was that I engaged in the task at all, seeing it is one which has, it may be, the demerit of being new, and which, at all events, will be sure to seem to some chimerical, and to others vain. Yet I cannot but venture to hope, that if a patient consideration be bestowed upon the reasons, which have been thought strong enough to warrant some such version as the present,* I shall not be left so much alone in the conviction that there is no want of

* Professor Newman's translation of the Odes of Horace is confessedly a work of a different class; and that by the Rev. William Sewell, which preceded it, could scarcely have been intended for young students at all. The version of the Georgics by the latter author is the only composition extant, as far as I know, which is at all of the same class as the present work. It combines more of poetic spirit with, almost universally, the strictest accuracy, than I have ever seen in any other translation of any author. Though I did not consult this production of Mr. Sewell's pen until after my own version of that part of Virgil had been completed, yet in my last revise for the press, I feel that in my alterations, which were very numerous, an unconscious memory may in a few places have drawn from this very worthy source. In a few instances, however, perhaps three or four, I deliberately substituted his renderings for my own: but these were only where words of very minor moment were concerned. I must here add, that I had not seen the Rev. Rann Kennedy and Mr. Kennedy's joint translation until I was nearly at the end of my work,-in fact, half through the Twelfth Book of the Æneid. After partially consulting their poems, I altered three words in the present volume. At one time I used to look into Dr. Trapp's book; but I soon gave that up. It was different, however, in the case of prose translations, of which I made no scruple to avail myself, where they seemed worth the time and trouble of consulting. Still, the reader must see, that having fettered myself by restrictions, to which no previous translator of any class had thought it necessary to submit, I must, in point of fact, have been left with but little aid from others. I have said thus much, not because he may think it worth the saying, but because I want to come before him with, at least, clean hands.

While upon this subject perhaps I may add, that of all those prose translations which I have had an opportunity of seeing, and which profess to be literal, very far the most poetical are those of the Georgics by Dr. Isaac Butt, and of the whole of Virgil by Dr. Henry Owgan.

wisdom in the design, whatever there may be in hands so feeble undertaking the execution of it.

Having had my attention directed for several years to the training of the young, I have long been of opinion that a far higher order of translation was required than that which seems to meet with very general acceptance, or at least toleration, so far as I have had any means of judging. I am satisfied that in most cases the style in which boys are allowed to render the great poets of antiquity, is such as wholly to destroy all poetic feeling, and to nip in the very bud every germ of poetic taste. in quarters where an unpoetical expression in a Latin verse exercise would be eliminated from it, with as much zeal as a cobra from the couch of the Anglo-Indian, a prosaic word in the version of a poet is tolerated, as if it were neither nuisance nor intrusion. Thus partial is the execution of a sentence due alike in both cases:

"" Cape saxa manu, cape robora, pastor."

Even

For let it be considered, what is the end to be gained in teaching youths the poets at all? Is it that they may learn to apply the rules of grammar; to foster habits of industry; to acquire accuracy; to lay up stores of knowledge; in a word, to chasten and inform their minds? No doubt it is: but all this might be done,-not, of course, so well,—still it might be done, well done, though not a single line of a single poet ever met their eyes. The study of Greek and Latin prose, with the help of mathematics, would effect the purpose quite well enough. But surely, if instruction were to stop here, it would fall very short of the high design which it aims to accomplish. Accuracy, industry, and the love of knowledge, may be, and are amongst the chief, but they are not the only qualities which the young should be trained to acquire. The

understanding and memory must not receive exclusive attention; something must be done for the inventive, as well as for the moral faculties. The fancy must be kindled and curbed, the imagination enlarged and schooled; a work which lies without the province of Mathematics and Prose, as it falls within that of Poetry. The aid of such a mistress is needed, with fire to rouse, and softness to allay, powers which might else lie dormant, or, igniting of themselves, riot in mischief proportioned to their subtilty and expansive force. Her value, indeed, might be further seen by the fact, that the combination of both Mathematics and Literature will still be inadequate to create a perfect system of instruction; one element will still be wanting: Art must be allowed to have her share in the process. Music, Painting, Architecture, Sculpture, her whole train must be introduced, to enlarge and refine, to soften and to grace. Science, Literature, and Art, must go hand in hand, if we mean to accomplish a successful secular education. It is not of course meant that this can always be effected in individual instances, but that it is imperative in the case of a nation; which, in some or other of its parts, must be brought under the full sway of the triumvirate. To attempt to force their power upon all persons, irrespective of capacity, and a thousand other circumstances, would be worse than a waste of time; for it would entail a smattering of knowledge, an acquisition nothing better than confused ignorance. Yet, though it be unavoidable to leave this or that person unacquainted with Art, the tone of the nation at large, when raised through her influence, cannot but very sensibly affect that of the individual. But Art requires support, as she is too likely to pine and perish for lack of sympathy and care; and to whom can she look for it but to Poetry, the very Nurse of Art? Poetry, then, must be earnestly cultivated, to enable her to dis

charge kindly offices of such high concern. Nay, if it be considered that had Art no existence at all, not a little of her power would be wielded by Poetry alone, it seems abundantly clear that to Poetry should the young be brought, to learn her lessons and drink of her spirit.

*

Once, then, brought within the territories of Poetry, they must be taught to speak her foreign, but graceful and persuasive tongue. She has a language of her own, wherewith to clothe her own ideas, and therefore it is uncivil, churlish, and absurd to employ any other. To dress the sovereign in a linsey-woolsey garb would be seen at once to be a very unsuitable investiture. Yet is not this the very kind of proceeding which is suffered in the youthful scholar? Is he not allowed to render Virgil (for instance) in the dullest way, in terms of which even prose must be thoroughly ashamed, and which are simple indignity to poetry, and an insult to one of her most honoured servants? It is quite true that the distinctions between these two great branches of literature are not always very plainly marked out. There is no such broad line of separation between them as that which divides the two great engines of investigation in mathematics,—the analytic and synthetic. The one does not always employ the phraseology of sober accuracy, nor the other that of imaginative elegance. For, as the penumbra of an eclipse presents a

* I have some misgiving as to the time when the young should be called to the study of the poets. It seems very necessary that they should be thoroughly grounded in the syntax of prose first, lest they become unsettled by a very possible shock at the licenses of poetry. For, as in music the pupil is diligently taught to keep time, in order to know afterwards how to break it; so the scholar learns how the rules of grammar are observed in one branch of his classical reading, only to find them violated in another. Yet, on the other hand, delay would be a serious evil. One thing, however, is clear, that the Latin grammar can scarcely be approached at too early an age.

region, where, if one may so speak, light and darkness both have liberty to range, so there is a common of language, to which both poetry and prose have the freest access. Yet on each side of this there are bounds, to transgress which would involve either party in an unmistakeable trespass. Now I would ask, is not this discrimination of property too often disdained? Are not the landmarks too often thrown down, and the boundary-lines obliterated? Is not the independence of poetry set at nought, and a foreign coin forced upon her for circulation within her very realm, instead of metal from her own mint? Is not the distinction between prose and poetry too often lost, nay worse than lost, by the vicious habit of jumbling up the one with the other, which, it is to be feared, is but too prevalent? Unless the love for literature is to be half-stifled in the bosoms of the young, poetry, as far as it is at all possible, must be as faithfully rendered into poetry as prose into prose. If not,-if a clumsy, unrhythmical, unfeeling style of translation be all that is asked at the hands of young students, the implied sanction of it will be likely to turn them into very Hotspurs, and lead them to cry out with him:

"I had rather be a kitten, and cry-mew,
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers:

I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn'd,

Or a dry wheel grate on an axle-tree;
And that would set my teeth nothing on edge,
Nothing so much as mincing poetry :

"Tis like the forc'd gait of a shuffling nag."

Shakspeare, 1 Henry IV. iii. 1.

One object, then, of the present publication has been, to help in giving a more poetic turn to the translation of the classical poets by the schoolboy.

But this is by no means all that is aimed at: there is the further design of influencing him in his composition