Venturi me teque legent: Pharsalia nostra
Vivet, et a nullo tenebris damnabitur ævo.
Pharsal. l. 9.
Independently of the excellence of the above translation, in completely conveying the sense, the force, and spirit of the original, it possesses one beauty which the more modern English poets have entirely neglected, or rather purposely banished from their versification in rhyme; I mean the varied harmony of the measure, which arises from changing the place of the pauses. In the modern heroic rhyme, the pause is almost invariably found at the end of a couplet. In the older poetry, the sense is continued from one couplet to another, and closes in various parts of the line, according to the poet’s choice, and the completion of his meaning:
A little gliding stream, which Xanthus was,
Unknown he past—and in the lofty grass
Securely trode—a Phrygian straight forbid
Him tread on Hector’s dust—with ruins hid,
The stone retain’d no sacred memory.
He must be greatly deficient in a musical ear, who does not prefer the varied harmony of the above lines to the uniform return of sound, and chiming measure of the following: