Εκ τ ̓ εφανον πασαι σκοπίαι, και πρωονες ακροί, Mr. Pope's translation, or rather paraphrase, is as follows: "As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, Here, we see, five Greek lines are paraphrastically expanded into twelve English, one line in Homer being thought sufficient to furnish more verses in the landscape, or night piece, given us by his translator, than are to be found in the whole simile in the original. But this is not all:-It is not only a paraphrase, but, through all the harmony of the versification, and brilliancy of the colouring, it is easy to discover some glaring blemishes, for which there is no warrant in the Greek. In particular, the splendor of the sun at noon-day could not be described more strongly than this moonlight night is in the line printed in Italics; and in the two last lines, by the introduction of swains in the plural number, the most striking allusion in the simile is lost; the shepherd, in the original, being Hector himself, the pastor populorum, as the stars are the thousand fires kindled by the Trojans, while they watched their tents, Thus, in Paradise Lost, Book IV. verse 982. "The careful ploughman that stands doubting, Lest on the threshing-floor the hopeful sheaves Prove chaff". is the angel Gabriel, who is solicitous for the safety of Adam and Eve. To shew that all the same ideas may be comprised in nearly the same number of lines in English, accept the fol lowing, for which, and also for some of the above remarks, I am indebted to the late reverend and ingenious Mr. Say. K. As in still air, when round the queen of night 1774, Feb. Yours, &c. CRITO. LVII. Various Descriptions of Night compared, MR. URBAN, HAVING in your Magazine for Jan. produced several Descriptions of the Night from the works of our English poets, and ventured to oppose them to the most celebrated ones of the ancients; I ought to have added to the number that of Shakespeare in his Midsummer Night's Dream, not only on account of its poetic excellence, but as it was, probably, the original which furnished Marston with so many just and natural images: The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve- And the wolf behowls the moon, Whilst the heavy ploughman snores, Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the scritch-owl, scritching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, In the church-way paths to glide: And we fairies that do run By the triple Hecat's team From the presence of the sun, Midsum. N. Dr.* Act. V. Sc. 1. 2. Shakespeare, it is evident, had no need to dress up his description in Macbeth with imagery culled from Antonio's Revenge, since his own glowing imagination had already, we see, in a prior piece, bodied forth the forms of things unknown, and adapted them to the occasion, giving to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. The two last lines of Dryden's description in the Conquest of Mexico deserved likewise to have been noticed : Even lust and envy sleep; but love denies The personification of lust and envy, and the investing of these abstract terms with the attributes of the living-the representing of them as laid to sleep-shews a much nobler fight of fancy than the personification of silence in Apollonius, Σιγη δε μελαινομενην εχεν ορφνην, or that of sleep in Statius, totis ubi somnus inertior alis Defluit in terras, mutumque amplectitur orbem: (though this latter image of sleep brooding with wings expanded over the silent globe, is, it must be confessed, highly animated, and truly poetical). The universal stillness and composure of the night are also much more finely and forcibly portrayed in this short moral sketch of Dryden, which exhibits the two most wakeful and tormenting passions incident to human nature as "lulled in pleasing slumber," than by the several images drawn from the natural worldthe silence of the birds, the beasts, the trees, the rivers, and the sea, that are crowded together in Statius's description, This play was first printed (according to Mr. Capell's acc: rate table of the editions of Shakespeare's plays) in 1600; Antonio's Revenge in 1962. tacet omne pecus, volucresque, feræque, and in the similar, though greatly superior one of Virgil, But this is not all. There is another exquisite beauty in those lines of Dryden, arising from the contrast between the restlessness, the sober certainty of waking misery in the breast of Pizarro (who utters them), and the profound repose and tranquillity of all nature around: But love denies † Rest to my soul, and slumber to my eyes. This is a beauty of the same kind with that which the critics have admired in the Medea of Apollonius, 1 Αλλα μεν 9 Μηδειαν επι γλυκερος λαβεν ὕπνος and that copy of it in the Dido of Virgil, At non infelix animi Phoenissa; neque unquam The Italian poets, such of them at least as I have seen, have struck out nothing on the subject of night, worthy to rank with the models of these great masters. Even Tasso himself has given us only a translation (an elegant one indeed) from Virgil in the following beautiful lines: * Dryden seems to have taken the hint of two quaint fanciful lines from the second and fourth verses in this description of Statius: The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head. The waves more faintly roar, And roll themselves asleep upon the shore. Conquest of Mexico. Rital Ladies. + Dryden is, however, indebted for this line to one of the Latin poets, Nulla quies animo, nullus sopor; ardua amanti. Val. Flac. VII. 244. de Medea Era la notte all' hor, ch' alto riposo Han l'onde, e i venti, e parea muto il mondo: Sopian gli affanni, e raddolciano i cuori The critical reader will perceive, on comparing this description with that in the fourth book of the Eneid, before given, that not only the images, but the expression too, are almost literally copied from thence, with some few heightenings from the hand of the translator. Thus "the waves and the winds," l'onde e i venti, are coupled together with, perhaps, greater propriety in the copy, than silvæque et æquora, "the woods and the seas," are in the original; though it must at the same time be acknowledged, that the sava quierant of the Mantuan poet is infinitely more animated and characteristic than the han alto riposo of the Tuscan one. Tasso has omitted the pleasing picturesque image of the "stars" in their courses [medio volvuntur sidera lapsu], happily introduced by the judicious Virgil, to heighten and set off the serenity that prevailed throughout the heavens as well as the earth-that is, throughout all nature-on that particular night he is describing, in order to contrast it the more strongly, as the occasion required, with the discomposure of Dido. And he has supplied its place with the vague idea of a general stillness of the globe,-e parea muto il mondo-borrowed, as it should seem, from the mutumque amplectitur orbem of Statius; but falls much below his original, both in the prosaic turn of the expression [parea], and in the application of the image itself; which being a general, uncharacteristic one, thrust in amidst a groupe of particular, appropriated images-the silence of the waves, the winds, &c.-loses in Tasso's hands all the graces it had in the hands of Statius, where it is properly adapted to the conciseness of the description, and the general turn of the rest of the imagery. The seventh line of Tasso, sotto il silentio de' secreti horrori, is, indeed, a fine improvement upon Virgil's somno positæ sub nocte silenti; it is, however, indebted for its principal beauty to an happy union of the ideas suggested by Scandebat roseo medii fastigia cæli Defluit in terras, mutumque amplectitur orbem. Achilleid. I. 619. |