vation, well calculated to fascinate a young and poetical mind, like that of Persius. Its extravagances were but the distorted images of sublime truths. Such tenets are to philosophy what fabulous legends are to history. Truth indeed shines through them, but half concealed, and by imperfect glimpses; and it is in this dim light that poetry loves to reside. Nor ought we, in characterising Persius, to omit what is perhaps the most pleasing feature of his writings, the views which they occasionally afford us of his own personal disposition, of his warmth of heart, and sincerity of attachment.

Of the present translator's qualifications for his task we need say little. The translator of Juvenal, the first classical satirist of the age, the merciless castigator of the Della Cruscan fraternity, cannot be supposed deficient either in the talent or the disposition for satire. On the other hand, with few exceptions, there appears to be little in common, as to opinions or predilections, between Persius and his translator. Of the three classes into which satirists may be divided, the sarcastic, the indignant, and what for want of a better term we may call the Horatian, Mr. Gifford, we think, belongs to the first more than to either of the others. He bears more resemblance to Pope and Boileau than to any of the Roman satirists.

The translation is ushered in by a Preface, critical and biographical. Of the labors of his predecessors, Mr. Gifford speaks with a liberality of praise which is very exemplary. We shall extract part of his observations.

It cannot, I think, be affirmed, that a new translation of Persius is much wanted: we are already possessed of several; of various degrees of merit, indeed, but all exhibiting strong claims on the public favor. Brewster is familiar to every scholar. I had not looked into him since I left Exeter College; but the impression he then made on my mind was very powerful, and certainly of the most pleasing kind. I thought him, indeed, paraphrastic, unnecessarily minute in many unimportant passages, somewhat too familiar for his author, and occasionally ungraceful in his repetition of trivial words and phrases; but the general spirit, accuracy, and freedom of his version commanded my highest admiration,which a recent perusal has not contributed, in any perceptible degree, to diminish. Dryden, of whom I should have spoken first, is beyond my praise. The majestical flow of his verse, the energy and beauty of particular passages, and the admirable purity and simplicity which pervade much of his language, place him above the hope of rivalry, and are better calculated to generate despair than to excite emulation.

But Dryden is sometimes negligent and sometimes unfaithful: he wanders with licentious foot, careless alike of his author and his reader; and seems to make a wanton sacrifice of his own learning. It is impossible to read a page of his translation without perceiving that he was intimately acquainted with the original; and yet every page betrays a disregard of its sense. By nature Dryden was eminently gifted for a

ment it is frequently possible to translate his meaning, and even some portion of his spirit, into another language, yet the true point of the jest-the undefinable something, which constituted the peculiar zest of the passage in the perceptions of contemporary readers, is gone. The body of wit remains, but the subtle essence is flown. Add to this the number of colloquial idioms, for which it is difficult to find substitutes in another language. Hence the obscurity of Aristophanes and the Roman satirists, when compared with the serious poets in both languages. And hence it is, that imitations of the above writers, in which the outline of the original, and the train of thought, are retained, with an adaptation of the allusions and incidents to modern times (such as those of Pope, Johnson, and the writer before us) have uniformly been more popular than translations of the original works. And when to the above disadvantages we add the defects of the poet himself, and of his subject; the little interest with which modern readers regard the events and characters of the age of Nero, compared with those of the republican times; the harshness and affected brevity of Persius' manner, which it is impossible entirely to disguise even in a translation; his abrupt transitions, and his want of artificial arrangement; it will not be thought surprising that Persius, though fortunate in many of his translators, has not acquired an extraordinary share of popularity.

Yet is Persius, to an intelligent reader, not without his interest. There is an inborn spirit of poetry showing itself amidst all his defects, like light struggling through clouds. As a portraiture of the manners of a distant age, and one of which scarce any other record remains, his writings will always command attention; and the air of earnestness and sincerity with which he promulgates his moral doctrines, as the present translator observes, although it may fail to convince, ensures our respect. Neither was the philosophical system which he adopted destitute of poetical capabilities. We are no admirers of the Stoical doctrine; neither are we insensible of its injurious practical tendency in more than one point of view. Stoicism was the fanaticism of philosophy; and while, on the one hand, the singular privileges it was supposed to confer generated pride in its professors, on the other, its extravagant requisitions and repulsive notions of virtue, may have reconciled some to vice, from a despair of ever attaining that perfect emancipation from moral evil, which the Porch demanded as a sine qua non; an effect likewise produced by the puritanism of later times. Still there is, in the better parts of the system, an air of generosity and ele

vation, well calculated to fascinate a young and poetical mind, like that of Persius. Its extravagances were but the distorted images of sublime truths. Such tenets are to philosophy what fabulous legends are to history. Truth indeed shines through them, but half concealed, and by imperfect glimpses; and it is in this dim light that poetry loves to reside. Nor ought we, in characterising Persius, to omit what is perhaps the most pleasing feature of his writings, the views which they occasionally afford us of his own personal disposition, of his warmth of heart, and sincerity of attachment.

Of the present translator's qualifications for his task we need say little. The translator of Juvenal, the first classical satirist of the age, the merciless castigator of the Della Cruscan fraternity, cannot be supposed deficient either in the talent or the disposition for satire. On the other hand, with few exceptions, there appears to be little in common, as to opinions or predilections, between Persius and his translator. Of the three classes into which satirists may be divided, the sarcastic, the indignant, and what for want of a better term we may call the Horatian, Mr. Gifford, we think, belongs to the first more than to either of the others. He bears more resemblance to Pope and Boileau than to any of the Roman satirists.

The translation is ushered in by a Preface, critical and biographical. Of the labors of his predecessors, Mr. Gifford speaks with a liberality of praise which is very exemplary. We shall extract part of his observations.

It cannot, I think, be affirmed, that a new translation of Persius is much wanted: we are already possessed of several; of various degrees of merit, indeed, but all exhibiting strong claims on the public favor. Brewster is familiar to every scholar. I had not looked into him since I left Exeter College; but the impression he then made on my mind was very powerful, and certainly of the most pleasing kind. I thought him, indeed, paraphrastic, unnecessarily minute in many unimportant passages, somewhat too familiar for his author, and occasionally ungraceful in his repetition of trivial words and phrases; but the general spirit, accuracy, and freedom of his version commanded my highest admiration,— which a recent perusal has not contributed, in any perceptible degree, to diminish. Dryden, of whom I should have spoken first, is beyond my praise. The majestical flow of his verse, the energy and beauty of particular passages, and the admirable purity and simplicity which pervade much of his language, place him above the hope of rivalry, and are better calculated to generate despair than to excite emulation.

But Dryden is sometimes negligent and sometimes unfaithful: he wanders with licentious foot, careless alike of his author and his reader; and seems to make a wanton sacrifice of his own learning. It is impossible to read a page of his translation without perceiving that he was intimately acquainted with the original; and yet every page betrays a disregard of its sense. By nature Dryden was eminently gifted for a

translator of Persius; he had much of his austerity of manner, and his closeness of reasoning-yet, by some unaccountable obliquity, he has missed those characteristic qualities so habitual to him, and made the poet flippant and inconsequential.

I come now to Sir W. Drummond. This is a work of great elegance; spirited and poetical, and polished into a degree of smoothness seldom attained. But Sir William Drummond declares, that his object was 'rather to express his author's meaning clearly than to translate his words or to copy his manner servilely.' How he wishes these expressions to be understood, he has explained in a subsequent passage, which I shall take the liberty of laying before the reader.

'What Dryden judged too rude for imitation, the critics of the present day will probably think I have been prudent in not copying. I have generally, therefore, followed the outline; but I have seldom ventured to employ the colouring of Persius. When the coarse metaphor, or the extravagant hyperbole debases, or obscures the sense of the original, I have changed, or even omitted it; and where the idiom of the English language required it, I have thought myself justified in abandoning the literal sense of my author.' Pref. p. x.

I am somewhat inclined to suspect that Sir W. Drummond's opinion of the critics of the present day' is not altogether ill founded. In proportion, therefore, as he has gratified them, I shall be found to displease them; having freely encountered what he so sedulously avoided, and, with one or two exceptions merely, followed the original through all its coarseness and extravagance, and represented with equal fidelity, the outline, and the filling up, of the picture.'

But, it will naturally be asked, if a new translation be not much wanted, why is the present intruded on the public? I am not one of those who think that the successful execution of a work should totally preclude every future attempt to rival or surpass it; for this would be to introduce an apathy and dejection fatal to all progressive excellence. The field of literature happily admits of various species of contention; and to excel in the humblest of them, is to possess some degree of merit, and to prefer some claim (however slight) to public favor. He who cannot attain the richness and harmony of Dryden, may yet hope to surpass him in fidelity; and though the spirit and freedom of Brewster may not be easily outgone, his conciseness and poetical feeling have not much to intimidate a competitor of ordinary endowments.

But to come closer to the question,-I endeavored (I know not with what success) to translate Persius as his immediate follower had been translated; I hoped that to a fidelity equal to that of the most scrupulous of my predecessors, I might be found to unite a certain degree of vigor, and to atone for a defect of poetical merit by conciseness and perspicuity. When I speak of fidelity, however, let it be observed, in justice to myself, that I carry the import of this word somewhat further than is usually done. I translate for the English reader, and do not think it sufficient to give him a loose idea of the original; but as fair and perfect a transcript

Two other translations of Persius have appeared; but as they were not published before the present version was finished, they do not come under my judgment. I may add, however, that the last of the two, by Mr. Howes, is a work of singular merit. The other, which I have not been fortunate enough to procure, is said to be a poor performance. 1817.

of it as the difference of language will admit: at the same time it will, I trust, appear that I have not, in any instance, fallen into barbarisms, or violated the idiom of my own country.

It will be readily admitted, that I have not adopted the most easy mode of translation; since, not content with giving the author's sense, I have entered as far as it was in my power, into his feelings, and exhibited as much of his manner, nay of his language, (i. e. his words,) as I possibly could. Expressions which have been usually avoided as not germane to our tongue, are here hazarded, for the simple purpose of bringing Persius, as he wrote, before the unlearned reader; who may be assured that he will find, in few versions, as much of the original as in the present:for this, of course, he must take my affirmation;-nor is this all; for I have given him no more than the original; all that will be found here, is to be found in Persius.

The error here ascribed, by implication, to Sir W. Drummond, is one into which translators of modern times have been apt to fall, that of rendering a writer whose language is bold, and whose versification is free, in a style of ornamented and polished diction, and smooth and equable versification. A kindred error indeed pervades half the classical translations of the last and present century, from Pope's Homer to Hodgson's Juvenal, and Sir William's own Lucretius. If Mr. Gifford himself has now and then committed this error in the present version, it is on occasions where a contrary style of translating is the least requisite; as in the opening of the sixth Satire, and perhaps the address to Cornutus in the fifth. Dryden is well characterised in the above extract. What we have observed of Dryden's Æneid on a former occasion,' may be applied with greater or less justice to all his translations. They are not representatives of the original; but they are themselves originals, and excellent in their kind. At the expense of much of the characteristic beauty of the originals, he infuses a new manner and spirit of his own. We miss the sprightliness of Ovid, the lofty melodies of Virgil, the tessellated diction of Horace, the energetic simplicity of Lucretius, and the dignity of Juvenal; but we are repaid for them by an ease which, amidst much mistranslation, negligence, and coarseness, still delights, an all-pervading vivacity, a flow of happy language, and an exuberance of fancy which sometimes by its intrusion mars the beauty of the original, and sometimes comes in aid of its tameness.2

'No. XLII. p. 288, in a review of Dr. Symmons's Translation of the Eneid.

* We recommend, to the readers of the Roman satirists, Dryden's Preface to his translations of Juvenal and Persius. The comparison between Juvenal and Horace, and indeed the whole of the latter part of the Introduction, is characterised by that union of critical acumen with liveliness of illustration, which renders Dryden's prefaces so delightful.