beats—the two first mutilated at the end—the third consisting of four and a half Iambs):
|
O Nata mecnm oonsule Manlio, |
Kindly jar, in Manlius' year |
In the Ode to Mæcenas, Festo quid potius die (III., 29), the translator frankly owns: "In several stanzas, I have felt my metre to be painfully cramping;" and elsewhere he says, "My substitute is apt to be deficient in compass wherever proper names occur in the Latin;" nevertheless his conclusion is, that all attempts to enlarge it seem on the whole to involve worse evils. That he should have succeeded so well as he has, in a path so narrow, and so hedged in with restrictions, is almost surprising. The task resembles the old game of jumping in sacks, or perambulating a cell with fetters on, or giving an abridgment of some free-soul'd poet, and cramming his sonorous cadences into monosyllables and interjections. Hence, many of the stanzas in this Horatian metre, as rendered by Mr. Newman, have the look of a terrier just after the clipping process has been applied to his ears and tail—when he comes forth looking uncomfortably curt and "curtailed" of his fair proportions—a martyr under the rule of subtraction—an abused victim of the shears. The Sapphic has for its substitute an English metre of more variety and capacity than the foregoing—thus:
Entrapp'd amid the wide Ægean,
When gloomy clouds the moon have hidden
And stars uncertain shine, the Sailor
Asks rest of Heaven. (Ode II., 16.)
In all his metrical experiments there is evidence that the translator has endeavoured to realise his own summary of principles, which is this: English metre is ruled by accent, without any regard to its equability: nevertheless, the sweetness of the verse depends on that equability, as well as on the ease of utterance,—that is, on the intrinsic softness of the words to be sounded; while the energy depends on the very opposite qualities—unequable accents and strength of sounds. But his experiment is one which
Ah me, what perils do environ!
And though not unfrequently sweet and energetic, his stanzas have too commonly a hard, crabbed aspect, and an abrupt discordant speech, which are far enough from consorting with one's notion of Flaccus. Flaccid they are, however, now and then.
Perhaps as favourable a specimen as we can find of Mr. Newman's skill as a translator into "unrhymed metres," is his verson of the Beatus ille, qui procul negotiis. While it is more free in movement, and musical in rhythm than many of his lyrics, it is also happy and ingenious in its literal adherence, line by line, and almost word for word, to the beautiful original:
"How blest is he, who far from troublous care,
As the ancient race of mortals,
With his own oxen tills his father's fields,
