The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-13 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY' EVENING, OCTOBER 13, 1863.

LAW INTELLIGENCE.---This Day,

COURT OF BANKRUPTCY.
(Before Mr. Commissioner Goulburn.)
IN RE BAKER--A BETTING MAN IN A DIFFICULTY.

This bankrupt was described as of Notting-hill, out of
business, and this was a meeting for last examination and
discharge.
On the case being first called on the bankrupt did not
answer, and Mr. Godfrey, from the office of Mr. Aldridge,
said that he understood that the bankrupt was a betting
man, and had gone to the races; and after waiting for up-
wards of half an hour his Honour ordered an adjournment
sine die, but shortly afterwards the bankrupt entered the
court and declared that he had been about the place all the
morning, into Mr. Cotnmissioner Holroyd's Court, round
about, and was rot aware that his Honour was sitting In
this (Hr. Commissioner Fonblampe',) Court; besides, he
was almost dead and almost blind.

His Honour saia that eyesight had very little to do with
it, and he might have heard his nave
After further delay, Mr. Aldridge having arrived, his
Honour consented to hear the case.

Mr. Aldridge said the bankrupt wars a betting man, and
he had been required to furnish a cash account from
January, V 63, and he now accounted for £:,80 won on
Maccarooi, and losses to about the same amount, He (Mr.
Aldridge) did not see that any further information could be
obtained. The solicitors to the petitioning creditors were
of the same opinion.

The bankrupt, in answer to questions by the learned
Commissioner, said he only betted slightly, and did. a little
on commission. He was not a professional betting man,
bat did it because he was out of business. He had been in
trade as a corn and seed merchant, and failed in 1859,
owing £15,000, and he assigned property which realised
£4,500, but some of the creditors would not accept the com-
position ; others had received 4s. 6d. in the pound.
His Honour, under these circumstances, considered the
bankrupt was entitled to his discharge.

RE C kTON.

This bankrupt is a cheneille and umbrella manufacturer,
of Chester-street, Spitalfields, and this was a meeting for
examination and discharge.
Mr. W. R. Buchanan, Basinghall-street, was for the
bankrupt, who passed without opposition,

LITERATURE,

The iEneid of Virgil ; In English Blank Verse.
By John Miller. One vol., pp. 508. Macmillan
and Co.

The circumstances under which this remarkable
translation of Virgil's great epic masterpiece, has
been written and published are 'very peculiar. It
was penned as the solace to a bitter grief, by one
who has conspicuously evidenced, through this very
medium, his ripened scholarship, and his many
rare natural endowments. A foot note upon one of
the fly leaves briifly apprizes the reader that the
work afforded its author three years' daily occupa-
tion. I, appears now posthumously. As in the
instance referred to by us only yesterday, when
reviewing the posthumous publication of a volume
of poems by Mr. Francis Weedon, a young man-of-
letter.9, prematurely deceased about a year or
two since, after the manifestation, by him, of
very considerable abilities as an aspirant to
literary distinction—so also in the more notable in-
stance before us, the generous hand of encourage-
ment appears to have been extended by Lord
Macaulay with a view to hearten onwards, thereby,
a comparatively humble fellow labourer. It is true
that the name of that great Critic, poet, historian, and
essayist is not here once mentioned, as that of the one
who thought so well of Mr. Miller's daring enter-
prise, in undertaking to produce, as he has here pro-
duced, a complete translation into English blank
verse of Virgil's !Enid. Macaulay's name, we say,
is not here actually given as the promoter or approver
of that bold enterprise. But it is, nevertheless,
quite plainly enough intimated. No one can be iti
one instant's doubt, as to who it is, the editors of the
volume under notice actually means, when they re-
mark, in the course of their few introductory obser-
vations upon Mr. Miller and his translation, that
" he had been moved by the favourable judgment of
a late noble critic, justly celebrated as among the
ablest of his time, to contemplate its publication."
These little unlooked- fer revelations of Lord
Macaulay's readiness to allow the claims of a gene-
rous literary brotherhood to be recognised, are, we
cannot but think, very charming indeed to contem-
plate. They betoken the large sympathies of the
great-hearted man, as well as the keen and ready
perception of merit of ail kinds and of all degrees,
by one whose radiant genius as a critic
was so peculiarly formed to appreciate it. In
its way, Mr. Miller's translation of " The eEaeid"
of Virgil into English blank verse is as extraordi-
nary a performance as Mr. Worsley's recently com
pleted Eoglish version of "The Odyssey" of Homer
in the Spenserian stanza. Essentially different of
their kind as are these two productions, there is, it
appears to us, something very kindred in the endow-
ments of the two men by whom they have been
produced. Mr. Worsley might, we are satisfied,
quite as readily (had he chosen to do so) have syl-
labled his translation of " The Odyssey" in flowing
and melodious blank verse, as Mr. Miller has here
done by " The .2E acid." Of this many of that
young poetic scholar's other metrical writings yield
to us, as it seems, the fullest possible evidence.
And so again vice versa might it be said on the
other hand, that had Mr. Miller so listed, he, upon
his part, might as easily have done by " The 2E acid"
as Mr. Worsley has done by " The Odyssey"—
turning it, that is to say, from tae original into the
stately and elaborate stanza glorified by the genius
of Spenser, and thence called after Spenser's name.
That it is, in fact, precisely as we have said, let the
exquisite Prefatory Stanzas in
i this volume, be-
tween pp. xi. and xxiii, (each inclusively) attest.
Spenserian stanzas they are—surpassing, for that
matter, in their facile grace and beauty
even the ablest penned by the accom-
plished translator of "The Odyssey," And in
saying this, we speak not here in any way invi-
diously —for it should be borne in mind that these
Spenserian stanzas by John Miller are the original
utterances of his own thoughts and feelings:
whereas the Spenserian stanzas referred to, as from
the hand of Philip Worsley, are penned throughout
by that gifted writer under the weight of all the
responsibilities appertaining to a conscientious
translator. Turning, however, to the text of this
careful translation into English Blank Verse of
Virgil's ornate and lovely masterpiece, as it has
been here penned deliberately by the able scholar,
who expired, it would seem, very soon indeed
after its completion, we find it to be as conscien-
tious as a version, and yet for the most part as
unfettered to a slavish conformity to the
original, as even the best parts of Mr. Worsley's
masterly version of the Odyssey. It would appear,
indeed, that Mr. Miller, while turning the har-
monious verse of Virgil into Eaglish, endeavoured
as sedulously to avoid dwindling to the mere, line
for line, word for word, bald literalness peculiar to
some of the translators of the " eEaeid," as
to avoid expanding to the equally reprehensible
paraphrase of others. His vigilant glance is turned
alternately; equably, intermediately, here to the
Scylla, there to the Charybdis. He steers his bark,
as a translator, with consummate adroitness and
apparently with an easy precision, as remarkable
for its nicety as for its precision, that as he passes be-
tWeeen the two perils where his predecessors have
so often suffered shipwreck, he is almost always, so
to speak, equedistant from each. In one of our
weekly contemporaries on Saturday, we observe a
fragmentary passage of Mr. Miller's version of the
" 2E seid" contrasted with the parallel passage from
six other earlier versions of the same celebrated ori-
ginal. These half dozen being in effect the Earl
of Surrey's (1557), Phear and Twine's (1607), Dry-
den's (1685), Pitt's (1740), with two others far more
modern, namely, the French of M. Delia° and the
English of Dr. Kennedy, well known, this last, to
the present generation as the learned head-master of
Shrewsbury. The particular passage (a very brief
one) selected for this telling contrast or comparison,
is no other than that furnished by the opening
lines of the second book of the " elleaeid :" lines thus
faithfully translated by Mr. Miller, as quoted by the
Athenccum

Silent were all and turned their eyes intent,
When sire )Eneas from his high couch began :
0 mighty Queen, thou orderest to renew
Unutterable sorrow ; how the Greeks
The Trojan splendours and that hapless realm
O'erthrew; those dark calamities which I
Both saw and largely shared.
We are tempted to transcribe the very same passage
thus given by our contemporary, because, in the
first instance, we would fain add to the series of
contrasts supplied by the Athenceum, another still
more apposite in its significance than any of the six
already enumerated, to wit the following ;
JOHN OGILBY, 1650.
All silent and with deep attention sate,
Then thus the Prince spake from his bed of State :
Unheard-of griefs, great Queen, you bid renew;
How Troy's unhappy Realm the Greeks o'erthrew ;
Whose sad destruction I myself have seen,
Atd in her loss have no small sharer been.
As literal even as old John Ogilby's, John Miller's
version previously given above, reads, it will be
allowed, quite as flowingly. And Yet—(this being
in truth our chief reason for referring to identically
the same passage selected by our contemporary for
quotation)—and yet there are flaws in Mr. Miller's
version that we find not even in Oid John Ogilby.
That very second line of the second book moves not
onward with the trailing sweep of the Virgilian
toga: There being besides that, a j amble, so to speak,
in the music of the blank verse in the echOing sug-
gestion of an unintended rhyme, furnished by the
C 105.0 of the third line and the opening of the sixth
in the words renew and o'orthrov. An unlucky
fragment in effect, it certainlydoes appear
to us to be—to have been thus selected from
this version of the /Eleid, With a view to its espe-
cial commendation. Rather than that passage in
particular we would give by preference almost any
other. Opening the volume hap-hazard, let us say,
for example, this fragment from the ninth book—
Euryalus rolled in death ;
O'er his fine limbs went forth his blood, and back
Upon his shoulder drooped his neck declined :
As when a purple flower cut by the share
Pales all away in dying; or as when
With weary neck the poppies droop their head
With chance o'etcharged with rain.
Enough, however, if we add after that one flavour-
OUs morsel, as we may call it, from this ripened
fruit of the poetic and scholarly labour of John
Miller, the last, and not lust gifted among the
many translators of Virgil who bale already lived

and died and flourished—enough if we add that,
regarded apart from its high merit as a translation,
if it can possibly be so regarded, that is apart from
those peculiar merits, it is intrinsically, so to speak,
as an English p6em, pure and simple—a work that
may be read throuhout with delight and re-
membered afterwards with a long enduring ad-
miratioa.

MARKETS—This Day.

HAY MARKETS.

SmiTrirrEr.n.-7`.leadow hay, £3 Os to LI 10s Od ; clover,
.-fA Os to £5 17s d 6; and straw, £1 Os to £1 14s par load.
Trade 41u11,

crrmnEttLAND.--Meadow bay, £3 Os to £4 10s ; clove!,
£4 Os to £5 17s 6d ; and straw, £1 8, to -..C1 14s per load.
A sh,w demand.
WIIITECTIAPEL —Meadow hay, £3 Os to £1 103; clover,
£1 Os to £0 Os; and straw, £l is to Ll 14s per load.
Trade inactive.