Translation of Homer by Chapman. 73. The translations of ancient poets by Phaier, Golding, Stanyhurst, and several more, do not challenge our attention; most of them, in fact, being very wretched performances.[1219] Marlowe, a more celebrated name, did not, as has commonly been said, translate the poem of Hero and Leander ascribed to Musæus, but expanded it into what he calls six Sestiads on the same subject; a paraphrase, in every sense of the epithet, of the most licentious kind. This he left incomplete, and it was finished by Chapman.[1220] But the most remarkable productions of this kind are the Iliad of Chapman, and the Jerusalem of Fairfax, both printed in 1600; the former, however, containing in that edition but fifteen books, to which the rest was subsequently added. Pope, after censuring the haste, negligence, and fustian language of Chapman, observes “that which is to be allowed him, and which very much contributed to cover his defects, is a free daring spirit that animates his translation, which is something like what one might imagine Homer himself would have written before he arrived at years of discretion.” He might have added, that Chapman’s translation, with all its defects, is often exceedingly Homeric; a praise which Pope himself seldom attained. Chapman deals abundantly in compound epithets, some of which have retained their place; his verse is rhymed, of fourteen syllables, which corresponds to the hexameter better than the decasyllabic couplet; he is often uncouth, often unmusical, and often low; but the spirited and rapid flow of his metre makes him respectable to lovers of poetry. Waller, it is said, could not read him without transport. It must be added, that he is an unfaithful translator, and interpolated much, besides the general redundancy of his style.[1221]
[1219] Warton, chap. liv., has gone very laboriously into this subject.
[1220] Marlowe’s poem is republished in the Restituta of Sir Egerton Brydges. It is singular that Warton should have taken it for a translation of Musæus.
[1221] Warton, iv. 269. Retrospective Review, vol. iii. See also a very good comparison of the different translations of Homer, in Blackwood’s Magazine for 1831 and 1832, where Chapman comes in for his due.
Tasso, Fairfax. 74. Fairfax’s Tasso has been more praised, and is better known. Campbell has called it, in rather strong terms, “one of the glories of Elizabeth’s reign.” It is not the first version of the Jerusalem, one very literal and prosaic having been made by Carew, in 1594.[1222] That of Fairfax, if it does not represent the grace of its original, and deviates also too much from its sense, is by no means deficient in spirit and vigour. It has been considered as one of the earliest works, in which the obsolete English, which had not been laid aside in the days of Sackville, and which Spenser affected to preserve, gave way to a style not much differing, at least in point of single words and phrases, from that of the present age. But this praise is equally due to Daniel, to Drayton, and to others of the later Elizabethan poets. The translation of Ariosto by Sir John Harrington, in 1591, is much inferior.
[1222] In the third volume of the Retrospective Review, these translations are compared, and it is shown that Carew is far more literal than Fairfax, who has taken great liberties with his original. Extracts from Carew will also be found in the British Bibliographer, i. 30. They are miserably bad.
Employment of ancient measures. 75. An injudicious endeavour to substitute the Latin metres for those congenial to our language, met with no more success than it deserved; unless it may be called success, that Sydney, and even Spenser, were for a moment seduced into approbation of it. Gabriel Harvey, best now remembered as the latter’s friend, recommended the adoption of hexameters in some letters which passed between them, and Spenser appears to have concurred. Webbe, a few years afterwards, a writer of little taste or ear for poetry, supported the same scheme, but may be said to have avenged the wrong of English verse upon our great poet, by travestying the Shepherd’s Kalendar into Sapphics.[1223] Campion, in 1602, still harps upon this foolish pedantry; many instances of which may be found during the Elizabethan period. It is well known that in German the practice has been in some measure successful, through the example of a distinguished poet, and through translations from the ancients in measures closely corresponding with their own. In this there is doubtless the advantage of presenting a truer mirror of the original. But as most imitations of Latin measures, in German or English, begin by violating their first principle, which assigns an invariable value in time to the syllables of every word, and produce a chaos of false quantities, it seems as if they could only disgust any one acquainted with classical versification. In the early English hexameters of the period before us, we sometimes perceive an intention to arrange long and short syllables according to the analogies of the Latin tongue. But this would soon be found impracticable in our own, which, abounding in harsh terminations, cannot long observe the law of position.
[1223] Webbe’s success was not inviting to the Latinists. Thus in the second Eclogue of Virgil, for the beautiful lines—
At mecum raucis, tua dum vestigia lustro,
Sole sub ardenti resonant arbusta cicadis,
we have this delectable hexametric version:—