I. HORACE IN ENGLISH. By Charles Cooper, Gentleman's Magazine, III. THE BULLY. By Ivan Tourgenieff. IV. THE "PEKING GAZETTE" AND CHINESE Quarterly Review, V. "SIR GEORGE TRESSADY" AND THE VI. OUT OF THE NIGHT. By Katharine Longman's Magazine, Blackwood's Magazine, . 656 660 Good Words, . 663 Cornhill Magazine, 668 . 67 POETRY. YOUTH 610 "IN THE GLORY OF IN THE WOOD OF FINVARA, 610 PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY THE LIVING AGE COMPANY, BOSTON. THE 610 FOR SIX DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING AGE Co. Single copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents. GEO. A. FOXCROFT, Manager Advertising Department, 36 Bromfield St., Room 3. IN THE WOOD OF FINVARA. I have grown tired of sorrow and human tears; Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears, A naked runner lost in a storm of spears. MOSCHUS' EPITAPH ON BION. "Ah, well a day! When mallows fade and fall, Or fresh green parsley by the garden wall, When withers all the thriving clump of dill Another year will see them flourish still. But we the great, the mighty or the wise, I have grown tired of rapture and love's Whene'er we fall on death and close our desire; Love is a flaming heart, and its flames Unhearing sleep within the hollow earth The endless sleep that knows no morning birth." aspire Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of a windy are. I would wash the dust of the world in a soft green flood: Here, between sea and sea, in the fairy wood, I have found a delicate, wave-green solitude. Here, in the fairy wood, between sea and sea, I have heard the song of a fairy bird in a tree, eyes, So Moschus sang two thousand years ago, In clear Greek tones that pierce the heart of woe. Yet from the spell of that sad knell-like strain Our hearts must turn, nor wed despair to pain. The early world felt youth's quick keen despair; To her this earth's green garden was so fair, That eyes yet blind with tears at death's sharp knife And the peace that is not in the world Saw through the darkness cold no other IN MEMORIAM: WILLIAM MORRIS. Painter-poet, art thou gone, Work of words and palette done? Gone from rising self-mued eyes To have commerce with the skies? Gone thou art! But echoing sure Shall th' evangel song endure: "Little labor of each minute, Let thy living soul pulse in it! Be thou, humblest artisan, Priest of art and very man! What a Stoss or Krafft may teach, Grasp it; it is in thy reach! Fischer's wrist or Dürer's brush Are for thee as song for thrush! Bliss of effort sung by poet, Let your eyes quick-flashing show it! Leave upon the dullest clod Human impress of the God!" So sang Morris Hope's sweet song To a dear despairing throng, Sowing seed of countless price For his Earthly Paradise. Speaker. S. E. W. From The Gentleman's Magazine. HORACE IN ENGLISH. Admiring at the fact that for two and a half centuries hardly a scholar or man of letters had lived in England who had not once or oftener in his life been moved to try his hand at a translation from Horace, I was long ago inspired, in the days of enthusiastic youth, to compile an anthology of these fugitive efforts. It was not a bad book, nor an uninteresting, though I say it, and I am an unprejudiced judge, for it brought me in nothingmy publisher, with unnecessary prolixity, being careful to demonstrate to me the exact number of pounds, shillings, and pence he had lost by the venture. There is very little originality among publishers. When Thomas Drant, Prebendary of St. Paul's, took his version of the "Epistles and Satires" to a printer in the year 1567, that astute person remarked, "though your boke be wyse and ful of learnyng, yet peradventure it wyl not be saleable; signifying, indeed, that flimflames and guegawes, be they never so sleight and slender, are sooner rapte up thenne those which be lettered and clarkly makings." My publisher said much the same in other words. And I have no doubt whatever but that Dr. Drant's printer was able, in his return of the sales, to justify his preconceived opinion even as my friend was. The world, in Drant's day, curiously enough, thought little of Horace. His popularity in England was still to make, and the learned Prebendary was well-nigh alone in his admiration. Indeed, Stanyhurst, the eccentric, whose translation of two books of the "Eneid," full of the slang of the Middle Ages, well earned for their author Southey's compliment of "the common sewer of the language," thought, like most of his contemporaries, that the "most considerable" of the Latin poets were Virgil and Ovid, while Horace came in with Ennius among "the rabblement." Here and there, however, in the collections of lyric poetry of the Elizabethan times, one may come across an unacknowledged version of an ode of Horace. In Tottel's "Miscellany" there is an anonymous rendering of Ode VII., Book IV., "Diffugere nives," in fourteen-syllabled verse: The winter with his griesly stormes ne lenger dare abide, The plesante grasse, with lusty greene, the earthe hath newly dide, The trees have leaves, ye bowes don spred, new changed is ye yere, The water brokes are cleane sonke down, the pleasant bankes appeare, etc. It is a pleasant poem, though diffuse as a translation, and it is not Horace; nor indeed, is any one of the three versions of the Ode to Licinius, one by Surrey, which appear in the same book. Why did they so admire the Ode to Licinius in those days? Sidney translated it; it was his only translation from Horace, for which, taking into account its jaw-breaking qualities, one may be properly thankful. Another poet, in another age, the highly-respectable Cowper, made a version of it, with a pious reflection at the end:— Sweet moralist! Afloat on life's rough sea, The Christian has an art unknown to thee, etc. Besides Cowper, the only other ranslator who seems to have used Horace as a means of "improving the occasion" was his antipodes Samuel Boyse-whose versions breathe a spirit of humble devotion. He wrote "The Deity," which Fielding said was not a bad poem, and he was in essentials about as mean and contemptible a scoundrel as ever escaped hanging; he swindled his benefactors, lived on his wife's dishonor, and died of drink and debauchery in a ditch or a sponging-house. Jasper Heywood is among the earlier of Horace's imitators. In "The Paradise of Dainty Devices," ed. 1580, occurs a fairly close rendering in fourteen-syllable verse, as usual, of the 10th ude of Book II: Amid the vale the slender shrubbe is hid from all mishap, When taller tree that standes aloft is rent with thunder clappe; The turret tops which touch the clouds neque aureum," with a good deal more are bent with every blast, that is pure Herrick, as, indeed, most Soon shivered are their stones with storms of it seems. and quickly overcast. That the poets have proved generally among the worst translators is curious, but not beyond explanation. Dryden took hold of several of the odes, paraphrased them, and turned them into stately sonorous versemagnificent, but not Horace. Cowley, too, embroidered his Own conceits upon his original, until one lost sight of the latter altogether. What can one think of his making Pyrrha's credulous lover "trust the faithless April of her May"? Milton, whose literalness is somewhat painful, would have scorned such irregular proceeding. Leigh Hunt essayed a version of the same ode to Pyrrha, so did Thomas Hood, junior. How should one render "simplex munditiis"? Here are three versions for choice: Plain in thy neatness-Milton. Herrick had a pleasant way, all his own, of dovetailing parts of the odes into his poems. Thus he addresses his "peculiar friend, Mr. John Wickes," under the name of Posthumus, beginning properly enough: Ah, Posthumus! our years hence flye, Or prayers, or vow, As Fate doth lead or draw us. None, Presently we recognize parts of the ode to Torquatus, and then "Non ebur 1 "To My Old Friend Posthumus," by the late Frederick Locker-Lampson, is a free and modern, but beautiful, imitation of this ode: My Friend, our few remaining years That time can never mend; Alas for love! this peaceful home! The darling at my knee! Herrick has the distinction of having been the first English translator of the "Carmen Amabæum," which is said, rightly or wrongly, to have been the most often translated or imitated poem in the world. His is a good version, hardly, if at all, second to Atterbury's. Mr. Gladstone's translation of this ode, made many years ago, has hardly been matched by his later efforts. Of the many imitations of the famous lovers' dialogue, the most quaint is found among the fugitive poems collected by Sir Henry Wotton. It is a dialogue between God and the Soul, and runs thus: SOUL: Whilst my soul's eye beheld no light To me the world's greatest king GOD: Whilst thou prov'dst pure; and that in thee I could glass all my Deity; SOUL: Now Fame and Greatness bear the sway ('Tis they that hold my prison's key), For whom my soul would die, might she Leave them her immortalitie. GOD: I and some few pure souls conspire, But, Lord! what if I turn again, My own dear wife! Thyself, old Friend! Ay, all too vainly are we screen'd O pray that then we may desery Lock me to Thee? What if I chase The world away to give Thee place? God: Then, though these souls in whom I joy The opportunities that the dialogue form of this ode presented to the satirist and parodist have been frequently availed of. Rowe thus immortalized the disagreement and reconciliation between Congreve and the elder Tonson. Tonson remarks: I'm in with Captain Vanbrugh at the present, A most sweet-natur'd gentleman and pleasant, He writes your comedies, draws schemes and models, Jacobin," which, indeed, contains many imitations of Horace by Canning, Frere, George Ellis, Lord Morpeth, etc. George Canning's version of the Ode to Bacchus (XXV., Book III.) is assumed to be written in the character of Charles Howard, Eleventh Duke of Norfolk, whose famous toast, "Our Sovereign's health, the Majesty of the People," was proposed at a banquet given at the Crown and Anchor Tavern on Charles Fox's birthday, January 24, 1798. For this toast the duke was deprived of all his offices: Whither, O Bacchus, in thy train, Say, in what tavern shall I raise And builds Duke's houses upon very odd My nightly voice in Charley's praise, hills; For him, so much I dote on him, that I, If I was sure to go to Heaven, would die. To which Congreve rejoins: Temple and Delaval are now my party, Men that are tam Mercurio both quam Marte; And though for them I scarce shall go to Heaven, Yet I can drink with them six nights in seven. a In the "Criticisms on the Rolliad," 1785, occurs a dialogue between Certain Personage and his Minister (George III. and Pitt). These curious political satires took the form of a pretended review of an imaginary epic poem. The first of them was published in a London newspaper in 1784, and was devoted to a criticism on Colonel (afterwards Lord) Rolle. Among the authors were Dr. Lawrence, General Fitzpatrick, R. Tickell, Joseph Richardson, Lord John Townshend, George Ellis, Sir R. Adair, General Burgoyne, Hare, Reid, Bate Dudley, Brummel, Boscawen, Pearce, and the Bishop of Ossory. Fox and Horne Tooke figured in another parody of the "Carmen Amaboum" in the poetry of the "Anti And dream of future glories, When Fox with salutary sway (Terror, the order of the day), Shall reign o'er King and Tories. My nightly feelings must have way! "Our Sov'reign Lord!" let those who doubt Mortals! no common voice you hear! Militia Colonel, Premier Peer, Lieutenant of a County! I speak high things! yet, God of wine, For thee, I fear not to resign These gifts of royal bounty. James and Horace Smith, whose "Rejected Addresses" constitutes their chief claim to immortality, published a brilliant volume of parodies of the first two books of odes, under the title of "Horace in London," in 1813. These had originally been written without any regard to regularity of succession, and many of them had appeared in monthly publications. The book is scarce now, and well-nigh forgotten, but its contents do no discredit to the authors of the ever-green "Addresses." For an example: |