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Sir Charles Bowen's Virgil
Oscar Wilde
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       _ (Pall Mall Gazette, November 30, 1887.)
       Sir Charles Bowen's translation of the Eclogues and the first six books of the AEneid is hardly the work of a poet, but it is a very charming version for all that, combining as it does the fine loyalty and learning of a scholar with the graceful style of a man of letters, two essential qualifications for any one who would render in English verse the picturesque pastorals of Italian provincial life, or the stately and polished epic of Imperial Rome. Dryden was a true poet, but, for some reason or other, he failed to catch the real Virgilian spirit. His own qualities became defects when he accepted the task of a translator. He is too robust, too manly, too strong. He misses Virgil's strange and subtle sweetness and has but little of his exquisite melody. Professor Conington, on the other hand, was an admirable and painstaking scholar, but he was so entirely devoid of literary tact and artistic insight that he thought that the majesty of Virgil could be rendered in the jingling manner of Marmion, and though there is certainly far more of the mediaeval knight than of the moss-trooper about AEneas, even Mr. Morris's version is not by any means perfect. Compared with professor Conington's bad ballad it is, of course, as gold to brass; considered simply as a poem it has noble and enduring qualities of beauty, music and strength; but it hardly conveys to us the sense that the AEneid is the literary epic of a literary age. There is more of Homer in it than of Virgil, and the ordinary reader would hardly realise from the flow and spirit of its swinging lines that Virgil was a self-conscious artist, the Laureate of a cultured Court. The AEneid bears almost the same relation to the Iliad that the Idylls of the King do to the old Celtic romances of Arthur. Like them it is full of felicitous modernisms, of exquisite literary echoes and of delicate and delightful pictures; as Lord Tennyson loves England so did Virgil love Rome; the pageants of history and the purple of empire are equally dear to both poets; but neither of them has the grand simplicity or the large humanity of the early singers, and, as a hero, AEneas is no less a failure than Arthur. Sir Charles Bowen's version hardly gives us this peculiar literary quality of Virgil's verse, and, now and then, it reminds us, by some awkward inversion, of the fact that it is a translation; still, on the whole, it is extremely pleasant to read, and, if it does not absolutely mirror Virgil, it at least brings us many charming memories of him.
       The metre Sir Charles Bowen has selected is a form of English hexameter, with the final dissyllable shortened into a foot of a single syllable only. It is, of course, accentual not quantitative, and though it misses that element of sustained strength which is given by the dissyllabic ending of the Latin verse, and has consequently a tendency to fall into couplets, the increased facility of rhyming gained by the change is of no small value. To any English metre that aims at swiftness of movement rhyme seems to be an absolute essential, and there are not enough double rhymes in our language to admit of the retention of this final dissyllabic foot.
       As an example of Sir Charles Bowen's method we would take his rendering of the famous passage in the fifth Eclogue on the death of Daphnis:
       All of the nymphs went weeping for Daphnis cruelly slain:
       Ye were witnesses, hazels and river waves, of the pain
       When to her son's sad body the mother clave with a cry,
       Calling the great gods cruel, and cruel the stars of the sky.
       None upon those dark days their pastured oxen did lead,
       Daphnis, to drink of the cold clear rivulet; never a steed
       Tasted the flowing waters, or cropped one blade in the mead.
       Over thy grave how the lions of Carthage roared in despair,
       Daphnis, the echoes of mountain wild and of forest declare.
       Daphnis was first who taught us to guide, with a chariot rein,
       Far Armenia's tigers, the chorus of Iacchus to train,
       Led us with foliage waving the pliant spear to entwine.
       As to the tree her vine is a glory, her grapes to the vine,
       Bull to the horned herd, and the corn to a fruitful plain,
       Thou to thine own wert beauty; and since fate robbed us of thee,
       Pales herself, and Apollo are gone from meadow and lea.
       'Calling the great gods cruel, and cruel the stars of the sky' is a very felicitous rendering of 'Atque deos atque astra vocat crudelia mater,' and so is 'Thou to thine own wert beauty' for 'Tu decus omne tuis.' This passage, too, from the fourth book of the AEneid is good:
       Now was the night. Tired limbs upon earth were folded to sleep,
       Silent the forests and fierce sea-waves; in the firmament deep
       Midway rolled heaven's stars; no sound on the meadow stirred;
       Every beast of the field, each bright-hued feathery bird
       Haunting the limpid lakes, or the tangled briary glade,
       Under the silent night in sleep were peacefully laid:
       All but the grieving Queen. She yields her never to rest,
       Takes not the quiet night to her eyelids or wearied breast.
       And this from the sixth book is worth quoting:
       'Never again such hopes shall a youth of the lineage of Troy
       Rouse in his great forefathers of Latium! Never a boy
       Nobler pride shall inspire in the ancient Romulus land!
       Ah, for his filial love! for his old-world faith! for his hand
       Matchless in battle! Unharmed what foemen had offered to stand
       Forth in his path, when charging on foot for the enemy's ranks
       Or when plunging the spur in his foam-flecked courser's flanks!
       Child of a nation's sorrow! if thou canst baffle the Fates'
       Bitter decrees, and break for a while their barrier gates,
       Thine to become Marcellus! I pray thee bring me anon
       Handfuls of lilies, that I bright flowers may strew on my son,
       Heap on the shade of the boy unborn these gifts at the least,
       Doing the dead, though vainly, the last sad service.'
       He ceased.
       'Thine to become Marcellus' has hardly the simple pathos of 'Tu Marcellus eris,' but 'Child of a nation's sorrow' is a graceful rendering of 'Heu, miserande puer.' Indeed, there is a great deal of feeling in the whole translation, and the tendency of the metre to run into couplets, of which we have spoken before, is corrected to a certain degree in the passage quoted above from the Eclogues by the occasional use of the triplet, as, elsewhere, by the introduction of alternate, not successive, rhymes.
       Sir Charles Bowen is to be congratulated on the success of his version. It has both style and fidelity to recommend it. The metre he has chosen seems to us more suited to the sustained majesty of the AEneid than it is to the pastoral note of the Eclogues. It can bring us something of the strength of the lyre but has hardly caught the sweetness of the pipe. Still, it is in many points a very charming translation, and we gladly welcome it as a most valuable addition to the literature of echoes.
       Virgil in English Verse. Eclogues and AEneid I.-VI. By the Right Hon. Sir Charles Bowen, one of Her Majesty's Lords Justices of Appeal. (John Murray.) _
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Introduction
Dinners And Dishes
A Modern Epic
Shakespeare On Scenery
A Bevy Of Poets
Parnassus Versus Philology
Hamlet At The Lyceum
Two New Novels I
Henry The Fourth At Oxford
Modern Greek Poetry
Olivia At The Lyceum
As You Like It At Coombe House
A Handbook To Marriage
Half-Hours With The Worst Authors
One Of Mr. Conway's Remainders
To Read Or Not To Read
Twelfth Night At Oxford
The Letters Of A Great Woman
News From Parnassus
Some Novels I
A Literary Pilgrim
Beranger In England
The Poetry Of The People
The Cenci
Helena In Troas
Pleasing And Prattling
Balzac In English
Two New Novels II
Ben Jonson
The Poets' Corner I
A Ride Through Morocco
The Children Of The Poets
New Novels I
A Politician's Poetry
Mr. Symonds' History Of The Renaissance
A 'jolly' Art Critic
A Sentimental Journey Through Literature
Common-Sense In Art
Miner And Minor Poets
A New Calendar
The Poets' Corner II
Great Writers By Little Men
A New Book On Dickens
Our Book-Shelf
A Cheap Edition Of A Great Man
Mr. Morris's Odyssey
A Batch Of Novels
Some Novels II
The Poets' Corner III
Mr. Pater's Imaginary Portraits
A Good Historical Novel
New Novels II
Two Biographies Of Keats
A Scotchman On Scottish Poetry
Literary And Other Notes I
Mr. Mahaffy's New Book
Mr. Morris's Completion Of The Odyssey
Sir Charles Bowen's Virgil
Literary And Other Notes II
Aristotle At Afternoon Tea
Early Christian Art In Ireland
Literary And Other Notes III
The Poets' Corner IV
Literary And Other Notes IV
The Poets' Corner V
Venus Or Victory
Literary And Other Notes V
The Poets' Corner VI
M. Caro On George Sand
The Poets' Corner VII
A Fascinating Book
The Poets' Corner VIII
A Note On Some Modern Poets
Sir Edwin Arnold's Last Volume
Australian Poets
Some Literary Notes I
Poetry And Prison
The Gospel According To Walt Whitman
The New President
Some Literary Notes II
One Of The Bibles Of The World
Poetical Socialists
Mr. Brander Matthews' Essays
Some Literary Notes III
Mr. William Morris's Last Book
Adam Lindsay Gordon
The Poets' Corner IX
Some Literary Notes IV
Mr. Froude's Blue-Book
Some Literary Notes V
Ouida's New Novel
Some Literary Notes VI
A Thought-Reader's Novel
The Poets' Corner X
Mr. Swinburne's Last Volume
Three New Poets
A Chinese Sage
Mr. Pater's Last Volume
Primavera