APPENDIX II.

DENHAM'S ESSAY ON TRANSLATED VERSE.

THERE are so few translations which deserve praise, that I scarce ever saw any which deserv'd pardon; those who travel in that kind, being for the most part so unhappy, as to rob others, without enriching themselves, pulling down the same good authors, without raising their own neither hath any author been more hardly dealt withall, than this our master : and the reason is evident; for, what is most excellent, is most inimitable, and if even the worst authors are yet made worse by their translators, how impossible is it not to do great injury to the best? And therefore I have not the vanity to think my copy equal to the original, nor (consequently) my self altogether guiltless of what I accuse others; but if I can do Virgil less injury than others have done, it will be, in some degree to do him right; and indeed, the hope of doing him more right is the only scope of this Essay, by opening this new way of translating this author, to those whom youth, leisure, and better fortune make fitter for such undertakings.

I conceive it a vulgar error in translating poets, to affect being fidus interpres; let that care be with them who deal in matters of fact, or matters of faith: but whosoever aims at it in poetry, as he attempts what is not required, so he shall never perform what he attempts; for it is not his business alone to translate language into language, but poesie into poesie; and poesie is of so subtle a spirit, that in pouring out of one language into another, it will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be not aa led in the transfusion, there will remain nothing but a caput mortuum, there being certain graces and

happinesses peculiar to every language, which give life and energy to the words; and whosoever offers at verbal translation, shall have the misfortune of that young traveller, who lost his own language abroad, and brought home no other instead of it: for the grace of the Latin will be lost by being turned into English words, and the grace of the English, by being turned into the Latin phrase. And as speech is the apparel of our thoughts, so are there certain garbs and modes of speaking, which vary with the times; the fashion of our clothes being not more subject to alteration, than that of our speech; and this I think Tacitus means, by that which he calls Sermonem temporis istius auribus accommodatum; the delight of change being as due to the curiosity of the ear, as of the eye; and therefore if Virgil must needs speak English, it were fit he should speak not only as a man of this Nation, but as a man of this Age; and if this disguise I have put upon him (I wish I could give it a better name) sit not naturally and easily on so grave a person, yet it may become him better than that fools-coat, wherein the French and Italian have of late presented him; at least, I hope, it will not make him appear deformed, by making any part enormously bigger or less than the life, (I having made it my principal care to follow him, as he made it his to follow nature in all his proportions.) Neither have I anywhere offered such violence to his sense, as to make it seem mine, and not his. Where my expressions are not so full as his, either our language, or my art were defective (but I rather suspect myself;) but where mine are fuller than his, they are but the impressions which the often reading of him hath left upon my thoughts; so that if they are not his own conceptions, they are at least the results of them, and if (being conscious of making him speak worse than he did almost in every line,) I err in endeavouring sometimes to make him speak better; I hope it will be judged an error on the right hand, and such an one as may deserve pardon, if not imitation.

APPENDIX III.

THE following address to Queen Henrietta Maria, under a slight concealment, was issued with some copies of the genuine edition of Waller's Poems in 1645, but immediately suppressed. It seems to me worthy of revival.

MADAM :

TO MY LADY.

Your commands for the gathering of these sticks into a faggot, had sooner been obeyed, but intending to present you with my whole vintage, I stayed till the latest grapes were ripe, for here your Ladyship hath not only all I have done, but all I ever mean to do in this kind; not but that I may defend the attempt I have made upon poetry, by the examples (not to trouble you with history) of many wise, and worthy persons of our own times: as Sir Philip Sydney, Sir Fra. Bacon, Cardinal Perron, the ablest of his country-men; and the former Pope, who they say, instead of the triple crown, wore sometimes the poet's ivy, as an ornament, perhaps of lesser weight, and trouble, but Madam, these nightingales sung only in the spring, it was the diversion of their youth. As ladies learn to sing and play when they are children, what they forget when they are women; the resemblance holds further; for as you quit the lute the sooner, because the posture is suspected to draw the body awry: so this is not always practised without some villany to the mind, wresting it from present occasions, and accustoming us to a style somewhat removed from common use. But that you may not think his case deplorable, who had made verses: we are told that Tully (the greatest wit amongst the Romans) was once sick of this

disease, and yet recovered so well, that of almost as bad a poet as your servant, he became the most perfect orator in the world. So that not so much to have made verses, as not to give over in time, leaves a man without excuse the former presenting us with an opportunity at least of doing wisely: that is to conceal those we have made, which I shall yet do, if my humble request may be of as much force with your Ladyship, as your commands have been with me; Madam, I only whisper these in your ears: if you publish them they are your own, and therefore as you apprehend the reproach of a wit and a poet, cast them into the fire, or if they come where green boughs are in the chimney, with the help of your fair friends, (for thus bound, it will be too hard a task for your hands alone) to tear them in pieces, wherein you shall honour me with the fate of Orpheus, for so his poems, whereof we only hear the form (not his limbs as the story will have it) I suppose were scattered by the Thracian dames. Here Madam I might take an opportunity to celebrate your virtues, and to instruct you how unhappy you are, in that you know not who you are: how much you excel the most excellent of your own and how much you amaze the least inclined to wonder of your sex. But as they will be apt to take your Ladyship for a Roman name: so would they believe that I endeavoured the character of a perfect nymph, worshipt an image of my own making, and dedicated this to the Lady of the brain, not of the heart of your Ladyships most humble servant.

E. W.

APPENDIX IV.

THE PREFACE TO WALLER'S POSTHUMOUS POEMS,

1690.

THE Reader need be told no more in commendation of these Poems, than that they are Mr. Waller's: A name that carries every thing in it, that's either great or graceful in poetry. He was indeed the parent of English verse, and the first that shew'd us our tongue had beauty and numbers in it. Our language owes more to him than the French to Cardinal Richlieu, and the whole Academy. A poet cannot think of him, without being in the same rapture Lucretius is in, when Epicurus comes in his way.

Tu pater & rerum inventor, Tu patria nobis

Suppeditas præcepta: Tuesque ex inclyte, chartis
Floriferis ut Apes in sallibus omnia libant

Omnia Nos itidem depascimur aureadicta:
Aurea, perpetua semper dignissima vita.

The tongue came into his hands, like a rough diamond; he polish'd it first, and to that degree that all artists since him have admired the workmanship, without pretending to mend it. Suckling and Carew, I must confess, wrote some few things smoothly enough, but as all they did in this kind was not very considerable, so 'twas a little later than the earliest pieces of Mr. Waller. He undoubtedly stands first in the list of refiners, and for ought I know, last too; for I question whether in Charles the Second's reign, English did not come to its full perfection; and whether it has not had its Augustan Age, as well as the Latin. It seems to be already mix'd with foreign languages, as far as its purity will bear; and, as chymists says