Neither Vicars nor Ogilby, however, was of sufficient note, nor had their labors sufficient vitality, to set the current of translation fairly going. That was reserved for Dryden, whose famous work came out in 1697. Dryden had all the qualifications necessary to ensure him a full harvest of imitation and rivalry at once. He was the most famous poet and critic of his day, and in either capacity had found means to excite abundance of jealousies and resentments. Moreover, his change of religion, and the vigor with which he had espoused the Catholic cause in his Hind and Panther, made him many additional enemies. So it is not to be wondered at that when, as Pope puts it,
“Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose
In various shapes of parsons, critics, beaux,”
the parsons led the onslaught. First came Parson Milbourn, “the fairest of critics,” who printed his own version side by side with the one he found fault with, and whom Dulness also promptly claimed for her own. Then Dr. Brady, giving over to his worthy coadjutor, Tate, for the nonce the herculean task of promoting Sternhold and Hopkins to be next to the worst poets in the world, devoted himself to the equally gigantic labor of proving that there was a work he could translate more abominably than the Psalms. His version in blank-verse, “when dragged into the light,” says Dr. Johnson, “did not live long enough to cry.” Then Dr. Trapp, the Oxford professor of poetry—majora viribus audens—rushed to the attack and did the Æneid into, if possible, still blanker verse than his predecessor’s. It was he who said of Dryden’s version “that where Dryden shines most we often see the least of Virgil.” This was true enough; and it was, no doubt, to avoid the like reproach that the good doctor forbore to shine at all. On him was made the well-known epigram apropos of a certain poem said to be better than Virgil:
“Better than Virgil? Yes, perhaps;
But then, by Jove, ’tis Dr. Trapp’s!”
This is only another form of Bentley’s famous judgment: “A very pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer.” The doctor has had no better luck than his fellows.
“Olli dura quies oculos et ferreus urguet
Somnus; in æternam clauduntur lumina noctem.”[[174]]
These efforts of the parsons, however, were no doubt inspired at least as much by odium theologicum as by the genuine impulse of emulation. The first true exemplification of this came about 1729 with the version of Pitt,[[175]] whose choice of Dryden’s couplet was a direct challenge. Johnson’s estimate of the success of this rivalry is not, on the whole, unfair—or, at least, as fair as such comparisons often are. “Dryden,” he says, “leads the reader forward by his general vigor and sprightliness, and Pitt often stops him to contemplate the excellence of a single couplet; Dryden’s faults are forgotten in the hurry of delight, and Pitt’s beauties neglected in the languor of a cold and listless perusal; Pitt pleases the critics and Dryden the people; Pitt is quoted and Dryden read.” Dryden, however, is probably oftener read nowadays than Pitt is quoted. It is something to be a poet after all, and in the exchange of translation we allow for the purity of his metal and the beauty of his coinage. Most of us would rather have the gold of Dryden, though it fall a piece or two short in the reckoning, than the small change of Pitt, though every silver sixpence and copper farthing be accounted for.