down to paint the acts of Samson against the uncircumcised. The great obstacle to Chapman's translations being read is their unconquerable quaintness. He pours out in the same breath the most just and natural, and the most violent and forced expressions. He seems to grasp whatever words come first to hand during the impetus of inspiration, as if all other must be inadequate to the divine meaning. But passion (the all in all in poetry) is everywhere present, raising the low, dignifying the mean, and putting sense into the absurd. He makes his readers glow, weep, tremble, take any affection which he pleases, be moved by words or in spite of them, be disgusted and overcome that disgust." Chapman's Homer is, in some respects, not unworthy of this enthusiastic tribute. Few writers have been more copiously inspired with the genuine frenzy of poetry—with that "fine-madness," which, as Drayton has said in his lines on Marlow, "rightly should possess a poet's brain." Indeed, in the character of his genius, out of the province of the drama, Chapman bears a considerable resemblance to Marlow, whose unfinished translation of Museus's Hero and Leander he completed. With more judgment and more care he might have given to his native language, in his version of the Iliad, one of the very greatest of the poetical works it possesses. But what, except the most extreme irregularity and inequality,-a rough sketch rather than a finished performance, was to be expected from his boast of having translated half the poem-namely, the last twelve books--in fifteen weeks? Yet, rude and negligent upon the whole as it is, Chapman's is by far the most Homeric Iliad we yet possess. The enthusiasm of the translator for his original is uncompromising to a degree of the ludicrous. "Of all books," he exclaims in his Preface, "extant in all kinds, Homer is the first and best;" and in the same spirit, in quoting a passage from Pliny's Natural History in another portion of his preliminary matter, he proceeds first to turn it into verse, "that no prose may come near Homer." In spite, however, of all this eccentricity, and of a hurry and impetuosity which betray him into many mistranslations, and, on the whole, have the effect perhaps of giving a somewhat too tumultuous and stormy representation of the Homeric poetry, the English into which Chapman transfuses the meaning of the mighty ancient is often singularly and delicately beautiful. He is the author of nearly all the happiest of the compound epithets which Pope has adopted, and of many others equally musical and expressive. "Far-shooting Phoebus," "the ever-living gods,"-" the many-headed hill,"-" the ivorywristed queen,"-are a few of the felicitous combinations with which he has enriched his native tongue. Carelessly executed, indeed, as the work for the most part is, there is scarcely a page of it that is not irradiated by gleams of the truest poetic genius. Often in the midst of a long paragraph of the most chaotic versification, the fatigued and distressed ear is surprised by a few lines,- -or it may be sometimes only a single line,-" musical as is Apollo's lute,"—and sweet and graceful enough to compensate for ten times as much ruggedness. Such, for instance, is the following version of part of the description of the visit paid by Ulysses and his companions to the shrine of Apollo at Chrysa, in the First Book : The youths crowned cups of wine Drank off, and filled again to all: that day was held divine, And spent in pæans to the Sun; who heard with pleased ear: When whose bright chariot stooped to sea, and twilight hid the clear, All soundly on their cables slept, even till the night was worn; And when the Lady of the Light, the rosy-fingered morn, Rose from the hills, all fresh arose, and to the camp retired, While Phoebus with a fore-right wind their swelling bark inspired. And here are a few more verses steeped in the same liquid beauty, from the Catalogue of the Ships, in the Second Book: Who dwell in Pylos' sandy soil and Arene' the fair, In Thryon near Alpheus' flood, and Aepy full of air, 1 This name is incorrectly accented, but Pope has copied the error. Warton had a copy of Chapman's translation, which had belonged to Pope, and in which the latter had noted many of the interpolations of his predecessor, of whom, indeed, as Warton remarks, a diligent observer will easily discern that he was no careless reader.- Hist. Eng. Poet. iv. 272. This copy, described in the newspaper account as having been presented to Warton by Bishop Warburton, is stated to have been knocked down for 127. at the sale by auction in April 1860 of the library of the late Rev. John Mitford. In the preface to his own Iliad, Pope has allowed to Chapman, “a daring fiery spirit that animates his translation, which is something like what one might imagine Homer himself might have writ before he arrived to years of discretion." Dryden has told us also that Waller used to say he never could read it without incredible transport. In a note upon Warton's History, by the late Mr. Park, it is stated that "Chapman's own copy of his translation of Homer, corrected by him throughout for a future edition, was purchased for five shillings from the shop of Edwards by Mr. Steevens, and, at the sale of his books in 1800, was transferred to the invaluable library of Mr. Heber." This important copy, it appears, cannot now be found. Chap In Cyparysseus, Amphygen, and little Pteleon, To ancient Thamyris of Thrace, did use him cruelly: He coming from Eurytus' court, the wise Oechalian king, Because he proudly durst affirm he could more sweetly sing Than that Pierian race of Jove, they, angry with his vaunt, Bereft his eyesight and his song, that did the ear enchant, And of his skill to touch his harp disfurnished his hand : All these, in ninety hollow keels, grave Nestor did command. Almost the whole of this Second Book, indeed, is admirably translated in the harangues, particularly, of Agamemnon and the other generals, in the earlier part of it, all the fire of Homer burns and blazes in English verse.* HARINGTON; FAIRFAX; FANSHAWE. Of the translators of foreign poetry which belong to this period, three are very eminent. Sir John Harington's translation of the Orlando Furioso first appeared in 1591, when the author was in his thirtieth year. It does not convey all the glow and poetry of Ariosto; but it is, nevertheless, a performance of great ingenuity and talent. The translation of Tasso's great epic by Edward Fairfax was first published, under the title of Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recoverie of Jerusalem, in 1600. This is a work of true genius, full of passages of great beauty; and although by no means a perfectly exact or servile version of the Italian original, is throughout executed with as much care as taste and spirit.† Sir Richard Fanshawe is the author of versions of Camoens's Lusiad, of Guarini's Pastor Fido, of the Fourth man's Iliad in a complete form was first printed without date, but certainly after the accession of James I., to whose son, Prince Henry, it is dedicated. The Odyssey, which is in the common heroic verse of ten syllables, was published in 1614. 1 This name is also misaccented. Both works are probably very incorrectly printed. * Chapman's Translation of the Iliad, formerly a scarce book, has now been rendered generally accessible by two reprints of it; the first edited by the late Dr. W. Cooke Taylor, 2 vols. 8vo. 1843; the second (along with the Odyssey and others of Chapman's translations) by Mr. R Hooper, 5 vols. 8vo. 1857. + Reprinted in the Tenth and Fourteenth Volumes of KNIGHT'S WEEKLY VOLUME. Book of the Eneid, of the Odes of Horace, and of the Querer por Solo Querer (To love for love's sake) of the Spanish dramatist Mendoza. Some passages from the last-mentioned work, which was published in 1649, may be found in Lamb's Specimens, the ease and flowing gaiety of which never have been excelled even in original writing. The Pastor Fido is also rendered with much spirit and elegance. Fanshawe is, besides, the author of a Latin translation of Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, and of some original poetry. His genius, however, was sprightly and elegant rather than lofty, and perhaps he does not succeed so well in translating poetry of a more serious style: at least, Mickle, the modern translator of Camoens, in the discourse prefixed to his own version, speaks with great contempt of that of his predecessor; affirming not only that it is exceedingly unfaithful, but that Fanshawe had not "the least idea of the dignity of the epic style, or of the true spirit of poetical translation." He seems also to sneer at Fanshawe's Lusiad because it was "published during the usurpation of Cromwell,"-as if even the poets and translators of that time must have been a sort of illegitimates and usurpers in their way. But Fanshawe was all his life a steady royalist, and served both Charles I. and his son in a succession of high employments. Mickle, in truth, was not the man to appreciate either Fanshawe or Cromwell. DRUMMOND. One of the most graceful poetical writers of the reign of James I. is William Drummond, of Hawthornden, near Edinburgh; and he is further deserving of notice as the first of his countrymen, at least of any eminence, who aspired to write in English. He has left us a quantity of prose as well as verse; the former very much resembling the style of Sir Philip Sidney in his Arcadia,-the latter, in manner and spirit, formed more upon the model of Surrey, or rather upon that of Petrarch and the other Italian poets whom Surrey and many of his English successors imitated. No early English imitator of the Italian poetry, however, has excelled Drummond, either in the sustained melody of his verse, or its rich vein of thoughtful tenderness. * Vol. ii. pp. 242-253. We will transcribe one of his sonnets as a specimen of the fine moral painting, tinged with the colouring of scholarly recollections, in which he delights to indulge :- Trust not, sweet soul, those curled waves of gold Nor voice whose sounds more strange effects do show Look to this dying lily, fading rose, Dark hyacinth, of late whose blushing beams DAVIES. A remarkable poem of this age, first published in 1599, is the Nosce Teipsum* of Sir John Davies, who was successively solicitor- and attorney-general in the reign of James, and had been appointed to the place of Chief Justice of the King's Bench, when he died, before he could enter upon its duties, in 1626. Davies is also the author of a poem on dancing entitled Orchestra, and of some minor pieces, all distinguished by vivacity as well as precision of style; but he is only now remembered for his philosophical poem, the earliest of the kind in the language. It is written in rhyme, in the common heroic ten-syllable verse, but disposed in quatrains, like the early play of Misogonus already mentioned, and other poetry of the same era, or like Sir Thomas Overbury's poem of The Wife, the Gondibert of Sir William Davenant, and the Annus Mirabilis of Dryden, at a later period. No one of these writers has managed this difficult stanza so successfully as Davies: it has the disadvantage of requiring the sense to be in general closed at certain regularly and quickly recurring turns, which yet are very ill adapted for *The full title is Nosce Teipsum. This oracle expounded in two elegies: -1. Of human knowledge.-2. Of the soul of man and the immortality thereof. |