The Aeneid of Virgil | Page 2

the Dido and Aeneas of the _Aeneid_. The wild love of the witch-maiden sits curiously on the queen and organizer of industrial Carthage; and the two qualities which form an essential part of Jason--the weakness which makes him a traitor, and the deliberate gentleness which contrasts him with Medea--seem incongruous in the father of Rome.' But though Virgil turned to the Greek epics for the general framework and many of the details of his poem, he always remains master of his materials, and stamps them with the impress of his own genius. The spirit which inspires the _Aeneid_ is wholly Roman, and the deep faith in the National Destiny, and stern sense of duty to which it gives expression, its profoundly religious character and stately and melodious verse, have always caused it to be recognized as the loftiest expression of the dignity and greatness of Rome at her best. But the sympathetic reader will be conscious of a deeper and more abiding charm in the poetry of Virgil. Even in his most splendid passages his verses thrill us with a strange pathos, and his sensitiveness to unseen things--things beautiful and sad--has caused a great writer, himself a master of English prose, to speak of 'his single words and phrases, his pathetic half lines, giving utterance as the voice of Nature herself to that pain and weariness, yet hope of better things, which is the experience of her children in every age.'
The task of translating such a writer at all adequately may well seem to be an almost impossible one; and how far any of the numerous attempts to do so have succeeded, is a difficult question. For not only does the stated ideal at which the translator should aim, vary with each generation, but perhaps no two lovers of Virgil would agree at any period as to what this ideal should be. Two general principles stand out from the mass of conflicting views on this point. The translation should read as though it were an original poem, and it should produce on the modern reader as far as possible the same effect as the original produced on Virgil's contemporaries. And here we reach the real difficulty, for the scholar who can alone judge what that effect may have been, is too intimate with the original to see clearly the merits of a translation, and the man who can only read the translation can form no opinion. However, it seems clear that a prose translation can never really satisfy us, because it must always be wanting in the musical quality of continuous verse. And our critical experience bears this out, since even Professor Mackail with all his literary skill and insight has failed to make his version of the _Aeneid_ more than a very valuable aid to the student of the original. The meaning of the poet is fully expressed, but his music has been lost. That oft-quoted line--
'Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt'
haunts us like Tennyson's
'When unto dying eyes?The casement slowly grows a glimmering square,'
and no prose rendering can hope to convey the poignancy and pathos of the original. The ideal translation, then, must be in verse, and perhaps the best way for us to determine which style and metre are most suited to convey to the modern reader an impression of the charm of Virgil, will be to take a brief glance at some of the best-known of the verse translations which have appeared.
The first translation of the _Aeneid_ into English verse was that of Gawin Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld in Scotland, which was published in 1553. It is a spirited translation, marked by considerable native force and verisimilitude, and it was certainly unsurpassed until that of Dryden appeared. In the best passages it renders the tone and feeling of the original with extreme felicity--indeed, all but perfectly. Take for instance this passage from the Sixth Book--
'Thai walking furth fa dyrk, oneth thai wyst?Quhidder thai went, amyd dym schaddowys thar,?Quhar evir is nycht, and nevir lyght dois repar,?Throwout the waist dongion of Pluto Kyng,?Thai voyd boundis, and that gowsty ryng:?Siklyke as quha wold throw thik woddis wend?In obscure licht, quhen moyn may nocht be kenned;?As Jupiter the kyng etheryall,?With erdis skug hydis the hevynnys all?And the myrk nycht, with her vissage gray,?From every thing hes reft the hew away.'
But in spite of its merits, its dialect wearies the modern reader, and gives it an air of grotesqueness which is very alien to the spirit of the Latin. One other sixteenth-century translation deserves notice, as it was written by one who was himself a distinguished poet; namely, the 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,