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 Æneas, 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 (tenerâ 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 præstas 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.