The Latest of "The Virgilians"

WERE one to name, after a well-known model, the qualities of Virgil to be kept in mind by a translator, he would mention, as preëminent among them, his conscious art; or, to designate its results, his dignity and grace. Virgil cut his vocal reed by the smooth-gliding Mincius only figuratively, and he never piped to the groves and streams. Delicate and sensitive, as he was, his selfdistrust made him a listener to Theocritus ; refined and proud, his self-consciousness made him the laureate of a splendid court. Though he dwelt alone, a true lover of nature, like Saadi he could not “ dispense with Persia for his audience; ” and he knew well that for the fastidious ears of Pollio and Mæcenas the utmost of art must be achieved, as well as the secret spirit be rendered. His work is consequently the supreme result of the most thorough poetic culture, as well as the genuine expression of the most charming of poetic natures. No scholar needs to be told this. With Dante, Milton, and Tennyson, he is recognized by all who have any gift of sensibility to poetic form as the master, the duce verace, who has led these children of His song to the heavenly paradise on whose verge he closed his mortal eyes, although not without a vision of that promised land,—

“Magnus ab integro seclorum nascitur ordo.”

The advance of poetry in that new age has been in the Christianization of its spirit, and of this Virgil was the forerunner. What Shelley wrote of all poets is preëminently true of him: he was “the hierophant of an unapprehended inspiration.” He had a prescience of the modern age ; by sharing and partly expressing its feeling, he has drawn toward him a more sympathetic reverence than any of his peers in the old era, and consequently has exercised a more active and continuous influence. Thus in Virgil’s verse is found the earliest prophecy of the new, the romantic spirit, as also the last perfection of the old, the classical form: this latter, the gift of the elder civilization to the modern poet, has been transmitted mainly through him who at the dawn of our literature was the master of Dante. The crystalline purity of style in the first Italian, the perfect phrase and fall of the young Milton’s numbers, the composite sweetness of Tennyson’s idyllic verse, find their model and fixed eternal type in him, Still unsurpassed, who is the mediator between the two great epochs, — the pagan poet, whose divine inspiration has been asserted in the tomes of the fathers and from the pulpit of the Popes, and whose heavenly aid has been invoked by kneeling Christians in the liturgies of the universal church. It is not our purpose to add a line to his panegyric, — Tennyson’s votive wreath is honor enough for one decade ; but by such opening remarks we would indicate how large a survey, how embracing a compass, that mind must have which would rewrite his verses in an alien tongue ; and especially we would emphasize the essential need in such a mind of the finer qualities of subtle appreciation. The first requisite in the translator of a poem of highly wrought art is cultivation of taste. Yet he may be thus characterized and fail, because he lacks technical skill to make his culture tell ; but he will know that he has failed. Any translation of Virgil must be done with good taste, and with something of literary finish; the lowest intelligent standard must demand this.

There is, it must be confessed, a touch of ceremony in Mr. Wilstach’s bow to the public, as he proffers these two attractive volumes,¹ which is slightly discomposing to the genial-minded reader. ‘‘It is now proposed,” he writes, “in the year 1882, nearly seven hundred years after the birth of our language, and, if this date be important, four hundred years after the discovery of America, two hundred years after the first American attempt, and nearly two hundred years after the English achievement, with our language in its full, perhaps its greatest, development, and with the rich accumulations of Virgilian efforts, successful and unsuccessful, at our service, to build a new translation of the full works.” Now, accuracy and a respect for detail are excellent qualities in a translator ; it is better to have too much of them than too little. It is to be noted, however, that the “ building ” of the new translation refers to the printer’s work; for the author states elsewhere that he began his version on the 17th of January, 1880, and finished it on the 14th of April, 1882 : “ The time employed, therefore, in the full original work of translation was two years and twenty-seven [sic] days, and this in the intervals of leisure spared from other duties.” Here, too, there is some discouragement, both in the misplaced pride of the last clause and in the arithmetic; but bearing in mind that Mr. Wilstach’s serious labor will be in another kind of numbers, one reads on, and gathers happy auguries from a variety of sources. For instance, the author has consulted nearly all previous translations, including the almost “ unintelligible ” Scotch version of Gawin Douglas, not in order to avoid charges of plagiarism, but, as he boldly avows, to profit by whatever was worth plundering ; and he takes occasion happily to contrast his procedure with that of Governor Long, who entirely neglected his predecessors. Again, when he quotes with relish Hallam’s priggish remark on Dryden, “He forgets, even in his dedications, that he is standing before a lord,” how can the rising doubt refuse to yield to the intimation that Mr. Wilstach will always remember in whose presence he is, and will conduct himself humbly! Pushing on through the one hundred and twentyseven pages of prolegomena, — very useful tables that show how easily Virgil may be transmuted into lexicography, tables of speeches, similes, fate-lines, imperfect lines, ignorings (passages neglected or slurred over by previous hands), new readings (meanings in the text now first discovered), and a notice of the minor works,—the reader comes to the poems, or rather to a “ table of the Pastorals,” which exhibits the familiar Eclogues in an original order, and in three cases under original names. Such innovations, however, are minor matters. From this point the text flows invitingly on, with prefatory remarks, arguments, lists of dramatis personœ, and copious foot-notes. This specious look of careful learning gives one confidence at once.

For the Eclogues the lover of Virgil has a special and peculiar fondness. They were the poet’s bud of promise, the virgin gold of first thought, first love, in his young heart; their defects are excrescent and transitory, their virtues are those of immortality. How sweetly the names now come to an English ear, with what increments of beauty, tenderness, and pathos,— Lycidas, Damœtas, Corydon, Amaryllis, Thyrsis ! How many echoes of noble song mingle with the refrain “ Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim "!

How many reminiscences of later idyls seem to fly from the lines as from nests of singing birds ! Hut what is this ? one exclaims, and rubs his eyes; for a change has passed upon those radiant syllables, — a change more marvelous in seeming as one opens the first Georgic, and can but pause and acknowledge that it is no individual charm of the Eclogues to his own heart that fills his critical mind with forebodings. Literalness is necessary in translation, of course, and it may be extended from words to constructions when the genius of English admits ; but here are such inversions, often unwarranted by the text itself, such convolutions as of a language in extremis, as have seldom been observed in public. The sentences advance with a curious crab-like movement, walking backward, with edgewise thrusts of their posteriors unexampled in acrobatic grammar; the verb making headway (the locution is not exact) toward the subject, the noun coquetting with the adverb, and the adjective pirouetting off with a particle. One cannot but mix metaphors in describing it, so dizzying is the confusion : —

(G. iii. 22-28.)

Not to be too narrow in citation, the last line of this extract (the references are to the Latin text) is matched by

(G. i. 129)

and fairly surpassed by

(G. iv. 453)

a line whose movement recalls maliciously Mr. Wilstach’s own criticism on one in Addison’s version: “ It is simply a writhing, bellying, cucumberish, twisted line, which ought never to have been written.” In vocabulary as well as in grammar the English of this translation is singular. No objection need be urged, it is true, to cyclone, bayou, or, except as a vulgarism, to stand in (instare), meaning to decide on, — “ stand in for bearded grain ” (G. i. 220), — or to be worth, —

(rEn. x. 494.)

At least, not wishing to be thought captious, we waive the question in this case. The author’s favorite among the newly coined words, theopoiia (apotheosis), as a name for what he quotes himself as elsewhere calling “ the proudest exhibition of the spectacular superb ” in history, may be passed, also, since it will never outlive the foot-note in which it is embedded. Armisonant might perhaps be admitted this once. But the most goodnatured tolerance must certainly stop on the hither side of sloo, a word, as the translator himself remarks, confined in modern times to “ story-books spiced with the dialect of ‘ the West,’ ” and of platted (posuit), to describe Dido’s founding of Carthage, —

Æn. iv. 211-12)

on which rendering Mr. Wilstach comments “ still nearer to say (since our registry laws have come in) that she placed of record her town-plat, in the manner of the proprietor of a wildcat or paper town.” We take space to condemn, also, ultraly (ultro), addense (to gather together), t’wards, rivalized, and illy as happily not yet English.

In a translation of Virgil it is impossible not to give some slight regard to the melody of the verse ; for in poetry this music of the mere words holds the secret of much of that indefinable element of charm which is the supreme result of art, and the dignity and grace of Virgil, which have been designated as the principal marks of his style, are especially conspicuous in this. A poet, of course, would not write thus (the Latin, by the way, is simply “ infelix lolium ”) : —

(G. i. 154)

but no one supposes Mr. Wilstach to be a poet, and the line goes on five fingers. In his preface the author stated that in syllables he had given “ full count rather than short measure,” and therefore the reader is prepared for frequent Alexandrines and such Swinburnian excess of short quantities as in the following : —

(G. i. 114)

but after both promise and liberal performance have accustomed the ear to leisurely scansion, it is unkind to precipitate one down a pentameter in this breakneck manner, —

(G. ii. 117)

not a solitary instance. The use of sour as a dissyllable and of sotcers as a monosyllable indicates extraordinary command of the vocal organs in the author; but sistér, worse than Keats’ worst cockneyism, and princéss, which Mr. Wilstach informs us he prefers as the usage of the English court (one wonders that he does n’t say “ mar’m ’ Andromache), are fatal errors. One cannot help suspecting that Mr. Wilstach has no ear for rhythm long before the proof comes in his rendering of the onomatopoetic lines,

Æn. viii. 452-53.)

To pass by these matters of technique, which the translator speaks of slightingly and may not have considered worth his notice, possibly he has been only the more faithful to the meaning of the poet. He frequently turns aside to punish one of his brother Virgilians, as lie terms them ; he has a whole fagot of rods to select from, and uses them in rotation on the backs of Dryden and lesser men. But how delightedly, on the other hand, does he point out to the reader his own improvements of Virgil! For slurring and omission he has no words too severe, but he does not regard expansion and heightening as offenses. He himself directs attention to his inflation of Melibœus’ exclamation, “Corydon, Corydon” (Ecl. vii. 70), into “ Corydon hear, hear Corydon’s lark-like voice ;" but when one reads as Virgil’s,

he doubts his memory, and turns to the passage (Eel. x. 77), to find venit Hesperus, — that is all. Think of Virgil’s describing the setting of the evening star as “a jewell’d journey of the night”! “ Through the lusk foliage fair ” has but one word, fohis (G. i. 413), to sustain its meretricious ornamentation ; “ branches running wild and fancy free ” is in Virgil ramos fluentes (G. ii. 370), etc., etc. These are but peccadilloes, however, to what Mr. Wilstach is capable of committing, and advertising in the notes besides. Oscula libavit natœ (Æn. i. 256), wrote Virgil, when Jove kisses his daughter Venus; but Mr. Wilstach translates,

Mr. Wilstach says that Anthon is feeble and senile. Virgil’s compact,

(Æn, v. 700)

becomes, in this new and popularized version,

Mr. Wilstach says that Dryden was garrulous. Once he thinks it worth while to remark, “ I content myself with translating literally from Virgil,” and then shows that by “ literally ” he understands the use of a direct English derivative for the Latin original, whether it means the same or not. In connection with this topic, we should not be forgiven if we passed over entirely without mention the “ new readings,” or peculiarly original translations, of Mr. Wilstach. Several of them consist in giving a dramatic touch to the simple narrative, as thus : —

(Æn. i. 610-12.)

Another of these interesting discoveries is that Acron’s unfinished nuptials (Æn. x. 720) imply that he was “a brilliant kid, escaped in hot haste from the Vulcanic fires of a domestic Troy.” On these new readings we do not dwell; let the curious reader turn to the “ table ” of them, where he will have them all, like the expurgated passages of Don Juan’s Ovid, “at one fell swoop.” For our own part, coming here upon the author’s humorous remark, as he glories over the unfortunate Dryden, “ him with his own sword I jugulate,” and elsewhere upon his annotation on “ et cœsa jungebant fœdera porca ” (Æn. viii. 641), “ and clinched the treaty with a slain porker,” we consider it folly to seek further for the Virgilian qualities of dignity and grace in this first American translation of “ the full works.”

Mr. Wilstach might have written an admirable Joe Miller of the American bar. His wonderfully varied notes are highly seasoned with Western if not with Attic salt; many a little incident of the office, illustrative, not of Virgil to be sure, but of the rusticity of clients and the wit of lawyers, being related, and occasionally a well-worn joke of some Pope or Haytian emperor, or of Lincoln (“Whose boots do you black?”), being thrown in, lest the reader should weary of Dido’s love and Camilla’s charms. Any writer on American affairs might Well consult these notes, in the absence of any less desultory authority. Here are descriptions of our hot-springs, oil-wells, and copper-mines ; extracts from Colonel Kise’s address at Lafayette, Ind.; Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg; Judge Agnew’s decision, 88 Penn. ; Tecumseh’s response to General Harrison. Now a reference is made to an unpublished joke of General Butler, accessible in the war archives; now Custer’s battle with the Indians furnishes a comparison for Æneas’ conflict with the Greeks (the comrades of Æneas are often called braves) ; or the phenomena that accompanied Garfield’s mortal illness — the band of light on the eve of the assassination, the yellow atmosphere on the day of his journey, the charging squadrons in the heavens on the night after his death — are detailed, to parallel those of Caesar’s death. Other still more extraneous matters may be found : the “ great good taste ” of the “ C. C. C. & I. R’y Co.” in naming their road the Bee-Line (apropos of the fourth Georgic), the dyspeptic nature of angel cake — but we forbear: it is enough to say that almost everything is in these notes except scholarship to elucidate the text, or to illustrate it. The preface informed us that they would be adapted “ in the more learned parts to the average culture of scholars : ” it appears that, in the author’s mind, average classical learning implies mainly the fact, repeated ad nauseam, that œs means copper, and, further, that Cerberus has its accent on the first syllable. To be frank, the annotations are valueless.

When the respect in which the classics are held is daily decreasing, such a pretentious work as this cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. Whoever makes his first acquaintance with Virgil through its pages might well question the praises of the poet and the good sense of his eulogists. To read him would not seem to any sane man essential either to practical life or cultivated taste. Just as widely as it is considered a translation of Virgil, so widely will Virgil be discredited. It would ill become a scholar, in such a case, to keep silence. There are several useful versions of these poems, which, while they are not equal to the original, are adequate to the needs of the English reader. In the much-abused Dryden’s, there is a strain of the genuine heroic; in Morris’s, although he has chosen to translate not into the lingua franca of poetry, but into the dialect, the cloying Provençal, of a school, there is fidelity, vigor, and beauty. Notwithstanding the wonderful skill with which Virgil blended the gravitas of the Roman spirit with the Χáρις of the Greek, — seriousness with charm, dignity with grace, — our language is not so lacking in either of these qualities as to make translation of his poems impossible. Good taste and a certain degree of literary finish are all we required ; and they are not rare now even in our journeyman work. Modesty, at least, is attainable. A sense of the respect due to the perfected work of genius, such as to overcome the self-intruding instinct of underbred natures, freedom from coarse humor and degrading allusions, — such qualifications are not too much to ask ; and so long as they are held in honor, not the scholar only, but every refined man or woman, will condemn and regret such a travesty and corruption as is this translation of one of the most excellent possessions of the race.