The Aeneid of Virgil | Page 3

version of the second and fourth books of the _Aeneid_ written by
Henry, Earl of Surrey. It gained the commendation of that stern critic

Ascham, who praises Surrey for avoiding rhyme, but considers that he
failed to 'fully hit perfect and true versifying'; which is hardly a matter
for wonder since English blank verse was then in its infancy. But it has
some fine passages--notably the one which relates the death of Dido--
'As she had said, her damsell might perceue
Her with these wordes fal
pearced on a sword
The blade embrued and hands besprent with gore.

The clamor rang unto the pallace toppe,
The brute ranne
throughout al thastoined towne,
With wailing great, and women's
shrill yelling,
The roofs gan roare, the aire resound with plaint,
As
though Cartage, or thauncient town of Tyre
With prease of entred
enemies swarmed full,
Or when the rage of furious flame doth take

The temples toppes, and mansions eke of men.'
Of the translations into modern English, that of Dryden may still be
said to stand first, in spite of its lack of fidelity. It owes its place to its
sustained vigour, and the fact that the heroic couplet is in the hands of a
master. In its way nothing could be better than--
'Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell,
Revengeful cares, and sullen
sorrows dwell,
And pale diseases, and repining age--
Want, fear,
and famine's unresisted rage,
Here toils and death, and death's
half-brother sleep,
Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep.
With
anxious pleasures of a guilty mind,
Deep frauds, before, and open
force behind;
The Furies' iron beds, and strife that shakes
Her
hissing tresses, and unfolds her snakes.'
But though the heroic couplet may have conveyed to Dryden's age
something of the effect of the Virgilian hexameter, it does nothing of
the kind to us. Probably we are prejudiced in the matter by Pope's
Homer.
Professor Conington's translation certainly has spirit and energy, but he
was decidedly unfortunate in his choice of metre. To attempt to render
'the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man' by fluent
octosyllabics was bound to result in incongruity, as in the following

passage, where the sombre warning of the Sibyl to Aeneas becomes
merely a sprightly reminder that--
'The journey down to the abyss
Is prosperous and light,
The palace gates of gloomy Dis
Stand open
day and night;
But upward to retrace the way
And pass into the
light of day,
There comes the stress of labour; this
May task a hero's
might.'
The various attempts that have been made to translate the poem in the
metre of the original have all been sad failures. And from Richard
Stanyhurst, whom Thomas Nash described as treading 'a foul,
lumbering, boistrous, wallowing measure, in his translation of Virgil,'
down to our own time, no one has succeeded in avoiding faults of
monotony and lack of poetical quality. A short extract from Dr. Crane's
translation will illustrate this very clearly--
'No species of hardships, Longer, O maiden, arises before me as strange
and unlooked for: All things have I foreknown, and in soul have
already endured them. One special thing I crave, since here, it is said,
that the gateway Stands of the monarch infernal, and refluent Acheron's
dark pool: Let it be mine to go down to the sight and face of my
cherished Father, and teach me the way, and the sacred avenues open.'
Nor is William Morris' attempt to devise a new metre anything but
disappointing. It is surprising that so delightfully endowed a poet
should have so often missed the music of Virgil's verse as he has done
in his translation, and the archaisms with which his work abounds,
though they might be suitable in a translation of Homer, are only a
source of irritation in the case of Virgil.
For the best metre to use we must look in a different direction. Virgil
made use of the dactylic hexameter because it was the literary tradition
of his day that epics should be written in that metre. In the same way it
might be argued, the English tradition points to blank verse as the
correct medium. This may be so, but its use demands that the translator

should be as great a poet as Virgil. Had Tennyson ever translated the
_Aeneid_, it would doubtless have been as nearly faultless as any
translation could be, as is shown by the version of Sir Theodore Martin,
which owes so much of its stately charm to its close adherence to the
manner of Tennyson. A typical passage is the description of Dido's love
for Aeneas--
'Soothsayers, ah! how little do they know!
Of what avail are temples,
vows, and prayers,
To quell a raging passion? All the while
A
subtle flame is smouldering in her veins,
And in her heart a silent
aching wound.

Now Dido leads
Aeneas round the ramparts, to him shows
The
wealth of Sidon, all