The

in the undertaking was unfortunately manifest. Odyssey itself was greatly inferior to the Iliad in heroic dignity and pathos: its interest lay in its adventures; and a translator could gain an adequate amount of credit by telling the story in flowing verse. Naturally, therefore, the manner of narrating adopted by Pope in the Iliad became the most characteristic feature in the work; and this was so successfully imitated by the two assistants whom he had chosen that it is practically impossible to discriminate between the versions of the scholars and that of the master.

Elijah Fenton, the elder of the two, was born at Shelton, near Newcastle-under-Lyme, on the 20th of May 1683. He was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, and took his B.A. degree in 1704. As a steady Nonjuror he seems to have earned the esteem of Pope, who used his influence to procure for him the appointment of tutor in the family of Lady Trumbull. In his tragedy of Mariamne (1723), Fenton showed some dramatic ability; and he was a friend and admirer of the playwright Southerne.1 He died in August 1730.

William Broome, Pope's other assistant, was the son of a farmer in Cheshire, and was born in 1689. He was educated at Eton, where he was captain of the school, and afterwards (as there was no vacancy at King's College in his year) at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he became a sizar on the 10th of July 1708, taking his B.A. degree from it in January 1711-12, and his M.A. in 1716. He had a great facility of imitating other men's styles, an accomplishment which probably recommended him to Pope as a translator, though the latter afterwards satirised him on this account in the Bathos: he was also scholar enough to furnish the necessary notes. He died in 1745.

I have told the curious story of this translating partnership in my Life of Pope : the whole transaction savours disagreeably of the tricks of trade. Pope had the

1 See his verses to him on p. 427.

2 Elwin and Courthope's edition of Pope's Works, vol. v. chapter ix.

lion's share of the profits-as was fair enough; nor do I think that there is any ground for the charge brought against him by the Dunces of treating his partners shabbily; his fault rather lies in the deception he practised on the public, by making it appear that he was practically responsible for the entire translation. He had no wish to gain credit for what did not belong to him (for evidently the work could add nothing to his reputation), but he was anxious that the translation should not suffer in the market, by being supposed largely the production of less famous hands than his. Fenton, a lazy and goodnatured man, fell in readily with this view of the matter, as far as he thought he honourably could; but Broome, vain and talkative, and caring more for fame than money, fancied that he was being unjustly deprived of the reputation due to him. Afraid to oppose Pope's manœuvres openly, he talked about them behind his back, and thus furnished materials for the reports that were widely spread by the poet's enemies of his dirty conduct to his partners.

Another translator, who carried what has been called the Pope style to excess, was Christopher Pitt. Born in 1699, he was sent in 1714 to Winchester, where he had translated the whole of the Pharsalia before he entered New College, Oxford, in 1719.1 He took his M.A. degree in 1724, and became Fellow of his College, but resigned the position on being appointed rector of Pimpern, in Dorsetshire. In 1725 he published his translation of Vida's Art of Poetry: his translation of the Eneid appeared in 1729. He died in 1748.

Of Pitt's translation of the Eneid, Johnson says with his customary under-note of sarcasm :

Pitt, engaging as a rival with Dryden, naturally observed his failures, and avoided them; and as he wrote after Pope's Iliad, he had an example of an exact, equable, and splendid versification. With these advantages, seconded by great diligence, he might successfully labour particular passages, and escape many

1 He was not aware at the time that it had been translated by Rowe: his own version was never published.

errors. If the two versions are compared, perhaps the result would be, that Dryden leads the reader forward by his general vigour and sprightliness, and Pitt often stops him to contemplate the excellence of a single couplet-that Dryden's faults are forgotten in the hurry of delight, and that Pitt's beauties are neglected in the languor of a cold and listless perusal-that Pitt pleases the critics, and Dryden the people-that Pitt is quoted and Dryden read.

This is very happy that it is also just may be seen by the following two versions of the death of Priam in the second Eneid, a passage that had already been rendered by Gavin Douglas, the Earl of Surrey, and Phaer, whose translations may also be found in the second volume of this History:

DRYDEN

Perhaps you may of Priam's fate inquire;
He, when he saw his regal town on fire,
His ruined palace, and his entering foes,
On every side inevitable woes;

In arms disused invests his limbs, decayed
Like them with age, a late and useless aid.
His feeble shoulders scarce the weight sustain;
Loaded not armed, he creeps along with pain,
Despairing of success, ambitious to be slain.

Uncovered but by heaven, there stood in view
An altar; near the hearth a laurel grew,
Doddered with age, whose boughs encompass round
The household gods, and shade the holy ground.
Here Hecuba, with all her helpless train

Of dames, for shelter sought, but sought in vain.
Driven like a flock of doves along the sky,

Their images they hug, and to the altar fly.

The queen, when she beheld her trembling lord,

And hanging by his side a heavy sword,

"What rage," she cried, "has seized my husband's mind?

What arms are these? and to what use designed?

These times want other aids were Hector here,

Ev'n Hector now in vain like Priam would appear.
With us one common shelter shalt thou find
Or in one common fate with us be joined."
She said, and with a last salute embraced
The poor old man, and by the laurel placed.

1 Vol. ii. pp. 134-136.

PITT

And now, great queen, you haply long to know
The fate of Priam in this general woe.
When with sad eyes the venerable sire
Beheld his Ilion sunk in hostile fire;
His palace stormed, the lofty gates laid low,
His rich pavilions crowded with the foe:
In arms long since disused the hoary sage
Loads each stiff languid limb that shook with age;
Girds on an unperforming sword in vain,
And runs on death amid the hostile train.
Within the courts, beneath the naked sky
An altar rose: an aged laurel by :

That o'er the hearth and household gods displayed
A solemn gloom, a deep majestic shade :
Hither like doves that close embodied fly
From some dark tempest blackening in the sky,
The queen for refuge with her daughters ran,
Clung, and embraced their images in vain.
But when in cumbrous arms the king she spied,

"Alas! my poor unhappy lord!" she cried,
"What more than madness, midst these dire alarms,
Moved thee to load thy helpless age with arms?
No aid like these this dreadful hour demands,
But asks far other strength, far other hands.
No! could my own dear Hector arm again,
My own dear Hector now would arm in vain.
Come to these altars, here we all shall have
One common refuge or one common grave."
This said, her aged lord the queen embraced,

And on the sacred seat the monarch placed.

If these versions be compared with those of Surrey and Phaer, it will be found that the older translators adhere strictly to Ben Jonson's principle of literal exactness, while Dryden and Pitt adopt the method of paraphrase. Both the latter expand freely the sense of their original, but Dryden has much more of Virgil's simplicity. Virgil compresses his narrative into twenty lines: Dryden takes twenty-seven to express Virgil's meaning, and the ampler space is occupied with ideas added to those of his author. Thus Virgil writes simply of Priam, "densos fertur moriturus in hostes." Dryden expands this with ideas suggested by Virgil's general description of the old king:

Loaded not armed, he creeps along with pain,
Despairing of success, ambitious to be slain.

In the same way he translates Virgil's “veterrima laurus": a laurel grew

Doddered with age;

meaning that the laurel was so old that it was overrun with creepers. Pitt's rendering, on the contrary, which actually runs to thirty lines, is swelled by the mere addition of words. Wishing to give his verse a stately effect, he speaks of the "sad eyes" of the "venerable sire"; of his "rich pavilions"; of "the hoary sage"; of the laurel that

displayed

A solemn gloom, a deep majestic shade :

although no equivalent for these phrases is to be found in the Latin text; and he thinks it a good stroke to render Virgil's simple "non si ipse meus nunc afforet Hector," by

No, could my own dear Hector arm again,
My own dear Hector now would arm in vain.

Pitt's English version of Vida's Ars Poetica is a much more valuable work. Vida was a contemporary of Ariosto, and one of the most enthusiastic pioneers of the Classical Renaissance. His Latin poems well deserve translation on account of the beauty and grace of their style; but they are also interesting, as showing how blinded the Italians of the time were to everything in the Revival of Learning beyond the excellence of Greek and Roman civilisation. He can see nothing in the overthrow of the Roman Empire by the barbarians but the destruction of ancient art; nothing of any worth in the life of the medieval Italian cities before the days of the Medici. Pitt's rendering of his ideas is excellent :

Hence a vast change of their old manners sprung ;
The slaves were forced to speak their master's tongue;
No honours now were paid the sacred Muse,

But all were bent on mercenary views ;