Odes and Carmen Saeculare | Page 2

his metre to his subject; the solemn Alcaic is used for a
poem in dispraise of serious thought and praise of wine; the Asclepiad
stanza in which Quintilius is lamented is employed to describe the
loves of Maecenas and Licymnia. But though this consideration may
influence us in our choice of an English metre, it is no reason for not
adhering to the one which we may have chosen. If we translate an
Alcaic and a Sapphic Ode into the same English measure, because the
feeling in both appears to be the same, we are sure to sacrifice some
important characteristic of the original in the case of one or the other,
perhaps of both. It is better to try to make an English metre more
flexible than to use two different English metres to represent two
different aspects of one measure in Latin. I am sorry to say that I have

myself deviated from this rule occasionally, under circumstances which
I shall soon have to explain; but though I may perhaps succeed in
showing that my offences have not been serious, I believe the rule itself
to be one of universal application, always honoured in the observance,
if not always equally dishonoured in the breach.
The question, what metres should be selected, is of course one of very
great difficulty. I can only explain what my own practice has been, with
some of the reasons which have influenced me in particular cases.
Perhaps we may take Milton's celebrated translation of the Ode to
Pyrrha as a starting point. There can be no doubt that to an English
reader the metre chosen does give much of the effect of the original; yet
the resemblance depends rather on the length of the respective lines
than on any similarity in the cadences. But it is evident that he chose
the iambic movement as the ordinary movement of English poetry; and
it is evident, I think, that in translating Horace we shall be right in
doing the same, as a general rule. Anapaestic and other rhythms may be
beautiful and appropriate in themselves, but they cannot be
manipulated so easily; the stanzas with which they are associated bear
no resemblance, as stanzas, to the stanzas of Horace's Odes. I have then
followed Milton in appropriating the measure in question to the Latin
metre, technically called the fourth Asclepiad, at the same time that I
have substituted rhyme for blank verse, believing rhyme to be an
inferior artist's only chance of giving pleasure. There still remains a
question about the distribution of the rhymes, which here, as in most
other cases, I have chosen to make alternate. Successive rhymes have
their advantages, but they do not give the effect of interlinking, which
is so natural in a stanza; the quatrain is reduced to two couplets, and its
unity is gone. From the fourth to the third Asclepiad the step is easy.
Taking an English iambic line of ten syllables to represent the longer
lines of the Latin, an English iambic line of six syllables to represent
the shorter, we see that the metre of Horace's "Scriberis Vario" finds its
representative in the metre of Mr. Tennyson's "Dream of Fair Women."
My experience would lead me to believe the English metre to be quite
capable, in really skilful hands, of preserving the effect of the Latin,
though, as I have said above, the Latin measure is employed by Horace
both for a threnody and for a love-song.

The Sapphic and the Alcaic involve more difficult questions. Here,
however, as in the Asclepiad, I believe we must be guided, to some
extent, by external similarity. We must choose the iambic movement as
being most congenial to English; we must avoid the ten-syllable iambic
as already appropriated to the longer Asclepiad line. This leads me to
conclude that the staple of each stanza should be the eight-syllable
iambic, a measure more familiar to English lyric poetry than any other,
and as such well adapted to represent the most familiar lyric measures
of Horace. With regard to the Sapphic, it seems desirable that it should
be represented by a measure of which the three first lines are
eight-syllable iambics, the fourth some shorter variety. Of this stanza
there are at least two kinds for which something might be said. It might
be constructed so that the three first lines should rhyme with each other,
the fourth being otherwise dealt with; or it might be framed on the plan
of alternate rhymes, the fourth line still being shorter than the rest. Of
the former kind two or three specimens are to be found in Francis'
translation of Horace. In these the fourth line consists of but three
syllables, the two last of which rhyme with the two last syllables of the