. That here I sung, was force and not desire; This hand reluctant touch’d the warbling wire: And let thy son attest, nor sordid pay Nor servile Xatt’ry stain’d the moral lay. (xxii. 387–92)

But in the additional line that is added to the end of the poem its great moral is not personal but political: So Pallas spoke: the mandate from above The king obey’d. The virgin-seed of Jove In Mentor’s form, conWrm’d the full accord, ‘And willing nations knew their lawful Lord.’

It might be said here that the poem as a whole is aligned with the values and arguments being upheld in Absalom and Achitophel from which the additional line is drawn.90 Certainly the reassertion of order in the poem is given the full force of law. The Augustan translators had no qualms about the justice of Ulysses’ case against the usurping good-for-nothing suitors. The suitor-slaying is rendered with great gusto by Pope who frequently points up the righteousness of the retribution being visited upon them, as when the cowman Philaetius kills Ctesippus. In the original, there is an evident joke in the poetic justice meted out to him at the end. He who had thrown a cow’s heel at the stranger is now killed by the cowman: and Wnally the cowherd struck Ctesippus in the breast and exulted over his foe: ‘You foul-mouthed son of Polytherses! Now control your fatuous tongue and 90 It is the Wnal line of the poem: see Dryden, Works, ii. 36.


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don’t talk so big, but entrust your speaking to the gods, who are far stronger than you. Take that in return for the cow’s hoof you gave godlike Odysseus when he begged in the hall.’ So spoke the herdsman of the cows with the twisted horns. (xxii. 284–92)

In the translation, there is no mention of the occupation of Philaetius who from a character who enjoys putting down a big-mouth is raised to the status of hero: Pierc’d thro’ the breast the rude Ctesippus bled, And thus Philaetius gloried o’er the dead. There end thy pompous vaunts, and high disdain; Oh sharp in scandal, voluble and vain! How weak is mortal pride ! To heav’n alone Th’ event of actions and our fates are known: ScoVer, behold what gratitude we bear: The victim’s heel is answer’d with this spear. (xxii. 316–23)

The heroic boasting of Philaetius is matched by the higher register given to Ctesippus too as his Homeric big mouth utters ‘pompous vaunts’ and shows ‘high disdain’ in English. Pope’s Philaetius is more of a moralist and makes a general sententious point about human pride but omits any mention of his master’s begging which might lower the tone.

Painting the manners: ‘partly in the nature of a comedy’ [Ulysses is shown] not in that full light of glory but in the shade of common life, with a mixture of such qualities as are requisite to all the lowest accidents of it, strugling with misfortunes and on a level with the meanest of mankind. As for the other persons, none of them are above what we call the higher Comedy: Calypso, tho’ a Goddess, is a character of intrigue; the Suitors are yet more approaching to it; the Phaeacians are of the same cast; the Cyclops, Melanthius, and Irus, descend even to droll characters: and the scenes that appear throughout, are generally of the comic kind; banquets, revels, sports, loves, and the pursuit of a woman.91

It may be felt here that this will be the least successful aspect of the epic in its Augustan reincarnation; this is often but not always true and

91 From the ‘Postscript to the Odyssey’, in Pope, Twickenham Edition, x. 386.

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especially not so in the case of the Cyclops. Broome in the notes is not taken with the drollery of the episode: I would own my opinion of it, and acknowledge the whole to be nothing but a collusion of words, and Wtter to have place in a Farce or a Comedy than Epic Poetry. . . . The whole wit or jest lies in the ambiguity of sØ which Ulysses imposes on Polyphemus as his own name, which in reality signiWes No Man. I doubt not but Homer was well pleased with it, for afterwards he plays upon the word and calls Ulysses PØ Æe sØ [l. 460 ‘No man worth nothing’] . . . I fancy an Author who should introduce such a sport of words upon the stage, even in the Comedy of our days, would meet with small applause.92 [he escapes when the Cyclops cries No man has blinded me—his fellow Cyclopes, none too bright, conclude that he is mad.]

His Wnal note adduces praise of the episode as ‘a piece of the Sublime strangely horrible’.93 This is certainly not a tale for the squeamish and the horror of it is vividly rendered in the translation. In a narrative featuring a troglodyte monster behaving monstrously in killing the companions of Ulysses by dashing their brains out against the walls of his cave and then eating them raw and whole there is a certain decorum in heightened expression and hyperbole. After the disgusting picture of his drunken sleep in which he belches wine and undigested human Xesh comes the most extended description of physical horror as Ulysses and his men gouge out his single round eye with a burning stake; additions are in bold. Then forth the vengeful instrument I bring; With beating hearts my fellows form a ring. Urg’d by some present God, they swift let fall The pointed torment on his visual ball. Myself above them from a rising ground Guide the sharp stake, and twirl it round and round. As when a shipwright stands his workmen o’er, Who plye the wimble, some huge beam to bore; Urg’d on all hands it nimbly spins about, The grain deep-piercing till it scoops it out: In his broad eye so whirls the Wery wood; From the pierc’d pupil spouts the boiling blood; Sing’d are his brows; the scorching lids grow black; 92 Note on ix. 432, in Pope, Twickenham Edition, ix. 323. 93 Pope, Twickenham Edition, x. 334.


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The gelly bubbles, and the Wbres crack. And as when Arm’rers temper in the ford The keen-edg’d pole-axe, or the shining sword, The red-hot metal hisses in the lake, Thus in his eyeball hiss’d the plunging stake. He sends a dreadful groan: the rocks around Thro’ all their inmost-winding caves resound. (ix. 451–70)

These couplets vividly impress upon their reader the physical sensation of sharp pointed twirling, piercing, and scorching. At the same time the additional line in the second couplet, an inspired sophistication of the Greek, expresses the unerring aim of the men as they pointedly wield their ‘vengeful instrument’ and the resulting torment of pain to the single eye highlighted in an emphatically placed and visually expressive periphrasis ‘visual ball’, the eye that sees (when open) and is seen, and a literal translation of Cyclops ‘round-eyed’. Pope makes the similes more congruous; he adds scooping to the Wrst and describes what is a ship’s timber in the Greek as a ‘huge beam’ that reXects upon the mighty eye. He changes the organization of the second so that the main point of comparison, the hissing noise, is made emphatic by close repetition in adjacent lines. Here the Augustan sense of decorum, Wttingness, produces positive artistic enhancement. The noise of the giant’s groan echoes magniWcently through the slowly expanding rhythm of the full resounding Wnal line. The episode is not without its grim humour. Polyphemus promises a favour to Ulysses if he tells him his name. When Ulysses claims his favour, the giant promises to eat him last. The Giant then. Our promis’d grace receive The hospitable boon we mean to give: When all thy wretched crew have felt my pow’r, Noman shall be the last I will devour. (ix. 435–8)

Pope’s additional epithet ‘hospitable’ is a savage pleasantry at the expense of the main moral theme of the poem, the requirement to give hospitality to the visiting stranger. The humour, therefore, is not gratuitous but has moral point. The additional mention of power underscores his brutishness too. Yet in ‘many-minded Homer’ even the brute has a redeeming trait in his fond appreciation for his favourite ram (the means by which

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unbeknown to his master Ulysses escapes). In subsequent literature, too, the Cyclops is a Wgure of pathos. There is pathos and irony in his address to the ram as, impeded by the weight of Ulysses, he emerges from the cave not Wrst as usual but last: Now far the last, with pensive steps and slow Thou mov’st, as conscious of thy master’s woe! Seest thou these lids that now unfold in vain? (The deed of Noman and his wicked train) Oh! didst thou feel for thy aZicted Lord, And would but Fate the pow’r of speech aVord! Soon might’st thou tell me, where in secret here The dastard lurks, all trembling with his fear: Swung round and round, and dash’d from rock to rock, His batter’d brains should on the pavement smoke. No ease, no pleasure my sad heart receives, While such a monster as vile Noman lives. (ix. 531–42)

Here is a potent mixture of pathos, irony, and something almost comic in the hypocrisy of the Cyclops’ moral judgement of Ulysses and his ‘wicked’ companions and in the sublime self ignorance of the giant unconsciously brought out in his use of the word ‘monster’ in the Wnal line (Pope’s addition) after he has just reminded us of his own monstrous behaviour three lines earlier. Pope has replaced Homeric drollery in the play on words scorned by Broome in the note cited earlier with his own joke that again has great thematic point. If we feel any sympathy for the Cyclops here, it could be said that this joke almost casts Ulysses momentarily in the role of monster. It certainly complicates the narrative. But the more obvious point relates to pathetic selfignorance in a poem in which knowledge is the great virtue. Ulysses is the man of knowledge with the ‘knowing mind’ that Eumaeus Wnds lacking in Antinous, leader of the suitors, whose tell-tale name means ‘anti-mind’. Antinous is the most brutish of the suitors and Pope is not above making a grim joke at his expense when he sports upon words at the moment of his death: Swift as the word the parting arrow sings, And bears thy fate, Antinous, on its wings: Wretch that he was, of unprophetic soul! High in his hands he rear’d the golden bowl;


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Ev’n then to drain it lengthen’d out his breath; Chang’d to the deep, the bitter draught of death: (xxii. 11–16)

The ‘comic’ character of the work sometimes encouraged the translator to a boldness of expression that he did not countenance in the more evenly sublime and elevated Iliad. When Ulysses steps forth in all the conWdence of his newly acquired power (‘Stripp’d of his rags, he blaz’d out like a God’; xxii. 2), he addresses the suitors directly with a witty insult that would have been unthinkable between heroes in the Iliad: ‘Dogs, ye have had your day’ (xxii. 41). It is certainly true that what marked the Odyssey for Pope as a comedy caused him and his fellow translators some diYculty but equally true that it encouraged and facilitated new modes of expression and extended the range of the Augustan epic style.

Reaction Pope’s Homer represents the grand climacteric of English translation. There is a sense in which everything leads up to it, and once there, it is the indisputable version to which all subsequent versions of epic bear reference, a standard marker to which all is referred even if that means conscious rejection. Moreover its publishing history shows how consistently and widely it has been read. But this is not to say that it won unanimous critical acclaim even in its own time. There were the criticisms of those who like John Dennis94 were Pope’s enemies which are now deservedly consigned to the oblivion that awaited the similar over-rationalistic nit-picking of Bentley on Paradise Lost, and Milburne on Dryden’s Virgil. But the immediate response is more fairly and judiciously expressed by Joseph Spence in An Essay on Pope’s Odyssey which came out hard on the heels of the poem itself in two volumes in 1726/7.95 Spence’s criticism is cast in the form of a dialogue between two speakers, Philypsus (he who is fond of the sublime) and Antiphaus (he is who is anti glitter). They are characterized as follows: The one was so possest with the Pleasure which he felt from Wne Thoughts and warm Expressions, that he did not take full Satisfaction in low Beauty, and

94 A sample of these can be found in John Barnard (ed.), Pope: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), 124–8. 95 See n. 85, above.

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simple Representations of Nature; the other, on the contrary, had such an aversion to glitterings and elevation, that he was distasted at any the least appearance of either. If the latter was prejudiced for the ancients, from the Purity and Justness, which we Wnd in most of their Works; Philypsus had his foible too, and was sometimes caught by the Flourish and Colouring of the Moderns. In a word, if Philypsus wou’d sometimes contemn a Point as low and mean, tho’ in reality proper enough, and naturally express’d; Antiphaus, in his turn, might happen now and then to blame a Passage which requir’d a good degree of ornament, as being too glaring and artiWcial. (i. 2–3)

The debate, which is balanced and not brought to a resolution, is left open for the reader to decide. All the issues that have subsequently been debated about Pope’s Homer are fully present in this immediate response, including the debate about rhyme and the heroic couplet, a form admired and defended by Philypsus but vigorously attacked by Antiphaus. Much of the discussion turns on the question of ornament in poetry; where Homer is simple, Antiphaus Wnds too much of it in Pope. Philypsus, on the other hand, is able to demonstrate that in many passages, through Pope’s deployment of all the poetic and rhetorical resources of the grand style, Homer is enhanced in Pope’s translation. He is appreciative, like many subsequent readers, of the pictorial quality of the translation. Thus in that beautiful description of Calypso’s bower, you see the groves of ‘living green’, the alders ‘ever-quivering’, the ‘nodding’ cypress, and its high branches ‘waving’ with the storm. ’Tis by epithets that the ancient poets paint their Elysian groves, and moderns their Windsor Forests. (ii. 18)

All the epithets here are actually the translator’s own additions. However, this visualization is but a part of the way in which Pope can make the narrative vivid. A passage Philypsus dwells on at length, and in which he Wnds the chief beauty of the whole translation, occurs in the Circe episode when the goddess is surprised by the successful resistance of Ulysses. What art thou? say! from whence, from whom you came? O more than human! tell thy race, thy name. Amazing strength these poisons to sustain! Not mortal thou, nor mortal is thy brain. Or art thou he? the man to come (foretold By Hermes pow’rful with the wand of gold) The man from Troy, who wander’d Ocean round,


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The Man, for Wisdom’s various arts renown’d. Ulysses? (x. 387–95) What starts? what terror and amazement? What passionate breaks are there in these lines? How solemn is the beginning? How emphatical the account of the action, and how lively the surprize and confusion of the Inchantress, upon Wnding the ineYcacy of her Charms? Nature here appears in every Word that she says . . . The extraordinary Beauty I mean, is that Insight which the Poet gives his Readers into Circe’s Mind. . . . Every one may perceive the Tumult, and the successive Enlightnings of her mind. We are led into a full View of the shifting of her thoughts, and behold the various openings of them in her Soul. (ii. 55–6, 58–9)

When later Dr Johnson came to his assessment of Pope’s Homer, he may have been recalling the strictures of Antiphaus in Spence’s Essay. It has been objected by some, who wish to be numbered among the sons of learning, that Pope’s version of Homer is not Homerical; that it exhibits no resemblance of the original and characteristick manner of the Father of Poetry, as it wants his awful simplicity, his artless grandeur and his unaVected majesty. This cannot be totally denied; but it must be remembered that ‘necessitas quod cogit defendit’; that may be lawfully done which cannot be forborne. Time and place will always enforce regard. In estimating this translation, consideration must be he had of nature of our language, the form of our metre, and above all of the change which two thousand years have made in the modes of life and the habits of thought. Virgil wrote in a language of the same general fabrick with that of Homer, in verses of the same measure, and in an age nearer to Homer’s time by eighteen hundred years, yet he found, even then, the state of the world so much altered, and the demand for elegance so much increased, that mere nature would be endured no longer; and perhaps in the multitude of borrowed passages, very few can be shewn which he has not embellished. . . . Thus it will be found in the progress of learning that in all nations the Wrst writers are simple, and that every age improves in elegance. One reWnement always makes way for another; and what was expedient to Virgil was necessary to Pope.96

His defence, in which there is more truth than may at Wrst meet the eye, develops the defence made by Philypsus himself. You are always blaming the Modern ReWnements, says Philypsus; but will you not allow that this taste of the Age is a suYcient justiWcation at least of Mr. Pope, in those cases where he complies with it?–we must write so as to please the World, and speak so as to be the most easily understood: Custom 96 Johnson, Lives, iii. 238–9.

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will often wear away the propriety of things of this Nature; and as for propriety of language, that depends upon it entirely. (i. 21)

Philypsus here is repeating the defence that Pope himself had oVered amongst the notes that he had written to accompany his earlier translation of the Iliad, when he gave his reasons for refusing to use the word ‘ass’ in his version: ‘ However, upon the whole, a Translator owes so much to the Taste of the Age in which he lives, as not to make too great a Complement to a former.’97 97 See his note on xi. 668 in Pope, Twickenham Edition, viii. 64.

Epilogue: Augustans and Moderns In this Wnal section, juxtaposition of extracts from English Augustan versions of Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Juvenal, and Horace with later and modern counterparts, some of which have been greatly acclaimed, is intended to throw the achievement of the Augustans into clear relief and to highlight aspects of their greater artistry. The following speech of Achilles is part of the short extract from Homer’s Iliad introducing Robert Lowell’s acclaimed Imitations Wrst published in 1958.1 Coward, do not speak to me of ransom! Before the day of terror overtook Patroklos, Sparing Trojans was my heart’s choice and rest— Thousands I seized alive and sold like sheep! Now there’s not one who’ll run out with his life, Should the god throw him to me before Troy, But none are more accursed than Priam’s sons . . . You too must die, my dear. Why do you care? Patroklos, a much better man, has died. Or look at me—how large and Wne I am— A goddess bore me, and my father reigned, Yet I too have my destiny and death: Either at sunrise, night, or at high noon, Some warrior will spear me down the lines, Or stick me with an arrow through the heel. (translating xxi. 99–113) Fool, propose not ransom to me, nor make speeches. Until Patroclus met his day of fate, till then it was more pleasing to my mind to spare Trojans, and many I took alive and sold; but now there is not one who will escape death, whomever before the walls of Ilios a god delivers into my hands—not one of all the Trojans, and not least of all one of the sons of Priam. No, friend, you too 1 Robert Lowell, Imitations (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1958).

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must die; why lament you thus? Patroclus also died, and he was better far than you. And do you not see what manner of man I am, how fair and how tall? A good man was my father, and a goddess the mother that bore me; yet over me too hang death and resistless fate. There will come a dawn or evening or midday, when my life too will some man take in battle, whether he strike me with a spear, or with an arrow from the string.

Comparison with the literal translation shows that Lowell has not taken many liberties despite the general title under which the version appears. There are only two notable additions: the simile in the fourth line ‘like sheep’ and the introduction of Achilles’ heel at the end. There are several infelicities in Lowell. That sparing Trojans could ever have been Achilles’ heart’s ‘rest’ is scarcely credible; ‘run out with his life’ is a confusing notion for escaping death. The chief infelicity is surely the translation of what must be an ironic use of the word º (‘friend’) as ‘my dear’, a phrase which does not lend itself to sarcasm, followed by the question ‘Why do you care?’ Again the force of the Greek q OºıæÆØ oø ‘why are you making such a hue and cry’ needs to be interpreted so that it carries a more than literal charge, otherwise it seems a silly question, for obviously a human being who is pleading for his life cares greatly. The translation of ªÆ as ‘large’ is too restrictive (‘tall’ in the literal version is equally poor), for Achilles is pointing not speciWcally to stature but to his mightiness (of which his stature is the physical manifestation) as the son of a goddess with a special destiny, as the next line makes clear. Here, though in the Greek the father is simply said to IªÆŁ (a ‘good man’ in the literal version), Lowell’s ‘my father reigned’ is probably a correct interpretation of the Greek. It is most likely that Homeric goodness in this context refers primarily to status rather than morals but ‘my father reigned’ is an indirect and stilted way of saying that he was a king. Finally, the one indubitable felicity in the passage, the importation of Achilles’ ‘heel’ is spoilt by the expression which immediately precedes it; ‘stick’ (conceivably a corruption of ‘strike’?) can scarcely be said to be properly idiomatic. Pope has taken more liberties than Lowell; his version is more of an imitation. Talk not of Life, or Ransom, (he replies) Patroclus dead, whoever meets me dies: In vain a single Trojan sues for Grace; But least, the Sons of Priam’s hateful Race.


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Die then, my Friend! What boots it to deplore? The great, the good Patroclus is no more! He, far thy Better, was foredoom’d to die, ‘And thou, dost thou, bewail Mortality?’ See’st thou not me, whom Nature’s Gifts adorn, Sprung from a Hero, from a Goddess born; The Day shall come (which nothing can avert) When by the Spear, the Arrow, or the Dart, By Night, or Day, by Force or by Design, Impending Death and certain Fate are mine. Die then— (xxi. 111–25)

The most notable change is the insertion of a line from Dryden’s Lucretius (acknowledged by quotation marks) in which the philosopher is arguing against the fear of death. The addition gives to Achilles himself something of a philosophical dimension as with magisterial and implacable ruthlessness he dismisses the plea of Lycaon. The question demonstrates that Achilles is eVectively deaf to all human cares but his own: it is sublimely egotistical in its desperate acceptance of the inevitable. It lifts the utterance onto a diVerent plane from that of Lowell or the literal version. None of the infelicities apparent in Lowell are present in Pope. All his expression is self-consistent, idiomatic, and fully appropriate. Nor is there any sign of that pseudo-poetic diction later castigated by Wordsworth and Coleridge.2 The only expression that might conceivably trouble a modern reader occurs in the question ‘What boots it to deplore?’ which contains a standard eighteenth-century idiom now obsolete. But its connotations are exactly right, underscoring the general sense of the pointlessness of Lycaon’s plea. The speech as a whole is implacable in its rhetoric emphasizing in a single-minded way, death, doom, and inevitability. Cowper’s version,3 more literal than Pope’s, is better and more emphatic than Lowell and makes an instructive comparison with his Augustan predecessor. Fool! speak’st thou of ransom? Name it not to me, For till my friend the miserable fate 2 See F. W. Bateson and N. A. Joukovsky (eds.), Alexander Pope: A Critical Anthology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 186–8. 3 William Cowper, The Iliad Translated into English Blank Verse (London: J. Johnson, 1791).

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Augustans and Moderns Accomplish’d, I was somewhat given to spare, And numerous, whom I seized alive, I sold. But now, of all the Trojans whom the gods Deliver to me, none shall death escape, ’Specially of the house of Priam, none. Die, therefore, even thou, my friend! What mean Thy tears unreasonably shed and vain? Died not Patroclus, braver far than thou? And look on me,—see’st not to what an height My stature towers, and what a bulk I boast? A king begat me, and a goddess bore. What then? A death by violence awaits Me also, and at morn, or eve, or noon, I perish, whensoe’er the destined spear Shall reach me, or the arrow from the nerve. (xxi. 121–37)

Though Cowper has none of the infelicities of Lowell, there is a stiltedness of expression arising partly from word choice and partly from their placing only too apparent in the slightly awkward formality of ‘Name it not to me’ and ‘Accomplish’d’. There is no trace here of the sublime egotism of Pope’s Achilles (as manifested particularly in the quotation from Lucretius); in the phrases ‘somewhat given to spare’ and ‘unreasonably shed’, Cowper’s Achilles, much more than Pope’s, speaks like an understating English gentleman of the eighteenth century. The general eVect of the word order in Cowper, with its pronounced tendency to inversion, is to make the whole utterance much slower and more deliberate (e.g. ‘numerous . . . sold’ and ‘death escape’). Pope also habitually uses inversion of the normal order of prose but in his couplets such inversion and suspension achieve a concentration of eVect as in the line: ‘Patroclus dead, whoever meets me dies’. There is no mistaking the deadly intention here and there is nothing in Cowper with such immediacy and directness as this. This concentration of eVect is the product of a consistent rhythmic assurance in Pope; his mastery of the couplet form lifts even the most circumstantial line: ‘Sprung from a Hero, from a Goddess born’ with its chiastic arrangement, its emphatically accented participle at the opening, and its repeated preposition is much more dynamic than Cowper’s ‘A king begat me, and a goddess bore’. Finally, this immediacy, economy, directness, and rhythmic assurance is unerringly directed to express the essential thematic content; the Wnal lines make a much more dramatic climax in Pope than in Cowper. The whole


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emphasis of the utterance comes down to the surety of ‘Impending Death and certain Fate’; how absolutely appropriate are Pope’s epithets here. Conversely, Cowper’s rhetorical break with the question ‘What then?’ (not in Homer) undermines any continuity of eVect and his last four lines are comparatively nerveless when put beside Pope’s passionately emphatic conclusion. Of course it may be said that Pope has taken more liberties with Homer’s Greek than has Cowper (though the latter’s ‘Wdelity’ can be overemphasized) but the result is not merely much better poetry in Pope but also a much clearer and more emphatic rendering of the epic content of the Greek. In the case of Virgil, there are many translations that could be put besides Dryden’s but two in particular are appropriate for present purposes. The Wrst is by Wordsworth who translated more than three books in the 1820s.4 In a letter to Walter Scott in 1805, he had denigrated Dryden’s translation in a verdict that has been much repeated: ‘in his translation from Vergil, whenever Vergil can be fairly said to have had his eye upon his object, Dryden always spoils the passage’.5 What precisely Wordsworth meant by having the eye upon the object is not entirely clear. What is clear, however, is the inferiority of his own translation when put beside Dryden’s as the following extract, taken from the third book and recording the moment when the Trojans Wrst catch sight of the promised land, will illustrate. Now, when Aurora reddened in a sky From which the Stars had vanished, we descry The low faint hills of distant Italy. ‘Italia!’ shouts Achates; round and round ‘Italia’ Xies with gratulant rebound, From all who see the coast, or hear the happy sound. Not slow is Sire Anchises to entwine With wreaths a goblet, which he Wlled with wine, Then, on the Stern he took his lofty stand, And cried, ‘Ye Deities of sea and land Through whom the Storms are governed, speed our way By breezes docile to your kindliest sway!’

4 Wordsworth translated Books I, II, most of III, and an extract from VIII: see William Wordsworth, Translations of Chancer and Virgil, ed. Bruce E. Graver (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). 5 Letter dated 7 November 1805: see James and Helen Kinsleys (eds.), Dryden: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), 323–4.

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Augustans and Moderns —With freshening impulse breathe the wished-for gales, And, as the Ships press on with greedy sails, Opens the port; and peering into sight, Minerva’s Temple tops a craggy height. (iii. 721–36 translating iii. 521–31)

It is remarkable in the Wrst place that Wordsworth chose to translate Virgil into the heroic couplet. Secondly what will strike a modern reader as equally remarkable is the awkward presence of pompous Latinate vocabulary and expression: ‘with gratulant rebound’ and ‘docile to your kindliest sway’ are expressions of a kind that has justly given much eighteenth-century poetry a poor reputation and against which the Romantics are thought generally to have rebelled. The retention of the Latin ‘Italia’ and the Latinate ‘Not slow’ (a negative not in Virgil here) are in a similar vein. In the imagery and cadence of ‘The low faint hills of distant Italy’ in the third line, the poet can be said to have presented the original Wnely to the eye of the beholder and in the line ‘With freshening impulse breathe the wished-for gales’ the gently quickening sound well echoes the sense; otherwise it is diYcult to Wnd much to praise in the style of this passage which as a whole is uneven in pitch and strained in manner. By contrast the ease and Xow of Dryden represents a consistent stylistic harmony which is a prerequisite for the successful rendition of a long narrative poem. And now the rising Morn, with rosie light Adorns the Skies, that puts the Stars to Xight; When we from far, like bluish Mists, descry The Hills, and then the Plains of Italy. Achates Wrst pronounc’d the Joyful sound; Then Italy the chearful Crew rebound. My sire Anchises crown’d a Cup with Wine: And oV’ring, thus implor’d the Pow’rs Divine. Ye Gods, presiding over Lands and Seas, And you who raging Winds and Waves appease, Breath on our swelling Sails a prosp’rous Wind: And smooth our Passage to the Port assign’d. The gentle Gales their Xagging force renew; And now the happy Harbour is in view. Minerva’s Temple then salutes our sight; Plac’d as a Land-mark, on the Mountains height; (iii. 682–97)


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Here Dryden’s style has an easy dignity that is characteristic of his Virgil generally. On examination there are many words with Latinate roots, but no words or phrases that seem overblown, inharmonious, strained, or pompous. We need only put ‘ ‘‘Italia’’ Xies with gratulant rebound’ beside ‘Then Italy the chearful crew rebound’ to make the point. By virtue of his word choice and the placing of those words Dryden maintains what Gerard Manley Hopkins well called ‘the native thew and sinew of the English language’,6 as much a comment on his metrical management as the pitch of his diction. In the opening the glimpsing of Italy is very beautifully imagined; far from spoiling Virgil, Dryden has certainly done justice to this important moment and might almost be said to have improved upon the visual quality of the Latin with the importation of the simile ‘like bluish Mists’ followed by a very precisely imagined representation of the stages by which what is on the horizon gradually becomes clear to the eye of the beholder, Wrst the hills and then the plains. This expands on Virgil’s words ‘procul obscuros colles humilemque videmus j Italiam’ (iii. 522– 3) ‘from afar we see the obscure hills and low-lying plain of Italy’. The epithets in the Latin, while they have visual signiWcance, are also indicative of the humble obscurity of Italy yet to be made famous by the descendants of Aeneas. The symbolic associations escape both Wordworth and Dryden equally, but Dryden has bettered Wordsworth in rendering the physical reality. Similarly, at the end, an importation ‘Plac’d as a Land-mark’ shows that Dryden characteristically has his eye very clearly on the object that he is visualizing in the scene which he is translating. C. Day Lewis’s translation7 is the modern version of Virgil most frequently reprinted. And now, the stars dispersed by the Wrst Xush of dawn, We sighted, far away, dim hills and a low coast-line. Italy. Achates was the Wrst to hail, ‘Italy!’ ‘Italy!’ my comrades echoed in cheerful greeting. Then did my father, Anchises, garland a mighty bowl And Wll it with wine, and taking his stand high up on the stern Above us, invoked the gods:— 6 In a letter to Robert Bridges, 6 Nov. 1887: see Gerard Manley Hopkins, Selected Letters, ed. Catherine Phillips (Oxford: OUP, 1990), 265. 7 The translation by C. Day Lewis of the Aeneid, commissioned for broadcasting, was Wrst published in 1952. See Lewis, The Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid of Virgil (London: OUP, 1966).

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Augustans and Moderns You deities who control the sea, the earth and the weather, Grant us fair winds and an easy passage! Breathe kindly upon us! A freshening breeze answered his prayer; getting nearer, we opened A harbour mouth, and saw on Minerva’s Height a temple. (iii. 421–31)

There is no pretension here, as in Wordsworth, to any high style. The Wrst two lines are rhythmically attractive but any build-up of anticipation is not carried through. ‘Italy’ comes with no sense of climax. Such prosaic anticlimax is again felt in the translation of ‘tempestatum’ (iii. 528) as ‘weather’ and in the Wnal line where ‘saw on Minerva’s Height a temple’ is bald and Xat in comparison to Wordsworth and Dryden who both convey an impression of the temple coming into view as a prominent landmark. The phrase ‘we opened j A harbour mouth’ scarcely makes sense. The translation is not distinguished by any consistent poetic eVect. Adopting a method of ‘translation with latitude’, Dryden and Pope deploy the mature Augustan couplet with a consistent rhythmic certainty, an easy decorum of style and content, and a clarity of emphasis in rhetorical arrangement that is all shown to exemplary eVect in the translations of epic with which this book has been chieXy concerned. In these respects, their translations have not been bettered in later times. Versions of other classical poets by Dryden and Pope have a similar preeminence and translations in Augustan couplets by lesser Wgures often have a quality by virtue of which they transcend those of later times. The poetry of Ovid, in particular, well lends itself to Augustan translation. Translations of Ovid by Marlowe, it will be recalled, constituted the earliest good examples of the closed couplet in English which in its rhetorical patterning continued to exhibit what Johnson called in relation to Pope’s Homer ‘Ovidian graces’.8 Ovid has recently appeared in a new translation by Ted Hughes9 that has been well received by critics and readers. Here is the modern version of the beautiful description of Diana’s grotto translated from the story of Actaeon, followed by the couplet version of Joseph Addison. A deep cleft at the bottom of the mountain Dark with matted pine and spiky cypress 8 See Johnson, Lives, vol. iii. 9 See Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid (London: Faber, 1997).


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Was known as Gargaphie, sacred to Diana, Goddess of the hunt. In the depths of this goyle was the mouth of a cavern That might have been carved out with deliberate art From the soft volcanic rock. It half-hid a broad pool, perpetually shaken By a waterfall inside the mountain, Noisy but hidden. Often to that grotto, Aching and burning from her hunting, Diana came To cool the naked beauty she hid from the world. (translating Metamorphoses, iii. 155–64)10 Down in a Vale with Pine and Cypress clad, Refresh’d with gentle Winds, and brown with Shade, The chaste Diana’s private Haunt, there stood Full in the Centre of the darksom Wood A spacious Grotto, all around o’er-grown With hoary Moss, and arched with Pumice-stone. From out its rocky Clefts the Waters Xow, And trickling swell into a Lake below. Nature had ev’ry where so plaied her part, That ev’ry where she seem’d to vie with Art. Here the bright Goddess, toil’d and chaf ’d with Heat, Was wont to bathe her in the cool Retreat. (translating iii. 155–63)11

The simplicity of what, when viewed from an Augustan perspective, might aptly be called Hughes’s poetic prose contrasts with the more obvious poetical workmanship of the Augustan translator, particularly marked in the conscious artiWce of the penultimate couplet. Such conscious artiWce reXected in neat verbal play is an Ovidian feature for which Hughes is not aiming to Wnd an equivalence. In comparison with a stronger Augustan poet, Dryden, the limitations of the modern version are more apparent. Midnight. Mankind sprawled In sleep without a care. 10 Tales from Ovid, 105–6. 11 Taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in Latin and English (1976), 86, a reprint by Garland Publishing of the Amsterdam edition of 1732, itself a splendid reissue of Sir Samual Garth’s composite version of 1717.

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Augustans and Moderns But Myrrha writhed in her sheets. To cool the Wery gnawings throughout her body She drew deep gasping breaths. They made the Xames worse. Half of her prayed wildly— In despair under the crushing Impossibility—and half of her coolly Plotted how to put it to the test. She was both aghast at her own passion And reckless to satisfy it.12 ’Twas now the dead of Night, when Slumbers close Our Eyes, and sooth our Cares with soft Repose; But no Repose cou’d wretched Myrrha Wnd, Her Body rouling, as she rouled her Mind: Mad with Desire, she ruminates her Sin, And wishes all her Wishes o’er again: Now she despairs, and now resolves to try; Wou’d not, and wou’d again, she knows not why; Stops, and returns, makes and retracts the Vow; Fain would begin, but understands not how. (translating Metamorphoses, 368–72)13

What is immediately obvious in the comparison here is a diVerence between showing (Dryden) and telling (Hughes). Dryden makes us experience the turmoil of Myrrha as she is torn between incestuous desires and her conscience. The various turns in thoughts and words in which Dryden believed Ovid excelled all poets14 are vividly present in the verbal dexterity in his couplets and recreate the physical and mental restlessness about which Hughes merely informs us. Dryden is clearer too. What Hughes’s Myrrha might be praying for ‘under the crushing j Impossibility’ is by no means obvious, whereas Dryden’s rapidly executed antitheses are easily apprehended. Dryden represents Ovid’s full copiousness, yet he uses only ten more words than Hughes who seems limited in expressiveness by comparison. In the case of satire, it is to be expected that the Augustans who excelled in the genre generally will excel the moderns in translation of the genre’s classical exemplars. That this is clearly the case is immediately borne out by putting the version of Juvenal’s tenth satire on the 12 Hughes, Tales from Ovid, 118. 14 See ‘Preface to the Fables’, ibid. 33.

13 Dryden, Works, vii. 251–2.


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vanity of human wishes by Lowell beside the translation of Dryden and the imitation of Johnson. One of Juvenal’s most memorable examples of the vanity of human military power and aspiration is the career of Hannibal and its abject end in anticlimax and failure. What is the last day of this mighty spirit whose valor turned the known world on its head? Not swords, or pikes, or legions—no, not these, his crown for Cannae and those seas of blood is poison in a ring. March, madman, cross the Alps, the Tiber—be a purple patch for schoolboys, and a theme for declamation! (translating ll. 159–67)15

What the modern version lacks, and in this Lowell is typical of modern translations, is any consistent equivalence of the declamatory power of the Latin. With the witty sarcasm on which the portrait ends: ‘declamatio Was’, Hannibal has become precisely a theme for declamation, but the puncturing of his aspiration is much more sharply concentrated in Dryden’s version. What wondrous sort of Death, has Heav’n design’d Distinguish’d from the herd of Humane Kind, For so untam’d, so turbulent a Mind! Nor Swords at hand, nor hissing Darts afar, Are doom’d t’Avenge the tedious bloody War, But, Poyson, drawn through a Rings hollow plate, Must Wnish him; a sucking Infant’s Fate. Go, climb the rugged Alps, ambitious Fool, To please the Boys, and be a Theme at School. (ll. 264–72)16

o

The Wnal couplet provides a grandly contemptuous dismissal. It is achieved through a combination of imagery and rhythm. ‘Go, climb the rugged Alps’ Wnely encapsulates Hannibal’s aspiration in way that ‘cross j the Alps’ fails to do. The folly of it is emphatically rendered in the monosyllabic rhyme word, and the latent irony in the pleasure that his defeat gives to Roman schoolboys makes the reduction of Hannibal’s 15 Lowell’s version of this satire Wrst appeared in Near the Ocean (London 1967). Extracts can be found in Juvenal in English, ed. Martin M. Winkler (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001), 432. 16 Dryden, Works, vi. 223.

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status complete. The couplet throws together ‘ambitious Fool’ with ‘Theme at School’; this is much more eVectively reductive than Lowell’s ending where ‘a theme for declamation’ is detached from the schoolboys and the Wnal quadri-syllabic word lacks incisive punch. For punch with moral gravity, here is Dr Johnson contemplating the fate of Charles V in declamatory poetry of a wholly diVerent order from that of Lowell. Did no subverted Empire mark his End? Did rival Monarchs give the fatal Wound? Or hostile Millions press him to the Ground? His Fall was destin’d to a barren Strand, A petty Fortress, and a dubious Hand; He left the Name, at which the World grew pale, To point a Moral or adorn a Tale. (ll. 216–22)17

A Wnal example may suggest how eVectively Dryden has used the rhetorical structures of the closed couplet form for the purposes of enforcing powerful argument but also how vividly he can deploy the form to deliver sharply delineated and highly energised pictures. Lowell’s comparatively literal version gives the basic Juvenalian sense. ‘Give us long life, O God, and years to live,’ in sickness or in health, this is our prayer; but age’s ills are strong and never fail. Look at the face, deformed and paralysed, unlike itself, its skin a hide, gone cheeks, a thousand wrinkles like a mother ape. (translating ll. 188–95)

Apart from the awkward phrase ‘gone cheeks’ this is straightforward enough. But Dryden makes us feel disgust and horror. Jove grant me length of Life, and Years good store Heap on my bending Back, I ask no more. Both Sick and Healthful, Old and Young, conspire In this one silly, mischievous desire. Mistaken Blessing which Old Age they call, ’Tis a long, nasty, darksome Hospital. A ropy Chain of Rhumes; a Visage rough, 17 Available in Samuel Johnson, The Complete English Poems, ed. J. D. Fleeman (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 83.


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Deform’d, Unfeatur’d, and a Skin of BuV. A stitch-fal’n cheek, that hangs below the Jaw; Such Wrinkles, as a skilful Hand wou’d draw For a Grandam Ape, when, with a Grace, She sits at squat, and scrubs her Leathern Face. (ll. 301–12)18

The Wnal picture of the ‘Grandam Ape’ presents us with an image which is still repulsive in eVect when we make the comparison between human and ape but in its own way the ape acts ‘with a Grace’ such as the skilful hand of a painter might catch. What may be unconscious charm in an animal is repulsive in a human being. The sophistication here forces an unhappy parallel between human and animal. Nobody could argue that in the case of Juvenal where the classical poet had his eye on his object Dryden spoils the passage. Juvenal is the springboard for the most vivid imagining. There is something of the grand scale about Dryden’s imagining in his satire; indeed he regarded satire, theoretically, as a species of epic.19 But the Augustan couplet was also an ideal medium for the sermo pedestris of Horace. The following extract from Pope’s imitation of Horace’s defence of satire is composed of elements as prosaic as it is possible to imagine. However, the couplet form invests the utterance with a digniWed precision and emphasis; the resulting verse has three of the four qualities highlighted by Dryden in relation to Virgil: clearness, ease, and purity. Your plea is good; but still I say, beware! Laws are explain’d by Men—so have a care. It stands on record, that in Richard’s Times A Man was hang’d for very honest Rhymes. Consult the statute; quart. I think it is, Edwardi sext. or prim. & quint. Eliz: See Libels, Satires—here you have it—read. P. Libels and Satires! Lawless Things indeed! But grave Epistles, bringing Vice to light, Such as a King might read, a Bishop write, Such as Sir Robert would approve— F. Indeed? The Case is alter’d—you may then proceed. 18 Dryden, Works, vi. 225.

19 Ibid. iii. 83.

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Augustans and Moderns In such a Cause the PlaintiV will be hiss’d, My Lords the Judges laugh, and you’re dismiss’d. (‘The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace Imitated’, 143–56)20

While the main focus of this book has been on the heroic couplet, the predominant poetic form in the Augustan period, other verse forms exhibit a comparable artistry. An extract from Dryden’s version of the Horace’s Ode, iii. 29 ‘Paraphrased in Pindaric verse’ may serve as a touchstone for the Augustan achievement. Comparison with an earlier more literal version by Sir John Beaumont published in 1609 may suggest both the basic material of the Latin and the kind of English translation upon which Dryden’s freer paraphrase improves. With mindful temper present hours compose, The rest are like a river, which with ease Sometimes within its channel Xows Into Etrurian seas. Oft stones, trees, Xocks and houses it devours, With echoes from the hills and neighb’ring woods When some Werce deluge, raised by showers, Turns quiet brooks to Xoods. He, master of himself, in mirth may live Who saith, ‘I rest well pleased with former days, Let God from heaven tomorrow give Black clouds or sunny rays.’ No force can make that void, which once is past, These things are never altered, or undone, Which from the instant rolling fast With Xying moments run. (translating ll. 32–48)21

This version by Beaumont, a son of Ben who championed classical values in his ‘Concerning the True Form of Poetry’ (1625),22 has a measured dignity and a surety of cadence: the positioning and sound of a phrase like ‘Into Etrurian seas’ is truly Horatian. A modern version by 20 In imitation of ll. 79–86; printed with the Latin in Pope, Twickenham Edition, iv. Imitations of Horace, 19–20. 21 Available in Horace in English, ed. D. Carne Ross and Kenneth Haynes (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996), 79–80. 22 see above, Ch. 2, pp. 78–81.


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comparison lacks both this lyric dignity and consistency of emphasis and is particularly deWcient in its expression of the Horatian philosophy at the end. Take care of the things you need to take care of today. Everything else is as if borne on the Tiber. One day the river Xows along as calm And peaceful as can be, down to the sea, The next day carrying with it rolling boulders And huge torn-loose tree trunks, and drowning beasts Pawing the Xood, and houses swept away, While all around the mountainsides and forests Sound with the echoing noise of how the storm Transformed the quiet stream from what it was. Happy the man who has earned the right to say: ‘I have lived my life. There may be storms tomorrow, Maybe fair weather. Nobody knows for sure. What I have had in the past cannot be taken Away from me now.’23

Dryden’s achievement in his freer paraphrase and his less constrained style is of a wholly diVerent order. Enjoy the present smiling hour, And put it out of Fortunes pow’r; The tide of bus’ness, like the running stream, Is sometimes high, and sometimes low, A quiet ebb, or a tempestuous Xow, And alwayes in extream. Now with a noiseless gentle course It keeps within the middle Bed; Anon it lifts aloft the head, And bears down all before it with impetuous force: And trunks of Trees come rowling down, Sheep and their Folds together drown; Both House and Homested into Seas are borne, And Rocks are from their old foundations torn, And woods made thin with winds, their scatter’d honours mourn.

23 The Odes of Horace: Bilingual Edition: A Translation by David Ferry (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), 251–3: with the Latin text.

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Augustans and Moderns Happy the Man, and he alone, He, who can call to day his own; He who, secure within, can say, ‘Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have liv’d to day: Be fair or foul, or rain, or shine, The joys I have possest, in spight of fate, are mine; Not Heav’n itself upon the past has pow’r, But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.’ (ll. 50–72, 1685)

This is Horace in a grand style that is rendered with absolute surety of conviction. As ‘The tide of Business’ in its extremity sweeps all before it, the reader too is carried away by the force of the poet’s expression. ‘Fortune’s Power’ is vividly embodied in the Wgure of the stream and in the ebb and Xow of the movement and rhythm of the verse. The strong Wgurative element in the Wrst section concludes with a heightening personiWcation as the woods ‘their scatter’d Honours mourn’; this is in the high style of the formal ode. As in the best manner of the mature couplet, the strong masculine rhymes not only bind the utterance but also emphasize what is important in the sense. There is a consistent musical accompaniment embodied in the verse and within this lyrical harmony a great variety of movement and sound. The second section enforcing the theme of carpe diem is wonderfully persuasive in its emphatic argument and passionate conviction. The expression is both steady and dynamic, an unusual combination. It also strikes a high note, though without notable metaphor and with the simplest words in the simplest constructions. Here is what Dryden hoped he had copied in his translation of Virgil: clearness, ease, purity, and magniWcence, this latter as much a consequence of rhythm and cadence as of metaphor and image or magniloquent diction. Set beside other versions, we can see that it has a formal elegance, a polished reWnement, and a metrical harmony resulting in a surety and poise that are the hallmarks of Augustan art in Latin and English. Yet these are a means to an end, not cultivated for their own sake, but harnessed in such a way as to give the utterance maximum emphasis, persuasiveness, dignity, and power, resulting here in what Pope called, when celebrating Dryden’s pivotal role in the reWnement of English poetry, his ‘energy divine’.24 24 ‘The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace’ [The epistle to Augustus], 269 in Imitations of Horace, 217.

Select Bibliography PRIMARY WORKS: CLASSICAL TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS Addison, Joseph, Miscellaneous Works, ed. A. C. Guthkelch, 2 vols. (London: Bell, 1914). Anon., Dido’s Death; Translated out of the best Latine Poets, into the best of vulgar Languages: By one that hath no name (London: Walter Burre, 1622). Aristotle, Aristotle: The Poetics: ‘Longinus’: On the Sublime: Demetrius: On Style, trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe (Aristotle and Longinus), W. Rhys Roberts (Demetrius) (London: Heinemann, 1932). Arnold, Matthew, ‘Lectures on Translating Homer’ in Matthew Arnold: On the Classical Tradition, ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960). Boileau, Œuvres comple`tes de Boileau, ed. Charles H. Boudhors, 7 vols. (Paris: Socie´te´ Les Belles Lettres, 1942), iv. Dissertation sur la Joconde; Arrest Burlesque; Traite´ du Sublime. Chapman’s Homer, ed. Allardyce Nicoll, 2 vols., 2nd edn. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967). Classical Literary Criticism, ed. D. A. Russell and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: OUP, 1989). [translations of Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Dio of Prusa, and Plutarch] Cowper, William, The Iliad Translated into English Blank Verse (London: 1791). Cronin, Grover, and Doyle, Paul A. (eds.), Pope’s Iliad: An Examination by William Melmoth (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1960). Daniel, Samuel, Poems and A Defence of Ryme, ed. Arthur Colby Sprague (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1965). Denham, The Poetical Works of Sir John Denham, ed. Theodore Howard Banks, 2nd edn. (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1969). Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Critical Essays, trans. Stephen Usher, 2 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1985). Dryden, Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays, ed. George Watson, 2 vols. (London: J. M. Dent, 1962). —— The Works of John Dryden, ed. E. N. Hooker, H. T. Swedenberg Jr. et al., 20 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1956– ). —— The Poems of John Dryden 1686–1693, ed. Paul Hammond and David Hopkins, vols. iii and iv (Harlow: Longman, 2000). Eliot, T. S., On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber, 1957). Ennius, Remains of Old Latin I Ennius Caecilius, trans. F. H. Warmington (London: Heinemann, 1967).

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Hall, Joseph, The Poems of Joseph Hall, ed. Arnold Davenport (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1969). Hobbes, Thomas, The Iliads and Odysses of Homer (London: William Crook, 1677). Homer, Iliad, trans. A. T. Murray, rev. William F. Wyatt, 2 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1999). —— The Odyssey, trans. A. T. Murray, 2 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1919). —— Homer in English, ed. George Steiner (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996). Horace, Horace in English, ed. D. S. Carne-Ross and Kenneth Haynes (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996). —— The Odes of Horace: Bilingual Edition: A Translation by David Ferry (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997). —— Satires Epistles and Ars Poetica, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (London: Heinemann, 1926). —— Odes and Epodes, trans. C. E. Bennett (London: Heinemann, 1914). —— Epistles Book II and Epistle to the Pisones (‘Ars Poetica’), ed. Niall Rudd (Cambridge: CUP, 1989). Hughes, Ted, Tales from Ovid (London: Faber, 1997). Hutchinson, Lucy, Commonplace Book, Nottinghamshire Archives, MS DDHU 1 [translation of most of Aeneid, ii–vi]. Johnson, Samuel, The Complete English Poems, ed. J. D. Fleeman (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971). —— Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, 3 vols. (Hildesheim: Ohm, 1968). Jonson, Ben, The Complete Poems, ed. George ParWtt (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975). —— Poetaster, ed. Tom Cain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). Juvenal, Juvenal and Persius, trans. G. G. Ramsay (London: Heinemann, 1957). —— Juvenal in English, ed. Martin M. Winkler (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001). Lauderdale, Richard Maitland, Earl of, The Works of Virgil (London: Lintot, [1709]). Lewis, C. Day, The Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid of Virgil (London: OUP, 1966). Longinus, On the Sublime, ed. D. A. Russell (Oxford: OUP, 1964). Lowell, Robert, Imitations (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1958). Lucan, M. Annaei Lucani Pharsalia, ed. C. E. Haskins, introd. W. E. Heitland (London: Bell, 1887). —— The Civil War, trans. J. D. DuV (London: Heinemann, 1928). —— The Civil War: Translated as Lucan’s Pharsalia by Nicholas Rowe, ed. Sarah Annes Brown and Charles Martindale (London: J. M. Dent, 1998). Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, trans. W. H. D. Rouse (London: Heinemann, 1937).

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355

Macrobius, Ambrosii Theodosii Macrobii Saturnalia, ed. Jacob Willis (Lipsiae: Teubner, 1963). Marlowe, Christopher, The Complete Poems and Translations, ed. Stephen Orgel (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971). Marvell, Andrew, Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. Robert Wilcher (London: Methuen, 1986). May, Thomas, Lucan’s Pharsalia: The Whole Ten Bookes (London: T. Jones and J. Marriot, 1627). Milton, John, The Poetical Works of John Milton, ed. Helen Darbyshire, 2 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 1952). Ogilby, John, The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (London, 1649; retrans. 1684). —— Homer: His Iliads (London, 1660). —— Homer: His Odysses (London, 1665). Oldham, John, The Poems of John Oldham, ed. Harold F. Brooks and Raman Selden (Oxford: OUP, 1987). Ovid, Ovid in English, ed. Christopher Martin (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998). Parnell, Thomas, Collected Poems of Thomas Parnell, ed. Claude Rawson and F. P. Lock (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989). Persius, Juvenal and Persius, trans. G. G. Ramsay (London: Heinemann, 1957) Pitt, Christopher, Vida’s Art of Poetry Translated into English Verse (London, 1725). Poole, Adrian, and Maule, Jeremy (eds.), The Oxford Book of Classical Verse in Translation (Oxford: OUP, 1995). Pope, Alexander, The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, gen. ed. John Butt, 10 vols. (New Haven and London: Methuen, 1938–68); index (1969), ed. Maynard Mack. —— The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn, 5 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 1956). —— The Iliad of Homer Translated by Alexander Pope, ed. Steven Shankman (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996). Quintilian, The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, trans. H. E. Butler, 4 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1920–2). Roscommon, Wentworth Dillon, Earl of, An Essay on Translated Verse 1685; and Horace’s Art of Poetry Made English 1684 (Menston: Scolar Press, 1971). Rowe, Nicholas, Lucan’s Pharsalia (London: Jacob Tonson, 1718 [for 1719]). Smith, G. Gregory (ed.), Elizabethan Critical Essays, 2 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 1904). Sowerby, Robin (ed.), Dryden’s Aeneid; a Selection with Commentary (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1986). Spence, Joseph, An Essay on Pope’s Odyssey (1726–1727) (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1968).

356

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Spingarn, Joel (ed.), Seventeenth Century Critical Essays, 3 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 1908). Stanyhurst, Richard, The First Foure Bookes of Virgil’s Aeneis: Translated into English Heroicall Verse (London: Henrie Bynneman, 1583). Stapylton, Sir Robert, Dido and Aeneas: The Fourth Booke of Virgil’s Æneis (London: William Cooke, 1634). —— Juvenal’s Sixteen Satires (London: Peter Parker, 1673). Surrey, Certain Bokes of Virgiles Aenaeis turned into English meter by the right honorable Lorde Henry Earle of Surrey (London: Richard Tottel, 1557). Tomlinson, Charles (ed.), The Oxford Book of Verse in English Translation (Oxford: OUP, 1980). Vicars, John, The XII. Aeneids of Virgil. . . . Translated into English deca-syllables (London, 1632). Vida, The De Arte Poetica of Marco Girolamo Vida, ed. Ralph G. Williams (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976). Virgil, Virgil, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, 2 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1934). —— P. Vergili Maronis Opera, ed. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: OUP, 1969). —— Virgil in English, ed. K. W. Gransden (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996). Waller, Edmund, The Poems of Edmund Waller, ed. G. Thorn Drury (London: Lawrence & Butler, 1893). Wordsworth, William, Translations of Chaucer and Virgil, ed. Bruce E. Graver (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).

SECONDARY WORKS Adamson, Sylvia, ‘Literary Language’, in Roger Lass (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language, vol. iii. 1476–1776 (Cambridge: CUP, 1999), 539–653. Aden, John M., The Critical Opinions of John Dryden (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1963). Allison, Alexander Ward, Toward an Augustan Poetic: Edmund Waller’s ‘Reform’ of English Poetry ([Lexington]: University of Kentucky Press, 1962). Amarasinghe, Upali, Dryden and Pope in the Early Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: CUP, 1962). Barnard, John (ed.), Pope: The Critical Heritage (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973). Bateson F. W., and Joukovsky, N. A. (eds.), Alexander Pope: A Critical Anthology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971). Bradford, Richard, Augustan Measures: Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Writings on Prosody and Metre (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). Bramble, J. C., ‘Lucan’, in E. J. Kenney and W. Clausen (eds.), The Cambridge History of Latin Literature (Cambridge: CUP, 1982), 533–57.

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357

Brower, Reuben A., The Poetry of Allusion (Oxford: OUP, 1972). Burrow, Colin, Epic Romance: Homer to Milton (Oxford: OUP, 1993). Caldwell, Tanya, Time to Begin Anew: Dryden’s Georgics and Aeneis (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press 2000). Chalker, John, The English Georgic: A Study in the Development of a Form (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969). Clarke, Howard W., ‘Pope’s Homeric Notes’, College Literature, 3/3 (Fall 1976), 203–18. —— Homer’s Readers: A Historical Introduction to the Iliad and Odyssey (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1981). Comparetti, Domenico, Vergil and the Middle Ages, trans. E. F. M. Benecke (New York: Macmillan, 1908). Connelly, Peter J., ‘Pope’s Iliad: Ut Pictura Translatio’, Studies in English Literature, 21 (1981), 439–55. Corse, Taylor, Dryden’s Aeneid: The English Virgil (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1991). Erskine-Hill, Howard, The Augustan Idea in English Literature (London: Edward Arnold, 1983). Gill, Roma, ‘Marlowe, Lucan, and Sulpicius’, Review of English Studies, ns 24 (1983), 401–13. Gillespie, Stuart, The Poets on the Classics: An Anthology of English Poet’s Writings on Classical Poets and Dramatists from Chaucer to the Present (London: Routledge, 1988). —— ‘Statius in English 1648–1767’, Translation & Literature, 8 (1999), 157–75. Groom, Bernard, The Diction of Poetry from Spenser to Bridges (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1955). Hammond, Paul, John Oldham and the Renewal of Classical Culture (Cambridge: CUP, 1983). —— John Dryden: A Literary Life (London: Macmillan, 1991). —— Dryden and the Traces of Classical Rome (Oxford: OUP, 1999). —— and Hopkins, David (eds.), John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays (Oxford: OUP, 2000). Harrison, T. W., ‘Dryden’s Aeneid’ in Bruce King (ed.), Dryden’s Mind and Art (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1969), 143–67. Hepp, Noe´mi, Home`re en France au xviie sie`cle (Paris: Klinksieck, 1968). Herrick, Marvin T., The Poetics of Aristotle in England (Cornell Studies in English 17; New Haven, 1930). Hesse, Alfred William, Nicholas Rowe’s Translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia 1703– 1718: A Study in Literary History [dissertation] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950). Hopkins, David, John Dryden (Cambridge: CUP, 1986). —— ‘Dryden and the Tenth Satire of Juvenal’, Translation & Literature, 4/1 (1995), 31–60.

358

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Jensen, H. James, A Glossary of John Dryden’s Literary Terms (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969). Jocelyn, H. D., ‘Vergilius Cacozelius (Donatus Vita Vergilii 44)’, in Francis Cairns (eds.), Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar, 2nd vol. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1979). Johnson, W. R., Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil’s Aeneid (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976). —— Momentary Monsters: Lucan and his Heroes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987). Joseph, Sister Miriam, Rhetoric in Shakespeare’s Time: Literary Theory of Renaissance Europe (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962). Kinsley, James and Helen (eds.), Dryden: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971). Knight, Douglas, Pope and the Heroic Tradition: A Critical Study of his Iliad (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951). Lanham, Richard A., A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms: A Guide for Students of English Literature (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969). Lecoq, Anne-Marie, La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes (Paris: Gallimard, 2001). Lyne, Raphael, Ovid’s Changing Worlds: English Metamorphoses 1567–1632 (Oxford: OUP, 2001). Mack, Maynard, Alexander Pope: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). Marks, Emerson R., Taming the Chaos: English Poetic Diction Theory since The Renaissance (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998). Martindale, Charles, ‘Paradox, Hyperbole and Literary Novelty in Lucan’s De Bello Civili’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 23 (1976), 45–54. —— Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge: CUP, 1993). —— (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (Cambridge: CUP, 1997). Mason H. A., To Homer through Pope (London: Chatto & Windus, 1972; reissued in paperback by Duckworth 2003). Masters, Jamie, Poetry and Civil War in Lucan’s Bellum Civile (Cambridge: CUP, 1992). Monk, Samuel H., The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories in XVIII-Century England (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960). Morton, Richard, John Dryden’s Aeneas: A Hero in Enlightenment Mode (Victoria, British Columbia: University of Victoria Press, 2000). Nussbaum, G. B., Vergil’s Metre: A Practical Guide for Reading Latin Hexameter Poetry (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1986). Piper, William B., The Heroic Couplet (Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1969).

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359

Proudfoot, Leslie, Dryden’s Aeneid and its Seventeenth-Century Predecessors (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1960). Rosslyn, Felicity, ‘Heroic Couplet Translation: A Unique Solution?’, Essays and Studies, 50 (1997), 41–63. Shankman, Steven, Pope’s Iliad: Homer in the Age of Passion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). Sherbo, Arthur, ‘Dryden and the Fourth Earl of Lauderdale’, Studies in Bibliography, 39 (1986), 199–210. Sowerby, Robin, ‘Pope and Horace’ in Charles Martindale and David Hopkins (eds.), Horace Made New (Cambridge: CUP, 1993), 159–83. —— ‘The Augustan Odyssey’, Translation & Literature, 4/2 (1995), 157–81. —— ‘The Freedom of Dryden’s Homer’, Translation & Literature, 5/1 (1996), 26–50. —— ‘Early Humanist Failure with Homer’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition pt I, 4/1 (Spring 1997), 36–63; pt II, 4/2 (Fall 1997), 165–94. —— ‘The Last Parting of Hector and Andromache’, in Paul Hammond and David Hopkins (eds.), John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays (Oxford: OUP, 2000). —— ‘Augustan Drydan’, in John Dryden, Classicist and Translator, Translation & Literature, 10/1 (2001), 51–66. —— ‘The Augustan Æneis: Virgil Enlightened?’, Translation & Literature, 11/2 (2002), 237–69. —— ‘The Decorum of Pope’s Iliad’, Translation & Literature, 13/1 (2004), 49–79. Thomas, Richard F., Virgil and the Augustan Reception (Cambridge: CUP, 2001). Tillotson, GeoVrey, Augustan Studies (London: Athlone Press, 1961). Venuti, Lawrence, ‘The Destruction of Troy: Translation and Royalist Cultural Politics in the Interregnum’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 13 (1993), 197–219. Wallerstein, R. C., ‘The Development of the Rhetoric and Metre of the Heroic Couplet, especially in 1625–1645’, PMLA 50 (1935), 166–209. Weinberg, Bernard, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961). Weinbrot, Howard D., Augustus Caesar in ‘Augustan’ England: The Decline of a Classical Norm (Princeton: PUP, 1978). —— Britannia’s Issue: The Rise of British Literature from Dryden to Ossian (Cambridge: CUP, 1995). West, David, and Woodman, Tony (eds.), Creative Imitation and Latin Literature (Cambridge: CUP, 1979). Winn, James, John Dryden and His World (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987).

360

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Winn, James, ‘ ‘‘According to my Genius’’: Dryden’s Translation of ‘‘The First Book of Homer’s Ilias’’ ’ in Paul Hammond and David Hopkins (eds.), John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays (Oxford: OUP, 2000). Ziolkowski, Theodore, Virgil and the Moderns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

Index Addison, Joseph 58, 124, 131–40, 165–6, 172, 195, 344 allusion 50–1 Anon: Dido’s Death 87–8 antithesis 207–8 Antony, Mark 26 Ariosto 131 Aristarchus 22 Aristotle 21–2, 26 Arnold, Matthew 132, 234, 303, 309–10 ars est celare artem 314–15 Ascham, Roger 63, 64, 78 Atterbury, Francis 85–6, 87 Auden, W. H. 4 Augustan age, ideal of 8, 16–17, 18, 36, 75–8, 81, 85 Augustus 3, 26, 115 Bacon, Francis 206 Bentley, Richard 333 Beaumont, Sir John 78–81, 350 Blackmore, Sir Richard 134 blank verse 63, 65, 68, 128, 131–43, 144–6 Boileau-Despreáux, Nicolas 8, 83, 147, 229, 230, 309 brevity 151 Broome, William 322, 330 Burke, Edmund 133 Busby, Dr Richard 156, 157 Byron, Lord George 307 Bysshe, Edward 65 cacozelia 149 Caesar, Gaius Julius 76 Campion, Thomas 65, 66 Casaubon, Isaac 151, 155, 157

Cato (Marcus Porcius Cato, the censor) 53, 75 Catullus (Gaius Valerius Catullus) 49, 68 Chapman, George 5, 68, 233, 237, 239, 260, 266, 271–2, 290, 324 quoted 265, 269, 280, 297–8 Chaucer, GeoVrey 13, 72 Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) 9, 10, 17–18, 19, 46, 52, 76, 114 quoted on ornament 43 clarity 40–1, 60, 126, 160, 252 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 69–71, 307, 339 concordia discors 20, 313 Congreve, Joseph 160 correctness 30, 210, 308 couplets 4, 68, 72–4, 86, 158, 170, 202–9, 241, 317 Cowley, Abraham 2, 115 on translation 100 Cowper, William 339–41 Crabbe, George 144 Crashaw, Richard 118 Cromwell, Henry 195, 212 Dacier, Madame 288, 292, 293 Daniel, Samuel 66, 67 decorum 26–9, 32, 33, 45, 60, 113, 126, 128, 243–4, 282–4, 289, 291, 330 Dekker, Thomas 75 de la Valterie, Abbe´ 288 Denham, Sir John 5, 78, 81 lines from ‘Cooper’s Hill’ 94, 96, 154 Sarpedon’s speech 235 his strength 81, 82, 94–101

362

Index

Denham, Sir John (cont.) on translation 94–5 his Virgil, compared to Dryden 108–14 his Virgil, compared to Waller 90–4 Dennis, John 333 disposition 4, 24–6, 29, 258 Domitius Afer 15 Donatus 149 Donne, John 73, 147, 151–2 Dorset, Earl of 147 Drayton, Michael 73 Dryden, John and Homer 289–93 and Horace 148, 153 and Juvenal 149–50, 153, 170 on Lucan 174 and Milton 140–3 and Persius 147–53, 151, 153 reWned raillery of Zimri 151 reWnement of couplet 82 reWnement of Denham 106–15 on rhyme 92, 128–9, 130–1 on Spenser 84, 85 on translation 158–9, 161–2 on Virgil: brevity and density of his style 114–15; clearness, purity, easiness and magniWcence 126, 180, 188, 266; deWnition of poetical wit 2; diction 111; management of the Wgures 113, 174; metrical harmony and variety 110 and Waller 81, 83–4, 170–1 Translations: Homer: sacriWce 289; the quarrel of Jupiter and Juno 292 Horace: Ode iii. 29: 351–2 Juvenal: Hannibal 347; defence of satire 166–7; hungry Greekling 164; Messalina 172; old age 348–9

Ovid: Myrrha 346 Persius: admiration for Virgil 155; characterization of Persian style 156; on contemporary taste 154; honest avowal 157; plain style 159–60; on poetasters 168 Virgil: Achaemenides (compared with Addison) 135–9; Aeneas obdurate 104; Ajax under pressure 275; autumn storm 285; boxing match 106; Camilla 58; death of Pallas 122; death of Priam (compared with Denham) 108–14; Dido restless and disturbed 101–2; Dido’s dying will 107; entry into a wood 263; Roman majesty 179; Rome’s destiny 34–5; simile of the bees 120; simile of the eagle and the snake 117; simile of the horse 269; simile of the torrent 279–80; Tartarus 141–2; tilling the Welds 124–5 Works quoted or alluded to: Absalom and Achitophel 151, 174, 328 ‘Dedication of the Æneis’ 126, 176 Discourse on Satire 147–53 passim, 155, 163, 169, 170, 172, 174, 195 MacFlecknoe 174 ‘Preface to the Sylvae’ 2, 162, 174 ‘Postscript to the Æneis’ 1, 108 The Art of Poetry 83, 151, 162, 170 The Hind and the Panther 177 ‘To the Memory of Mr. Oldham’ 163

Index elegiac couplet 4, 68–71, 73 Eliot, T. S. 3, 42, 193 elocution 24, 36–59 enargeia 29, 55, 275 Ennius 5, 12, 75, 259–62 passim quoted 259, 260, 266, 272 Erasmus, Desiderius 8, 17, 47, 52 Erskine Hill, Howard 1 Eustathius, Archbishop of Thessalonika 242, 296 Fairfax, Edward 82, 83 Fenton, Elijah 321 Ferry, David 351 Wgures 4, 38, 41–5, 60, 113–15 Francis, Philip 17 furor poeticus 23, 258 Garth, Samuel 131 Gascoigne, George 64, 72, genre 22, 45–6, 61 Gildon, Charles 288 Godolphin, Sidney 87 Golding, Arthur 74 graecisms 149 Grimald, Nicolas 72 Hall, Joseph 152, 162 Harvey, Gabriel 64 Hesiod 61 hexameter 63, 67, 69–71, 73, 75, 115, 260–3, 266–8, 273–5, 278–9 Hill, George Birkbeck 286 Hobbes, Thomas 270–1 Holiday, Barten 165 Homer 21, 29–31, 48–50 Iliad 26, 27, 30, 32, 218, 230 Odyssey 30 quoted 260, 266, 272, 277, 282, 283, 284 Hopkins, Gerard Manley 112, 343 Horace, Quintus Horatius Flaccus

363

abhorrence of indecorum 28–9 brevity and obscurity 39, 151 critical candour 55 on diction and need for rigour 54 furor poeticus 23 on imitation 159 Jonson and 75 as literary critic 8, 19–23, 24, 26 limae labor 16–17 matter before words 53, 76 on men and manners, 11, 27 moral of the Iliad 230 purity 149 reWner of Lucilius 149 represents Greek tradition 22 Roman inferiority to Greece 36 Romans practical rather than artistic 35 satirical ideal quoted 149, 170, 173 satirist 149–50 Socraticae chartae 152 on sounding triXes 54 usage the guide in word choice 127 utile dulci 153, 314 venerates Ennius 13 verisimilitude 27 Works: Ars Poetica: quoted 11, 16–17, 23, 27, 35, 39, 53, 54, 55, 76, 151, 152, 153, 159, 314 ‘Epistle to Augustus’: quoted 16, 36; appropriated by Pope, 81, 210 ‘Epistle to Florus’: quoted 54 Hughes, Ted 344–6 imitation 48, 63, 159, 161, 259–72 imitative harmony 4, 55–9 ingenium 23, 39 invention 4, 24, 29, 257–9, 308

364

Index

Johnson, Samuel 81, 144, 189, 190. 192, 200, 201, 224 on composition 308 on Denham 82, 116 on Dryden 2, 115–16, 120, 286 on invention and judgement 257 on Milton’s blank verse 145–6 on Pope’s Homer 6, 116, 240, 301, 308, 309, 310, 335, 344 on Pope and representative metre 58 on Pope’s genius 308 on Rowe 5, 186–7 on rules for translation 95 on Spenser 84 from ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’ 348 and Waller 81–4, 116 Jonson, Ben 4, 11, 27, 68, 75–8, 80, 85, 127, 144, 188 on imitation 159, 220 Rowe, compared with 202–6 on Spenser 85 The Poetaster 75–8 as translator 206 judgement 29, 48, 128–9, 151, 226, 257–9, 308, 315 Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) 149–53, 211 quoted 166 Dryden’s translation 164–74 Keats, John 112 Lanham, Richard 126 ‘La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes’ 230, 244 Latinisms 118 Lattimore, Richmond 231–2, 296–7, 298, 300, 303, 320 Lauderdale, Richard Maitland, Earl of 117–18 Le Bossu, Rene´ 229

Lewis, Cecil Day 343–4 limae labor 17, 35, 301–8 Lloyd, Robert 144–5 Longinus 157, 229, 293 Lowell, Robert 337–9, 347–8 Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) 2, 19, 151, 174, 174–209, 211, 216 quoted 176, 180, 199 Lucari, Niccolo 9 Lucilius Gaius 149 Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) 2, 5, 13, 18, 44, 52, 277–9 quoted 277 Lycophron 39 Macrobius (Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius) 47–8 quoted 20, 48, 50 Marlowe, Christopher 4, 67, 68, 72, 144, 181–8, 201, 344 Maronolatry 14, 20, 59 Marston, John 75 Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis) 72 Marvell, Andrew 181–2 May, Thomas 191 metaphor 41–4, 49, 60, 80, 157 metrical harmony and variety 109–11, 261, 274 Milburne, Luke 333 Milton, John 118, 129, 131, 135, 139, 144–6, 195, 214, 215, 216, 239 on decorum 28 and Dryden 140–3 Motteux, P. A. 237 Newman, Francis 310 obscurity 39–40, 151 Ogilby, John 117, 119, 233 Oldham, John 128, 152, 153, 161, 163–5

Index ornament 44, 60, 114, 115–26 Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) 2, 13, 19, 53, 68–71, 78, 209, 210, 344 quoted 69, 71, 210 Parry, Millman 309 Perrault, Charles 230 Persius (Aulus Persius Flaccus) 39, 151–3, 168, 195, 211 quoted 156, 157 Dryden’s translation 153–8 Petrarch, Francesco 9 Pitt, Christopher 4, 10, 13, 37–8, 47, 56 Plato 293 Plautus (Titus Maccius Plautus) 75 Plutarch 11 poetic diction 4, 38, 45–55, 115–26, 125, 127–8 Pope, Alexander aesthetic ideal 226, 281–2 art and nature 21, 222, 310 Augustan virtues 222–7 clarity 40, 160, 252–3 on correctness 308 couplet ideal 81, 313 debt to Dryden 210 decorum of genre 38 dressing nature to advantage 310 expression as dress of thought 38 Homer and Virgil like their respective heroes 257 Homer as the Muses’ Spring 228 Homer, boyhood enthusiasm for 233 Homer’s ‘brave neglect’ 259 his Homer compared to Dryden’s 288–93 Homer’s Wre and imagination 253 Horace as critic 22, 158 imitative harmony 56, 287 judgement 258 on metrical smoothness 154

365 nature and Homer 228 nature methodiz’d 23, 314 on superWcial concern with language 54 polish 301–10 on Quintilian 25 reWnement 81, 210 rules of art 21–2, 23, 25, 228, 258 self criticism in choice of words 54–5 style of sound 287 translation method compared with Dryden’s 243 versiWcation, in poetical index of his Iliad 241, 243 Vida, praise of 4, 7, 59 Virgil, borrowings from 281, 294 Virgil’s laboured art 294 and Waller 81–3 Translations of Homer: 228–352 Iliad 230–310; Achilles and Scamander 287; Achilles to Lycaon 338–41; Achilles’ shield 296–301; Ajax under pressure 276; anger of Achilles, 246–57; Athene dons the aegis 293–6; comedy of Olympus 291–3; commentary on 232, 234, 235, 242, 248, 251, 252, 253, 254, 256, 280, 284–5, 289, 292, 296, 303, 336; entry into the wood 264; nightpiece 303–10, 312; ‘Preface to the Iliad ’ 253, 257, 310; sacriWce to the gods 290; Sarpedon’s speech compared with Denham 235–7; simile of Xies 282–4; simile of the horse 269; simile of the peasant irrigating the plains 284–6; simile of the torrent 280; ‘The Episode of Sarpedon’ 230–46, 316

366

Index

Pope, Alexander (cont.) Odyssey 131, 310–36; Circe 334–5; Cyclops 301, 330–3; Eumaeus the pigman 325–6; Menelaus on the Greek ideal 325; ‘Postscript to the Odyssey’ 316, 322, 329; social and political values 326–9; ‘The Arrival of Ulysses in Ithaca’ 315–22; ‘The Gardens of Alcinous’ 310–15; Ulysses builds his raft 323–4 Translation of Statius: 209–27; Adrastus invokes the night 216; Adrastus entertains his visitors 218; ceremonial goblet described 220–1; criticism of Statius 212; Jove calls a council 217; Oedipus’ suVering 224; nightfall 214 Other works alluded to or quoted from: An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot 209 An Essay on Criticism quoted 4, 7, 21, 21–2, 22, 23, 25, 38, 40, 54, 56, 81, 105, 154, 160, 222, 226–7, 228, 252–3, 258, 282, 308, 310 ‘Epilogue to the Satires: Dialogue II’ 209 Imitations of Horace 55, 81, 210, 349–50 Pastorals 82 ‘Receit to Make an Epick Poem’ 230 The Art of Sinking 135 The Rape of the Lock 59, 206, 236, 237 The Temple of Fame 259, 294 Windsor Forest 82, 313, 334 Works (1717) 82 Propertius, Sextus 68

purity 39, 52, 126, 127, 149, 151, 155, 162, 188, 265, 349 Puttenham, George 41, 64, 66, 72, 127 Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus) 10, 11, 12–13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 25, 29, 46, 61, 175, 183, 186, 192 Raphael Sanzio 8 Rapin, Rene´ 230 reWned raillery 151, 163, reWnement 14, 77, 93, 106, 210, 261–2 rhyme 63, 66–7, 72, 79, 83, 92, 128–31, 131–43, 144–6, 222 Robortello, Francisco 22 Rochester, John Wilmot Earl of 161 Roscommon, Earl of 21, 35, 36, 84, 128, 129–30, 161, 288 Rowe, Nicholas 5, 174–209 Jonson, compared with 202–6 Marlowe, compared with 181–8 rules of art 21–4, 60 Rymer, Thomas 84 Sandys, George 73 translating Ovid 74 Saturnian metre 259 Scaliger, Julius Caesar 150 Scudamore, James 291 Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) 193, 206, 211 sententia 183, 205, 209 sermo, sermones 61, 150, 160, 174, 349 Servius (Marius Servius Honoratus) 18 Shakespeare, William 67, 129 Shelley, Percy 118 Sidney, Sir Philip 128, 240 similes 31–2, 45, 243, 280–1, 331

Index bees 120, 142–3 eagle and the snake 117 Xies 282–4 horse 266–72 peasant irrigating his Welds, 284–6 Sarpedon like a lion 239 shepherds’ Wght and the scales 241–4 torrent 277–82 Spence, Joseph 131, 132, 144, 210, 233, 333–6 Spenser, Edmund 83, 84, 85, 119 StaVord, John 117 Statius (Publius Papinius Statius) 174, 175, 209–27 passim Adrastus invokes the night 215 ceremonial goblet 219–20 Jove calls a council 217 Oedipus’ suVering 223 nightfall 212 Stanyhurst, Richard 64 Stapylton, Sir Robert 89–90, 165, 171–2 style of sound 287 Surrey, Howard, Henry, Earl of 63–4, 68 Tacitus (Publius Cornelius Tacitus) 158, 206 Tasso Torquarto 82, 83, 131 Tennyson, Alfred Lord 113 Terence (Publius Terentius Afer) 75–6 Theocritus 61 Theophrastus 126–7 Tibullus, Albius 68 Tillotson, GeoVrey 118 Tottel, Richard 72 translation, attitudes to 48, 75, 93, 94–5, 101, 124, 344

367

unity 26, 60, 226–7, 272–82 verisimilitude 26–9, 32, 60 Vicars, John 88–9, 90 Vida, Marcus Hieronymus 3, 7–63 passim, 77, 80, 114, 226, 228, 241, 257, 265, 282, 287 Oxford editor 8, 45 Virgil (Publius Virgilius Maro) 9–59 passim, 75–8, 82 aesthetic standard 7–61 passim, 75–8, 174–5 co-ordination of metre and meaning 268 controlled strength 263 decorum of theme and style 124–5 energeia 275 focus and emphasis 228 Homer, comparison with 15, 26, 27–8, 29–34, 50, 243 imitative harmony 58 imperium sine Wne dedi 37 judgement of 29, 48 Latin ideal 126–8 Lucan, comparison with 174–80 Lucretius, comparison with 277–9 master of allusion 49 metrical Xuency 261 metrical variety 274 mirror image of Homer 50 purity of 175 reWned artistry 260 Roman mission 35–6 satire, potential for 148 verbal music 141 Aeneid 128; quoted 34, 37, 44, 45, 49, 58, 112, 121, 125, 134, 141, 261, 267, 273, 275, 278 Eclogues 18, 61, 82

368

Index

Virgil (Publius Virgilius Maro) (cont.) Georgics 26, 49, 61, 124–6, 283; quoted 285 Vittorino da Feltre 9, 29 Waller, Edmund 5, 171 compared to Denham compared to Dryden

and Horace his sweetness 81, 86–94 translation of Virgil Weinbrot, Howard 1 Welwood, James 175, 176, 194 Wilson, Thomas 41 Wordsworth, William 144, 307, 309, 339, 341–2, 344

The Augustan Art of Poetry: Augustan Translation of the Classics

Virgil and the Augustan Reception

Virgil and the Augustan Reception

Virgil's Augustan Epic

Virgil and the Augustan Reception

Virgil's Augustan Epic

The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age-Virgil

The Art of Poetry

Greece and the Augustan Cultural Revolution

The Art of Chinese Poetry

Fundamentals of the Art of Poetry

Teaching the art of poetry: the moves

Art of Poetry

Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome

The Art of War: Direct Translation

The Art and Craft of Poetry

The Art & Craft of Poetry

The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age

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