Why to mute fish should thou thyself discover, Maids bury: and, for aught we know, I laugh'd the wanton play to view; And still old lovers yield the place to new. Then tell her what your pride doth cost, Alas! what comfort is 't that I am grown THE FORCE OF LOVE. PRESERVED FROM AN OLD MANUSCRIPT. THROW an apple up an hill, Down the mountain flows the stream, Eagles to the skies aspire, Metals grow within the mine, Does the cedar love the mountain? And not one star in Heaven offers to take thy part. Seek the birds in spring to pair? If e'er I clear my heart of this desire, If e'er it home to its breast retire, A lover burnt like me for ever dreads the fire. The pox, the plague, and every small disease We're by those serpents bit; but we're devour'd by these. Breathes the rose-bud scented air As the wencher loves a lass, When young maidens courtship shun, When the Moon out-shines the Sun, IF a man should undertake to translate Pindar almost without any thing else, makes an excelword for word, it would be thought, that one mad-lent poet; for though the grammarians and critics man had translated another; as may appear, have laboured to reduce his verses into regular when he that understands not the original, reads the verbal traduction of him into Latin prose, than which nothing seems more raving. And sure, rhyme, without the addition of wit, and the spirit of poetry, (quod nequeo monstrare & sentio tantum) would but make it ten times more distracted than it is in prose. We must consider in Pindar the great difference of time betwixt his age and ours, which changes, as in pictures, at least the colours of poetry; the no. less difference betwixt the religions and customs of our countries; and a thousand particularities of places, persons, and manners, which do but confusedly appear to our eyes at so great a distance. And lastly (which were enough alone for my purpose) we must consider, that our ears are strangers to the music of his numbers, which, sometimes (especially in songs and odes) feet and measures (as they have also those of the Greek and Latin comedies) yet in effect they are little better than prose to our ears. And I would gladly know what applause our best pieces of English poesy could expect from a Frenchman or Italian, if converted faithfully, and word for word, into French or Italian prose. And when we have considered all this, we must needs confess, that, after all these losses sustained by Pindar, all we can add to him by our wit or invention (not deserting still his subject) is not like to make him a richer man than he was in his own country. This is in some measure to be applied to all translations; and the not observing of it, is the cause that all which ever I yet saw are so much inferior to their originals. The like happens too in pictures, from the same root of exact imitation; which, being a vile and un worthy kind of servitude, is incapable of producing any thing good or noble. 1 have seen originals, both in painting and poesy, much more beautiful than their natural objects; but I never saw a copy better than the original: which indeed cannot be otherwise; for men resolving in no case to shoot beyond the mark, it is a thousand to one if they shoot not short of it. It does not at all trouble me, that the grammariars, perhaps, will not suffer this libertine way of rendering foreign authors to be called translation; for I am not so much enamoured of the name translator, as not to wish rather to be something better, though it want yet a name. I speak not so much all this, in defence of my manner of translating, or imitating, (or what other title they please) the two ensuing Odes of Pindar; for that would not deserve half these words; as by this occasion to rectify the opinion of divers The Psalms of David men upon this matter. (which I believe to have been in their original, to the Hebrews of his time, though not to our Hebrews of Buxtorfius's making, the inost exalted pieces of poesy) are a great example of what I have said; all the translators of which, (even Mr. Sandys himself; for in despite of pular errour, I will be bold not to except him) for this very reason, that they have not sought to supply the lost excellencies of another language with new ones in their own, are so far from doing honour, or at least justice, to that divine poet, that methinks they revile him worse than Shimei. And Buchanan himself (though much the best of them all, and indeed a great person) comes in my opinion no less short of David, than his country does of Judea. Upon this ground I have, in these two Odes of Pindar, taken, left out, and added, what I please; nor make it so much my aim to let the reader know precisely what he spoke, as what was his way and manner of speaking; which has not been yet (that I know of) introduced into English, though it be the noblest and highest kind of writing in verse; and which might, perhaps, be put into the list of Pancirolus, among the lost inventions of antiquity. This essay is but to try how it will look in an English habit: for which experiment 1 have chosen one of his Olympic, and another of his Nemean Odes; which are as followeth. po THE SECOND OLYMPIC ODE OF PINDAR. Written in praise of Theron, prince of Agrigentum, (a famous city in Sicily, built by his ancestors) who, in the seventy-seventh Olympic, won the chariot-prize. He is commended from the nobility of his race, (whose story is often toucht on) from his great riches, (an ordinary common-place in Pindar) from his hospitality, munificence, and other virtues. The Ode (according to the constant custom of the poet) consists more in digressions, than in the main subject: and the reader must not be choqued to hear him speak so often of his own Muse; for that is a liberty which this kind of poetry can hardly live without. QUEEN of all harmonious things, Dancing words, and speaking strings! What god, what hero, wilt thou sing? What happy man to equal glories bring? Begin, begin thy noble choice, [voice. And let the hills around reflect the image of thy Pisa does to Jove belong; Jove and Pisa claim thy song. The fair first-fruits of war, th' Olympic games, Alcides offer'd-up to Jove; Alcides too thy strings may move: [prove! Is first in Pisa's and in Virtue's race! Ev'n his own swift forefathers has outgone, Till on the fatal bank at last With pride and joy espy. Then chearful notes their painted years did sing, And Wealth was one, and Honour th' other, wing; Their genuine virtues did more sweet and clear, In Fortune's graceful dress, appear. To which, great son of Rhea! say The firm word, which forbids things to decay! If in Olympus' top, where thou Sitt'st to behold thy sacred show; If in Alpheus' silver flight; If in my verse, thou dost delight, My verse, O Rhea's son! which is Lofty as that, and smooth as this. For the past sufferings of this noble race (Since things once past, and fled out of thine hand, Hearken no more to thy command) Of the blue-ey'd Nercides, But death did them from future dangers free; What god, alas! will caution be For living man's security, Or will ensure our vessel in this faithless sea? Never did the Sun as yet Roll with alternate waves, like day and night: And did old oracles fulfil Of gods that cannot lic, for they foretell but their own will. Erynnis saw 't, and made in her own seed She slew his wrathful sons with mutual blows: And brave Thersander, in amends for what was past, arose. Brave Thersander was by none, In war, or warlike sports, out-done. Loud Olympus, happy thee, Isthmus and Nemæa, does twice happy see; By not being all thine own; Greatness of mind, and fortune too, In the noble chase of fame; [lame. This without that is blind, that without this is Riches alone are of uncertain date, And on short man long cannot wait; They, whilst life's air they breathe, consider well, and know Th'account they must hereafter give below; The heavy necessary effects of voluntary faults. There neither earth nor sea they plough, For food, that whilst it nourishes does decay, Till all their little dross was purg'd at last, The Muse-discover'd world of Islands Fortunate. oft-footed winds with tuneful voices there And golden trees enrich their side; For bracelets to the arin, and garlands to the head. Here all the heroes, and their poets, live; To Theron, Muse! bring back thy wandering song, Whom those bright troops expect impatiently; And may they do so long! How, noble archer! do thy wanton arrows fly Thy sounding quiver can ne'er emptied be: Art, instead of mounting high, About her humble food does hovering fly; Like the ignoble crow, rapiue and noise does love; Whilst Nature, like the sacred bird of Jove, Now bears loud thunder; and anon with silent joy The beauteous Phrygian boy Defeats the strong, o'ertakes the flying prey, And sometimes basks in th' open flames of day i And sometimes too he shrowds His soaring wings among the clouds. Leave, wanton Muse! thy roving fight; To thy loud string the well-fletcht arrow put; Let Agrigentum be the butt, And Theron be the white. And, lest the name of verse should give. Malicious mea pretext to misbelieve, By the Castalian waters swear, (A sacred oath no poets dare To take in vain, No more than gods do that of Styx prophane) A better man, or greater-soul'd, was born; No man near him should be poor! But in this thankless world the givers Wrongs and outrages to do, Lest men should think we owe. Appear'd not half so bright, But cast a weaker light, Such monsters, Theron! has thy virtue found: Through earth, and air, and seas, and up to th But all the malice they profess, Thy secure honour cannot wound; For thy vast bounties are so numberless, That them or to conceal, or else to tell, Is equally impossible! THE FIRST NEMEAN ODE OF PINDAR. Chromius, the son of Agesidamus, a young gentleman of Sicily, is celebrated for having won the prize of the chariot-race in the Nemæan games, (a solemnity instituted first to celebrate the funeral of Opheltes, as is at large described by Statius; and afterwards continued every third year, with an extraordinary conflux of all Greece, and with incredible honour to the conquerors in all the exercises there practised) upon which occasion the poet begins with the commendation of his country, which I take to have been Ortygia,, (an island belonging to Sicily, and a part of Syracuse, being joined to it by a bridge) though the title of the Ode call him Ætnæan Chromius, perhaps because he was made governor of that town by Hieron. From thence he falls into the praise of Chromius's person, which he draws from his great endowments of mind and body, and most especially from his hospitality, and the worthy use of his riches. He likens his beginning to that of Hercules; and, according to his usual manner of being transported with any good hint that meets him in his way, passing into a digression of Hercules, and his slaying the two serpents in his cradle, concludes the Ode with that history. BEAUTEOUS Ortygia! the first breathing-place Of great Alpheus' close and amorous race! Fair Delos' sister, the childbed Of bright Latona, where she bred Th' original new Moon! heavenly vault. "To thee, O Proserpine! this isle I give," Said Jove, and, as he said, Smil'd, and bent his gracious head. "And thou, O isle!" said he, "for ever thrive, And keep the value of our gift alive! As Heaven with stars, so let The country thick with towns be set, Let all the towns be then Wise in peace, and bold in wars! Nor let their warlike laurel scorn With the Olympic olive to be worn, Whose gentler honours do so well the brows of Peace adorn!" Go to great Syracuse, my Muse, and wait "Twill open wide to let thee in, When thy lyre's voice shall but begin; No doubt will thee admit, strength and beauty through the forming mass; They mov'd the vital lump in every part, For the great dower which Fortune made to it, Who saw'st her tender forehead ere the horns To lose th' occasion Fortune does afford were grown! Who, like a gentle scion newly started out, When they young Chromius' chariot drew, Young Chromius, too, with Jove began; From hence came his success, Nor ought he therefore like it less, Since the best fame is that of happiness; For whom should we esteem above The men whom gods do love? 'Tis them alone the Muse too does approve, The torches which the mother brought |