PREFACE.

If one novelty more than another may fairly be required to show cause for its existence, it is an addition to the already formidable heap of translations from Horace.

Dining in hall, about twenty years ago, at Trinity College, Cambridge, I had the pleasure of sitting next to a fellow of the college, reputed to be one of the best classics in the University, who, in the course of conversation, mentioned that he had just received a copy of a new translation of the Odes, but that he had not yet cut the leaves, and rather shrank from doing so, because he knew that really to translate Horace was impossible. Few people are insensible to the charm lurking in the word impossible, and most will therefore readily understand how it was that, as soon as I got home, I took down Horace from its shelf, and set to work upon 'Beatus ille.' The result I showed to that accomplished scholar and fastidious critic, the late Mr. Herman Merivale, who, though never

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very lavish of praise, spoke benignly enough of my first attempt to encourage me to repeat it: so, before very long I had done into English' a dozen or so of the finest Odes. Then, having for a while satisfied the sentiment, and failing to discover a Magazine-Editor good-natured enough to print any of my versions, I laid them all by, and scarcely looked at them again until last spring, when, being confined to the house for a fortnight by indisposition which disabled me from severer labour, I again betook myself to Horace, and occupied myself with him, until the dozen of Englished Odes had grown into a score. By that time, what had at first been somewhat of a task had become a pleasant pastime, and after that a day seldom passed without my translating a few lines, until at last all the Odes were finished, and also as many of the Epodes—some of which would be unpresentable in a closely-fitting English dress-as I myself greatly care for.

To describe, however, how this little volume came into being may scarcely suffice: something also must be said in excuse of its publication. Now, however great the merit of several preceding translators-and no one can appreciate more highly than I do the labours of Mr. Theodore Martin, Mr. Conington, and the late Lord Lytton-they one and all seem to me to have left much to be desired in regard to fidelity, and it is on the extent to which I may have supplied their deficiencies in that particular that I would venture to rest my claim to notice. As my title-page intimates, I have aimed at rendering the

original text 'word for word,' and though I am far from imagining that I have always succeeded, I do not much hesitate to ask the reader to judge for himself—as with both Latin and English side by side before him he readily may —whether I have not succeeded pretty nearly as often as I have failed, and whether any of my failures are altogether decisive. In two cases-those of Odes 22 of Book I and 27 of Book III-where peculiarly intractable measures have been adopted, I have, I fear, somewhat palpably interpolated; but in general, irrespectively of course of expletives and auxiliaries, almost every Latin word will, I think, be found to have its English, and almost every English word its Latin equivalent on the opposite page.

But in order to be completely satisfactory, a translation of Horace should reproduce Horace's metres as well as his language, and this is a point to which I did not at first sufficiently advert. Moreover, when I did attend to it, I found myself confronted by difficulties for the most part absolutely insuperable. The metres oftenest employed by Horace are the Alcaic and the Sapphic, but although, as Mr. Tennyson has proved by experiment, pure and melodious Alcaics may be constructed with English materials, yet even the genius of a Tennyson might have been at fault if, instead of being unfettered in his choice of subject, and instead of having the whole vocabulary of our language at his disposal, he had been rigorously restricted to the English synonymes of the few words actually employed by Horace, and required therewith to express Horace's

meaning in Alcaic verse. At any rate, in my own single experiment of the kind, I could not satisfy myself with more than the first quatrain, and gave up the thing in despair in the middle of the second. Sapphics are a good deal more manageable, and in several cases I have rendered those of Horace into verses of a structure not, I think, differing more from his than his do from those of his own Greek models, nor ever, I hope, ceasing to be strictly rhythmical even when least conforming to ancient orthodox rhythm. But of the remaining Horatian metres, seventeen in number, I question whether there is one reproducible in English without a fatal sacrifice of music, and the most that I have attempted in regard either to these or to the Alcaics is to use lines of the same or nearly the same length as those of which they are composed. In some cases I have allowed myself still more license, though I have always, I hope, been sufficiently heedful that the form of verse adopted should accord with the spirit of the original. In two instances, those of Odes 4 and 14 of the fourth Book, I have tried the terza rima of the Italian poets.

When in doubt as to either the right reading or the right interpretation, I have generally been guided by Mr. Macleane, to whose truly admirable edition of Horace I cannot too gratefully acknowledge my obligations, and whom I must also beg to pardon the freedom with which I have pillaged his materials when compiling my own brief explanatory notes.