to-day, with the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, which he has sent me for a specimen, beginning with the 454th line of the Fourth Georgic,

Now, wild in woe, the miserable bard

Mourns his rapt bride; she, while along the stream,
From Aristæus' hot pursuit she fled

In headlong haste, saw not before her feet

A Hydra huge, beneath the spiring blade,

Guarding the banks; saw not---to death devote !
'Twas then the Dryad Choir, her sister train,

Rais'd piercing plaints, that loftiest mountains rang;
In tears the Rhodopean rocks dissolv'd,

And tall Pangeus wept, and (nurse of Mars)
Thrace, and the Getæ, and swift Hebrus' stream,

And Orithyra fair, Athenian maid.

He, soothing his sad love, thee, consort sweet,
Thee sole along the solitary shore,
Thee at advancing, thee at parting day,
Sang to his hollow shell. Th' infernal jaws
Of Tænarus, and gates of Dis profound,
And forests that with blackest terror gloom'd,
He pierc'd; and dar'd to face the shades of hell,
And the tremendous king, and ruthless souls,
Unknowing how to melt at mortal pray'rs.
But, at his strain arous'd, came flitting fast
Thin shadows from the bottomless abyss
Of Erebus, and empty shades of men
Now banish'd from the light of upper day,
In number countless as the birds that fly
By myriads to the woods, and hide them there,
Driv'n from the mountain tops by closing eve,
Or wint'ry show'rs. Here matrons, husbands, throng,
And spirits, now of life disburthen'd, once
Heroes magnanimous; unwedded maids,

And boys, and youths, erst on funereal piles

Laid 'fore their parents' eyes; whom circling bind
Cocytus' mire obscene, and squalid reeds,

And, with her sluggard wave, th' abhorred lake,

And Styx, with streams thrice three times circumfus'd;
Nor less the damned domes astounded stood,
And Death's Tartarean deeps; and Furies three,
With tangled locks of twisting adders blue;

And Cerberus, to silence charm'd, fast held

His yawning mouths threefold; and sudden paus'd
Ixion's indefatigable wheel.

And now, all perils with reverted step

Safe had he pass'd, and, on the verge of light,
Ransom'd Eurydice was now arriv'd,

Following behind (such law Proserpine gave)---
When here infatuate phrensy sudden seiz'd
Th' unwary lover; pardonable, I deem,
To pardon could the gods infernal know.
He stood; and now, on the last bounds of day,
All mem❜ry lost, alas! and soul-subdu'd,
On his Eurydice back-turning---gaz'd!
There lost was all his toil, and there infring'd
Th'ungentle tyrant's law! Thrice sounds were heard
To bellow through Avernus' floodless pool.
Then she:---And who me, miserable me!
And who, my Orpheus, thee, hath thus undone?
What madness seiz'd thy soul? See! once again,
Where me the iron destinies recall,

And death-like slumbers seize my swimming eyes!
And now farewell! By deepest night clos'd round,
Far am I borne away, and stretch to thee
My pow'rless hands! ah me! now thine no more!
She said; and sudden melted from his view
In flight dispers'd, as smoke dissolving blends
Into thin air; no longer him discerns
Clasping the shades in vain, and eager still
To speak innumerable things; nor more
Hell's boatman grants th' opposing lake to pass.

What should he do? or whither (twice by Fate
His bride now wrested) bend his wandering way?
How shall he weep, what magic tones employ,
To mitigate the manes? She the while,
Chill'd by the hand of death, sails far away.
While sev'n sad months in tedious order roll'd
(So fame records), beneath a sky-clad rock,
Beside forsaken Strymon's pensive stream,
Ceaseless he wept, his woes revolving sad
In gelid caverns, soothing tigers fierce,
And luring with his song the list'ning oaks.
Under a poplar tree, thus Philomel,

Moaning, bewails all lost her tender young,

Whom, callow in her nest, th' obdurate clown
Observing, thence in secret drew; but she
Sorrows all night, and, drooping on the bough,
Renews and still renews her doleful strain,
And fills with piteous plaints the regions round.
From that sad hour, no joys of Venus born,
No Hymeneal rites his constant soul

Could bend; but ice-bound Hyperborean climes,
And snowy Tanaïs, and Riphæan wastes,
To frost for ever married, wild he roam'd
In solitude forlorn; lamenting still
Eurydice for ever, ever, lost,

And Pluto's frustrate boon.---The Thracian dames

(Their love despis'd), amid the rites divine,

And Bacchanalian orgies of the night,

Wide o'er the fields the lacerated youth

Scatter'd. Nor less ev'n then, when Hebrus' stream

The head rude-torn from off the marble neck,
Amidst his eddying tide roll'd buoyant on;
Ev'n then, Eurydice! the voice itself
And torpid tongue, ah! sad Eurydice!
While linger'd still the parting spirit, call'd;
Eurydice! along the river's length,

The winding banks in dying echoes bear.

N° 61. SATURDAY, JULY 13.

Non missura cutem, nisi plena cruoris hirudo.
Nor will he leave his skin, until he drains,
Through every pore, the liquor of his veins.

THERE is no better proof of the difficulty that attends any species of composition, than the scarcity of successful specimens it affords, among a more than common multitude of trials. It is hard to point out an indisputably good translation in the language; whence it follows, that no mind of ordinary mould is equal to the performance, and that, to accomplish for the task, some certain qualities must conspire, which do rarely operate in conjunction. Why men should think humbly of an object which great geniuses have thought not unworthy to employ them, and on which original talents have been tried in vain-which, in the literary warfare, has proved too strong for the mighty, and which, circumscribed as its limits may seem, has held out against those conquerors by whom greater provinces have been subdued, it is not easy to conceive, unless it arise from the envy inspired by failures in original attempts, which derive some consolation from under-rating the glory acquired in less arduous undertakings. They are best answered, however, by a fact which contains in it something a little problematical: there never was a capital translator that was destitute of original

VOL. XLIII.

powers, while many an original genius is without the qualifications of a translator.

If translation were nothing more than a verbal exercise of the memory, and a mechanical accommodation of one part to another; if the letter alone, and not the spirit, were concerned; if the force of a man's mind existed separately in the words, and not in their combination; and if the sum of his meaning were always to be produced from the same denominations; the translator might stand in the middle, between the maker of an index, and the compiler of a vocabulary: but, if there be any intellectual chemistry employed in the transfusion of thoughts and images from one language into another; if, to represent, in all their vivacity, the pictures wrought in another's imagination, we must possess all the corresponding colours in our own; if it be necessary to feel nicely, to describe justly; if we must conceive fully, to copy faithfully; then there is a dignity in translation above the reach of common men; merit that belongs to it beyond what the original reflects; a merit peculiarly and eminently its own; and a mode of excellence not always within the grasp of original ability.

શ

But what is that circumstance in which consists the superior difficulty of translation; a difficulty which great wits and accomplished writers have rarely, if ever, surmounted; and before which genius itself falls often prostrate, and avows its imbecility? A greater felicity of invention, or power of imagination; a greater skill in combining, or force in colouring; a greater expansion of thought, or affluence of materials, it cannot require than works of original genius: to these belong whatever hold the highest place and character in the order of intellectual endowments; whatever is paramount and