seems to be Mr. Green's view, and he has, we think, carried it out with good sense and discrimination. The text is based on Dindorf and Meineke. A table of the various readings of the texts of these two scholars is prefixed. We do not understand why Mr. Green never refers to Dr. Holden's recent edition. We suppose he must have completed the greater part of his work before its publication. We wonder, too, that he takes no notice of Teuffel's edition, published in 1856. We are glad to find that from time to time he gives us a parallel passage, and we only wish he had given more. One of the first duties of a teacher appears to us to be, to make his pupils feel the connexion between different literatures. We could wish, too, that he had explained the plan and outline of the play in a brief English summary. This we are convinced would have been very acceptable to students. We must confine ourselves to two or three specimens of Mr. Green's work. We observe that at v. 32 (a passage usually rendered, "Take the horse home, after having first made him have a roll" he adopts Paley's explanation of the word aλíoas, "having taken him out of harness ;" this certainly seems to suit the sense better; but we have our doubts whether the word will bear this meaning. We always thought it a queer thing that a horse before being put into the stable should be made to roll on the ground; but we observe that there is a passage in Xenophon (De re equestri, 5, 3) which, taken in connexion with an explanation given by Julius Pollux (183), seems to favour the ordinary view. Perhaps the Greek idea was that a horse after having come in from a day's work, would be refreshed by having a good roll and stretching his legs. We find that Cumberland, who translated this play in 1797, renders Eaλioas by "unharnessed," and perhaps Paley borrowed his interpretation from him. We like it, but we cannot make up our mind about it. At v. 94, pрovτiorýρiov (the place where Socrates and his disciples pursued their studies), is rendered contemplating," which does not strike us as particularly happy or ingenious. It is perhaps better than "the thinking-shop" of Walsh; but we think it hardly so good as the "council chamber" of Cumberland, or the "meditation hall" of Mr. Rudd, the most recent of the translators of Aristophanes. Mr. Green, we feel sure, is right in explaining the phrase aiyídos nvíoxos, which the poet applies to Athene, v. 602, from a passage in Eschy. Eumen., 403-5, as "charioted on thy ægis." He also, in v. 999, very properly rejects the meaning which Liddell and Scott give to the word uvŋoɩkaкñσaι. It is rendered in their lexicon "to reproach with the ills of age," whereas μvηoíкakoç, as Mr. Green points out, signifies" mindful of evil, 66 bearing a grudge." The true meaning of the passage is thus brought out, which is, "Don't cherish any bad or ungrateful feeling towards the best time of your father's life, when he supported your weakness." W. J. BRODRIBB, M.A. Correspondence. ON METRICAL TRANSLATION. SIR, A writer in a recent number of this Magazine, laid down that there could be no true translation of a Greek or Roman poet which did not reproduce his metre; and that this had been successfully done by the Poet Laureate and others. I venture to think, on the contrary, that what resemblance there is between these modern experiments and their originals, is a prima facie resemblance, and vanishes upon inspection; and that the specimens which the Laureate gave us, whatever may be their value upon other grounds, are, as imitations of metre, worthless. That the likeness is not so perfect as it has been assumed to be may, perhaps, appear thus. Let us take Mr. Tennyson's alcaic stanzas-the best alcaics, one may well suppose, which our language is capable of producing-and consider a single line: "Calm as a mariner out in ocean." This, it will be said, is a perfectly unexceptionable English alcaic line. And such, no doubt, it is; but does it really reproduce Horace? If so, then, supposing we constructed a Latin line upon its model, we ought to have a fac simile of the normal Horatian line. Take Sol ut in aëre lucet alto: Is this a fair sample of Horace? It is a line which any elementary lyric-book would tell us was bad; a line the like of which could not be found in all Horace's Odes. The same experiment might be tried on any other metre with the same result. Coleridge's verse "In the pentameter aye falling in melody back," has been often quoted for its ingenuity and beauty, and I do not presume to question either. I only say that a fac simile of it in Latin would be a pentameter so execrable, that the student of Ovid and Tibullus would hardly recognise it as a pentameter at all. The truth I take to be this: that we modern experimentalists adopt-and I dare say must adopt, to make metrical composition possible at all in English-not merely a different, but a diametrically opposite, principle to what our predecessors followed. We study to produce such verses as it shall be impossible to read without, at the same time, involuntarily scanning them. They are to "scan themselves," to quote Dr. Whewell's phrase; or, as Mr. Fortescue puts it, "the words, read as they are spoken, should fall rightly into the metre." The ancients, I contend, made it a special point that their verses should not "scan themselves," and every form of line which did so they held bad on that account. We select, in other words, for our standard precisely those lines which Horace or Ovid carefully excluded, frame verse after verse upon their model, and call the result a reproduction of Horace's or Ovid's versification. My first proposition, as to the principle on which the moderns work, I need hardly verify. As to the second, it may of course be said, that we cannot tell how the Greek and Roman poets read their lines. We have, however, this evidence as to how they did not read them. There are in every metre certain types of line which the writers in it manifestly avoided. In an alcaic ode (for instance) such a line as I propounded just now, or a line of the forms, "Fortia corpora fudit Hector," "Fada cadavera barbarorum." A pentameter, again ending with a monosyllable, would not be found in all Latin literature. And so with other metres. This avoidance is a simple fact, and one for which we are bound to account in some way. Now if we suppose they meant their verses to be read as they are scanned, there is no apparent reason-I think I may say there is no conceivable reason-why any one of these types of line should have been objected to. "Aùsa mori mulièr marito," and "Mòrdet aquà tacitùrnus àmnis" (read as accented), are rhythmically identical with fœda cadavera barbarorum, and with any other line which scans. A pentameter ending with a monosyllable is rhythmically identical with any other pentameter scanned e.g., there is surely no difference in sound between "Sídera tángit equís," and "Sídera tángite quís." On that supposition, I say, all these lines, which were as a matter of fact rejected, would be perfectly admissible. And in English, where the supposition is true, they were all (as one would expect) admitted freely. I appeal to Mr. Fortescue himself whether (which are identical in construction with two of my model bad Latin lines)-would not be thought rather good than otherwise in English. As to any objection to pentameters which end with a monosyllable, they do so almost uniformly. If, on the other hand, we adopt the supposition that the old poets (like the modern) read their verses by an accent which was so far arbitrary that it was wholly independent of the scansion, and was intended partially to conceal the scansion, then one sees at once why all these lines might have been disallowed. "Aúsa móri múlier maríto," and "Mórdet áqua tacitúrnus ámnis "-read as, rightly or wrongly, I was taught to read them at school- are two different lines, and are both good because they do not carry their scansion upon their face; and "Fortia corpora fudit Ajax" is bad because it does. This hypothesis, and no other that I can think of, would account for the condemnation of all the lines, in what metre soever, which are actually condemned. Why, for instance, would such a verse as μελαῖνα νύξ, μελαῖνα νύξ, μελαῖνα νύξ, be a bad iambic? The books would of course say that it has no cæsura. But why is a verse bad which has no cæsura? If all verses are to be scanned in reading them, a verse without a cæsura stands just the same as a verse with any number. What appears to me to be the almost universal fallacy of metrical writers is the assumption that when you have got the scansion of a line you have got its rhythm. Mr. Fortescue speaks of "metre or rhythm" throughout as convertible terms. I deny that the rhythm of the Propria quæ maribus is the same as the rhythm of the " Æneid." Any metre may no doubt, as he says, be imitated in English: lines, that is, may be made in any metre which scan. Even so intricate a one as Super alta vectus Atys is, I am told, copied, and that correctly, in the Laureate's "Boadicea." 66 Adiitque opaca silvis redimita loca deæ." "Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters o'er a wild confederacy." "Soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, gentleman, apothecary." What the metre of the second and third may be, and how far they correspond with the first, I am not competent to say. The last I had always mistaken for prose. However, the lines in "Andromeda " are most of them undeniable hexameters: but what then? The lines "When little Samuel woke and heard his Maker's voice, At I are equally undeniable iambics: and the same claim that Mr. Kingsley has to have reproduced the rhythm of Homer, Dr. Watts seemingly has to have reproduced that of Æschylus. do not suppose that if Mr. Fortescue had to translate the "Prometheus Vinctus," he would feel obliged to represent the iambic lines by the "Little Samuel" metre, and the anapastic ones by the metre of Owen Meredith's "Lucile :" but I do not see how, consistently with his principles, he could do otherwise. Perhaps I may be allowed to make some comments on Mr. Fortescue's own versions, to which indeed he invites criticism— that is to say, on their merits as imitations. As to the first ode, I should say that he was bound, on his own showing, to translate it not only into sapphics but into Horatian sapphics. It would be no imitation of Pope's metre, for example, to write it as handled by Keats, or by Mr. Morris. Now the "dactyl in the middle," on which Mr. Fortescue's sapphic line is made to hinge, is not, I submit, a characteristic of Horace's line. It is there, of course, but it only appears when you take the verse to pieces and I confess that my despised old friend, me. "Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded " seems to me more Horatian than any line in the copy before Could Mr. Fortescue read the ode he has translated into the metre into which he has put it? Of course he could if he scanned it all through; and in that case I can only put my former question in a different form. Why is it that we never find in Horace such a line as Ense nudo terruit Hector arcem?— In an alcaic one naturally looks to the two final lines. Of Mr. Fortescue's third line, one seems to me (for an obvious reason) really to resemble one of Horace's: the remainder to be much less like it than Mr. Ingle's fragment, "In hurry post-haste for a licence." They are all exactly in the metre if we substitute a dissyllable ("April" suppose) for the monosyllable at the end. Can Horace's third lines be read by scanning them or otherwise, into this metre? Some perhaps could, such as the first in this ode; but that is no more a fair sample of Horace's versification than "Cornua velatarum obvertimus antennarum," is a fair sample of Virgil's. Of the fourth lines, I can only say |