The Works of Alexander Pope Part 18

[Footnote 110: He has omitted some forcible expressions of the original: Septem--atris--terentem--nigro--centum per jugera,--all of them picturesque epithets.--WARTON.

Statius says, that the huge serpent while alive encircled Delphi seven times with its dark coils, and that when dead and barely unrolled, its body spread over a hundred acres.]

[Footnote 111: The water was not itself poisonous, but it turned to venom in the serpent.]

[Footnote 112: Stephens is more literal, and at the same time more poetical:

earth prepares thy room Garnished with flow'ry beds, and thatched above With oaken leaves close woven; whilst the grove Lends bark to make thy garments.]

[Footnote 113: Much superior to the original.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 114: Sandy's translation of Ovid's Met. bk. vi.

And calls the furies from the depth of h.e.l.l.]

[Footnote 115: Pope copied Stephens:

devouring some With rav'nous jaws before their parents' eyes, And fats herself with public miseries.]

[Footnote 116: Inachus, according to one tradition, built the city of Argos. After his descendants had reigned for some generations, the throne was seized by Danaus.]

[Footnote 117: Death cutting off the fatal thread with a scythe, is not a very sublime or congruous image. Pope has blended modern ideas with cla.s.sical: in the original it is "ense met.i.t;"--"_mows_ with his _sword_." Pope has introduced a "_scythe_," to preserve more accurately the metaphor, but it has a bad effect.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 118: Choroebus.]

[Footnote 119: Statius states that Choroebus withdrew, having obtained his end, and says nothing of his being "unwilling," by which Pope seems to mean that he was unwilling to accept his life. This deviation from the original destroys the generous heroism of Choroebus, for if he was weary of his existence there was no merit in his braving death. Statius, indeed, had previously said that Apollo granted Choroebus the "sad boon of life" out of admiration for his magnanimity; but this phrase only signifies that life is sorrowful, and not that Choroebus would have preferred to die.]

[Footnote 120: Some of the most finished lines he has ever written, down to verse 854.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 121: Apollo was specially wors.h.i.+pped by the Lycians.]

[Footnote 122: The celebrated fountain sacred to Apollo on Parna.s.sus.]

[Footnote 123: Apollo was surnamed the Cynthian, from Mount Cynthus in the island of Delos, which was the place of his birth, and the most revered of all the localities set apart for his wors.h.i.+p. The island, which had previously floated over the ocean, was, according to one version of the legend, rendered stationary by Jupiter when Apollo was born; according to another version, it was subsequently fixed by Apollo himself.]

[Footnote 124: The walls of Troy were the work of Apollo and Neptune.]

[Footnote 125: In the first edition it was

Thou dost the seeds of future wars foreknow.]

[Footnote 126: The Phrygian was Marsyas, who contended on the flute against Apollo with his lyre. When the umpires decided in favour of the G.o.d, he flayed Marsyas for his presumption.]

[Footnote 127: t.i.tyus a.s.saulted the mother of Apollo, and her son shot the offender.]

[Footnote 128: Niobe, because she had seven sons and seven daughters, thought herself superior to Latona, who had only one son, and one daughter,--Apollo and Diana. These divinities, in revenge, destroyed the fourteen children of Niobe.]

[Footnote 129: In the first edition:

He views his food, would taste, yet dares not try, But dreads the mould'ring rock that trembles from on high.

Apollo intrigued with Coronis, the daughter of Phlegyas. Her enraged father retaliated by firing the temple of Apollo, and was consigned for his rebellion to perpetual torture in the infernal regions. His terror lest the impending rock should crush him is a circ.u.mstance interpolated by Pope from Virgil's description of the punishment of Pirithous and Ixion, and the expression "mould'ring rock" is taken from Dryden's translation of the pa.s.sage, aen. vi. 816:

High o'er their heads a mould'ring rock is placed That promises a fall, and shakes at ev'ry blast.

The revolting nature of the food itself is the reason a.s.signed by Statius why Phlegyas forebore to partake of it, and preferred to endure the pangs of hunger.]

[Footnote 130: After Apollo, in the later mythology, had been identified with the sun, all the names personifying the sun, of which t.i.tan was one, became applicable to Apollo.]

[Footnote 131: Diodorus maintained that the Osiris of the Egyptians was their G.o.d of the sun, and Statius has adopted this erroneous view.

According to the statement of Herodotus, Osiris answered to the Grecian Bacchus, and there is little doubt that the old historian was right.]

[Footnote 132: Mithras was the Persian G.o.d of the sun. He was wors.h.i.+pped in caves, or, as Pope has it, in "hollow rocks," because the spherical form of the cave symbolised the universe, of which Mithras was the maker. The "blaze of light which adorns his head" in Pope's version, makes no part of the description in the original. The final line is explained by several ancient works of art, in which a man, wearing a Phrygian cap, is depicted cutting the throat of a bull he has flung to the ground. The man is said by an old scholiast on Statius to typify the sun, the bull the moon, and the intention, he states, is to represent the superiority of the sun over the moon. Statius speaks of the bull as indignant at being compelled to follow Mithras,--an idea which suits ill with the tranquil aspect of the moon as it floats through the heavens.]

TRANSLATIONS

FROM

OVID.

Great is the change in pa.s.sing from Statius to Ovid; from force to facility of style; from thoughts and images which are too much studied and unnatural to such as are obvious, careless, and familiar. Ovid seems to have had the merit of inventing this beautiful species of writing epistles under feigned names. It is a high improvement on the Greek elegy, to which its dramatic form renders it much superior. The judgment of the writer must chiefly appear by opening the complaint of the person introduced, just at such a period of time, as will give occasion for the most tender sentiments, and the most sudden, and violent turns of pa.s.sion to be displayed. Ovid may perhaps be blamed for a sameness of subjects in these epistles of his heroines; and his epistles are likewise too long, which circ.u.mstance has forced him into a repet.i.tion and languor in the sentiments. On the whole the epistle before us is translated by Pope with faithfulness and with elegance, and much excels any Dryden translated in the volume he published, several of which were done by some "of the mob of gentlemen that wrote with ease,"--that is, Sir C. Scrope, Caryll, Pooly, Wright, Tate, Buckingham, Cooper, and other careless rhymers. Lord Somers translated Dido to aeneas, and Ariadne to Theseus. Though I regret the hours our poet spent in translating Ovid and Statius, yet it has given us an opportunity of admiring his good sense and judgment, in not suffering his taste and style, in his succeeding works, to be infected with the faults of these two writers.--WARTON.

Warton says, "The judgment of the writer must chiefly appear by opening the complaint of the person introduced at such a period of time as will give occasion for the most tender sentiments." How beautifully is this displayed in Pope's Epistle to Abelard, a poem that has another most interesting circ.u.mstance, which Ovid appears, as well as our Drayton, to have neglected,--I mean the introduction of appropriate and descriptive imagery, which relieves and recreates the fancy by the pictures, and by the landscapes which accompany the characters. Ovid, in this Epistle, seems not insensible to the effect of the introduction of such scenes; and the Leucadian rock, the _antra nemusque_, the aquatic lotus, the sacred pellucid fountain, and particularly the genius of the place, the Naiad, addressing the despairing Sappho (which circ.u.mstance Pope has beautifully imitated and improved in Eloisa), are in the genuine spirit of poetical taste. Dr. Warton observes that this translation is superior to any of Dryden's. If, indeed, we compare Pope's translations with those of any other writer, their superiority must be strikingly apparent. There is a finish in them, a correctness, a natural flow, and a tone of originality, added to a wonderful propriety and beauty of expression and language. If he ever fails, it is where he generalises too much. This is particularly objectionable, where in the original there is any marked, distinct, and beautiful picture. So, ver. 253, Pope only says,

Cupid for thee shall spread the swelling sail;

whereas in Ovid, Cupid appears before us in the very act of guiding the vessel, seated as the pilot, and with his _tender_ hand (_tenera manu_) contracting, or letting flow the sail. I need not point out another beauty in the original,--the repet.i.tion of the word _Ipse_.--BOWLES.

Richardson has appended this note to the Epistle of Sappho to Phaon in his copy of the quarto of 1717: "Corrected by the first copy, written out elegantly (as all his MSS.) to show friends, with their remarks in the margin; the present reading for the most part the effect of them."

The remarks in the margin are mere exclamations, such as "pulchre,"

"bene," "optime," "recte," "bella paraphrasis," "longe praestas Scrope meo judicio," "minus placet," &c. They are doubtless from the pen of Cromwell, since it appeals from Pope's letter to him on June 10, 1709, that he had jotted down the same phrases on the margin of the translation of Statius. Bowles having quoted the observation of Warton, "that he had seen compositions of youths of sixteen years old far beyond the Pastorals in point of genius and imagination," adds, "I fear not to a.s.sert that he never could have seen any compositions of boys of that age so perfect in versification, so copious, yet so nice in expression, so correct, so spirited, and so finished," as the translation of the Epistle of Sappho to Phaon. The remark was made by Bowles in the belief that the version was the production of the poet's fourteenth year. Pope himself records on his ma.n.u.script that it was "written first 1707." He was then nineteen, and when the Epistle was published in 1712, in Tonson's Ovid, he was twenty-four.

"Ovid," says Dryden, "often writ too pointedly for his subject, and made his persons speak more eloquently than the violence of their pa.s.sions would admit." Pa.s.sion is sometimes highly eloquent; feeling strongly it expresses itself forcibly, and Dryden meant that the characters in Ovid, by their numerous strokes of studied brilliancy, seemed to be carried away less by their emotions than by the ambition to s.h.i.+ne. These glittering artifices were formerly called wit, and Dryden complains that Ovid "is frequently witty out of season," but they are not wit in our present sense of the word. Occasionally they are the far-fetched or affected prettinesses which are properly called conceits; and more commonly they consist in terse ant.i.thesis, and a sparkle of words produced by the balanced repet.i.tion of a phrase. They are often as appropriate as they are showy, and if they are among the blemishes they are conspicuous among the beauties of Ovid. His writings are marked by opposite qualities. He is sometimes too artificial in his expression of the pa.s.sions, and sometimes he is natural, glowing, and pathetic. He abounds in pointed sentences, and is not less distinguished for the easy, spontaneous flow of his language. He is at once prolix and concise, indulging in a single vein of thought till the monotony becomes tedious, and yet enunciating his ideas with sententious brevity. The condensation of the Latin in many places cannot be preserved in the diffuser idioms of our English tongue, but, if we overlook a few weak couplets, Pope has translated the Epistle of Sappho to Phaon with rare felicity, and notwithstanding the inevitable loss of some happy turns of expression, he has managed to retain both the pa.s.sion and the poetry.

Effusions of sentiment were better adapted to his genius than the heroic narrative of the Thebais; and his limpid measure, which neither resembled the numerous and robuster verse of Statius, nor was suited to an epic theme, accorded with the sweetness and uniformity of Ovid's verse, and with the outpourings of grief and tenderness which are the staple of these epistolary strains. There is no ground for the regret of Warton that Pope should have spent a little time in translating portions of Ovid and Statius. It would be as reasonable to lament that he stooped to the preliminary discipline which made him a poet. He has related that he did not take to translation till he found himself unequal to original composition, and, like all who excel in any department, he learnt, by copying his predecessors, to rival them.

SAPPHO TO PHAON.[1]

Say, lovely youth,[2] that dost my heart command, Can Phaon's eyes forget his Sappho's hand?

Must then her name the wretched writer prove, To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love?

Ask not the cause that I new numbers choose, 5 The lute neglected, and the lyric muse;[3]