It would be worse than superfluous to look among his other versions from Horace for further evidence of Ben Jonson's incomparable incompetence as a translator, But as this has been hitherto very insufficiently insisted on,—his reputation as a poet and a scholar standing apparently between the evidence of this fact and the recognition of it,—I will give one crowning example from The Poetaster. This is what Virgil is represented as reading to Augustus—and Augustus as hearing without a shriek of agony and horror.
Meanwhile the skies 'gan thunder, and in tail[1]
Of that fell pouring storms of sleet and hail.
'In tail of that'! Proh Deûm atque hominum fidem! And it is Virgil—Virgil, of all men and all poets—to whom his traducer has the assurance to attribute this inexpressible atrocity of outrage!
The case of Ben Jonson is the great standing example of a truth which should never be forgotten or overlooked; that no amount of learning, of labour, or of culture will supply the place of natural taste and native judgment—will avail in any slightest degree to confer the critical faculty upon a man to whom nature has denied it. Just judg-
- ↑ Compare Æn. iv. 160.
