Puslapio vaizdai
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Courted by all the winds that hold them play,-
An amber scent of odorous perfume

Her harbinger, a damsel train behind?'.

But the truth is, the choric odes of the Greek tragedians are constructed upon principles, and breathe a spirit very different from what we seem to discover in Pindar, who especially requires a more distinct expression, and a quicker repercussion of musical sounds. In this respect, also, our great master has, in his L'Allegro and Il Penseroso-more particularly in the formershown a power over the English language of which there are few examples, and which cannot without the very greatest skill and felicity be preserved within the limits allowed by faithful translation. Long habit has seemed to make rhyme essential to our lyric verse; and, no doubt, by marking the metre more distinctly, and by exciting and gratifying the ear in its craving for the return of similar sounds, rhyme does very materially add to the peculiar pleasure which every one of any sensibility receives from the recitation of that kind of poetry. It helps also to supply something of that melody and sonorousness of words in which the Greek is so infinitely superior to the English and all other modern European languages. But then, on the other hand, rhyme is a very Procrustes' bed in the hands of a translator; the dimensions of the original must be made to fit the appointed frame, cost what it may in amputation, excision, or stretching; and it may well be questioned whether, upon a review of all our English versions of the Greek and Latin poets-to say nothing of the foreign poetry of modern Europe-more has been gained by the use of rhyme, in producing what is called readability, than has been lost, through the difficulties which it imposes, in omissions, garblings, and total misrepresentations of the meaning and character of the original authors.

It is certainly not true that rhyme is indispensable to the perfection of some kinds of lyric verse in English. The choruses in the Agonistes, in which the rhymes are only scattered here and there, are a proof of this; so we must be bold to say-notwithstanding some stiff phrases—is the translation from Horace :

'What slender youth, bedew'd with liquid odours,
Courts thee on roses, in some pleasant cave,

Pyrrha? for whom bind'st thou

In wreaths thy golden hair,

Plain in thy neatness?' &c.

And, in our judgment, Collins's rhymeless Ode to Evening is not surpassed for musical effect in any language in Europe;

If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,

May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,

Like

Like thy own solemn springs,

Thy springs, and dying gales,' &c.

We some time ago chanced to hear Mr. Coleridge recite the following lines, as a specimen of lyric rhythm, which he thought might satisfy the ear without rhyme; and we well remember, whilst listening to the intonations of that old man eloquent,' our feeling that rhyme would have been even injurious to the effect.

To a Cataract from a cavern near the summit of a mountain precipice :

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The deep-murmur'd charm of the son of the rock,
Which is lisp'd evermore at his slumberless fountain.
There's a cloud at the portal, a spray-woven veil
At the shrine of his ceaseless renewing:

It embosoms the roses of dawn;

It entangles the shafts of the noon;

And into the bed of its stillness

The moonshine sinks down, as in slumber,

That the son of the rock-that the nursling of heaven,

May be born in a holy twilight.

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If this, or something like this, could be sustained permanently, and fitted to correspond with the varieties of the original, we think more of what is really Pindar's, and less of what is not Pindar's, might be worthily given in an English version. The labour to the translator would, in one respect, be greatly increased, unless he were a master of versification; for where the popular support of rhyme is wanting, the choice and balance of words must be exquisite, in order to produce the melody which the English ear requires in lyric measures. But if the translator were a perfect craftsman in this, then surely, being liberated from the necessity of finding like-ending words, he might venture to interpret his original with an

exacter

exacter fidelity. The almost necessary faults of rhyming translators are not so much those of omission as of commission; they are not satisfied with what satisfied their betters; nescio quid majus Iliade is always secretly in their hopes, and they insist that the fire of the original must not be lost by an over-scrupulous attempt to preserve its form. With which proposition we entirely agree, and only require an instance to be shown where that which really is fire in the original has ever been extinguished—or even dimmed-by the exactness of the form of transfusion alone. But if something more is meant, and it is alleged to be a translator's duty to embellish the original, then we dissent. At least, if you smear paint upon a plain face, you ought to be very sure that you will improve what you must disguise. It may well be that the bare place which you have decked with fruits not its own, was intended—or, at all events, now serves to give relief and lustre to the flower planted next to it; and it may also be, that the sheathed rose-bud, which with infinite labour you have contrived to blow all abroad, has thereby lost at once the beauty and the fragrance which it had. Some one brought to Sheridan, we think, the Beauties of Shakspeare, in one volume; he asked, where the other seven were. So it is pre-eminently with Pindar. No other poet of all antiquity so imperatively demands from a translator a strict observance of his shade as well as his light; to adorn that which he has left plain is, more than with any other poet we know, to confound all resemblance. He is, for the most part, so figurative, that, where he speaks without a figure, it may well be presumed that he did so on purpose, and his purpose ought to be observed.

We will say for Mr. Cary, that he has been less ashamed of his original than any other translator of Pindar who has gone before; indeed, we expected as much from his manly version of the rough places in Dante: yet rhyme and fashion, and the cant of common versifiers, have led him away from the simple straight-forwardness of his noble original more often than we could have wished. We have already mentioned those three opening lines of the second Olympic; just take them as an example :

̓Αναξιφόρμιγγες ὕμνοι
τίνα θεὸν, τίν ἥρωα,

τίνα δ ̓ ἄνδρα κελαδήσομεν ;

Which Mr. Cary renders thus :

'Ye hymns, that rule the lyre,

What God, what hero shall inspire,

What mortal man, the warbled song ?'

• Whom shall we sing, O Hymns?' says Pindar, with a strong personification, but a direct and simple meaning. The translator

makes

'Daughters of heaven ;-Aglaia, thou
Darting splendours from thy brow;
With musical Euphrosyne,-
Be present. Nor less call I thee,

Tuneful Thalia, to look down
On this joyous rout, and own
Me their bard, who lead along,
For Asopichus, the throng
Tripping light to Lydian song;
And Minya for thy sake proclaim
Conqueress in the Olympic game.

Waft, Echo, now thy wing divine
To the black dome of Proserpine;
And marking Cleodamus there,
Tell the glad tidings;-how his son,
For him, hath crown'd his youthful hair
With plumes in Pisa's valley won.'

We

Pindar lived to be eighty years old, and, like all the great poets of his age, and indeed, country, was a voluminous writer. The books of odes which we possess did not constitute a fourth part of the works which were collected and edited by Aristophanes and Aristarchus. Those great grammarians classed the remains of Pindar, which seem to have been entirely lyric, under the names of Pæans, Dithyrambics, Prosodia, Parthenia, Hyporchemata, Encomia, Scolia, Threni, and others. They distinguished the Epinicia, the largest part of which we still have, from the Hymns, more strictly so called. It has been said that the most brilliant specimens of the Pindaric muse have not come down to us. cannot quite believe this: not doubting, assuredly, that time has robbed us of much, little inferior in merit to that which it has preserved; but conceiving it more probable, in the absence of explicit testimony, that, upon the whole, the best was the most celebrated, and the more celebrated the most likely to live. The few fragments which still remain, amply prove that Pindar was Pindar always, and we should be glad to see another edition of Mr. Cary's book enriched by versions of two or three of the most connected of them. The Scolium xgv μèv xarà nαιgòv Epάтwv-x. 7. λ.—and the Threnic fragments-τοῖσι λάμπει μὲν μένος ἀελίου-κ. τ. λ. in particular, are exquisitely beautiful, and ought not to be lost to the English reader of this great poet. The Dithyrambic linesδεῦτ ̓ ἐν χορὸν, Ολύμπιοι—putting us in mind of Schiller's, or more truly, Coleridge's Visit of the Gods,'-will also bear translation.* As far as it is possible to judge from these scanty relics,

6

we

*We jot down the following rough lines merely to show the different tone of the Dithyrambus from the majestic Epinician :

'Down

we should think that Pindar's boldness of imagery and luxuriance of language never deserted him; but that in the Epinician Odes he had exercised a severer taste and a more exalted tone, than in his other compositions.

This might well be expected, when we come to consider the surpassing dignity of the occasions upon which these odes were composed, and the remoteness and variety of the countries to which they were sent. The Games which attracted the costly and laborious competition of princes and magistrates, must have been associated with feelings and solemnities of a very peculiar interest;—and the poet, whose odes were chanted in Rhodes, and in Sicily, in Cyrene, Lacedæmon, Corinth, Athens, and Lesbos, must have possessed a truly national fame, and almost all that was civilized in the world as his theatre. It should be remembered that the Olympic and other public Games were in their institution and accompaniments strictly religious solemnities, and the hymn which was composed upon the occasion of a victory was designed as much for the honour of the God as for the praise of the man. We ought to say that the Divinity was more regarded than the winner of the prize; for it would have revolted the religious and the prudential feelings of a Greek of Pindar's age to have made the successful individual the principal figure in the hymn. The honour was in itself transcendant, and for that very

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When the nectarous plants felt the spring-tide sweet-smelling,
What time the young Hours oped the ports of their dwelling!
Now the violet blooms are chance-flung on the land,

And the rose and the rose-leaf are wreath'd in the hair,

And voices and pipings

Ring loud in the air!'

reason

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