THEOCRITUS TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE. I ET C. S. CALYERLEY, LATE FELLOW OF CSRISTS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AUTHOR OF "TRANSLATIONS INTO ENGLISH AND LATIN." 5 J >3 J ) J DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. LONDON: BELL AND DALDY. 1869. » • • • »*' •.'•• »• ••.*•• •.*'I •• •f••,•..• ;••« ,•••.• * ,"• ••,•• • •••• •*!«••*•,*.•••• ••**• ••*.• .... ..'.•..• • ••' ••• • • '. f + 43 PEEFACE. ^ T HAD intended translating all or nearly all these Idylls into blank verse, as the natural equivalent of Greek or of Latin hexameters; only deviating into rhyme where occasion seemed to demand it. But I ^ found that other metres had their special advantages: the fourteen-syllable line in particular has that, among M others, ofcontaining about the same number of syllables as an ordinary line of Theocritus. And there is also \j no doubt something gained by variety. Several recent writers on the subject have laid down that everytranslation ofGreek poetry, especially bucolic poetry, must be in rhyme of some sort. But they have seldom stated, and it is hard to see, why. There is no rhyme in the original, and prima facie should be none in the translation. Professor Blackie has, it is 230; 18 PREFACE. vi true, pointed out the "assonances, alliterations, and rhymes," which are found in more or less abundance in Ionic Greek.* These may of course be purely accidental, like the hexameters in Livy or the blank- verse lines in jMr. Dickens's prose: but accidental or not (it may be said) they are there, and ought to be recognised. May we not then recognise them by in- troducing similar assonances, etc. here and there into the English version? or by availing ourselves of what " Professor Blackie again calls attention to, the com- pensating powers"t of English? I think with him that it was hard to speak of our language as one which "transforms hoos megaloio hoeien into 'great ox's hide.' " Such phrases as 'The Lord is a man of war,' 'The trumpet spake not to the armed throng,' are to my ear quite as grand as Homer: and it would be equally fair to ask what we are to make of a language which transforms Milton's line into 7) adXTrfy^ ov Trpoaecfyr] rbv ooTrXiafxevov 6')(\ov. But be this as it may, these phenomena are surely too * Blackie's Homer, Vol. I., pp. 413, 414. t Ibid., page 377, etc. PREFACE. vii rare and too arbitrary to be adequately represented by any regularly recurring rhyme : and the question remains, what is there in the unrhymed original to which rhyme answers? To me its eflfect is to divide the verse into couplets, triplets, or (if the word may include them all) stanzas of some kind. Without rhyme we have no apparent means of conveying the effect of stanzas. There are of course devices such as repeating a line or part of a line at stated intervals, as is done in 'Tears, idle tears' and elsewhere: but clearly none of these would be available to a translator. Where therefore he has to express stanzas, it is easy to see that rhyme may be admissible and even necessary. Pope's couplet may (or may not) stand for elegiacs, and the In Memoriam stanza for some one of Horace's metres. Where the heroes of Virgil's Eclogues sing alternately four lines each, Gray'squatrain seems to suggest itself: and where a similar case occurs in these Idylls (as for instance in the ninth) I thought it might be met by taking whatever received English stanza was nearest the re- quired length. Pope's couplet again may possibly best convey the pomposity of some Idylls and the PREFACE. viii point of others. And there may be divers considera- tions of this kind. But, speaking generally, where — the translator has not to intimate stanzas where he has on the contrary to intimate that there are none — rhyme seems at first sight an intrusion and a sug- gestio falsi. No doubt (as has been observed) what 'Pastorals' we have are mostly written in what is called the heroic measure. But the reason is, I suppose, not far to seek. Dryden and Pope wrote Mieroics,' not from any sense of their fitness for bucolic poetry, but from a sense of their universal fitness and their followers of : course copied them. But probably no scholar would affirm that any poem, original or translated, by Pope or Dryden or any of their school, really resembles in any degree the bucolic poetry of the Greeks. Mr. Morris, whose poems appear to me to resemble it more almost than anything I have ever seen, of course writes what is technically Pope's metre, and equally of course is not of Pope's school. Whether or no Pope and Dryden intended to resemble the old bucolic poets in style is, to say the least, immaterial. If they did not, there is no reason whatever why any of us PREFACE. ix who do should adopt their metre: if they did and failed, there is every reason why we should select a different one. Professor Conington has adduced one cogent argu- ment against blank verse: that is, t—hat hardly any of us can write it.* But if this is so if the 'blank — verse' which we write is virtually prose in disguise the addition ofrhymewould only make it rhymed prose, and we should be as far as ever from "verse really deserving the name."t Unless (which I can hardly imagine) the mere incident of 'terminal consonance' can constitute that verse which would not be verse independently, this argument is equally good against attempting verse of any kind : we should still be writing disguised, and had better write undisguised, prose. Prose translations are of course tenable, and are (I am told) advocated by another very eminent critic. These considerations against them occur to one: that, among the characteristics of his original which the translator is bound to preserve, one is that he wrote metrically; and that the prattle which passes * PrefacetoConington'sMneid^pageix. t Ihid. X PREFACE. muster, and sounds perhaps ratlier pretty than other- wise, in metre, would in plain prose be insufferable. Very likely some exceptional sort of prose may be meant, which would dispose of all such difficulties; but this would be harder for an ordinary writer to evolve out of his own brain, than to construct any species of verse for which he has at least a model and a precedent. These remarks are made to shew that my metres were not selected, as it might appear, at hap-hazard. Metre is not so unimportant as to justify that. For the rest, I have used Briggs's edition {Poetce Bucolici Greed), and have never, that I am aware of, taken refuge in any various reading where I could make any sense at all of the text as given by him. Some- times I have been content to put down what I felt was a wrong rendering rather than omit but only ; in cases where the original was plainly corrupt, and all suggested emendations seemed to me hopelessly wide of the mark. What, for instance, may be the true meaning of /3oX/369 rt? KO'xXia^; in the fourteenth Idyll I have no idea. It is not very important. And no doubt the sense of the last two lines of the "Death PREFACE. xi ofAdonis'' is very milikelj to be what I have made it. But no suggestion that I met with seemed to me satisfactory or even plausible: and in this and a few similar cases I have put down what suited the context. Occasionally also, as in the Idyll here printed — last the one lately discovered by Bergk, which I — elucidated by the light of Fritzsche's conjectures I have availed myself of an opinion which Professor Conington somewhere expresses, to the effect that, where two interpretations are tenable, it is lawful to accept for the purposes of translation the one you might reject as a commentator. TeTopraio<i has I dare say nothing whatever to do with 'quartan fever.' On one point, rather a minor one, I have ventured to dissent from Professor Blackie and others: namely, in retaining the Greek, instead of adopting the Roman, nomenclature. Professor Blackie says* that there are some men by whom " it is esteemed a grave offence to call Jupiter Jupiter," which begs the question: and that Jove "is much more musical" than Zeus, which begs another. Granting (what might be questioned) that Zeus, Aphrodite, and M^os are as absolutely the * Blackie's Homer, Preface, pp. xii., xiii. xii PREFACE. same individuals with Jupiter, Venus, and Cupid as — Odysseus undoubtedly is with Ulysses still I cannot see why, in making a version of (say) Theocritus, one should not use by way of preference those names by which he invariably called them, and which are characteristic of him : why, in turning a Greek author into English, we should begin by turning all the proper names into Latin. Professor Blackie's authoritative statement* that "there are whole idylls in Theocritus which would sound ridiculous in any other language than that of Tarn o' Shanter" I ac- cept of course unhesitatingly, and should like to see it acted upon by himself or any competent person. But a translator is bound to interpret all as best he may: and an attempt to write Tam o' Shanter's lan- guage by one who was not Tam o' Shanter's country- man would, I fear, result in something more ridiculous still. * Blackie'sHomer, Vol. I., page 384. c. s. c.