Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/20

Perhaps I may be judged to have some advantage over my rhyming predecessors in respect of closeness to the original. It would be discreditable to me if the minute study which it has been my duty and my pleasure to give to every line, I might almost say every word, of my author in the prosecution of my commentary did not reflect itself to some degree in the translation. It is even possible that a casual reader may overlook many instances of close rendering; that he may suppose various forms of expression to be gratuitous which have been really adopted in order to bring out more fully the force, as I conceive it, of the Latin. The characteristic art of Virgil's language, I must own, is a thing which I have made no attempt to represent. Whether that peculiar habit which I have mentioned elsewhere as common to him and to Sophocles, the habit of hinting at two or three modes of expression while actually employing one, is capable of being transferred into English, I do not know: certainly none of his translators has effected the transference. It is obvious that the experiment is one to perform which would require the utmost nicety: everything would depend on the exact poetical equivalence of the various turns of phrase, either severally or as presented in combination: and a shade more or less in each case might produce not beauty but deformity. Such felicities, in fact, though well worthy of critical investigation, are hardly to be discovered by critical search: while the translator was seeking them, any spirit that there might be in his verses would be apt to evaporate. It is only one to whom they would suggest themselves naturally, in conformity I mean with his natural genius, who would be able to employ them in translation without injury to the