Odes and Carmen Saeculare | Page 4

to be the best
representation of the Alcaic in English, especially as it appears to
afford facilities for that linking of stanza to stanza which one who
wishes to adhere closely to the logical and rhythmical structure of the
Latin soon learns to desire. But I have not adopted it; and I believe
there is good reason for not doing so. With all its advantages, it has the
patent disadvantage of having been brought into notice by a poet who is
influencing the present generation as only a great living poet can. A
great writer now, an inferior writer hereafter, may be able to handle it
with some degree of independence; but the majority of those who use it
at present are sure in adopting Mr. Tennyson's metre to adopt his
manner. It is no reproach to "C. S. C." that his Ode reminds us of Mr.
Tennyson; it is a praise to him that the recollection is a pleasant one.
But Mr. Tennyson's manner is not the manner of Horace, and it is the
manner of a contemporary; the expression--a most powerful and
beautiful expression--of influences to which a translator of an ancient
classic feels himself to be too much subjected already. What is wanted
is a metre which shall have other associations than those of the
nineteenth century, which shall be the growth of various periods of
English poetry, and so be independent of any. Such a metre is that

which I have been led to choose, the eight-syllable iambic with
alternate rhymes. It is one of the commonest metres in the language,
and for that reason it is adapted to more than one class of subjects, to
the gay as well as to the grave. But I am mistaken if it is not peculiarly
suited to express that concentrated grandeur, that majestic combination
of high eloquence with high poetry, which make the early Alcaic Odes
of Horace's Third Book what they are to us. The main difficulty is in
accommodating its structure to that of the Latin, of varying the pauses,
and of linking stanza to stanza. It is a difficulty before which I have felt
myself almost powerless, and I have in consequence been driven to the
natural expedient of weakness, compromise, sometimes evading it,
sometimes coping with it
unsuccessfully. In other respects I may be
allowed to say that I have found the metre pleasanter to handle than any
of the others that I have attempted, except, perhaps, that of "The Dream
of Fair Women." The proportion of syllables in each stanza of English
to each stanza of Latin is not much greater than in the case of the
Sapphic, thirty-two against forty-one; yet, except in a few passages,
chiefly those containing proper names, I have had no disagreeable
sense of confinement. I believe the reason of this to be that the Latin
Alcaic generally contains fewer words in proportion than the Latin
Sapphic, the former being favourable to long words, the latter to short
ones, as may be seen by contrasting such lines as "Dissentientis
conditionibus" with such as "Dona praesentis rape laetus horae ac."
This, no doubt, shows that there is an inconvenience in applying the
same English iambic measure to two metres which differ so greatly in
their practical result; but so far as I can see at present, the evil appears
to be one of those which it is wiser to submit to than to attempt to cure.
The problem of finding English representatives for the other Horatian
metres, if a more difficult, is a less important one. The most pressing
case is that of the metre known as the second Asclepiad, the "Sic te
diva potens Cypri." With this, I fear, I shall be thought to have dealt
rather capriciously, having rendered it by four different measures, three
of them, however, varieties of the same general type. It so happens that
the firsf Ode which I translated was the celebrated Amoebean Poem,
the dialogue between Horace and Lydia. I had had at that time not the
most distant notion of translating the whole of the Odes, or even any

considerable number of them, so that in choosing a metre I thought
simply of the requirements of the Ode in question, not of those of the
rest of its class. Indeed, I may say that it was the thought of the metre
which led me to try if I could translate the Ode. Having accomplished
my attempt, I turned to another Ode of the same class, the scarcely less
celebrated "Quem tu, Melpomene." For this I took a different metre,
which happens to be identical with that of a solitary Ode in the Second
Book, "Non ebur neque aureum," being guided still by my feeling
about the individual Ode, not by any more general