The Aeneid of Virgil | Page 3

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 the town laid out,?Begins to speak, then stops, she knows not why.?Now, as day wanes, the feast of yesterday?She gives again, again with fevered lips?Begs for the tale of Troy and all its woes,?And hangs upon his lips, who tells the tale.?Then,