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THE SATIRES, EPISTLES, AND ART OF POETRY OF HORACE
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE
BY JOHN CONINGTON, M.A.
CORPUS PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
TO
THE REV. W. H. THOMPSON, D.D.
MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,
ETC. ETC. ETC.
IN GRATITUDE FOR MANY KINDNESSES
RECEIVED FROM HIM AND OTHER CAMBRIDGE FRIENDS,
AND IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE COMPLIMENT
PAID BY CAMBRIDGE TO OXFORD
IN THE APPOINTMENT OF THE OXFORD LATIN PROFESSOR
AS ONE OF THE ELECTORS TO HER LATIN CHAIR.
PREFACE.
In venturing to follow up my translation of the Odes of Horace by a
version of the Satires and Epistles, I feel that I am in no way
entitled to refer to the former as a justification of my boldness in
undertaking the latter. Both classes of works are doubtless
explicable as products of the same original genius: but they differ
so widely in many of their characteristics, that success in
rendering the one, though greater than any which I can hope to have
attained, would afford no presumption that the translator would be
found to have the least aptitude for the other. As a matter of fact,
while the Odes still continue to invite translation after
translation, the Satires and Epistles, popular as they were among
translators and imitators a hundred years ago, have scarcely been
attempted at all since that great revolution in literary taste which
was effected during the last ten years of the last century and the
first ten years of the present. Byron's Hints from Horace, Mr.
Howes' forgotten but highly meritorious version of the Satires and
Epistles, to which I hope to return before long, and a few
experiments by Mr. Theodore Martin, published in the notes to his
translation of the Odes and elsewhere, constitute perhaps the whole
recent stock of which a new translator may be expected to take
account. In one sense this is encouraging: in another dispiriting.
The field is not pre-occupied: but the reason is, that general
opinion has pronounced its cultivation unprofitable and hopeless.
No doubt, apart from fluctuations in the taste of the reading
public, there are special reasons why a version of this portion of
Horace's works should be a difficult, perhaps an impracticable
undertaking. It would not be easy to maintain that a Roman satirist
was incapable of adequate representation in English in the face of
such an instance to the contrary as Gifford's Juvenal, probably,
take it all in all, the very best version of a classic in the
language. But though Juvenal has many passages which sufficiently
remind us of Horace, some of them light and playful, others level
and almost flat, these do not form the staple of his Satires: there
are passages of dignified declamation and passionate invective which
suffer less in translation, and which may be so rendered as to leave
a lasting impression of pleasure upon the mind of the reader. Like
Horace, he has an abundance of local and temporary allusions, in
dealing with which the most successful translator is the one who
fails least: unlike Horace, when he quits the local and the
temporary, he generally quits also the language of persiflage, and
abandons himself unrestrainedly to feeling. Persiflage, I suppose,
even in ordinary life, is much less easy to practise with perfect
success than a graver and less artificial mode of speaking, though,
perhaps for that very reason, it is apt to be more sought after: the
persiflage of a writer of another nation and of a past age is 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 powers of managing the graver heroic, where so
many great masters have gone before me, I felt less diffidence in
attempting the lower and more colloquial form of the measure, as not
requiring the same command of rhythm, and not exposing a writer to
the same amount of invidious comparison with his predecessors.
In what I have said I have implied that Cowper is the right model
for the English heroic as applied to a translation of Horace: and
this on the whole I believe to be the case. Horace's
characteristics, as I remarked just now, are ease and terseness, and
both these Cowper possesses, ease in metre, and ease and terseness
in style. Pope, on the other hand, who in some respects would seem
the better representative of Horace, is less easy both in style and
metre, while his terseness is what Horace's terseness is not,
trimness and antithetical smartness. Still, while making Cowper my
pattern as a general rule, I have attempted from time to time to
borrow a grace from Pope, even, when the original gave me no warrant
for the appropriation. If Cowper's verse could be written by Cowper,
it would probably leave nothing to be desired in a translation of
this kind: handled by an inferior workman, it is in danger of
becoming flat, pointless, and insipid: and Horace has many passages
which, if not flat, pointless, or insipid in themselves, are
painfully liable to become so in the hands of a translator. I have
accordingly on various occasions aimed at epigram and pungency when
there was nothing epigrammatic or pungent in the Latin, in full
confidence that any trifling additions which may be made in this way
to the general sum of liveliness will be far more than compensated
by the heavy outgoings which must of necessity be the lot of every
translator, and more particularly of myself. [Footnote: Cowper
himself has some remarks bearing on this point: "That is
epigrammatic and witty in Latin which would be perfectly insipid in
English; and a translator of Bourne would frequently find himself
obliged to supply what is called the turn, which is in fact the most
difficult and the most expensive part of the whole composition, and
could not perhaps, in many instances, be done with any tolerable
success. If a Latin poem is neat, elegant and musical, it is enough;
but English readers are not so easily satisfied. To quote myself,
you will find, in comparing the Jackdaw with the original, that I
was obliged to sharpen a point which, though smart enough in the
Latin, would in English have appeared as plain and as blunt as the
tag of a lace." --Letter to Unwin, May 23, 1781 (Southey's Cowper,
ed. 1836, vol. iv. p. 97).] All translation, as has been pointed out
over and over again, must proceed more or less on the principle of
compensation; a translator who is conscious of having lost ground in
one place is not to blame if he tries to recover it in another, so
that he does not consciously depart from what he believes to be the
spirit of the original: the question he has to ask himself is not so
much whether he has conformed to the requirements of this or that
line, most important as such conformity is where it can be realized
without a sacrifice of higher things, as whether he has conformed to
the requirements of the whole sentence, or even of the whole
paragraph; whether the general effect produced by all the combined
elements in the English lines answers in any degree to that produced
by the Latin. Often and often, while engaged on this translation, I
have been reminded of Johnson's words in his Life of Dryden: "It is
not by comparing line with line that the merit of works is to be
estimated, but by their general effects and ultimate result. It is
easy to note a weak line and write one more vigorous in its place,
to find a happiness of expression in the original and transplant it
by force into the version; but what is given to the parts may be
subducted from the whole, and the reader may be weary, though the
critic may commend. That book is good in vain which the reader
throws away." [Footnote: Compare his parallel between Pitt's and
Dryden's Aeneid in his Life of Pitt.] I will only add that if these
remarks are true of translation in general, they apply with special
force to the translation of an original like the present, where the
Latin is nothing if it is not idiomatic, and the English in
consequence, if it is to be anything, must be idiomatic also.
There is yet something more to be said on the question of style. The
exact mode of representing Horace's persiflage is, as I have
intimated already, not an easy thing to determine. The translators
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the most part made
their author either vulgar or flat, sometimes both. Probably no
better rule can be laid down for the translator of the present day,
than that he should try to follow the ordinary language of good
society, wavering and uncertain as that standard is. I do not mean
so much the language of the better sort of light literature as the
language of conversation and of familiar letter-writing. Even some
of the idiomatic blemishes of conversation may perhaps, in such a
work, be venial, if not laudable. I have not always sought to be a
minute purist even on points of grammar. Cowper, rather singularly,
appears from his practice to proscribe colloquial abbreviations in
poetry, though they were, I suppose, at least as usual in his time
as in ours, and are used by Pope in his lighter works with little
scruple. I have adopted them freely through nearly the whole of my
version, though of course there are some passages where they could
not be properly employed. Gifford says in the Essay on the Roman
Satirists prefixed to his Juvenal that the general character of his
translation will be found to be plainness: and if I do not
misunderstand what he means by the term, it exactly represents the
quality which I have endeavoured to attain myself. As a general
rule, where a rendering presented itself to me which in dealing with
another author I should welcome as poetical, I hare deliberately
rejected it, and cast about instead for something which, without
being feeble or slipshod, should have an idiomatic prosaic ring.
Where Horace evidently means to rise, I have attempted to rise too:
but through the greater part of this work I have been anxious, to
use his own expression, to creep along the ground. No doubt there is
danger in all this, the danger of triviality, pertness, and
occasional vulgarity. Gifford's own work was attacked on its first
appearance by a reviewer of the day precisely on those grounds: and
though he seems to have made a vehement reply to his assailant, the
changes which he made in his second edition showed that the censure
was not without its effect. Still, where it is almost impossible to
walk quite straight, the walker will reconcile himself to incidental
deviations, and will even consider, where a slip is inevitable, on
which side of the line it is better that the slip should take place.
A patent difficulty of course is to know what to do with local and
temporary customs, allusions, proverbs, &c., which enter, I need not
say, far more largely into satire or comedy than into any other form
of writing. Here it is that the imitator has the advantage of the
translator: a certain parallelism between his own time and the time
of the author he imitates is postulated in the fact of his imitating
at all, and if he is a dexterous writer, like Pope or Johnson, he is
sure to be able to introduce a number of small equivalents, some of
them perhaps actual improvements on the original, while he is at
liberty to throw into the shade those points of which he despairs of
being able to make anything. A translator has three courses open to
him, to translate more or less verbally, so as to run the risk of
being unintelligible to a reader unacquainted with the original, to
generalize what is special, and to borrow something of the
imitator's licence, introducing a modern speciality in place of an
ancient. Here, as I have found on other occasions of the kind, to be
allowed a choice of evils is itself a matter for self-
congratulation. To be shut up entirely to one or other of these
resources would be a serious misfortune: to be able to employ them
(should it seem advisable) successively is no inconsiderable relief.
The last of the three no doubt requires to be used very sparingly
indeed, or one great object of translating a classic, the laying
open of ancient life and thought to a modern reader, will be
wantonly sacrificed. No one now-a-days would dream of going as far
in this direction as Dryden and some of the translators of his
period, talking e.g. about "the new Lord Mayor" and "the Louvre of
the sky." But there are occasionally minor points--very minor ones,
I admit--where a modern equivalent is allowable, if not absolutely
necessary. Without transforming bodily a Roman caena into an English
dinner, one may sometimes effect with advantage a trifling change in
the less important dishes: a boar must not appear as a baron of
beef, but a scarus may perhaps be turned, as I have turned it, into
a sardine. In money again it would surely be needless pedantry in
the translator of a satirist to talk of sestertia rather than
pounds. I fear I have not always been at the pains to make the
English sum even roughly equivalent to the Roman, but have from time
to time introduced a particular English sum arbitrarily, if it
appeared to suit the context or even the metre. Thus, where Philip
gives or lends Mena fourteen sestertia that he may buy a farm, I
have not startled the modern agricultural reader by talking about a
hundred and twenty pounds, but have ventured to turn the sestertia
into so many hundreds. On the whole, however, while I certainly
cannot recommend any one to try to distil Latin antiquities from my
translation as they are sometimes distilled from the original, I
hope that I have not been unfaithful to the antique spirit, but have
reflected with sufficient accuracy the broad features of Roman life.
Taken altogether, this translation will be found less close to the
original than those with which I have formerly troubled the public.
The considerations pointed out in the last paragraph will to a great
extent account for this: generally too I may say that where the main
characteristic of the original is perfect ease, the translator, if
he is to be easy also, will be obliged to take considerable
latitude. I trust however that I shall be found in most cases not to
have translated irrespectively of the Latin, but to have borne it in
mind even while departing from it most widely. I have studied the
various commentators with some care, and hope that my version may
not be without its use in turn as a sort of free commentary. I have
omitted two entire satires and several passages from others. Some of
them no one would wish to see translated: some, though capable of
being rendered without offence a hundred or even fifty years ago,
could hardly be so rendered now. Where I have not translated I have
not in general cared to paraphrase, but have been silent altogether.
I have in short given so much of my author as a well-judging reader
would wish to dwell on in reading the original, and no more.
I have made acquaintance with such of the previous translations as I
did not already know, though it seemed best to avoid consulting them
in any passage till I had translated it myself. The few places in
which I have been consciously indebted to others have been mentioned
in the notes. Besides these, there are many other coincidences in
expression and rhyme which might be detected by any one sharing my
taste for that kind of reading, probably one or two in each poem:
but as I believe them to be mere coincidences, I have not been at
pains either to avoid them or to call attention to them. The only
one of my predecessors in translating all the poems contained in
this volume whom I need mention particularly is Mr. Howes. His book
was published posthumously in 1845; but though it is stated in the
preface to want the author's last corrections, a good deal of it
must have been written long before, as the translation of the
Satires is announced as nearly half finished in the introduction to
a translation of Persius by the same author published in 1809, and
some specimens given in the notes to that volume correspond almost
exactly with the passages as they finally appear. The translation of
Persius is a work of decided ability, but, in common I am inclined
to think with all the other translations, fails to give an adequate
notion of the characteristics of that very peculiar writer. The
translation of the Horatian poems, on the other hand, seems to me on
the whole undoubtedly successful, though, for whatever reason, its
merits do not appear to have been recognized by the public. It is
unequal, and it is too prolix: but when it is good, which is not
seldom, it is very good, unforced, idiomatic, and felicitous. In one
of its features, the habit of supplying connecting links to Horace's
not unfrequently disconnected thoughts, perhaps I should have done
wisely to follow it more than I have done: but the matter is one
where a line must be drawn, and I am not without apprehension as it
is that the scholar will sometimes blame me for introducing what the
general reader at any rate may thank me for. I should be glad if any
notice which I may be fortunate enough to attract should go beyond
my own work, and extend to a predecessor who, if he had published a
few years earlier, when translations were of more account, could
scarcely have failed to rank high among the cultivators of this
branch of literature.
BOOK I.
SATIRE I.
QUI FIT, MAECENAS.
How comes it, say, Maecenas, if you can,
That none will live like a contented man
Where choice or chance directs, but each must praise
The folk who pass through life by other ways?
"Those lucky merchants!" cries the soldier stout,
When years of toil have well-nigh worn him out:
What says the merchant, tossing o'er the brine?
"Yon soldier's lot is happier, sure, than mine:
One short, sharp shock, and presto! all is done:
Death in an instant comes, or victory's won."
The lawyer lauds the farmer, when a knock
Disturbs his sleep at crowing of the cock:
The farmer, dragged to town on business, swears
That only citizens are free from cares.
I need not run through all: so long the list,
Fabius himself would weary and desist:
So take in brief my meaning: just suppose
Some God should come, and with their wishes close:
"See, here am I, come down of my mere grace
To right you: soldier, take the merchant's place!
You, counsellor, the farmer's! go your way,
One here, one there! None stirring? all say nay?
How now? you won't be happy when you may."
Now, after this, would Jove be aught to blame
If with both cheeks he burst into a flame,
And vowed, when next they pray, they shall not find
His temper easy, or his ear inclined?
Well, not to treat things lightly (though, for me,
Why truth may not be gay, I cannot see:
Just as, we know, judicious teachers coax
With sugar-plum or cake their little folks
To learn their alphabet):--still, we will try
A graver tone, and lay our joking by.
The man that with his plough subdues the land,
The soldier stout, the vintner sly and bland,
The venturous sons of ocean, all declare
That with one view the toils of life they bear,
When age has come, and labour has amassed
Enough to live on, to retire at last:
E'en so the ant (for no bad pattern she),
That tiny type of giant industry,
Drags grain by grain, and adds it to the sum
Of her full heap, foreseeing cold to come:
Yet she, when winter turns the year to chill,
Stirs not an inch beyond her mounded hill,
But lives upon her savings: you, more bold,
Ne'er quit your gain for fiercest heat or cold:
Fire, ocean, sword, defying all, you strive
To make yourself the richest man alive.
Yet where's the profit, if you hide by stealth
In pit or cavern your enormous wealth?
"Why, once break in upon it, friend, you know,
And, dwindling piece by piece, the whole will go."
But, if 'tis still unbroken, what delight
Can all that treasure give to mortal wight?
Say, you've a million quarters on your floor:
Your stomach is like mine: it holds no more:
Just as the slave who 'neath the bread-bag sweats
No larger ration than his fellows gets.
What matters it to reasonable men
Whether they plough a hundred fields or ten?
"But there's a pleasure, spite of all you say,
In a large heap from which to take away."
If both contain the modicum we lack,
Why should your barn be better than my sack?
You want a draught of water: a mere urn,
Perchance a goblet, well would serve your turn:
You say, "The stream looks scanty at its head;
I'll take my quantum where 'tis broad instead."
But what befalls the wight who yearns for more
Than Nature bids him? down the waters pour,
And whelm him, bank and all; while he whose greed
Is kept in check, proportioned to his need,
He neither draws his water mixed with mud,
Nor leaves his life behind him in the flood.
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