The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-18 00:00:00

LIT.ERATITET.

Enochus Arden. Poe= Tennysonianum. Latino

liedditum. El. Moxon et Soc.
It was only the other day that we ha I occasion
to comment upon a singularly beautiful tribute
proffered by art to the genius of the Poet Laureate:
We have now to direct attention to a tribute 11',
less beautiful of its kind, which has been offered
to that same genius not by art., but by scholarailiiii.
Professor William Selwyn has in this elegant transur
tion of " Enoch Arden " into Latin very siglialble
rivalled, if he has not indeed actually surpassed t
latest achievement of Monsieur Gustave pore as al
illustrator of one of the masterpieces of Alfred
Tennyson. Thanks to the exceeding purity an
.
grace of his latinity, the translator has contrived, Ito'.
this his version of "Enoch Arden," to transmute itl„,
the classic tongue a poem eminently entitled
.`1
reason of the various charms of style and diction
'
...
so conspicuously appertaining to it in the original
pre-eminently entitled, we might say, to what hmr.
long since come to be so very exceptional an hunetia
It is iu terms of deprecation no less winning au
lis
gracious than these, that Professor Selwyn
preludes what we cannot but regard as his 1.05.'
masterly performance :
Si qua notes longo culpanda in carmine; si gnti
Archetypes iityJnias male rospondentia charts,
Judicio leni, volut ssgri somnia, ponses :
Forsitan et tug to docet experiontia, seniurn
Subtilem, et magni felicia verba paette,
Multsque temporibus non coavenientia prissis,
" Difficile illastrare Latinis versibus ease."
There is a noticeable echo, in this, of the gore D.
reference to the curiosa felicitas verborum,naPle.,„j:i
in the allusion thus made to the " sensum subtilewri
and the " felicia verba" of this charming love-story
of of the unconscious bigamist Annie Lee, wife '„-ot
of all of Enoch Arden, and afterwards (though d,
yet a widow) of Philip Ray. In the reuder7
of this tender idyll into Latin verse, we knob
whether to admire more those portions of it ,90
are descriptive of the picturesque little English sena
port where the loves of Annie Lee follow the °or
upon the other in their mournful sequence, r,
those other portions comprising within them
Tennyson's magnificent celebration of the tropic
scenery where the shipwrecked mariner is lanlent.
Mg for his lost home, and love, and life, irt e so,
litude as awful as that of Robinson Crusoe's Pr°tof
type, Alexander Selkirk, on the ocean island o:00
Juan Fernandez. Thus, for example, iu ter.
later passages, do we find Professor Selwyn'S
sion of the A ords relating how Enoch—

. . heard
Tile myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
The league-long roller thundering on the reef;"
thus faithfully echoing their noble resonance--

Audiit innumeros ululare ad litora merges;
Imma,nes fluctus submerse, in gaxa tonantes.
The scrupulous exactitude with which the trausl9';4t
follows out the lightest turn of phrase, the subtl;
touch of imagery, could hardly be more sigilahltl'i;
yet more delicately indicated, by the wahntiip
through some passing reference, here, to rw
when—

" Him like the ze3rking bee in blossom-dust
Blanc/et.' with his mill, they found ;"
Ilium, apis in morem perfusu polline forum,
Alboutem farro inveniunt. t Of
The original, and the translation, in 11°.`i?
fact, might be almost taken line for lineh
hero and there, even word for word. fbi.
is tilt, ,1 ! The .L 3
ciency alone discernible in the reflection be
that il4
peculiar to many other reflecions
n
meaning in saying which, we would her o
more clearly indicate, by comparing this 0114
reflection of "Enoch Arden" to the reflection:o
any one else's countenance in a mirror, an t:
reflection appears to our own eyes—not to h'%,
when gazing upon it. To us the outlines and P,
portions of the features of that reflected COnlitreoi
nance, by reason of the mere fact of their revers tm
in reflection (the right side, thereupon, becoming ro.
left and the left the right)—the outlines and
portions of those feature; to our eyes, be it !Tracery
bered, evidence always an appreciable yet a /,be
subtle distortion. Just such a divergence from
symmetrical beauty of the original, we linl"3or.
consciousness of when examining this 111 cia
vellous shadowing forth in Latin of
Arden"—a divergence, doubtless, hardly recoo.og
able to the eye of Professor Selwyn himself, Veld,
that he is, there, scanning it, so to speak, ihrl9/4:e!
the original, like the very alter ego of the Llure3
What is, here, far more worthy of note, however',
the fact that from the first line to the last, for°