The very Father hearteneth on, and stays with happy might
The Danaans, crying on the gods against the Dardan fight.
Snatch flight, O son, whiles yet thou mayst, and let thy toil be o’er;
I by thy side will bring thee safe unto thy father’s door.
“She spake, and hid herself away where thickest darkness poured.
Then dreadful images show forth, great godheads are abroad,
The very haters of our Troy.”
The half-lines respond to the imperfect verses in Virgil, which, in the fashion of the Chinese tailor, both Mr. Morris and his forerunner conscientiously copy. Phaer has other oddities, such as “Sybly” for Sibylla, “lymbo” for Hades, “Dei Phobus” for Deiphobus, and “Duke Æneas”; while every book is wound up with a Deo Gratias by way of colophon. Let us hope it was not too fervently echoed by his readers. Indeed, Phaer’s version is better than its fame.
“After the associated labors of Phaer and Twynne,” says Warton in his History of English Poetry, “it is hard to say what could induce Richard Stanihurst, a native of Dublin, to translate the first four books of the Æneid into English hexameters.” The remark shows less than the wonted perspicuity of the historian of English poetry. What induces any translation, except the belief (the fond belief!) that the work it aims to do has not yet been done? Master Stanihurst, like many other learned men then and since, was firmly persuaded that the hexameter was your only measure for a translation of Virgil. But there are hexameters and hexameters, and Master Stanihurst’s were unluckily of the other sort. A poet who proclaims his intention to “chaunt manhood and Garboiles,” and gives us
“With tentive list’ning each wight was settled in hark’ning”