Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry [77]
sentences and the true sublime. These are above liking Martial or Owen's epigrams, but they would certainly set Virgil below Statius or Lucan. I need not say their poets are of the same paste with their admirers. They affect greatness in all they write, but it is a bladdered greatness, like that of the vain man whom Seneca describes an ill habit of body, full of humours, and swelled with dropsy. Even these, too, desert their authors as their judgment ripens. The young gentlemen themselves are commonly misled by their pedagogue at school, their tutor at the university, or their governor in their travels, and many of these three sorts are the most positive blockheads in the world. How many of these flatulent writers have I known who have sunk in their reputation after seven or eight editions of their works! for indeed they are poets only for young men. They had great success at their first appearance, but not being of God, as a wit said formerly, they could not stand.
I have already named two sorts of judges, but Virgil wrote for neither of them, and by his example I am not ambitious of pleasing the lowest or the middle form of readers. He chose to please the most judicious souls, of the highest rank and truest understanding. These are few in number; but whoever is so happy as to gain their approbation can never lose it, because they never give it blindly. Then they have a certain magnetism in their judgment which attracts others to their sense. Every day they gain some new proselyte, and in time become the Church. For this reason a well-weighed judicious poem, which at its first appearance gains no more upon the world than to be just received, and rather not blamed than much applauded, insinuates itself by insensible degrees into the liking of the reader; the more he studies it, the more it grows upon him, every time he takes it up he discovers some new graces in it. And whereas poems which are produced by the vigour of imagination only have a gloss upon them at the first (which time wears off), the works of judgment are like the diamond, the more they are polished the more lustre they receive. Such is the difference betwixt Virgil's "AEneis" and Marini's "Adone." And if I may be allowed to change the metaphor, I would say that Virgil is like the Fame which he describes:-
"Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo."
Such a sort of reputation is my aim, though in a far inferior degree, according to my motto in the title-page--sequiturque patrem non passibus aequis--and therefore I appeal to the highest court of judicature, like that of the peers, of which your lordship is so great an ornament.
Without this ambition which I own, of desiring to please the judices natos, I could never have been able to have done anything at this age, when the fire of poetry is commonly extinguished in other men. Yet Virgil has given me the example of Entellus for my encouragement; when he was well heated, the younger champion could not stand before him. And we find the elder contended not for the gift, but for the honour (nec dona moror); for Dampier has informed us in his "Voyages" that the air of the country which produces gold is never wholesome.
I had long since considered that the way to please the best judges is not to translate a poet literally, and Virgil least of any other; for his peculiar beauty lying in his choice of words, I am excluded from it by the narrow compass of our heroic verse, unless I would make use of monosyllables only, and these clogged with consonants, which are the dead weight of our mother tongue. It is possible, I confess, though it rarely happens, that a verse of monosyllables may sound harmoniously; and some examples of it I have seen. My first line of the "AEneis" is not harsh -
"Arms, and the man I sing, who forced by Fate," &c. -
but a much better instance may be given from the last line of Manilius, made English by our learned and judicious Mr. Creech -
"Nor could the world have borne so fierce a flame" -
where the many liquid consonants are placed so
I have already named two sorts of judges, but Virgil wrote for neither of them, and by his example I am not ambitious of pleasing the lowest or the middle form of readers. He chose to please the most judicious souls, of the highest rank and truest understanding. These are few in number; but whoever is so happy as to gain their approbation can never lose it, because they never give it blindly. Then they have a certain magnetism in their judgment which attracts others to their sense. Every day they gain some new proselyte, and in time become the Church. For this reason a well-weighed judicious poem, which at its first appearance gains no more upon the world than to be just received, and rather not blamed than much applauded, insinuates itself by insensible degrees into the liking of the reader; the more he studies it, the more it grows upon him, every time he takes it up he discovers some new graces in it. And whereas poems which are produced by the vigour of imagination only have a gloss upon them at the first (which time wears off), the works of judgment are like the diamond, the more they are polished the more lustre they receive. Such is the difference betwixt Virgil's "AEneis" and Marini's "Adone." And if I may be allowed to change the metaphor, I would say that Virgil is like the Fame which he describes:-
"Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo."
Such a sort of reputation is my aim, though in a far inferior degree, according to my motto in the title-page--sequiturque patrem non passibus aequis--and therefore I appeal to the highest court of judicature, like that of the peers, of which your lordship is so great an ornament.
Without this ambition which I own, of desiring to please the judices natos, I could never have been able to have done anything at this age, when the fire of poetry is commonly extinguished in other men. Yet Virgil has given me the example of Entellus for my encouragement; when he was well heated, the younger champion could not stand before him. And we find the elder contended not for the gift, but for the honour (nec dona moror); for Dampier has informed us in his "Voyages" that the air of the country which produces gold is never wholesome.
I had long since considered that the way to please the best judges is not to translate a poet literally, and Virgil least of any other; for his peculiar beauty lying in his choice of words, I am excluded from it by the narrow compass of our heroic verse, unless I would make use of monosyllables only, and these clogged with consonants, which are the dead weight of our mother tongue. It is possible, I confess, though it rarely happens, that a verse of monosyllables may sound harmoniously; and some examples of it I have seen. My first line of the "AEneis" is not harsh -
"Arms, and the man I sing, who forced by Fate," &c. -
but a much better instance may be given from the last line of Manilius, made English by our learned and judicious Mr. Creech -
"Nor could the world have borne so fierce a flame" -
where the many liquid consonants are placed so