DRYDEN’S TRANSLATION OF V'ERGIL
AND ITS
‘EGHTEENTH - CENTURY SUCCESSORS

Thesis for the Degree of Ph. D.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
BETTY SMITH ADAMS
3.970

x

THf-‘c'.

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

DRYDEN'S TRANSLATION OF VERGIL
AND ITS
EIGHT EENI'H-CENTURY SUCCESSORS

presented by

Betty Smith Adams

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. degree in English

Mai/5M?

Major professor

Date September 15, 1970

 

0-169

 

 

   
     

  

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ABSTRACT
DRYDEN'S TRANSLATION 0F VEBGIL
AND ITS
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURI SUCCESSORS
By
Betty Snith Adams
\

The purpose of this study is to determine the kind and extent of
Dryden's influence on the eighteenth-century translators of Vergil.
Translations of three passages-—the fourth Eclo e, the first Georgie,
and the fourth Aeneid-«are compared with Dryden's translation. Simil-

 

arities in lines and, where appropriate, in rhymes-words are noted, as
are agreements and differences in the readings of the Latin original

and in the theory of translation that informs each work. The direct

all indirect influence of Dryden is traced in the work of his succes-
sors throughout the century: William Benson, Joseph Trapp, Christo-

pher Pitt, Joseph Warton, James Beresford, and William Sotheby. 'hm

translations that appeared in the l760's-t'hose of James Beattie and

Robert Mews-are discussed in the Appendix.

In general, blank-verse translators were primarily interested in
verbal accuracy, and those who translated into heroic couplets were
most concerned about producing English poetry. Though all the writers
of blank verse used nary conventional epithets, images, and syntactic
structures, only Joseph Trapp borrowed directly from Dryden; and he
borrowed less than any of the important translators who used the

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   

Betty Snith Adams
‘ ~senile?» There was no trend toward the dominance of either form in

eighteenth-century translations of Vergil, both continuing in use
throughout the period.

The high point of the influence of Dryden's Ver 1 came in the
lid-century in the translations of Pitt and Warton. After that time,
its importance as a resource declined, though it did not by any means
cease to exist. The persistence of Dryden's influence for more than
a hundred years was largely due to the fact that the most competent
poets among his successors shared his principles of poetics and of
translation, and his influence was attenuated in the latter years of
the century as his successors came to rely not only upon Dryden's
m but also on those published during the interval between it and
. their own, as well as upon such new secondary resources as the Latin
ettltion of Christian Gottlieb Heyne. In poetics, the eighteenth-cen-
tury translators of Vergil remained essentially conservative; they
neither led nor participated in a revolt against the poetic diction of
John Dryden.

 

DEYDEN'S TRANSLATION 0F VERGIL
EIGHTEEN‘IH-CENTUHY SUCCESSORS

By
Betty Snith Adams

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

ONTOR OF PHIIDSOPH!

Department of English

1970

 

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ACKNWIEIXEMENTS

 

In writing a thesis about the indebtedness of poets to their pre-
decessors, one cannot but be aware of his own debts. Mine are exten-
sive, and I can only acknowledge than gratefully. I owe most to the
manbers of my cannittee, the knowledgeable, generous, and patient
scholars on whose direction I have relied; to Professors Howard P.
Anderson and Robert Uphaus, and most of all to Professor Arthur Sherbo,
chairman of the committee.

No study of this kind could be made without the help of librar-
ians. Maw whose names I do not know have given of their time and
energy to save mine. Among those who have been especially helpful are
In good friends, Miss Ruth Erlandson, Miss Jane Gatliff, Mrs. Clara
Goldslager, and Mrs. Marjorie Harf, of Ohio State University; Mr.
Charles W. Mann, of Pennsylvania State University; Miss Harriet C.
Jameson and Mr. Donald Gresch, of the University of Michigan; and
Mrs. Carolyn Blunt, of Michigan State University.

To Professor Albert J. Kuhn, Chairman of the Department of Wish
at Ohio. State, I am grateful for his encouraganent and particularly for
his willinpess to adjust my schedule as much as possible so that I
might make efficient use of the time available.

They have made what might have been an onerous task a pleasure.

 

 

  
   
   
   
  
    
 
   
       

 

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The Purpose and Method of this Study .

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CHAPTER I
The Purpose and Method of this Study

i'he purpose of this study is to determine the extent of the influ-
ence of Dryden's translation of Vergil on the eighteenth-century trans—
lators who followed bin, and possibly to provide new evidence that may
be useful in the description and evaluation of eighteenth-century
poetics. Sanple passages from the verse translations which appeared
in the early, niddle, and late years of the century will be compared
with the corresponding passages of Dryden's work, so that, insofar as
is possible, the similarities and differences may be accounted for and
the extent of any indebtedness of the later translators to Dryden may
be appraised.

The passages selected for close comparison are the fourth Bologge,
the first No, and the fourth Amid. mess choices were made for
a number of reasons. They are representative of what Dryden himself
believed to be his lost successful renderings of Vergil; in the Dedi-
cation of the m, addressed to the Earl of Hulgrave, Dryden lists
those parts of his translation by which he is nest willing to be
Med: the fourth, sixth, and eighth Eclogges; the first and fourth
m and the fourth, fifth, seventh, ninth, tenth, elevmth, and
twelfth m. Of these, the fourth w some to be a happy
choice because its subject pro-pts translators to prefatory discussions
of the pastoral and of the kinds of poetry and poetic devices they

 

2

value, and the discussions illumine the later poets' relation to Dry-
4‘. he first m, widely regarded as the finest example of Ver-
gil's sublime, leads than to make equally revealing observations about
diction and prosody. There is, in addition, a practical advantage in
the selection of the fourth gen-gig, the passage Dryden called “aw
greatest Favourite."1 m. debt to the English translators who pre-
ceded him has been mined by L. Proudfoot in Men's Aeneid and Its
mtgefih Centu_rz Predecessors,2 with copious citations fro. Book IV.
The use of the same book in this study makes continuity with that very
useful work possible.

The criteria used in the selection of eighteenth-century texts
to be examined require somewhat fuller explanation. it first, there
appears to be a very large corpus from which to choose; it is a con-
nonplace that every eighteenth-century gentleman with pretensions to
learning tried his hand at Englishing the classics, and that many
rmdered their translations in verse. The Canbggge Bibliom of
W lists, in addition to Dryden's, four verse trans--
latiens of the complete works of Vergil by single authors: by Richard
hithnd, Earl of Iauderdale, published in 1718; by Joseph Trapp in
1731; by Robert Andrews in 1766; and by William Henry Helnoth in
17901: 1’]. Nicholas Brady in 1716-17, Christopher Pitt in 171.0, Aleut-
ander Strahan in 1767, an! James Beresford in 1791. published verse
translations of the entire M; and Willie- Hawkins published his

 

lfhe statelent appears in a letter from Dryden to Jacob fonson,
writta in the spring of 1693 and dated simply Wednesday morning,“
in M10- I- Ward. «1., W (New York. 1965).
P’s 7"“75e

2(hncheeter, mm, 1960).

 

 

 

- _.—--

 

3
rendering of Books I through V: in 1764. The complete Eclonges and

m were translated by Joseph Warton and published with Pitt's
M as the Works of Virgil in latin and Diglish in 1753. Thomas
Nevile in 1767 and William Mills in 1780 published translations of
the Georges; and in 1725 William Benson published his Virgil's Hus-
m: or, an Essay on the Georges, translations of the first two
mg, each with a preface devoted largely to the writer's objec-
tions to Dryden.

To this list, Elizabeth Nitchie adds Luke Milbourne's first
m in 1698, Mr. Sherbourne's fourth .Lenejfl in 1723, John Theo-
bald's second Aeneid in 1736, a second edition of Strahan's first

 

Md together with Francis Atterbury's first Eclogue in 1767, J. Tyt-
ler's first four Eclogges in 1781, J. Morrison's second Ae_n_e_i_g in 1787,
and William Sotheby's Georges in 1800.3 Raymond D. Havens also cites
the first two m translated by Gapbl Lofft in 178L.l* John
canington refers to a translation of the Eclogges by James Beattie,

a minor poet and author of the much admired Essay on Truth.5 Both
Ritchie and Havens list numerous enmples of verse translations of
episodes an! short descriptive passages. These short works are not
represented in this study because they are too brief to permit the
ldnd of comparison used here, and also because they are often only in-
cidentally translations, alch as Joseph Addison's “Milton's Style Imi-
tated in a Translation of a Story out of the Third Md," which

 

3W (New Iork. 1966). pp. 238-39.

km Inf___31ence of Hilton on flash Poetn (Cambridge, Mass.,
1922). pp. 323-58 and 7-2 .

' 5"The hglish Translators of Virgil," Merl] Review, C! (1861),
73-111..

 

 

 

I.

appeared in Dryden's W Part V, in 1704. As the title
suggests, the Verglian subject matter is merely the occasion for
Addison's attupt to reproduce Milton's style, the important concern
of the pen. And in those works in which translating Vergil is the
hglish poet's major interest, Dryden must be taken seriously when he
points out in the Dedication of the Agog, I"tie one thing to take
pains en a fragment, and Translate it perfectly" and quite another to
''hear the weight of a whole author. "6

The Earl of Iauderdale's 12123399 though published after Drydsn's,
wee completed before Dryden undertook h1s.7 There was, in fact, some
cross fertilisation between the two translations. The Earl made use
of the fragments by Dryden and others which Dryden had included in his
miscellanies of 1681. and 1685. (Dryden's own works included the liens
and Males episodes from the fifth and ninth Aeneids and the fourth
and ninth m.) Dryden, in his turn, made use of Lauderdale's
work, especially in the Agni—d. Dryden gratefully acknowledged his
debt, though it must be added that he certainly did not enggerate it.

 

Proudfoot has told the story of their reciprocal borrowing, and it is
unnecessary to repeat all the details here, since this translation is
not actually an eighteenth-century successor of Dryden's, despite the

 

6The edition of Dryden used throughout this mm is James
Kinsley, fig Peg; 2f John D_zzden, 1. vols., continuously paginated
(Oxford, 19 . The renark quoted here appears on p. 1051.

7 f V 2 vols. (Iondon, 1718). The preface is an
elaborate Justification of the publication of Lauderdale's ”Corrector
Cow" after Dryden'i: “Our Translator has not taken the liberty, or
very rarely, to Paraphrase upon his Author, a Vice too much in use at
this Day; but has aldeavour'd to give you his genuine Sense and

in as few Words, and as easie a Turn of language, as the

leaning
meaty of Virgil's Stile, and the Interpretation of the Original,
wou'd penit.‘

 

date of its mblicatien.

he first translation in verse of the complete Lani; to be
ounposed and published after Dryden's was that of Joseph Trapp. He
began to work on his £919.14 in 1703, though he did not publish the
first volume, Books I-VI, until 1718. The second volume, containing
the last six books, was published in 1720. Eleven years later, Trapp
reissued the m with only a few minor revisions together with his
translation of the Eclogues and the Geeggcs. His work thus spans
most of the first third of the century. This translation and the
author's explication of the critical principles that informed his work
continued to be cited respectfully throughout the eighteenth century.
Any study of Dryden's successors must take Trapp into account, and he
has therefore been selected as a representative of the translators
tron the earlier part of the century to be examined here.

However, in order to minimise the risk of drawing unwarranted
conclusions from a single work, at least two translators' versions
will be examined for each of the early, middle, and late periods of
the century. William Benson's first We, published in 1725, will
be used with the Trapp translation.

Two complete M's appeared in the mid-century. The earlier
was translated by Joseph Warten and Christopher Pitt. Pitt's mg
was first published in 171.0, nine years after the canpletion of the
Trapp version. It was reissued with Joseph Warten's Eclogges and
m; in 1753 in four volumes; Warten also provided the notes and
prefatory essay» mirteen years later, Robert Andrews' line-fer-line
translation was published. Having assuned the awesome task of render-
ing Vergil's compact Latin hemmeters into the sane nuber of hglish

 

 

6

pentaneter lines, Andrews was often forced into what looks like modern
headline English. He labeled his verse fem "iambic pentaneter," a
description which occasionally fits it. Rhyme he realized would have
been an insuperable obstacle to line-for-line translation, as would
any attempt to achieve the tone of Hiltonic blank verse. Because this
translation is so highly idiosyncratic, and because it received vir-
tually no attention when it appeared and had no influence upon later
M": I have not included it in my discussion of aid-century
verse translations.8

The only couplets mg; in uglish verse which appeared after
Andrews' was Wth's. It, however, is not a late eighteenth-century
translation at all but only a poor edition of Dryden. 'me "correction"
and “enlarguent” of Dryden's work pranised in Helmth's preface
counts to very little indeed. Such changes as there are appear in
the argulents, and even these are minor: changes in verb tense or the
substitution of an infinitive for a gerund in an otherwise unaltered
sentence. more are, of course, many orthographic differences, but
the verse itself is wholly Dryden's. In the fourth Eclegge, for ex-
slple, there are only two substantive variants, both obvious nie-
prints. Ihere Drydu: has goats speeding hasswud with ”strutting
Doggs,‘ Eel-0th has the nonsensical epithet “strutting drugs" (1. 25),
and in the later publication unveil" in 'the nauseous Qualns of ten
long baths and Travail“ is rendered "travel' (1. 75). Such variants
as eccur in the W and the Age}; are conpsrable. “me slain on
the title page of an I's.ll new translation," for which the bookseller

 

8A review of this translation and of the author's prefatory essay
m be found in Appendix D.

 

 

7
rather than Helnoth scans to have been responsible, can only have been
intended to deceive the unwary.

It is perhaps indicative of the esteen in which Dryden's name was
still held that the title page asserts that all previous translations,
I'especially Dryden's,“ have been "consulted." But any hope that the
fraud might go undetected can only have rested on the confidence that
readers were completely unfaniliar with the Dryden translation.

The Helnoth edition has rightly received virtually no attention.
he Mel-0th entry in the Dictionary of National. 312m does not
mention either the M or the similarly touted 109;, nor is it
mtioned in the W survey of eighteenth—century E-
gl's. Elisabeth Nitchis dismisses it with the cment that it is
Enrydsn's translation 'revised and improved.” The number of sub-
stantial eighteenth-century translations of Vergil is thus nallsr
than it at first appears to be.

In the absence of a complete Long, the last period of the cen-
tury is represented here by Jues Beresford's mid, published in
1791., and William Sotheby's m in 1800. Since Tytler's transla-
tion of the m was not available to me, only the Georgics and
the M have been mined for this period.

Of the mining substantial portions of Vergil, I have examined
these that were available: Hilbourne'e first Georgic, along with his
m“ a mu Virg g a Letter to a rug; Brady's m
heobald's second and fourth M33 and Beattis's Bologgg;9 as well
as the prose translations of Joseph Davidson, John Martyn, and Caleb
Alexander. 0: several other translators, I have read only the few

 

,A discussion of this work appears in Appendix D.

 

 

8

lines which appeared in contemporary reviews. William Hawkins' M
was found to be full of faults, illustrated with thirty or forty lines
of his translation. Unfortunately, the longest continuous passage
quoted was only seventeen lines. William Mills' Georgics were pro-
nounced "sufficiently faithful and close; but closeness and fidelity
are but parts of a translator's province. How unanimated and prosaic!”
ihe twenty-five lines quoted are in no way remarkable. John Morrison
is identified as a precocious twelve-year-old who rhymes well enough
but has a good deal to learn before he can neasurs up to Dryden, and
the reviewer prints a few lines of parallel passages from Morrison and
fro. Dryden without further cos-sent. It is safe to assume that this
translation exerted no influence on the course of English poetry.
inc-as llevils's Georgios are dismissed as accurate enough but lacking
in |'d.ignity of expression, and . . . hamotw of . . . verse.“ Nor is
there anything unusual or remarkable in the more than one hundred lines
quoted in the review of Alexander Strahan's M. Strahan's verse,
like Haddns' and Hills', is unrhyned but usually end-stopped, dis-
tinguished from prose only by conventional poetic epithets.lo

‘me principal concern of this study is poetic diction; prosody,
however, since it affects diction, cannot be ignored hers. Eighteenth-
cutury M's took two fans: the heroic couplet and blank verse.
Beth fans are represented in the samples for each of the three per-
iods. Trapp used blank verse which he intended to be Miltonic; Bu-
son wrote in couplets, as did Pitt, Warton, and Beattie. Andrews

 

10m the reviews cited appeared in the Monty Review soon after
publicatien of the works discussed in tha, as follows: Hawkins:
Vol. numb), 257-61; Him: Humvee) 135-36; Morrison:
munu'rss), 321-23; levils: mu (17673, 337; and atrium:
mvn(1767), 321-23.

"s

 

9
described his unrhymed lines as iambic pentameter, and Beresford trans-
lated the Aeneid into more recognizable blank verse, for most of the

 

same reasons that had motivated Trapp. Sotheby's Georgics are in
heroic couplets.

The received opinion concerning the significance of form in
eighteenth-century Vergil's is expressed by '1'. W. Harrison in his
essay, "English Vergil: the Aeneid in the Eighteenth Century. "11
Drawing chiefly on the translators' prefaces and on contemporary
theorists about poetics and only secondarily on the translations them-
selves, Harrison argues that during the first half of the century
English men of letters were primarily interested in the political ele-
ments of the m and in the last half that interest gave way to a
search for beauties, instances of the sublime, the picturesque, or the
pathetic. He cites various poets' admiration for these Romantic quali-
ties, beginning with Trapp, and adds:

These samples could be multiplied many times , and

in the translations of the period, now [L9, the

latter part of the century], of course, deserting

the heroic couplet for the inevitable blank verse,

and especially in those of Christopher Pitt, pub-

lished in 171.0, and of Alexander Strahan, com-

pleted in 1767, one can detect the poetical enthu-

sia- rising as it approaches the pathetic.
This argument is misleading in two important ways. he use of blank
verse and admiration for the pathos of Vergil sea to be linked, though
in the examples Harrison himself cites, the link does not always hold.
Trapp, Pitt, Usrton, and strahan all admired Vergil's pathos, but two

of them wrote in heroic couplets and two in blank verse. And Harrison

“mm x0967). 1-11 and 80-91-
”an. pp. 86-87.

 

 

 

10
also seems to suggest that translation moved steadily from rhyme to
blank verse as the century progressed, though, in fact, most of the
translators of Vergil, in the early 1700's as well as later, wrote in
blank verse. Not only Beresford in the last decade of the century but
also Il‘rapp and Brady in the first and second decades rendered Vergil
in that meter. Dryden himself is reported to have said that if he had
had his translation to do over again, he would have chosen unrhymed
verse for it.13 me story is supported by remarks in the Dedication
of the m to the same effect. Dryden criticizes the Italian
translator, Hannibal Caro, for having produced a "scandalously mean"
translation even "though he has taken advantage of writing in Blank
Verse, and freed himself from the shackles of modern Rhine." And Dry-
den goes on to pronounce as a general principle that “he who can write
well in Rhime, may write better in Blank Verse." is Havens points out,
"notwithstanding the merited popularity of Dryden's Vergil and Pope's
liter, lovers of Greek and Latin have never been entirely satisfied
with the heroic couplet as an English equivalent of the classical hex-
smeter."u‘ Sane translators, no doubt, found translating from Latin
into English rhyme simply beyond their capacities as craftsmen; and
for anyone except Pope, the difficulties involved in that task would
be, as Havus describes than, like those of a wasan acting Hamlet, a
sufficiently demanding role under the best of conditions. Others,
early in the century as well as later, chose blank verse because they
felt that Hilton had established it as £13 meter of English epic,

 

1aneoorded in Joseph Richardson's mug Notes on Pafllss

Inst (172A), p. on, and reported in Havens, p. 32in.

“Miami—193$. P- 323-

 

 

either original or translated.

'the fem a translation took affects the method of enmination
used here, because of the importance of rhyme words as signals of bor-
renting. The procedure for comparison of passages in heroic couplets
is based on those used by Proudfoot and by Helene M. Hooker, as out-
lined in her essay, 'Dryden's Georgcs and English Predeccssors."15
is evidence of borrowing, Profifoot accepts identity of rhyme words,
either one or both in a given couplet; parallel phrasing in which
similar or identical words occur; and, of course, identity or near
identity of lines. Hrs. Hooker rejects identities or similarities of
wording within the line and accepts only identical flames and phrases
used to render the same passage. However, she accepts such a rhyme-
word, even if it has undergone functional shift: 3.5., the end-word
Enemies" in house M's Georges appears as a verb, whereas in Dry-
den's corresponding passage, I'eacercise" is a noun; Hrs. Hooker treats
Dryden's line as derived from May's. Proudfoot points out that influ-
ence may be apparent in lines in which the end-words are not the same,
and offers a number of examples, of which two are quoted here:

1. en:
His words, his looks, imprinted in her heart,
(Aeneis IV, 5)
on:
His lords, his looks, are printed in her breet,
(lanai: IV: 5)
3. Men:
To this one error I might yield again;
(Lanai: IV. 25)
Lauderdale:
To this one Frailty I perhaps aim yield.
(m IV, 21)

 

”Wm. Hum). 273-310.

 

 

 

12
me first of these seaas to me to be obviously acceptable; the second
is less so and requires some reinforcement, such as the repetition of
words not imediately suggested by the Latin line or external evidence
of a connection. In this particular instance, Proudfoot believes both
kinds of support may be found. The Iatin line is:
Huic uni forsan potui euccumbere culpae. 16

(Aeneidos, IV, 19)
If either line contained 'succmb” instead of I'yield,'l the borrowing
would sen very unlikely, even though the phrase structure is similar,
because the Latin line offers limited possibilities of structural vari-
ation. It would Justify putting the propositional phrase at the begin-
ning of the line (m g) or at the end M), since it is impos-
sible to reproduce the dative frame of the Latin line in English. I
should be especially reluctant to infer a relationship between the two
English lines on the basis of verbal echoes alone, since the transla-
tions of M are different. (he external evidence Proudfoot cites
for this line is that Lauderdale's eighteenth-century editor identi-
fies the line as one Dryden used, though elsewhere Proudfoot labels
the editor's attributions as often erroneous.)

The most I should be willing to claim concerning this line is the
possibility that Dryden was influenced here by his predecessor, as is
suggested by the degree of syntactic parallelism and the word choice
l'y:|.e1|.d." Dryden's decision to emit £322.“. and to add "again" together
with his use of "error' rather than "frailty" puts the matter in doubt.

 

“This and subsequent quotations of the Latin text are, unless

otherwise identified, taken from the 1675 Dolphin edition of Carolus
Ruseus, the text which Dryden used and which remained by far the most
popular out almost the entire century. Vergil's hooks will be
identified with initials, books with Roman morals, and lines with
Arabic mulbers. Translators will be identified by me.

\

 

13
Despite the fact, however, that Proudfoot makes some rather dubious

applications of his principle, the principle itself seems generally
sound: similarities within the line may attest to borrowing as well
as end-words.

Hrs. Booker classifies evidence of borrowing under six headings:

(l) the use of an end-word or phrase to provide the
rhyme for a couplet;

(2) the verbatim or almost verbatim use of a line or
couplet;

(3) a combination of lines, the first from one transc-
lator, the second from another;

(1.) a like combination of couplets;

(5) a combination of phrases from two translators in
order to form a line; and

(6) the use of a French or Latin oosmentary for con-
tent but of an kglish translation for rhyme.

Headings (l) and (2) describe the noting of the number, kind, and
frequency of similarities between Dryden's work and that of his prede-
cessors. I have noted the same things with respect to his successors.
The problsn of deciding which among several possible texts is exerting
influence arises in this stucw also, though again with a difference.
Benson and Trapp both show some familiarity with the work of Dryden's
predecessors, but they devote so much attention to Dryden and they
know his translation so well that they could not have borrowed from
one of his sources without considering Dryden's use of that same
source. By lid-century, however, translators were taking Trapp's 1e;-
‘fl, into account as well as Dryden's, and Joseph Harton relied heavily
upon Benson's m. Proudfoot's rule of thumb, that of several
possibilities, the most likely source for am given passage is the one
nest similar to it, seems a sensible solution to this probln. I have

 

 

ll.
accordingly compared each author with his eighteenth-century prede-
cessors as well as with Dryden.

Except with respect to Sotheby's Geomcs, the Latin and French
cementaries do not really present a problaa. All the translators
knew the standard works, and several cannented on the use Dryden had
made of than and whether they considered that use defensible. However,
the influence of foreign-language commentators would not be very likely
to produce similar uglieh diction in the work of two poets for the
same reasons that the Latin original of the poem would not. The words
of one language do not have single or exact equivalents in another.
nu processes of generating sentences are also different; there is no
other language in which the mechanisms of accidence and of subordina-
tion are precisely equivalent to those of English. (French, of course,
is more similar to English in these respects than Latin is.) The
likelihood that consulting French or Latin comentaries would lead two
hglish writers to put down the same English words in the same order
is thus remote.

The differences between Latin and English also provide the
rationale of the importance of rhyme-words in an influence study such
as this. If the original language were really equivalent to the
language into finish a translation is rude, we should be more sur-
prised when translators differ than when they agree. The fact is that
thq differ a great deal, and this is especially apparent in transla-
tions from Iatin henneters into English couplets. End-stepping is
the rule in the oouplet, but the relation between the syntactic unit
an! the line is not the principle of line construction in Latin verse.
no .311 freer word order of the Latin, the Ilonger line (thirteen to

 

 

15

sixteen syllables as opposed to the English ten), the economy of ana-
lytic inflections as opposed to the distribution of synthetic parti-
cles—all these operating together make possible many different though
equally faithful translations into mglish verse. The amount of varia-
tion which mglish pemits increases the possibilities of differing
translations. The usual subject-verb-complemerrt order may be inverted,
and it is often possible to place a subordinate structure in any one
of two or three optional slots. In most lines translated into English
verse, the Latin sentence and the Latin line do not dictate the word
or even the semantic unit that must come at the end of the English line.

Nevertheless, the density of end-word agreement does appear to be
one index of the literalness of a translation. Robert Andrews, whose
primary aim was to reproduce Vergil's diction, word order, and line
structure as accurately as possible, was able to mks only 199 lines
(appmnmateh two of every seven) of his fourth Aeneid end with a

 

reasonably literal translation of the Latin end-word. In the same
book, Dryden's count is seventy-five (or about on line in every thir-
teen), whereas Trapp's is 150 (approximately one in six). The same
may be said, with due caution, of higlish end-word agreemmts as well.
In general, those translators whose work shows most other evidences of
influence from Dryden's agree with his end-words more often than those
who so. to have been less influenced by him. In the fourth m
Andrews uses only forty-two end-words that repeat Dryden's but not
Vol-311's; Trapp has nasty-turn.”

A. hrs. Hooker has shown, the likelihood that two posts should

 

178a the chart of enddword agreements among the translations
Med in this study in Appendix B.

a

 

16
accidentally happen upon the same rhyme words in translating the sane
passage is not very great. Rhyming conventions were not so limited
that, for sample, the occurrence of "Join" forced the rhyme-word
"vine" (or ”wine“ or azw one of a number of other possibilities).
Lists such as Edward Bysshe's include from a dozen to fifty or more
entries under a particular end—syllable sound sequence}8 Poets could
and did work within the same conventional inventory of rmes without
choosing the same pairs. Therefore, when a similar phrase occurs in a
passage in which the rhyme-words also agree with Dryden's, I conclude
that the later post was influenced by his predecessor, the probability
increasing, of course, with the density of such end-words in a single
Puke.-

All this is not to say that every time two English translators
and a line in corresponding passages with the same word, one is neces-
sarily borrowing fraa the other. The frequency of such similarities
and the degree to which syntax and diction are also similar must be
taken into account. At least equal caution nust be used in dealing
with similarities within the line, particularly in nnrhyled verse,
where the frequency of aid-word agreement is a sanewhat less reliable
check.

me conventionality of eighteenth-century poetic diction makes it
important to consider other possible reasons for similarities among
pom. 'nu W faniliar to all mush writers of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is more than a classical
Latin lexicon. Its synomies, cross-references, and quotations,
especially of epithets, are in effect a style manual for Latin

 

”n, ‘41; 2f Mon Poetg (Mon, 1702).

 

 

l7

caposition and, at least insofar as diction is concerned, for transla-
tion, as well.19 Frequent canplaints about poets who rely too heavily
upon it show that critics and poets alike were thoroughly familiar
with it. The popular English style books, such as Bysshe's, had neat-
ly arranged indices of rhymes, with monosyllables, disyllables, poly-
sleables, and accent patterns carefully separated. Most of the
rhymes in Dryden's m appear in Bysshe, and the same is true of
the translations of Benson, Pitt, harton, Beattie, and Sotheby. The
epithets within the line are often cannon currency also. John Arthos
lists nany examples of words and periphrases frequently used by
writers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.
tether the epithets occur in poetic or in scientific writing, Arthos
has been able to trace most of then to their origins as conventional
translations of equally conventional Greek and Iatin phrases.20

Anything colorfully decorated, for example, is likely to be de-
scribed as pointed. Among the Latin writers, Lucretius, Hanilius,
Prudentius, am Avitus as well as Vergil used M and its deriva-
tive fans in this way. Dryden is simply translating literally when
he writes that "painted Scythians" participate in Apollo's rites
M N, 208) and soon “feast on painted Beds" M N, 301).
Trapp also renders the participle describing the Scythian as

 

”the edition of the Gradus which was available for use for this
study was published in Iondon in 1851. It is the first edition to
contain hglish synonyms and purports to be I'thoroughly revised and
corrected." 1hough it is valuable as a resource, it is not the work
Dryden and his successors had for reference.

3° e of oral on in teenth-Cent
Ann Arbor, 191.9 . The 11 s are arranged in the Appendices
in alphabetical order under the rubrics, I'Significant Words," “Peri-
phrases,“ and I'fiithevts with Suffix i."

.1:

‘

 

18
“painted," but occasionally, especially when the English word would
seem figurative if he used "painted," Trapp chooses "embroidered" as
his translation of m a choice Dryden makes only once when he
renders,

Vobis picta croco et fulgenti murice vestis
(A 11, 61h)

Your Vests unbroyder'd with rich Purple shine.
Dryden, A 11:, 81.1)

In other passages, Dryden usually translates M as "painted,"
whether the result is literal. 6r figurative in the mglish line.21
And like other English poets, he often constructs an epithet of
I'puinted" and a noun when the Latin convention is suggested by the
noun even though there is no Justification for it in the particular
passage he is translating. The I‘painted Shield" in Dryden's:

Fair in; follows in the wat'ry Field,

Proud of his mnag'd Horse, and painted Shield.

(A 1, 261-62)

is simply a shield in Vergil. The llpainted Heads" of Dryden‘s fourth
m (l. 1.33) blush with colors in the Latin. Vergil describes
the Amazon queen Camilla as quiver-bearing (glare—trajyd n, 61.9);
Drydu: further describes the quiver as "painted" (A II, 965), and
he gives a painted quiver to Venus (A 1, 1.1.6) where Vergil has merely
provided her with the ants appropriate for a huntress. Moreover, Dry-
den, like Spenser and Milton before him, unless the sane use of
'painted' in originally English lines. In I"1‘he Flower and the Leaf,"
for instance, Dryden renders,

 

21A rare exception occurs in Book IV of the Aeneis, where Dryden
rsnders m as 'parti-colour'd" (1. 763).

("ex

 

19
and naketh smale floures
To springen here and there,
(11. 8-9)

. . . and paint the Fields with Flow'rs'

(1. 6)
and changes the sense of the image in,

. . . the briddes songis for to here
(1. 37)

The painted Birds, Companiongzof the Spring,
Hopping from Spray to Spray,

The point is that a conventional epithet may turn In; in almost aw con-
text, and therefore the presence of the same epithet in two transla-
tions is not in itself conclusive evidence of borrowing.

Even Proudfoot's rule, that of several possibilities the most
likely source for am given passage is the one most similar to it,
met be applied cautiously. The "mighty Round of fears" that revolves
in Joseph Trapp's fourth Eclogge (l. 7) and the "mighty fears” that
“in radiant Circles run" in Drydsn‘s (11. 7-8) appear to be much more
closely related to each other than to the "magmas . . . ordo' of
'saeculorm" (the mighty series of lifespans or centuries) in Vergil's:

Magnus ab integro saeculorum nascitur ordo.
( 3 IV, 5)

Iet it. seems almost equally likely that the two hglish poets were
simply working within the same range of conventional diction. For a
few lines further along, Trapp returns to the same figure to trans-
late Vergil's,

et incipient nagni precedere menses;
( E IV. 12)

 

22The medieval text of "me Flower and the Leaf" is frcn Walter
H. Sheet, 81.; e and Other Pi es: A u t to the Cu-
er Oxford, hagland, , :23 3 1-79.
Dryden's version appears in the Kinsley edition, pp. 1650 .

 

 

20

. . . and mighty Months begin to roll.
(E IV, 16)

whereas Dryden turns to another figure, equally far from the Latin
ted. and equally conventional:

Majestic}: Months set out with him to their appointed Race.
E IV, 15

(he is forced to conclude that, though there may be borrowing no mat-
ter where a passage occurs in a line, similar words and similar images
are not, taken alone, sufficient proof of one poet's influence on
another. Accordingly, especially when there is no rhyme agreement to
make the end of the line particularly significant, I have claimed in-
fluence only where similarities of syntactic patterns, diction, and
imagery (where applicable) coincide and are not dictated by the Latin
original.

In the chapters which follow, the evidence to be found in the

sample passages is presented in chronological order. Chapter II

examines the translations of two of Dryden's early successors, Benson
and Trapp; Chapter III, Pitt's mtg; Chapter IV, flarton's Eclogges
and W and Chapter V, the translations of Beresford and
Sotheby. Chapter VI discusses the significance of the evidence that
has been presented. Parallel passages referred to in statistical sum-
mries in the test are reproduced in Appendix A. Appendices B and C
present tabulations of end-word agrements and of lines influenced by
the corresponding passages of Dryden's translation. Appendix D pre-
suts a discussion of two translators of the 1760's who were not

directly inflamed by Dryden; Beattie and Andrews.

 

CHAPHR II
William Benson and Joseph Trapp

Bosccsnon's MM is so often cited by eighteenth-
century translators and commentators and so often quoted without
citation, as if unconsciously, that one is tempted to regard it as the
accepted practical norm, by which particular translations could be
neasured. 'mat scans to be what eighteenth-century translators be-
lieved. But, in fact, his principles are sometimes impossible to put
into practice because they call for mutually exclusive qualities. The
translator, for example, is exhorted to have absolute respect for the
words of his original, a quality which can be expressed only in rigor-
ous, word-for-word accuracy. Co the other hand, the translated work
must rise when the original rises and fall when it falls, effects
which can be achieved only in tens of the affective potentialities
of the second language. And those affective qualities are produced
by sequences of sounds, myth, and syntax peculiar to the individual
language and therefore not translatable, and by figures of description
and rhetoric that smetimes can be translated and sonstines cannot.
And since sounds, rhythic effects, and syntactic stmctures involve
the selection of words as well as their arrangement, and since the
value of tropes and figures is in great part culturally determined,
the translator often has to choose between verbal accuracy and the
mention of the same poetic effect as that of his original.

21

 

 

22

Nor does it help to argue that either the spirit or the letter
deserves priority and the other should be secondary. For there simply
is no clearly defined way to identify the precise point at which one
value is to be sacrificed to the other. Notwithstanding Dryden's
Mutation that he had on the whole succeeded in putting into prac-
tice the tenets of the Art of Translagon, he, as well as other posts,
in fact did what had to be done: he chose one quality as the most im-
portant. For him it was English poetry. Vergil was to be made to
speak as he would have spoken had he been born a contemporary uglish-
mn. The critical questions that properly arise are whether a trans-
lation made in accordance with that principle is worth the making, and
whether Dryden has done it well or ill. The pettier the critic, the
more likely he is to Judge Drydsn's efforts by criteria that are ir-
relevant, glven Dryden's primary commitment.

me first critic to win a dubious inortality with such a criti-
cism was Inks Hilbourne, many of whose arguments are repeated, though
somewhat less petulantly, by William Benson, the first translator
whose work will be examined here. Both were driven into print by
their veneration of Vergil and their indignation about the offense Dry-
den's m emitted against him, and both appended to their con--
mentaries their own translations of part of the m inviting com-
parison between their work and Dryden's. Benson is new best remem-
bered for an unfortunate error in Judgment that had nothing to do with
his skill and perceptiveness as a translator and poet. As surveyor
general, he warned that the House of Lords and the painted chamber
were in ininent danger of collapse. His opinion was rejected by the
0.11%” appointed to investigate the latter, and time vindicated

 

 

23
their Judynent rather than his. the is tempted to conjecture that he
understood the direction or the tendency of details but not the inter-
plq of forces, that he could project arithmetic operations but did
not understand what to do with a problun that involved a matrix of
values. At an rate, the conjecture is especially tempting as one
reads the prefatory essays and notes to his translation of the first
two Georgics.
He opens the preface of his second Geomic with the rennrk:

There are few Ways of spmding one's Tine more

idly than in finding Faults in the labours of

other,People; especially of any one that has

acquir'd a general Reputation: Neither is

there any thing more invidious than such an

Undertaking.
men, the concession having been made, he turns inediately and enthu-
siastically to his attack on Dryden, giving no attention whatever to
the multiplicity of considerations that had to infer- the translator's
choices. Like Hilbourne, he believed Dryden to have suffered fraa
grave lilitations as a Iatinist, as a poet, and as a nan, which ren-
dered hi- unfit to produce a worthy translation of the greatest poet
of all tile, though unlike Hilbourne he did not seem to be rubbing his
hands in glee over the prospect of destroying the great man's reputa-
tion. lot that he would shrink from arguing g honin : for maple,
he charges Dryden with having a "Fang, or Genius, or Taper of the
Kind, cell it as we will, . . . so unalterably bent to Usutonness,
that he was anutterably incapable of entring in any Manner into the
Sense or Ideas of his Author.“

Bunsen frequently notes that Dryden has gone astray in following

the text and cutary of Carolus Buseus's Dolphin edition of Vergil.
He notes, for ennple, that lines 139 and 11.0 of Dryden's first

 

 

2a
m misrepresent Vergil by applying Ceres' look of approval to the
preceding description of the farmer pounding clods with rakes, when it
should be applied to the description that follows of a farmer who
cross plows his furrows at an oblique angle. The difficulty is that
Ruaeus and Dryden after him had failed to see that in Vergil's lines:
neque illm

Flava Ceres alto nequicquan spectat Olympo,

It qui, proscisso quae suscitat aequore terga,

Rursus in obliquun verso perrunpit aratro:

Enercetque frequsns telluren, atque imperat arvis.

(G I, 95-99)

'3 mi, mscisso, etc. must be constru'd gu_i- & mrrunflt, & exercet,
Mo“

Dryden, following Ruaeus and others, translates segetes (G I, l)
as I'ccrn." Benson insists that the word, regardless of its usual
sense, nust be translated “corn—lands" because (1) Vergil would not
mete his instruction on topics beyond the famer's control; (2) the
crop depends upon new factors that the farmer can do nothing about 3
(3) cultivating the soil is something the farmer can do; and (1.)
"therefore, laetes Segetes plainly means Campos Fructuosos." He does
not consider the possibility that either Vergil or Dryden might have
intended netonyly.

Here to the point, in Benson's view, Dryden failed 'unutterably"
to understand either Vergil's subject or the poetic qualities that
ends the Latin work a nectar-piece. As an urban poet, 1):de was up”.
fectly ignorant'l of everything rural and therefore missed nest of Ver-
gil's especially deft descriptions. Sheep washing in a river bloat;
Dryden substitutes the conventional “woolly” for the more infomtive
I'bleating" because he is unaware of the peculiar life-likeness of

 

 

25
Vergil's word picture. It is interesting that Benson's objection here
is not raised on the ground that balantun means "bloating" and does

 

not connote IWoolly." The literal text is cited, however, as the
reason why Dryden's antitheses (Benson uses this ten for various
kinds of parallel structures) are objectionable. Figures should re-
produce those of the original, and the words must also, except where
Vergil obviously intended other words.

Yet it would be a mistake to assume that all Benson's criticisms
were of no value at all. Balantuu does mean 'bleating." And, as Ben-
son points out, in the opening lines of the first Geomc, Dryden does
establish a tone unlike that of Vergil's text, when he renders the
subjunctive my; (I would .sing) as indicative and thus asserts the
poet's power to sing as fact rather than as desire or purpose, thereby
losing the conventional Latin Tremor Oratoris. In rare instances, even

 

his criticises of Dryden's management of the kglish line are inter-
esting. For mule, Dryden's line,

Begin when the slow Waggoner descends,
(G I. 318)

is awkward, Benson observes, because there is no caesura and no sus-
pense. Both weaknesses, he suggests, might be remedied by the rever-
sal of the order of "slow" and "the," which would transform the adjec-
tive into an adverb and set up tension between the adverb "slow" and
the verb ”descends." The value of the suggestion, however, is some-
what vitiated by the fact that Benson prints this line of Dryden‘s
tent in italics to indicate that there is no justification for it at
all in the Latin text. The clear implication is that Dryden should
have clitted all the italicised passages.

Fro- Benson's notes and prefaced, three conclusions nay be drawn.

 

 

26
line first is that he recognizes a number of criteria to be used in
determining the value of a translation. The best translation is sane-
tines the nest literal, sometimes the most faithful to the spirit of
the original, sonetines the nest supple Eglish, sanetines whatever
is nest nearly in accord with Benson's direct, if not divine, revela-
tion of Vergil's intentions. The second conclusion, a corollary of
the first, is that no hierarchy of values is apparent in Benson's
choice of the nest inportant criterion in any particular instance.
mough he never reveals the slightest hesitation in deciding what
principle to apply, he also never reveals any awareness that other
pcdnciples impinge upon it in such a way as to present a complex
problu which another translator might legitimately solve in a differ-
ent way.

The third inference is that the author of so detailed and cate-
gorial a rejection of Dryden and all his works whould rather differ
from his predecessor than echo bin. There are, indeed, many passages
of Benson's two m (he translated only the first two books) that
are very different from Dryden's. Iet upon ennining the tents close-
ly, one is struck by the number of similarities, too close to be at-
tributed to accident.

In the 63!. lines of Benson's first Georgie, there are 158 lines
that ad with the same rune-words Dryden used in the corresponding
passages of his translation. Forty-four of these are half-rhymes;
1.3., the words that rhyme with the shared words are different in the
two hglish texts. or the ranaining 111. lines, thirty-six are coup-
lets which have the sane end—words in Benson and Dryden but which do
not occur in the work of Ogilby and May, their seventeenth-century

 

27

predecessors with whom Benson acknowledged himself to be familiar.
Eight lines (four couplets) end with rtwme-wonds Dryden appears to have
borrowed fran Ogilby. In two couplets which rhyme the same in Dryden
and Boson, Dryden is indebted to Ogilby for a half-rhyme. Five pas-
sages of three consecutive line ends, Lg. , the rhyme—words of one
couplet together with the imediately preceding or following half-
rhyme, agree in the two translations, as does one four-line passage.
Three longer passages of five, six, and seven lines respectively, dif-
fer in only one rhyme-word. In Benson's tent, there are also a number
of passages of nixed identities of rhyme-words, some with Dryden and
sue with Ogilby. The rhyme words of three couplets and one half-
rhyme could have come either from Dryden or fun Hay, and five more
could have cane from Dryden or directly frm Dryden's primary source,
the translation of the m1 of Iauderdale.1

Professor J. M. Bottkol, in his review of Mrs. Hooker's essay on
Dryden's debt to earlier translators of the Georges, points out that
such rhyming pairs as "Join/vine" are ubiquitous in poetry of the per—
19:1.2 But this objection takes into account only the occurrences of
the same rhyming pairs in the works of different poets and does not
deal with their occurrence in corresponding passages of translated
verse. In the first @3519, for example, Dryden rhymes "field" with
I'yield" five times; Benson, four times. But since this rhyme occurs
only once in corresponding passages, three of Benson's are not con-
sidered as possible evidence of influence. Nor does Professor

 

lThe agre-ents with Dryden smarised here are reproduced in
‘pm ‘1.

W an (April. 191.7), 113.19.

 

 

28
Botthsl's objection that sometimes the rhyme-words are the only iden-
tical words in otherwise quite dissimilar lines necessarily make bor-
rowing unlikely. ‘l'he later poet occasionally appears to go to con-
siderable trouble to shape his line so as to take advantage of an end-
word. Benson and Dryden translate the following lines from Vergil:
pallidus Orcus

Rusenidesque satae: tum partu Terra nefando

Coeumque, Japetumque crest, saevmque Typhoea,

Et conjuratos coelun rescindere fratres.

(G I, 277-80)

That gave the Furies and pale Pluto Birth,
And arm'd, against the Sides, the Sons of Earth.
(Dryden, G I, 373-71.)

Then, the relmtless Furies bears the Earth,
And pale fac'd Pluto at an impious Birth,

Then, from her womb the Rebel Brethren rise,

In desp'rate League combin'd to stem the Skies:

(Benson, G I, 351-51.)
lothing in the Latin text forces the “birth/earth" rhyme, and the two
English poets manage their sentences differently, Dryden's being un-
characteristically compact and Benson's equally uncharacteristically
prolix. And since 11-. is known that Benson worked with Dryden's text '
always in mind, it appears likely that he also profited from Dryden's
flames.

In Book I, Benson borrows only one two-line passage verbatim.
Vergil's line,

lavita tun stellis metros & nonina fecit,
(G I, 157)

is translated:
Then Sailors quarter'd Heav'n, and found a lane
m- ev'ry fix'd, and sv'ry wandring Star:
(Dryden, G 1, 208-09)
Then Sailors quarter'd Heav'n, and found a Name
I

For ev'ry firt, and ev ry ar,
‘ (Benson, 6 I, 177-78)

 

29
Ogilby had written:

Then Sailors nam'd and number'd every Star,
And knew what all the Constellations were;
(G I, lav-2.8)

and Trapp was to publish as his version:
The Sea-Faring Crew
Then first gave Names, and Numbers to the Stars,
(G 1, 177-78)
The Latin original not only does not force Benson and Dryden into
agreasent here; it does not Justify the quartering of heaven, the
rendering of the verb as "find," or any descriptive details about the
stars. If the details are conventional, there still must be an ex-
planation for the fact that both poets decided to use these particular
conventions in the same order. There are Just too many coincidences.
Benson does not italicize these additions of Dryden's, nor does he
cement on the lines in his notes.
Some other lines are also clearly influenced by Dryden's 1w.
Dryden renders,

Inpiaque aeternsm tinuerunt saecula hoot-n.
(G I, 1.68)

All! Inpious Herbals fear'd kernel Night.
(6 I. 631)
And Benson echoes:

And th'inpious Age fear'd an Eternal Night.
(G I. 581)

Similarly,

Hoe metuens, coeli menses & sidera serve:
(G I, 335)

booms, in Dryden:

In fear of this, observe the starry Signs,
(G I, 1.59)

ad in Benson:

 

 

30

In fear of this, observe the Monthly Signs.
I, 1.19)

Occasionally, a half-rhyme occurs in conjunction with syntactic
parallels or details not justified by the Latin tends. Vergil's lines:
Tun ferri rigor, atque argutae lamina ferrae;
Han prini cuneis scindebant fissile Gligmn:
I, Its-u.)
are translated by Dryden:
Then Saws were tooth'd, and sounding Axes made;
(For Wedges first did yielding Wood invade.)
(G 1, 215-16)
and by Benson:
Then th'Edge of Iron, and the Saw's shrill Blade,
(For with the Hedge the First did wood mad»;
(G I 185-86
Not only the rather figurative translation of scindebant as "invade"
but also its placanent in the line are reproduced in the later trans-
lation. Again, when Vergil addresses the famsr and bids him pray for
moist solstices and serene winters:
Hmida solstitia atque hiuee crate serenas
Agricolae:
(G I, 100-01)
Dryden translates:
Ie Swains, invoke the Pow'rs who rule the Slq,
For a moist Sumner, and a Hinterdry
(6:1. 11.546)
and Busch adds the sane details—the powers to when the prayers
should be addressed and the sky:
The Solstice noist, serene the Winter 31¢,
For this, ye Swains, intreat the Pow'rs on high;
(G 1, 128-29)
The translation of the vocative gauche as "ye Swains" taken alone
would not be particularly significant, but added to the other simil-

arities, it provides one further evidence that Benson was very much

 

 

31
influenced by the translation he called "the worst Translation that
ever was made, all things consider'd" of "the best Poem of the best
Post that ever writ."3
Often, when Benson repeats Dryden's rhyme scheme in a couplet,
one line is syntactically parallel with Dryden's and one is not. V615
gil's lines:
squalent abductis arva colonic,
Et curvae rigidum falces conflantur in ensem.
(G I, 507-08)
in Dryden's version are:
The Plain no Pasture to the Flock affords,
The crooked Scythes are streightned into atords:
(G I. 683-81.)
And Benson, following the latin text more literally than Dryden in the
first line, uses the same structure in the second:
A ghastly Sight the squallid Field affords,
And bending Scythes are hamer'd into Swords:
(G I, 626-27)
A four-line passage demonstrates a similar echo of Dryden. To
Vergil's lines:
Proluit insane contorquens vortice silvas
Fluviorum rex Eridanus, composque per omnes
Gun stabulis amenta tulit:
(G I, 1:81-83)
Dryden adds intensifying details, as he so often does; the personi-
fied river is seen as I'rising in his flight," and not only the herds,
but also the alliterative "Houses" and "lab'ring Hinds" are swept along
on the flood:

Then rising in his Night, the King of Floods,
Busht thro' the Forrests, tore the lofty Woods:

 

3m. Preface to Book II of Viz-Q's Hum, p. xxviii.

 

 

 

32
And rolling onward, with a sweepy Sway,
Bore Houses, Herds, and lab'ring Hinds away.
(G 1, 619-52)
Benson follows the word order of the original closely in the first
couplet, even though doing so involves him in an inversion that is
awkward in uglish, then yields to Dryden's more graceful syntax in
the second:
In furious Gulphs absorps the whirling Woods
Ilperial Po, the Sov'reign of the Floods;
And pouring onwards with resistless Sway
Bears, with their ruin'd Stalls, the Horde away:
(a I, 596-99)

The parallel is sometimes closer. For example, with the excep-
tion of the order of the instrumental phrase and the subject, the fol—
lowing couplets share both rlmne schqne and sentence structure:

The Crow with clsn'rous Cries the Show'r duands,
And single stalks along the Desart Sands.
(mum, G I, 533‘3")
Then with full Voice the Book the Show'r demands,
And solitary Stalks along the soorchingSand
(Benson, GI, 1.86-87)
his lines translated here suggest "sands” as an end-word but not
'denands':
Tun cornix plena pluvian vocat improba voce,
It sols in sioca secun spatiatur arena.
(G I, 388-89)
In translating
Ipsa dies alios alio dedit ordine Luna
Felices opera, quinte- tags:
(6 I, 276-77)
Dryden shifts the initiative from the giver to the receiver:
The lucky Days, in each revolving Moon,
For labour chuse: The Fifth be sure to shun;
(G I: 371-72)

and Benson, maintaining the focus of the original text, still echoes

JR

I
.

 

T'—

33
Dryden's syntax while repeating his rhyme:

For various labours each revolving Moon
Gives Happy Days; the Fifth be sure to shun;
(G I, 349-50)

Like Dryden, he adds the monitory “be sure to" to Quinton fgge.
In longer passages, too, Dryden's influence makes itself felt.

Benson renders:

Ego inter sese paribus concurrere telis
Bananas acies iterum videre Philippi:
Nec fuit indignum superis, bis sanguine nostro
hathiam 8c latos Ami pingu'escere campos.
Scilicet & tenpus veniet, qum finibus illis
Agricola, incurvo terram molitus aratro,
keen inveniet scabra rubigine pila:

(G I, 1.39.95)

For this a second Time, Philippi's Field

Romans engag'd in equal Arms beheld;

And twice Amathia did Just Heav'n think good
And Hams' Waste to fatten with our Blood:

Hay, and the time will cane, when lab'ring Swains
Shall plough up rusty Piles within those Plains;

(G I, 606-11)

Benson condenses Vergil's seven lines to six, as does Dryden, though
the length of Book I in the three versions is evidence enough that
such cmdensations are rare for both mglish writers: Vergil, 511.
lines; Dryden, 693 lines; and Benson, 63!. lines. Dryden distributes
his rhymes differently, beginning with a triplet:

For this th'nnsthian Plains once more were strow'd

Hith Roman Bodies, and Just Heav'n thought good

To fatten twice those Fields with Bonn Blood.

Then, after length of Time, the lab'ring Swains

“no turn the Turfs of those unhappy Plains

Shall rusty Piles from the plough'd Furrows take,

(G I, 659-61.)
levertheless, his translation provides four of Benson's six end-words
and mum into the judgnent of "Just Heav'n.‘I

lore oftm, the English translations take more lines than the

latin original, and Dryden's English verse is longer than Benson's.

L. A

 

 

31+
For annuals, Vergil's line and a half,

Quippe ubi fas versum atque nefas, tot bells per orbem,
Tam multae scelerum facies:
(G I, 505-06)

requires three lines in Dryden's version:
Where Fraud and Rapine , Right and Wrong confound;
Where impious Anne from ev'ry part resound,
And monstrous Crimes in ev'ry Shape are crown'd.
(G I, 678-80)
and two full lines in Benson's:
Where impious Mortals Right, and Wrong confound
Wars rage; and Vice in ev'ry Shape is crown'd.
(c 1, 622-23)
Benson's more compact translation does not result in different words
falling at line ends. Where Dryden needs two couplets to translate,
Pan ovium custos, tua si tibi Maenala curse,
Adsis o Tegeaee sevens:
(G I, 17-18)

And thou, the Shepherds tutelary God,

Leave, for a while, 0 Pan! thy lov'd Abode:

And, if Arcadian Fleeces be thy Care,

From Fields and Mountains to aw Song repair.

(a I, 19.22)

Benson, not adding extraneous details, renders the same passage in two
lines:

And Pan, if thy Arcadia be thy Care,

Hither, thou Guardian of the Flock, repair:
Again, the condensation does not force him away from Dryden's rhyme
schas, even though the content of the lines is not exactly the same.

It is doubtful that Benson realized the extent to which he was

influenced by the work he found so overrated and so inadequate. Cer-
tainly, he acknowledged no debt at all, but rather announced that he
was writing in order to "shew the Injustice of complimenting Mr. Dry-

den, even at the expense of Virgil himself; and to let every Body

35
see, that whatever Abilities Mr. Dryden might have, in other respects,

he was by no Means a prOper Person to engage in this Undertaking“.
Yet, all things considered, it is hardly surprising that Benson's con-
centration on Dryden's manifold errors and weaknesses should have led
him to think some of Dryden's thoughts after him, and to think them in
Dryden's words.

Joseph Trapp published his translation in three installments;
his £2923. came out in two volumes, the first in 1718 and the second
in 1720, and eleven years later in three volumes, now including the
W and the m. In the preface to the 1731 edition, he
noted that he had taken the opportunity to "retouch, correct, and im-
prove m Translation of the Legals: which I have done in many Places,
tho' with very little seeming Alteration." He made no major changes.

For ten years from 1708 to 1718, Trapp had been Professor of
Poetry at Oxford. Some of the lectures he gave in that capacity were
published in 1711 under the title Praelectiones Poeticae, and were re-
issued in 1715 and 1736 and translated into English in 1712 by William
Clarke and William Bowyer. Trapp had already begun his £9253. when he
took up his duties at Oxford, and it beguiled his leisure throughout
his tenure there and for several years afterwards. The translation
was a labor of love as well as an opportunity for him to put his
critical principles into practice.

In the essay cited in Chapter I, '1‘. W. Harrison suggests that
early eighteenth-century translators were interested in the political
significance of Vergil's work to the exclusion of poetical concerns.
But neither Joseph Trapp's translation nor his preface to it bears out

 

“The Preface to Book II, p. xxviii.

36

such a judgment. His discussion of the political significance of the
Aeneid is perfunctory, but he grows eloquent about Vergilian poetics.
For example, to support his judgment that Book III is as beautiful "in
its Kind” as an other book of the poan, he argues:

For it is impossible to determine which of them.is

the most Beautiful, or Delightful, absolutely speak-

ing. 'Tis here, as 'tis everywhere else: There

are different Species of Beauty, and Delight; and

that not only to different Persons, but to the same

Persons, at different Times. This Third Book is as

perfect in It's Kind, as any of the rest in Theirs:

And even the Kind itself is exceeding agreeable for

the Reason above-mentioned: Nay, it's very Situation,

which makes it over—looked and slighted by Some,

ought to make it loved and admired by All. For what

a grateful Vicissitude is it to the Mind, to pass

fron.the Horrour and Fury of war, to»the more slow

and cool Ideas of voyages, and Countries, described

in so charming a Manner! And from Then again to the

Rapidity of Passions in That Tragedy which succeeds.5
Trapp declares himself to be unwilling to set up a heirarchy of values
in which the sublime outranks all other beauties; nevertheless, that
quality is the touchstone by which he demonstrates the excellence of
even the ”slow'and cool Ideas” of so straightforward a travelogue as
Book III. He calls attention to such qualities as "the most consume
sate Elegancy and Variety throughoutI and “the Marvellous, and the
EBEB!E$2§E-' He cites I'theM'yrtles distilling Blood, and the Speech
of Polydore from the Bottom.of the That; which is of the Marvellous
Kind, and than which nothing can.be more full of Horrour.‘ "The Ad-
venture of the Harpies is another Instance of the Marvellous Kind;
and what indeed can be more marvellous? The Description is excellent;

and the whole Passage is full of Dread and ander.' Trapp summarises:

 

5The edition of Trapp's translation used here is the fourth,
published in 1755. The passage from the Preface quoted above occurs

on pp. 135-36.

37
"This Third Book of the Aeneis contains such a variety of Facts, and
Places, of Grief and Joy, or Terrour and Admiration, that nothing ever
more verify'd that [sentence] of Horace expressing the irresistible
Magic of Poetry."6
What interested Trapp was not politics, but poetry. Yet it must

be noted that it is the emotional impact, the sublimity, of the Latin
poem that moves him to eloquence. He seeks to reproduce Vergil's
poetic values in English chiefly through literal fidelity to Vergil's
text. Alexander Pope, in the Preface to his Homer, concedes that
“there have not been more Men misled in former Times by a servile dull
Adherence to the Letter, than have been deluded in ours by a chimerical
insolent Hope of raising and improving their Author.” But what is a
concession for Pope is Trapp's thesis: a translator must not sacri-
fice the sense of Vergil's words to his own conception of Vergil's
poetic intent, and, of course, he must refrain from putting first his
own purposes as an English poet. What makes a poem imortal is its
"Soul," but

then all this being taken care of, certainly the

nearer to the Original, the better: Nay indeed

it is impossible to hit the Air right; unless you

hit the Features, from which the Air, so far as it

relates to the Body, rises and results. Should my

Translation be approved of for the Spirit of Poetry;

I should not be sorry, my I should be glad, if at

the same time it served for a Construing-Book to a

Concerning Dryden's translation of Vergil's lines:

 

61755 Preface, pp. 1364.0 assist.

7Norman Ault, ed., _T_h_g Prose Works of Alexander Pope (Oxford,
1936), Vol. I, 21.5. ‘

s
1731 Preface, p. lxvi.

38

Ferrum exercebant vasto Cyclopes in antro,
Brontesque, Steropesque, & nudus membra Pyracmon.
(A VIII, [flip-25)

On their eternal Anvils here he found
The Brethren beating, and the Blows go round.
(A VIII, 561-62)

Trapp complains of numerous departures from the literal sense, adding:

In the Passage throughout, Mr. Eden has the
true Spirit of Virgi ; but he would have had
never the less of it, if he had more closely
adhered to his Words and Expressions.9

Despite all the protestations that the translator must sometimes
depart frm the words of the original in order to adhere more closely
to its essential nature, the fact remains that Trapp conceives ”de-
parture” strictly and finds such additions and omissions as Dryden's
inexcusable. He quotes with approval "Dr. Felton's ingenious and judi-

cious Dissertation upon PM the Classicks":

the thing to be regarded is the Beauty and Ele-
gance of the Original; and . . . without mind-
ing am thing but the Sense of the Author, [the
translator] is to consider how that Passage would
be best expressed in Eglish, if you were not
tied up to the Words of the Original; And you
may depend upon it, that if you can find a Way
of expressing the same Sense as beautifully in
w you have hit the true Translation, tho'
you cannot construe the Words backwards and for-
wards into one another: For then you certainly
have translated, as the ““1010 were he an

W would have wrote.
Nevertheless, Trapp cannot agree with Dr. Felton that ”a Translation of

 

91731 Preface, p. xc.
1%“. a m,HmmdemD.anUfip®nmdhnpww

lar Qigsertation on Reading the Classics and foMa just Style in
1711. Though it went through several editions, the work was not uni-
versally admired; Felton's contemporary, Thomas Hearne, noted in his
diary that it was "a very light, foolish performance." Trapp (who.
Hearne described asa a,”vain proud, empty fellow”) obviously disagreed.
See the entries for Henry Felton [1679-1710] and Thomas Hearne [1678-

1735] in the Elgtignggz 9: National Biogrgpgz.

39
Virgil after Mr. Dryden's is a desperate Undertaking.“ His transla.

tion, he says, is "of a different Nature," from Dryden's, and he does
not hesitate to cake value judgments about the two chief elements of
the difference: fideiity to the Latin words and prosody.

He justifies his own choice of blank verse on the grounds

that the Potters of Rhime often cramp the Expression,
and spoil the Verse, and so you can both translate
more closely, and also more fully express the Spirit
of your Author, without it, than with it; I say be-
sides This, supposing other Circumstances were equal,
Blank Verse is in it self better. It is not only
more Majestick, and Sublime, but more Musical, and
Harmonious: It has more M in it, according to
the ancient, and true Sense of the Word, than Rhime
it self, as it is now used. . . . The Privilege of
resting on this, or that Foot, sometimes one, and
sometimes another, and so diversifying the Pauses
and Cadences, is the greatest Beauty of Blank Verse,
and perfectly agreeable to the Practice of our Mas-
ters, the Greeks, and Romans. . . . The same may be
said of placing the Verb after the Accusative Case;
and the Adjective after the Substantive; both which,
especially the last, are more frequent in Blank
Verse, than in Rhime. This Turn of Expression . . .
even in our own Language adds much to the Grandeur,
and Majesty of the Poem, if it be wrought with Care,
and Judgment. As does also the judicious intersper-
sing (for judicious, and EM it must be) of an-
tigue Words, and of such as, being derived from Latin,
retain the Air of That language: Both which have a
better Effect in Blank Verse, than in Rhine; by
Reason of a certain Majestick Stiffness, which be-
cause the one, more than the other. . . . I speak
of this Stiffness only in some particular Passages,
for which it is prOper: For Blank Verse, when it
pleases, can be as smooth, as soft, and as flowing,
as Rhime.

Trapp concedes that rhymed verse is more quotable and adds that it
would be idle to ”reject That in Speculation, which Mr. Dryden and Mr.
Pope have ennobled by their Practice." Still, the point remains that
blank verse is intrinsically superior to rhyme, and rhyme imposes

 

J41731 Preface. pp. ind-1mm.

1.0
especially severe limitations upon the verse translator. He does not,
however, go so far as to consider a faithful verse translation of
whatever prosodic structure impossible, as Joseph Davidson was to
argue in the preface to his prose translation:

As to this Translation of Virgil, though there have
been new in Verse some of which are of great Merit;
yet, as the Translators have confined themselves to
Measure and Numbers, none of them have expressed
the Author's Meaning so fully and exactly as may

be done by a translator in Prose. For the Poet is
often necessitated, for the Sake of his Measures,

to add, retrench, or otherwise deviate from the pre-
cise Meaning of his Author, especially if he be
shackled and hemmed in by Rhymes.12

In Trapp's view, the best translation is, like its original, written
in the most suitable meter (in Latin, hexameters and in English, blank
verse), and is as literally faithful to the words of the original as
possible.

In these two crucial respects, Trapp rejects the Dryden transla-
tion, a rejection all the more impressive because he seems reluctant
to make it:

Mr. Dryden's is, in many Parts, a noble and
spirited Translation; and yet I cannot, upon

the Whole, think it a good one. . . . H1. vergi-
fication here, as everywhere else, is generally
flowing and harmonious; and Beauties of all
kinds are scattered through the Whole. But then,
besides his often grosly mistaking his Author's
Sense; as a Translator, he is extremely licen-
tious. . . . In many Places, where he shines most

 

12Joseph Ihvidson, The Works of Virgil Translated into @insh
2m“ 3: flag the aginal as the Different Idioms of the latin and
MEI-lib Mges Will Allow London, 1790 , p. lxvi. This transla-
tion was originally published several years earlier. However, David-
son's nineteenth-century American editor, William Staughton, whose edi-
tion was published in Baltimore in 1813, cannot be correct in saying
that Davidson drew on Warton as well as Dryden and Trapp for his notes,

since Warton's translation was published five years after the earliest
authenticated edition of Davidson, the second, published in 171.8.

 

41
as a Poet, he is least a Translator; And where

you

most admire Mr. Eden, you see the least of Virgi1.]‘3

(he should enact, then, to find Dryden's and Trapp's translations

similar only when Dryden is most literally faithful to his Latin text.

0n the whole, that expectation is fulfilled. In the

seven lines of the fourth Eclogge, for example, there are

thets which are the same in the two English poems:

Sicilian Muse(s) (Dryden, 1; Trapp,
Sicelides Musae (Vergil,
leftier strain (Dryden, 1; Trapp,
paullo majors (Vergil,
lowly Shrubs (Dryden. 2: Trapp.
humilesque swricae (Vergil,
Consul's Care (Dryden, h: Trapp.
consuls dignae (Vergil,
Chast(e) Lucina (Dryden. 11; Trapp.
casta . . . Lucina (Vergil,
great Achilles (Dryden. 11h: Trapp.
magnus . . . Achilles (Vergil,
Thracian Orpheus (Dryden, 65: Trap?»
Thracius Orpheus (Vergil,
ten longimonths (Dryden, 75: Trapp,
longs decus . . . menses (Vergil,

seventy-

eight epi-

l)
1)

1)
1)

2)
2)

‘3‘;

11)
10)

1+5)
36)

66)
55)

71)
61)

Six are translated in the most literal possible manner, three of than

(W Chast[e] Lucina, and Thracian Mons) with cognate

words.

we of the less literal translations is also very conch:

the

adjective digus (worthy of), used with "be" and followed by a noun in

the ablative case, was conventionally translated "deserve" with the

noun becoming the object; and as Arthos has shown, ”care" frequently

was added to such structures, both in the classical Latin (cure) and

 

l31731 Preface, pp. lncxii-lxmiii.

1+2
in M8h.u One is tempted, however, to demur: Trapp was thoroughly
familiar with Dryden's translation, as his own coments in his prefaces
and notes show; i it appears unlikely that he hit upon the same combin-
ation of two conventions without at least thinking of Dryden's use
of them to render the same passage. And such similarities are not
limited, even in this short work, to epithets alone. The "loftier
Strain" of line 2, in Vergil's line,

Sicelides Musae, paullo majors canamus.
(E IV, 1)

is the object of the subjunctive verb "let us sing.” The adverb 33113
(somewhat) modifies the adjective m (loftier), which is used sub-
stantivally here. Some kind of grammatical transformation in the
miinsh line is required by the impossibility of rendering ”.1213 as

a nominal, as well as by the needs of the iambic pentameter line.
However, I suspect that even the prose translation of the modern Loeb

Tiaras»
Sicilian Muses, let us sing a somewhat loftier

Strain. (I, 29)15
owes more to the durability of Dryden's translation than to the in-
evitability of the use of "strain." A number of nouns might serve as
well, or the phrase might be made adverbial: "somewhat more loftily."
More important, the concurrence of Dryden and Trapp in changing the
mood, person, number, and sense of the verb also suggests that Trapp
divided his attention between Vergil and his own English predecessor

 

“My of Natural Description, p. 20.

15H. R. Fairclough, tr. , Vir 1 2 vols., in The Loeb Classical
Librg (Cambridge, Mass. , 1966). As in this passage, volume and page
numbers will be cited in parenthese in the text in subsequent refer-
ences to this work. Umarked translations are an own.

1+3
as he began this Eclogge. There was at least one influence that might

just as well have led either or both of the translators in a different
direction; the Ruaeus commentary, which both men know well, here

offers,

0 Musae Siculae, cantemus paullo grandiora.

as equivalent to Vergil's line. Ruaeus also varies the semantic con-
tent of the verb but not as Dryden and Trapp vary it, and he does not
suggest the alterations they make in its syntactic function.l6

Marv examples, however, may be educed to show that, in general,
Trapp's diction often agrees with Dryden's when both are translating
verbatim; inferences of influence drawn from such similarities can
be only tentative. The lines,

Yet of old Fraud some Footsteps shall remain,
(Dryden, E IV, 37)

and

lot of old Guilt some Footsteps shall remain,
(Trapp, E IV, 39)

to render,

Pauca tamen suberunt priscae vestigia fraudis.
(E IV, 31)

seem very similar indeed, but they are also very literally translated.
The placement of the genitive fraudis (“Fraud/Guilt") is Optional in
English: the phrase could occur initially, after "Footsteps," or
after "ranain"; and Dryden and Trapp have exercised the same option.
But the position they have chosen is not unusual in English, nor is
there anything surprising about the English placement of the Latin

 

16The Interpretatio, Ruaeus's paraphrase of Vergil's tent, is
printed between the poem and the notes. Like the notes, it is
written in Latin prose (which, incidentally, tends toward French
word order and syntax).

1.1.
postpositive BEE. (yet); and the remainder of the sentence is in
normal order. Trapp here either may have echoed Dryden, deliberately
varying his rendition of fraudis, or he may have translated inde-
pendently.
Similarly, in the first Georgie, the inverted order of the Eng-
lish half line:

for your Gifts I sing.
(Dryden, lb)

and

Your Gift’ I 311180 e e e
(Trapp, 15)

exactly repeats the Latin structure of,

Munera vestra cano.
(12)

And when a few lines further along, Vergil invokes the gods:

Diique Deaeque omnes, studium quibus arva tueri;
(G I. 21)

Dryden translates:
Come all ye Gods and Goddesses that wear
The rural. Honours, and increase the Year.
(G I, 26-27)
and Trapp:

And all ye Gods and Goddesses, who tend
The fields, and studious o'er their fruits preside!
(G 1: 29-30)

the similarities occur in the most literally translated words, whereas
the two poets' expansions of the complement of Vergil's sentence are
quite different, Dryden generalizing in both phrases and Trapp simply
reduplicating by translating literally ("who tend the Fields”) and
then repeating the sense of the translation in the less literal seman-
tic equivalent of the Latin cognate ("studious"). Despite their

1:5
superficial agreement, the two translators have dealt with their orig-
inal in different ways.
Often, when the two English posts are similar, it is not possible
to make even a tentative inference about the genesis of Trapp's line.
For example, when Vergil traces the develOpment of the useful arts:

Nam primi cuneis scindebant fissile lignum:
Tum variae venere artes.
(G 1, 11.1.4.5)

Dryden renders the line:
(For Wedges first did yielding Wood invade.)
And various Arts in order did succeed.
(G 1, 216-17)
and Trapp:
(With Wedges, first, the splitting Wood they riv'd)
Then various Arts ensued.
( G I, 187-88)
And their treatment of Vergil's account of the invention of the plow
is even more plainly the same:

& curvi formam accipit ulmus aratri.
(G I. 170)

Both Dryden and Trapp place the ell (ulmus) in the preceding line and
devote a full line to the predicate:

Fit for the Figure of the crooked Plough.
(Dryden, G I, 250)

And takes the Figure of the crooked Plough.
(Trapp, G I, 219)

Dryden's "Fit for the Figure" is a less literal translation of m
m than Trapp's, but, again, where both translations are literal,
they agree. In the mglish translations of the account of lucky and
unluclq days,

none fugae melior, contraria furtis .
(c I, 286)

A6
it is easy to see that Dryden is indebted to Lauderdale:

The Ninth is good for Travel, bad for Theft.
(Dryden, G I, 382)

The ninth for trav'ling's good, and ill for Theft.
(Iauderdale, G I, 371.)

but much less clear whether Trapp has his predecessor or only the
Latin original in mind.

The Ninth to Flight
Is found propitious, but adverse to Theft.
(Trapp, G I: 356.57)

Often, one suspects that Dryden's translation was lying open on
Trapp's desk, but the evidence is tantalizing rather than conclusive.
when Vergil, for example, tells how the famer ties up his vines:

Atque Amerina parent lentae retinacula viti.
(G I, 265)

the Ruaeus paraphrase keeps the relative abstractness of par; even in
varying the word:

Praeparant Amerina ligamina vinae flanli.
But Trapp, like Dryden, moves fun the abstract to the more concrete
action and shows how the farmer will prepare his ties:

And Osiers twist to bind the flexile Vine.
(Trapp, G I, 331)

or twine
The Sallow Twigs to tye the stragling Vine.

(Dryden. G 1, 357-58)
Dryden appears to have been as concerned about a rhyme-word for “vine"
as about the literal meaning of the Latin text, but the origin of
Trapp‘s choice is less clear, especially since he echoes Ruaeus in
the adjective 'flexile" and adopts the sense of Dryden's I'twist"
without repeating the word itself. In Vergil's complaint about the

difference between the way the world is and the way it ought to be,

#7

Et curvae rigidum falces conflantur in ensan.
(G I. 508)

both Dryden and Trapp seem to have Isaiah in mind:

The crooked Scythes are streight'ned into Swords.
(Dryden, G I, 681.)

And crooked Scythes are hammer'd into Swmds.
(Trapp, G I: 627)

Whether that parallel accounts for the absence of rigidum (hard, in-
flexible) in the translations, or whether they felt that they had
more or less incorporated the modifier of M (swords) into their
English verbs ”streight'ned" and "hammer'd,‘I and whether Trapp made
his decisions independently or in the light of what Dryden had done
cannot be determined with any certainty.

There are many passages in the fourth Aeneids which present the
same problems as those to be found in the Eclogges and the Georges.
Some apparently closely related passages are literal translations.
Vergil has Dido praise Aeneas's courage by contrasting his fearless-
ness with the coward's terror, observing:

Degereres animos timer arguit.
(A N, 13)

Both Dryden and Trapp translate closely, making use of the cognates
”argue" and "degenerate":

Fear ever argues a degenerate Kind.

(Dryden, A IV, 17)
Unmanly Fear
Argues degen'rate Souls.
(Trapp, A IV, l7-l8)
Vergil's line,

Velleribus niveis & festa fronds revinctum.
(A Iv, 1.59)

becomes, in Dryden's version,

1.8

With snowy Fleeces and with Garlands crown'd:
(A IV, 666)

and in Trapp's,

With snowy Fleeces, and fresh Garlands crown'd.
(A IV, 612)

Two words here are translated freely: £e_s_t_a_ (solann, ritual) and
Ml! (bound, fastened). Trapp renders fists; as “fresh,” thus
preserving the alliterating sound of the Latin in the adjective but
not preserving it in the noun which translates £12922 (it works, in-
stead with I'Fleeces"), and both English poets translate revinctum as
I'crown'd." Since the exigencies of Dryden's couplet would be equally
well served by the literal "bound“ (the rhyme-word is “around”, his
reason for choosing the conventional "crown'd' is as obscure as
Trapp's.

The increnental use of "absent" in:

Absent, her absent Heroe sees and hears.
(Dryden, A IV, 119)

Hi- absent, absent still she hears, and sees.
(Trapp, A IV, 115)

repeats Vergil' s trope:

illus abeens absentee ‘auditque videtque:
(1 IV; 83)

and Trapp is closer to the Latin than to Dryden, both in the opening
phrase and in the order of the verbs, which Dryden is obliged to in-
vert for the sake of his rhyme. Vergil explains why Anna did not
suspect Dido's plan to cemit suicide on the grounds that she had
seen her sister wild with grief before and she made no such attempt

then:

49
aut graviora timet, quam morte Sichaei.
Ergo jussa parat.
(A Iv, 502-03)
She fear'd no worse than when Sichaeus fell:
Therefore obeys.
(Dryden, A IV, 726-27)

And fear'd no worse than when Sichaeus dy'd:
Therefore obeys her Orders.
(Trapp, A IV, 671-72)

Trapp and Dryden agree in shifting the noun 9.191132 to a verb, but not
the same verb, and both poets combine Jussa Egret as "obey,“ though
Trapp adds the semantically redundant ”her Orders ," perhaps because
the four syllables of "Therefore obeys" seem inadequate to do justice
to Vergil's hemistich. Dryden, making no attempt to preserve this
evidence that Vergil left his poem unfinished, is free to move on to
the next sentence.

Like his first Georgie, Trapp's fourth £29533 contains one line
that is identical to Dryden's in the same passage. And here, too,
both poets are literally accurate, but in the lines immediately follow-
ing, Trapp, as usual, remains close to the Latin, whereas Dryden does

not :

At pius Aeneas, quanquam lenire dolentan

Solando cupit, & dictis avertere cures,

Multa gemens, magnoque animum labefactus amore:
(A IV. 393-95)

But good Aeneas, tho' he much desir'd

To give that Pity, which her Grief requir'd,

Tho' much he mourn'd, and labour'd with his Love,
(Dryden, A IV, 568-70)

But good Aeneas, tho' he nmch desir'd
By comforting to ease her Grief and sooth
The Tanpest of her Passions 3 groaning deep,
And stagger'd in his Mind by mighty Love;
(Trapp. A IV. 518-21)

The echo of the end-word “love" does not help to resolve the problan

50
of whether Dryden's influence is at work in Trapp's lines, since it is
a literal translation of Vergil's end-word m, as well. And the
two translations of the lines in which Juno agrees to make the ar-
rangements for Dido and Aeneas to meet in the cave pose the same
problen:
'hnn sic excepit regia Juno:
Hecum erit iste labor:
(A N, 114-15)
Mine, said Imperial Mg, be the Care;
(Dryden, A IV, 161)
To whom Imperial Luge. Thus reply'd;
Mine be that Care;
(Trapp, A IV, ISL-55)
Again, the similarities are literal or conventional, and where the
two translations differ, Trapp remains closer to Vergil.
But all these problematical resemblances notwithstanding, there
rennin a number of passages in which the agreement between Trapp's
and Dryden's versions is not entirely explainable by their latin orig-
inal and does not sew to be suggested by a poetic comonplace. Some-
times, the uglieh translators make explicit a detail that is implied
but not stated in the Latin. when Iarbas calls Jupiter's attention
to the scandalous behavior of Dido and Aeneas, demanding better recom-
pense for his faithful worship, he prays:

Juppiter omnipotens, cui nunc Maurusia pictis
Gene epulata toris , Lenaeum libat honor-1,

Aspicis base?
(A IV, 206-08)

Great Jove, propitious to the Moorish Race,

Who feast on painted Beds, with Off'rings grace
Tm Tanples, and adore thy Pow'r Divine

With Blood of Victims, and with sparkling Wine:

Seest than not this?
(Dryden: A IV, 300-010)

51

Almighty gove, to whom the Moorish Race

Feasting on broider'd Beds, pour richest Wine;

Seest thou these Things?

(Trapp, A IV, 270-72)

Trapp's more compact version echoes Dryden's diction, omitting the
additions to which the need for rhymes seans to drive him, but re-
peating the end-words “Race" and "Wine“ and making lanaeum , , , hon-
“ explicitly wine. The Loeb translation of this passage is more
literal than either Dryden's or Trapp's:

Almighty Jupiter, to whom now the Moorish race,

feasting on embroidered couches, pour a Lenaean
offering, beholdest thou these things?

(I, 409)
And Dryden, translating Vergil's idyllic picture of the golden age to
come,

nee magnos metuent armenta leones.
(E IV, 22)

must bear in mind the preceding rhyme-word “speed," and he therefore
adds to the literal sense of Vergil's clause (nor shall herds fear
great lions):

And lowing Horde, secure from Iyons feed.
(3 IV, 26)

Trapp picks up the image of the grazing sheep:
and the Horde,
Unterrify'd by monstrous lions, feed.
(1: IV, 28-29)
Here, as in a mnber of other passages, Trapp uses Dryden's image and
syntactic fem while also correcting a flaw or omission (in this pass-
age, the omission of name). Vergil shows Dido's timidity in

Aeneas' s presence:

Incipit effari, mediaque in voce resistit.
(A IV, 76)

52
Dryden interprets her behavior:
This pomp she shows to tempt her wand'ring Guest;
Her falt'ring Tongue forbids to speak the rest.
(A IV, 105-06)
while Trapp is much closer to the literal statement that she begins
to speak and stops in mid-speech:
Begins to speak, and in the Middle stops
Her fault'ring Tongue.
(A IV, 105-06)
Fidelity to the text does not rule out the addition of affective de-
tails such as Dido' s faltering tongue or the suggestion that due honors
are appreciated by the dead:

These grateful Off'rings on my Grave bestow;
(Baden, A IV, 897)

and

And pay That grateful Off'ring to my Ghost:
(Trapp, A IV, 831)

do more than simply translate Vergil' s:
cinerique haec mittite nostro
Munera.
(A IV, 622-23)
Dido's request is simply: "Send these tributes to my ashes."

As has already been observed in connection with many similarities
in the Dryden and Trapp M's, the use of cognates in a translation
suggests a great deal of attention to the original text, and the
agreement in the diction of translations in which such words appear
is not evidence of borrowing by one translator frcn the other. Con-
versely, agreuent in diction that might well but does not involve
the use of cognates does suggest that the later translator was af-
fected by his predecessor's work. In the following translations of

Vergil's description of the prelude to a storm, three cognate terms

53
occur: "impend" (impendente), "nocturnal" (noctis), and "long"
(longgs), the last only in Dryden's, and all three in Trapp's:

And oft before tempest'ous Winds arise,

The seeming Stars fall headlong from the Sld.es;
And, shooting through the darkness, guild the Night
With sweeping Glories, and long trails of light:
And Chaff with eddy Winds is whirl'd around,

And dancing Leaves are lifted from the Ground;

And floating Feathers on the Waters play.

(Dryden, G I, 501-07)

0ft too, when Winds impends, you shall behold

Stars glide from Heav'n; long Streaks of Fire, behind,
Stream thro' noctumal Shades; light Chaff, and Leaves
Fall'n from the Trees in Eddies whirl around;

Or Feathers on the Water' s airface play.

Saepe etiam stellas vento impendente videbis

Praecipites coelo labi: noctisque per umbras

Flamanm longos a tergo albescere tractus:

Saspe levmn paleam & frondes volitare caducas:

Aut summa nantes in aqua colludere plumes.

(G 1. 365-69)

There are, of course, a number of differences in the two versions.
Not the least of then is the fact that Trapp has chosen to translate
Vergil's last line, whereas Dryden has translated the Ruaeus para-
phrase of it, omitting supgrficie:

out plmnas natantes in superficie aqua agitari.
Nevertheless, two of Trapp' s five end-words are suggested by Dryden
but not by Vergil (or Ruaeus), and while “winds" and "stars” and
“leaves" are predictable, “chaff," 'feathers," "play," "whirl around ,"
and 'edcb“,are less so.

A similar use and correction of Dryden occurs in Trapp's version
of Vergil's account of the divine origin of work:
Pater ipse colendi
Baud facilu esse viam voluit: primusque per artem
Movit agros, curis acuens mortalia cords:

Nee torpere gravi passus sua regna veterno.
(o I, 121-21.)

5A
is faithfully reproduced in:

The Sire of Gods himself
Will'd not that Tillage should be free fran Toil.
He first solicited the lazy Mold
By Art; and whetted Mortal Wit with Cares,
Permitting not his Reign to rust with Sloth.

(Trapp, G I, 160-64)
but with echoes of Dryden's more prolix version:

The Sire of Gods and Men with hard Decrees,
Forbids our Plenty to be bought with Ease:
And wills that Mortal Hen, inur'd to toil
Shou'd exercise, with pains, the grudging Soil.
Himself invented first the shining Share
And whetted Humane Industry by Care;

Himself did Handy—Crafts and Arts ordain;
Nor suffer'd Sloath to rust his active Reign.

(G 1, 183-90)
Both Dryden and Trapp specialise 11413 (way): "the father of the cel-
estial ones himself has willed the way not to be easy"; the absence
of freedom fraa labor is surely implied but is not stated in the orig-
1113].. Neither "care'l nor "reign“ occurs as an end-word in Vergil,
though they do in both English poems, and there is nothing in either
Vergil. or Ruasus to suggest the verb "rust.”

The most interesting parallels in the two works occur when Trapp
finds the Latin not readily translatable into mglish. In such pas-
sages, he carefully reviews the alternatives, and then usually decides
in agreanent with Dryden. Trapp translates,

Ejectum liters, egentum

Excepi;
(A Iv, 373-71.)
Him toss'd
On Shore, of all Things indigent, I here
Receiv'd;

(A N, 489—91)
and explains in his note on the passage:

55
Some point it; ejectum, littore egentem: Others;

ejectum littoreL egentem. I chuse the latter,

tho' Both are very good. Ejectum [e navi] littore,

for littus. Perhaps after all, He means ejectum

[e patria: and then littore must relate to egentan.
Among those whose reading of the line is different is Ruaeus, who
paraphrases the passage:

Excepi Aeneam expulsam e litore, egenum;

(I took in Aeneas who had been cast from his shore,

indigent.)
But Dryden's choice is the same as Trapp's; his Aeneas has been cast
not from his own coast but onto Dido's shore without resources:

I sav'd the Shipwrack'd Exile on my Shore:
(linden, A xv, 537)

By modern standards of translation, Trapp seems to insist upon making
a distinction that is real enough but not very significant. The point
remains, however, that if he is splitting hairs, he is doing so after
Dryden's example.

Dido continues with her account of all that she has done for the
ungrateful Aeneas:

& regni demons in parts locavi:
(A IV, 37h)

which Trapp renders:
and made him Partner of m Throne.
(Fool that I was!)
(A Iv, 1.91-92)
much as Dryden has already done:
I took the Trutor to m Throne and Bed:
Fool that I was-—
(A IV. 53940)
both mglish poets having ranoved demens from the clause in which Ver-
gil. imbedded it and having treated it as a parenthetical exclamation
rather than as a modifier of the putative subject of locavi. They

56
agree also in their interpretation of the kind of gramatical deletion
involved in Vergil' 3 very compact line:

Amissam classem, socios a morte reduxi.
(A N, 375)

Trapp translates:

repair'd his shatter'd Fleet,
And hospitably sav'd his Friends from Death.

(A IV} 492-93)
and notes:
9.221;“; [P6119] w [refeciJ These words
are understood; And yet all is very plain;

seeming to be govern'd of reduxi; tho'
it really is Not.

Dryden's translation is freer, but it accords with Trapp's view of Ver-
- gil's syntax; he, too, treats the saving of the men and the refitting
of the fleet separately. Dryden's additions and his manipulation of
the order of the lines appears to be dictated by the exigencies of
rhyme. The complete passage, as it appears in his translation, is:

I sav'd the Shipwreck'd Exile on nw Shore;

With needful Food his hungry Trojans fed;

I took the Traytor to my Throne and Bed:

Fool that I was—'tis little to repeat

The rest, I stor'd and Rigg'd his ruin'd Fleet.
(A IV, 537-14)

Dido's offering to the dark gods has troubled all of Vergil's
translators. The consensus is that the hemistich:

Et matri praereptus amor.

may not be in the form in which Vergil would have left it if he had
lived to polish his epic. As Trapp observes in his note on this line,

This cannot be translated litterally. Amor for
what she loved: It seems she would eat it, if
it were not imediately snatched from her, after
the Birth of the foal. The fleshy Knot, or an
Excrescence of Flesh upon the Forehead of it,

57

is not named in the Original; but , according
to all Annotators, That is the Thing intended.

Dryden's version of the passage is less satisfactory because it does
not make the intention explicit in so great detail as Trapp's does,
but the handling of the crux is the same in both translations:

And cuts the Forehead of a new-born Fole;
Bobbing the Mother's Love.
(Dryden, A IV, 746-1.?)

and the flesl‘w Knot
Torn from the Forehead of a new-foal'd Colt,
To rob the Mother's Love.
(Trapp, A IV, 687‘89)

The two English poets also sometimes concur on emissions as well
as expansions and difficult passages. In Dido's curse:

Sequar atris ignibus absens:
Et quum frigida mors anima seduxerit artus,
anibus umbra locis adero:
(A IV, 38h-86)

Trapp notes that absens is not translatable into English:

In the Original it is Absent I'll follow thee.
But our Language will not admit of That Word
in That Sense; which is the same, as Dead.

AID—3.9.95: i.e. Hortua.
He therefore units the word entirely from his translation, as does

Wen:

Wrapt in dusky Flames,
I'll follow thee; and, soon as icy Death

Has freed nw Soul from Flesh,
(Trapp, A IV, 505-07)

Dido shall come, in a black Sulph'ry flame;
When death has once dissolv'd her Mortal frame.
(Dryden, A IV, 555-56)

From such tenuous agreements we cannot infer anything like the
pervasive, often probably unconscious, emulation of Dryden that can be

found in Benson's translation. Trapp uses details from Dryden's Vergil
Judiciously, sparingly, and for clearly definable reasons. When, for

58
emmple, in the passage he calls Vergil's "very best" (because in it
”the Dreadful, and the Wonderful, joined with the Pathetical, reign
thro' the Whole to a Degree unutterable"), Trapp adopts Dryden's epi-
thet I'putrid Blood” to translate cruorem (blood), he makes the choice
because he thinks the expansion will help him to achieve the degree of
horror evoked in the original passage as a whole. His differences
from Dryden's translation are equally deliberate. Vergil ought to be
dealt with on his own terms, in the most nearly equivalent words, fig-
ures, and metrical values possible. Where Dryden keeps his eye stead- '
ily focused on that objective, he is to be heeded; and where he does
not, he is to be corrected or discarded altogether.

Even in the early part of the eighteenth century, Dryden was not
the only bridge between the Latin poet and the Elglish reader. It is
obvious that without Dryden's Georgics, Virgi_l' s Husbandg would have
been very different, if indeed it had been published at all. Trapp's
Ml: on the other hand, would have been different in details but
not essentially, for Trapp worked much more independently than Benson,
even when Dryden's translation lay Open before him. Whereas Benson
used Vergil in order to deal with m'yden, Trapp used Dryden to supple-—
ment his own work with Vergil.

CHAPTER III
Christopher Pitt

Christopher Pitt is renumbered for two translations from latin
into English heroics: Vida's Art of Poetgz and the Aeneid. Both
works were highly regarded and much quoted in contemporary times, and
both were virtually forgotten not long after the turn of the century.
In the nggidge Histog of Egglish Literature, Pitt's Vida is re-
viewed as an expression of the values of Augustan poetics, but the
m is dismissed with a sentence:

His translation of Vergil, in a measure, ousted
Dryden's in the favour of the eighteenth cen-
tury; though, to the possibly more impartial
judgment of a posterity almost equally remote
from either, it has not much, if anything more
of Vergil and a good deal less of poetry.1

None of the major literary histories so much as mention Pitt's
original verse, an implied judgment that agrees with the critical
evaluation of his own time. Samuel Johnson confessed that he had ”not
observed that am rise above mediocrity."2 And in Joseph Warton's
E33: on the Writings and Genius of Pope, we find Pitt relegated to
the fourth rank of English poets, among the “mere versifiers."3 The

 

1A. w. Ward and A. a. Waller, From Steele and Addison to Pom and
M (Cambridge, England, 1913), Vol. II, 211-12.

2"The Life of Christopher Pitt ," reprinted in Alexander Chalmers,
Works of the Eglish Poets (London, 1811.), Vol. III, 366.

3(London, 1756), pp. n—m.

59

60
reason for this view is readily apparent: Pitt's verses seem to have
been written to illustrate the conventions which any schoolboy'might
have been able to recognize and imitate, rather than to express a
poetic vision. Only a few imitations and translations from the Hebrew
M show no obvious influence of Vergil, Dryden, or Pope; and of
these works, one of the imitations, a scatalogical essay on Spenser's
style, seems to owe its content to the Dunciad. Most of Pitt's verses,
chiefly occasional poems, are so highly derivative in prosody, imagery,
language, and subject matter that the reader’almost feels that he has
read them.before. Again and again, he finds Vergil's images in Dry;
den's English: the "suspicious babe" of the Eclogge to Pollio, the
people who pour down to the shore and "darken all the strand," the old
battlefields where swains plow up rusty armor, are but a few examples
that could be multiplied many times to confirm the rightness of the
judgment that Pitt was a “mere versifier."

Yet Johnson linked his Agngig_with Dryden's, calling them "the
two best translations that perhaps ever were produced by one nation of
the same author," and Warton elected to publish his own.version of the
gglgggggland.the Georgics with Pitt's Agggig, Even after the twen-
tieth-century devaluation of the work is taken into account, there
still remains a qualitative difference between it and Pitt's occa-
sional poems. The difference is not explained in Pitt's own account
of his purpose and method in.making the translation. He began working
on passages of the Aeneid, he says, as a pastime and continued until

he "at last fell insensibly into the Thought of Translating the Whole."h

He pays graceful tribute to Dryden and acknowledges his own debt to

 

APreface, l7h0 edition.

61

I am not fond of Writing Prefaces, but think it
necessary to say a Word or two, to prevent the
Reader's imagining, that I pretend to rival Mr.
Men in this Translation. There is no name
that I have a greater and more real Respect for.
I look on Him with a sort of Veneration, and ap—
prehend that Every One must have a mean Opinion
of aw Judgment, if it was supposed that I thought
of entering the Lists with that great Poet. . . .
How this Translation is executed is, with all Def-
erence, Submitted to the Publick. There was No-
thing, I am sure, of Envy in it; and scarce any-
thing of Enulation. A Painter of a lower Rank
may draw a Face that was taken by Titian; and
think of Mending his Hand by it, without any
Thought of Equalling his Master. The very Work-
ing on the same Subject with so great a Genius,
has often served to show me the Superiority of
his Hand the more Distinctly.

It may be preper to take Notice here, that, in
different Places, I have borrowed about Fifty or
Sixty entire Lines from Mr. Eden. I believe I
need make no Apology for this Liberty; but rather
fear the Reader will wish I had borrowed a greater
munber fran his Noble Translation.5

The commentaries of Johnson and Warton, though not entirely in

agreement with each other, are somewhat more helpful. Johnson does

not accept much of what Pitt says in his own preface:

Pitt, engaging as a rival with Dryden, naturally
observed his failures, and avoided them; and, as
he wrote after Pope's Iliad, he had an example of
an exact, equable, and splendid versification.
With these advantages, seconded by great diligence,
he might successfully labour particular passages,
and escape many errours.

He consents, a bit testily perhaps:

He represents himself as translating with great
indifference, and with a progress of which him-
self was hardly conscious. This can hardly b8
true, and, if true, is nothing to the header.

 

5Preface, 171.0 edition.

6

"life of rim," 1). 366.

62
Warton agrees, at least in part, with Johnson's assessment of Pitt's
strength. His excellence lies in his having corrected many of Dry-
den's most egregious errors. In his dedication of the 1753 edition to
Sir George Lyttelton, Warton declines to discuss Dryden's weaknesses
himself, but he quotes at length from Joseph Spence's Polmetis, in
which Dryden's mistranslations are examined in detail. Spence offers
two major objections to Dryden's treatment of the Latin original.
Dryden too often has added details for which there are no classical
precedents, as he does when he gives wings to the figure of Peace;
and sometimes for insufficient reason he misrepresents the meaning of
Vergil's words. The exigencies of his rhyme scheme drive him to sub-
stitute a "Gothic mace" for Neptune's trident, so that he may have an
end-word to rhyme with "place." And there is no justification at all
for his rendering looms as "tygers' rather than “lions. "

Warton and Johnson disagree, however, on the value of Pitt's cor-
rections in their effect on the translation as a whole, and, conse-
quently, on the comparative worth of the two thlish translations.
Johnson finds

that Dryden leads the reader forward by his gen-
eral vigour and sprightliness, and Pitt often
stops him to contemplate the excellence of a
single couplet; that Dryden's faults are for-
gotten in the hurry of delight, and that Pitt's
beauties are neglected in the langour of a cold
and listless perusal; that Pitt pleases the
critics, and Dryden the people; that Pitt is
quoted, and Dryden read.
But the first virtue Warton ascribes to Pitt's translation is its

"great spirit ," a term he seems to use to denote loftiness of tone

and emotional impact. Only afterwards does he make the familiar

 

7"life of Pitt,” p. 366.

63

comment about Pitt's "fine flow of harmonious versification" and the
"faithfulness and perspicuity" with which he has reproduced the sense
of the Latin words. Neither warton nor Johnson disagrees with the
conventional view that it is the business of the epic poet to depict
human passions and that the primary beauties of epic verse are to be
feund in its expression of the sublime and the pathetic. Whrton ap-
plies these canons specifically to Vergil in his prefatory essays on
epic and didactic poetry, and there is nothing new or controversial in
the way he conducts his argument: he approves faithfulness to nature,
consistency of character, purity and correctness of language, the
avoidance of harsh words and far-fetched metaphors, and propriety of
diction, imagery, and action. The terms in which he accounts for Ver-
gil's (and therefore the translator's) success are not readily dis-
tinguished from those Johnson uses throughout his literary criticism.
In his general comments on Pitt's Aeneid, Warton seems to be respond-
ing to something he does not discuss. That elusive quality, I believe,
is the affective appeal of a few rhetorical devices which Dryden and
Pitt use differently. Perhaps this is the quality Harrison has called
”rising poetical enthusiasm."8

Pitt repeatedly uses the device of exclamatio to inject emotion
into lines in which Vergil and Dryden depend upon semantic content.
For example, where Dryden translates,

Si modo quod memoras factum fortune sequatur.
(A IV, 109)

If Fortune with our joint Desires comply:
(A N, 153)

Pitt's version reads,

 

8See p. 9 above.

6h
And oh! that fortune in the work would join,
With full success to favour the design!
(A IV, 168-69)
Dryden renders Dido's complaint,
Hunc ego si potui tantum.sperare dolorem;

Et perferre, soror, potero.
(A Iv, 1419.20)

Cou'd I have thought this threatning Blow so near,
My tender Soul had been forewarn'd to bear.
(A IV, 605-06)
It is interesting to note that neither English poet translates the
vocative soror in this sentence, but Pitt adds the interjection:
Ah! had I once foreseen the fatal blow,
Sure, I had borne this mighty weight of woe.
(A IV, 607-08)
In the fourth Aeneid, Pitt fails to reproduce this figure only once
when it occurs in the Latin text; Dido addresses Anna,

O luce magis dilecta sorori,
(A IV, 31)

and Pitt translates:

Sister, the fair replies, whom far above
The light of heav'n, or life itself I love.
(A IV, 1.9-50)

Dryden uses the interjection in this passage, but changes the measure
of Dido's devotion from light to air:

0 dearer than the vital Air I breathe,
(A IV. 1.2)

But in several other passages in which vergil uses exclamatio, Dryden
omits it, whereas Pitt faithfully reproduces it, often adding the con-
trastive conjunction to his favorite exclamatory particles. He ren-

ders,

Heu quibus ills
Jactatus fatis! quae bella exhausts canebat!
(A IV, 13-11.)

65
But oh! what wars, what battles he relates!
wa long he struggled with his adverse fates!
(A IV, 17-18)
In the poet's exclamation,
Heul vatum ignarae mentes: quid vota furentem,
Quid delubra juvant?
(A 1v, 65-66)
Pitt turns the exclamatory citation of the ignorance of the wise into
direct address:
But ah! no sacred rites her pain remove;
Priests, pray'rs, and temples! what are you to love?
(A IV, 102-03)
In Pitt's translation of,

Hen! furiis incensa feror.
(A N, 376)

the exclamation more or less literally translates Vergil's.§gu:

But ah! I rave;-my soul the furies fire;
(A IV, 5h5)

but the redundant phrase “I rave" weakens the image of the furies; it
appears to have been used to fill out the line.

Far'more often Pitt's interjections are not translated from the
Latin text nor suggested by Dryden's version. In Book IV alone, there
are more than twenty such passages. Most of them, like Anna's re-
proach of the dying queen,

was this, my Dido, ah! was this the way
(A IV, 969)

deepen the pathos of grief. But other emotions are also expressed in
such particles-—outrage, for example in Hyarbas's reference to Aeneas:

And lo! this second Paris comes again,
(A IV, 316)

or much weaker annoyance in Mercury's injunction to Aeneas to hurry
his departure from Carthage:

66

What—canst thou sleep in this important hour?
(A IV, 806)

The same particle emphasizes Dido's grief and confusion as she mourns

Aeneas' s desertion,

Wham-shall I follow through the roaring min,
(A IV, 583)

and she counterfeits happiness as she deceives her sister,

Anna, partake my joy, for 10! I find
(A IV, 697)

or earnestness, as she attempts to convince herself that she will not
fall in love with her Trojan guest,

But oh! may Earth her dreadful gulf display
(A N, 35).9

The only passage in Book IV in which Dryden introduces exclamatio
is that in which pius Aeneas sets sail from Carthage with a prayer:

Sequimur te sancte Deorum,
Quisquis es, imperioque iterum paremus ovantes.

(A IV, 576-77)
Dryden's version is:
O sacred Pow'r, what Pow'r so e're thou art,
To thy bless'd Orders I resign my heart:
and Pitt's is:
Whoe'er thou art, thou blest celestial guide,
Thy course we follow through the foam tide;
(A IV) 827.28) e
In a number of respects the apparently dissimilar English lines resen-
ble each other more than they resemble Vergil. In the latin original,
the opening sentence of the invocation of divine assistance on the

journey is very solemn, the tonal effect depending primarily on the

 

9Other lines in which Pitt adds exclamatio are: 27, 168, 170,
“+1, (+53, (+68, #73, 530, 605: 607s 61-1: 323: 795s 853: 896s and 9730

67
action depicted but also on prosody, specifically on the alliteration
in the first words of the two short clauses and in the words which re-
ceive primary stress in the second line. The pause after tg, repre-
sented by Ruaeus's pointing of the line, reinforces the alliteration
of Mr and sancte, as the intonation pattern does for imperio
and'pgzgggg. Both Dryden and Pitt have attempted to reproduce the
statedy'tone by preserving the rhetorical scheme in one line of the
couplet and by adding to the sense, though one suspects the expansions
may be due to the rimming problem. A literal rendering of the two
clauses reveals the elements in the English verse translations that
are not to be found in Vergil:
we follow thee, holy one of the gods,
Whoever thou art; and at [thy] command, we set out
on [our] way, rejoicing.

There is no reference to the unknown god's function as guide, to the
foam.on the waves or even to the water, to the god's power, to the
holiness of his orders, to Aeneas's heart, or for that matter, to
Aeneas personally. All the additions in this passage are consistent
with the original, but what is more important is the fact that they
serve the same rhetorical purposes in both Dryden's and Pitt's poems.

The other rhetorical schemata Pitt uses in Book IV are forum of
.rsnsiitia- His favorite is the simplest, the reduplication of single,
nearly always monosyllabic words. Like exclamatio, repgtitio is a de-
vice for expressing emphasis, and in Pitt's translation, it is some-
times used effectively. The darkness is intensified in,

The deep, deep shades of everlasting night;
(A IV, A0)

and the line,

68

Guilt, guilt prevails; and justice is no more.
(A N, 539)

is like an incantation. Sometimes, however, the selection of the word
that is emphasized suggests that the device must serve some other pur-
pose. In the lines in which Dido charges Aeneas with hardheartedness,
Vergil has her ask a series of short rhetorical questions:

Num fletu ingemuit nostro? num lumina flexit?
Num lacrymas victus dedit? aut miseratus amantem est?

Quae quibus anteferam?
(A N, 369-71)
Literally, she asks:
Did he lament our weeping? Did he turn [his] eyes?
Did he, overcome, shed tears or pity [his] lover?
What shall I put before what?
The repeated particle 1_1_u_m emphasizes the fact that a negative answer
is to be expected. Drydm renders the first two lines faithfully,
Did he once look, or lent a list'ning Ear;
Sigh'd when I sob'd, or shed one kindly Tear?
(A IV, 527-28)
but faced with the problem of making Qu_ae guibus anteferam? clear and
graceful, he adds ideas which the Latin text does not imply,
All Symptoms of a base Ungrateful Mind,
So foul, that which is worse, 'tis hard to find.
(A Iv, 529-30)
Though the interpretation of Aeneas's motives is not inconsistent with
judgments Dido makes in other passages, here it is Dryden's Dido, not
Vergil's, who adds charges of baseness, foulness, and ingratitude to
that of lack of sympathy. Pitt accepts Dryden's reading of the ques-
tion while rejecting the unwarranted comment, but he also has the re-
quirements of heroic verse to deal with. He solves the problu by re-
peating the sense of the translatable questions in place of Dryden's

addition:

69

Did he once deign to turn his scornful eyes?

Did he once groan at all nw piercing sighs?

Drap't he one tear in pity to my cries?

Calm he look'd on, and saw my passions burst.

Which, which of all his insults was the worst?
(A IV, 532-36)

The repetition of ”which“ might well function effectively as the
transition to a passage in which Aeneas's numerous offenses were cata-
logued and examined, but the passage which follows does not do that.
Instead, it deve10ps further the theme of insensitivity to Dido's suf-
ferings: Juno and Jove look on with oculis aeguis; heaven is as in-
different as the false lover. The second "which” does, however, eke
out the line. And again, when Anna chides her dying sister with the
phrase mg mg ad fata vocasses (you should have called me to the
same fate), Pitt's Anna inverts and repeats "me":

Me, me you should have call'd, your fate to share
(A N, 978)

even though this syntactic structure is contrastive, here suggesting
that Dido has called someone else to share her fate instead of Anna,
an implication that makes no sense at all in context. Pitt has not
controlled and directed the reader's attention here: he has gained a
tenth syllable. That seems to be the primary purpose served by sev-
eral other reduplications.lo
In the fourth Aeneid, none of Pitt's simple repetitio's are

translated from Vergil, who uses the device far.more sparingly, and
none are suggested by Dryden's fourth Aeneid, in which it does not oc-

cur at all. The device is commonplace; Dryden uses it elsewhere, as

 

10Other examples of this rhetorical figure occur in lines 107,
152, 328, A02, A45, 484, 49A, 609, 632, 722, 734, 825, 852, 935, and
985.

70
do other posts. What makes it a distinguishing characteristic of
Pitt's style is the unusual degree of his reliance on it.
Pitt also uses slightly amplified forms of simple repetitio.
In three lines,
And now, ev'n now, the messenger of Jove
(A IV, 511)
For why, ah! why the traitor should I spare?
(A IV, 530)
Whither, ah whither, will the tyrant fly?
(A IV, 623)
he combines repetition with exclamation, and in two more with nouns of

direct address:
say, father, say
If yet thy eyes these flagrant crimes survey.
(A IV, 30A-05)
Go, Barce, go and bid my sister bring

The sable victims for the Stygian king;

There is only one such amplification in Dryden's fourth book:

look, Anna look; the Trojans crowd to Sea,

and there are none in Vergil.

In Vergil, and also in Dryden, somewhat more complex schemes of
repetition are more frequent. Anaphora, the repetition of the initial
word in successive clauses, is a case in point. Both Dryden and Pitt
usually translate this figure exactly, as they do in their rendering
of the lines:

It nigrum campis agmen, praedamque per herbas
Convectant calls angusto: pars grandia trudunt
Obnixae frumenta humeris: pars agmina cogunt,
Castigantque mores: apere omnis semita fervet.
(A IV, Ina-07)
Both Dryden and Pitt reproduce the anaphora of pgrs, though Pitt re-

stricts it to his periphrastic rendering of the second of the parallel
Latin clauses; and both expand the simile. Dryden follows vergil

71
more literally through the rhetorical figure but departs from him in

the last line of the passage:

The sable Tr00ps, along the narrow Tracks,

Scarce bear the weighty Burthen on their Backs:

Some set their Shoulders to the pond'rous Grain;
Some guard the Spoil, some lash the lagging Train;
All ply their sev'ral Tasks, and equal Toil sustain.

(Dryden, A IV, 586-90)
In one long track the duslq legions lead

Their prize in triumph through the verdant mead:
Here, bending with the load, a panting throng

With force conjoin'd heave some huge grain along:

Some, lash the stragglers to the task assign'd;

Some, to their ranks, the bands that lag behind:

They crowd the peopled path in thick array,

Glow at the work, and darken all the way.

(Pitt, A IV, 583-90)
Dryden omits per herbas, and Pitt expands it in a conventional epithet
in the phrase "through the verdant mead.” Their treatments of calls
gggsto are very similar, but they are also quite literal; Dryden's
pluralizing of "track” is explained by his use of humeris (which he
translates as "backs") in his rhyme. Pitt's choice of the verb "lag"
could have been suggested by Dryden's "lagging," as his use of "lash”
to render ggstigant might have been influenced by Dryden's. But it is
perhaps equally possible that the two poets just happened to hit upon
the same English equivalents for these few Latin words. Thus, it is
sometimes difficult to determine whether the similarities in the Eng-
lish versions are accidental or are the result of Dryden's influence.
In translating anaphora, both Dryden and Pitt sometimes increase

the number of repetitions. Vergil's emphatic 1.3 . . . 3:3 in,

To propter Libycae gentes, Nomadumque tyranni

Odere, insensi Tyrii: te propter eundem

Extinctus pudor,

(A IV, 320-22

which Dryden translates,

72

For you I have provok'd a Tyrant's Hate,
Incens'd the Lybian, and the Tyrian State;
For you alone I suffer in aw Fame;

(A N, A63-65)

in Pitt's version is expanded to:

For thee Numidian kings in arms conspire;
For thee have I incens'd the sons of Tyre;
For thee I lost my honour and my fame,
(A IV, 463-65).

In other passages, it is Dryden who extends the figure. Vergil de-
scribes the mortally wounded queen, as she tries to sit up and speak:

Ter sese attollens cubitque innixa levavit,11
Ter revoluta toro est: oculisque errantibus, alto
Quaesivit coelo lucem, ingemuitque reperta.

(A IV, 690-92)

and Pitt here follows the text of the original more or less faith-
fully, though he gives up the emphatic value of placing ”thrice" in
the initial position in the lines:

Prep'd on her elbow, thrice she rear'd her head,
And thrice fell back, and fainted on the bed;
Sought with her swimming eyes the golden light,
And saw the sun, but sicken'd at the sight.

(A IV, 99A-97)

Dryden's version of the scene is,

Thrice Dido try'd to raise her drooping Head,
And fainting thrice, fell grov'ling on the Bed.
Thrice 0p'd her heavy Eyes, and sought the Light,
But having found it, sicken'd at the sight;
And clos'd her Lids at last, in endless Night.

(A IV, 988-92)

The rhetoric here is vergil's, but a number of details, including

some not involved in the rhyme schmne, are Dryden's. The decision to

 

111n the Latin text which is printed an face with the Pitt-Warton
translation, iggigg is normalized to adnixa, the form,more commonly
used after the Augustan period. Aside from such emendations along
with some differences in pointing, none of which change the sense,
warton's Latin text agrees with that of the Dolphin edition.

73
place the translation of £259 (to the couch) at the end of the line,
together with the action described, naturally suggests "head" as a
rhymedword, just as the position of‘luggm suggests "sight," even
though there is no such noun in the Latin text. But where Vergil
shows Dido simply falling back on the bed, Pitt clearly follows Dry-
den in adding the affective detail of her fainting; and, again fol-
lowing Dryden, he substitutes cause for effect in using “sicken'd” in-
stead of a literal translation of ingenuit (groaned, lamented). The
differences between the English versions show how careful Pitt usual-
1y was about the sense of the words and images he introduced. For ex-
ample, both Dryden and Pitt have expanded oculis, but differently,
Dryden by making Dido's eyes heavy and having her open them, and Pitt
by calling them "her swimming eyes"; iggemuit suggests tears, as
.arzantihna implies the element of motion he captures in "swimming."
Such differences in part account for the contemporary admiration for
the purity of Pitt's translation. Such differences notwithstanding,
it is apparent that Pitt has followed Dryden rather closely here in
solving the problems involved in rendering vergil's hexameters into
English couplets.

A comparison of the two poets' handling of other rhetorical fig-
ures also reveals interesting differences in their styles along with
echoes of Dryden's work in Pitt's. Both make use of schemes of repe-
tition which involve the structure of more than one phrase, but Pitt
uses simple parallelism more extensively than Dryden does, and Dryden
more often introduces the relatively more complex figures of gpggglgp-
gig (repetition of the initial word of a clause at the end of it) and
gaggiplggig (repetition of the final word of a clause at the beginning

7b

of the next one). The difference in the figures is that in the one,
repetition creates a frame for a periodic unit, and in the other, it
underscores the joining, and therefore the essential separation, of
two units. The application of these rubrics to English rhetoric re-
quires some adjustment of the definitions, since the clause structures
of Latin.and English are not exactly the same. In the classical
language, for example, person and number'markers of the verb.may serve
as sufficient grammatical subjects, thus making the distinction be-
tween independent clauses and compound predicates inoperative in many
latin sentences, though the difference between the two structures is
always clear in English. In examining the rhetoric of the English
translations, I have therefore considered a variety of periodic con-
texts as "clauses" and have accepted under that heading any well de-
fined period, especially if its boundaries coincide with those of the
poetic line.

This broad definition brings into the category of epggélepsis
such lines as Pitt's,

Go then, dear sister, as a suppliant so,
(A N, 615)

as well as,

Rise in the rage, thou, great avenger, rise!
(A N, 897)

The same sort of rhetorical balance is achieved also in,

This graceful prince has shock, and this alone.
(A N. 32)

In Pitt's verse, the repetition at the end in most instances simply
pulls the word out of the clause in order to emphasize it and serves
no other function. Dryden's simplest epanalepses are more complex.

For example, in the line,

75

Again she comes, and is refus'd again.

(A IV, 635)
the repeated word both emphasizes the element of frequency and relates
two clauses of different semantic content.

Dryden's repetitions also are likely to involve contrasting syn-
tactic functions, as his use of anadiplosis does in the passage in
which Dido sees omens of her approaching doom:

for when before the Shrine
She pours, in Sacrifice, the Purple Wine,
The Purple Wine is turn'd to putrid Blood:
(A IV. 657-59)
The direct object of the first clause has become the subject of the
second. Pitt's use of this figure is generally simpler. In Dido's
instructions to Anna,
Tsll.my perfidious lover, I implore
The name of wedlock he disclaims no more:
No more his purpos'd voyage I detain
From beauteous Latium, and his destin'd reign.
(A IV, 627-30)
”no more" fills the same grammatical slot in both clauses. Here Pitt
has exercised the same syntactic Options that Dryden has in his gpgggr
‘lgpgig of "again" cited above.

In their reliance on these and other relatively sophisticated
schanes of repetition for emphasis and elegance, Dryden and Pitt are
following classical.models.‘ One such scheme, which is farnmore com-
mon in vergil than in either of his translators, is pglyptoton, the
repetition of derivatives from a single root. Because of the large
inventory of Latin inflectional forms, the Latin poet can manipulate
this rhetorical device much more readily than an English writer can.
When vergil uses the same noun in.two different syntactic slots, he

achieves both repetition and variety, as may be seen in the lines,

76
Idtora litoribus contraria, fluctibus undas
Imprecor, arms anmis: pugnent ipsique nepotes.
(A N, 628-29)

In a literal translation, the repetition survives but the variety is
lost, and with it goes the resonance between the repeated words in the
series and the different but syntactically parallel fluctibus undas
(Let shores be opposed to shores, waves to seas, arms to arms; may
they fight, they themselves and their descendants). In rendering this
passage, the English poets wisely have not tried to reproduce their
original:

Our Arms, our Seas, our Shores, oppos'd to theirs,
And the same hate descend on all our Heirs.

(Dryden, A Iv, 903-01.)
By land, by sea, in arms the nation dare,
And wage, from.son to son, eternal war!
(Pitt, A IV, 906-07)
Their approach to the problem is the same, but the lines they have pro-
duced are not at all similar, and there seems to be no reason to sup-
pose that Pitt here follows Dryden. And he appears to owe no more to
Dryden in his translation of another passage in which Vergil has used

the same scheme:

illum absens absentem auditque videtque:
(A Iv, 83).

Dryden attempts to reproduce the rhetoric of the original,

Absent, her absent Heroe sees and hears;
(A N, 119)

but Pitt does not,
In fancy sees her absent prince, and hears
His charming voice still sounding in her ears.
Instead, he offers "in fancy" for the "absent" that describes Dido.

There are, however, some tantalizing similarities in the two

77
translations of the passage in which this clause occurs. Pitt, like

Dryden, has inverted the order of gig}; and zi_d_et-, and the explanation
that he has done so in order to provide a rhyme for "ears” is not
wholly satisfactory, since the entire second line of the couplet is an
addition to the sense, and Pitt might therefore have substituted a
rhyme for "sees“ if he had wished. The passage describes Dido's in- '
fatuation:

Post, ubi digressi, lumenque obscure vicissim,
Luna premit, suadentque cadentia sidera somnos:
Sola demo moeret vacua , stratisque relictis
Incubat: illum absens absentem auditque videtque:
Aut gremio Ascanium, genitoris imagine capta,
Detinet; infandum si fallere possit amorem.

(A N, 80—85)

Pitt's translation is more prolix than Dryden's:

But when the setting stars to rest invite,

And fading Cynthia veils her beam light;

When all the guests retire to soft repose;

Left in the hall, she sighs, and vents her woes,

Lies on his couch, bedews it with her tears,

In fancy sees her absent prince, and hears

His charming voice still sounding in her ears.

Fir‘d with the glorious hero's graceful look,

The young Ascanius on her lap she took,

With trifling play her furious pains beguil'd

In vainlo-the father charms her in the child.
(Pitt, A IV, 126-36)

Then when they part, when Phoebe‘s paler Light
Withdraws, and falling Stars to Sleep invite,
She last remains, when ev'ry Guest is gone,
Site on the Bed he press'd, and sighs alone;
Absent, her absent Heroe sees and hears;
Or in her Bosom young Ascanius bears:
And seeks the Father's image in the Child,
If Love by likeness might be so beguil'd.
(Dryden, A IV, 115-22)

The Loeb translation, which is more literal than either mglish poem,
shows how much the poets have expanded Vergil's lines:

Then when all have gone their ways, (and in turn
the dim moon sinks her light, and the setting

78

stars invite sleep, alone she mourns in the empty

hall, and falls on the couch he has left. Though

absent, each from.each, she hears him, she sees

him, or, captivated by his father's look, she

holds Ascanius on her lap, if so she may beguile

a passion beyond all utterance.

(1, 401-03)

Five of Dryden's eight rhyme-words appear in Pitt's lines, though the
order within the two couplets is reversed. In the first couplet, the
lines in which each rhymedword occurs are similar in content. And in
the couplet with which the passage ends, Pitt, in de-emphasizing the
sense of infandum (unspeakable), changes the direction of the original
in much the same way that Dryden does. In this passage, as in other
similar passages, faint traces of Dryden's hand can be seen, but it is
clear that Pitt is using Dryden as a supplementary resource, not as
his primary authority.

Pitt often expands vergil's sense in the same way'that Dryden
does. In the Latin, fer example, Dido's last plea to Aeneas contains
this concession:

Neque te teneo, neque dicta refello.
I, sequere Italiam ventis, pete regna per undas.
(A Iv, 380-81)
which both translators build, by introducing ana hora, into a more
actively emotional outburst:
Go then, I plead not, nor thy flight delay;
Go, seek new kingdoms through the watry way:
(Pitt, A Iv, 551-52)

But go, thy flight no longer I detain,
Go seek thy promis'd Kingdom.through the Main:
(Dryden, A Iv, 548~A9)

Both also omit dicta.
And when Dido wants to declare her love for Aeneas, Vergil de-

scribes her behavior,

79

Incipit effari, mediaque in voce resistit.
(A IV. 76)

Dryden and Pitt explain why she stops in mid-voice, though Pitt, as if
dissatisfied with what Dryden has left to the reader's imagination, is

more explicit:

Now, as she tries to tell her raging flame,
Stops short,-and faulters, check'd by conscious shame:
(Pitt, A IV, 118-19)

Dryden has merely suggested Dido's shame:

Her falt'ring Tongue forbids to speak the rest.
(A IV, 106)

More often, when the two translators expand the same passages,
each follows his own characteristic pattern: Pitt uses some form of
periphrasis, and Dryden adds new details. When Juno tells Venus how
she will manage the union of their two proteges:

His ego nigrantem.commista grandine nimbum,

Dum trepidant alae, saltusque indagine cingunt,

Desuper infundam, & tonitru coelum omne ciebo.

Diffugient comites, & nocte tegentur Opaca.

Speluncam.Dido, dux.&.Trojanus eandem

Devenient:

(A IV, 120-25)

Dryden, like Pitt, deals with the second line first, translating it
literally:

There, while the Huntsmen pitch their Toils around,
(A IV, 168)

then he expands by introducing an entirely new image, apparently'under

the prompting of his need for a rhyme:

And chearful Horns, from Side to Side, resound;
(A IV, 169).

Pitt, though equally prolix, adds nothing that the Latin.text does not

imply:

There, while the crowds the forestdwalks beset,
Swarm round the woods, and spread the waving net;
(A IV, 182-83)

80
His translation is not much closer to the words of the Latin text; he
has generalized the huntsmen into crowds and has introduced a new set
of connotations with his use of "beset" and “swarmfl to express the
idea of encircling, but he has not anglicized the Tyrian hunt by in-

troducing horns. Dryden continues,

A Pitchy Cloud shall cover all the Plain
With Hail, and Thunder, and tempestuous Rain:
The fearful Train shall take their speedy Flight,
Dispers‘d, and all involv'd in gloomy Night:
(A Iv, 170-73)
adding to the statement Difgggient comites (the company scattered)

that they were afraid. Again, Pitt is simply more diffuse:

The skies shall burst upon the sportive train
In storms of hail, and deluges of rain:
The gather'd tempest o'er their heads shall roll,
And the long thunders roar from pole to pole.
0n eviry'side shall fly the scattering crowds,
Involv'd and cover'd in a night of clouds.

(A IV, 18A-89)

In the final sentence of the passage, Dryden uses a conventional epi—
thet to remind us of Dido's beauty, and he makes more explicit ver-
gil's implication.that the lovers are to meet accidentally when they
go into the cave in search of shelter.

One Cave a grateful Shelter shall afford
To the fair Princess, and the Tro an Lord.
(A IV, 17h-75)

and Pitt echoes,
Tb the same cave for shelter shall repair
The Trojan heroe and the royal fair.
(A IV, 190-91)
Even if Pitt had not acknowledged in his preface that he had al-
ways read Dryden with pleasure and often compared Dryden's Vergil with
his own, there would be ample evidence in the text of Pitt's transla-

tion that he had read Dryden attentively. But the rhetoric of Pitt's

81

translation demonstrates that their styles differ in two important re-

spects: (l) Pitt's use of rhetorical schemes is simpler than Dryden's-
in this respect, Dryden is closer to Vergil; and (2) Pitt limits his
expansions to elements implied by the Latin text much more strictly
than Dryden does—in this respect, Pitt is more faithful to Vergil.

There are, however, indications that Pitt often relied on Dryden
for rhyme-words and consequently for diction, and sometimes for syntax
within the line, as well. Almost a fifth of Pitt's rhyme-words (181.
of 1017) echo those Dryden has used to render the same passages.12
Some, especially of the half-rhymes, must have been coincidences,
forced by the Latin text or suggested by conventional rhyme fonnulae.
But often, even when only one word of a rhyming pair is the same as
Dryden's, the rest of the line is also very close to his.

Pitt's Dido confides her fear that she is falling in love in much
the same words she uses in Dryden's version; she tells Anna that her
feelings are

Too like the tokens of my former flame.
(A IV, 31.)

whereas Dryden's Dido has complained that they are

Too like the Sparkles of my former flame.
(A IV. 31)

Dryden's queen tries to impress her guest in order to induce him to re-
main in Carthage; she

Displays her map Wealth, and rising Town,
(A IV, 103)

as Pitt' s Dido

Shows him her Tyrian wealth, and growing town;
(A Iv) 115).

 

l25ee Appendix A2 for rhyme-words Pitt shares with Dryden.

82

Dryden's Juno taunts Venus about the fact that she has overcome a mere
mortal woman's reluctance to love, ending her speech with an ironic
comment on the one-sidedness of the struggle:

High Praises, endless Honours you have won,

And mighty Trophees vdth your worthy Son:

Two Gods a silly Woman have undone.

(A IV, 13t-36)

In Pitt's translation, she jeers,

A high exploit indeed! a glorious name

Unfading trOphies and eternal fame,

You, and your son have worthily pursu'd;

Two gods a single woman have subdu'd.
(A IV, 146-49)

Pitt has not borrowed a rhyme here, and he has not introduced a new
idea, as Dryden has. In Vergil's line,

Una dona Div-um si foemina victa duorum est.
(A IV, 95)

W is not also foolish. In other respects, however,

Pitt has followed the earlier translation. The inverted syntax is

exactly parallel in the two versions, and in both gang is omitted.
In the two mglish descriptions of the monstrous Rumor, we find,

No Slumbers ever close her wakeful mes.
(Dryden, A IV, 267)

No golden slumbers seal her watchful eyes.
(Pitt, A IV, 273)

Aeneas repeats Mercury's charge that Ascanius has a right to complain
in very similar phrases:

Of his defrauded Fate, and destin'd Reign.
(Dryden, A IV, 509)

and

By me defrauded of his destin'd reign.
(Pitt, A IV, 510)

83
What is true of single lines holds true with increasing frequency
as the number of shared rhyme-words increases. In couplets there is
sometimes some minor rearrangement of phrases or some granmatical var-
iation, such as the shift from compound to complex syntax in the lines,
His Vows, in haughty Terms, he thus preferr'd,
And held his Altar's Horns; the mighty Tnund'rer heard
(Dryden, A Iv, 320-21)
Pitt's decision to use the tighter syntax of the Latin,

Talibus orantem dictis, arasque tenentem
Audiit omnipotens:
(A IV, 219-20)

has not kept him from accepting Dryden's translation of Talibus oran-
Amman...

Such borrowings follow no clearly defined pattern; they are not
confined to difficult cruxes. They may be found in dialogue, as when
Dido invokes the aid of the dark gods against Aeneas: '

Let him for Succour sue from place to place,
Torn fran his Subjects, and his Son's embrace:
(Dryden, A IV, 884-85)

Still let him wander, toss'd from place to place,
Far from his country, and his son's wxbrace,

(Pitt, A IV, 883-84).
When events are reported by the narrator, the borrowings are equally
numerous. The lovers' neglect of their duty is recorded:

The Mounds, the Works, the Walls, neglected lye
Short of their promis'd height that seem'd to threat
the We
(Dryden, A IV, 127-28)

The works and battlements neglected lie,
And the proud structures cease to brave the sky.
(Pitt, A IV, 1.1.04.1)

Nor are such borrowings concentrated in a few sections of the poem;
they occur throughout. There are thirty-six couplets in which the

rhymedwords are the same in both translations, and most of then are

8A
as clearly related as those cited.

Occasionally, when the corresponding passages are different, Pitt
seems to have Dryden's version of another passage in mind. Vergil's
account of Dido's passion,

est mollis flamma medullas
Interea, & tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus.
Uritur infelix Dido, totaque vagatur
Urbe furens.
(A 1v, 66-69)
becomes, in Pitt's translation,
With passion fir'd, her reason quite o'erthrown,
The hapless queen runs raving thro' the town.
Soft flames consume her Vitals, and the dart
Deep, deep within, lies festering in her heart.
(A IV, lOA-O?)
The final clause comes some lines later in the Latin, as the conclu-
sion of a simile in which Dido is likened to a wounded deer fleeing
aimlessly with the fatal weapon still lodged in her body. Dryden's
translation of the simile ends with,
the fatal Dart
Sticks in her Side; and ranckles in her Heart.
(A IV, 99-100)

Pitt's debt is most apparent, however, in the longer passages in
which the two poets agree. There are four sequences of four consecu—
tive lines, in which the similarities are greater than they would be
in independent translations. One such sequence occurs in the long de-
scription of Humor. Vergil's lines,

Parva metu prime; mex sese attollit in auras,
Ingrediturque sole, 8: caput inter nubila condit.
Illam Terra parens, ira irritata deorum,
Ehctremam (wt perhibent) Coeo Biceladoque sororan
Progenuit,

(A IV, 176-80)

are translated in the Loch edition:

85

small at first through fear, soon she mounts up
to heaven, and walks the ground with head hidden
in the clouds. Her, 'tis said, Mother Earth,
provoked to anger against the gods, brought forth
last, as sister to Coeus and Enceladus,

(I. 407-09)
Dryden again contributes a new image, one unlikely to be found in Ver-
gil and therefore of questionable legitimacy:

Soon grows the Pygmee to Gygantic size;
(A IV, 255)

which Pitt does not borrow, but expresses in.more diffuse style:

First small with fear, she swells to wond'rous size,
(A IV, 263)

In the three succeeding lines, they proceed in the same manner, phrase

by phrase:

Her Feet on Earth, her Forehead in the Skies:
Inrag'd against the Gods, revengeful Earth
Produc'd her last of the Titanian birth.
(Dryden, A IV, 256-58)

And stalks on earth, and tow'rs above the Skies;
Whom, in her wrath to heav'n, the teeming earth
Produc'd the last of her gigantic birth;

(Pitt, A IV, 26h-66)

Rumor's brothers do not appear in either of the English versions.
Another very similar pair of couplets occurs in the passage in
which Aeneas attempts to justify his leaving to Dido. The Latin lines
are:
Ego te, quae plurima fando
Enumerare vales, nunquam Regina negabo
Promeritam: nec me meminisse pigebit Elisae;
Dum memor ipse mei, dum.spiritus hos reget artus.
(A IV. 333-36)
The translations agree substantially, not only in what they include
but also in what they emit:

Fair Queen, you never can enough repeat
Your boundless Favours, or I own.my Debt;

86

Nor can my Mind forget Eliza's Name,
While vital Breath inspires this Mortal Frame.
(Dryden, A IV, 1:83-86)
Your b‘ounties, queen, I never can forget
And never, never pay the mighty debt;
But, long as life informs this fleeting frame,
My soul shall honour fair Eliza's name.
(Pitt, A IV, 1.83—86)
Both Dryden and Pitt have rendered Aeneas's first sentence very freely,
as is apparent in the difference between their translations and the
Ioeb:

"I will never deny, 0 Queen, that thou hast de-
served of me the utmost thou canst set forth in

speech, . . ."
(I, 419)
Dryden has minimized £a_r_1_d9_ (that can be spoken), and Pitt has omitted
it altogether. Vergil's Aeneas here recognizes that Dido has a just
claim on him, but both Dryden and Pitt have shifted the anphasis away
from her claim, .to her “Favours" or "bounties." The final couplets
are also similar in their treatment of Vergil's words, which are
translated in the Loeb:
". . . nor shall try memory of Elissa be bitter,
while I have memory of myself, and while breath
still sways these limbs."
(1, Al?)
In the English versions, Aeneas does not consider that the memory of
Dido may sometime become bitter to him but simply says he will not for-
get her. In both, Aeneas's reference to his own mortality is strength-
ened by the addition of a modifier to ”frame."
In Book IV, Pitt has borrowed two lines from Dryden verbatim:
To Ceres, Bacchus, and the God of day.

(Dryden, A IV, 78;
Pitt, A IV, 91)

87

My fatal course is finished, and I go
(Dryden, A IV, 938;
Pitt, A IV, 939).
The gods to whom Dido sacrifices in Vergil's line,

Legiferae Cereri, Phoeboque, patrique Iyaeo;
A IV, 58

are Ceres the law-giver, Phoebus, and father Lyaeus. In the transla-
tions, they have lost their functional titles. And the scope of for-
tune is extended in the translation of,

Vixi, & quem dederat cursmn fortuna, peregi:
(A IV, 653)

(I have lived; and, as fortune has given my course,
I depart.)

Of all the eighteenth-century translators of Vergil, Pitt ex-
pressed the most unqualified admiration for Dryden, and he did not
scruple to make use of what he considered to be Dryden's best pas-
sages. He did not see himself as an original, innovative poet. His
diction is as thoroughly conventional when he does not draw from Dry-
den's m as when he does. His favorite adjectives are abstract
(as in "mighty debt,“ "rising grief," "dark suspicions," etc.), and
often seen to be chosen for their metrical suitability rather than for
their semantic content. Pitt differed with Dryden about the preroga—
tives of the translator, not about poetics. And the result of that
difference is as Warton and Johnson have described it: Pitt has
avoided Dryden's most egregious errors and unwarranted additions to
Vergil's poem. Pitt's faithfulness to the Latin text, taken together
with the demands of the couplet fem, necessarily makes his verse re-
dundant and diffuse. The purity of his translation naturally was ad-
mired in a time when gentlemen read Latin for pleasure and did not

seriously object to diffuseness. But after two centuries, conditions

88
and readers are different, and Johnson's evaluation of the "spirit" of
the two works seems more defensible than warton's. It is the pure and

mellifluous verse of Pitt's Aeneid that seems to invite "a cold and

listless perusal."

CHAPTER IV

Joseph Warton

In 1753, nine years after Pitt died, Joseph Warton published a
new edition of Pitt's Aeneid, together with his own translation of
the Eelogges and the Georgics, cepieusly annotated and accompanied
by several critical and interpretative essays. It was by far the
most scholarly English edition of Vergl that had yet appeared, and
its reception was all that Warton could have desired.

In the Monthly Review for March, 1753, the cemmentator's praise
of the verse, though very brief and general, is unstinting: the new
1913;; is so obviously superior to all its predecessors that any
reader can immediately appreciate its excellence. As proof, he re-
prints the entire first Georgic, so that the reader can see for him-
self "that Mr. Warton has far surpassed all who have gone before him
in the same task, in regard to rendering his author's sense with
exactness and perspicuity” and can enjoy the "classical purity and
correctness in his stile" and the ”easy hamonious flow in his versi-
fication." Most of the reviewer‘s critical commentary, however, is
given to an examination of the scholarly apparatus of the edition.
He commends Warton's "great judgment and true taste" in gathering to-
gether the best of Vergil scholarship and criticism, including
William Warburton's "Dissertation on the Sixth Aeneid," Francis At-
terbury's 'Cementary on the Character of Iapis," and William

89

90
Whitehead's "On the Shield of Aeneas.” Previously unpublished works
included were three essays by the editor himself on pastoral, didac-
tic, and epic poetry, some comments by Joseph Spence, and some manu-
script notes left by the late Edward Holdsworth. In the Advertisement
Warton acknowledges his indebtedness for many notes to previous edi-
tors and translators, including several of Dryden's resources-"es-
pecially Servius, De La Gerda, Ruaeus, Segrais, [and] Catrou"-—and
the English translations of Joseph Trapp and John Martyn.

The reviewer gives a good deal of attention to Warton's prefa-
tory essays, for his critical theories were already recognized to be
at least as significant as his own poetic practice, an evaluation
which still holds. His discussions on poetics reveal what he was at-
tempting to preserve in his translation, and it may therefore be help-
ful to examine his critical principles before turning to his applica-
tion of them in.his own verse. Such an examination is important also
because of the position warton has traditionally been supposed to oc—
cupy in eighteenth-century literary criticism. Victorian scholars
considered him a very influential proto-romantic. Accordingly, one
might expect to find his sensibility growing throughout his long pro-
ductive life from the classicism.of Pope toward the romanticism of
Wordsworth. There is, however, no evidence of that kind of develop-
ment in his work.

Warton's literary career began in 17AA.with the publication of
his most famous poem, The Enthusiast: or, the Lover of Nature, and
continued throughout the last half of the century. He wrote and
edited many works, among them.a nine-volume edition of the works of

Pope and two volumes of a projected edition of Dryden that he did not

91

live to finish. His reputation was established and has continued to
rest upon the works published during the first twelve of those fifty-
six.years: on a few poems, chiefly The Enthusiast and the "Ode to
Fancy"; the Xgrgil; the'Egggygon the Writings and Genius of Pope,
the first volume of which appeared to a largely unfavorable recep-
tion; and a series of twenty-four critical papers, published in the
‘Agxgnggzgg'between April 2A, 1753, and March 5, 175A. John WOoll, in
hiS‘Bng£§EQi§§;:!¢mOir of Joseph wartog, reports that in 1759 the
university of Oxford conferred the degree of Master of Arts upon War-
ton in recognition of his Ver il; Alexander Chalmers, however, points
out that the publication of the essay on Pepe also preceded the honor
and must have been counted among the reasons for it.1

Much of warton's literary theory is in agreement with the main—
stream.of criticism.that runs from.Dryden to Johnson. In his view,
the business of the critic is not to legislate what poets should do
but to explicate flhat the best poets have done. General principles
must be formulated inductively from the masterworks of literature,
not from the masterworks of criticism: even Aristotle can be and
sometimes is wrong. The inductive method requires that the critic,
unlike Rapin and some others, know the text he deals with in its orig-
inal language and that he deal with it in detail.2 The "regular plan"
the critic should follow must be inferred from Warton's judgments
about particular works; he has not spelled it out in a comprehensive

and systematic statement. In "Reflections on Didactic Poetry," Warton

 

1“The Life of Dr. Joseph warton,” works of the English Posts
(London, 1810), Vol. XVIII, 1A7. Wholl's Memoir appeared in 1806.

2Adventurer, no. 49.

92
apologizes for the great number of passages he quotes, but adds that
without them his discussion would be of no value.

Warton distinguishes between the characteristics of poetry in
general and the special characteristics appropriate to particular
genres. He believes in a hierarchy of value in poetry; those writ-
ings in which reason is dominant are of less value than those in
which the passions and characters of men are displayed. In this con-
text, ”reason" comes close to meaning argumentation. All poetry is
imitative, and all is in the broadest sense morally instructive. Rea-
son may be said to dominate when the poem is written to prove a the-
sis. The passions may be displayed in works of various genres, and
they are always most effectively evoked by means of an artful sim-
plicity. Distress, for example, is most affecting if the characters
speak in short, broken snatches, as Dido does when she realizes that
Aeneas is determined to leave her, or as Lear does when he seeks
signs of life in Cordelia's body. Dryden or Rowe, he says, would
have spoiled such scenes by making the characters declaim about their
feelings. (As a matter of fact, Dryden's Dido does declaim for forty
lines, whereas Pitt's Dido uses only thirty-four. In Adventurer no.
75, however, Warton has original writing, not translation, in mind.)

The means by which the poet joins nature and passion, and by
which he yokes together the probable and the wonderful is invention.
Great power of invention is the distinguishing mark of the best poets:
Shakespeare has it in "inexhaustible plenty"; Milton's most poetic
passages are those which show him at his most inventive, the extra-
terrestrial scenes of W Pope's most poetic invention is
the sylphs of Ihe Rape of the Loc . By “invention," Warton means the

93
original creation of characters and scenes. Variety and propriety of
characters and events make any poems-an eclogue or a tragedy, a de-
scriptive poem or an epic-—appealing. In all,the characters should
be consistently motivated, the events should be at once natural and
surprising, and the language should be appropriate both to the sub-
ject and to poetry.

Some of the diction appropriate to one kind of poetry may be in-
appropriate to another, but in all cases, words dealing with the comp
mon objects of ordinary workaday life are "harsh" or “coarse" and
should be avoided if possible. And not only the words but the things
they evoke, whether in literal or in figurative description, must also
be carefully chosen. Images should call to mind real rivers, not
other poems about rivers. warton complains,

many a poet who has dwelt for'years in the Strand,

has attempted to describe fields and rivers, and

generally succeeded accordingly. Hence that nau-

seous repetition of the same circumstances; hence

that disgusting impropriety of introducing what

may be called a set of hereditary images, without

preper regard to the age, or climate, or occasion,

in which they were formerly used.3
He praises Thomson for refraining from describing his rivers in terms
of I'wind" and "murmuring" sound and for his fidelity to nature in
such evocative details as the water "fretting o'er a rock." The com-
bination of novelty and nature is necessary in all kinds of poetry;
indeed, "a minute and particular enumeration of circumstances, judi-

ciously selected, is what chiefly discriminates poetry from history,

and renders the former, for reason, a more close and faithful

 

3Es§§z on Pope, p. #2.

94
representation of nature than the latter.“+ Though correctness and
regularity are also virtues, warton approves Ionginus's warning that
"exactness . . . is the sure criterion of a cold and creeping genius."5
Many of the same honorific terms may be applied to all good poetry:
"sweet," "pure," ”correct," "elegant," "moving," "artful," "striking."
Emcept for the recommendation of minute description, all this sounds
very familiar to the reader of Dryden and Johnson.

The greatest difference between warton's theory and his practice
in his original verse is to be found in diction. The "genial earth,"
"mum'ring waters," “rolling planets," and “the rich tints that paint
the breathing mead" of The Enthusiast would have been equally unre-
markable in the work of any of the poets who had "dwelt for years in
the Strand." Where his principles are most orthodox, his practice is
most consistent with them. He avoids "harsh” terms. His verse forms
are conventional blank verse, heroic couplets, and Pindarics. All
this is not to ignore the romantic themes that recur in his verse—-
the insistent objections to rigid regularity, the belief in the nat-
ural nobility of primitive men and the sublimity of unmanaged nature,
and the emphasis upon imagination and feeling. But the fact remains
that in diction and versification Warton stands in the tradition of
Dryden and Pope, in his original verse and especially in.his transla-
tion of Vergil.

In the "Dissertation on Epic Poetry," warton deals much more

briefly with some of the same tapics that Dryden discusses in the

 

AEssa on Po e, pp. h8-h9.
5A

dventurer, no. 57.

95

Dedication of his Agggig. Both men draw upon Rene 1e Bossu, but their
common indebtedness does not account for all the similarities between
the two essays.6 Elizabeth Nitchie charges that "Warton has not ad-
mitted that in his discussion of epic poetry he has followed Dryden's
Dedication to the Agngig almost word for word for'nearly a page."7
The quoted passage is long enough to prove that warton consulted Dry-
den when he wrote his "Dissertation"; it could scarcely fill a duo-
decimo page, and it is attributed to Dryden, though the extent of the
quotation is not marked. Both Dryden and Narton describe the epic
poem as the highest form of mimesis, which by raising and calming the
passions inspires men to virtuous action. Both compare Vergil with
Homer and ascribe the difference between their theses to the differ-
ent political situations in.Greece and Rome. Both discuss Aeneas's
character in.temms of his piety and valor and call attention to Dido's
perfidy to Sichaeas and her excessive passion, and they praise
Aeneas's obedience to the will of the gods. They admire many of the
same characteristics in Vergil's style, his brevity and the harmony
and variety of his lines. Like Trapp, warton is struck by the sublime
ity of vergil's sentiments and style. In the "Reflections on Didac-
tic Poetry," warton discusses the pitfalls the epic poet must avoid:
"laboured diction,“ "pompous epithets," and "high-flown.metaphors."

The charm.of the pastoral for warton lies in its representation

of innocence and tranquility, its demonstration of the superiority of

 

6Bossu's Traite du pgéme epigue (Paris, 1675) was regarded as the

classic statement on the nature and value of epic poetry during the
. late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

7vergil and the English Poets, pp. 158-59.

96
nature over art. He quotes Alexander Pope on the form and language
appropriate to this genre: it may be either narrative or dramatic, or
a.mixture of the two; its language must be humble but pure; and the
whole must be simple, brief, and delicate. These remarks serve as an
introduction to Samuel Johnson's Rambler no. 37, which warton reprints
in full to complete his "Dissertation upon Pastoral Poetry."

warton's apology for didactic poetry is both more subtle and more
original than his other prefatory essays. He begins by defending the
genre against the charge that it is not true poetry because the author
speaks in his own voice and therefore does not imitate nature. warton
sees that this stricture would ultimately proscribe descriptive as
'well as didactic verse. "Surely,” he objects,

the poet is an imitator when he paints any object

of universal nature, animate or inanimate, whether

he speaks in his own person or introduces speakers;

tho' indeed imitations of the latter species have

not the same dignity or utility with those of hu-

man manners, passions, and characters.
The purpose of didactic poetry, he goes on to say, is "to render in-
struction amiable, to soften the severity of science, and to give vir-
tue and knowledge a captivating and engaging air." In fact, the un-
poetic subject matter is the poet's challenge; it requires all his
art to make what is inherently dull and harsh, interesting and beauti-
ful.

But didactic poetry is not mere metrical discourse, despite the
fact that Harton often speaks of the poet's hiding, or concealing, or
disguising the lesson he has to teach. Instruction, in the hands of
the poet, becomes the occasion for something much.more important-

this point is made clear in the frequently repeated injunction that

97
the didactic poet should not aim at exhaustive treatment of his sub-

ject, but should deal only with those parts of it that are especially
susceptible to poetic treatment. The object of the Georgics, then,
is intellectual pleasure, not better farming. Since that pleasure
comes largely from the novel but natural and concrete description to
be found in it, the best subjects for the poet to choose are those
which offer a wealth of concrete objects to describe: the ordinary
occupations of life and natural philosophy. The writer's artistry
lies in his ability to mold "coarse" words and things into the stuff
of poetry. vergil has brought off that difficult feat supremely well,
and it is the task of the translator to reproduce his success in Eng-
lish. warton's conception of his task in translating the Georgics is
thus essentially the same as Dryden's.8
The didactic poet has at his disposal a wider range of meta-
phoric language than the epic poet. What for epic verse would be
"laboured description" is "poetical circumlocution" in didactic, epi-
thets too pompous for epic are merely striking, "high-flown metaphors"
merely "bold.” The didactic poet has many opportunities to raise the
objects he discusses by noble prosop0poeias, striking similitudes,
and skillful.manipulation of language. The "poet" here is the orig-
inal author. warton has little to say about the special problems of

translation, but his criticisms of translators are made in terms

 

8The Abbé DeLille, who was much influenced by his English prede-
cessors, especially Dryden and Merton, echoes this argument: "Un
autre charme de la poésie, comme de tous les autres arts, c'est la
difficulté vaincue." (Another charm.of poetry, as of all the other
arts, lies in the difficulty overcome.) "Discours Préllminaire,"§gg
Géor ' es (Paris, 1770). Reprinted in Oeuvres de J. DeLille (Paris,
1824;, Vol. II, x1.

98
applicable to original works.

Warton has more to say about influence and borrowing. In £919.2-
£9.22! no. 63, he takes up the problen of distinguishing plagiarism
from unconscious influence and from the kind of resemblance that nec-
essarily arises when two poets imitate the same element of nature.

He compares poems of Alexander Pope with the works of other writers
from whom he drew ideas, phrases, lines, and in the case of "The Dy-
ing Christian" virtually the whole poem. Though he is reluctant to
condemn Pope and offers the explanation that the poet himself may not
have been aware that he was remembering more than he was composing,
Warton makes it clear that he disapproves. As if determined to avoid
POpe's error, he freely acknowledges his own debts to other cements-
tors and translators in the Advertisement of his BEE—3

Mr. Pitt hath borrowed about sixty lines from Mr.

Dryden, and I mself about a dozen, and a remark

or two in the life of Virgil. I am indebted also

to Mr. Benson for some observations and for six

lines of the two first Georgics. For the rest I

am answerable.
A close reading of Warton's translation leads one to conclude that
Peter Gay's description of Diderot applies to Joseph Warton, too: his
frank acknowledgment of dependence has concealed the extent to which
he has used his predecessors' work; he has been "disingenuously can—
did."9 In fact, his first Georgic is the most highly derivative work
examined in this study.

Warton's greatest debt is to Benson, but he has also made exten-

sive use of Dryden's translation (more, however, in the third and

 

9The Deli htenment: An Interpretation, Vol. I, The Rise of Mod-
W (New York. 19375. 354-

 

99

fourth Georgics than in the first two) and some use of Trapp's. In
the first Georgic, Warton has taken almost verbatim from Benson, in
addition to the six-line passage he mentions, five couplets and eight
single lines, a total more than three times greater than he has ac-
knowledged. He has also borrowed three or four lines from Dryden and
four or five from Trapp, depending on his source for the line which
Trapp borrowed from Dryden.

Yet, Warton's translation is far fran a mere collage of other
men's work. It is as eclectic as the comentary that accompanies it,
no doubt for the same reason: Warton set out to produce the best and
most definitive edition and translation of Vergil possible. The fact
that a finished translation must meet the same tests as an original
poan does not imply that the verse translator goes about his task in
the same way an original poet does. In Warton's view, Dryden's aim
and Dryden's method are still sound: Vergil is to be made to speak
as he would have done if he had been born an Englishman, and only the
happiest equivalents of his Latin lines can approach that Vergilian
English—regardless of their source. All that is truly poetic in an
English leggy, is Vergil's own; none of the beauties Warton finds in
epic, pastoral, and didactic poetry in his opinion are untranslatable.
The translator must be a poet not in order to invent, but in order to
understand and reproduce Vergil's invention in a new medium. The
translator's primary skill is his manipulation of the artistic and
linguistic correspondences between Latin and English verse. He does
not create original poetry. In borrowing a deft translation, Warton
therefore pays tribute to the translator whose work he incorporates
into his as well as to Vergil. The charge of plagiarism would be made

100
as unjustly against warton as against Dryden, however much one may
wish that they had accounted for their borrowings more completely.
In the coherence and tonal integrity of each of their‘ggggil's lies
evidence that neither used his predecessors merely to cover his own
linguistic and poetic deficiencies, much less to save time and effort.
Rather, as Proudfoot has observed, their use of earlier translations
must have made their task more difficult.10 Dryden's limitations lay
in the extent to which he fell short of his goal.

In his translation of the fourth Eclogge, Warton relied far less
than he usually did on other translators, for in that short poem he
was less interested in measuring the English version by the Latin
original. In this work, Vergil had become, in part, a transmitter of
a greater original, the Sybelline prophecy. Warton therefore turns to
the biblical analogue of the prophecy for comparison. Except for one
or two echoes of the eleventh chapter of Isaiah, he remains as faith-
ful as he can to Vergil's text, but he cannot help observing in a
note, "How'much inferior is Virgil's poetry to Isaiah's.“

In this Eclogue, Warton agrees with Dryden in approximately one
of every four rhyme-words. The lines in which they occur, however,
are not always very similar in other respects. Warton translates Ver-
gil's lines,

Teque adeo decus hoc aevi, te consuls inibit,
Pollio, & incipient magni procedere menses.
(E N, 11-12)

The months begin, the babe's auspicious face,
Pollio, thy glorious consulship shall grace;
(E Iv, 13-”).

 

10Seventeenth-Century Predecessors, p. 267.

101
He uses two of the end-words in Dryden's triplet:
The lovely Boy, with his auspicious Face,
Shall Pollio's Consulship and Triumph grace;
Majestick Months set out with him.to their appointed Race.
(E IV. 13-15)
The only resemblances between the two English versions are the con-
ventional epithet "auspicious face" and the equally conventional
rhyme formula. However, neither word of that formula is required by
the Latin text, as Trapp's much more literal translation shows:
Beneath thy Fasces, Pollio, to adorn
Thy Consulship, This Glory of the Age
Shall rise; and mighty Months begin to roll.
(E IV, 14-16)
And the same may be said of the couplet with which the poem Opens.
Vergil's lines,
Sicelides Mnsae, paullo majors canamus.
Non omnes arbusta juvant, humilesque myricae.
(E Iv, 1-2)
literally mean,

Sicilian.Muses, let us sing somewhat more loftily.
Not all enjoy orchards and lowly Shrubs.

The impossibility of treating méjggg as a substantive in English has
already been discussed in the chapter on the translators of the early
eighteenth century. Given the necessity for a grammatical shift, it
is obvious that the sense of the sentence might well suggest the
"strains/plains" formula but certainly does not require it.

The expected child, Vergil prophesies, will live among gods and
heroes:

Pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus orbem.
(E IV, 17)

which Trapp translates literally,

102
And with his Father's Vertues rule the Globe,
In Peace.
Dryden adds the modifier "jarring," which emphasizes the discord
that obtains before the child's birth, and transforms orbem into
"mankind":
The jarring Nations he in peace shall bind,
And with paternal Virtues rule mankind.
(E IV, 20-21)
and warton follows:
The jarring world in lasting peace shall bind,
And with his father's virtues rule mankind.
(E IV, 19-20)
His use of Dryden's text is clear here, though it is more extensive
in the second line than in the first.

In one of the two remaining couplets in which warton and Dryden
agree in their choice of rhymedwords, warton, like Trapp, accepts
Dryden's addition to the sense of the text:

Ipsae lacte domum referent distenta capellae
Ubera: nec magnos metuent armenta leones.
(E IV, 21-22)
literally:
Uncalled, the goats shall bring home their udders
swollen with milk, and the herds shall not fear
huge lions.
(Loeb, I, 31)
Dryden sets the fearless herds to grazing, and translates referent
(return) as "speed":
The Goats with strutting Duggs shall homeward speed,
And lowing Herds, secure from Lyons feed.
(E IV, 25-26)
warton omits Dryden's "lowing" and translates Vergil's maggos, but

otherwise follows Dryden rather closely:

103
With milk o’ercharged the goats shall homeward speed,
And herds secure from.mighty lions feed.
(E IV, 25-26)
In the remaining couplet, one line of warton's version resembles Dry-
den's only in the rhyme-word:
0f native purple and unborrow'd gold,
And sandyx clothe with red the crowded fold.
(Warton, E IV, 49-50)

But the luxurious Father of the Fold,
With native Purple, or unborrow‘d Gold,
(Dryden, E IV, 52-53)
0f the seven single lines in which the rhyme-words agree, three
are sufficiently similar in diction and syntax to suggest that war-
ton was using Dryden's‘gglggug as he wrote. The lines in Dryden's

version are:

The knotted Oaks shall show‘rs of Honey weep,

(E IV. 35)

Yet, of old Fraud some footsteps shall remain,
(E IV, 37)

No God shall crown the Board, nor Goddess bless the Bed.
(E IV, 77)

and in warton's:

And knotted oaks shall showers of honey wee .

(E IV, 34

Yet of old crimes some footsteps shall remain,
(E IV, 35)

No god shall grace thy board, no goddess bless thy bed.
(E IV, 72)

All three of these lines,.however, are quite literally translated, as
can be seen in the Ioeb translation:

and the stubborn oak shall distill dewy honey.
(I. 31)

Yet shall some traces of olden sin lurk behind,
(I. 31)

104

no god honours with his table, no goddess with her bed.
(I, 33)

Nevertheless, Warton's diction is so similar to Dryden's as to sug-
gest that he worked with Dryden's lines in mind. All other similar-
ities of phrasing and diction in the two English Eclogues are so
limited in scope or so literal or conventional that no indebtedness
can be inferred from.them.

As has been suggested above, warton's expansion of Vergil's
sentence,

Occidet & serpens, & fallax herba veneni
Occidet:
(E IV, 2h-25)
which is translated literally in the Loch version,
The serpent, too, shall perish, and the false
poison-plant shall perish;
(I. 31)
is traceable to the formulaic repetition in Isaiah xi, 8, which war-
ton quotes in his note on the passage:
"And the suckling child shall play upon the hole
of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his
hand on the adder's den."
His interpretation of the fourth Eclogue did not encourage him to
make very extensive use of other translations.

In the first Georgic, on the other hand, warton has relied heav-
ily upon Dryden, and even more heavily on Benson. Trapp's blank
verse translation could not be equally helpful to a translator who
worked in rhyme, but warton has made considerable use of it too.
Sometimes it is difficult to determine which source he is using in a
given passage. For example, in translating Vergil's lines:

Nunc caput objectare fretis, nunc currere in undas,
Et studio incessum.videas gestire lavandi.

105

Tum cornix.plena pluviem vocat improba voce,
Et sola in sicca secum spatiatur arena.

(G I, 386-89)
Now dive, now run upon the wat'ry plain
And long to lave their downy plumes in vain:
loudly the rains the boding rook demands,
And solitary stalks across the scorching sands.
(warton, G I, 458-61)
warton has made use of Benson's translation of these lines:
Now plunge their Heads, now run upon the Stream:
With endless Labour ply the wat'ry Plain,
And dive, and wash, and proudly wash in vain:
Then with full VOice the Rook the Show'r demands,

And solitary Stalks along the scorching Sands:
(Benson, G I, 483-87)

But Benson, in his turn, has relied upon Dryden, especially in the
last couplet of the passage:
And dive with stretching Necks to search their Food;
Then lave their Backs with sprinkling Dews in vain,
And stem the Stream to meet the promis'd Rain.

The Crow with clamflrous Cries the Show'r demands,
And single stalks along the Desart Sands.

(Dryden, G I, 530-3h)

In the last line, Benson appears to have changed Dryden's "single" to
"solitary,” and warton to have changed Benson's "along" to "across."
Such evidence, though it traces the provenience of the lines, must
not be interpreted to mean that Dryden's influence reached warton
only indirectly. warton used the Dryden text itself, as well as the
work of later translators who also relied on it.

warton's notes to the first Georgie show'how carefully and thor-
oughly he worked, how many topics and stylistic elements he investi-
gated minutely, how resonant he found virtually every line of Vergil's
text. In many notes, he cites interesting parallels, sources, and
analogues to the Georgics from other classical works or from English

poetry. Though biblical parallels are not so important in shaping

106
the Georgics as they are for the fourth Eclogue, warton lost no 0p-
portunity to cite them, usually to Vergil's disadvantage. 0f Ver-
gil's celebrated description of a storm, he wrote:
This description, fine as it is is expelled by the
storm.in the 18th psalm. God is described flying
upon the wings of the wind-"He made darkness his
secret place, his pavilion round about him, with
dark water and thick clouds to cover him.-The
springs of waters were seen, and the foundations
of the round world were discovered at thy chiding,
0 Lord." See the whole, too long to be transcribed,
but inimitably great and sublime.
Qggite Romani scriptores1 cedite Grail;
(Yield to the scriptures, Romans; yield, Greeks!)
Occasionally a deficiency in the work of his predecessors would
offend him, and he would duly record his reaction. 0f their trans-
lations of Vergil's line,

Et teneram ab radice ferens Sylvane cupressum.
(G I, 20)

he complains,

Medals represent Sylvanus bearing a young cypress

tree torn up by the roots. Neither Mr. Dryden nor

Mr. Benson seem apprehensive of this allusion,

which is very picturesque.
In reference to another passage, in which Dryden appears to have mis-
interpreted the significance of an owl's hooting, warton comments,
"Mr. Dryden has strangely translated this passage."

Such notes help to suggest the procedure warton.must have used
in making his translation. He must first have translated literally
but roughly, consulting French, Latin, and English commentaries as
he went along. Then he must have turned to his three English prede-
cessors, comparing, correcting, sometimes chiding, adapting, and

sometimes borrowing, as he polished what he had written, until he

had composed the best line he could. He must have written the notes

107

that record his reactions to his sources as the occasions arose dur-
ing this stage of the work and added others, such as Holdsworth‘s
comments and long paragraphs of background information from the Po -
nggggb.later. The process was surely laborious. Dryden had pro-
duced his translation of the complete works with the help of some of
his friends, in just under four years. Warton took nearly seven to
translate about a fourth as many lines and edit Pitt's ggggig, His
methods and objectives were the same as Dryden's; but warton was
able to polish his lines more carefully than Dryden, and in many pas-
sages, his diligence enabled him to surpass his illustrious prede-
cessor.

Three of Dryden's lines appear in warton's first Georgic exact-
ly as they do in Dryden's, and in one more the only contrast is that
between "onward" and "onwards." Dryden's translation of

Impiaque aeternmm timuerunt saecula noctem.

(G I. 1.68)

And Impious Mortals fear‘s Eternal Night.
- (G I, 631)

also appears in Trapp's version. The two words for which English
cognates may be used, ggtggg§3,and im.ia, are translated "eternal"

and "impious," and the rest of the line is also rendered very liter-
ally, The same reservation.may be suggested with somewhat less justi-
fication for

The Pleiads, Hyads, and the Northern Car.
(Dryden, G I, 210)

which warton repeats to translate,

Pleiadas, Hyadas, claramque Lycaonis Arcton.
(G I, 138)

But in the brief address to Neptune which they share, there is

108

a good deal of difference between the Latin and English versions in

the syntactic structure, though not in the sense:

Tuque o, cui prima frementem
Fudit equum.magno tellus percussa tridenti,
Neptune:
(G I, 12-11.)

And thou, 0 Neptune, for whom Earth, smitten by
thy mighty trident, first sent forth the neigh-
ing steed;

(Loeb, I, 81).

warton, copying Dryden exactly in the first line, also shifts the

earth from the subject function in the second line:

And thou, whose trident struck the teeming earth,

Whence strait a neighing courser sprung to birth.
(G I, 15-16)

just as Dryden has done:

And thou, whose Trident struck the teeming Earth,
And made a passage for'the Coursers Birth.
(G I, 15-16)

In warton's translation of:

the third

Proluit insano contorquens vortice sylvas
Fluviorwm rex.Eridanus, camposque per omnes
Cum stabulis armenta tulit: nec tempore eodem
Tristibus aut extis fibrae apparere minaces,

(G 1, 481—81.)

Monarch of mighty floods, supremely strong,
Eridanus, whole forests whirl'd along,
And rolling onwards with a sweepy sway,
Bore houses, herds, and helpless hinds away:
(G I, 561-6A)

line appears to be indebted to Benson's corresponding line:

In furious Gulphs absorps the whirling Whods
Imperial :2, the Sov'reign of the Floods;

And pouring onwards with resistless Sway.
Bears, with their ruin'd Stalls, the Herds away:

m1, new).

But an examination of Dryden's text shows that both warton and Benson

have been influenced directly'by it; warton has taken not only the

109
third line but also the fourth almost verbatim:

Then rising in his Might, the King of Floods,
Rusht thro' the Forrests, tore the lofty WOods;
And rolling onward, with a sweepy Sway,
Bore Houses, Herds, and lab'ring Hinds away.
(Dryden, G I, 649-52)

The Loeb version shows how much Dryden has amplified the Latin verse
in the last line:

Eridanus, king of rivers, washed away in the swirl
of his mad eddy whole forests, and all across the
plains swept cattle and stalls alike.

(I, 113)
warton is sometimes willing to trust Dryden's judgment about
omissions as well as amplifications, especially when a literal ren-
dering of the Latin.makes for awkward English. Vergil describes the
aftermath of a rainstorm:

Verum ubi tempestas &.coeli mobilis humor
Mutavere vias: & Juppiter humidus Austris
Densat, erant quae rara modo; & quae densa, relaxat:

(G I, 417-19).
The Loeb translation reproduces Vergil's syntax faithfully:

but that when the weather and fitful vapours of
the sky have turned their course, and Jove, wet
with the south winds, thickens what just now'was
rare, and makes rare what now was thick,

(I, 109).

But Dryden here has wisely condensed the more diffuse expression of
his original:
But with the changeful Temper of the Skies,
As Rains condense, and Sun-shine rarifies;
(G I, 565-66).
And warton has followed his example:

But when the changeful temper of the skies
The rare condenses, the dense rarifies,

(G I, 489-90).
At other times, warton accepts from Dryden the rhyme scheme and

110

the more faithful line of a couplet but translates the other line
independently. Land that has lain fallow for two years, Vergil says,
produces the best crop:

Illa seges demum votis reSpondet avari

Agricolae, bis quae solem, bis frigora sensit:

Illius immensae ruperunt horrea messes.

(G I, 47-49)
That field only answers the covetous farmer's
prayer, which twice has felt the sun and twice
the frost; from it boundless harvests burst the
granaries.

(Ioeb, I, 85)

Dryden translates:

That crop rewards the greedy Peasant's Pains,

Which twice the Sun, and twice the cold sustains,
And bursts the crowded Barns, with more than promis'd Gains.

(G I, 72-7A)
warton adopts the line in which Dryden has preserved Vergil's‘ggg-
phggg, changing "cold" to the more evocative "frosts" and making the
verb agree with his plural subject:
Those lands at last repay the peasant's care,

Which twice the sun, and twice the frosts sustain,
And burst his barns surcharg'd with pond'rous grain.

(G I, 62-61.)
In the passages that have been cited, and in others similar to them,
most of warton's lines which have been influenced by Dryden's come
from passages of the poem which Dryden has translated with both fidel-
ity and grace.

In all, in warton's 601-line text, there are 136 rhyme-word
agreements with Dryden's version. Of that number, forty-eight also
occur in Benson, and often it is the latter translation that warton
favors. Vergil celebrates the coming of spring:

jam vere sereno.
Tunc agni pingues, & tune mollissima vina;

lll

Tunc somni dulces, densaeque in montibus umbrae.

(G I, 3404.2)
Dryden begins, not very literally:

For then the Hills with pleasing Shades are crown'd,
And Sleeps are sweeter on the silken Ground:

With milder Beams the Sun securely shines;

Fat are the lambs, and luscious are the Wines.

(G I, h67-70)
warton reverses the couplets, keeping the order of the Iatin:

When winter ends, and spring serenely shines,

Then fat the lambs, then mellow are the wines,
Then sweet are slumbers on the flowery ground;

Then with thick shades are lofty mountains crown'd.

(G I, 410-13)
Benson has treated Dryden's version in the same way, and warton has
adopted from Benson the first line in full and the second and fourth
lines with very minor substitutions. In the third line, he has de-
parted from.Benson somewhat more, substituting "sweet" for Benson's
"soft" and "flowery" for "verdant."

When Winter ends, and Spring serenely shines;

Then fat the lambs, and mellow are the Wines;

Then soft the Slumbers on the verdant Ground;

Then with thick Shades the lofty Mountains crown'd.
(Benson, G I, h26-29)

Dryden's lines,

Or that the Heat the gaping Ground constrains,
New Knits the Surface, and new Strings the Veins;

(G 1. 135-36)
appear to have provided the rhyme for:

Dr genial heat the hollow glebe constrains,
Braces each nerve, and binds the gaping veins;
(warton, G I, 110-11).

But again the influence is once removed, coming through Benson, who

has also adopted Dryden's rhyme but few of his words:

Or that the Heat the hollow Glebe constrains,
Braces each Nerve, and knits the gaping Veins;
(G I, 116-17).

112
In other passages, warton and Benson are both directly indebted

to Dryden. Vergil describes conditions after the long decline from
the golden age:

Quippe ubi fas versum.atque nefas, tot bella per orbem,
Tam multae scelerum facies: non ullus aratro
Dignus honos, squalent abductis arva colonis,

(G I, 505—07)

Dryden and Warton translate:

Where Fraud and Rapine, Right and wrong confound;
Where impious Arms from ev'ry part resound,
And monstrous Crimes in ev‘ry Shape are crown'd.
The peaceful Peasant to the wars is prest;
The Fields lye fallow in inglorious Rest.
(Dryden, G 1, 678-82)

Where sacred order, fraud and force confound;
Where impious wars and tumults rage around;
And every various vice and crime is crown'd:
Dishonour'd lies the plough; the banish'd swains
Are hurried from th'uncultivated plains;
(Warton, G I, 589-93).

The triplets correspond line for line in content, and two of the
rhyme-words agree. Neither Dryden nor warton has rendered the pas-
sage so literally as Benson, whose version reads:

Where impious Mortals Right, and wrong confound;

Wars rage; and Vice in ev'ry Shape is crown'd;

The Plains no Honour from the Plough receive;

The ravish'd Hinds, their Toils unfinish'd leave:

A ghastly'Sight the squallid Field affords,
(G I, 622-26)

Benson echoes Dryden in some phrases and in his "confound/crown'd"
rhyme. warton borrows the same rhymedwords but not the same phrases.
like Benson, he uses Dryden, but differently.
Sometimes warton has used Dryden's and Benson's rhyme-words, but
his translation is otherwise not much indebted to either.
What time, nor mast,nor fruits, the groves supply'd,
And fam'd Dodona sustenance deny'd:

Tillage grew toilsome, and the harvests dyid.
(warton, G I, 179-81)

113
These lines are independently translated and are not more similar to
either Dryden's or Benson's lines than the Latin forces them to be:

When new Dodonian Oaks no more supply'd
Their.Mast, and Trees their Forrest-fruit deny‘d.
Soon was his Labour doubl'd to the Swain,
And blasting Mildews blackned all his Grain.
(Dryden, G I, 221-24)

When scanty Food the Sacred Groves supply'd,
And all relief Dodonean Oaks deny'd;
But soon new Toil the Foodful Glebe requir'd,
Eat with an evil Rust the Grain expir'd;
(Benson, G I, 192-95)
Such passages are not, however, numerous, and when they do occur
Warton is likely to have turned to Trapp's version, as he has in the

couplet which translates,

nam.saepe videmus
Ipsius in vultu varios errare colores.

(G 1, 451-52)
Observe too, when he ends his heavenly race,
What various colours wander o'er his face:
(warton, G 1, 523-24)
The order of ideas and the grammatical relations in the Latin are not
obscure, but they make less than graceful English; the passage is
easy to understand but difficult to translate. Warton here prefers
Trapp's combination of fidelity and smoothness:
For oft we see
How various Colours wander o'er his Face;
(G I, 561-62)
but Trapp's blank verse does not help him.with his rhyme scheme. For
that, he turns to Dryden:
For oft we find him finishing his Race,
With various Colours erring on his Face;

Following Dryden, he moves his translation of emenso cum.iam.decidet

glygpg (also when he sets, having traversed the heavens) into this

 

llh
sentence from an earlier line of Vergil's text in order to translate
EB;§Q as an end-word.

Obviously, warton used the work of all three of his important
English predecessors. To distinguish sharply and fully between the
direct influence of Dryden and his indirect influence mediated by
Benson and Trapp would virtually require the reprinting and cross-
indexing of all four translations. The important point to be noted
is that Dryden's influence reached warton in these two ways and that
warton in his turn became a transmitter of Dryden's theory and prac-
tice of the art of verse translation. warton's fidelity to Vergil's
text and the care with which he approached each line made his style
at once more supple than Pitt's and less flamboyant than Dryden's.
But he was not nearly'so doctrinaire about verbal accuracy as Benson
or Trapp. In a word, warton.made a heroic effort to do what Dryden
had attempted and fallen short of accomplishing: to recreate in
English from all the materials available Vergil's most sublime
achievement. And so long as the Georgics continued to be read and
imitated, warton's translation continued to be accounted among the

finest that had been.made.

CHAPTER V

James Beresford and William.Sotheby

Most of the eighteenth-century translations of Vergil were made
in the mid-century, between 1735 and 1770. The only complete Works
published after that time were editions of the Dryden or Pittewarton
translations. It was during those years that Rebert Andrews' strange
version was published, as were the Agggigs of Theobald, Pitt, Hawkins,
and Strahan. The same period saw a somewhat less lively interest in
the‘Enggggg and the Georgics; warton's version of the two works ap-
peared during that time, as did Nevil's Georgics, Atterbury's first
Efilggug, and Beattie's Pastorals.1 The one substantial portion of
Vergil published in the following decade was Mills' Georgics, which
appeared in 1780. Iofft's first two Georgics came out in 1784 and the
precocious Master Morrison's second ggggid in 1787. It was not until
l79h that another translation of the entire epic was published-—James
Beresford's Aeneid.

Beresford did not equivocate about the task of the translator.
In his preface, we find him saying over and over again.that the Eng-

lish translator should not seek to produce a poem that simply resembles

 

lSee pp. 2-6, in which these translations are discussed in more
detail. Two minor works of the 1760's are described in Appendix.D-

Robert Andrews' Vergil figglished and James Beattie's Pastorals.
Neither was directly influenced by Dryden's Vergil, though Beattie's
diction and prosody are conventional.

115

116
his original but rather should make its counterpart in English. Like
Trapp, he argues that the spirit of the original in large part resides
in the minutiae of the language, that to translate literally‘ig to be
faithful to the spirit of the author. All that is of real poetic value
is translatable. What the reader should be given is Vergil's poem, not
an English poet's interpretation of it; the Latin epic should be
"poured . . . without loss or adulteration" [i.g., without omdSsions
or expansions] out of Latin into English. He recognizes that putting
his theory into practice may raise a few difficulties, but he minimizes
them:

It will sometimes, though very rarely, be found
necessary, in Englishing this Poet, to depart
from.the letter of the parent-sentence. The
idioms of the two languages will not always coal-
esce; insomuch that of two versions of the same
passage, the one literal, the other lax, it may
happen that the latter is the more faithful:

for if the original Poet clothed his thoughts in
graceful diction, constructed according to the
purest rules of the language in which he wrote,
that imitator deserts his model, whose expressions,
however close in.meaning, are constrained in man-
ner; while he alone adheres to it, whose phrase
like that of his Author, is congenial to his own
vernacular tongue. "While languages," says John-
son, "run on together, the closest translation
may be considered as the best; but when they
divaricate, each must take its natural course.”
My constant and principal care, however, has
been to set down without change, addition, or
retrenchment, the matter that lay before me.2

After he had completed his translation and written his preface
to it, Beresford found a Latin treatise by the Bishop of Avranches,
which he felt proved his argument to be right. He therefore added
a postscript to his translation, consisting of two passages from the

treatise along with his translation of and comments about them, "for

 

2Preface, p. xi.

117
the double purpose," he says, "of corroborating my own notions, and of
presenting to the Reader, in a short compass, a perfect Theory of
Translation." The Bishop offers six standards a "just Translation"
should meet: (1) "religious scrupulosity in exhibiting the thoughts";
(2) "fidelity in delivering the words"; (3) "extreme solicitude in
pursuing the general colour of the original work"; (A) "consummate
perspecuity"; (5) "terseness and elegance“; and (6) "a certain na-
tiveness of character, such as may keep off the suspicion that it is
but an interpretation of the Wbrk of another." The order of these
criteria is important. The first three are obligatory, and though all
three are of great importance, the faithful representation of meaning
is the first essential, verbal accuracy is the second consideration,
and "general colour," presumably what other commentators mean by both
"spirit" and "manner," comes last. Beresford offers no comment on the
less crucial criteria beyond saying that they also are extremely im-
portant-a pity, since the terms are so abstract that they might mean
a great many different things. But he assures us that the translation
that met these standards would be "faultless." The "cardinal duty" of
the translator, he says, is "Fidelity."

The order of precedence is a bit misleading, since it seems to
suggest that there is something more important than verbal accuracy.
When Beresford places the word after the sense, he does so merely to
provide for the rendering of Latin syntactic structures into English
structures when the two are not entirely equivalent. In reading his
,Agggig, it is never necessary, as it sometimes is in reading Andrews',
to consult the Latin original in order to puzzle out the English syn-

tax. When Beresford says that the translator must adhere "with the

118
utmost strictness" first to the meaning, then to the words, and finally
to the manner of his original, he construes "meaning" in a very limited
sense indeed.
As for metrics, he cites Dryden‘s remarks about the difficulties
rhyme creates and refers the reader to William.Cowper's remarks on
blank verse in the preface to his homer. Cowper argues

that a just translation of any ancient poet in
rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be
equal to the task of closing every couplet with
sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the
full sense and only the full sense of his original.
The translator's ingenuity, indeed, in this case,
becomes itself a snare, and the readier he is at
invention and expedient, the more likely he is to
be betrayed into the widest departures from.the
guide whom he professes to follow. . . .

There is indisputably a wide difference between
the case of an original writer and a translator.
In an original work, the author is free; if the
rhyme be of’difficult attainment, and he cannot
find it in one direction, he is at liberty to
seek it in another. . . . But in a translation
no such option is allowable; the sense of the
author is required, and we do not surrender it

‘ even to the plea of necessity. Fidel-

ity is indeed of the very essence of translation,
and the term.itself implies it. For which reason,
if we suppress the sense of our original, and
force into its place our own, we may call our work
an imitation, if we please, or perhaps a paraphrase.
but it is no longer the same author only in a dif-
ferent dress, and therefore it is not translation.3

Cowper is quoted here at such length not only to show the rationale of
Beresford's preference for blank verse, but also because Beresford's
quoting him.has led reviewers to believe he was attempting to copy
Cowper's style. In the Monthly Review of September, 1795, the critic

objects to Beresford's attempt to emulate Cowper, adding that Cowper's

 

3The Life and Works of William Cowper, Robert Southey, ed., in 8
vols. (London, 185h), VII, ixex.

119

Homer was hardly his best work. Furthermore, he notes, Beresford does
not explain what he means by the term."blank verse":

If by that term.he means such verse as Milton
wrote, we will readily acknowledge that a pref-
erence is due to it:--but if, as we rather sus-
pect, he gives that name to lines of ten syl-
lables, encumbered with pompous epithets and
inflated expression, and obscured by a forced
and unnatural transposition of the words, we
shall not scruple to pronounce with Eope that
it is not poetry, but prose run mad.

So much for the theory of translation offered in Beresford's preface.
To demonstrate that the translation is no better than the theory, the
reviewer offers three parallel passages from it and from.the version
by Pitt, whose object, he says, was not so much "to rival Mr. Dryden,
as to correct some errours in his translation," adding that "in this
attempt, he has succeeded so well as to preclude, in the opinion of men
of judgment, all hOpe of its ever being excelled."5 The sample pas-
sages, he believes, clearly show that Beresford has often perplexed
the sense he was so zealous to preserve, that his diction and syntax
are awkward and his metrics, rough.
Nearly a hundred years later, the critical view of Cowper's

Homer had.mellowed somewhat, but concerning Beresford's Aeneid, it re-
mained the same:

It was not until 1794 that another blank verse

translator showed himself. This was the Rev.

James Beresford, Fellow of Merton College, other-

wise known as the author of a popular jeu d'esprit

called the 'Miseries of Human Life', and of a

less successful polemic against Calvinism. Cowb

per's Homer had recently appeared, and had been

recognized to be, what it certainly is, a work of
real merit; and it was tempting to try whether

 

I'Vol. XVIII, ser. 2, p. 1..
5Ibid., p. 3.

120

the same process could not after all be made to

answer with Virgil. But Cowper's success, what-

ever it may have been, was due, not to the theories

of his preface, but to his practice as an original

poet: it established a case for blank verse as

wielded by Cowper, not as wielded by Mr. Beresford.6
Beresford himself did not claim.to be a follower of Cowper, whose
translation was published three years before his own, and I am in-
clined to suspect that he cited the preface to the Homer merely to
support his objections to rhyme, just as he was to cite the Bishop of
Avranches to give weight to his theory of translation. Beresford took
little notice of earlier translators of Vergil. He observed that Dry-
den was "on the whole the most successful of my numerous Predecessors"
but went on to point out that Dryden's choice of the heroic couplet
limited him.severely; As for the earlier blankaverse translators, they
had failed "only from unskillful management of the weapon with which
they assailed [the Latin text], not from any insufficiency in the wea-
pon itself."7

It is therefore somewhat surprising to find him indebted to a

member of that nameless company of failures. For often, where Joseph
Trapp's translation is both literal and in normal English syntactic
form, Beresford adopts it. In the following lines, for example, which
follow Dido's confession to her sister of her growing love for Aeneas:

Sic effata, sinum lacrymis implevit obortis.

Anna refert, O luce magis dilecta sorori,

(A IV, 30-31)

Trapp translates,

Thus having said,
She fill'd her Bosom with o'erflowing Tears.

 

6"The English Translators," pp. 90-91-
7Preface, p. viii.

121

Anna replies, 0 dearer than This Light
To me;

(A IV, 39-42)

Beresford echoes Trapp as he renders the lines literally, even more
literally than Trapp in that he does not adjust sorori to the speak-
er's point of view:

So said, she bath'd her breast with streaming tears.
Anna replies: 0 dearer than the light
To thy fond sister:

(A IV, 36:38)

And when Dido solemnly vows not to yield to her passion, but to
remain faithful to Sichaeus:

Sed.mihi vel tellus Optem prius ima dehiscat;
vel pater omnipotens adigat me fulmine ad umbras,
Pallentes umbras Erebi, noctemque profundam:

(A IV, 2L-26)

But I should prefer either that earth yawn to the
depths for me,

Or that the father almighty with a thunderbolt
drive me to the shades,

Pale shades of Erebus, and night profound.

the two translations are very close:
But may the yawning Earth devour’me quick:
Or nge with Thunder strike me to the Shades,
Pale Shades of Erebus, and Night profound;
(Trapp, A IV, 32-34)
But may deep earth first yawn below my feet,
Or Jove with thunders strike me to the shades,
Pale shades of Erebus, and night profound,
(Beresford, A IV, 30-32).
The English versions are also very literal, even to the point of pre-
serving Latin word order in the final line (where it happens to coin-
cide with English structure); but there are minor differences between
the original and the translations, differences which the two English-
men have dealt with in similar fashion. Vel...vel. optem, and Ea,

though possible to render verbum ex verbo, make for awkward expression

||I|| ||Iil lullll'l‘l
\‘lIlll ll||||

122

in English. The periphrastic gel is perhaps more common in Latin than
"either...or" in English, and it is often translated with the single
correlative; all the Agggids included in this study have ”or" alone
in this passage. And all five translators get around the difficulty
of the doubled optative subjunctive by ignoring‘gptgm (I should prefer)
and render iga (to the depths) freely. Andrews, as well as Trapp and
Beresford, reduces pater omnipotens to "Jove," but he does not use the
proper name as they do to eliminate four troublesome syllables. The
'words of Pallentes umbras Erebi,_noctemquegprofundum so strongly sug-
gest translation into cognates that one is surprised to find other
translators deviating from "Pale shades of Erebus and night profound."
Dryden and Pitt have both chosen to render this passage freely, ex?
panding somewhat. Beresford's view, no doubt, would be that they are
driven to do so by their need to rhyme, but it is more likely that
they have striven to preserve the impressiveness of Dido's vow, since
both call attention to the fact that her breaking it was a serious of-
fense. Whether such expansion actually is equivalent in its effect on
the reader to Vergil's gptgm’and thus closer to vergil's "meaning"
while farther from his words, is a moot point. If there is superior
fidelity to sense in the free translations, it should be noted that
Beresford's willingness to sacrifice words to meaning has not stretched
that far. Certainly, his approach is different from Dryden's and
Pitt's:

But first let yawning Earth a Passage rend;

And let me through the dark Abyss descend;

First let avenging Jove, with Flames from high,

Drive down this Body, to the neather Sky,

Condemn'd with Ghosts in endless Night to lye;
(Dryden, A IV, 32-36)

123

But oh! may Earth her dreadful gulf display,

And gaping snatch me from the golden day;

May I be hurl'd, by Heav'n's almighty sire,

Transfixt with thunder and involv'd in fire,

Down to the shades of hell from realms of light,

The deep, deep shades of everlasting night;

(Pitt, A IV, 35-40)

Even the literal-minded Andrews agrees here with Trapp and Beresford
only in part:

But first yawn Earth, and close me in her womb;

Jove‘s glaring arm first bolt me to the shades,

Pale shades of Erebus and Night's abyss:

(A IV, 24-26)

In "Night's abyss" he has made a minor syntactic adjustment to render
Ergggnggg substantivally, as if it were profundum. Andrews may have
used "Jove" to solve a metrical problem, but not the same problem that
Trapp and Beresfordfaced, since he has managed the rest of the line
very differently. He packs adigat and fulmine into the verb "bolt"
and therefore has to add Jove's "glaring armfl in order to fill out the
line.

The last phrase of Vergil's line,

Dat somnos adimitque, & lumina morte resignat.

(A IV, 24244)
is a crux, which commentators have interpreted to mean different things.
Ruaeus notes that Servius read resignat as equivalent to claudit,
(close), so that he attributed to Mercury the power to give or inter-
rupt sleep and to close men's eyes in death. Turnebus, on the other
hand, interpreted it to mean "open," as in a erit in busto, referring
to the Roman custom of opening the eyes of a corpse on its funeral
pyre-—the interpretation Rushton Fairclough favors in the Ioeb transla-
tion. Ruaeus himself preferred to read the ablative gggtg as "from

death" and zesignat in its usual meaning "open"; thus, he gives

12h
Mercury the power to call the dead back to life. In a note on the
line, Trapp repudiates Servius' suggestion and seems to waver between
Turnebus' and Ruaeus' interpretations:
Servius gives it a quite different Construction;
resignat , i.e., claudit, contrary to the Sense of
all other Expositors, to the Roman Custom of open-

ing the Eyes of the Dead upon the Funeral Piles,
and to the plain Meaning of the word.

fiesignat ex or a morte.
Like Dryden, Pitt, and Andrews, he settles upon Ruaeus' reading in his

translation.8 And again it is Trapp's line that Beresford echoes:

Gives, or breaks Sleep; and Eyes unseals from Death.
(Trapp, A IV', 318)

Sleep gives or breaks, and eyes unseals from.death:
(Beresford, A IV, 325).

In one parenthetical line, in which Vergil explains why Dido
called Sichaeus' old nurse instead of her own:

Namque suam patria antiqua cinis ater habebat:

(A IV, 633)
for the pyre's black ashes held her own in the olden
land.
(106b, I, 439)
he seems to have relied on Pitt:

(Her own lay bury'd in her native land)
(Pitt, A IV, 911)

(Her own lay buried in her native land, )
(Beresford, A IV, 858).

And he repeats Dryden's version of one hemistich, a perplexing line

 

8The other translations are:
he seals in Sleep, the wakeful sight;

And Eyes, thou clos'd in Death restores to Light.
(Dryden: A IV, 358-59)

Inyites or chases sleep with wond'rous pow'r,

And opes those eyes that death had seal'd before.
(Pitt, A IV, 358-59)

Gives or breaks sleep; and opens death-sunk eyes:
(Andrews, A IV, 2AA)

125
most commentators believe vergil would have revised if he had lived to
polish the Agggig:

Et matri praereptus amor.
(A IV, 516)

Bobbing the Mbther's love.
(Dryden, A IV, 747)

But even this small resemblance may be accidental. Trapp has also used
Dryden's reading of the Latin, though he has changed the form of the
verb:

To rob the Mother's Love.
(Trapp, A IV, 689)

Of the three English translators, only Trapp preserves the line as a
hemistich. Dryden fills out the line with the beginning of the next
sentence, and Beresford puts the phrase at the end of a line:

Of newbborn foal, robbing the mother's love.
(A IV, 701)

Such similarities as these between Beresford'slggngig and the great
rhymed translations are very rare.

Where the blankdverse versions resemble one another, Beresford is
always closer to Trapp than to Andrews. The agreement in many passages
can be explained by the fact that both Beresford and Trapp aimed at
verbal accuracy, and such resemblances would not necessarily prove that
Beresford used Trapp's text, if there were not so many of them, or if
there were more similarities between Beresford and Andrews, who also
aspired to translate literally. But there are many echoes of Trapp's
‘work in Beresford's and not nearly so many of Andrews'; it does,
therefore, seem probable that Beresford used Trapp's'Agggig_as a re-
source, especially when difficulties arose. Dryden's translation, on

the contrary, appears to have had no direct influence on him.

126
It was not until the end of the century that an English poet ap-

proached the task of translating vergil in a manner similar to Dryden's
and warton's. William.Sotheby's figgggics of VirgilgTranslated, which
first appeared in 1800, enjoyed a modest success. The Mont reviewer
found it worthy to take a place beside, though not instead of, the
Qggrgigg of Dryden and warton, who "were sufficient masters of the
beauties of their original and of the resources of English to render
[Vergil] as much justice as our language can afford."9 Not, of course,
that any translator had done or was likely to do justice to the orig-
inal: "to execute such a task without faults would be almost to equal
Virgil himself." Occasionally, the commentator found Sotheby‘s lines
"flat," his epithets "turgid” or "feeble" or "inelegant," and his
translation inaccurate. But, as if afraid that his discussion of
Sotheby's shortcomings might vitiate his general commendation, he con-
cluded by reminding the reader'of the magnitude of the task the trans-
lator had undertaken:

On the whole, when we say that Mr. Sotheby's ver-

sion of the Georgics may hold a respectable place

among the efforts of preceding posts on the same

subject, we bestow no inconsiderable praise. . . .

Mr. Sotheby has derived most respectable poetic

reputation from his former productions, and his

fame wi suffer no diminution from.his present
labours.

On this side of the Atlantic, Sotheby's Georgics came out with Arthur

Murphy's translation of "The Bees," and it was republished at least

 

9Monthly Review, ser. 2, XXXIV (Jan., 1800), 75-78.

loSotheby's previous publications were three ambitious poetic
works: A Tour through Parts of wales: Sonnets, Odes, and Other Poems,
Oberon in.two volumes from the German of weiland, and The Battle of the
Nil . The Siege of Cuzco, a tragedy in five acts published a few
months after the Geor ice, was not well received. Sotheby's later
works included a Homer in heroic couplets.

 

I II‘ ‘ll'tl‘l‘I-i I'll

127

twice in complete‘ygggils with the Eclogues of Francis wrangham and the
mg; of Dryden.ll

In a brief preface, Sotheby praises the grace, spirit, dignity,
and versification of Dryden's Vgrgil and the learning, refinement of
taste, and correctness of judgment evident in warton's, and he acknow-
ledges that he has tried to imitate their "excellencies." He also
pays tribute to the "general merit of the justly celebrated version of
the Georgics by the Abbe De Lille," a French translation published in
1770, which was highly regarded in both England and France. Since he
does not annotate his Georgics, Sotheby refers readers who are inter-
ested in discussions of particular passages to the Latin and English
version of John Martyn, which is also cited in warton's ygggil. Schol-
are are referred to the Latin text and commentary of Christian Gottlieb
Heyne, a massive work in nine volumes, published between 1767 and 1771.
Heyne brought the discoveries of a hundred years to bear upon the text,
and his edition supplanted that of Ruaeus, whose judgment had so often
guided Dryden and other translators of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.12

Though Dryden's influence is apparent in Sotheby's Georgics, it

is markedly weaker there than in Benson's or Warton's, no doubt at

 

11"The Bees" is Book XIV of Praedium rusticum.[The Country Estate]
by Jacques vaniere; this edition was published in New York in 1808.
The Cgmplete Works were published in New York in 1834 and 1848.

12Heyne's supremacy endured for’many years, in school texts as
well as in scholarly editions. I have used Vol. I of the Virgilii
Opera ania (London, 1831.). For the sake of uniformity, I have con-
tinued usually to quote Latin lines from the Ruaeus edition and have
indicated the one deviation from this practice. A comparison of the
two texts of the first Georgie reveals no significant differences,
though there are many in the commentaries.

 

 

I ‘.‘ll|l| I ll }! l‘ll'lllil'l II ‘I '1'! lulu .ll

128
least partly because of Sotheby's reliance upon new secondary sources.
I have found no lines in which Sotheby seems to be translating from De
Lille rather than from Vergil, and, as has been said, he does not
point out the particular lines in which he follows Heyne's interpreta-
tion. Their influence is to be traced in more subtle, though perva-
sive, differences between his work and that of his predecessors. It is
apparent in a number of passages. For example, when Vergil invokes the
agricultural gods, attributing to thml, among other benefits, the rain
which makes the seed grow:

Quique satis largum coelo demittitis imbreln.
(G I, 23)

Ruaeus' paraphrase is faithfully abstract:
qui effunditis e coelo pluviam copiosam in segetes,

(who lavish lentiful rain upon the cultivated fields
rm the SW 0

Trapp and Benson, in rendering the line as literally as possible, fol-
low the text in the same manner:
You
Who with large Show'rs refresh That Seed from Heav'n.
(Trapp, G I, 31-32)

And You, who on the Sown send down the kindly Rain:
(Benson, G I, 26)

without referring to Dryden's more graphic substitute for demittitis:

And you, who swell those Seeds with kindly Rain:
(G I, 29)

which Warton echoes :

0r swell with showers the cultivated grain.
(G I, 28)

Sotheby' s line,

0r feed with prosperous show'rs the cultur'd fields.
(G I, 28)

129
is not, however, simply a further movement toward a livelier image,
but is suggested by De Lille:
Qui versez l'eau des cieux, qui fecondez les champs.
(Who pour water from the skies, who feed the fields).
In another such passage, Vergil's list of the farmer's winter oc-
cupations includes:

Aut pecori signum, aut numeros impressit acervis.

(G I, 263)

(Either stamps a mark on the flocks or numbers on
the grain-stacks).

Ruaeus' note states that the sheep were marked either with a hot iron
or with dye:

Signum.imprimitur pecori, aut candente ferro, aut colore.
And the earlier translators are accordingly vague about the matter in
their versions of the first half of the line:

Then let him.mark the Sheep, or whet the shining Share.
(Dryden, G 1, 35A)

0r marks his Cattle, or his Sacks of Corn.
(Trapp, G I, 329)

0r stamps the Mark upon the fleecy Race,
(Benson, G I, 332)

Scoop troughs from trees, mark flocks, or sacks of wheat;
(warton, G I, 313)

Mark your fair flocks, or stamp your number'd sacks;
(Andrews, G I, 263)

Sotheby's translation,

0r head the two-horn'd forks, or brand the sheep;
(G I, 314)

reflects Heyne's commentary, which refers the reader to a parallel pas-
sage in the third Georgie:

Continuoque notas et numine gentis inurunt.
(Heyne, G III, 158)

I.

130

(And immediately they burn in the marks and the name
of the breed.)

Not all of Sotheby's agreements with Heyne, however, represent
differences between his reading of the original and Dryden's. Like
most eighteenth-century translators, Dryden used Ruaeus critically, de-
parting from.him whenever it seemed appropriate to do so. Nor does
Sotheby always follow Heyne to the letter. And he also uses De Lille
selectively. For example, De Lille complains that Ruaeus misunderstood
the phrase liggefacta volvere saxa (G I, #73) in vergil's account of
the eruption of Etna. Ruaeus had said that the words signified rocks
consumed and diminished by fire, or perhaps dry, porous pumice—stone,
or ashes. De Iille finds Ruaeus' interpretation contrary to both the
sense of the words and the physical facts. He cites the authority of
the Academy of Naples, who certainly ought to know what a volcanic
eruption is like, and whose account of the eruption of Vesuvius in 1737
rightly applauds the accuracy of Vergil's expressions.13 Neither Dry-
den nor Sotheby had deemed the point important, and in the two transla-
tions there is latitude for both interpretations:

What Rocks did ggtga's bellowing Mouth expire
From.her torn Entrails! what Floods of Fire!
(Dryden, G I, 636-37)
Wide seas of fire down shatter'd Aetna flow,
While globes of flame the red volcano threw,
And fervid rocks that lighten'd as they flew!
(Sotheby, G I, 564-66)
Sotheby's use of his predecessors‘ work is a far cry from pla-

giarism, but it is nonetheless apparent. warton's version of the

lines:

 

13Heyne also has a note on this line, with a cross reference to
line 576 of the third Aeneid. He also comments on the accuracy of Ver-
gil's observation.

131

Ille malum virus serpentibus addidit atris:
Praedarique lupos jussit, pontumque moveri:
Mellaque decussit foliis, ignemque removit:

(G I, 129-31)

reads:

He to fell serpents deathful venom gave,

Bade wolves destroy, and stormy ocean rave;

Conceal'd the fire, from leaves their honey shook;
(warton, G 1, 159-61).

Sotheby reshapes the verse, but under the influence of warton's diction:

Jove to the serpent fang new venom gave,
Commanded wolves to prowl, and swell'd the wave,
From leaves their honey shook, conceal'd the fire,

(G I, 161-63).
More often it is Dryden's phrases that he recasts. In the Latin,
the vision of the farmer who in peacetime plows up relics of the war
once fought in his field is:

Nec fuit indignum superis, bis sanguine nostro
Emathiam & latos Aemi pinguescere campos.
Scilicet & tempus veniet, quum finibus illis
Agricola, incurvo terram molitus aratro,

Dryden translates:

For this th'Emathian Plains once more were strow‘d
With Roman Bodies, and just Heav'n thought good

To fatten twice those Fields withQRoman Blood.
Then, after length of Time, the lab'ring Swains,

Who turn the Turfs of those unhappy Plains,
(G 1, 660-64).

 

Sotheby's version is his own:

The Gods twice fed broad Haemus with our host,

And bath'd with Roman blood th'Emathian coast.

There, after length of time, the peaceful swain

Who ploughs the turf that swells o'er armies slain,
(G 1. 589-92)

but the phrasing in the second couplet is colored by Dryden, as the

literal translation in the Loeb edition shows:

and the Powers above thought it not unseemly that
Emathia and the broad plains of Haemus should twice

132

batten on our blood. Yea, and a time shall come,
when in those lands, as the farmer toils at the
soil with crooked plough, . . .

(I, 115)

Often more than one source may be detected in a passage of Sothe-
by's translation. Like Trapp, warton, and Andrews, Sotheby repeats
the second line of Dryden's couplet verbatim:

In Iron Clouds conceal'd the Publick Light:
And Impious Mortals fear'd Eternal Night.
(Dryden, G 1, 630-31)

However, in his first line,

What time in iron clouds he veil'd his light,
(SOthebY: G I; 559)

he echoes warton as well:

With dusky redness veil‘d his chearful light
(G I, 51.3).

In his translation of Vergil's description of the signs of impending

st orms :

Saepe etiam stellas vento impendente videbis
Praecipites coelo labi: noctisque per umbras
Flammarwm longos a tergo albescere tractus:
Saepe levem paleam & frondes volitare caducas:
Aut summa nantes in aqua colludere plumas.

(G I, 365-69)
Sotheby again formulates his own version:

0ft shalt thou see, ere brooding stonms arise,
Star after star glide headlong down the skies,
And, where they shot, long trails of lingering light
Sweep far behind, and gild the shades of night;
0ft the fall'n foliage wing its airy way,
And floating feathers on the water play.
~ (G I, its-ts)

but owes rhymedwords and the entire concluding line to Dryden:

And oft before tempest'ous Winds arise,

The seeming Stars fall headlong from.the Skies;
And, shooting through the darkness, guild the Night
With sweeping Glories, and long trails of Light:
And Chaff with eddy Winds is whirl'd around,

133
And dancing Leaves are lifted from the Ground;
And floating Feathers on the waters play.
(G I , 501-07)

Both translations are literal, but not slavishly so: only lgnggg is
rendered in a cognate-it would be difficult to find a satisfactory
substitute for "long." But other words, impendente for example, might
also have been rendered in a cognate form in one or the other of the
translations. Sotheby's comet-tails, like Dryden's, "gild the night."
In short, the differences notwithstanding, the two English poets have
dealt with the text of this passage in.mnch the same way.

Eighty-three of Sotheby's rhymedwords occur in the corresponding
passages of Dryden's translation, more than half of them in sequences
of two or:more enddwords.14 These coincidences occur at the rate of
two for every fifteen lines, not a great density when compared with
Benson's one in four or warton's two in nine, but not very greatly dif-
ferent from Pitt's rate of two in every eleven lines. The commentators
to whom Sotheby turned for guidance, though not the same as those Dry-
den consulted, cleave to most of the same poetic values. And Sotheby's
lines are sprinkled with such conventional epithets as "genial power"
(as well as "genial salts," "genial show'rs," "genial earth," and "gen-
ial time"), "watery way," "finny prey,” "fleecy cloud," and many
others. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the admiration
Sotheby expresses for Dryden's translation or his candor when he says
he has endeavored to imitate it. If William.Sotheby's version of the
‘Qggggigg'does not represent Augustan poetry at its best, the fault does

not lie in his intention.

 

1“See Appendix A5.

CHAPTER VI

Dryden's Influence on his Successors

Dryden's translation of Vergil not only pleased his friends and
silenced many of his enemies; it also inspired other poets to emulate
him, and in some measure provided many of them with the means of doing
so. Assessing the extent of their indebtedness to him is complicated
by the fact that Dryden did not invent the prosody or the poetic
language of his Egggil. He used a long-established form.and a highly
conventional diction, much of which had been translated from.Vergi1
and other classical writers by English poets of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. As Professor Arthur Sherbo has pointed out to
me, he did, however, contribute some small part to that poetic dic-
tion, and his Eg_gil is a great repository of it. His Specific influ-
ence on his successors must be sought in echoes of his text in theirs,
in what is individual in his reading of Vergil, and in the manner in
which he and those who followed him approached the task of translation.

The value which eighteenth-century translators of Vergil attribu-
ted to Dryden's work varied considerably, not, however, in accordance
with their use of it. William Benson published his Virgil's Hus-
QEBQEE for the acknowledged purpose of exposing the shoddiness of Dry-
den's Vergil, which he called "rather a Version of Ruaeus's Interpret-
ation than of Virgil's Poetry." Yet he echoed it as often as Joseph

warton, who took a more charitable view of Dryden's weaknesses. The

13h

135
blankdverse translators-Joseph Trapp, Robert Andrews, and James Beres-

ford-criticized the license with which Dryden had rendered the original
and agreed in attributing his failure to his choice of ferm. Andrews
and Beresford dismissed his translation as the best a mere rhymer
could hope to do and did not borrow from it. Trapp, on the other
hand, distinguished between the translator, whom he considered care-
less, and the poet, to whom he listened with respect and sometimes
echoed. Christopher Pitt, James Beattie, and William.Sotheby, dis-
claiming even the intent to vie with so great a master as Dryden, said
they sought only to follow his example. Pitt's Agngid’often shows the
effects of his having read Dryden, and Sotheby's reveals less exten-
sive but more intentional use of it, whereas Beattie appears not to
have been influenced by any specific passages of Dryden's Eclogue .

In one respect, all the eighteenth-century translators were heirs
of Dryden. The view of the translator's task which underlies and per-
meates all their discussions, when they disagree as well as when they
agree, is so generally accepted that it is most readily seen in con-
trast with the stance of late nineteenth— and twentieth-century verse
translators. Dryden and his followers assumed a real and objective
correspondence between the original work and its best translation;
they believed that there was, at least potentially, an ideal English
.122811: to which an optimum.approach.might be made. They took serious-
ly the possibility of preserving, as it were, Vergil's speaking voice,
as it would have sounded if he had been born in Augustan England.

But, curiously, they did not take the next logical step of recognizing
how'relative and temporary a value that Vbrgilian voice would have.
They understood the problems involved in essaying to reproduce poetry

136

in a second language, but they would hardly have described their task
as an attempt, in Elinor wylie's metaphor, to transmute "bronze that
sings" into "singing water in a sieve."1 For them, a translation was
not, as it is for their‘modern counterparts, a personal interpretation,
as ephemeral as the taste of the audience to whom it is addressed.
Rather, eighteenth-century translation was, as Douglas Knight has
characterized it, a "bifocal event," which sought to achieve a stance
in the "permanent present“ through the translator's serious and intel-
ligent involvement in the two worlds of the original poem and of his
own society, and through his apprehension of a necessary analogical
connection between those worlds.2

Dryden's method of translating-and-collating is, by modern stan-
dards, at best a pointlessly cumbersome procedure and at worst pla-
giarism. But it follows logically from the Augustan view of the
translator's objectives. All of the poets examined in this study felt
impelled to take prefatory note of the work of their predecessors and
‘to pass judgment upon it that justified their own efforts and revealed
in what respects others had fallen short of producing the ideal English
.!2_8ilp Even Beattie, who readily conceded that his Pastorals might
on the whole be inferior to Dryden's and Warton's, suggested that his
rendering of some details might be more faithful than theirs, as a
shoemaker'might improve upon the foot of a great sculptor's status.

But only two of Dryden's successors, Whrton and Sotheby, systematically

 

l"Bronze Trumpets and Sea Water: 0n Turning Latin Into English,"
Ngtgg 3g Qgtgh the Wind (New York, 1921), p. 43.

2"Translation: the Augustan.Mode,“ in On Translation, Reuben A.

Brewer, ed., Haggard Stud, in CompI Lit., XXIII (Cambridge, Mass.,
1959). pp. 196-201..

137

subjected their own work to a painstaking collation with earlier trans-
lations and commentaries.3 Consequently, their use of his text often
is apparent in more sharply defined similarities in their versions of
Vergil than are to be found in the work of Benson and Pitt, who were
at least equally, and in some ways more deeply, indebted to Dryden.h
It is difficult to see this difference in the ways Dryden influenced
his successors by examining a single passage, for there is no uniform
line-by-line correlation between Dryden's translation and that of any
of his followers, much less among several of them. Yet there are some
passages in which the general characteristics of the translations may
be seen encapsuled, one of which is the vision of peace in the first
Georgie. The Latin text is:

Scilicet & tempus veniet, quum finibus illis

Agricola, incurvo terram.molitus aratro,

Exesa inveniet scabra rubigine pila:

Aut gravibus rastris galeas pulsabit inanes,

(G I, h93-96)
(And there shall surely come a time when in those lands
the farmer, working the earth with a crooked plow,

shall find rough-feeling javelins, corroded with rust,
or with heavy rakes shall clash upon empty helmets).

Dryden's translation reads:

Then, after length of Time, the lab'ring Swains,
Who turn the Turfs of those unhappy Plains,

 

3801“ others described their work as if they had followed Dry-
den's procedure; one may recall the claims for Melmoth's Vergil (see
Chapter I, pp. 6-7). And in the 1820's, John Ring made a similar
claim for his rather pOpular Vergil, citing Pitt and Dryden as his
English sources. But there is so little of his own work or of Dry-
den's in his Aeneid that it might almost be called a pirated edition

or Pitt 0

hSee Appendix B for a tabulation of enddword agreements of eight-
eenth-century Vergils with Dryden's. Appendix.C lists lines in which
Dryden's influence may be traced in the translations of Benson, Pitt,
‘Warton, and Sotheby.

138
Shall rusty Piles from the plough'd Furrows take,
And over empty Helmets pass the Rake.
(c I, 662-65)

In Sotheby's version of the first couplet,

There, after length of time, the peaceful swain,
Who ploughs the turf that swells o'er armies slain,
(G I, 591-92)

the rhyme-word for "swain" is "slain," and the sense of the original
is expanded to emphasize the double function of the plain as a culti-
vated field and as a military burial ground. Nevertheless, his debt
to Dryden is obvious. And it is equally clear that he has not used
Dryden's lines as the basis of the couplet which follows:

Shall cast, half-gnaw'd with rust, huge pikes in air,

And hollow helms that clash beneath the share,

(Sotheby, G I, 593-910.

In this passage, Warton's dependence upon Dryden is similar to Sothe-
by's, though it is less apparent. Warton's version is:

The time at length shall come, when lab'ring swains,

As with their ploughs they turn those guilty plains,

'Gainst hollow helms their heavy drags shall strike,

And clash 'gainst mamr a sword, and rusty pike.

(G I, 573-76)

There are five content words in the first line of Dryden's translation
and also of Warton's. Dryden's are “then," "length," ”time," "lab-
ring,” and "swains"; Warton adds "come," which translates veniet,
and omits "then," for which there is no Latin word. There also is no
Latin antecedent for “length.” And the only word that might suggest
"lab'ring" (molitus), though it is govemed grammatically by the word
translated "swain" (aggi cola), must be placed in the apposite phrase
where it takes "land" (terram) as its direct object. As the prose
metaphrase shows, the syntax of this Latin structure can readily be

reproduced in English: "the farmer, working the earth." But Dryden

139
has not chosen to render the syntax literally, and warton has followed
him.rather than Vergil. In his second line, Warton reproduces the syn-
tax.of igggrvo. . .aratro (with a crooked plow), like Dryden omitting
the adjective; and his "guilty plains" echoes Dryden's rhymedword.
By replacing Dryden's "unhappy" with "guilty," he sharpens the focus
upon the land and perhaps thus suggests Sotheby's expansion of the
line. Like Sotheby, he departs from.Bryden in the next couplet.
Benson's version is more succinct than Warton's or Sotheby's, and
the correSpondences between his translation and Dryden's, though tan-
talizing, are more problematic. His version is:
Nay, and the Time will come, when lab'ring Swains
Shall plough up rusty Piles within those Plains;
0r hollow Casques with clashing Barrows raise,
(G 1, 610-12)
In these lines, such verbal echoes as "lab'ring Swains" and rusty
Piles" are few, and Benson condenses the text.
Shall plough up rusty Piles within those Plains;

contains the sense of two of Dryden's lines:

Who turn the Turfs of those unhappy Plains,
Shall rusty Piles from.the plough'd Furrows take.

Yet a comparison of the two English texts with the Latin shows how
closely Benson has followed Dryden's reading of the original. Like
Dryden, he has transformed the incurvo, , ,aratro (crooked plow) into
a verb and reduced to "rusty Piles" the phrase exesa. L,scabra rubi-
gige pila (which may be translated either "corroded javelins, rough-
ened with rust" or ”rough-feeling javelins, corroded with rust").
Benson has also rearranged the Latin phrases exesa, , ,pila, finibus
illig, ggleas, , ,inanes, and Eggtig in accordance with Dryden's dis-
tribution of them.

140
In Pitt's Agggig there are many passages similar to Benson's in
that they contain few verbal echoes but marked parallels in the hand-
ling of the Latin text. In one such passage, Dido pleads with Aeneas
to reconsider his plan to leave Carthage:

per ego has lacrymas dextramque tuam, te,
(Quando aliud mihi jam.miserae nihil ipsa relique)
Per connubia nostra, per inceptos Hymenaeos;
Si bene quid de te merui, fuit aut tibi quicqumm
Dulce meum: miserere domus labentis; & istam
Oro, si quis adhuc precibus locus, exue mentem.

(A Iv, 311.49)
The Loeb translation is fairly literal:

By these tears and thy right hand, I pray thee-
since naught else, alas: have I left myself-by
our'marriage, by the wedlock begun, if ever I
deserved well of thee, or if aught of mine has
been sweet in thy sight, pity a falling house,
and if yet there be any room for prayers, put
away this purpose of thine.

(I, 1.17)

Dryden exPands her plea considerably:

Now by those holy vows, so late begun,
By this right Hand, (since I have nothing more
To challenge, but the Faith you gave before;)
I beg you by these Tears too truly shed,
By the new Pleasures of our Nuptial Bed;
If ever Dido, when you were most kind,
were pleasing in your Eyes, or touch'd your Mind;
By these my Pray'rs, if Pray'rs may yet have Place,
Pity the Fortunes of a falling Race.
(A IV, use-62)

And Pitt follows Dryden in expanding the lines to make Dido's appeal
more blatantly physical, in working up precibus (for prayers) into a
rhetorical flourish, and in generally smoothing the sentence structure
(both poets thus, by warton's criteria, failing to reproduce the par-
ticular beauty of Vergil's language).

The poets who produced rhymed‘zgggils differed not only in the

extent to which they depended upon Dryden, but also in the way they

lhl
used him. Dryden's version of the Georgics was the only English trans-
lation Benson consulted. Though he pointed out-and exaggerated-Dry-
den's debt to Thomas May and John Ogilby, he did not use these earlier
seventeenth-century Georgics for his own.work. He knew Dryden's ver-
sion so well that he often echoed it unconsciously. He cannot, of
course, have been unaware of the fact that he frequently depended upon
Dryden for rhymes, though he might have been surprised to discover
that one of every four of his rhymedwords agreed with Dryden's. Pitt
turned to Dryden somewhat less often for end-words, one is tempted to
say because Pitt, as an experienced if not an original poet, was more
skillful than Benson in devising rhymes. However, the difference in
their rates of borrowing rhymedwords is not great; about a fifth of
Pitt's echo Dryden's. And, like Benson, he often responded to the
Vergil whom Dryden had taught him to see. For warton and Sotheby,
Dryden's 111353;; had become one of several resources. Warton consulted
Benson, Trapp, and Martyn, as well as Ruaeus and Dryden; and Sotheby
relied upon Heyne, De Lille, warton, and Dryden. The result was that
in their translations Dryden's influence was limited to particular
passages which they selected deliberately. Dryden's influence is
much more extensive in warton's Georgics than in Sotheby's; warton
borrowed more freely from.him and consulted more secondary resources
that had also been influenced by him. Sotheby, on the other hand,
owed less to Dryden‘s English successors and had available to him.the
new resources of the Heyne commentary and the De Lille translation.
Their importance in shaping his Georgics is not easy to define.
Heyne's commentary is for the most part lexical and historical; he is

not much concerned with vergil's poetics. And De Lille represents no

1&2

major change in poetic values or in the objectives of the translator.
He was the first French translator of vergil to be highly praised by
an English counterpart, but he was also the first to declare himself
indebted to Dryden and to echo Dryden's criticism of the pedantry of
his own seventeenth-century French predecessors. He found Dryden's
Iygggil inferior to Pope's H2955, "less nervous, less brilliant, more
careless," but still a much better way of coming to know vergil than
the closest word-for-word or line-by-line translation.5 The fact re-
mains that any influence of Dryden which Sotheby received indirectly
through De Lille had been so diffused in the process of translation
from English to French and back again that it was no longer apparent
in verbal echoes.

Throughout the century, there were translators whose objective
was different from Dryden's in that they sought first of all to ren-
der vergil's lines as literally as possible. That primary commitment
forced them to reject the couplet form and to depart accordingly from
the language of Dryden's Egggil. One may suggest that they did not
reject the language itself out of hand, because they elected to use
many conventional epithets, images, and syntactic structures where
they did not interfere too much with verbal accuracy--that is to say,
because their diction often reminds the reader of Dryden even when it
does not echo the corresponding passage in his translation. Among
the blankdverse translators, only Joseph Trapp borrowed from Dryden's
Eggggg” and he borrowed less than any of the important translators

who used the couplet.

 

5"Discours Preliminaire," Oeuvres, Vel. II, Les Georgigues
(Paris, 1821.), xlix.

lh3

There was no trend toward either the couplet or blank verse in
eighteenth-century English Egggils. Both forms continued in use, the
couplet being favored by those who believed that a verse translation
must first of all be a work of art and then it must be faithful to its
original, and blank verse being chosen by those who reversed the pri-
orities. The high point of the influence of Dryden's 2:33;; came in
the mid-century in the translations by Pitt and warton. After that
time, its importance as a resource declined but did not by any means
cease to exist. The persistence of Dryden's influence for more than
a hundred years was largely due to the fact that the most competent
poets among his successors shared his principles of poetics and of
translation, and his influence was attenuated in the latter years of
the century as his successors came to rely not only upon his 1253;;
but also on those published during the interval between it and their
own, as well as upon new secondary resources. The translators of Ver—

gil neither led nor participated in a revolt against the poetic dic-

tion of John Dryden.

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Trapp, Joseph. .Lgctures on Poetry. ed. William Bowyer. London, 1742.

. The works of Virgil: Translated into Epglish Blank
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Trickett, Rachel. The Honest Muse: A Study in Augpstan Verse. Ox-
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Trowbridge, Hoyt. "Joseph Warton on the Imagination," 193, xxxv (1937),
73-87.

Tucker, Susie I. Protean Shape, A Study in Eighteenth-Century Vbcabu-
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t‘ 1! 1.7- .1. . if. Unitas-platen

1.5:“; ..t fi!h&t.§k.. u... ur; r 1. e .

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

Dryden's Rhymes in Eighteenth-Century Texts

1. In Benson's Virgil's Husbandry

Half rhymes:

And you blest Pow'rs, still present to the Swain,
(Benson, G I, 12)
Ye Fawns, propitious to the Rural Swains,
(Dryden, G I, 11)

And with thy Mbther's Boughs thy Temples crown.
(Benson, G I, 35)
And with thy Goddess Mother's Myrtle crown'd.

(Dryden, G I, 37)

Or, God of Ocean, wilt thou fix.thy Reign,

(Benson, G I, 36)
Or wilt thou, Caesar, chuse the watry Reign,

(Dryden, G I, 38)

To Thee alone the Mariner shall pray,

(Benson, G I, 38)
Then Mariners, in Storms, to thee shall pray,

(Dryden, G I, 40)

How Pontus heady Castor sends from far,
(Benson, G I, 73)
Thus Pontus sends her Beaver Stones from far;

(Dryden, G I: 87)

To skim the Surface with a Gentle Share

(Benson, G I, 86)
The Surface, and but lightly print the Share,

(Dryden, G I, 101)

Lest Mbisture, Here, desert the Barren Sand.
(Benson, G I, 89)
In watry Soils; or lest the barren Sand

(Dryden, G I, 104)

It profits oft to fire the Fruitless Ground,
(Benson, G I, 106)

150

151

With kindled Fires to burn the barren Ground;
(Dryden, G I, 123)

Nor e'er on Him, with an ungracious Eye,

(Benson, G I, 122)
Regards his Labours with a grudging Eye;

(Dryden, G I, 140)

Why shou'd I tell 92 Him, who, sown the Grain,
(Benson, G I, 134)
And broods indulgent on the bury'd Grain.

 

(Dryden, G I, 148)
Nor nothing hurt lewd Geese, and Thracian Cranes.

(Benson, G I, 155)
But glutton Geese, and the Stpyponian Crane,

(Dryden, G I, 179)
And whetted Human Minds with needful Care;

(Benson, G I, 160)
And whetted Humane Industry by Care;

(Dryden, G I, 188)

Before Great Jove no Swains subdu'd the Ground,

(Benson, G I, 162)
E're this, no Peasant vexfid the peaceful Ground;

(Dryden, G I, 191)

(For with the wedge the First did Wbod invade.)

(Benson, G I, 186)
(For Wedges first did yielding wood invade.)

(Dryden, G I, 216)

The Plank, the Sled, the Drag's incumbring Weight,
(Benson, G I, 202)
Of waggons, and the Cart's unwieldy Weight;

(Dryden, G I, 244)

The Earth-Boards double, double are the Ears;
(Benson, G I, 220)

 

On either side the Head produce an Ear,
(Dryden, G I, 252)

In hollow Caverns sculks the Speckled Toad,

(Benson, G I, 235)
The hissing Serpent, and the swelling Toad:

(Dryden, G I, 269)

Sown in the Spring are Beans: The crumbling Soil

(Benson, G I, 276)
Sow Beans and Clover in a rotten Soyl,
' (Dryden, G I, 304)

152
When with his Horns the Bull unbars the Year;

(Benson, G I,
The Bull beats down the Barriers of the Year;

(Dryden, G I,
Religion never has forbid the Swain

(Benson, G I,
From necessary works, the lab‘ring Swain.

(Dryden, G I,
The tedious Labours of the watchful Swain?

(Benson, G I,
What Cares must then attend the toiling Swain;

(Dryden, G I,
Down rush the Skies, and with impetuous Rain

(Benson, G I,
And oft whole sheets descend of slucy Rain,

(Dryden, G I,
What, oft observing, the sagacious Swain

(Benson, G I,
When Southern Blasts shou'd cease, and when the Swain

. (Dryden, G I,

The Sea Gulls haste, and sport around the Strand:

(Benson, G I,
When sportful Coots run skimming o're the Strand;

(Dryden, G I,
Or when the Horn prepares his lofty Flight,

(Benson, G I,
And mounting upward, with erected flight,

(Dryden, G I,
See, the Blood-thirsty Foe pursuing fkys,

(Benson, G I,
Tow'ring aloft, avenging Nisus flies,

(Dryden, G I,
Gay, with I know not what unusual Joys,

(Benson, G I,
To greet the Sun; and seis'd with secret Joy,

(Dryden, G I,
But when the Storm, and moist inconstant Skies

(Benson, G I,
But with the changeful Temper of the Skies,

(Dryden, G I,
With equal Rage, an universal war:

(Benson, G I,

Winds, Rain, and Storms, and Elemental War:
(Dryden,

G I,

279)
307)

341)
362)

391.)
422)

407)
1.37)

445)
487)

454)
1.97)

455)
499)

507)
549)

512)
560)

520)
565)

564)
612)

153

A Noise of Arms, and Clashing of the war
' (Benson, G I, 588)
Of Arms and Armies, rushing to the war:

(Dryden, G I, 639)

Where impious Mortals Right, and Wrong confound;
(Benson, G I, 622)
Where Fraud and Rapine, Right and wrong confound;

(Dryden, G I, 678)

As when the Carrs, swift pow‘ring thro' the Race,
(Benson, G I, 631)
So four fierce Coursers starting to the Race,

(Dryden, G I, 690)

Couplets (including two lines of a triplet):

And Pan, if thy Arcadia be thy Care,
Hither, thou Guardian of the Flock, repair:
(Benson, G I, 18-19)
And, if Arcadian Fleeces be thy Care,
From Fields and Mbuntains to my Song repair.

(Dryden, G

There where the op'ning Vbid attends thy Laws,
Betwixt the Maid, and the pursuing Claws;
(Benson, G

21-22)

H
v

H
to

42-43)
The Sgoypion ready to receive thy Laws,
Yields half his Region, and contracts his Claws.

(Dryden, G

The Harvest Here, There Vines more happy found,
Elsewhere the Trees with Golden Products crown'd,
And Herbs unbidden rise, and throng the Ground:

(Benson, G
A fourth with Grass, unbidden, decks the Ground:
Thus Tmolus is with yellow Saffron crown'd:

(Dryden, G

Or where the Vetches little Offspring stood,
Or Lupins brittle Stalks, and sounding wood:
(Benson, G I, 94-95)
At least where Vetches, Pulse, and Tares have stood,
And Stalks of Lupines grew (a stubborn W00d:)
(Dryden, G I, 110-11)

49-50)

H
b

68-70)

H
'-

83-84)

H
‘0

But still alternate Tillage aids your Toil;
Only, don't blush to glut the craving Soil

(Benson, G 1, 100-01)
But sweet Vicissitudes of Rest and Toyl
Make easy Labour, and renew the Soil. .
(Dryden, G I, 116-17)

154

Th'Eternal Sire's immutable Decrees
would not that Tillage shou'd be trac'd with Ease,
(Benson, G 1, 157-58)
The Sire of Gods and Men, with hard Decrees,
Forbids our Plenty to be bought with Ease:

(Dryden, G I, 183-84)

When scanty Food the Sacred Groves supply'd
And all relief Dodonean Oaks deny'd;
"——' (Benson, 0 1, 192-93)
When now Dodonian Oaks no more suppLy'd
Their Mast, and Trees their Forrest-fruit deny‘d.
(Dryden, G I, 221-22)

Vain without which, and impotent were Hope,
Nor could be sown, nor rise the joyful Cr0p:
(Benson, G I, 208-09)
These all must be prepar'd, if Plowmen hope
The promis'd Blessing of a Bounteous Crop.

(Dryden, G I, 247-48)

When bent betimes, and tamid the stubborn Bough,
Tough m receives the Figure of the Plough;
(Benson, G I, 217-18)
Young Elms with early force in Copses bow,
Fit for the Figure of the crooked Plough.
(Dryden, G I, 249-50)1

To smooth the Floor the Roller runs the Round,
And binding Chalk consolidates the Ground;
(Benson, G I, 227-28)
And let the weighty Rowler run the round,
To smooth the Surface of th'unequal Ground;

(Dryden, G I, 260-61)

Mark likewise, when the Almonds in the wood
Put on their Bloom, and fragrant Branches load:
(Benson, G I, 239-40)
Mark well the flowring Almonds in the wood;
If od'rous Blooms the bearing Branches load,

(Dryden, G 1, 272-73)

As those, who homewards steer the vent'rous way
Through Pontus, and the Jaws of th'stter-breeding Sea.
(Benson, G I, 264-65)

 

1It should be noted that there is no word in the Latin lines to
justify the translation "bough" (or "bow"):
Continuo in sylvis magni vi flexa domatur
In burim, & curvi fonmam accipit ulmus aratri.

(G 1. 169-70)

155
Than Saylors homeward bent, who cut their way

Thro' Helle's stormy Streights, and Oyster-breeding Sea.
(Dryden, G I, 296-97)

Here, the vast Snake in winding Circles glides,

And either Arctos, like a Stream, divides:
(Benson,

Around our Pole the spiry Dragon glides,

And like a winding Stream the Bears divides;

(Dryden,

Hence in the fickle Sky we Storms foreknow,

The Days of Harvest, and the Time to sow;
(Benson,

From hence uncertain Seasons we may know;

And when to reap the Grain, and when to sow:

(Dryden,

Others the Fork, or Setters point: Or twine
Light Osier Bands to stay the feeble Vine:

(Benson,
Or sharpen Stakes, or head the Forks, or twine
The Sallow Twigs to tye the stragling Vine:

(Dryden,

Happy the Seventh, next the Tenth, to joyn

Steers in the Taming Yoke, to fix the Vine,

And o'er the Loom extend the quiv'ring Twine,
(Benson,

The Sev'nth is, next the Tenth, the best to joyn

Young Oxen to the Yoke, and plant the Vine.

(Dryden,

He Gestures uncouth yields to Ceres' Praise,
And sings of Ceres in resounding Lays.
(Benson,
On Ceres let him.sall, and Ceres praise
With uncouth Dances, and with Country Lays.

(Dryden,

E'er Winds arise: 0r, swells the working Flood;

Or a harsh Crash is heard throughout the wood;
(Benson,

Soft whispers run along the leavy woods,

And Mountains whistle to the murmfiring Floods:

(Dryden,

And far behind, thro' gloomy Shades of Night,
Glitter and whiten the long Trails of light:
(Benson,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G 1,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

And, shooting through the darkness, guild the Night

With sweeping Glories, and long trails of Light.
(Dryden,

G 1,

308-09)

334-35)

316-17)

344-45)

334-35)

357-58)

360-62)

379-80)

439-40)

481-82)

wads)

491-92)

459-60)

503-04)

156

Then with the swelling Dikes swims all the Plain;

Then ev'ry Seaman on the foamy Main

Quick gathers up the Sails all drench'd with Rain:

(Benson,
The Clouds are crush'd, a glut of gather'd Rain
The hollow Ditches fills, and floats the Plain,
And Sailors furl their dropping Sheets amain.

(Dryden,

Now may you see wide Ocean's various Fowls;

Or those that haunt Cayster'S‘well-lov'd Pools;
(Benson,

Besides, the sev'ral sorts of watry Fowls,

That swim.the Seas, or haunt the standing Pools:

(Dryden,

Nor from less certain Signs, the Swain descrys

Unshow'ry Suns, and bright, expanded Skies;

. (Benson,

Then after Show'rs, 'tis easie to descry

Returning Suns, and a serener Sky:
(Dryden,

You'll ne're be taken by th'ensuing Day,

Nor shall Fair Nights, insidious, Thee betray:
(Benson,

By them thou shalt foresee the following day;

Nor shall a starry Night thy Hopes betray.

(Dryden,

Ah! what can Leaves to guard the Grapes avail?
So rattling bounds on Roofs the horrid Hail!
(Benson,
When ridgy Roofs and Tiles can scarce avail,
To barr the Ruin of the ratling Hail.
(Dryden,

He, even giddy Tumults oft declares,

And treach'rous Falshood, and audacious wars:
(Benson,

The change of Empires often he declares,

Fierce Tumults, hidden Treasons, Open wars.

(Dryden,

In Rust obscure he veil'd his Beamy Light,

And th'impious Age fear'd an eternal Night:
(Benson,

In Iron Clouds conceal'd the Publick Light:

And Impious Mbrtals fear'd Eternal Night.

(Dryden,

Ne'er did such Lightning flash along the Sky,
Or baleful Comets blaze so thick on high:
(Benson,

G I,

A65-67)

511-13)

478-79)

527-28)

h92-93)

539-h0)

530-31)

573-74)

556-57)

599-600)

576-77)

626-27)

580-81)

630-31)

60h-O5)

157

Such Peals of Thunder never pour'd from high;
Nor forky Light'nings flash'd from such a sullen Sky.

(Dryden, G I, 655-56)

A ghastly Sight the squallid Field affords,
And bending Scythes are hammer'd into Swords:
(Benson, G I, 626-27)
The Plain no Pasture to the Flock affords,
The crooked Scythes are streightned into Swords:
(Dryden, G I, 683-84)

Passages of three consecutive lines:

The Field lies gasping, and the Plants decay;
See. how he labours on the Hanging Brow,
Extends the Path, and tempts the Springs to flow:
(Benson, G I, 138-LO)
And shrivell'd Herbs on with'ring Stems decay,
The wary Ploughman, on the Mountain's Brow,
Undams his watry Stores, huge Torrents flow;
(Dryden, G I, 158-60)

Then Sailors quarter'd Heav'n, and found a Name
For ev'ry fixt, and ev'ry wandring Star,
The Shining Bull, and Arctos' Beamy Car;
(Benson, G I, 177-79)
Then Sailers quarter'd Heav'n, and found a Name
For ev' ry fixld and ev'ry wandring Star:

The Pleiads, Hyads, and the Northern Car.
(Dl'yden, G 1,208-100

For this, his 93b the werld's Great Light divides,
And by twelve Stars his certain Passage guides:
Five Zones the Heav'ns infold: With constant Sun,
(Benson, G I, 29h-96)
For this, thro' twelve bright Signs Np llo guides
The Year, and Earth in sev'ral Climes divides.
Five Girdles bind the Skies, the torrid Zone
Glows with the passing and repassing Sun.
(Dryden, G I, 319-22)

The Rains condense: More furious Auster roars:
Now with vast Wind the woods, now lashes He the Shoars.
In fear of this, observe the Mbnthly Signs:
(Benson, G I, 417-19)
The waves on heaps are dash'd against the Shoar,
And now the woods, and now the Billows roar.
In fear of this, observe the starry Signs,
(Dryden, G I, 1.57-59)

And dive, and wash, and proudly wash in vain:
Then with full Voice the Rook the Show‘r demands,
And solitary Stalks along the scorching Sands:
(Benson, G I, #85-87)

158

Then lave their Backs with sprinkling Dews in vain,
And stem the Stream to meet the promis'd Rain.
The Crow with clam'rous Cries the Show4r demands,
And single stalks along the Desart Sands.
(Dryden, G I, 531-34)

Passages of four consecutive lines:

Thee I invoke: Do Thou assist my Course,
And —to the bold Attempt give equal Force;
Pity with me th'unskilful Peasants Cares,
Begin your Reign, and hear ev' n now our Pray'rs.
(Benson, G 1,51-54)
But thou, propitious Caesar, guide my Course,
And to my bold Endeavours add thy Force.
Pity the Poet's and the Ploughman's Cares,
Int'rest thy Greatness in our mean Affairs,
And use thy self betimes to hear and grant our Pray' rs.

(Dryden, G I, 59-63)

Whence genial Moisture hastens through the Earth,
Slides to the Root, and chears the tender Birth:
Or that the Heat the hollow Glebe constrains,
Braces each Nerve, and knits the gaping Veins;
(Benson, G I, Ila-l7)
Whether from hence the hollow WOmb of Earth
Is warmfld with secret Strength for better Birth,
Or when the latent Vice is cur'd by Fire,
Redundant Humours thro' the Pores expire;
Or that the warmth distends the Chinks, and makes
New Breathings, whence new Nourishment she takes;
Or that the Heat the gaping Ground constrains,
New knits the Surface, and new Strings the veins;
(Dryden, G I, 126.33)

Fright off the Birds, and thin the Shady Plain,
And with repeated vows call down the Rain,
Ah! bootless on another's Heaps you'll look,
And comfort Hunger with the shaken Oak.
(Benson, G I, 202-05)
Unless the Boughs are IOpp‘d that shade the Plain,
And Heav'n invok'd with Vows for fruitful Rain:
On other Crops you may with envy look,
And shake for Food the long abandon'd Oak.
(Dryden, G I, 235-38)

For various Labours each revolving Mbon
Gives ngpy Days; the Fifth be sure to shun:
Then, the relentless Furies bears the Earth
And pale fac'd Pluto at an impious Birth:
(Benson, G I, 3h9-52)

159

The lucky Days, in each revolving Moon,

For Labour chuse: The Fifth be sure to shun;
That gave the Furies and pale Pluto Birth,

And arm'd, against the Skies, the Sons of Earth.

(Dryden, G I, 37l-7h)

In furious Gulphs absorps the whirling woods
Imperial Po, the Sov'reign of the Floods;
And pouring onwards with relentless Sway,
Bears, with their ruin'd Stalls, the Herds away:
(Benson, G I, 596-99)
Then rising in his Might, the King of Floods,
Rusht thro' the Forrests, tore the lofty woods;
And rolling onward, with a sweepy Sway,
Bore Houses, Herds, and lab'ring Hinds away.

(Dryden, G I, 649-52)

And twice Aemathia did just Heav'n think good,
And Haemus' Wasts to fatten with our Blood:
Nay, and the Time will come, when lab'ring Swains
Shall plough up rusty Piles within those Plains;
(Benson, G I, 608-11)
For this, th'Emathian Plains once more were strow‘d
With Roman Bodies, and just Heav'n thought good
To fatten twice those Fields with Roman Blood
Then, after length of Time, the lab'ring Swains,
Who turn the Turfs of those unhappy Plains,

(Dryden, G I, 659—63)

Longer passages in which one rhymedword does not occur in Dryden:

With all the diff'rent Seasons that appear;
Though still the same, still constant is the Year.
Whenever it befalls, that pow'ring Rain,
And Storms of Sleet withhold the eager Swain;
Then is it given to compleat with Care
(Benson, G I, 32A-28)
Observe what Stars arise or disappear;
And the four Quarters of the rolling Year.
But when cold Weather and continu'd Rain,
The lab'ring Husband in his House restrain:
Let him.forecast his Work with timely care,

(Dryden, G I, 348-52)

Yet 13 it Then the Time to strip the wood
Of Acorns, or the Olive's shining Food,
The Laurel's Freight, and Myrtle stain‘d in Blood:
Then Toils for Stags, for Cranes to fix the Snare,
And trace the Mazes of the long-ear'd Hare:
Then, with the Whirling Sling to stay the 292,
(Benson, G I, 385-90)

160

Yet that's the proper Time to thrash the WOod
For Mast of Oak, your Fathers homely Food.
To gather Laurel-berries and the Spoil
Of bloody Myrtles, and to press your Oyl.
For stalking Cranes to set the guileful Snare,
T'inclose the Stags in Toyls, and hunt the Hare.
With Balearick Slings, or Gnossian Bow,
To persecute from far the flying Doe;
(Dryden, G I, 409-16)

Then soft the Slumbers on the verdant Ground;
Then with thick Shades the lofty Mountains crown'd:
Let all Thy Rustic Youth, at Ceres' shrine,
With bended Knees confess the Pow'r Divine:
Mix.you the fragrant Combs, with Milk and gentle Wine.
Round the new Fruits thrice let the Victim go:
Let shouting Crowds attend the solemn Show,
(Benson, G I, A28—3h)
For then the Hills with pleasing Shades are crown'd,
And Sleeps are sweeter on the silken Ground: .
With milder Beams the Sun securely shines;
Fat are the Lambs, and luscious are the Wines.
Let ev'ry Swain adore her Pow'r Divine,
And Milk and Honey mix with sparkling Wine:
In long Procession, shouting as they go;
(Dryden, G I, 467-74)

By Night parch'd Meads are cut, and Stubble light,
Distilling Moisture ne'er deserts the Night:
Thus by the Wintry Light of sparkling Fire
One splits the Match, till late the Flames expire:
Mean while the Dame sings in the glimm'ring Room,
To chear the Labour of the rattling Loom;
Or from the Must, by Vulcan thickned, skims
The frothy Surges on the brazen Brims.
(Benson, G I, 367-74)

Parch'd Meads and Stubble mow, by Phoebe's Light;
Which both require the Coolness of the Night:
For Moisture then abounds, and Pearly Rains
Descend in Silence to refresh the Plains.
The Wife and Husband equally conspire,
To work by Night, and rake the Winter Fire:
He sharpens Torches in the glim'ring Room,
She shoots the flying Shuttle through the Loom:
Or boils in Kettles Must of Wine, and skims
With Leaves, the Dregs that overflow the Brims.

' (Dryden, G I, 385—9L)

161
2. In Pitt's Fourth Aeneid

Half rhymes:

Who is this heroe, this our godlike guest?

(Pitt, A IV, 12)
With strange Ideas of our Trojan Guest?

(Dryden, A IV, 14)

Too like the tokens of my former flame.

(Pitt, A IV, 34)
Too like the Sparkles of my former Flame.

(Dryden, A IV, 31)

Shall see a potent town and empire rise.
(Pitt, A IV, 76)
How will your Empire spread, your City rise

(Dryden, A IV, 6h)

Caress, invite your godlike guest to stay,
(Pitt, A IV, 80)
And still invent occasions of their Stay;

(Dryden, A IV, 69)

Confirm'd her hOpes, and fann'd the rising flame.

(Pitt, A IV, 87)
And added Fury to the kindled Flame.

(Dryden, A IV, 7A)

To Ceres, Bacchus, and the God of Day.
(Pitt, A Iv, 91)

(Dryden, A IV, 78)

Shows him her Tyrian wealth, and growing town;

(Pitt, A IV, 115)
Displays her Tyrian wealth, and rising Town,

(Dryden, A IV, 102)

To Ceres, Bacchus, and the God of Day:

In fancy sees her absent prince, and hears

(Pitt, A IV, 131)
Absent, her absent Heroe sees and hears;

(Dryden, A IV, ll?)

In storms of hail, and deluges of rain:

(Pitt, A IV, 185)
With Hail, and Thunder, and tempestuous Rain:

(Dryden, A IV, 171)

No golden slumbers seal her watchful eyes;
(Pitt, A IV, 273)
No Slumbers ever close her wakeful Eyes.

(Dryden, A IV, 267)

162

Reports a truth, or publishes a lye.
(Pitt, A IV, 277)

Things done relates, not done she feigns; and mingles Truth with

Eyes.
(Dryden, A IV, 271)

The godlike stranger to her bridal bed;

(Pitt, A IV, 281)
Admits into her Throne and Nuptial Bed

(Dryden, A IV, 276)

With his unmanly, soft, luxurious train,

(Pitt, A IV, 317)
And now this other Paris, with his Train

(Dryden, A IV, 3114)

Neglects the promis'd walls decreed by fate.

(Pitt, A IV, 333)
Nor minds the future City, giv'n by Fate;

(Dryden, A IV, 332)

A warlike realm! and give the world the law.

(Pitt, A IV, 339)
And on the conquer'd WOrld impose the Law.

(Dryden, A IV, 339)

Atlas, whose head supports the starry skies;

(Pitt, A IV, 363)
Whose brawny Back supports the starry Skies:

(Dryden, A IV, 363)

So, from his kindred mountain, Hermes flies

(Pitt, A IV, 375)
And near the surface of the water flies.

(Dryden, A IV, 377)

And, fir'd with eager joy, the prince obey.
(Pitt, A IV, A25)
They hear with Pleasure, and with haste obey.

(Dryden, A IV, 421.)

(For what can 'scape a lover's piercing eyes,)

(Pitt, A IV, h27)
(What Arts can blind a jealous woman's Eyes!)

(Dryden, A IV, A26)

By those first pleasures of the bridal bed;

(Pitt, A IV, A57)
By the new Pleasures of our Nuptial Bed;

(Dryden, A IV, h58)

163

For thee I lost my honour and my fame,

(Pitt, A IV, 465)
For you alone I suffer in.my Fame;

(Dryden, A IV, 465)

By me defrauded of his destin'd reign.

(Pitt, A IV, 510)
Of his defrauded Fate, and destin'd Reign.

(Dryden, A IV, 509)

No heroe got thee, and no goddess bore.

(Pitt, A IV, 526)
Not sprung from Noble Blood, nor Goddess born,

(Dryden, A IV, 523)

Whole trees they bring, unfashion'd from the wood,

(Pitt, A IV, 576)
Of its green Arms despoil'd the growing wood,

(Dryden, A IV, 577)

Pour from the town, and darken all the shores.

(Pitt, A IV, 578)
With Trojan Bands that blacken all the Shore:

(Dryden, A Iv, 579)

Safe in their darksom cells the treasur'd prey;

(Pitt, A IV, 582)
The plunder'd Forrage of their yellow Prey.

(Dryden, A IV, 585)

Thy eyes survey'd the tumult on the shore;
(Pitt. A IV, 594)
When, from the Tow'r, she saw the cover'd Shore,

(Dryden, A IV, 592)

Whither, ah whither, will the tyrant fly?

(Pitt, A IV, 623)
Whom does he shun, and whither would he fly;

(Dryden, A IV, 620)

The name of wedlock he disclaims no more:
(Pitt, A IV, 628)
The Nuptials he disclaims I urge no more;

(Dryden, A IV, 62A)

Tho' all his scatter'd honours strow the ground,
(Pitt, A IV, 6A6)
With Leaves, and falling Mast, they spread the Ground,
(Dryden, A IV, 642)

Safe in his strength, and seated in the rock,

(Pitt, A IV, 647)
Or shaken, clings more closely to the Rocks:

(Dryden, A IV, 6h5)

164

80 deep the root in hell's foundation lies.

(Pitt, A IV, 650)
So deep in Earth his fixfld Foundations lye.

(Dryden, A IV, 647)

Still firm the dictates of his soul remain,

(Pitt, A IV, 653)
But the firm purpose of his Heart remains.

(Dryden, A IV, 652)

Her husband seems to summon her away.

(Pitt, A IV, 670)
She thought she heard him summon her away;

(Dryden, A IV, 669)

Trees leave their mountains at her potent call;

(Pitt, A IV, 713)
The yawning Earth rebellows to her Call;

(Dryden, A IV, 708)

But rears a pile of oaks and firs on high,

(Pitt, A IV, 729)
The cloven Helms and Pines are heap'd on high;

(Dryden, A IV, 729)

Her robes were gather'd, and one foot was bare.
(Pitt, A IV, 750)
One tender Foot was shod, her other bare;

(Dryden, A IV, 751)

Then fly her fury while thou yet canst fly,

(Pitt, A IV, 811)
Haste swiftly hence, while thou hast pow'r to fly.

(Dryden, A IV, 813)

And not one Trojan left upon the shore;

(Pitt, A IV, 836)
With headlong haste they leave the desert Shores,

(Dryden, A N, 837)

Thou too in fillets bind thy aged brows.

(Pitt, A IV, 916)
With sacred Fillets, bind thy hoary Brow.

(Dryden, A IV, 91A)

Glows on her cheek, and kindles in her face.

(Pitt, A IV, 928)
With livid Spots distinguish'd was her Face,

(Dryden, A IV, 923)

For no such end bestow'd;-—the conscious bed,

(Pitt, A IV, 931)
Which once he wore, and saw the conscious Bed,

(Dryden, A IV, 932)

165

Shall I then die, and unreveng'd? (she said,)

(Pitt, A IV, 948)
Then kiss'd the Couch; and must I die, she said;

(Dryden, A IV, 944)

Clip'd from her head the fatal golden hair;
(Pitt, A IV, 1005)
The Sisters had not cut the topmost Hair;
- (Dryden, A IV, 1000)

The solemn offering to the pow'rs below;

(Pitt, A IV, 1006)
Nor made her sacred to the Shades below.

(Dryden, A IV, 1002)

Couplets (including two lines of a triplet):

The morn had chas'd the dewy shades away,
And o'er the world advanc'd the lamp of day;
(Pitt, A IV, 7-8)
Now, when the Purple Morn had chas'd away
The dewy Shadows, and restor'd the Day;
(Dryden, A IV, 7-8)

Sure he descends from some celestial kind;
For fear attends the low degenerate mind.
(Pitt, A IV, 15-16)
Fear ever argues a degenerate kind,
His Birth is well asserted by his Mind.
(Dryden, A IV, 17-18)

My love he had, and ever let him have,
Interr'd with him, and buried in the grave.
(Pitt, A IV, 45-66)
No; he who had my VOws, shall ever have;
For whom I lov'd on Earth, I worship in the Grave.
(Dryden, A IV, 38-39)

The queen before the snowy heifer stands,
Amid the shrines, a goblet in her hands;
(Pitt, A IV, 94-95)
The beauteous Queen before her Altar stands,
And holds the Golden Goblet in her Hands:
(Dryden, A IV, 81-82)

Soft flames consume her vitals, and the dart,
Deep, deep within, lies festering in her heart.
(Pitt, A IV, 106-07)
With fruitless Care; for still the fatal Dart
Sticks in her side; and ranckles in her Heart.
(Dryden, A IV, 99-100)

166

But when the setting stars to rest invite,
And fading Cynthia veils her beamy light;
(Pitt, A IV, 126-27)
Then, when they part, when Phoebe's paler Light
Withdraws, and falling Stars to Sleep invite,
(Dryden, A IV, 115-16)

With trifling play her furious pains beguil'd;
In vainl-the father charms her in the child.
(Pitt, A IV, 135e36)
And seeks the Father's Image in the Child,
If Love by Likeness might be so beguil'd.
(Dryden, A IV, 121-22)

The works and battlements neglected lie,
And the proud structures cease to brave the sky.
(Pitt, A IV, 140-41)
The Mounds, the works, the walls, neglected lye,
Short of their promis'd height that seem'd to threat the Sky.
(Dryden, A IV, 127-28)

Her steed, with gold and purple cover'd round,
Neighs, champs the bit, and foaming paws the ground.
(Pitt, A IV, 203-04)
Proud of his Purple Trappings, paws the Ground;
And champs the Golden Bitt; and Spreads the Foam around.
(Dryden, A IV, 192-93)

As when from Lycia bound in wintry frost,

Where Xanthus' streams enrich the smiling coast,

. (Pitt, A IV, 215-16)

Like fair A 0110, when he leaves the frost

Of wintry Xanthus, and the Lycian Coast;
(Dryden, A IV, 204-05)

Meantime loud thunders rattle round the sky,
And hail and rain, in mingled tempest, fly;
(Pitt, A IV, 241-42)
Mean time, the gath'ring Clouds obscure the Skies;
From Pole to Pole the forky Lightning flies;
(Dryden, A IV, 231-32)

Through all his realms, in honour of his sire;
And watch'd the hallow‘d everlasting fire;
(Pitt, A IV, 294-95)
In Ammgn's Honour, his Coelestial Sire;
A hundred Altars fed, with wakeful Fire:
(Dryden, A IV, 288—89)

Or earth's unmeasur'd regions, as he flies,
wrap'd in a rapid whirlwind, down the skies.
(Pitt, A IV, BSA-55)
And whether o're the Seas or Earth he flies,
With rapid Force, they bear him.down the Skies.
(Dryden, A IV, 352-53)

167

A sword all starr'd with gemms, and Spangled o'er
With yellow jaspers, at his side he wore;
(Pitt, A IV, 383-84)
A Purple Scarf, with Gold embroider'd o're,
(Queen Dido's Gift) about his waste he wore;
(Dryden, A IV, 384-85)

The Lord of heav'n and earth, almighty Jove,
With this command dispatch'd me from above;
(Pitt, A Iv, 393-94)
Forgetful of thy own? All pow'rful Jove,
Who sways the Wbrld below, and Heav'n above,

(Dryden, A IV, 392-93)

But now, fair queen Apollo's high command
Has call'd me to the fam'd Italian land;
(Pitt, A IV, 497-98)
But now the Delphian Oracle Commands,
And Fate invites me to the Latian Lands.
(Dryden, A IV, 496-97)

My vengeful spirit shall thy torments know,
And smile with transport in the realms below.
(Pitt, A IV, 561-62)
At least my Shade thy Punishment shall know;
And Fame shall Spread the pleasing News below.
(Dryden, A IV, 560-61)

Stung with the pains and agonies of love,
Still he regards the high commands of Jove;
(Pitt, A IV, 571-72)
Tho' much he mourn'd, and labour'd with his love,
Resolv'd at length, obeys the Will of Jove;
(Dryden, A IV, 570-71)

Thus pray'd the queen; the sister bears in vain
The moving message, and returns again.
(Pitt, A IV, 637e38)
But all her Arts are still employ'd in vain;
Again she comes, and is refus'd again.

(Dryden, A IV, 634-35)

A marble structure; this she dress's around
With snowy wool; with sacred Chaplets crown'd.
(Pitt, A IV, 667-68)
That honour'd Chappel she had hung around
With snowy Fleeces, and with Garlands crown'd:
(Dryden, A IV, 665-66)

Then her sad sister she with smiles address'd,
Hope in her looks, but anguish at her breast:
(Pitt, A IV, 695-96)
The Time and Means, resolv'd within her Breast,
She to her mournful Sister, thus address'd.
(Dryden, A IV, 690-91)

168

Go then, erect with speed and secret care,
Within the court, a pile in open air.
(Pitt, A IV, 717-18)
Within the secret Court, with silent Care,
Erect a lofty Pile, expos'd in Air:
(Dryden, A IV, 712-13)

Next big with death, the sword and robe she spread,
And plac'd the dear, dear image on the bed.
(Pitt, A IV, 733-34)
The Spoils and Sword he left, in order Spread:
And-the Man's Image on the Nuptial Bed.
(Dryden, A IV, 73A-35)

Now with a sacred cake and lifted hands,
All bent on death, before her altar stands
(Pitt, A IV, 747-48)
A leaven'd Cake in her devoted Hands
She holds, and next the highest Altar stands:
(Dryden, A IV, 749-50)

She calls to witness every god above,
To pay due vengeance for her injur'd love.
(Pitt, A Iv, 753-54)
And ev'ry Pow'r, if any rules above,
Who minds, or who revenges injur'd Love.

(Dryden, A IV, 755-56)

Or, slighted in my turn with haughty pride,
Court the fierce tyrant whom I once deny'd?
(Pitt, A IV, 773-7A)
Become a Supplyant to Hyarba's Pride,
And take my turn, to Court and be deny'd!
(Dryden, A IV, 775-76)

Fly,-or the floods shall soon be cover'd o'er
With numerous fleets, and armies crowd the shore,
(Pitt, A IV, 813-14)
The Sea with Ships will soon be cover'd o're,
And blazing Firebrands kindle all the Shore.
(Dryden, A IV, 814-15)

With the same ardor fir'd, the shouting train
Fly, seize their oars, and rush into the main.
(Pitt, A IV, 833-34)
An emulating Zeal inspires his Train;
They run, they snatch; they rush into the main.
(Dryden, A IV, 835-36)

Now o'er the glittering lawns Aurora spread
Her orient beam, and left her golden bed.
(Pitt, A IV, 839-40)
Aurora now had left her Saffron Bed,
And beams of early Light the Heav'ns o'respread,
. (Dryden, A IV, 839-40)

169

Still let him.wander, toss'd from.place to place,
Far from his country, and his son's embrace,
(Pitt, A IV, 883-84)
let him.for Succour sue from place to place,
Torn from his Subjects, and his Son's embrace,
(Dryden, A IV, 884-85)

Fight, when your pow'r supplies so just a rage;
Fight now, fight still, in every distant age;
(Pitt, A IV, 904-05)
Now, and from hence in ev'ry future Age,
When Rage excites your Arms, and Strength supplies the Rage:

(Dryden) A IV, 899‘900)

Go, Barce, go, and bid my sister bring
The sable victims for the Stygian king;
But first be sprinkled from the limpid spring.
(Pitt, A IV, 912-14)
The Sheep, and all th'attoneing Off'rings bring;
Sprinkling her Body from the Crystal Spring
(Dryden, A IV, 911-12)

Stood still, and paus'd a moment,--then she cast
Her body on the couch, and spoke her last:
(Pitt, A IV, 933-34)
Then on the Couch her trembling Body cast,
Repress'd the ready Tears, and spoke her last.
(Dryden, A IV, 93A-35)

My fatal course is finished, and I go
A ghost majestic to the realms below.
(Pitt, A IV, 939-40)
My fatal Course is finish'd; and I go
A glorious Name, among the Ghosts below.
(Dryden, A IV, 938-39)

Bring, bring me water; let me bathe in death
Her bleeding wounds, and catch her parting breath.
(Pitt, A IV, 985-86)
Bring water, bathe the WOund; while I in death
lay close my Lips to hers; and catch the flying Breath.
(Dryden, A IV, 982-83)

Passages of three consecutive lines:

And pay our vows to nothing but a name.

Him, as he grasp'd his altars, and prefer'd

His wrathful pray'r, th'almighty father heard;
(Pitt, A IV, 321-23)

And I, rejected I, adore an empty Name.

His was, in haughty Terms, he thus preferr'd,

And held his Altar's Horns; the mighty Thund'rer heard,
(Dryden, A IV, 319-21)

170

Shall I in proud Iarbas' chains be led
A slave, a captive to the tyrant's bed?
Ah1-had I brought, before thy fatal flight,
(Pitt, A IV, 471-73)
Or till Hyarba shall in Triumph lead
A Queen, that proudly scorn'd his proffer'd Bed!
Had you deferr'd, at least, your hasty Flight,
(Dryden, A IV, 471-73)

Ten thousand things, disdainfully away;
Sunk in their arms the trembling handmaids led
The fainting princess to the regal bed.
(Pitt, A TV, 566-68)
Abruptly here she stops: Then turns away
Her loathing Eyes, and shuns the sight of Day.
Amaz'd he stood, revolving in his Mind
What Speech to frame, and what Excuse to find.
Her fearful Maids their fainting Mistress led;
And softly laid her on her Iv'ry Bed.
(Dryden, A IV, 562-67)

The pure libation turn'd to sable blood.
This horrid omen to herself reveal'd,
Ev'n from.her sister's ear she kept conceal'd.
(Pitt, A IV, 662-64)
The Purple Wine is turn'd to putrid Blood:
And the white offer'd Milk, converts to Mud.
This dire Presage, to her alone reveal'd,
From all, and ev'n her Sister, she conceal'd.
(Dryden, A IV, 659-62)

Through dreary wilds, abandon'd and alone;
And treads a dark uncomfortable plain,
And seeks her Tyrians o'er the waste in vain.
(Pitt, A IV, 678-80)
Disdainful as by Day: She seems alone,
To wander in her Sleep, thro' ways unknown,
Guidless and dark: or, in a Desart Plain,
To seek her Subjects, and to seek in vain.

(Dryden, A IV, 677-80)

The grief that rag'd tumultuous in her breast.
Meantime with all things ready for his flight,
In thoughtless sleep the heroe past the night.
(Pitt, A IV, 800-02)
These Thoughts she brooded in her anxious Breast;
On Board, the Trojan found more easie rest.
Resolv'd to sail, in Sleep he pass'd the Night;
And order'd all things for his early flight.
(Dryden, A IV, 799-802)

Rise, prince; a woman is a changeful thing.
This said; at once he took his rapid flight,
Dissolv'd in air, and mingled with the night.
(Pitt, A IV, 800-02)

171

WDman's a various and a changeful Thing.
Thus Hermes in the Dream; then took his flight,
Aloft in Air unseen; and mix'd with Night.
(Dryden, A IV, 819-21)

Thrice her fierce hands in madness of despair
Beat her white breast, and tore her golden hair.
Then shall the traitor fly, ye gods! (she said)
(Pitt, A IV, 845-47)
Stung with despight, and furious with despair,
She struck her trembling Breast, and tore her Hair.
And Shall th'ungrateful Traytor go, she said,
(Dryden, A IV, 845-47)

And see the Trojan image sink in fire.
Thus I compleat the rites to Stygian Jove,
And then farewell-a long farewell to love!
(Pitt, A IV, 918-20)
Thus will I pay my was, to Stygian Jove;
And end the Cares of my disastrous love.
Then cast the Trojan Image on the Fire;
(Dryden, A IV, 915-17)

Passages of four consecutive lines:

Hence then from.strife resolve we both to cease,
And by the nuptial band confirm the peace.
To crown your wish, the queen with fond desire
Dies for your son, and melts with amorous fire.
(Pitt, A IV, 154-57)
But shall Coelestial Discord never cease?
'Tis better ended in a lasting Peace.
You stand possess'd of all your Soul desir'd;
Poor Dido with consuming Love is fir'd: .
(Dryden, A IV, 139-42)

First small with fear, she swells to wond'rous size,
And stalks on earth, and tow'rs above the skies;
Whom, in her wrath to heav'n, the teeming earth
Produc'd the last of her gigantic birth;
(Pitt, A IV, 263-66)
Soon grows the Pygmee to Gygantic size;
Her Feet on Earth, her Forehead in the Skies:
Inrag'd against the Gods, revengeful Earth
Produc'd her last of the Titanian birth.
(Dryden, A IV, 255-58)

Struck and alarmfld with such a dread command,
He longs to leave the dear enchanting land.
But ah! with what address Shall he begin,
How speak his purpose to the raving queen?
(Pitt, A IV, 407-10)

172

Revolving in his Mind the stern Command,
He longs to fly, and loaths the charming Land.
What shou'd he say, or how shou'd he begin,
What Course, alas! remains, to steer between
Th'offended Lover, and the Pow‘rful Queen!
(Dryden, A IV, 406-10)

Prop'd on her elbow, thrice she rear'd her head,
And thrice fell back, and fainted on the bed;
Sought with her swimming eyes the golden light,
And saw the sun, but sicken'd at the sight.
(Pitt, A IV, 994-97)
Thrice Dido try'd to raise her drooping Head,
And fainting thrice, fell grov'ling on the Bed.
Thrice op'd her heavy Eyes, and sought the Light,
But having found it, sicken'd at the Sight;
(Dryden, A IV, 988-91)

Longer passages of consecutive lines:

From that sad day, unhappy Dido! rose

Shame, death, and ruin, and a length of woes.

Nor fame nor censure now the queen can move,

No more she labours to conceal her love.

Her passion stands avow'd; and wedlock's name

Adorns the crime, and sanctifies the shame.
(Pitt, A IV, 253-58)

From this ill Omend Hour, in Time arose

Debate and Death, and all succeeding woes.

The Queen whom sense of Honour cou'd not move

No longer made a Secret of her Love;

But call'd it Marriage, by that specious Name,

To veil the Crime and sanctifie the Shame.

(Dryden, A IV, 245-50)

And the shrill echoes ring amidst the skies;
As all fair Carthage, or her mother Tyre,
Stormfid by the foe, had sunk in floods of fire;
And the fierce flame devour'd the proud abodes,
With all the glorious temples of the gods.
(Pitt, A IV, 960-64)
Of mixing women, mount the vaulted Skies.
Not less the Clamour, than if ancient 213$,
Or the new Carthage, set by Foes on Fire,
The rowling Ruin, with their lov'd Abodes,
Involv'd the blazing Temples of their Gods.
(Dryden, A IV, 961-65)

Longer passages in which one rhyme-word does not occur in Dryden:

At length the heroe thus in brief replies.
Your bounties, queen, I never can forget;

173

And never, never pay the mighty debt;
But, long as life informs this fleeting frame,
My soul shall honour fair Eliza's name.

. (Pitt, A IV, 482-86)
Tho' heaving in his Heart; and thus at length, replies.
Fair Queen, you never can enough repeat
Your boundless Favours, or I own.my Debt;
Nor can my Mind forget Eliza's Name,
While vital Breath inspires this Mortal Frame.

(Dryden, A IV, 482-86)

And yet great Jove and Juno from the sky
Behold his treason with a careless eye;
Guilt, guilt prevails; and justice is no more.
The needy wretch just cast upon my shore,
Fool as I was! with open.arms I led
At once a partner to my throne and bed;
(Pitt, A IV, 537-42)
Nor Juno views my wrongs with equal Eyes;
Faithless is Earth, and Faithless are the Skies!
Justice is fled, and Truth is now no more;
I sav'd the Shipwrack'd Exile on my Shore:
With needful Food his hungry Trojans fed;
I took the Traytor to my Throne and Bed:
(Dryden, A IV, 5365-39)

In all his thoughts you ever bore a part,
You know the nearest passage to his heart.
Go then, dear sister, as a suppliant go,
Tell, in the humblest terms, my haughty foe,
I ne'er conspir‘d at Aulis to destroy,
With vengeful Greece, the hapless race of Troy;
Nor sent one vessel to the Phrygian coast,
Nor rak'd abroad his father's sacred dust.
(Pitt, A IV, 613-20)
In all his trusted Secrets you have part,
And know the soft Approaches to his Heart.
Haste then, and humbly seek my haughty Foe;
Tell him, I did not with the Grecians goe;
Nor did my Fleet against his Friends employ,
Nor swore the Ruin of unhappy Troy.
Nor mov'd with Hands prophane his Father's dust;
(Dryden, A IV, 612-18)

17h

3. In warton's Fourth Eclogue
and First Georgie

Half rhymes:

See a new progeny from.heav'n descend!

(Warton, E IV,
A golden progeny from Heav'n descends;

(Dryden, E IV,

He shall enjoy the life divine, and see
(warton, E IV,
By Gods and Heroes seen, and Gods and Heroes see.
(Dryden, E IV,

And knotted oaks Shall showers of honey weep.

(warton, E IV,
The knotted oaks shall shoW'rs of Honey weep,

(Dryden, E IV,

Yet of old crimes some footsteps shall remain,
(warton, E IV,
Yet, of old Fraud some footsteps shall remain,

(Dryden, E IV,
Dear to the gods! 0 progeny of Jove!

tr!

(warton, IV,
0 of Coelestial Seed! 0 foster Son of Jove!

(Dryden,

[*1

IV:

Tho' Phoebus, tho' Calliope inspire,
(warton, E IV,
Though each his Heav'nly Parent shou'd inspire;

(Dryden, E IV,

No god shall grace thy board, no goddess bless thy bed.

(warton, E IV,

9)
10)

17)
19)

34)
35)

35)
37)

5A)
59)

63)
68)

72)

No God shall crown the Board, nor Goddess bless the bed.

(Dryden, E IV,

Ye deities, who aid industrious swains,

(Warton, G I,
Ye Fawns, propitious to the Rural Swains,

(Dryden, G I,

The suppliant swains, and bless with fruits the year;
(Warton, G I,

The rural Honours, and increase the Year.
‘ (Dryden, G I,

Or swell with showers the cultivated grain.
(Warton, G I,

77)

13)
ll)

28)
27)

30)

175

You who supply the Ground the seeds of Grain;
(Dryden, G I, 28)

With dire ambition fir'd, in hell to reign,

(warton, G I, 50)
(For let not Hell presume of such a Reign;

(Dryden, G I, 52)

Which twice the sun, and twice the frosts sustain,
(warton, G I, 63)

Which twice the Sun, and twice the Cold sustains,
(Dryden, G I, 73)

Gainful to burn the barren glebe 'tis found,
(warton, G I, 102)
long Practice has a sure Improvement found,

(Dryden, G I, 122)

Or oozing off, and purify'd by fire,

(Warton, G I, 106)
Or when the latent Vice is cur'd by Fire,

(Dryden, G I, 128)

The crumbling clods, with harrows, drags, and rakes,
(warton, G I, 115)
Who smooths with Harrows, or who pounds with Rakes

(Dryden, G I, 138)

The happiest covering for the bury'd grain;

(warton, G I, 123)
And broods indulgent on the bury'd Grain.

(Dryden, G I, 148)

Yet after all these toils of swains and steers,

(warton, G I, 147)
Nor yet the Ploughman, nor the lab'ring Steer,

(Dryden, G I, 177)

Th'eternal sire, immutably decrees,

(warton, G I, 151)
The Sire of Gods and Men, with hard Decrees,

(Dryden, G I, 183)

Ere Jove had reign'd, no swains subdu'd the ground,
(warton, G I, 155)
E're this, no Peasant vexld the peaceful Ground;
(Dryden, G I, 191)

O'er the press'd grain, and Bacchus! flying sail.

(warton, G I, 195)
The Fan of Bacchus, with the flying Sail:

(Dryden, G I, 246)

176

The earth-boards double; double are the ears;

(Warton, G
On either side the Head produce an Ear,

(Dryden, G
Else thro' the loosen'd dust, and chinky ground,

(warton, G
To smooth the Surface of th'unequal Ground;

(Dryden, G
In vain be trampled on the hungry floor.

(warton, G
In vain the Hind shall vex.the thrashing Floor,

(Dryden, G
'Till winter's first impracticable rains.

(warton, G
'Till cold December comes with driving Rain.

(Dryden, G
Sow beans in spring: in spring the crumbling soil

(warton, G
Sow Beans and Clover in a rotten Soyl,

(Dryden, G
When the Bull opes with golden horns the year,

(Warton, G
The Bull beats down the Barriers of the Year;

(Dryden, G
Plac'd full beneath the burnings of the sun,

(Warton, G
Glows with the passing and repassing Sun.

(Dryden, G
Nor the four seasons of th'adjusted year;

(Warton, G
And the four quarters of the rolling Year.

(Dryden, G
To hurry,forward, when the sky is fair,

(Warton, G
Which else is huddl'd, when the Skies are fair:

(Dryden, G
No solemn rite should e'er forbid the swain,

(Warton, G
From necessary works, the lab'ring Swain.

(Dryden, G

Ossa on Pelion, thrice t'uplift they strove,

, (warton, G I,
With Mountains pil'd on Mountains, thrice they strove
(Dryden, G I, 375)

201)

252)

210)

261)

225)
278)

248)
301)

253)
304)

256)
307)

273)
323)

307)
349)

310)
353)

320)
362)

337)

177

For taming oxen, and for planting vines,

(warton, G I, 342)
Young Oxen to the Yoke, and plant the Vine.

(Dryden, G I, 380)

Mix honey sweet, for her, with milk and mellow wine;
(warton, G I, 415)
And Milk and Honey mix.with sparkling Wine:
(Dryden, G I, A72)

From the frail bark that ploughs the raging main,

(Warton, G I, 430)
From the toss'd Vessel on the troubled Main:

(Dryden, G I, 494)

But if thou shalt observe the rapid sun,

(warton, G I, 495)
Observe the daily Circle of the Sun,

(Dryden, G I, 571)

For wasteful storms and deluges of rains!

(warton, G I, 502)
And brews for Fields impetuous Floods of Rain.

(Dryden, G I, 578)

And sailors sav'd from.the devouring sea,

(warton, G I, 509)
Are void of Tempests, both by Land and Sea,

(Dryden, G I, 585)

None should persuade to loose my bark from shore,

(warton, G I, 530)
The Frith, or haul his Cables from.the Shear?

(Dryden, G I, 614)

By surest marks th'unerring sun declares,
(warton, G I, 537)
Th'unerring Sun by certain Signs declares,

(Dryden, G I, 620)

And with the voice of man (portentous!) spoke!

(warton, G I, 558)
In silent Groves, dumb Sheep and Oxen spoke;

(Dryden, G I, 644)

Couplets (including two lines of a triplet):

Give me, Sicilian maids, sublimer strains,
All love not lowly shrubs and rural plains:
(warton, E IV, 1-2)
Sicilian Muse, begin a loftier strain!
Though lowly Shrubs and Trees that shade the Plain,
(Dryden, E IV, 1-2)

178

The months begin, the babe's auspicious face,

Pollio, thy glorious consulship shall grace;

(warton, E IV,
The lovely Boy, with his auspicious Face,
Shall Pollio's Consulship and Triumph grace,

(Dryden, E IV,

The jarring world in lasting peace shall bind,
And with his father's virtues rule mankind.
(warton, E IV,
The jarring Nations he in peace shall bind,
And with paternal Virtues rule mankind.
(Dryden, E IV,

With milk o'ercharged the goats shall homeward Speed,
And herds secure from mighty lions feed.

(warton, E IV,
The Goats with strutting Duggs shall homeward Speed,
And lowing Herds, secure from Lyons feed.

(Dryden, E IV,

Of native purple and unborrow'd gold,
And sandyx clothe with red the crowded fold.
(warton, E IV,
But the luxurious Father of the Fold,
With native Purple, or unborrow'd Gold,

(Dryden, E IV,

What culture crowns the laughing fields with corn,

Beneath what heavenly signs the glebe to turn,
(warton, G I,

What makes a plenteous Harvest, when to turn

The fruitful Soil, and when to sowe the Corn;
(Dryden, G I,

Bacchus and Ceres, by whose gifts divine,

Man chang'd the crystal stream for purple wine,
(warton, G I,

Bacchus and fost'ring Ceres, Pow4rs Divine,

Who gave us Corn for Mast, for water Wine;

(Dryden, G I,

And thou, whose trident struck the teeming earth,
Whence strait a neighing courser sprung to birth.
(warton, G I,
And thou, whose Trident struck the teeming Earth,
And made a Passage for the Coursers Birth.
(Dryden, G I,

Wilt thou, great Caesar, o'er the earth preside,
Protect her cities, and her empires guide,

(warton, G I,
Or o're the Fruits and Seasons to preside,
And the round Circuit of the Year to guide.

(Dryden, G I,

13-14)

13-14)

19-20)

20-21)

25-26)

25-26)

49-50)

52-53)

1-2)

1-2)

9-10)

9-10)

15-16)

15-16)

33-34)

34—35)

179

Pity with me, the simple ploughman's cares,

Now, now assume the god, and learn to hear our pray'rs.
(warton, G I, 55-56)

Pity the Poet's and the Ploughman's Cares,
Int'rest thy Greatness in our mean Affairs,

And use thy self betimes to hear and grant our Pray'rs.
(Dryden, G I, 61—63)

When Zephyr's breeze unbinds the crumbling soil,
Then let my groaning steers begin the toil;
(warton,
And goad him till he groans beneath his Toil,
'Till the bright Share is bury'd in the Soil.
(Dryden,

While for Olympic games, Epirus breeds,

To whirl the kindling car, the swiftest steeds?
(warton,

E irus for th'Elean Chariot breeds,

(In hopes of Palms,) a Race of running Steeds.
(Dryden,

What time the stones, upon th'unpeopled world,

Whence sprung laborious man, Deucalion hurl'd.
(warton,

0n sundry Places, when Deucalion hurl'd

His Mother's Entrails on the desart world:
(Dryden,

The turf disclos'd, the clinging clods unbound,
Summer shall bake and meliorate thy ground;
(warton,
That while the Turf lies Open, and unbound,
Succeeding Suns may bake the Mellow Ground.

(Dryden,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

The glebe shall rest, whence last you gather'd grain,

Till the spent earth recover strength again;
(warton,

That the spent Earth may gather heart again;

And, better'd by Cessation, bear the Grain.
(Dryden,

But blush not fattening dung to cast around,

Or sordid ashes o'er th'exhausted ground.
(warton,

Yet sprinkle sordid Ashes all around,

And load with fat'ning Dung thy fallow Ground.
(Dryden,

Or genial heat the hollow glebe constrains,
Braces each nerve, and binds the gaping veins;
(warton,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

59-60)

70-71)

75-76)

89-90)

79-80)

93-94)

83-84)

98—99)

89-90)

108-09)

98-99)

118-19)

110-11)

180

Or that the Heat the gaping Ground constrains,
New Knits the Surface, and new Strings the Veins;

(Dryden, G

Or who, lest the weak stalks be over-weigh'd,

Feeds down, betimes, the rank luxuriant blade,
(warton, G

Shou'd scarce sustain the head's unweildy weight,

Sends in his feeding Flocks betimes t'invade

The rising bulk of the luxuriant Blade;

(Dryden, G

Sailors first nam'd and counted every star,
The Pleiads, Hyads, and the northern car.
(warton, G
For ev'ry fixld and ev'ry wandring Star:
The Pleiadg, ads, and the Northern Car.
(Dryden, G

Then all those arts that polish life succeed;

What cannot ceaseless toil, and pressing need!
(Warton, G

And various Arts in order did succeed,

(What cannot endless Labour urg'd by need?)

(Dryden, G

I:

I,

I,

I,

I,

I.

I:

What time, nor mast, nor fruits, the groves supply'd,

And fam'd Dodona sustenance deny'd;

(Warton, G
When new Dodonian Oaks no more supply'd
Their Mast, and Trees their Forrest-fruit deny'd.

(Dryden, G

Next must we tell, what arms stout peasants wield,

Without whose aid, no crops could crown the field:
(Warton, G

Nor must we pass untold what Arms they wield,

Who labour Tillage and the furrow'd Field:

(Dryden, G

When bent betimes, and tam'd the stubborn bough,

Tough elm.receives the figure of the plough;
(Warton, G

Young Elms with early force in Copses bow,

Fit for the Figure of the crooked Plough.

(Dryden, G

More ancient precepts could I Sing, but fear
Such homely rules may grate thy nicer ear.
(Warton, G
I cou'd be long in Precepts, but I fear
So mean a Subject might offend your Ear.
(Dryden, G

I.

I:

132-33)

138-39)

164-66)

167-68)

209-10)

175-76)

217-18)

179-80)

222-23)

190-91)

239-40)

198-99)

249-50)

206-07)

256-57)

181

Their nest and chambers scoop, the eyeless moles,
And swelling toads that haunt the darksome holes;
(warton, G I, 214-15)
For gather'd Grain the blind laborious Mole,
In winding Mazes works her hidden Hole.
(Dryden, G I, 266-67)

But the well-disciplin'd, and chosen grains,
Tho' quicken'd o'er slow fires with skilful pains,
(warton, G I, 230-31)
Unless the Peasant, with his Annual Pain,
Renews his Choice, and culls the largest Grain.
(Dryden, G 1, 286-87)

Betwixt the first and these, indulgent heav'n
Two milder zones to feeble man hath giv'n, .
(warton, G 1, 278-79)
Far on the right and left, th'extreams of Heav'n,
To Frosts and Snows, and bitter Blasts are giv'n.

(Dryden) G I, 324.25)

Hence changeful heav'n's rough storms we may foreknow,
The days to reap, the happiest times to sow,
(warton, G I, 300-01)
From hence uncertain Seasons we may know;
And when to reap the Grain, and when to sow;

(Dryden, G I, 344-45)

Iapetus and Coeus, heaving earth
Produc'd, a foul abominable birth!
(werton, G 1, 333-34)
That gave the Furies and pale Pluto Birth,
And arm'd against the Skies, the Sons of Earth.

(Dryden, G I, 373-74)

One, by the glowing ember's livid light,
watches and works the livelong winter's night,
(warton, G 1, 349-50)
Parch'd Meads and Stubble mow, by Phoebe's light;
Which both require the Coolness of the Night:
(Dryden, G I, 385-86)

Beguiling time sings in the glimmering room,
To chear the labours of the rattling loom,
(warton, G I, 353-55)
He sharpens Torches in the glimiring Room,
She shoots the flying Shuttle through the Loom:
(Dryden, G 1, 391-92)

Fbr noxious cranes then plant the guileful snare,
O'er tainted ground pursue the listening hare;
(warton, G I, 371-72)
For stalking Cranes to set the guileful Snare,
T'inclose the Stags in Toyls, and hunt the Hare.

(Dryden) G I) #134110»)

182

How careful swains should watch in shorter days,
When soften'd summer feels abated rays:

(warton,
The Year, and adds to Nights, and shortens Days;
And Suns declining shine with feeble Rays:

(Dryden,

0ft in one deluge of impetuous rain,

All heav'n's dark concave rushes down amain,
(warton,

And oft whole sheets descend of slucy Rain,

Suck'd by the spongy Clouds from off the Main:

(Dryden,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

Great Jove himself, whom dreadful darkness shrouds,

Pavilion'd in the thickness of the clouds,
(warton,

The Father of the Gods his Glory shrowds,

Involv'd in Tempests, and a Night of Clouds.

(Dryden,

Invoking Ceres, and in solemn lays,

Exalt your rural queen's immortal praise.
(warton,

On Ceres let him call, and Ceres praise,

With uncouth Dances, and with Country Lays.

(Dryden,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

0ft, stars fall headlong thro' the shades of night,

And leave behind white tracks of trembling light,

(warton,

G I,

And, shooting through the darkness, guild the Night

With sweeping Glories, and long trails of Light:
(Dryden,

Nor less by certain marks may'st thou descry
Fair seasons, in the calm, and stormless sky;
(warton,
Then after Show'rs, 'tis easie to descry
Returning Suns, and a serener Sky:
(Dryden,

Fierce Nisus presses on his panting prey,

Where Nisus wheels, she swiftly darts away.
(warton,

Where-ever frighted Scylla flies away,

Swift Nisus follows, and pursues his Prey.
(Dryden,

But when the changeful temper of the skies,
The rare condenses, the dense rarifies,
(warton,
But with the changeful Temper of the Skies,
As Rains condense, and Sun-shine rarifies;

(Dryden,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

G I,

379-80)

420-21)

389-90)

437-38)

394-95)

444-45)

420-21)

481-82)

436-37)

503-04)

466-67)

539-40)

481-82)

549-50)

489-90)

565-66)

183

No night serene with smiles, shall e'er betray,
And safely may'st thou trust the coming day:
(warton, G I, 497-98)
By them thou shalt foresee the following day;
Nor shall a starry Night thy Hopes betray.

(Dryden, G I, 573-74)

With dusky redness veil'd his chearful light,
And impious mortals fear'd eternal night:
(warton, G I, 543-44)
In Iron Clouds conceal'd the Publick Light:
And Impious Mortals fear'd Eternal Night.
(Dryden, G I, 630-31)

And rolling onwards with a sweepy sway,
Bore houses, herds, and helpless hinds away:
(warton, G I, 563-64)
And rolling onward, with a sweepy Sway,
Bore Houses, Herds, and lab'ring Hinds away.
(Dryden, G I, 651-52)

Let streams of blood already spilt attone
For perjuries of false Laomedon!
(warton, G I, 585-86)
0! let the Blood, already spilt, atone
For the past Crimes of curst Laomedon!
(Dryden, G I, 674-75)

Where sacred order, fraud and force confound,
Where impious wars and tumults rage around,
And every various vice and crime is crown'd:
(warton, G I, 589-91)
Where Fraud and Rapine, Right and wrong confound,
Where impious Arms from ev'ry part resound,
And monstrous Crimes in ev'ry Shape are crown'd.

(Dryden, G I, 678-80)

Passages of three consecutive lines:

Thick fall the rains; the wind redoubled roars,
The god now smites the woods, and now the sounding shores.
warned by these ills, observe the starry signs,

(warton, G I, 402-04)
The waves on heaps are dash'd against the Shoar,
And now the woods, and now the Billows roar.
In fear of this, observe the starry Signs,

(Dryden, G I, 457-59)

And long to lave their downy plumes in vain:
loudly the rains the boding rook demands,
And solitary stalks across the scorching sands.
(warton, G I, 459-61)

184

Then lave their Backs with sprinkling Dews in vain,
And stem the Stream to meet the promis'd Rain.
The Crow with clamflrous Cries the Show!r demands,
And Single stalks along the Desart Sands.
(Dryden, G I,

From.her burst entrails did she oft exspire,
And deluge the Cyclopean fields with fire!
A clank of arms and rushing to the wars, .
(warton, G I,
What Rocks did Aetna's bellowing Mouth expire

Pram her torn Entrails! and what Floods of Fire!
What Clanks were heard, in German Skies afar,

Of Arms and Armies, rushing to the war!

(Dryden, G I,

And Haemus' fields twice fatten‘d with our blood.

The time at length shall come, when lab'ring swains,

As with their ploughs they turn these guilty plains,
(warton, G I,

To fatten twice those Fields with Roman Blood.

Then, after length of Time, the lab'ring Swains,

Who turn the Turfs of those unhappy Plains,

(Dryden, G I,

Passages of four consecutive lines:

Or over boundless ocean wilt thou reign,

Smooth the wild billows of the roaring main,

While utmost Thule shall thy nod obey,

To thee in shipwrecks shivering sailors pray,
(warton, G 1,

Or wilt thou, Caesar, chuse the watry Reign,

To smooth the Surges, and correct the Main?

Then Mariners, in Storms, to thee shall pray,

Ev'n utmost Thule shall thy Pow'r obey;

(Dryden, G I,

When winter ends, and spring serenely shines,

Then fat the lambs, then mellow are the wines,

Then sweet are slumbers on the flowery ground,

Then with thick shades are lofty mountains crown'd.
(warton, G I,

Fbr then the Hills with pleasing Shades are crown'd,

And Sleeps are sweeter on the silken Ground:

With milder Beams the Sun securely shines,

Fat are the Lambs, and luscious are the Wines.

(Dryden, G I,

Ill can thin leaves their ripening grapes defend!
Such heaps of horrid hail on rattling roofs decend!
Observe too, when he ends his heavenly race,
What various colours wander o'er his face:

(warton, G I,

531-34)

549-51)

636-39)

572-74)

661-63)

39—42)

38-41)

410-13)

467-70)

521-24)

185

How shall the Vine, with tender Leaves, defend
Her teeming Clusters when the storms descend?
When ridgy Roofs and Tiles can scarce avail,»
To barr the Ruin of the ratling Hail.

But more than all, the setting Sun survey,

When down the Steep of Heav'n he drives the Day.
For oft we find him.finishing his Race,

With various Colours erring on his Face;

(Dryden, G I, 597-604)

186

4. In Beattie's Fourth Eclogue
Half-rhymes:

They bade the sacred spindle swiftly run,
(Beattie, E 75)
Shall bless the sacred Clue, and bid it smoothly run.
(Dryden, E 57)

0 Thou, the offspring of eternal Jove!

(Beattie, E 78)
O of Coelestial Seed! 0 foster Son of Jove!

(Dryden, E 59)

187

5. In Sotheby's First Georgic
Half-rhymes:

Invites the plough, and weds to elms the vine;
(Sotheby, G I, 2)
And how to raise on Elms the teeming Vine:

(Dryden, G I, 4)

Browse the rich shrubs that shade the Caean plain;
(Sotheby, G I, 16)
Thy Milky Herds, that graze the Flow'ry Plains.
(Dryden, G I, 18)

And if thy Maenalus yet claim thy care,

(SOthebY) G I: 19)
And, if Arcadian Fleeces be thy Care,

(Dryden, G I, 21)

Let not such lust of dire dominion move
(Sotheby, G I, 47)
Nor let so dire a Thirst of Empire move

(Dryden, G I, 53)

Feeds down its rank luxuriance when the blade

(Sotheby, G I, 139)
The rising bulk of the luxuriant Blade;

(Dryden, G I, 166)

Or who, ‘mid doubtful months, and flooding rains,
(Sotheby, G I, 141)
When Fountains open, when impetuous Rain

(Dryden, G I, 173)

Yet when the sturdy swain and patient steer

(SOtheby’ G I: 114-5)
Nor yet the Ploughman, nor the lab‘ring Steer,

(Dryden, G I, 177)

Ere Jove bore rule, no labour tam'd the ground,

(Sotheby, G I, 157)
E're this, no Peasant vex'd the peaceful Ground;

(Dryden, G I, 191)

And tow'r in triumph o'er the golden ear.

(Sotheby, G I, 190)
And shoots its Head above the shining Ears.

(Dryden, G I, 230)

There builds the field-mouse underneath the ground,
(Sotheby, G I, 221)
The Field Mouse builds her Garner under ground;

(Dryden, G I, 265)

188

Cull'd yearly one by one the largest grain;

(Sotheby, G I, 242)
Renews his Choice, and culls the largest Grain.

(Dryden, G I, 287)

wait till Bootes' lingering beams descend,

(Sotheby, G I, 275)
Begin when the slow waggoner descends,

(Dryden, G I, 318)

Lie Climes to feeble man by Heav'n assigned.

(Sotheby, G I, 284)
Betwixt the midst and these, the Gods assign'd

(Dryden, G I, 326)

And fourfold parts, as seasons change, the year.

(Sotheby, G I, 308)
And the four Quarters of the rolling Year.

(Dryden, G I, 349)

Point the sharp stake, or edge the blunted share,
(Sotheby, G I, 315)

Then let him.mark the Sheep, or whet the shining Share.
(Dryden, G I, 354)

Brings pitch and millstones home for barter'd oil,
(Sotheby, G I, 327)
To neighb'ring Towns with Apples and with Oyl:
(Dryden, G I, 368)

To weave, to tame the steer, and plant the vine;

(SOtheby: G I) 3411»)
Young Oxen to the Yoke, and plant the Vine.

(Dryden, G I, 380)

Then the gay hind unlocks his hoarded store,

(Sotheby, G I, 361)
In Genial Winter, Swains enjoy their Store,

(Dryden, G I, 403)

Her pure libation, honey, milk, and wine;

(Sotheby, G I, 418)
And Milk and Honey mix with sparkling Wine:

(Dryden, G I, 472)

And floating feathers on the water play.

(Sotheby, G I, 448)
And floating Feathers on the waters play.

(Dryden, G I, 507)

Behind, on rustling plume, fierce Nisus flies:
(Sotheby, G I, 492)
Tow'ring aloft, avenging Nisus flies,
" ' (Dryden, G I, 549)

189

If dull at morn with many a scatter'd beam
(SOthebY: G I: 533)
Or if thro' Mists he shoots his sullen Beams,

(Dryden, G I: 591)

Each hue that varies at the close of day.

(Sotheby, G I, 540)
When down the Steep of Heav'n he drives the Day.

(Dryden, G I, 602)

That night my anchor'd bark shall sleep on Shore,
(SOtheby, G I: 545)
The Frith, or haul his Cables from the Shoar?
(Dryden, G I, 614)

There, after length of time, the peaceful swain

(Sotheby, G I, 591)
Then, after length of Time, the lab'ring Swains,

(Dryden, G I, 662)

Couplets:

Thou! whose dread trident shook the womb of earth,

And loos'd the steed, that neighing sprung to birth;
(Sotheby, G I, 13-14)

And thou, whose Trident struck the teeming Earth,

And made a Passage for the Coursers Birth.

(Dryden, G I, 15-16)

0ft noxious geese and the Strymonian crane
waste with voracious bill the plunder'd grain,
(Sotheby, G I, 147-48)
But glutton Geese, and the Strymonian Crane,
With foreign Troops, invade the tender Grain:
— (Dryden, G 1, 179-80)

Not to dull Indolence and transient Toil
Great Jove resign'd the conquest of the soil:
(Sotheby, G I, 151-52)
And wills that Mortal Men, inur'd to toil
Shou'd exercise, with pains, the grudging Soil.
(Dryden, G I, 185-86)

From leaves their honey shook, conceal'd the fire,
And bade free streams, that flowid with wine, retire;
(Sotheby, G I, 163-64)
Remov'd from Humane reach the chearful Fire,
And from the Rivers bade the Wine retire:
(Dryden, G I, 201-02)

Now learn what arms industrious peasants wield,
To sow the furrow‘d glebe, and clothe the field:
(Sotheby, G I, 197-98)

190

Nor*must we pass untold what Arms they wield,
Who labour Tillage and the furrow'd Field:
(Dryden, G I, 239-40)

With ponderous roller smooth the level floor,
And bind with chalky cement o'er and o'er;
(Sotheby, G I, 217-18)
Delve of convenient Depth your thrashing Floor;
With temper'd Clay, then fill and face it o're:
(Dryden, G I, 258-59)

Then beans and lucerne claim.the mellow soil,
And millet springing from thy yearly'toil.
(Sotheby, G I, 263-64)
Sow Beans and Clover in a rotten Soyl,
And Millet rising from your Annual Toyl;
(Dryden, G I, 304-05)

For this the golden sun the earth divides,
And, wheel'd thro' twelve bright signs, his chariot guides.
(Sotheby, G I, 277-78)
For this, thro' twelve bright Signs Apgllo guides
The Year, and Earth in sev'ral Climes divides.
(Dryden, G I, 320-21)

Here the huge Snake in many a volume glides,
Winds like a stream, and either Bear divides,
(Sotheby, G I, 291-92)
Around our Pole the spiry Dragon glides,
And like a winding Stream the Bears divides;
(Dryden, G 1, 334-35)

Then, with dire labour rent, the womb of Earth
Pour'd forth her offspring of gigantic birth,
(Sotheby, G I, 333-34)
That gave the FUries and pale Pluto Birth,
And arm'd, against the Skies, the Sons of Earth.
(Dryden, G I, 373'an)

Thrice with enormous strength the rebels strove,
Rock pil'd on rock, to scale the Throne of Jove,
(SOtheby: G I: 337-38)
With Mountains pil'd on Mountains, thrice they strove
To scale the steepy Battlements of Jove;

(Dryden, G I, 375-76)

Seethes the sweet must, the trembling caldron skims,
And sweeps with wavy leaf its frothy brims.
(SOthebY: G I: 355-56)
Or boils in Kettles Must of Wine, and skims
With leaves, the Dregs that overflow the Brims.
(Dryden, G I, 393-94)

191

Yet, not regardless of the wintry food,
Then gather acorns from the leafless wood,
(Sotheby, G I, 369-70)
Yet that's the proper Time to thrash the WOOd
For Mast of Oak, your Fathers homely Food.
(Dryden, G I, 409-10)

Then toil the struggling stags, then cranes ensnare,
Press round her tainted maze the list'ning hare;
(SOtheby: G I, 373-714)
For stalking Cranes to set the guileful Snare,
T'inclose the Stags in Toyls, and hunt the Hare.
(Dryden, G 1, 413-14)

waste far and wide, and, by the roots uptorn,
The heavy harvest sweep through ether borne,
(Sotheby, G I, 389-90)
The heavy Harvest from the Root is torn,
And whirl'd aloft the lighter Stubble born;

(Dryden, G I, 433-34)

When gales Should lull, and when th'experienc'd swain
From distant range his shelter'd herd restrain.
(Sotheby, G I, 429-30)
When Southern blasts shou'd cease, and when the Swain
Shou'd near their Folds his feeding Flocks restrain.
(Dryden, G I, 487-88)

In gay contention dip their wings in vain,
And prelude, as they Sport, th'impending rain:
, (Sotheby, G I, 469-70)
Then lave their Backs with Sprinkling Dews in vain,
And stem the Stream to meet the promis'd Rain.
(Dryden, G I, 531-32)

New instincts sway, and their inconstant mind
Shifts with the clouds, and varies with the wind:
(Sotheby, G 1, 505-06)
So turn the Species in their alter'd Minds,
Compos'd by Calms, and discompos'd by Winds.
(Dryden, G I, 567-68)

No treacherous signs announce th'expected day,
Nor faithless nights shall flatter and betray.
(Sotheby, G I, 511-12)
By them thou shalt foresee the following day;
Nor shall a starry Night thy Hopes betray.
(Dryden, G I, 573-74)

Dark o'er the wasted earth, and stormy main,
In torrents drives the congregated rain.
(Sotheby, G I, 515-16)

192

Conclude she bodes a Tempest on the Main,
And brews for Fields impetuous Floods of Rain.
<Dr'yden, G I, 577-78)

What time in iron clouds he veil'd his light,
And impious mortals fear'd eternal night.
(Sotheby, G 1, 559-60)
In Iron Clouds conceal'd the Publick Light:
And Impious Mortals fear'd Eternal Night.

(Dryden, G 1, 630-31)

Down the wide deluge whirls uprooted woods,
And wastes the earth with desolating floods.
(Sotheby, G I, 579-80)
Then rising in his Might, the King of Floods,
Rusht thro' the Forrests, tore the lofty woods;
(Dryden, G I, 649-50)

Passage of three consecutive lines:

O'er all the sky, Germania heard afar
The bray of arms that clang'd th'aerial war.
The Alpine regions of eternal snow
(Sotheby, G I, 567-69)
What Clanks were heard, in German Skies afar,
Of Arms and Armies, rushing to the war!
Dire Earthquakes rent the solid Alps below,
And from their Summets shook th'Eternal Snow.
(Dryden, G I, 638-41)

Passage of four consecutive lines:

0ft shalt thou see, ere brooding storms arise,
Star after star glide headlong down the skies,
And, where they shot, long trails of lingering light
Sweep far behind, and gild the shades of night;
(Sotheby. G 1. 443-46)
And oft before tempest'ous Winds arise,
The seeming Stars fall headlong from the Skies;
And, shooting through the darkness, guild the Night
With sweeping Glories, and long trails of Light:
(Dryden, G I, 501-04)

Passage of Six consecutive lines:

While fam'd Epirus rears th'equestrian breed,
Born for the palm that crowns th'Olympic steed.
In stated regions, from th'eternal Cause,
Such Nature's compact, and unbroken laws;
Such from the time when first Deucalion hurl'd
The stones that peopled the deserted world: .
(SOtheby: G I; 73-78)

193

E irus for th'Elean Chariot breeds,

(In hOpes of Palms,) A Race of running Steeds.
This is the Orig‘nal Contract; these the Laws
Impos'd by Nature, and by Nature's Cause,

On sundry Places, when Deucalion hurl'd

His Mother's Entrails on the desart world:

(Dryden, G I, 89491.)

APPENDIX.B

Dryden's Endéwords in Eighteenth-Century Texts

Translator

l.
2.
3.
h.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Benson
Trapp
Pitt
warton
Beattie
Andrews
Beresford

Sotheby

Rhymed
or

Blank

Verse

R

B
R
R
R
B
B
R

NUmber
of

EndéWords

Shared
158
148
185
153

N

8

194

Lines

in

Sample

63h
1,650
1,017
673
102
1,282
960
618

Percentage
of
Agreement
2h.9
9.0
18.2
22.7
3.9
8.9
8.0
13.h

APPENDIX C

Derivations from Dryden

Lines Lines
Identical Derived Probably Shorter Lines Percentage

Translator Lines from Derived Similar in of
Dryden from Passages Sample Similar

Dryden Lines

1. Benson 2 18 12 6 634 6.0

2. Pitt 2 18 41 12 1,017 7.1

3 . Warton 3 27 8 8 673 6 . 8

4. Sotheby 2 7 l 6 618 2.6

Judgments about similarity tabulated here are based upon the extent of
the agreement in word choice and syntax of the line cited and the cor-
responding line in Dryden's Vergil, with the most literal possible ren—
dering of the Latin text taken into account. The lines listed below
are printed in Appendix A.

,flgnggn. Identical lines: G I, 177 and 178. lines derived from Dry-
den: G I, 18, 35, 116’ 157, 186, 218, 227, 239, 318, 319, 349, 350,
419, 581, 587, 598, 610, and 627. Lines probably derived from Dryden:
G I, 160, 2110, 317, 331+, 1.28, 431, 433, 466, 561+, 580, 536, and 622.
Shorter similar passages: G I, 73, 265, 371, 460, 608, and 609.

Pitt. Identical lines: A IV, 91 and 939. Lines derived from Dryden:
A IV, 34, 115, 126, 258, 266, 363, 407, 510, 614, 650, 664, 734, 818,
846, 884, 985, 995, and 997. Lines probably derived from Dryden:

A IV, 7, 76, 107, 140, 141, 253, 264, 273, #57, #82, 485, 542, 573,
613, 620, 623, 653, 663, 667, 668, 670, 680, 696, 717, 718, 748, 811,
313, 819, 820, 834, 845, 847, 914, 916, 913, 919, 940, 948, 986, and
996. Shorter similar passages: A IV, 46, 95, 204, 264, 322, 323, 408,
754, 802, 883, 931, and 934.

warton. Identical lines: G I, 15, 168, and 544. Lines derived from
Dryden: E IV, 9, 14, 19, 20, 26, 34, 35, 49, and 72; and G I, 39,
40, 41, 42, 63, 371, 410, #11, 461, 489, A90, 524, 563, 564, 572, 573,
574, and 585. lines probably derived from.Dryden: G I, 9, 16, 55,
176, 206, 307, 404, and 537. Shorter similar passages: E IV, 13 and
25; and G I, 56, 123, 139, 199, 355, and 551.

195

196

Sotheby. Identical lines: G I, 448 and 560. Lines derived from Dry-
den: G I, 13, 147, 164, 264, 292, 444, and 591. Lines probably de-
rived from.Dryden: G I, 47. Shorter similar passages: G I, 139,
4A5, #46, 492, 559, and 569.

APPENDIX D

James Beattie and Robert Andrews

The notion that contemporaries independently translating the same
text will necessarily echo one another is disproved by the transla-
tions of James Beattie and Robert Andrews, who resemble each other as
little as either of them resembles Dryden. The difference between
Andrews' version of Vergil and Dryden's can be accounted for by their
different goals. Dryden sought to create an English poem; Andrews,
to translate the original poem verbum ex verbo. Beattie, on the other
hand, wanted to explore the beauty of details-—to make sure that the
foot of the statue was as perfect as the total work. Despite the fact
that Beattie admired Dryden as a poet and as a translator, and despite
the fact that his own diction reverberates with conventional Drydenian
formulae, his Pastorals almost never recall the corresponding passages
of Dryden's Eclogues.

In 1760, Beattie was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy of
Marischal College through the good offices of Robert Arbuthnot and the
Earl of Erroll. He dedicated his first volume of poems to his noble
patron in gratitude. This work, entitled Original Poems and Translar
‘Liggg, contained a number of short verses previously published in the
W some hitherto unpublished poems, and translations of
short passages from Anacreon, Lucretius, and.Horace together with the

ten Eglggggs of Vergil titled Pastorals. Beattie's very sympathetic

197

198

friend and biographer, Sir William.Forbes, observed that "of the
pieces in this collection, all are certainly not of equal merit," an
opinion he believed Beattie shared, since he never reprinted a number
of these early poems.l Notable among the omissions were all the trans-
lations. The book, however, was well received. The Monthly Review
commentator congratulated its readers "on this new acquisition to the
Republic of Letters," pointing out that Beattie had taken Gray for his
model in his odes and elegies and commending his "harmonious numbers,
. . . pleasing imagination, [and] . . . spirited expression." This
high praise was reserved for the original works alone. After com-
menting upon specific virtues of "The Ode to Peace" and "The Triumph
of Melancholy," the reviewer refers the reader

for his farther entertainment . . . to the book;

which, however, we are sorry to find, towards the

latter-end, consists of Translations; . . . for

these must have taken up that time, which a writer

possessed of our Author's fancy, might have better

employed in composing ORIGINALS.2

Beattie himself had little to say about the translations. In his

preface to the Pastorals, as he called the Eclogges, he offers the
usual modest disclaimer concerning any intention to rival his illus-
trious predecessors. "Mr. Dryden's translation," he says,

will be admired as long as the English language

is understood, for that fluent and graceful en-

ergy of expression, which distinguishes all the

writings of that poet. In his compositions, even

in those which have been censured as inaccurate,

we are charmed with

"Thoughts that breathe and words that burn"

And if we find any thing blameable, we are in-
clined to impute it, not to any defect in his own

 

1An Account of the Life and writings of James Beattie, LL.D.,
(Edinburgh, 1806): I: #8409.

2am (June, 1761), 393-94.

The stylized generosity of Beattie's tribute to Dryden does not mask
any specific indebtedness to him.in the translation of the fourth

Eclogge.
sibly Pollio‘s son (though he does not think that is a very important

matter);
child is the son of Octavia and heir-apparent of Caesar Augustus.
Dryden-Trapp explanation was the accepted one during the first half of
the century, and as his tardiness in reading warton shows, Beattie was
not in the vanguard of either readers or writers.
tance later read into his emphasis on description and inspiration in
The Minstrel, the most important poem which he was to publish a decade
later, Beattie's attitude toward poetry and the classics was as ortho-
dox.as his theology.
He did not find the shackles of rhyme distasteful.

rhyming patterns of his original works vary from one poem to another,

199

genius or taste, but to the depravity of the age
in which it was his misfortune to live.

The translation of Virgil, published some
years ago by the learned and ingenious Mr. Joseph
warton did not come into my hands till long after
what is now offered to the public was finished.
The perusal of these two masterly versions might
have effectually discouraged the publication of
the following, had he ever intended it as a
rival to either of the others. But he disclaims
that intention, and would wish only to be thought
an humble copier of Virgil. And he hopes that
his translation will be pardoned, if, in a few
particular instances, it be found to have set any
of the beauties of the admired original in a more
conspicuous point of view to the English reader.

Like Dryden and Trapp, Beattie identifies the child as pos-

he does not mention the suggestion warton offers that the

3

 

3

Beattie's theological orthodoxy is fully demonstrated in the
work for which his contemporaries praised him.most highly, the Essay
on Truth, which he wrote to refute the dangerous skepticism of David

Hume, Francois VOltaire, and other philosophes.

Despite the impor-

Though the

200

all are rhymed; and a good many like the Pastorals, are in heroic
couplets. Nor is there anything approaching the doctrinaire polemic
of Trapp in the one explanation Beattie makes of his choice of a metri-
cal form. In a letter to his friend, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Blacklock,
Beattie discusses his use of the Spenserian stanza in The Minstrel,
which he had just begun to write:

I have written one hundred and fifty lines, and am

surprised to find the structure of that complicated

stanza so little troublesome. I was always fond of

it, for I think it the most harmonious that ever

was contrived. It admits of more variety of pauses

than either the couplet or the alternate rhyme [the

forms Beattie used most]; and it concludes with a

pomp and majesty of sound, which, to my ear, is

wonderfully delightful. It seems also very well

adapted to the genius of our language, which, from

its irregularity of inflexion and number of mono-

syllables, abounds in diversified terminations,

and consequently renders our poetry susceptible of

an endless variety of legitimate rhymes.

Beattie's diction, too, is entirely conventional. In his fourth
Pastoral, flocks graze "the flowery plain," ships "roam the watery
waste" and "plough the deep," lambs "wanton on the mead," and the poet
aspires to sing in "loftier numbers." In his "Essay on Poetry and
Music as They Affect the Mind," Beattie treats the special language of
poetry at some length. He lists various categories of poetic diction:
clipped forms, such as "mead," "clime," and "vale"; words in which a
syllable has been added for metrical convenience or poetic tone, such
as "affright" and "distain"; words once in common use but now only

poetic, such as "swain" and the active verb "speed" [in the sense of

"assist"]; and words which had been limited to poetry from their

 

AForbes, Life and writings, I, 89. The letter is dated 22 Sep-
tember, 1766.

7|qu

201
introduction into the language, such as "viewless," "verdant," and
"sylvan." Under the rubric of "poetic language," he also describes
special syntactic patterns, chiefly Latinisms, as characteristic of
the language of poetry. And he justifies his selection of examples by
the practice of the best poets. He explains his disapproval of modern
poets' adoption of the most arcane of Spenser's archaisms by observing
that if they had been acceptable, Dryden and Pope would have used them.
In fact, Beattie says, "the practice of Milton, Dryden, or Pope, may
. . . in almost all cases, be admitted as good authority for the use
of a poetical word."5
Though the "Essay" does not deal systematically with translation,

there are in it some observations on the topic, unfortunately so in-
complete as to raise more questions than they answer. Like Dryden and
virtually everyone else, Beattie recommends that a poet translate an—
other whose "genius" is amenable to his, and he makes the usual pleas
for fidelity to the original text, but he does not explain what he be-
lieves "fidelity" is. Dryden often violates it, he says:

His Virgil abounds in lines and couplets of the

most perfect beauty; but these are mixed with

others of a different stamp: nor can they who

judge of the original by this translation, ever

receive any tolerable idea of that uniform.mag-

nificence of sound and language, that exquisite

choice of words and figures, and that sweet

pathos of expression and sgntiment, which char-

acterise the Mantuan Poet.

0n the other hand, further along in the same discussion, he praises

 

5Essays: 0n Poetry and Music. as They Affect the Mind;, 0n
dicrous Compositioni, On the Usefulness of Classical

Learning (London, 1779), pp. 216-31. The passage quoted appears on
p. 2290

6Ibid., p. 16.

202
Pope for frequently improving upon Homer in his translation. Beattie's
practice as a translator is thus not much illuminated by his vague
statements of principle.

Certainly he does not differ from Dryden by hesitating to add to
the sense of Vergil's lines. This fact is immediately apparent in the
mere length of the fourth Pastoral: whereas Dryden translates Vergil's
sixty-three hexameters in seventy-seven heroic lines, Beattie uses a
hundred and two. His expansions, like Dryden's, include both repeti-
tions and additions, though Dryden.more often adds new ideas and

Beattie more often repeats the same ideas in other words. Vergil's
lines,

Teque adeo decus hoc aevi, te consule inibit,
Pollio, & incipient magni procedere menses.
Te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri,
Irrita perpetua solvent formidine terras.
Ille Deum vitam_accipiet, Divisque videbit
Permistos heroas, & ipse videbitur illis:

(E 1v, 11-16)

are rendered literally in the Loeb version:

And in thy consulship, Pollio, yea in thine, shall
this glorious age begin, and the mighty months com-
mence their march; under thy sway, any lingering
traces of our guilt shall become void, and release
the earth from its continual dread. He shall have
the gift of divine life, shall see heroes mingled
with gods, and shall himself be seen of them.

(I. 31)
Dryden adds an honorific description of the child and makes the father-
son relationship more resonant and the removal of guilt more abstract:

The lovely Boy, with his auSpicious Face,

Shall Pollio's Consulship and Triumph grace;

Majestick Months set out with him.to their appointed Race.
The Father banish'd Virtue shall restore,

And Crimes shall threat the guilty world no more.

The Son shall lead the life of Gods, and be

By Gods and Heroes seen, and Gods and Heroes see.

(E IV, 13-19)

203

Beattie also adds details, but different ones. Like Warton, he be-
lieved the prophecy of the Sybil foretold the birth of Christ, and
therefore he also makes use of a Biblical echo:

This Child, the joy of nations, shall be born?

Thy consulship, 0 Pollio, to adorn:

Thy consulship these happy times shall prove,

And see the mighty Months begin to move:

Then all our former guilt shall be forgiv'n,

And man shall dread no more th'avenging doom of heav'n.

The Son with heroes and with Gods shall shine,

And lead, enroll'd with them, the life divine.

(Beattie, E IV, 17-24)

In rendering yidebit and videbitur, he departs from the text in.much
the same way that Dryden does in the couplet about forgiveness of
guilt-for perhaps the same reason: the literally translated words "no
more" and "divine" require rhymes. Beattie's second and third lines
are repetitious. His decision to render Vergil's first three periods
in two couplets almost inevitably requires Beattie to add or to repeat.

Dryden, in rendering this passage as a triplet, has not had to face
that problem here.

Sometimes Beattie's additions add so little information that they
merely make what was succinct in the Latin, diffuse in English. Vergil
describes the conditions that will obtain in the golden age:

Non rastos patietur humus, non vinea falcem:
Robustus quoque jam tauris juga solvet arator.

Nec varios discet mentiri lana colores:
(E IV, 40-42)

(The soil shall not endure the ploughs, nor the vin-
yard, the pruning-hook:

the lusty plowman now shall also set his oxen free
from the yoke.

Nor shall wool learn to feign various colors.)

 

70f. Luke 2.10: "And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for,
behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all
people."

204
Dryden again translates in a triplet:
The labouring Hind his Oxen shall disjoyn,
No Plow shall hurt the Glebe, no Pruning-hook the Vine:

Nor wooll shall in dissembled colours shine.

His one deviation from a literal rendering is in the reversed order of
the first two lines. Beattie's metrical scheme, in his version of this
passage, is more regular in that he keeps to the ten-syllable line:

Henceforth no plough shall cleave the fertile ground,

No pruninghood the tender vine shall wound,

The husbandman with toil no longer broke

Shall loose his ox.for ever from.the yoke.

No more the tool a foreign die shall feign,

(E IV, 65-69) .

He makes some additions: "henceforth," "fertile," and "forever," and,
like Dryden, for robustus he substitutes a modifier which points to the
farmer's condition in the present rather than in the age to come. But
there are no new images; the same ideas are simply diffused over five
lines.

All this is not to say that Beattie failed to appreciate the
packed brevity of Vergil's Latin or such rhetorical devices as the repe-
tition of the two forms of video in the first passage cited above. In
the "Essay on Poetry and Music," he observes that brevity is "indispen-
sible [in] the poetic tongue."8 And as for imagery and skillful man-
ipulation of language, "tropes and figures promote strength of expres-

sion, and are in poetry peculiarly requisite, because they are often

more natural, and more imitative, than proper words."9

The difficulty, in Beattie's view, is inherent in translation

itself. He had no snobbish objections to the Greek and Latin classics'

 

8P. 218.
9

P. 245.

205

being available in English. His own first contact with Homer and Ver-
gil was through Pope's and Dryden's translations, both of which he had
read before he was ten years old.10 But he realized that it is not
possible to reproduce poetry in a second language with complete fidel-
ity to the words, rhetoric, and spirit of the original. "It is not
possible," he therefore asserts, "for anyone who is ignorant of Latin
to have any adequate notion of Virgil. The choice of his words, and
the modulation of his numbers, have never been copied with tolerable
success in any other tongue."ll

Dryden's shortcomings sometimes offended Beattie, but he realized
that many of them were inevitable. Simply because he was a translator,
he was doomed to some degree of failure. That difficulty granted,
Beattie found more to complain about in Dryden's execution than in his
principles concerning verse translation. Beattie's Pastorals resemble
Dryden's Eclogues in form and diction and, to some extent, in the gen-
eral treatment of the Latin text. The chief difference between them
is due to the fact that Beattie was not trying to arrive at a defini-
tive English version of the Eclo es; indeed, he alone of the transla-
tors of the period sometimes appears to have doubted the possibility
of such a version. There was no need, therefore, for him to refer con-

stantly to the work of his predecessors as he translated. The

 

10Alexander Dyce, "Memoir of Beattie," in The Poetical Works of
James Beattie (London, 1831), pp. xxxhxxxi.

llQuoted by Forbes in The Life and Writings. I, 53. Beattie
wrote several essays on the benefits of classical education. The
statement quoted here does not appear in "Remarks on the Usefulness of
Classical Learning" included in the 1779 edition of Essays on Poetry
and Music, the only volume of Beattie's critical writings that was
available to me. This essay is pedagogical rather than literary in
emphasis, but the point of view expressed in it is consistent with that
in Forbes's quotation.

206
resemblance between his Pastorals and Dryden's Eclogges are due to the
fact that they worked within the same theory of translation and poetic
tradition. It need only be added that Beattie was very much aware of
what Dryden had contributed to that tradition, and that he was in no
sense in rebellion against it.

Robert Andrews did consciously depart from.Dryden's values con-
cerning both prosody and the proper goal of the translator. He ap-
pears to have worked out a detailed theory of poetics, but there is not
much information available about it or about Andrews himself. In James
Mew‘s short biographical sketch in the‘Qigtionary of NationaleBioge
‘rgpgx, his birth date is not given, and it seems uncertain whether he
died in the same year in which his Vergil was published, 1766. Mew's
list of Andrews"works includes a criticism on the sermons of the Rev.
John Holland, "some animadversions on Dr. Brown's 'Essays on the Char-
acteristics,'” and a volume of original poems called Eidyllia, pub-
lished in 1757, the preface to which "contains a violent attack on
rhyme." I have been unable to find any other reference to any of
these works or any trace of surviving copies.

Nor have I been able to find any evidence of the "considerable
taste and scholarship" Mew attributes to Andrews. Commentaries in the
Monthly Review are very rarely minute enough to meet Joseph warton's
standards and are frequently equivocal concerning the quality of newly
published works, but the reviewer's opinion of Andrews' Egggil is
quite clear : he finds nothing at all to recommend it to the reader,
and he quotes a particular passage only to ridicule it. By any mea-
sure, Andrews' Virgil Englished was hardly a success, and few c0pies

of the one edition have survived; Mew notes that there is none in the

 

207
British Museum. And I have found no trace of an extant copy of his
original odes which were published later in 1766 to an even more con-
descending response.

Yet, poor and intrinsically unimportant as Andrews"yg§gil_is,

T. W. Harrison finds it interesting as evidence of the prevailing
critical attitude of the time.12 And indeed, Andrews, like his prede-
cessors, does reveal something about his own poetic values in his dis-
cussion of Vergil's and in his criticism of other translators. His
predecessors, he believes, all failed to produce faithful translations
of Vergil, because they did not appreciate the key element in Vergil's
poetical masterpiece, its structural beauty. The basic unit is the
"idea"; poetry is the felicitous arrangement of ideas within the line
and the juxtaposition of lines in the verse. Andrews does not explain
how the accumulation of patterns within patterns and the interplay
among line units work, but he assures us they do.

Neglecting this central principle, others have been too much ab-
sorbed in superficial concerns, such as the complexities of diction
and prosody, problems not nearly so difficult as poets have supposed.
The pseudo-problem of diction arises from the translators' substituting
words from "some Latin Commentator" for Vergil's, from.misunderstanding
of the equivalence of Latin and English, and from the English writers'
unwillingness to "doff their Gothic shackles." The last term.requires
some explanation, for Andrews does not use it in the usual way to refer
to rhyme alone. He does not define the term, but the most obvious dif-

ference between his presumably unshackled verse and that of his prede-

cessors is in syntax. Andrews simply assumes that the syntactic

 

lZnEnglish Aeneids," p. 9.

208

possibilities of Latin exist in English also, and that sentences built
on Latin models can be placed in sequence with sentences built on Eng-
lish patterns. The determining factor in the choice of syntactic pat-
terns is the ten-syllable line. For example, in the lines in which
the poet predicts a glorious future for the child of the fourth Eg-
lgggg, the first two are entirely English; though the structure is
periodic, the syntactic options exercised are quite normal:

He shall with Gods, and Heroes mixit with Gods,

In free communion taste the life divine;

(E IV, 15-16).

In the next line, however, there is nothing optional about the use of

a definite article with the first noun:

And peaceful world rule with his father's grace.
(E 4, 17)

and its omission makes the sentence non—English. English syntax per-
mits many inversions and other deviations from normal word order, but
that tolerance is severely strained when several variant structures oc-
cur within one clause. In the three-line period:

First at thy birth, Boy! shall her off'rings Earth

Wild ivy, colocasia, acantha fair,

With bacchar sweet, spontaneous bear around:

- (E IV, 18-20)

periodicity is achieved by means of the wide separation of the ele-
ments of the verb phrase ("shall. . .bear") and by reversing the order
of the verb and adverb. Also, the subject-object inversion forces the
separation of a long appositive series from its governing noun. The

sentence, translated structurally as well as verbally, would read:

First at thy birth, boy, earth shall spontaneous(1y)
bear her offerings-awild ivy, colocasia, and fair
acantha, sweet with bacchar.

The long object phrase forces the displacement of the adverb from its

209
normal position following the direct object; however, "spontaneous(ly)"
could as well occur before as after "shall." "Around" seems to have
been added to provide the ninth and tenth syllables of the line. This
sort of syntax is apparently what freedom from Gothic shackles means.

Problems of diction could be solved as easily, if poets would use
short, exact words that render the Latin text into English precisely.
"All languages," Andrews explains, "are but different dialects of the
same," and "if the same language have seldom if ever two words exactly
of the same meaning; yet those of different Nations, where all the
arts and sciences have equally flourish’d, as seldom has either of 'em
a word to which the other has not one synonymous." Passing over the
equating of ancient Roman and eighteenth-century British arts and
sciences, the sentence is still astonishingly naive, as anyone who has
ever tried to translate both literal signification and nuance in a
single word can testify.

As for prosody, the decisions to be made concern the type of line
and the distribution of pauses. Andrews rejects rhyme out of hand.
Those who have chosen the heroic couplet have "fully satisfied" the
taste and capacity of those readers "to whom they confessedly sacri-
ficed their judgment" (apparently an allusion to Dryden's remarks on
the subject), but the sacrifice was too great. "For Rhyme besides
obliging you to end the line with a good sound, serves also as a bar-
rier between each in a couplet: and owes to this effect probably all
its p0pularity." In short, it makes fidelity to Vergil's structure of
ideas impossible. English blank verse, on the other hand, does not
interfere with the placement of words and is therefore the proper

equivalent of Latin hexameters. Prosodic skill consists in making a

210

"proper division in the sense of the line," by placing the pauses so
that the reader's ear is held "suspended in a rapture of attention."
The heroic line, whether a complete grammatical unit or not, should
have enough meaning-content to justify the sort of pause a schoolboy
makes in translating aloud. The pause that comes at the end of an un-
pointed line is the quantitative measure of all others; at a comma,
its duration should be doubled; at a semicolon, tripled, and so on.
Andrews does not say whether the formula provides for differentiating
varieties of full stops. Underlying all his discussion of form.and
method is the assumption that matter and manner are separable in all
poetry, not only in translation, and that they are separable not mere-
1y verbally, to facilitate discussion, but actually, in the process of
composition. "Sounds and syllables" are but "adventitious graces."

When Andrews' statements about mechanics have been gleaned from
the rambling and sometimes almost incoherent verbiage of the preface,
all that remains is a sententious affirmation of the moral value of
Vergil, a defense of his political stand, and a number of references
to his sublimity, pathos, fire, imagination, and propriety of charac-
ter and language--all of which simply repeat Trapp's preface in gar-
bled form. Not that Andrews acknowledges any debt to Trapp. He men-
tions Trapp frequently, but always to point out his inexcusable short-
comings. It is clearly Trapp whom Andrews has in mind when he asks,
"but how forgive the blank verse writers their retaining all the
errours of those they affect to despise, and worse? their lines being
more defective in sense and more preposterously divided." All this
has a familiar ring, if we read "Benson" for "Andrews" and "Dryden"

for "Trapp." Like Benson, Andrews chose what he considered to be an

211

overrated translation to expose and correct-and, occasionally, to

COW013

The agreements in phrasing and diction between Andrews"Vgrgil
and the texts of his predecessors are, with few exceptions, short and
literal translations. They can readily be accounted for by the fact
that Englishmen of the same era were translating the same original.
The number of those similarities, however, is suggestive: there are
many more between Andrews and Trapp than between Andrews and any of
his other predecessors. And all the exceptions to the general descrip-
tion of Andrews' text are close correspondences between it and Trapp's.
Where Trapp, for example, describes the farmer's winter activities:

Some point their Stakes, and double-spiky Prongs:
And Osiers twist to bind the flexile Vine;
With.Bubeaanicker now slight Baskets weave:
(G 1, 330-32)
Andrews echoes:
0r point your stakes and doubly spiky prongs:

Twine osiers, to confine your flaunting vines:
0f Rubean wicker your light basket weave:

(c. 1, 264-66).
To close the list of labors permissible on sacred days, Trapp trans-
lates:

0r plunge the bleating Flocks in healthful Streams.
(G I, 338)

and Andrews follows:

0r plunge your bleating flocks in healthful streams.
(G 1, 272)

Similar echoes occur throughout the fourth Aeneid. Andrews' Dido

solemnly vows not to fall in love with Aeneas:

 

13That Trapp's Ver i1, though still respectfully cited, had never
replaced Dryden's in popularity and had been quite thoroughly eclipsed
by the Pittawarton version appears not to have occurred to Andrews.

212

Jove‘s glaring arm first bolt me to the shades,
Pale shades of Erebus and Night's abyss:
(A IV, 25-26)
in much the same words as Trapp's Dido:

0r Jove with Thunder strike me to the Shades,
Pale Shades of Erebus, and Night profound;

(A IV, 33-34).
The hunters in the two versions are accompanied by,

Massylian Horsemen, and quick-scented Hounds.
(Trapp, A IV, 176)

Massylian horsemen, and sagacious hounds.
(Andrews, A IV, 132)

And in Andrews' version, Dido cries,

Receive this Spirit: Free me from these cares.
(A IV, 652)

as she does in Trapp's,

Recive this Soul, and free me from These Cares.
(A IV, 869).

In the first Georgie, two of Andrews' lines are identical with
those of other versions; but in both cases, Trapp is Andrews' immedi-
ate source. Warton had also borrowed Trapp's line,

And Scylla rues the ravish'd purple Hair.
(Trapp, A IV, 504;
warton, A IV, 479).

Andrews adapts the verb form, but otherwise his line is identical:

And Scylla rue the ravish'd purple hair;
(A IV, 405).

Both Trapp and Warton had adopted a line from.Dryden verbatim:

And Impious Mortals fear'd Eternal Night.
(Dryden, A IV, 631;
Trapp, A IV, 581;
warton, A IV, 544;
Andrews, A IV, 468)

as Andrews also does.

Once again, even though rhyming is not a factor, endaword counts

213
bear out the conclusions drawn from comparing the substance of the
texts. In Andrews' translation of the fourth Eclo e, the first 9293-
,gig, and the fourth Agggig, the end-word in one line of every four
translates Vergil's end-word (323 of 1,282); one in five repeats
Trapp's (236 of 1,282); and one in eleven echoes Dryden's (114 of
1,282). Andrews' agreements with Warton and Benson are based on fewer
total lines but seem accurate none the less, Andrews' endaword agree-
ing with Warton's at a ratio of one to thirteen (42 of 577), and with
Benson's at one to ten (49 of 514). Endaword counts are not suffi-
cient proofs of the influence of one poet upon another, especially in
unrhymed texts, and they do not define the nature of the indebtedness
where it does exist. But, at least in translations of the same orig-
inal, such tallies do seem to be reliable indicators of works which
would merit closer comparison.

By any measure, Andrews appears not to be directly indebted to
Dryden. In some passages, however, Dryden‘s indirect influence, though
difqued, may still be felt. Occasionally, his expansion of a Vergil-
ian image persists. In the fourth Eclogue, for example, the poet's
vision of the golden age includes, among other evidences of regener-
ated nature:

nec magnos metuent armenta leones.
(E IV, 22)
(nor shall herds fear mighty lions.)
Dryden's expansion,

And lowing Herds, secure from lyons feed.
(E IV, 26)

is carried over into Trapp's version,

Unterrify'd by monstrous Lions, feed.
(E IV, 29)

214
and then into Andrews',

herds fearless with the lion graze:
(E IV, 22)

even though his diction is clearly not affected by Dryden's in this
passage. And in a few lines in which Andrews is probably indebted to
Trapp, he is as close or, in very rare instances, even closer, to Dry-
den. For example, Dryden translates,
aut graviora timet, quam.morte Sichaei.
(A IV. 502)
(but she feared no worse than at the death

of Sichaeus.)

She fear'd no worse than when Sichaeus fell:
(A IV, 726)

and Trapp follows:

And fear'd no worse than when Sichaeus dy'd;
(A IV, 671)

Andrews keeps the English clause to render morte Sichaei. and, like
Dryden, he chooses the conventional euphemism "fell":

Nor fearing worse, than when Sichaeus fell;
(A IV, 502).

It is possible that Andrews had Dryden's line in mind when he wrote
this line. But considering the text as a whole, it seems more prob~
able that "fell“ is a deliberate variation from Trapp that accidentally
resembles Dryden. There are so few of such similarities that I do not
believe they warrant any inference of a direct influence from Dryden.
Indeed, I should be reluctant to draw any conclusion at all about the
general decline or persistence of Dryden's influence on eighteenth-

century translators from a text as idiosyncratic as Andrews' Vergil

EngliShedo