Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry | Page 2

of necessity peculiarly difficult to
realize and reproduce. Nothing is so variable as the standard of taste in
a matter like this: even on the minor question, what expressions may

and what may not be tolerated in good society, probably no two
persons think exactly alike: and when we come to inquire not simply
what is admissible but what is excellent, and still more, what is
characteristic of a particular type of mind, we must expect to meet with
still less unanimity of judgment. The wits of the Restoration answered
the question very differently from the way in which it would be
answered now; even Pope and his contemporaries would not be
accepted as quite infallible arbiters of social and colloquial refinement
in an age like the present. Whether Horace is grave or gay in his
familiar writings, his charm depends almost wholly on his manner: a
modern who attempts to reproduce him runs an imminent risk first of
losing all charm whatever, secondly of missing completely that

individuality of attractiveness which makes the charm of Horace unlike
the charm of any one else.
Without however enlarging further on the peculiar difficulty of the task,
I will proceed to say a few words on some of the special questions
which a translator of the Satires and Epistles has to encounter, and the
way in which, as it appears to me, he may best deal with them. These
questions, I need hardly say, mainly resolve themselves into the metre
and the style. With regard to the metre, I have myself but little doubt
that the measure in which Horace may best be represented is the heroic
as I suppose we must call it, of ten syllables. The one competing
measure of course is the
Hudibrastic octosyllabic. This latter metre is
not without
considerable authority in its favour. Two translators,
Smart and Boscawen, have rendered the whole, or nearly the whole of
these poems in that and no other way: Francis occasionally adopts it,
though he generally uses the longer measure: Swift and Pope, as every
one knows, employ it in three or four of their imitations: Cowper, in his
original poems perhaps the greatest master we have of the Horatian
style, translates the only two satires he has attempted in the shorter
form: Mr. Martin uses it as often as he uses the heroic: perhaps Mr.
Howes is the only translator since Creech who employs the heroic
throughout. Some of my readers may possibly wonder why I in
particular, having rendered the AEneid in a measure which, whatever
its vivacity, may be thought deficient in dignity, should turn round and
repudiate it in a case where vivacity, not dignity, happens to be the

point desired. I can only say that it is precisely the colloquial nature of
the metre which makes me stand in doubt of it for my present purpose.
Using it in the case of Virgil, I was sure to be reminded of the need of
guarding against its abuse: using it in the case of Horace, I should be
constantly in danger of regarding the abuse as the law of the measure.
Horace is scarcely less remarkable for his terseness than for his ease:
the tendency of the octosyllabic metre in its colloquial form is to
become slipshod, interminable, in a word unclassical. Again, few of
those who use it apply it consistently to all Horace's hexameter poems:
most make a distinction, applying it to some and not to others. In point
of fact, however, it does not seem that any such distinction can be made.
Horace's lightest Satires or Epistles have generally something grave
about them: his gravest have more than one light passage. To draw a
metrical line in the English where none is drawn in the Latin appears to
me objectionable ipso facto where it can reasonably be avoided. That it
can be avoided in the present case does not really admit of a doubt. The
English heroic couplet, managed as Cowper has managed it, is surely
quite equal to representing all the various changes of mood and temper
which find their embodiment successively in the Horatian hexameter.
Cowper's more serious poems contain more of deep and sustained
gravity than is to be found in any similar production of Horace: while
on the other hand there are few things in Horace so easy and sprightly
as the Epistle to Joseph Hill, nothing perhaps so absolutely prosaic as
the Colubriad and the verses to Mrs. Newton. There is also an
advantage in rendering the Satires of Horace in the metre which may be
called the recognized metre of English satire, and as such has always
been employed (with one very partial and grotesque exception) by the
translators of Juvenal. Lastly, I may be allowed to say that, while very

distrustful of my