impugned; the question is simply suggested, whether, in case of a proposal to assimilate the English law affecting the property of women who marry, to that which prevails in other civilised countries, the legislative assembly best qualified to arrive at a decision which should be beyond suspicion of being partial, would be one in the election of which no woman had a voice. But as this question is not at present raised by any politician, it may be more apposite to take one which is periodically mooted, and which is believed, though on what grounds it is somewhat difficult to make out, to have a special interest for the female sex, namely, the propriety of legalising marriage with a deceased wife's sister. The supposed wishes and opinions of women have been freely used as arguments pro and con in Parliament, and a departure from the timehonoured formula, "Women have no business with politics," has been sanctioned to the extent of taking some pains to ascertain what women think and desire in the matter. This seems a tacit confession that an assembly composed of the representatives of one sex only, is not always the one most competent to decide on questions specially affecting the other. "Women have nothing to do with politics," we are told, and this assertion is given as an answer to their request for enfranchisement. But on the right solution of political questions depends the progress of the nation in material prosperity and intellectual culture. Female persons, especially those occupying an independent position, have the same stake in the country as their male fellow-citizens, and it is of just as much importance to women as to men, that the national counsels should be directed to the end of promoting the comfort and happiness of the masses of the people. The venerable phrase, "Women have no business with politics,” was once uttered as a reproach in the hearing of a witty Frenchwoman during the period of the Revolution, and called forth the ready reply, that in a land where women were liable to have their heads cut off for political offences, they liked to know the reason why. We have in this country discontinued the practice of cutting off the head of any person, whether man or woman, for political reasons; but whatever practical inconvenience any individual is liable to sustain from the operation of political measures, affects persons of both sexes alike. "Women have nothing to do with politics" is a mere assertion, founded on sentimental, not on scientific grounds. It may be true, it may be false; it is a proposition fairly open to dispute. But though this proposition may be doubted, there is no doubt at all about its converse. It may be denied that women have anything to do with politics; it cannot be denied that politics have a great deal to do with women. LYDIA E. BECKER. CONINGTON'S ENEID. The Eneid of Virgil. Translated into English Verse. By Joux CON- AS is the case with translators of Homer since the days of Pope, so it is with all such as essay the translation of Virgil's "Eneid," and enter the field which is Dryden's by right of first possession. They must incur the imputation of seeking to try a fall with a master of their craft. They cannot help feeling that not only are the sympathies of bystanders pre-engaged on the side of their antagonist as a champion whose vested rights it seems sacrilege to disturb, but that their own inner sense and leaning point in the same direction. They are doing despite, by the act of rivalry, to a god of their youthful idolatry. Of Pope's "Homer" Professor Conington, in one of the "Oxford Essays," avers, "that probably no other work has had so much influence on the national taste and feeling for poetry. It has been-I hope it still is-the delight of every intelligent schoolboy; they read of kings, of heroes, and of mighty deeds,' in language which, in its calm, majestic flow, unhasting, unresting, carries them on as irresistibly as Homer's own could do, were they born readers of Greek; and their minds are filled with a conception of the heroic age, not, indeed, strictly true, but almost as near the truth as that which was entertained by Virgil himself."* And the tone of modest deprecation of audacious rivalry which breathes throughout the pre "Oxford Essays," 1858, p. 30.] face to his recently published "Eneid" is a sufficient guarantee that Mr. Conington is quite alive to the great advantage which a no less mighty weaver of verse than Pope-to wit, his predecessor Dryden, -enjoys in an arena of which he has come to be esteemed the genius loci; and where, in fact, his very peculiarities of style, his freedom, facility, and vigour, almost pass with English readers for the characteristics of the poet he translates. But it is this very mastery of the situation, as held by Dryden, which really renders needful the effort to produce a translation more nearly representing Virgil's own poem, a translation aiming rather at the reproduction in English of the exquisite delicacy of Virgil's own touch, than at the exhibition of personal gifts of poetry, and endeavouring before all things to set forth the "Eneid" as it issued from the author's mould, with as few additions or diminutions, as slight departure from the original thoughts and expressions, as the most careful rendering of one language through the medium of another can secure. Not to anticipate the great Caroline translator's practice in reference to the "Eneid,” opportunities of comparing which with the greater faithfulness of the Oxford Professor will occur in examining the work of the latter, it may not be out of place to give a single sample of Dryden's small reverence even for Homer, in a passage very much admired, nay, sometimes quoted as equalling anything of Pope, and as proving what great capabilities for Homeric translation lay undeveloped in him. The lines represent Hector's prayer for the young Astyanax, as he holds him in his arms in the parting scene with Andromache.* The original, which it is needless to quote, has not a word to spare, and bears tacit testimony to the concurrence of heathen practice with Divine precept, in holding cheaply the long prayer and the vain repetition. But now contrast Dryden : "Parent of gods and men, propitious Jove, And who in former times remembered me, May say, the son in fortitude and fame Outgoes the mark, and drowns his father's name : That at these words his mother may rejoice, And add her suffrage to the public voice." There is not much amiss in the four first lines: but it will be found that the third couplet is a mere amplification of 'Iiov ip "Iliad," vi. 476-81. aváσov; while the aged man, whose memory does duty in ver. 9, 10, is an expansion of the monosyllable rɩs in ver. 479; and his speech in ver. 11, 12, a paraphrase of Tarpòs d'öye #odλòv dμɛívwv in ver. 480. It would be easy to show this diffuseness of Dryden's at greater length, but the point for establishment is that faithful translation is liable to go by default where the translator, being a brilliant and fertile poet born, succumbs to the temptation of forgetting his original in himself. Finer, more vigorous lines than the above would be hard to find; but if ever the cant phrase, "This is poetry, but this is not-Homer!" was justifiable, it is surely here. Dryden's real tribute to Homer and to Virgil is his not infrequent introduction, into his original poems, of some image or description of theirs which has taken hold upon his fancy. With his lax, uncritical scholarship he has every temptation to be vague in his translations: he may even, by careful observers, be tracked through the whole process of circumlocution to evade difficulties; but when, as in the "Britannia Rediviva," he paints from memory the son of Venus in the temple at Carthage,― "Shining with all his goddess mother's grace: For she herself had made his countenance bright, Breathed honour on his eyes, and her own purple light" (128-33), a regret must possess all who can appreciate his transcending genius that he did not either eschew translation altogether, or else adhere more closely to principles which no one knew better how to enunciate. For though, in prefacing his Ovidian translations, he advocates paraphrastic translation as affording elbow-room for the elegances of classical poetry, and unjustly underrates Sandys, whose "Metamorphoses," in spite of a dash of quaintness, remain a model of what translation ought to be, Dryden has left no room for misunderstanding his ideal of the more distinct declaration of principles prefixed to his "Eneid." His design was "to copy Virgil in his numbers, his choice of words, and his placing of them for the sweetness of the sound." He professes to have studied, among other admirable features, "Virgil's sober retrenchment of his sense." He admits that the scantiness of the heroic verse has been a hindrance to his reproduction of the beauty and figurativeness of Virgil's words and expressions, and regrets that the brevity which that poet studied more than all others is so beyond the reach of imitation by other tongues. All this is bare profession; but, as a matter of fact, at the end of three years bestowed upon his translation, the only characteristic of his original which clung to Dryden, was his sounding elegance of diction. If among his contemporaries his version passed for "Virgil speaking such English as he would have spoken had he been born in England in Dryden's days," a very limited comparison of the Latin with his English now, will demonstrate that at all events it is not Virgil speaking from his own brief. The causes may have been contempt of servile accuracy, disinclination to subject poetic thought to an irksome groove, and the inherent difficulties of his chosen measure. The first and second of these were not unnatural failings of a great original genius; the third was an obstacle which, if ever surmounted, is certainly not to be got over by forsaking the direct road of translation, and straying into amplifications and additions. It is doubtful, indeed, whether this impediment admits of cure. As yet, no model translator has wrought one in the instance of Virgil. One or two recent and limited attempts to render Homer faithfully in heroic couplets are simply beneath contempt. It has, however, been suggested that the result would be different, if translators would allow themselves the liberty of running line into line, and abandon the usual practice of concluding the sense of a couplet within its proper limits. Something like this was attempted in a translation or two by Leigh Hunt from Homer and Theocritus, but the experiment could scarce have seemed successful to its inventor, for he continually recurs to the timehonoured usage, which is more natural to the genius of English heroics. And further, where seen in its fullest extent, the result is not such as to encourage innovation. John Wordsworth attempted something of the same kind, but was himself convinced of his failure. Despairing of the heroic couplet, Virgil's translators have sometimes chosen blank verse, and essayed to tread the path of Milton, a path demanding almost as much and as various skill in verse and diction as the other. There is, indeed, the alternative of the metre of the "Faëry Queen," but to resort to it would indicate a readiness to multiply fetters to chafe at, or shake off, in the process of translation. Among recent translators in blank verse are the names of Kennedy, Singleton, and Miller. Of these the first is, on the whole, most successful, though the posthumous version of the third has many creditable passages. The second would be more noteworthy if its author had not, in pious horror of free translation, rushed into the counter-extreme of over-exactness, and if he had been as solicitous about the effect of his clauses and sentences as about the tasteful choice of his words. But after all there has been no sufficient success in these quarters to discourage other adventurers, whether they affect the same or some other metre. And of this opinion Mr. Conington seems to be, for while he speaks reverently, and even apologetically, of entering the lists against Dryden, he has little to say about the inferior combatants, whom he probably regards with as little concern as a knight-errant would the mêlée on the second day of a tourna |