BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. XLIX. APRIL, 1821. VOL. IX. FABLES FROM LA FONTAINE, IN ENGLISH VERSE. "Full of wise saws and modern instances."-SHAKESPEARE. "I am a nameless man-but I am a friend to my country, and of my country's friends."—IVANHOE. A translation is in general a sad dull business. It is like a dish twice dressed, and the flavour is lost in the cooking. The object should be rather to transfuse than translate; to embody, as it were, the spirit of the original in a new language; to give, in short, to translation, the same meaning in a literary which it bears in an ecclesiastical sense,-where it always implies an improvement in the thing translated. The mode of conducting this literary operation is as various as the terms by which it is expressed. Sometimes the work is, according to the Dutch phrase, overgeret, i. e. overdone; sometimes, according to the French phrase, it is traduit, i. e. traduced; and sometimes, according to our own phrase, it is done, i. e. done for into English. Dryden has perhaps furnished the most brilliant specimens in our language of successful execution in this line. His tenth Satire of Juvenal almost surpasses the original. What can be more beautifully easy and simple than the opening ?— "Look round the habitable world, how few Know their own good, or, knowing it, pur sue." And yet how he warms with his subject as he advances, pouring forth thoughts that breathe, and words that burn, in the very spirit of the Roman satirist. But Juvenal was a poet after his own heart, and he translates him con amore. His Virgil is less happy. Here he seems to be performing a task,-and indeed we are told that he wrote it for bread. Besides, Dryden had nothing Virgilian in his composition. It would be difficult to imagine anything more opposite than their poetical characters, unless it be those of Homer and Pope, who may be considered as the very antipodes to each other. Still, when an occasion is offered for the display of his power, Dryden takes noble advantage of it. For instance, when Turnus, in his indignant reply to the affected apprehensions of Drauces, says,— 66 Nunquam animum talem dextrâ hac (absiste moveri) Amittes; tecum habitet et sit pectore in isto." The translator, adds a line, which heightens the sarcasm, and conveys, in the strongest manner, the spirit and temper of the speaker :"Let that vile soul in that vile body rest: The lodging is right worthy of the guest!" The only poet of modern times capable of translating Virgil-the elegant, the tender Virgil-was Racine. Dryden should have confined himself to Juvenal;-though in saying this, we must not forget his splendid versions of Horace. Here, however, he gives us paraphrase rather than translation; he bears the Lyric Muse of the Latin bard upon his own sublimer pinions, to a loftier heaven of invention, and makes her sing in a higher tone of inspiration. There is nothing in the Odes of Horace that can be compared with "Alexander's Feast;" and we shall seek in vain in the original for ⚫ Octavo. John Murray, Albemarle Street, London. 1820. VOL. IX. A |