Further particulars of Vincent Bourne (1695-1747), a master at Westminster, are given in the notes to Lamb's translations in the poetical volume. His Poemata appeared in 1734, the best edition being that of the Rev. John Mitford, Bernard Barton's friend, published in 1840. Lamb first read Bourne as late as 1815. Writing to Wordsworth in April of that year he says of Bourne: "What a heart that man had, all laid out upon town scenes, a proper counterpoise to some people's rural extravagances." And again in the same letter: "What a sweet, unpretending, pretty-mannered, matter-ful creature, sucking from every flower, making a flower of every thing—his diction all Latin, and his thoughts all English." And in the Elia essay "On the Decay of Beggars" Bourne is called "most classical, and at the same time, most English, of the Latinists!"
[Page 391,] foot. Cowper ... out of the four. Cowper, who was Bourne's pupil at Westminster, translated twenty-three of the poems, but there were only four in early editions of his works. Lamb and Cowper did not clash in their translations, except in the case of the lines on the sleeping infant quoted later in this essay. Cowper's version ran thus:—
Sweet babe, whose image here expressed,
Does thy peaceful slumbers show,
Guilt or fear, to break thy rest,
Never did thy spirit know.
Softly slumber, soft repose,
Such as mock the painter's skill,
Such as innocence bestows,
Harmless infant, lull thee still!
The line quoted by Lamb from Cowper is the first of "The Jackdaw." Cowper's praise of Bourne resembles Lamb's. He writes: "I love the memory of Vinny Bourne. I think him a better Latin poet than Tibullus, Propertius, Ausonius, or any of the writers in his way, except Ovid, and not at all inferior to him."
[Page 392,] line 4. A recent writer. Lamb himself.
[Page 395,] line 19. There is a tragic Drama. "The Wife's Trial" (see Vol. IV.). More properly a comic drama.
[Page 395,] line 27. But if to write in Albums be a sin. A reference probably to the attack on Lamb's book made a year earlier in the Literary Gazette, which occasioned Southey's spirited lines to The Times in defence of his friend.
[Page 396,] middle. But the disease has gone forth. Four years before, in 1827, Lamb had protested to Bernard Barton against the Album exactions:—