The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-26 00:00:00

Professor Connington,* and Mr. Theodore Martin,
and Lord Lytton—the last mentioned of the three I
himself, at once Poet, Dramatist, Novelist, Orator,
and Statesman, a man who has left none of the
fairer fields either of letters or of ambition untouched,
and who (to adopt Samuel Johnson's or Fabius
quintilian's phrase) has touched none that he
has not adorned. "With Theodore Martin's radiant
and animated version of Horace, the public, or,
at any rate, the lettered portion of the public,
is already familiar. Almost equally familiar
is it, by this time, with the wonderfully close
and delicate rendering into English of these
peerless Odes by Professor Connington. Lord
Lytton's version has hitherto been only known
among a select few, and in a purely fragmentary
manner, through the specimens published during
the course of last year in four successive numbers of
Blackwood's Magazine. The work is now before us
in its integrity. " The Odes and Epodes of Horace"
—the Four Books of the Odes, the Secular Hymn,
and the Seventeen Epodes—are here transformed,
transfused, transmuted, translated (however it might
be the most clearly expressed) from the original
into the English Language. Throughout, the task
has been done at once con amore and conscientiously.
Lord Lytton's version is no paraphrase--it is almost,
one might say, a linear translation. So conscious
is the translator himself of the integrity of his
work, not merely as a whole, but in all its details—
verse by verse and phrase by phrase—that he has
not shrunk from that crucial test of every transla-
tion, the confronting, all through the volume upon
opposing pages, of the English version and the Latin
original. hence, indeed, eve have reason at once to
express our grateful acknowledgments to Lord
Lytton for the double luxury his book has afforded
us—leading us on the one hand (the right) to
the perusal yet once more of Horace himself
throughout, and on the other hand (the left)
to the examination, for the first tune in their
collective form, of his own always dexterous, often
felicitous, here and there nothing less than exquisite
renderings. The distinctive peculiarity of Lord
Lytton's version, as the title-page indicates at once,
is that it is a Metrical Translation, or, as the pre-
liminary announcements of the work more explicitly
stated, a version of the Odes and Epodes in Rhyme-
less Metre. By his charming volume entitled "The
Lost Tales of Miletus," Lord Lytton had already
demonstrated, beyond the possibility of contradic-
tion, that in its flexile and harmonious flow the
English language, in the hands of a master, does
really admit of the employment of rhymeless metres
of extraordinary variety without involving in the
use of them any appearance either of incongruity
or of pedantry—but, more even than that, it should
be said, with the opening up thereby of "fresh fields
and pastures new" in our English poetic literature.
'Phis position Lord Lytton has now made doubly
good, has made good in a far more remarkable man-
ner than even in that first daring venture of his be-
yond the hitherto recognized border-lands, or boun-
dary lines of our native rules of poetic composition.
Instead of imitating, it should far rather here be
said at once that he has emulated the Latin metre
by a rhythmical adaptation of it in harmony, in
swing, and flow, and cadence, and accentuation,
with a due regard throughout in the construction
of his varied measures to the maintenance intact of
the whole distinctive character of English prosody.
It is true, no doubt, that, according to his own as-
surance, he originally endeavoured, upon first under-
taking the wonderfully difficult task of producing
these rhythmical and rhymeless translations—his
endeavour, in the first instance, as he says, was to
attempt a close imitation of the ancient measures,
the scansion being, as he adds, by accent and not
quantity. But, happily for himself and for Horace,
too, in being thus rhythmically Englished —the
translator's original design (that of careful imita-
tion) was so far abandoned that, asLord Lytton says
himself, " it soon appeared to me best to vary the
modifications according as the prevalent spirit of the
ode demanded lively and sportive, or serious and
dignified, expression." Hence, in effect, we take it,
the elastic ease and grace with which these unac-
customed metres, selected (some of them, one might
almost say, invented) by the translator, emulate,
instead of merely slavishly imitating the alcaics and
the sapphics, and all the other multiform and
marvellously varied metres of Horace. Turning,
however, from the mere construe! ic,,diffieultiOs of the
particular kind of version upon which Lord Lytton
has here adventured, and bearing in mind those of
a far more formidable kind awaiting him, as for that
matter it awaits every translator of Horace, in all
that c mistitutes thespecialand distinctive glory of his
Odes, we cannot but think that the noble lord im-
perilled the creation of a new difficulty for himself,
by bringing, through his daring selection of the very
form and manner of his verse, this English version of
his into direct comparison with the, in every sense,
inimitable Latin original. Bent on reflecting back,
as faithfully as possible, that inimitable original, by
means of a metrical translation into English as
accurate as well could be—that is to say, by means
of kindred measures, kindred idioms, kindred lan-
guage, kindred turns of speech, of thought,
of illustration—Lord Lytton has evidently
entered with all his heart and soul upon the 1,
accomplishment of his task, and has apparently
left teething whatever undone or uncared for that
could farther his efforts to ensure the realisation
of his design. Prefixed to his translation of the
Odes and Epodes he has given to his readers, by way
of Introduction, that charming and scholarly dis-
sertation upon Horace and the causes of his popu-
larity, which originally appeared last year in the
pages of Blackwood's Magazine. In it he evidences
incidentally, or rather inferentially,his own exquisite
sense of the difficulties lying, inevitably and im-
mediately, as it were, in the pathway of every
scholastic Horatian Translator. He realizes, for
example, first and foremost of all, that Charm which
is like an aroma—impalpable, intangible, inimitable,
undefinable. He recognizes in numberless lines of
Horace the " felicitous suppleness of proverbs."
In ode after ode, he beholds, and lovingly admires,
" the compactness and solidity of an imperishable
gem." Horace, he exclaims, " invokes the Muse and
invites the Grace." He pronounces him " the Poet of
Eclecticism." Linking the past with the present, an-
cient with modern civilisation, he acknowledges in
Horace, their general representative. His lively wit,
his good-natured philosophy, his undefinable air of
good breeding, commend him, as it has been here ad-
mirably well put, tothe consideration and sympathy
of the refined and cultivated. " Men of the world
claim him as of their order," says Lord Lytton, while
pronouncing him " foremost among that high class
of gentlemen—thorough-bred authors." Hence, in
effect, the intimacy subsisting between the courtly
Mecmnas and the soneofe the Venusian Freedman,
between the lordly Augustus and the by no means
lordly lyrist of whom Saetonius writes—Habitu
corporis brevis flit atque obelus. Commenting upon
one among the conspicuous charms of Horace, his
love alike and almost equally for town and
country, Lord Lytton says of him very happily,
"He might be as familiar with Sir Philip
Sidney in the shades of Penshurst as with
Lord Chesterfield in the saloons of Mayfair."
And, as strikingly illustrative of the personal affec-
tion inspired by Horace, now, after the lapse of 1877
years since the date of his death, we need only point
to Lord Lytton's own warm-hearted, and, to our
mind, perfectly unanswerable vindication of him
from the three principal charges directed against
his character—That of the cowardice absurdly im-
puted to him because of his own really manly men-
tion of an incident on the battle field of Philippi—
That of adulation to Caesar Augustus, in regard to
which Lord Lytton felicitously illustrates the situa-
tion of things at that epoch in Rome by referring
to recent, or, as one might say, contemporary
events occurring in France—That finally of certain
erotic poems, here most judiciously omitted from
among the number of these translations, and which
poems, Lord Lytton argues, and it must be
said, with a considerable show of probability,
were mere imitations from the Greek, and no
genuine expressions of the lyrist's own sen-
timents. It is not here, as will be observed,
the errors of Horace that areingeniously extenuated
by this his latest translator, it is the whole character