Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

She long conceal'd the melancholy cause,
While from her eyes a briny fountain flows:
Her aged sire, and tender husband strive
To heal her grief, and words of comfort give;
Yet dread some fatal consequence to hear,
And begg'd she would the cruel cause declare.»>

Illa diu reticet, pudibundaque celat amictu
Ora. Fluunt lacrymæ more perennis aquæ.
Hinc pater, hinc conjux lacrymas solantur, et orant
Indicet: et cæco flentque paventque metu.

Ter conata loqui, etc.

Our readers will easily perceive by this short specimen, how very unequal Mr Massey is to a translation of Ovid. In many places he has deviated entirely from the sense, and in every part fallen infinitely below the strength, elegance, and spirit of the original. We must beg leave, therefore, to remind him of the old Italian proverb,' and hope he will never for the future traduce and injure any of those poor ancients who never injured him, by thus pestering the world with such translations as even his own schoolboys ought to be whipped for.

Il Tradattores Tradatore.

CRITICISM

ON

BARRET'S TRANSLATION

OF

OVID'S EPISTLES.

PUBLISHED IN MDCCLIX.

CRITICISM

ON

BARRET'S TRANSLATION

OF

OVID'S EPISTLES.

THE praise which is every day lavished upon Virgil, Horace, or 'Ovid, is often no more than an indirect method the critic takes to compliment his own discernment. Their works have long been considered as models of beauty; to praise them now is only to show the conformity of our taste to theirs: it tends not to advance their reputation, but to promote our own. Let us then dismiss, for the present, the pedantry of panegyric; Ovid needs it not, and we are not disposed to turn encomiasts on ourselves.

It will be sufficient to observe, that the multitude of translators which have attempted this poet serves to evince the number of his admirers; and their indifferent success, the difficulty of equalling his elegance or his ease.

Dryden, ever poor, and ever willing to be obliged, solicited the assistance of his friends for a translation of these epistles. It was not the first time his miseries obliged

VOL. II.

28

It

him to call in happier bards to his aid; and to permit such to quarter their fleeting performances on the lasting merit of his name. This eleemosynary translation, as might well be expected, was extremely unequal, frequently unjust to the poet's meaning, almost always so to his fame. was published without notes; for it was not at that time customary to swell every performance of this nature with comment and scholia. The reader did not then choose to have the current of his passions interrupted, his attention every moment called off from pleasure only, to be informed why he was so pleased. It was not then thought necessary to lessen surprise by anticipation, and, like some spectators we have met at the play-house, to take off our attention from the performance, by telling, in our ear, what will follow next.

Since this united effort, Ovid, as if born to misfortune, has undergone successive metamorphoses, being sometimes transposed by schoolmasters unacquainted with English, and sometimes transversed by ladies who knew no Latin: thus he has alternately worn the dress of a pedant or a rake; either crawling in humble prose, or having his hints explained into unbashful meaning. Schoolmasters, who knew all that was in him, except his graces, give the names of places and towns at full length, and he moves along stiffly in their literal versions, as the man who, as we are told in the Philosophical Transactions, was afflicted with a universal anchilosis. His female imitators, on the other hand, regard the dear creature only as a lover; express the delicacy of his passion by the ardour of their own; and if now and then he is found to grow a little too warm, and perhaps to express himself a little indelicately, it must be imputed to the more poignant sensations of his fair admirers. In a word, we have seen him stripped of

« AnteriorContinuar »