FRAGMENTS OF TRANSLATIONS, ETC., BY GOLDSMITH.
To the Aldine edition of 1831, the Rev. John Mitford added several fragments of translation from Goldsmith’s Essays. About a third of these were traced by Bolton Corney in 1845 to the Horace of Francis. He therefore compiled a fresh collection, here given.
From a French version of Homer.
The shouting army cry’d with joy extreme,
He sure must conquer, who himself can tame!
The Bee, 1759, p. 90.
The next is also from Homer, and is proposed as an improvement of Pope:—
They knew and own’d the monarch of the main:
The sea subsiding spreads a level plain:
The curling waves before his coursers fly:
The parting surface leaves his brazen axle dry.
Miscellaneous Works, 1801, iv. 410.
From the same source comes number three, a quatrain from Vida’s Eclogues:—
Say heavenly muse, their youthful frays rehearse;
Begin, ye daughters of immortal verse;
Exulting rocks have crown’d the power of song!
And rivers listen’d as they flow’d along.
Miscellaneous Works, 1801, iv. 427.
Another is a couplet from Ovid, the fish referred to being the scarus or bream:—
Of all the fish that graze beneath the flood,
He, only, ruminates his former food.
History of the Earth, etc., 1774, iii. 6.