translation as flowers growing round that fountain's margin (p. 306). Some people will ridicule such criticism as frivolous and minute. But Lord Ravensworth himself we are satisfied will not be of the number. Indeed, he assures us (a fact which will not secure him the respect of the Utilitarians of the North) that he has been twenty years' trying every conceivable variety of form' in which to Anglicise Dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo the close of the very poem from which he has unjustly banished Fuscus! We are especially glad to be able to praise the very pretty result of all this labour The softly speaking Lalage, The softly smiling still for me; one of the best attempts at an impossibility which we know! Strange praise, no doubt, in the eyes of practical men, but a Horatian translator can scarcely hope for more. We shall now open our Horace at one of those historic odes where he catches for a brief while the spirit of an antique Roman, and the colour of the national blood rises to the cheek of the artist. In the song of triumph for the fall of Cleopatra, Lord Ravensworth is again assisted with a translation by Lord Derby, but he contends for the laurel along with him, and many of our readers will be glad to see the contest. We take up the strain at the point where panic has seized the Eastern queen, and her galleys in all their bird-like beauty are hurrying through the agitated sea. Then assailed her stricken soul, Or hunters chase o'er Hæmon's snow the hare. Oar and sail incessant plying, Nobly she to death resigned, To save from death a now dishonoured life. Actium's bay, Behold her anguish and dismay, Urges his rowers to the chase, Trembling through Hæmonia's grove; No womanly alarm betrayed But Lord There is a spirit and flow in both these versions. Derby's is nearer the sense of the original, and it has also the great advantage of being written in a uniform metre. Laxity in this particular breeds laxity in others; where the music may at any time be changed, the sense will; and in the last nine or ten lines Lord Ravensworth's love of paraphrase flies away with him altogether. This is the more provoking, because a line like Haughty in her deliberate death! has just that pregnant compactness which a student of Horace most admires in this class of his odes. Felicity of expression is one of the surest signs of genius, and no self-indulgent freedom should be allowed to spoil its development by any writer who at all possesses the gift. Our lords are fortunate in their competitors in this lyric. The orthodox translator, Francis, is both tame and odd. Mr. Robinson seems less at home than in gayer and lighter pieces. Professor Newman, notwithstanding the natural power which rarely deserts him, is crabbed and quaint, as witness his wind-up : She her prostrate palace dar'd, Borne off, to walk, no vulgar woman! Stript of rank, in haughty triumph. It would be easy to add to these specimens of translation, without some of which no opinion could be formed on the subject at all. But we shrink from overloading our pages with quotation, and we have already illustrated nearly all the varieties of treatment of which the art of Horatian translation admits. We have seen it rise from rude but promising beginnings; change its fashion with the fashions of the literature which, as we ought always to remember, itself largely helped to nourish and refine; produce in the hands of illustrious writers, works of permanent beauty and value; and finally now we see it cultivated with skill and assiduity, and with a success above the average of past times. If we cannot rival certain remarkable efforts, still we could undertake to turn out a version by our 'Eminent Hands' truer to Horace and to Nature than those which issued from the shops of Lintot and Dodsley. No one translator, perhaps, is entitled to put aside Francis; but the general run of translation is better than his. Had it fallen within our scheme to draw on the periodicals of the day, we might have further strengthened this view. Father Prout still lives in the translated thought and transfused grace of the poet of Tivoli. Spirat adhuc amor! And the occasional efforts of Bon Gaultier, Mr. Theodore Martin, induce us to hope that he will one day give to the world the complete fruit of a Horatian labour which has been continued long. An age of civilization, culture, and refinement, is just the age when Horace ought to be successfully naturalised amongst us, and his admirers well know that traits which he sketched in the Rome of Augustus come curiously to the surface in the London of to-day. are The task is so difficult of translating Horace in any way, that no sensible man will lay down rigid rules as to what 'ways admissible, and what not. Milton's Pyrrha, as a whole, is lovely, but who knows whether Milton himself did not try similar translations, and reject the results as unsatisfactory? Dryden's Tyrrhena regum progenies is paraphrastical in the extreme, but a version, literal and ugly, would have been just as great a departure from the Horatian reality in another direction. And in that case there would have been this additional disadvantage, that the literal failure would only have been a failure, the paraphrase is a fine poem. Our complaint of Mr. Newman is not that his rhythms are new, and that he despises the ordinary ornaments of our common poetry. We respect the rhythms as experiments, and we honour the exactness as exactness; we only assert, that it is but one quality, and that he has not yet proved that his novelty of workmanship is compatible with the ease, grace, and music, which are as much essentials as the downright meaning of phrases and words. We should say the same of Mr. Sewell, whose system, though not identical, is similar. But in reality he only seems to intend his Horace for a help to students, and as such we wish it every success. In fact, though we are ready to welcome excel lence, lence, whether in the literal, paraphrastical, or intermediate methods, the predominant caution that rises to our pen as we dismiss the subject is, that it is really translation, the reproduction of Horace himself, which is to be desired, and that the greater danger ultimately is his who thinks himself entitled to take liberties and to overlook details. An infusion of PreRaphaelitism would do no harm to this cognate art; and if we wanted to give a youthful aspirant some practical advice towards attaining more of the reality of the antique model in his copy, we should recommend to him a careful study of statues, coins, and gems. The polite arts, Cicero tells us, are all related. The ancient life is necessary to the understanding of the ancient poetry, and perhaps it really requires as much learning to translate Horace as to edit him. ART. III.-Recollections of the last Four Popes, and of Rome in their Times. By H. E. Cardinal Wiseman. London. 1858. THE HE last four popes, of whom Cardinal Wiseman undertakes to record his recollections, were remarkable men; they lived in critical times, and had to deal with circumstances of unusual difficulty; their talents and virtues rise high above the average standard; and among the 260 occupants of St. Peter's chair whom the Romish Church numbers in her annals, few have equalled and none have surpassed them in personal disinterestedness and rectitude of intention. It is unfortunate that the Cardinal adds so little to our knowledge of their characters and their history. In the early part of his career he has nothing to tell. Later in life, when his employments bring him into closer contact with the subjects of his biography, discretion, as he hints, seals his lips. Of their administrative capacity as indicated by the external aspect of the capital or the social condition of the people, he scarcely gives more information, although, as his motto boasts, he has received his nurture and education at Rome. This piece of good fortune he owed to Pius VII., who, soon after his restoration, re-established the Collegio Inglese, and among the first cargo of youths who were sent out to fill its long-deserted halls, was the future Cardinal Wiseman. In those days the facilities for travelling were comparatively few. The time of railways was yet far distant, that of steamboats was only just beginning. The 'overland route was rejected by the students, for, we are told, it required ap * Romæ nutriri mihi contigit atque doceri.'-Hor. Ep. II. 2. pliances, pliances, personal and material, scarcely compatible with the purposes of their journey.' Accordingly, on the 2nd October, 1818, they took their passage on board a merchantman bound for Leghorn, and at last arrived at Rome on the 18th of December. As soon as they were released by the Custom-house they drove to the English College. The rector, its sole occupant, was out; but they made themselves quite at home, took possession of the house, and eat up his dinner. Or as the Cardinal expresses it in more dignified style,— 'On returning from his walk, the excellent superior, the Rev. Robert Gradwell, found the first instalment of this important body (his future pupils) really installed in his house, to the extent of having converted to present use the preparations for his own frugal and solitary meal. The arrival of the English students (he continues) was an event of sufficient magnitude to be communicated to the Secretary of State, and the answer was that as many of the party as could be provided with the old and hallowed costume of the English College should be presented to the Holy Father within a few days. Among the more fortunate ones, owing to a favourable accident, was the present writer. Thus, not in the garb of a courtier bred in the palace halls, not by the privilege of dignity or station, but in the simple habit of a collegian, and through the claim of filial rights upon a common father, was an early approach secured to the feet of the good and holy Pius VII.'— (p. 17.) In the course of his collegiate career the student has occasional opportunities of being presented, to the Holy Father, and, further, the English College used frequently to direct their afternoon walks towards the Porta Pia, in the neighbourhood of which Pius used to take his brief allowance of exercise in winter, by the side of some lofty wall which sheltered him from the Tramontane' wind, and reflected the glow of the bright evening sun. 6 Such were the future Cardinal's opportunities of observing Pius VII., and he himself seems, in all sincerity, to think them considerable, although to us they scarcely seem to exceed those enjoyed by a chorister of Westminster for studying the character of his neighbour the Archbishop of Canterbury. But what his portraits want in distinctness of outline and fulness of detail, they make up in brilliancy of colouring. His volume is one uninterrupted strain of panegyric: we wish he were in as good humour with the public he addresses as he is with his subject and himself. But while he devotes a page to explaining how innocently the Romans become quarrelsome over their cups, and get drunk from the mere love of sobriety (p. 258), he takes offence at |