Chapter X: Part 10

[Footnote 14: When Tydeus had received his death-wound from a javelin hurled by Menalippus, he gathered up his failing strength, and flung a dart by which he mortally wounded Menalippus in turn. Full of revengeful spite Tydeus begged that the head of Menalippus might be brought to him. He grasped it with his dying hand, gazed at it with malignant joy, gnawed it in his frenzy, and refused to relinquish his hold. This was "the rage of Tydeus," which Statius says the Greeks themselves condemned as exceeding the recognised latitude of hate.]

[Footnote 15: The prophet was Amphiaraus, who predicted that all who took part in the expedition, except Adrastus, would be destroyed. The earth opened while Amphiaraus was fighting, and swallowed up him and his chariot. Statius paints him sinking calmly into the yawning gulf, without dropping his weapons or the reins, and with his eyes fixed on the heavens.]

[Footnote 16: Hippomedon is made by Statius the hero of the conflict in the river Ismenus, where he at last succumbs to the god of the river. The piles of dead formed a dike, which turned back the waters.]

[Footnote 17: Parthenopaeus.--POPE.]

[Footnote 18: He declared that Jupiter himself should not keep him from ascending the walls of Thebes. Jupiter punished his defiance by setting him on fire with lightning on the scaling ladder, and he was burnt to death.]

[Footnote 19: Oedipus did not strike his wounds. He struck the ground, which was the usage in invoking the infernal deities, since their kingdom was in the bowels of the earth.]

[Footnote 20: One of the three principal furies or avengers of crime, who inhabited the world of condemned spirits.]

[Footnote 21: The great difference between raising horror and terror is perceived and felt from the reserved manner in which Sophocles speaks of the dreadful incest of Oedipus, and from the manner in which Statius has enlarged and dwelt upon it, in which he has been very unnaturally and injudiciously imitated by Dryden and Lee, who introduce this most unfortunate prince not only describing but arguing on the dreadful crime he had committed.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 22: Laius, king of Thebes, warned by the oracle that he would be killed by his own offspring, exposed his son Oedipus on Mount Cithaeron. The infant was found by a shepherd, and carried to Polybus, king of Corinth, who adopted him. Arrived at man's estate, he too was informed by the oracle that he would take the life of his father, and commit incest with his mother. Believing that the king and queen who brought him up were his parents, he determined not to go back to Corinth, and in attempting to avert his destiny, he fulfilled it. As he journeyed towards Thebes he met his real father, Laius, and slew him in a conflict which grew out of a dispute with his charioteer.]

[Footnote 23: Or the temple at Delphi, where Oedipus went to consult the oracle.]

[Footnote 24: The Sphinx sat upon a rock near Thebes propounding a riddle to every one who passed by, and destroying all who were unable to explain it. The Thebans proclaimed that whoever would rid the kingdom of this scourge should marry the widow of Laius, and succeed to the vacant throne. Oedipus, by solving the riddle, drove the Sphinx to commit suicide, and in accepting the reward, he unconsciously verified the remainder of the oracle.]

[Footnote 25: Oedipus behaves with the fury of a blustering bully, instead of that patient submission and pathetic remorse which are so suited to his condition.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 26: In the first edition he had written

Which shall o'er long posterity prevail.

The more forcible phrase which he substituted for "long posterity," was from Dryden's Virg. AEn. iii. 132:

And children's children shall the crown sustain.]

[Footnote 27: This couplet follows closely the translation of Stephens:

Put on that diadem besmeared with gore
Which from my father's head these fingers tore.]

[Footnote 28: Dryden's Virg. AEn. iii. 78:

Broke ev'ry bond of nature and of truth]

[Footnote 29: Pope uses "preventing" in the then common but now obsolete sense of "anticipating."]

[Footnote 30: A river in the lower world.]

[Footnote 31: Great is the force and the spirit of these lines down to verse 183; and indeed they are a surprising effort in a writer so young as when he translated them. See particularly lines 150 to 160.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 32: The entrance to the infernal regions was said to be through a cave in the Taenarian promontory, which formed the southern extremity of Greece.]

[Footnote 33: Pope has judiciously tamed the bombast image "caligantes animarum examine campos," "the plains darkened with a swarm of ghosts." "Lucentes equos," he translates, "fair glories," omitting the image entirely. To mount Atlas he has added an idea which makes the passage more ridiculous than sublime. It is poorly expressed in the original; in the translation it is ludicrous; "and shook the heavens _and gods he bore_." There are many images which if indistinctly seen are sublime; if particularised they become quite the contrary. However, the translation is certainly wonderful, when the age of the author is considered. It shows his powers of metrical language, at so early a period of his poetical studies, though it is very unfaithful in particular passages.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 34: Pope's acquaintance with Latin prosody, from his confined education, was probably very small, or he would not have used Mal[=e]a, instead of Mal[)e]a, with the line of Statius before him.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 35: "Well-known," because the Fury had before visited the Theban palace to instigate the crimes and passions of which it had been the scene. The haste with which she goes, and her preference for the terrestrial journey, even over the haunts of her own Tartarus, indicate the signal malevolence of the mission. Hence the delight she takes in it.]

[Footnote 36: The original is more forcible and less extravagant. The sunken eyes of the Fury glared with a light like that of red-hot iron--_ferrea lux_.]

[Footnote 37: This expression, which is not in Statius, is common with Dryden, as in his Virg. AEn. x. 582:

And from Strymonius hewed his better hand.]

[Footnote 38: Statius depicts the frenzied virulence of the Fury, by saying that she lashed the air with the serpent. Pope has marred the description by representing the lashing of the air as the act of the serpent itself.]

[Footnote 39: After Ino had drowned herself and her son Melicertes, they became marine divinities, and their names were changed to Leucothea and Palaemon. Statius is more picturesque than Pope. When the apparition of the Fury announced terrible evils to come, the sea was stirred to its depths. On the outburst of the tempest, Palaemon was sailing about on the back of a dolphin, and it was then that his mother snatched him up in her alarm, and pressed him to her bosom. To convey an idea of the tremendous nature of the storm, Statius says that the Corinthian isthmus could hardly resist the violence of the waves which dashed against each of its shores. This circumstance is justly styled by Pope "most extravagantly hyperbolical," but a translator should not have omitted it.]

[Footnote 40: A great image, and highly improved from the original, "assueta nube."--WARTON.

The first edition had a feeble prosaic line in place of the image which Warton admired:

Headlong from thence the fury urged her flight,
And at the Theban palace did alight.]

[Footnote 41: "Ruptaeque vices" in the original, which Pope translates, "and all the ties of nature broke," but by _vices_ is indicated the alternate reign of the two brothers, as ratified by mutual oaths, and subsequently violated by Eteocles.--DE QUINCEY.]

[Footnote 42: The felicities of this translation are at times perfectly astonishing, and it would be scarcely possible to express more nervously or amply the words,--

jurisque secundi
Ambitus impatiens, et summo dulcius unum
Stare loco,--

than by Pope's couplet, which most judiciously, by reversing the two clauses, gains the power of fusing them into connection.--DE QUINCEY.]

[Footnote 43: "Bound" is an improper verb as applied to "steers"; besides the simile is not exactly understood. There is nothing about "reins" or "bounding" in the original. What is meant is that the steers do not draw even. Pope confounded the image of the young bullocks with that of a horse, and he therefore introduces "reins" and "bounding."--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 44: For "armour wait," the first edition had "arms did wait."]

[Footnote 45: "Charger" is used in its old sense of a dish.]

[Footnote 46: Statius, to point the folly of the criminal ambition, goes on to represent, that the contest was only for naked unadorned dominion in a poverty-stricken kingdom,--a battle for which should cultivate the barren territory on the banks of a petty stream,--and for this empty privilege the brothers sacrificed everything which was of good report in life or death. Pope weakened the moral of Statius, and the lines which follow to the end of the paragraph are also very inferior in force to the original.]

[Footnote 47: In the first edition,

Not all those realms could for such crimes suffice.

Pope might have done more to improve this prosaic couplet.]

[Footnote 48: Pope borrowed from the translation of Stephens:

How wast thou lost
In thine own joys, proud tyrant then, when all
About thee were thy slaves.]

[Footnote 49: It should be "discontented."--WARTON.]

[Footnote 50: This couplet was interpolated by Pope and seems to have been suggested by his hostility to the revolution of 1688. Nor does Statius call the populace "vile," or say that they are always "discontented," or that they are "still prone to change, though still the slaves of state." Neither does he say that they "are sure to hate the monarch, they have," but he says that their custom is to love his successor, which is a sentiment more in accordance with experience.]

[Footnote 51: "Exiled" because the king who was not reigning had to leave the country during his brother's year of power.]

[Footnote 52: The warriors who were the produce of the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus fought among themselves till only five were left.]

[Footnote 53: "Unrivalled," as the context shows, is not here a term of commendation, but merely signifies that the monarch had no equal in rank or power.]

[Footnote 54: "Placido quatiens tamen omnia vultu," is the common reading. I believe it should be "nutu," with reference to the word "quatiens."--POPE.]

[Footnote 55: Pope was manifestly unable to extract any sense from the original. It is there said that Jupiter at his first entrance seats himself upon his starry throne, but that the other gods did not presume to sit down "protinus," that is, in immediate succession to Jupiter, and interpreting his example as a tacit license to do so, until, by a gentle wave of his hand, the supreme father signifies his express permission to take their seats. In Pope's translation, the whole picturesque solemnity of the celestial ritual melts into the vaguest generalities.--DE QUINCEY.

De Quincey was mistaken in his inference that Pope was unable to understand the passage, for he had the assistance of the translation of Stephens, which gives the meaning correctly:

Anon
He sets him down on his bespangled throne.
The rest stand and expect: not one presumed
To sit till leave was beckoned.]

[Footnote 56: The winds would have been inconvenient members of a deliberative assembly if they had taken to howling, whistling, and sighing. Nevertheless their propensity to blow was so inveterate that, in Statius, they are only kept quiet by their fear of Jove.]

[Footnote 57: Our author is perpetually grasping at the wonderful and the vast, but most frequently falls gradually from the terrible to the contemptible.--WARTON.

By "our author" Warton meant Statius, and the expression, he criticised as hyberbolical was the "eluded rage of Jove,"--an exaggeration for which Pope alone was responsible.]

[Footnote 58: Hiera, one of the AEolian islands in the neighbourhood of Sicily, was supposed to be the workshop of Vulcan. The island was volcanic, and the underground noises were ascribed to Vulcan, and his assistants, the Cyclopes, as they plied their trade. The circumstance that the fires of the AEolian forge were exhausted was doubtless introduced by Statius because in his day the eruptions had ceased in Hiera.]

[Footnote 59: Agave, the daughter of Cadmus. Her son Pentheus appeared among the women who were celebrating the Bacchic revelries on Mount Cithaeron, and his mother, mistaking him in her frenzy for a wild beast, like a wild beast tore him to pieces.]

[Footnote 60: There is no mention of "the direful banquet" in the original. "The savage hunter" alludes to Athamas chasing and slaying his son under the delusion that he was a lion.]

[Footnote 61: The king of Argos.]

[Footnote 62: Tantalus, king of Argos, invited the gods to a banquet, and served up the boiled flesh of his own son, Pelops.]

[Footnote 63: Phoroneus was commonly reputed to have been the founder of the city of Argos.]

[Footnote 64: Juno employed Argus to keep guard over Io, transformed by Jupiter into a cow. Mercury, being sent by Jupiter to rescue Io, lulled Argus to sleep by melodious airs on the flute, and then cut off his head.]

[Footnote 65: An oracle announced to Acrisius, king of Argos, that he would die by the hands of his grandson. The king endeavoured to escape his fate by imprisoning his daughter, Danae, in a brazen tower, but Jupiter obtained access to her in the shape of a shower of gold, and she became the mother of Perseus, who fulfilled the prediction, according to the established legendary usage.]

[Footnote 66: The force of this taunt is weakened in Pope's translation by the change from the second person to the third, as though the invectives of Juno had not been addressed to Jupiter himself.]

[Footnote 67: Jupiter visited Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, in all the majesty of the thunderer, and she was consumed by the lightning.]

[Footnote 68: Homer makes Juno say that there are three cities pre-eminently dear to her--Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae. Samos had no less title to the distinction. It was one of the localities which contended for the renown of having given her birth, and was, with Argos, the principal seat of her worship. Virgil ranks Samos second among the places she delighted to honour.]

[Footnote 69: The river Alpheus, which takes its rise in Arcadia, loses itself underground in parts of its course, and again reappears. This suggested the fiction that it ran in a subterranean channel, below the bottom of the sea, to the fountain of Arethusa in Sicily, where it once more emerged to day. Pope had less regard to the text of Statius than to Dryden's translation of Virgil's lines on the same legend in Ecl. x. 5:

So may thy silver streams beneath the tide,
Unmixed with briny seas, securely glide.]

[Footnote 70: The Arcadians celebrated the worship of Jupiter with human sacrifices.]

[Footnote 71: He was king of Pisa in Elis, where was the celebrated Olympia, with its temple of Jupiter. Oenomaus had ascertained from an oracle that he would perish by the agency of his son-in-law, and he was anxious, in self-defence, to keep his daughter, Hippodamia, from marrying. As he possessed the swiftest horses in the world he required her suitors to contend with him in a chariot-race, which allowed them no chance of success. The prize of victory was to be his daughter; the penalty of defeat was death, and the bones which laid unburied in the neighbourhood of Jupiter's temple were those of the lovers of Hippodamia.]

[Footnote 72: The Cretans claimed to possess both the birth-place and burial-place of Jupiter.]

[Footnote 73: "Derived from Jove," inasmuch as Perseus, one of the kings of Argos, was the son of Jupiter and Danae.]

[Footnote 74: Eteocles and Polynices.--POPE.]

[Footnote 75: Mercury, so called because he was born upon Mount Cyllene.]

[Footnote 76: Eteocles.]

[Footnote 77: Stephens's translation:

This were such a day
He'd spend an age to see 't.]

[Footnote 78: To Argos, of which Danaus had been king, whence the Argives were also called Danai.]

[Footnote 79: Atreus, king of Mycenae, murdered the two sons of his brother Thyestes, and feasted their father with dishes made of their flesh.]

[Footnote 80: Bacchus forced the Theban women to assemble, and give loose to the wild rites by which he was celebrated. It was on this occasion that Pentheus was massacred by his mother.]

[Footnote 81: Nisus was king of Megara when it was besieged by Minos. The king's daughter, Scylla, conceived a passion for Minos, and to ensure him the victory she plucked from her father's head a purple hair upon which depended the preservation of himself and the city.]

[Footnote 82: Statius says that when Polynices was in the middle of the isthmus of Corinth he could hear the waves beat against both its shores. "This," remarked Pope, "could hardly be; for the isthmus of Corinth is full five miles over," and he calls the introduction of the circumstance "a geographical error." It was his own geography that was at fault. The width of the isthmus is only three miles and a half. Pope spoilt the incident when he transferred it to the Scironian rock. Sciron was a robber and murderer, who compelled his victims to wash his feet upon the cliff, and while they were engaged in the operation he kicked them over into the sea.]

[Footnote 83: "We have scarcely in our language eight more beautiful lines than these, down to human care," ver. 481.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 84: Pope owed some happy expressions to the translation of Stephens:

The silent world does view
Her airy chariot pearled with drops of dew.]

[Footnote 85: He again borrowed from Stephens:

And nodding through the air brings down in haste
A sweet forgetfulness of labour passed.]

[Footnote 86: A very faulty expression; as also below, verse 501,--"rolls a deluge on."--WARTON.

He copied Dryden's Virg. AEn. iv. 638:

As when the winds their airy quarrel try.

He was indebted to a second couplet in the same translation, AEn. ii. 565:

Thus, when the rival winds their quarrel try,
Contending for the kingdom of the sky.]

[Footnote 87: "Showers" is an inappropriate word to denote the deluge of rain which flooded the earth, and "swept herds, and hinds, and houses to the main."]

[Footnote 88: The Inachus, and the Erasinus were rivers in the plain of Argos.]

[Footnote 89: The waters of the Lerna were infected by the venom from the serpent Hydra, which Hercules slew.]

[Footnote 90: The storm, by blowing down trees or branches, made an opening in the dense foliage through which the sun had never penetrated.]

[Footnote 91: In the first edition:

The prince with wonder did the waste behold,
While from torn rocks the massy fragments rolled.]

[Footnote 92: Dryden's Virg. AEn. ii. 413:

The shepherd climbs the cliff, and sees from far
The wasteful ravage of the wat'ry war.]

[Footnote 93: Dryden's Virg. Geor. i. 652:

Bore houses, herds, and lab'ring hinds away.]

[Footnote 94: Statius represents Polynices as terrified by the tempest. Pope appears to have thought that this was derogatory to the character of the fugitive king, and he calls him, when gazing on the ravages caused by the storm, "the intrepid Theban," which conveys the impression that he was undaunted by the spectacle. In the same spirit Pope at ver. 527, has the line, "Thus still his _courage_ with his toils increased," where the original says that the stimulus which urged him on was fear. But while Pope has obliterated the alarm which was generated by the tempest he has introduced in its place an alarm which had no existence. In the midst of the havoc worked by the elements the recollection of his brother "wings the feet" of the intrepid Theban "with fears," though he is beyond his brother's reach, and has no suspicion at present that he designs to break the compact to reign alternately. The influence which the remembrance of Eteocles exercised over the mind of the wanderer is expressly distinguished by Statius from the fear, and means no more than that since Polynices was an exile from Thebes, he was compelled to proceed onwards till he could find an asylum in another state.]

[Footnote 95: A mountain on which stood the citadel of Argos.]

[Footnote 96: The temple at Prosymna was dedicated to Juno.]

[Footnote 97: Pope took the expression from Dryden, Virg. AEn. vii. 79:

One only daughter heired the royal state.

And ver. 367:

Only one daughter heirs my crown and state.]

[Footnote 98: Strictly his sons-in-law.]

[Footnote 99: That is, he ordained that the oracles should be incapable of interpretation before it was fulfilled.]

[Footnote 100: Calydon, of which his father Oeneus was king.]

[Footnote 101: The mode in which the two fugitives became known to the king and gained admission to the palace, is not told by Pope, who has left upwards of seventy lines untranslated, and by the mutilation rendered the incidents improbable. Polynices reaches the palace first and lies down, worn out, on the pavement of the vestibule. Tydeus arrives at the same spot, and Polynices is unwilling that he should share the shelter. A quarrel ensues, and from words they proceed to blows. The king is disturbed by the uproar; he issues forth from the palace with attendants and torches to ascertain the cause; explanations follow, and these result in Tydeus and Polynices becoming the guests of Adrastus. "There is an odd account," Pope says to Cromwell, "of an unmannerly battle at fisty-cuffs between the two Princes on a very slight occasion, and at a time when, one would think, the fatigue of their journey, in so tempestuous a night, might have rendered them very unfit for such a scuffle. This I had actually translated, but was very ill satisfied with it, even in my own words, to which an author cannot but be partial enough of conscience."]

[Footnote 102: Before the victory of Hercules over the Nemean lion, he is said by Statius to have worn the skin of a lion which he slew in the neighbourhood of Mount Temessus.]

[Footnote 103: "Horror" at the thought of the dreadful forebodings which had been suggested by the literal language of the oracle; "glad" because of the manner in which the prediction was verified. Jortin, in a note on another passage of the Thebais, says, "Statius could not help falling into his beloved fault of joining contraries together. He is too apt to seek this opposition in his words. He never indeed misses this favourite figure when he can bring it in."]

[Footnote 104: "Firm" for confirm was sanctioned by the frequent example of Dryden, from whose translation of Virg. AEn. viii. 107, Pope has borrowed the entire couplet:

But oh! be present to thy people's aid,
And firm the gracious promise thou hast made.]

[Footnote 105: In the first edition this verse was an Alexandrine, ending with "and wake the sleeping fires," which Pope took from Dryden, Virg. AEn. viii, 720:

And on his altars waked the sleeping fires.]

[Footnote 106: "Fry" was the reading of all the editions till that of 1736, when "fly" was substituted by an evident error of the press, and has been retained ever since.]

[Footnote 107: "Tutress" in the first edition. Acestis had been the nurse, and was now the duenna of the two daughters of Adrastus.]

[Footnote 108: The gorgon, Medusa, changed every one who saw her to stone. Perseus avoided the penalty by only looking at her reflection in a mirror as he cut off her head while she slept. Being the grandson of a king of Argos he was an Argive hero, whence his triumph was engraved upon the royal goblet. The artist had selected the moment when Perseus is darting into the air with the head of the gorgon, which, newly separated from the body, still retained the traces of expiring life.]

[Footnote 109: On account of the beauty of Ganymede, Jove sent an eagle to convey him from the earth to the habitations of the gods. There he was appointed cup-bearer, which rendered the incident appropriate to a drinking-vessel.]

[Footnote 110: He has omitted some forcible expressions of the original: Septem--atris--terentem--nigro--centum per jugera,--all of them picturesque epithets.--WARTON.

Statius says, that the huge serpent while alive encircled Delphi seven times with its dark coils, and that when dead and barely unrolled, its body spread over a hundred acres.]

[Footnote 111: The water was not itself poisonous, but it turned to venom in the serpent.]

[Footnote 112: Stephens is more literal, and at the same time more poetical:

earth prepares thy room
Garnished with flow'ry beds, and thatched above
With oaken leaves close woven; whilst the grove
Lends bark to make thy garments.]

[Footnote 113: Much superior to the original.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 114: Sandy's translation of Ovid's Met. bk. vi.

And calls the furies from the depth of hell.]

[Footnote 115: Pope copied Stephens:

devouring some
With rav'nous jaws before their parents' eyes,
And fats herself with public miseries.]

[Footnote 116: Inachus, according to one tradition, built the city of Argos. After his descendants had reigned for some generations, the throne was seized by Danaus.]

[Footnote 117: Death cutting off the fatal thread with a scythe, is not a very sublime or congruous image. Pope has blended modern ideas with classical: in the original it is "ense metit;"--"_mows_ with his _sword_." Pope has introduced a "_scythe_," to preserve more accurately the metaphor, but it has a bad effect.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 118: Choroebus.]

[Footnote 119: Statius states that Choroebus withdrew, having obtained his end, and says nothing of his being "unwilling," by which Pope seems to mean that he was unwilling to accept his life. This deviation from the original destroys the generous heroism of Choroebus, for if he was weary of his existence there was no merit in his braving death. Statius, indeed, had previously said that Apollo granted Choroebus the "sad boon of life" out of admiration for his magnanimity; but this phrase only signifies that life is sorrowful, and not that Choroebus would have preferred to die.]

[Footnote 120: Some of the most finished lines he has ever written, down to verse 854.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 121: Apollo was specially worshipped by the Lycians.]

[Footnote 122: The celebrated fountain sacred to Apollo on Parnassus.]

[Footnote 123: Apollo was surnamed the Cynthian, from Mount Cynthus in the island of Delos, which was the place of his birth, and the most revered of all the localities set apart for his worship. The island, which had previously floated over the ocean, was, according to one version of the legend, rendered stationary by Jupiter when Apollo was born; according to another version, it was subsequently fixed by Apollo himself.]

[Footnote 124: The walls of Troy were the work of Apollo and Neptune.]

[Footnote 125: In the first edition it was

Thou dost the seeds of future wars foreknow.]

[Footnote 126: The Phrygian was Marsyas, who contended on the flute against Apollo with his lyre. When the umpires decided in favour of the god, he flayed Marsyas for his presumption.]

[Footnote 127: Tityus assaulted the mother of Apollo, and her son shot the offender.]

[Footnote 128: Niobe, because she had seven sons and seven daughters, thought herself superior to Latona, who had only one son, and one daughter,--Apollo and Diana. These divinities, in revenge, destroyed the fourteen children of Niobe.]

[Footnote 129: In the first edition:

He views his food, would taste, yet dares not try,
But dreads the mould'ring rock that trembles from on high.

Apollo intrigued with Coronis, the daughter of Phlegyas. Her enraged father retaliated by firing the temple of Apollo, and was consigned for his rebellion to perpetual torture in the infernal regions. His terror lest the impending rock should crush him is a circumstance interpolated by Pope from Virgil's description of the punishment of Pirithous and Ixion, and the expression "mould'ring rock" is taken from Dryden's translation of the passage, AEn. vi. 816:

High o'er their heads a mould'ring rock is placed
That promises a fall, and shakes at ev'ry blast.

The revolting nature of the food itself is the reason assigned by Statius why Phlegyas forebore to partake of it, and preferred to endure the pangs of hunger.]

[Footnote 130: After Apollo, in the later mythology, had been identified with the sun, all the names personifying the sun, of which Titan was one, became applicable to Apollo.]

[Footnote 131: Diodorus maintained that the Osiris of the Egyptians was their god of the sun, and Statius has adopted this erroneous view. According to the statement of Herodotus, Osiris answered to the Grecian Bacchus, and there is little doubt that the old historian was right.]

[Footnote 132: Mithras was the Persian god of the sun. He was worshipped in caves, or, as Pope has it, in "hollow rocks," because the spherical form of the cave symbolised the universe, of which Mithras was the maker. The "blaze of light which adorns his head" in Pope's version, makes no part of the description in the original. The final line is explained by several ancient works of art, in which a man, wearing a Phrygian cap, is depicted cutting the throat of a bull he has flung to the ground. The man is said by an old scholiast on Statius to typify the sun, the bull the moon, and the intention, he states, is to represent the superiority of the sun over the moon. Statius speaks of the bull as indignant at being compelled to follow Mithras,--an idea which suits ill with the tranquil aspect of the moon as it floats through the heavens.]

TRANSLATIONS

FROM

OVID.

Great is the change in passing from Statius to Ovid; from force to facility of style; from thoughts and images which are too much studied and unnatural to such as are obvious, careless, and familiar. Ovid seems to have had the merit of inventing this beautiful species of writing epistles under feigned names. It is a high improvement on the Greek elegy, to which its dramatic form renders it much superior. The judgment of the writer must chiefly appear by opening the complaint of the person introduced, just at such a period of time, as will give occasion for the most tender sentiments, and the most sudden, and violent turns of passion to be displayed. Ovid may perhaps be blamed for a sameness of subjects in these epistles of his heroines; and his epistles are likewise too long, which circumstance has forced him into a repetition and languor in the sentiments. On the whole the epistle before us is translated by Pope with faithfulness and with elegance, and much excels any Dryden translated in the volume he published, several of which were done by some "of the mob of gentlemen that wrote with ease,"--that is, Sir C. Scrope, Caryll, Pooly, Wright, Tate, Buckingham, Cooper, and other careless rhymers. Lord Somers translated Dido to AEneas, and Ariadne to Theseus. Though I regret the hours our poet spent in translating Ovid and Statius, yet it has given us an opportunity of admiring his good sense and judgment, in not suffering his taste and style, in his succeeding works, to be infected with the faults of these two writers.--WARTON.

Warton says, "The judgment of the writer must chiefly appear by opening the complaint of the person introduced at such a period of time as will give occasion for the most tender sentiments." How beautifully is this displayed in Pope's Epistle to Abelard, a poem that has another most interesting circumstance, which Ovid appears, as well as our Drayton, to have neglected,--I mean the introduction of appropriate and descriptive imagery, which relieves and recreates the fancy by the pictures, and by the landscapes which accompany the characters. Ovid, in this Epistle, seems not insensible to the effect of the introduction of such scenes; and the Leucadian rock, the _antra nemusque_, the aquatic lotus, the sacred pellucid fountain, and particularly the genius of the place, the Naiad, addressing the despairing Sappho (which circumstance Pope has beautifully imitated and improved in Eloisa), are in the genuine spirit of poetical taste. Dr. Warton observes that this translation is superior to any of Dryden's. If, indeed, we compare Pope's translations with those of any other writer, their superiority must be strikingly apparent. There is a finish in them, a correctness, a natural flow, and a tone of originality, added to a wonderful propriety and beauty of expression and language. If he ever fails, it is where he generalises too much. This is particularly objectionable, where in the original there is any marked, distinct, and beautiful picture. So, ver. 253, Pope only says,

Cupid for thee shall spread the swelling sail;

whereas in Ovid, Cupid appears before us in the very act of guiding the vessel, seated as the pilot, and with his _tender_ hand (_tenera manu_) contracting, or letting flow the sail. I need not point out another beauty in the original,--the repetition of the word _Ipse_.--BOWLES.

Richardson has appended this note to the Epistle of Sappho to Phaon in his copy of the quarto of 1717: "Corrected by the first copy, written out elegantly (as all his MSS.) to show friends, with their remarks in the margin; the present reading for the most part the effect of them." The remarks in the margin are mere exclamations, such as "pulchre," "bene," "optime," "recte," "bella paraphrasis," "longe praestas Scrope meo judicio," "minus placet," &c. They are doubtless from the pen of Cromwell, since it appeals from Pope's letter to him on June 10, 1709, that he had jotted down the same phrases on the margin of the translation of Statius. Bowles having quoted the observation of Warton, "that he had seen compositions of youths of sixteen years old far beyond the Pastorals in point of genius and imagination," adds, "I fear not to assert that he never could have seen any compositions of boys of that age so perfect in versification, so copious, yet so nice in expression, so correct, so spirited, and so finished," as the translation of the Epistle of Sappho to Phaon. The remark was made by Bowles in the belief that the version was the production of the poet's fourteenth year. Pope himself records on his manuscript that it was "written first 1707." He was then nineteen, and when the Epistle was published in 1712, in Tonson's Ovid, he was twenty-four.

"Ovid," says Dryden, "often writ too pointedly for his subject, and made his persons speak more eloquently than the violence of their passions would admit." Passion is sometimes highly eloquent; feeling strongly it expresses itself forcibly, and Dryden meant that the characters in Ovid, by their numerous strokes of studied brilliancy, seemed to be carried away less by their emotions than by the ambition to shine. These glittering artifices were formerly called wit, and Dryden complains that Ovid "is frequently witty out of season," but they are not wit in our present sense of the word. Occasionally they are the far-fetched or affected prettinesses which are properly called conceits; and more commonly they consist in terse antithesis, and a sparkle of words produced by the balanced repetition of a phrase. They are often as appropriate as they are showy, and if they are among the blemishes they are conspicuous among the beauties of Ovid. His writings are marked by opposite qualities. He is sometimes too artificial in his expression of the passions, and sometimes he is natural, glowing, and pathetic. He abounds in pointed sentences, and is not less distinguished for the easy, spontaneous flow of his language. He is at once prolix and concise, indulging in a single vein of thought till the monotony becomes tedious, and yet enunciating his ideas with sententious brevity. The condensation of the Latin in many places cannot be preserved in the diffuser idioms of our English tongue, but, if we overlook a few weak couplets, Pope has translated the Epistle of Sappho to Phaon with rare felicity, and notwithstanding the inevitable loss of some happy turns of expression, he has managed to retain both the passion and the poetry. Effusions of sentiment were better adapted to his genius than the heroic narrative of the Thebais; and his limpid measure, which neither resembled the numerous and robuster verse of Statius, nor was suited to an epic theme, accorded with the sweetness and uniformity of Ovid's verse, and with the outpourings of grief and tenderness which are the staple of these epistolary strains. There is no ground for the regret of Warton that Pope should have spent a little time in translating portions of Ovid and Statius. It would be as reasonable to lament that he stooped to the preliminary discipline which made him a poet. He has related that he did not take to translation till he found himself unequal to original composition, and, like all who excel in any department, he learnt, by copying his predecessors, to rival them.

SAPPHO TO PHAON.[1]

Say, lovely youth,[2] that dost my heart command,
Can Phaon's eyes forget his Sappho's hand?
Must then her name the wretched writer prove,
To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love?
Ask not the cause that I new numbers choose, 5
The lute neglected, and the lyric muse;[3]
Love taught my tears in sadder notes to flow.
And tuned my heart to elegies of woe.
I burn, I burn, as when through ripened corn
By driving winds the spreading flames are borne![4] 10
Phaon to AEtna's scorching fields retires,
While I consume with more than AEtna's fires![5]
No more my soul a charm in music finds;
Music has charms alone for peaceful minds.[6]
Soft scenes of solitude no more can please, 15
Love enters there, and I'm my own disease.
No more the Lesbian dames my passion move,
Once the dear objects of my guilty love;
All other loves are lost in only thine,
Ah youth ungrateful to a flame like mine! 20
Whom would not all those blooming charms surprise,
Those heav'nly looks, and dear deluding eyes?
The harp and bow would you like Phoebus bear,
A brighter Phoebus Phaon might appear;
Would you with ivy wreathe your flowing hair, 25
Not Bacchus' self with Phaon could compare:
Yet Phoebus loved, and Bacchus felt the flame,
One Daphne warmed, and one the Cretan dame;[7]
Nymphs that in verse no more could rival me,
Than ev'n those gods contend in charms with thee.[8] 30
The muses teach me all their softest lays,
And the wide world resounds with Sappho's praise.
Though great Alcaeus more sublimely sings,
And strikes with bolder rage the sounding strings,
No less renown attends the moving lyre, 35
Which Venus tunes, and all her loves inspire;
To me what nature has in charms denied,
Is well by wit's more lasting flames supplied.
Though short my stature, yet my name extends
To heav'n itself, and earth's remotest ends. 40
Brown as I am, an Ethiopian dame[9]
Inspired young Perseus with a gen'rous flame;
Turtles and doves of diff'ring hues unite,
And glossy jet is paired with shining white.
If to no charms thou wilt thy heart resign, 45
But such as merit, such as equal thine,
By none, alas! by none thou can'st be moved,
Phaon alone by Phaon must be loved!
Yet once thy Sappho could thy cares employ,
Once in her arms you centered all your joy: 50
No time the dear remembrance can remove,
For oh! how vast a memory has love?[10]
My music, then, you could for ever hear,
And all my words were music to your ear.
You stopped with kisses my enchanting tongue, 55
And found my kisses sweeter than my song.[11]
In all I pleased, but most in what was best;
And the last joy was dearer than the rest.[12]
Then with each word, each glance, each motion fired,
You still enjoyed, and yet you still desired, 60
Till all dissolving in the trance we lay,
And in tumultuous raptures died away.
The fair Sicilians now thy soul inflame;
Why was I born, ye gods, a Lesbian dame?
But ah! beware, Sicilian nymphs! nor boast 65
That wand'ring heart which I so lately lost;
Nor be with all those tempting words abused,
Those tempting words were all to Sappho used.
And you that rule Sicilia's happy plains,
Have pity, Venus,[13] on your poet's pains! 70
Shall fortune still in one sad tenor run,
And still increase the woes so soon begun?
Inured to sorrow from my tender years,
My parent's ashes drank my early tears;
My brother next, neglecting wealth and fame, 75
Ignobly burned in a destructive flame:[14]
An infant daughter late my griefs increased,
And all a mother's cares distract my breast.[15]
Alas! what more could fate itself impose,
But thee, the last and greatest of my woes? 80
No more my robes in waving purple flow,
Nor on my hand the sparkling diamonds glow;
No more my locks in ringlets curled diffuse
The costly sweetness of Arabian dews,
Nor braids of gold the varied tresses bind, 85
That fly disordered with the wanton wind:
For whom should Sappho use such arts as these?
He's gone, whom only she desired to please!
Cupid's light darts my tender bosom move,
Still is there cause for Sappho still to love: 90
So from my birth the sisters fixed my doom,
And gave to Venus all my life to come;
Or, while my muse in melting notes complains,
My yielding heart keeps measure to my strains.
By charms like thine which all my soul have won, 95
Who might not--ah! who would not be undone?
For those Aurora Cephalus[16] might scorn,
And with fresh blushes paint the conscious morn.
For those might Cynthia lengthen Phaon's sleep,
And bid Endymion[17] nightly tend his sheep. 100
Venus for those had rapt thee to the skies,
But Mars on thee might look with Venus' eyes.
O scarce a youth, yet scarce a tender boy!
O useful time for lovers to employ!
Pride of thy age, and glory of thy race, 105
Come to these arms, and melt in this embrace!
The vows you never will return, receive;
And take at least the love you will not give.[18]
See, while I write, my words are lost in tears![19]
The less my sense, the more my love appears. 110
Sure 'twas not much to bid one kind adieu,
(At least to feign was never hard to you,)[20]
Farewell, my Lesbian love, you might have said;
Or coldly thus, "Farewell, O Lesbian maid!"
No tear did you, no parting kiss receive, 115
Nor knew I then how much I was to grieve.
No lover's gift your Sappho could confer,[21]
And wrongs and woes were all you left with her.
No charge I gave you, and no charge could give,
But this, "Be mindful of our loves, and live." 120
Now by the Nine, those pow'rs adored by me,
And Love, the god that ever waits on thee,
When first I heard (from whom I hardly knew)
That you were fled, and all my joys with you,
Like some sad statue[22], speechless, pale I stood, 125
Grief chilled my breast, and stopped my freezing blood;
No sigh to rise, no tear had pow'r to flow,
Fixed in a stupid lethargy of woe:
But when its way th' impetuous passion found,
I rend my tresses, and my breast I wound; 130
I rave, then weep; I curse, and then complain;
Now swell to rage, now melt in tears again.
Not fiercer pangs distract the mournful dame,
Whose first-born infant feeds the fun'ral flame.
My scornful brother with a smile appears, 135
Insults my woes, and triumphs in my tears;
His hated image ever haunts my eyes;
"And why this grief? thy daughter lives," he cries.
Stung with my love, and furious with despair,[23]
All torn my garments, and my bosom bare, 140
My woes, thy crimes, I to the world proclaim;
Such inconsistent things are love and shame!
'Tis thou art all my care and my delight,
My daily longing, and my dream by night:[24]
Oh night more pleasing than the brightest day, 145
When fancy gives what absence takes away,
And, dressed in all its visionary charms,
Restores my fair deserter to my arms!
Then round your neck in wanton wreaths I twine,
Then you, methinks, as fondly circle mine: 150
A thousand tender words I hear and speak;
A thousand melting kisses give, and take:[25]
Then fiercer joys, I blush to mention these,
Yet, while I blush, confess how much they please.
But when, with day, the sweet delusions fly, 155
And all things wake to life and joy, but I,
As if once more forsaken, I complain,
And close my eyes to dream of you again:[26]
Then frantic rise, and like some fury rove
Through lonely plains,[27] and through the silent grove, 160
As if the silent grove, and lonely plains,
That knew my pleasures, could relieve my pains.
I view the grotto, once the scene of love,
The rocks around, the hanging roofs above,
That charmed me more, with native moss o'ergrown, 165
Than Phrygian marble, or the Parian stone;
I find the shades that veiled our joys before;
But, Phaon gone, those shades delight no more.[28]
Here the pressed herbs with bending tops betray
Where oft entwined in am'rous folds we lay; 170
I kiss that earth which once was pressed by you,
And all with tears the with'ring herbs bedew.
For thee the fading trees appear to mourn,
And birds defer their songs till thy return:
Night shades the groves, and all in silence lie, 175
All but the mournful Philomel and I:
With mournful Philomel I join my strain,
Of Tereus she, of Phaon I complain.[29]
A spring there is, whose silver waters show,
Clear as a glass, the shining sands below: 180
A flow'ry lotos spreads its arms above,
Shades all the banks, and seems itself a grove;
Eternal greens the mossy margin grace,
Watched by the sylvan genius of the place:
Here as I lay, and swelled with tears the flood,[30] 185
Before my sight a wat'ry virgin stood:
She stood and cried, "O you that love in vain!
Fly hence, and seek the fair Leucadian main;
There stands a rock, from whose impending steep
Apollo's fane surveys the rolling deep; 190
There injured lovers, leaping from above,
Their flames extinguish, and forget to love.[31]
Deucalion once with hopeless fury burned,
In vain he loved, relentless Pyrrha scorned:
But when from hence he plunged into the main, 195
Deucalion scorned, and Pyrrha loved in vain.
Haste, Sappho, haste, from high Leucadia throw
Thy wretched weight, nor dread the deeps below!"[32]
She spoke, and vanished with the voice--I rise,
And silent tears fall trickling from my eyes. 200
I go, ye nymphs! those rocks and seas to prove;
How much I fear, but ah, how much I love!
I go, ye nymphs, where furious love inspires;
Let female fears submit to female fires.
To rocks and seas I fly from Phaon's hate, 205
And hope from seas and rocks a milder fate.
Ye gentle gales, beneath my body blow,
And softly lay me on the waves below![33]
And thou, kind Love, my sinking limbs sustain, }
Spread thy soft wings, and waft me o'er the main, } 210
Nor let a lover's death the guiltless flood profane! }
On Phoebus' shrine my harp I'll then bestow,
And this inscription shall be placed below,
"Here she who sung, to him that did inspire,
Sappho to Phoebus consecrates her lyre; 215
What suits with Sappho, Phoebus, suits with thee;
The gift, the giver, and the god agree."
But why, alas, relentless youth, ah! why
To distant seas must tender Sappho fly?[34]
Thy charms than those may far more pow'rful be, 220
And Phoebus' self is less a god to me.[35]
Ah! canst thou doom me to the rocks and sea,
Oh! far more faithless and more hard than they?
Ah! canst thou rather see this tender breast
Dashed on these rocks, than to thy bosom pressed? 225
This breast which once, in vain! you liked so well;[36]
Where the loves played, and where the muses dwell.
Alas! the muses now no more inspire,
Untuned my lute, and silent is my lyre.
My languid numbers have forgot to flow, 230
And fancy sinks beneath a weight of woe.
Ye Lesbian virgins, and ye Lesbian dames,
Themes of my verse, and objects of my flames,
No more your groves with my glad songs shall ring,
No more these hands shall touch the trembling string: 235
My Phaon's fled, and I those arts resign:
(Wretch that I am, to call that Phaon mine!)[37]
Return, fair youth, return, and bring along
Joy to my soul, and vigour to my song:
Absent from thee, the poet's flame expires; 240
But ah! how fiercely burn the lover's fires!
Gods! can no prayers, no sighs, no numbers move
One savage heart, or teach it how to love?
The winds my prayers, my sighs, my numbers bear,[38]
The flying winds have lost them all in air! 245
Oh when, alas! shall more auspicious gales
To these fond eyes restore thy welcome sails![39]
If you return--ah why these long delays?
Poor Sappho dies, while careless Phaon stays.
O launch the bark, nor fear the wat'ry plain; 250
Venus for thee shall smooth her native main.
O launch thy bark, secure of prosp'rous gales;
Cupid for thee shall spread the swelling sails.[40]
If you will fly--(yet ah! what cause can be,
Too cruel youth, that you should fly from me?) 255
If not from Phaon I must hope for ease,
Ah let me seek it from the raging seas:
To raging seas unpitied I'll remove,
And either cease to live or cease to love!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The ancients have left us little further account of Phaon than that he was an old mariner, whom Venus transformed into a very beautiful youth, whom Sappho and several other Lesbian ladies, fell passionately in love with.--FENTON.]

[Footnote 2: Mrs. Behn's translation:

Say, lovely youth, why would'st thou thus betray.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 3: In the MS.:

These mournful numbers suit a mournful muse.]

[Footnote 4: Our poet has not varied much here from the couplet of his predecessor, Sir Carr Scrope:

I burn, I burn, like kindled fields of corn,
When by the driving winds the flames are borne.--WAKEFIELD.

The first version in Pope's manuscript, though not so closely copied from Scrope, is decidedly inferior to the text:

I burn, I burn, as when fierce whirlwinds raise
The spreading flames, and crackling harvests blaze.]

[Footnote 5: A childish, false thought.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 6: Scrope's couplet exceeds this in simplicity, and to my taste, on the whole, is preferable:

My muse, and lute can now no longer please;
These are th' employments of a mind at ease.--WAKEFIELD.]

[Footnote 7: As Ovid tells the story in his Metamorphoses, Apollo fell in love with Daphne and pursued her. When he was gaining upon her in the race she was transformed, at her own request, into a laurel. The Cretan dame was Ariadne. Bacchus was smitten with her extraordinary beauty, and married her.]

[Footnote 8: This happy line, which is not too extravagant for a lover, belongs to Pope.]

[Footnote 9: Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus, an AEthiopian king. Her mother thought herself superior in beauty to the Nereids, which excited their jealousy, and through their influence a sea-monster was sent to prey upon man and beast in the dominions of Cepheus. To atone for her mother's vanity, and rid the land of the scourge, Cepheus agreed to offer up Andromeda to the monster. She was chained to a rock on the coast, where Perseus saw her at the critical moment when she was about to be devoured. Captivated by her charms he engaged and slew the monster, and made Andromeda his wife.]

[Footnote 10: This is very inferior to the conciseness, and simplicity of the original, "memini (meminerunt omnia amantes)." Sir Carr Scrope's translation is nearer the original, and more natural as well as elegant:

For they who truly love remember all.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 11: This line is another of the embellishments which Pope engrafted on the original.]

[Footnote 12: The first line of this couplet is faulty in point of versification, and, to use our bard's own remark, ten low words creep in one dull line. As to the last line, it is wholly redundant, and has no place in the original.--RUFFHEAD.]

[Footnote 13: In the original, Erycina, which was a surname of Venus from Mount Eryx, in Sicily, where a celebrated temple was dedicated to her.]

[Footnote 14: He has here left four lines untranslated, which are thus rendered in the MS.:

My ruined brother trades from shore to shore,
And gains as basely as he lost before:
Me too he hates, advised by me in vain,
So fatal 'tis to be sincere and plain.

Of the last couplet the MS. contains a second version:

He hates his sister for a sister's care,
So unsuccessful 'tis to be sincere.]

[Footnote 15: In the MS.:

An infant now my hapless fortunes shares,
And this sad breast feels all a mother's cares.]

[Footnote 16: Cephalus tells the story poetically in Sandys' translation of Ovid's Met. vii. 701. He was a hunter, who was setting his nets in early dawn,

When grey Aurora, having vanquished night,
Beheld me on the ever-fragrant hill
Of steep Hymettus, and against my will,
As I my toils extended, bare me thence.]

[Footnote 17: Cynthia prolonged the sleep of Endymion, a shepherd of singular beauty, that she might kiss him without his knowledge.]

[Footnote 18: Scrope is pleasing here: