It needs little reflection to see that it
is to one or other of these three peculiarities that the
failure of the Elizabethan writers of classical metres
must be ascribed.
is to one or other of these three peculiarities that the
failure of the Elizabethan writers of classical metres
must be ascribed.
Catullus - Ellis - Poems and Fragments
The poems and fragments of Catullus / translated into the metres
of the original by Robinson Ellis.
Catullus, Gaius Valerius. London : J. Murray, 1871.
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? THE
POEMS AND FRAGMENTS
OF
CATULLUS.
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? A
L/VT
THE
POEMS AND FRAGMENTS
CATULLUS,
TRANSLATED IN THE METRES OF THE ORIGINAL
BY
ROBINSON ELLIS,
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD,
PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
LONDON :
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1871.
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? LONDON I
BRADBCRY, EVAN'S, AND CO. , PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
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? TO ALFRED TENNYSON.
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? PREFACE.
THE idea of translating Catullus in the original
metres adopted by the poet himself was suggested to
me many years ago by the admirable, though, in
England, insufficiently known, version of Theodor
Heyse (Berlin, 1855). My first attempts were
modelled upon him, and were so unsuccessful that
I dropt the idea for some time altogether. In 1868,
the year following the publication of my larger critical
edition * of Catullus, I again took up the experiment,
and translated into English glyconics the first Hymen-
aeal, Collis o Heliconid, Tennyson's Alcaics and
Hendecasyllables had appeared in the interval, and
had suggested to me the new principle on which I
was to go to work. It was not sufficient to reproduce
the ancient metres, unless the ancient quantity was
reproduced also. Almost all the modern writers of
classical metre had contented themselves with making
an accented syllable long, an unaccented short ; the
* The translation follows this edition (Oxford, 1867), in the
constitution of the text, as well as in the sectional division of the
poems.
b2
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? viii PREFACE.
most familiar specimens of hexameter, Longfellow's
Evangeline and dough's Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich
and Amours de Voyage were written on this principle,
and, as a rule, stopped there. They almost in-
variably disregarded position, perhaps the most im-
portant element of quantity. In the first line of
Evangeline
This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
there are no less than five violations of position, to
say nothing of the shortening of a syllable so distinctly
long as the i in primeval. Mr. Swinburne, in his
Sapphics and Hendecasyllables, while writing on a
manifestly artistic conception of those metres, and, in
my judgment, proving their possibility for modern
purposes by the superior rhythmical effect which a
classically trained ear enabled him to make in hand-
ling them, neglects position as a rule, though his nice
sense of metre leads him at times to observe it, and
uniformly rejects any approach to the harsh combina-
tions indulged in by other writers. The nearest
approach to quantitative hexameters with which I am
acquainted in modern English writers is the Andro-
meda of Mr. Kingsley, a poem which has produced
little effect, but is interesting as a step to what may
fairly be called a new development of the metre. For
the experiments of the Elizabethan writers, Sir Philip
Sidney and others, by that strange perversity which
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? PREFACE. ix
so often dominates literature, were as decidedly un-
successful from an accentual, as the modern experi-
ments from a quantitative point of view. Sir Philip
Sidney has given in his Arcadia specimens of hexa-
meters, elegiacs, sapphics, asclepiads, anacreontics,
hendecasyllables. The following elegiacs will serve
as a sample.
Unto a caitif wretch, whom long affliction holdtth,
A nd now fully beliefs help to bee quite perished ;
Grant yet, grant yet a look, to the last moment of his anguish,
O you (alas so I finde) cans of his onely mine :
Dread not auohit (0 goodly cruel) that pitie may enter
Into thy heart by the sight of this Epistle I send :
And so refuse to behold of these strange wounds the redtall,
Lest it might m 1 allure home to thyself to return.
In these the classical laws of position are most care-
fully observed ; every dactyl ending in a consonant is
followed by a word beginning with a vowel or h
affliction holdeth, moment of his anguish, cause 6f his
onely ; affliction -wasteth, moment of his dolour, cause of
his dreary, would have been as impossible to Sir
Philip Sidney as moer6r tenebat, momentd per curae,
causa, vel sola in a Latin writer of hexameters. Simi-
larly where the dactyl is incided after the second
syllable, the third syllable beginning a new word, the
utmost care is taken that that word shall begin not
only with a syllable essentially short, but, when the
second syllable ends in a consonant, with a vowel :
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? x PREFACE.
of this epistle, but not of this disaster, still less of this
direction. The other element of quantity is less
rigidly defined; for (i) syllables strictly long, as /,
thy, so, are allowed to be short; (2) syllables made
long by the accent falling upon them are in some
cases shortened, as rulne, perished, cruel ; (3) syllables
which the absence of the accent only allows to be long
in thesi, are, in virtue of the classical laws of position,
permitted to rank as long elsewhere moment of his,
of this epistle. It needs little reflection to see that it
is to one or other of these three peculiarities that the
failure of the Elizabethan writers of classical metres
must be ascribed. Pentameters like
Gratefulness, sweetness, holy love, hearty regard,
That the delights of life shall be to him dolorous,
And even in that love shall I reserve him a spite ;
sapphics like
Are then humane mindes privileged so meanly
As that hateful death can abridg them of power
With the vow of truth to record to all worlds
That we bee her spoils ?
hexameters like
fire no liquor can cool : NeptiinJs realm would not avail us.
Nurs inward maladies, which have not scope to bee breath 1 d out.
Oh no no, worthie shepherd, worth can never enter a title ;
are too alien from ordinary pronunciation to please
either an average reader or a classically trained
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? PREFACE. xi
student. The same may be said of the translation
into English hexameters of the two first Eclogues of
Virgil, appended by William Webbe to his Discourse
of English Poetrie (1586, recently reprinted by Mr.
Arber). Here is his version of Eel. I. , i TO.
MELIBAEUS.
Tityrus, happilie then lyste tumbling under a beech tree,
All in a fine oate pipe these sweete songs lustilie c haunting :
We, poore soules goe to wracke, and from these coastes be remoued,
And fro our pastures swecte : thou Tityr, at ease in a shade plott
Makst thicke groues to resound with songes of brave Amarillis.
O Melibaeus, he was no man, but a God who releeude me :
Euer he shalbe my God : from this same Sheepcot his alters
Neuer, a tender lambe shall want, with blood to bedew them.
This good gift did he giue, to my steeres thus freelie to wander,
And to my selfe (thou. seest) on pipe to resound what I listed.
ib. 50 56.
Here no unwoonted foode shall grieue young theaues who be laded,
Nor the infections foule of neighbours flocke shall annoie them.
Happie olde man. In shaddowy bankes and coole prettie places,
Heere by the quainted floodes and springs most holie remaining.
Here, these quicksets fresh which lands seuer out fro thy neighbors
And greene willow rowes which Hiblae bees doo rejoice in,
Off fine whistring noise, shall bring sweete sleepe to thy sences.
The following stanzas are from a Sapphic ode into
which Webbe translated, or as we should say, trans-
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? xii PREFACE.
posed the fourth Eclogue of Spenser's Sheepheardes
Calendar.
Say, behold did ye euer her Angelikeface,
Like to Phoebe fayre ? or her heauenly hauour
And the princelike grace that in her remaineth ?
haueyee the like seene ?
Vnto that place Caliope dooth high her,
Where my Goddesse shines : to the same the Muser
After her -with sweete Violines about them
cheerefully tracing.
All ye Sheepheardes maides that about the greene dwell,
Speede ye there to her grace, but among ye take he;de
All be Virgins pure that aproche to deck her,
dutie requireth.
When ye shall present ye before her in place,
See ye not your selues doo demeane too rudely :
Bynd the fillets ; and to be fate the waste gyrt
fast with a tawdryne.
It needs little reflection to see that it
is to one or other of these three peculiarities that the
failure of the Elizabethan writers of classical metres
must be ascribed. Pentameters like
Gratefulness, sweetness, holy love, hearty regard,
That the delights of life shall be to him dolorous,
And even in that love shall I reserve him a spite ;
sapphics like
Are then humane mindes privileged so meanly
As that hateful death can abridg them of power
With the vow of truth to record to all worlds
That we bee her spoils ?
hexameters like
fire no liquor can cool : NeptiinJs realm would not avail us.
Nurs inward maladies, which have not scope to bee breath 1 d out.
Oh no no, worthie shepherd, worth can never enter a title ;
are too alien from ordinary pronunciation to please
either an average reader or a classically trained
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? PREFACE. xi
student. The same may be said of the translation
into English hexameters of the two first Eclogues of
Virgil, appended by William Webbe to his Discourse
of English Poetrie (1586, recently reprinted by Mr.
Arber). Here is his version of Eel. I. , i TO.
MELIBAEUS.
Tityrus, happilie then lyste tumbling under a beech tree,
All in a fine oate pipe these sweete songs lustilie c haunting :
We, poore soules goe to wracke, and from these coastes be remoued,
And fro our pastures swecte : thou Tityr, at ease in a shade plott
Makst thicke groues to resound with songes of brave Amarillis.
O Melibaeus, he was no man, but a God who releeude me :
Euer he shalbe my God : from this same Sheepcot his alters
Neuer, a tender lambe shall want, with blood to bedew them.
This good gift did he giue, to my steeres thus freelie to wander,
And to my selfe (thou. seest) on pipe to resound what I listed.
ib. 50 56.
Here no unwoonted foode shall grieue young theaues who be laded,
Nor the infections foule of neighbours flocke shall annoie them.
Happie olde man. In shaddowy bankes and coole prettie places,
Heere by the quainted floodes and springs most holie remaining.
Here, these quicksets fresh which lands seuer out fro thy neighbors
And greene willow rowes which Hiblae bees doo rejoice in,
Off fine whistring noise, shall bring sweete sleepe to thy sences.
The following stanzas are from a Sapphic ode into
which Webbe translated, or as we should say, trans-
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? xii PREFACE.
posed the fourth Eclogue of Spenser's Sheepheardes
Calendar.
Say, behold did ye euer her Angelikeface,
Like to Phoebe fayre ? or her heauenly hauour
And the princelike grace that in her remaineth ?
haueyee the like seene ?
Vnto that place Caliope dooth high her,
Where my Goddesse shines : to the same the Muser
After her -with sweete Violines about them
cheerefully tracing.
All ye Sheepheardes maides that about the greene dwell,
Speede ye there to her grace, but among ye take he;de
All be Virgins pure that aproche to deck her,
dutie requireth.
When ye shall present ye before her in place,
See ye not your selues doo demeane too rudely :
Bynd the fillets ; and to be fate the waste gyrt
fast with a tawdryne.
Bring the Pinckes therewith many Gellifloivres sweete,
And the Cullambynes : let vs haue the Wynesops,
With the Coronation that among the loue laddes
wontes to be worne much.
Daffadowndillies all a long the ground strowe,
And the Cowslyppe with a prety paunce let heere lye.
Kyngcuppe and Lillies so beloude of all men
and the deluceflowre.
There are many faults in these verses ; over quaint-
nesses of language, constructions impossible in English,
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? PREFACE. xiii
quantities of doubtful correctness, harsh elisions, for
Webbe has tried even elisions. Yet, if I may trust
my judgment, all of them can still be read with plea-
sure ; the sapphics may almost be called a success.
This is even more true of metres, where these faults
are less perceptible or more easily avoided, for in-
stance, Asclepiads. Take the verses on solitariness,
Arcadia, B. II. fin.
O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness !
O how much I do like your solitariness !
Where man's mind hath a freed consideration
Of goodness to receive lovely direction.
or the hen decasyllabics immediately preceding,
Reason tell me thy minde, if here be reason,
In this strange violence, to make resistance,
Where sweet graces erect the stately banner.
It is obvious that a very little more trouble would
have converted these into very perfect and very
pleasing poems. Had Sir Philip Sidney written every
asclepiad on the model of Where man's mind hath a
freed consideration, every hendecasyllable like Where
sweet graces erect the stately banner, the adjustment of
accent and quantity thus attained might, I think, have
induced greater poets than he to make the experiment
on a larger scale. But neither he nor his contem-
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? xiv PREFACE.
poraries were permitted to grasp as a principle a
regularity which they sometimes secured by chance ;
nor, so far as I am aware, have the various revivals of
ancient metre in this country or Germany in any case
consistently carried out the whole theory, without
which the reproduction is partial, and cannot look
for a more than partial success. Even the four
specimens given in the posthumous edition of dough's
poems, two of them elegiac, one alcaic, one in
hexameters, though professedly constructed on a
quantitative basis, and, in one instance (Trunks the
forest yielded, with gums ambrosial oozing, <&c. ) com-
bining legitimate quantity (in which accent and
position are alike observed) with illegitimate (in
which position is observed, but accent disregarded)
into a not unpleasing rhythm, cannot be considered as
more than imperfect realizations of the true positional
principle. Tennyson's three specimens are, at least
in English, still unique. It is to be hoped that he
will not suffer them to remain so. Systems of Gly-
conics and Asclepiads are, if I mistake not, easily
manageable, and are only thought foreign to the
genius of our language because they have never been
written on strict principles of art by a really great
master.
What, then, are the rules on which such rhythms
become possible? They are, briefly, these: (i) ac-
cented syllables, as a general rule, are long, though
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? PREFACE. xv
some syllables which count as long need not be
accented, as in
All that on earth' 's leas blooms, what blossoms Thessaly nursing,
blossoms, though only accented on the first syllable,
counts for a spondee, the shortness of the second o
being partly helped out by the two consonants which
follow it; partly by the fact that the syllable is in
thesi ; (2) the laws of position are to be observed,
according to the general rules of classical prosody :
(a) dactyls terminating in a consonant like beautiful,
bounteous, or ending in a double vowel or a diphthong
like all of you, surely may, come to thee, must be
followed by a word beginning with a vowel or y or h ;
dactyls terminating in a vowel or y, like slippery,
should be followed, except in rare cases, by words
beginning with a consonant; trochees, whether com-
posed of one word or more, should, if ending in a
consonant, be followed by a vowel, if ending in
the vowel a, by a consonant, thus, planted around
not pla? tted beneath, Aurora the sun's not Aurora
a sun's (see however, Ixiv. 253), but unto a wood, any
again, sorry at all, you be amused, (b) Syllables made
up of a vowel followed by two or more consonants,
each of which is distinctly heard in pronunciation, as
long, sins, part, band, waits, souls, ears, must, heart,
bright, strength, end, and, rapt, hers, dealt, moment,
bosoms, answers, mountains, bearest, tumbling, giving,
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? xvi PREFACE.
coming, harbour/;;^, dimcu/t, imminenf, stratagems,
utterance, happiest, tremblingly, can never rank as
short, even if unaccented and followed by a vowel,
h or y. Thus, to go back to Longfellow's line,
This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
forest, murmuring, pines and the, are all inadmissible.
But where a vowel is followed by two consonants, one
of which is unheard or only heard slightly, as in accuse,
sh#//, awemble, dissemble, kindm, compass, affect,
appear, annoy, or when the second or third con-
sonant is a liquid, as in betray, beslime, besmear, depress,
dethrone, agree, the vowel preceding is so much more
short than long as to be regularly admissible as short,
rarely admissible as long. On this principle I have
allowed disorderly, tendntlSss, heavenly, to rank as
dactyls.
These rules are after all only an outline, and per-
haps can never be made more. It will be observed
that they are more negative than positive. The reason
of this is not far to seek. The main difference between
my verses and those of other contemporary writers
the one point on which I claim for myself the merit
of novelty is the strict observance throughout of the
rules of position. But the strict observance of posi-
tion is in effect the strict avoidance of unclassical
collocations of syllables : it is almost wholly negative.
To illustrate my meaning I will instance the poems
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? PREFACE. xvii
written in pure iambics, the Phaselus ille and Quis hoc
potest uidere. Heyse translates the first line of the
former of these poems by
Die Gahotte, die ihr schauet, Hebe Herrn,
and this would be a fair representation of a pure
iambic line, according to the views of most German
and most English writers. Yet not only is Die no short
syllable, but ihr, itself long, is made more hopelessly
long by preceding three consonants in schauet, just as
the last syllable of schauet, although in itself short,
loses its right to stand for a true short in being
followed by the first consonant of liebe. My own
translation,
The puny pinnace yonder you, my friends, discern,
whatever its defects, is at least a pretty exact repre-
sentation of a pure iambic line. xxix. 6-8, are thus
translated by Heyse :
Und jener soil in Uebermuthes Ueberfltiss
Von einem Bett zum andern in die Runde gehn ?
by me thus,
Shall he in 6'er-assumption, 6 'er --repletion he,
Sedately saunter every dainty couch along?
The difference is purely negative ; I have bound
myself to avoid certain positions forbidden by the
laws of ancient prosody. To some I may seem to
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? xviii PREFACE.
have lost in vigour by the process ; yet I believe the
sense of triumph over the difficulties of our language,
the satisfaction of approaching in a novel and per-
ceptibly felt manner one of those excellences which,
as much as anything, contributes to the per-
manent charm of Catullus, his dainty versification,
will more than compensate for any shortcomings
which the difficulty of the task has made inevitable.
The same may be said of the elaborately artificial
poem to Camerius (c. lv. ), and the almost unapproach-
able Attis (c. Ixiii. ). Here, at least half the interest
lies in the varied turns of the metre ; if these can be
represented with anything like faithfulness, the gain
in exactness of prosody is enough, in my judgment,
to counterbalance the possible loss of freedom in
expression.
There is another circumstance which tends to
make modern rules of prosody necessarily negative.
Quantity, in English revivals of ancient metre, depends
not only on position, but on accent. But accent
varies greatly in different words ; heavy level ever
cometh any, have the same accent as empty evil either
boometh penny ; but the first syllable in the former
set of words is lighter than in the latter. Hence,
though accented, they may, on occasion, be con-
sidered and used as short ; as, on the same principle,
dolorotis stratagem echoeth family, usually dactyls,
may, on occasion, become tribrachs. But how lay
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? PREFACE. xix
\
down any positive rule in a matter necessarily so fluc-
tuating? We cannot. All we can do is to refuse
admission as short syllables to any heavier accented
syllable. Here, then, much must be left to individual
discretion. My translation of the Attis will best
show my own feeling in the matter. But I am fully
aware that in this respect I have fallen far short of
consistency. I have made any sometimes short,
more often long ; to, usually short, is lengthened in
Ixi. 26, Ixvii. 19, Ixviii. 143; with is similarly long,
though not followed by a consonant, in Ixi. 36 ; given
is long in xxviii. 7, short in xi. 17, Ixiv. 213; are is
short in Ixvii. 14 ; and more generally many syllables
allowed to pass for short in the Attis are elsewhere
long. Nor have I scrupled to forsake the ancient
quantity in proper names ; following Heyse, I have
made the first syllable of Verona short in xxxv. 3,
Ixvii. 34, although it retains its proper quantity in
Ixviii. 27. Again, Pheneos is a dactyl in Ixviii. in,
while Satrachus is an anapaest in xcv. 5. In many
of these instances I have acted consciously ; if the
writers of Greece and Rome allowed many syllables
to be doubtful, and almost as a principle avoid per-
fect uniformity in the quantity of proper names, a
greater freedom may not unfairly be claimed by their
modern imitators. If Catullus could write Pharsaliam
coeunt, Pharsdlia regna frequentant, similar license
may surely be extended to me. I believe, indeed,
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? xx PREFACE.
that nothing in my translation is as violent as the
double quantity just mentioned in Catullus ; but if
there is, I would remind my readers of Goethe's
answer to the boy who told him he had been guilty of
a hexameter with seven feet, and applying the re-
mark to any seeming irregularities in my own transla-
tion would say, Lass die Bestie stehen.
It would not be difficult to swell this Preface by
enlarging on the novelty of the attempt, and indirectly
panegyrising my own undertaking. I doubt whether
any real advantage would thus be gained. If I have
merely produced an elaborate failure, however much
I might expatiate on the principles which guided me,
my work would be an elaborate failure still. I shall
therefore say no more, and shall be contented if I
please the, even in this classically trained country, too
limited number of readers who can really hear with
their ears if, to use the borrowed language of a great
poet, I succeed in making myself vocal to the intelli-
gent alone.
? ?
of the original by Robinson Ellis.
Catullus, Gaius Valerius. London : J. Murray, 1871.
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? THE
POEMS AND FRAGMENTS
OF
CATULLUS.
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? A
L/VT
THE
POEMS AND FRAGMENTS
CATULLUS,
TRANSLATED IN THE METRES OF THE ORIGINAL
BY
ROBINSON ELLIS,
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD,
PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
LONDON :
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1871.
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? LONDON I
BRADBCRY, EVAN'S, AND CO. , PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
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? TO ALFRED TENNYSON.
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? PREFACE.
THE idea of translating Catullus in the original
metres adopted by the poet himself was suggested to
me many years ago by the admirable, though, in
England, insufficiently known, version of Theodor
Heyse (Berlin, 1855). My first attempts were
modelled upon him, and were so unsuccessful that
I dropt the idea for some time altogether. In 1868,
the year following the publication of my larger critical
edition * of Catullus, I again took up the experiment,
and translated into English glyconics the first Hymen-
aeal, Collis o Heliconid, Tennyson's Alcaics and
Hendecasyllables had appeared in the interval, and
had suggested to me the new principle on which I
was to go to work. It was not sufficient to reproduce
the ancient metres, unless the ancient quantity was
reproduced also. Almost all the modern writers of
classical metre had contented themselves with making
an accented syllable long, an unaccented short ; the
* The translation follows this edition (Oxford, 1867), in the
constitution of the text, as well as in the sectional division of the
poems.
b2
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? viii PREFACE.
most familiar specimens of hexameter, Longfellow's
Evangeline and dough's Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich
and Amours de Voyage were written on this principle,
and, as a rule, stopped there. They almost in-
variably disregarded position, perhaps the most im-
portant element of quantity. In the first line of
Evangeline
This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
there are no less than five violations of position, to
say nothing of the shortening of a syllable so distinctly
long as the i in primeval. Mr. Swinburne, in his
Sapphics and Hendecasyllables, while writing on a
manifestly artistic conception of those metres, and, in
my judgment, proving their possibility for modern
purposes by the superior rhythmical effect which a
classically trained ear enabled him to make in hand-
ling them, neglects position as a rule, though his nice
sense of metre leads him at times to observe it, and
uniformly rejects any approach to the harsh combina-
tions indulged in by other writers. The nearest
approach to quantitative hexameters with which I am
acquainted in modern English writers is the Andro-
meda of Mr. Kingsley, a poem which has produced
little effect, but is interesting as a step to what may
fairly be called a new development of the metre. For
the experiments of the Elizabethan writers, Sir Philip
Sidney and others, by that strange perversity which
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? PREFACE. ix
so often dominates literature, were as decidedly un-
successful from an accentual, as the modern experi-
ments from a quantitative point of view. Sir Philip
Sidney has given in his Arcadia specimens of hexa-
meters, elegiacs, sapphics, asclepiads, anacreontics,
hendecasyllables. The following elegiacs will serve
as a sample.
Unto a caitif wretch, whom long affliction holdtth,
A nd now fully beliefs help to bee quite perished ;
Grant yet, grant yet a look, to the last moment of his anguish,
O you (alas so I finde) cans of his onely mine :
Dread not auohit (0 goodly cruel) that pitie may enter
Into thy heart by the sight of this Epistle I send :
And so refuse to behold of these strange wounds the redtall,
Lest it might m 1 allure home to thyself to return.
In these the classical laws of position are most care-
fully observed ; every dactyl ending in a consonant is
followed by a word beginning with a vowel or h
affliction holdeth, moment of his anguish, cause 6f his
onely ; affliction -wasteth, moment of his dolour, cause of
his dreary, would have been as impossible to Sir
Philip Sidney as moer6r tenebat, momentd per curae,
causa, vel sola in a Latin writer of hexameters. Simi-
larly where the dactyl is incided after the second
syllable, the third syllable beginning a new word, the
utmost care is taken that that word shall begin not
only with a syllable essentially short, but, when the
second syllable ends in a consonant, with a vowel :
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? x PREFACE.
of this epistle, but not of this disaster, still less of this
direction. The other element of quantity is less
rigidly defined; for (i) syllables strictly long, as /,
thy, so, are allowed to be short; (2) syllables made
long by the accent falling upon them are in some
cases shortened, as rulne, perished, cruel ; (3) syllables
which the absence of the accent only allows to be long
in thesi, are, in virtue of the classical laws of position,
permitted to rank as long elsewhere moment of his,
of this epistle. It needs little reflection to see that it
is to one or other of these three peculiarities that the
failure of the Elizabethan writers of classical metres
must be ascribed. Pentameters like
Gratefulness, sweetness, holy love, hearty regard,
That the delights of life shall be to him dolorous,
And even in that love shall I reserve him a spite ;
sapphics like
Are then humane mindes privileged so meanly
As that hateful death can abridg them of power
With the vow of truth to record to all worlds
That we bee her spoils ?
hexameters like
fire no liquor can cool : NeptiinJs realm would not avail us.
Nurs inward maladies, which have not scope to bee breath 1 d out.
Oh no no, worthie shepherd, worth can never enter a title ;
are too alien from ordinary pronunciation to please
either an average reader or a classically trained
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? PREFACE. xi
student. The same may be said of the translation
into English hexameters of the two first Eclogues of
Virgil, appended by William Webbe to his Discourse
of English Poetrie (1586, recently reprinted by Mr.
Arber). Here is his version of Eel. I. , i TO.
MELIBAEUS.
Tityrus, happilie then lyste tumbling under a beech tree,
All in a fine oate pipe these sweete songs lustilie c haunting :
We, poore soules goe to wracke, and from these coastes be remoued,
And fro our pastures swecte : thou Tityr, at ease in a shade plott
Makst thicke groues to resound with songes of brave Amarillis.
O Melibaeus, he was no man, but a God who releeude me :
Euer he shalbe my God : from this same Sheepcot his alters
Neuer, a tender lambe shall want, with blood to bedew them.
This good gift did he giue, to my steeres thus freelie to wander,
And to my selfe (thou. seest) on pipe to resound what I listed.
ib. 50 56.
Here no unwoonted foode shall grieue young theaues who be laded,
Nor the infections foule of neighbours flocke shall annoie them.
Happie olde man. In shaddowy bankes and coole prettie places,
Heere by the quainted floodes and springs most holie remaining.
Here, these quicksets fresh which lands seuer out fro thy neighbors
And greene willow rowes which Hiblae bees doo rejoice in,
Off fine whistring noise, shall bring sweete sleepe to thy sences.
The following stanzas are from a Sapphic ode into
which Webbe translated, or as we should say, trans-
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? xii PREFACE.
posed the fourth Eclogue of Spenser's Sheepheardes
Calendar.
Say, behold did ye euer her Angelikeface,
Like to Phoebe fayre ? or her heauenly hauour
And the princelike grace that in her remaineth ?
haueyee the like seene ?
Vnto that place Caliope dooth high her,
Where my Goddesse shines : to the same the Muser
After her -with sweete Violines about them
cheerefully tracing.
All ye Sheepheardes maides that about the greene dwell,
Speede ye there to her grace, but among ye take he;de
All be Virgins pure that aproche to deck her,
dutie requireth.
When ye shall present ye before her in place,
See ye not your selues doo demeane too rudely :
Bynd the fillets ; and to be fate the waste gyrt
fast with a tawdryne.
It needs little reflection to see that it
is to one or other of these three peculiarities that the
failure of the Elizabethan writers of classical metres
must be ascribed. Pentameters like
Gratefulness, sweetness, holy love, hearty regard,
That the delights of life shall be to him dolorous,
And even in that love shall I reserve him a spite ;
sapphics like
Are then humane mindes privileged so meanly
As that hateful death can abridg them of power
With the vow of truth to record to all worlds
That we bee her spoils ?
hexameters like
fire no liquor can cool : NeptiinJs realm would not avail us.
Nurs inward maladies, which have not scope to bee breath 1 d out.
Oh no no, worthie shepherd, worth can never enter a title ;
are too alien from ordinary pronunciation to please
either an average reader or a classically trained
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? PREFACE. xi
student. The same may be said of the translation
into English hexameters of the two first Eclogues of
Virgil, appended by William Webbe to his Discourse
of English Poetrie (1586, recently reprinted by Mr.
Arber). Here is his version of Eel. I. , i TO.
MELIBAEUS.
Tityrus, happilie then lyste tumbling under a beech tree,
All in a fine oate pipe these sweete songs lustilie c haunting :
We, poore soules goe to wracke, and from these coastes be remoued,
And fro our pastures swecte : thou Tityr, at ease in a shade plott
Makst thicke groues to resound with songes of brave Amarillis.
O Melibaeus, he was no man, but a God who releeude me :
Euer he shalbe my God : from this same Sheepcot his alters
Neuer, a tender lambe shall want, with blood to bedew them.
This good gift did he giue, to my steeres thus freelie to wander,
And to my selfe (thou. seest) on pipe to resound what I listed.
ib. 50 56.
Here no unwoonted foode shall grieue young theaues who be laded,
Nor the infections foule of neighbours flocke shall annoie them.
Happie olde man. In shaddowy bankes and coole prettie places,
Heere by the quainted floodes and springs most holie remaining.
Here, these quicksets fresh which lands seuer out fro thy neighbors
And greene willow rowes which Hiblae bees doo rejoice in,
Off fine whistring noise, shall bring sweete sleepe to thy sences.
The following stanzas are from a Sapphic ode into
which Webbe translated, or as we should say, trans-
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? xii PREFACE.
posed the fourth Eclogue of Spenser's Sheepheardes
Calendar.
Say, behold did ye euer her Angelikeface,
Like to Phoebe fayre ? or her heauenly hauour
And the princelike grace that in her remaineth ?
haueyee the like seene ?
Vnto that place Caliope dooth high her,
Where my Goddesse shines : to the same the Muser
After her -with sweete Violines about them
cheerefully tracing.
All ye Sheepheardes maides that about the greene dwell,
Speede ye there to her grace, but among ye take he;de
All be Virgins pure that aproche to deck her,
dutie requireth.
When ye shall present ye before her in place,
See ye not your selues doo demeane too rudely :
Bynd the fillets ; and to be fate the waste gyrt
fast with a tawdryne.
Bring the Pinckes therewith many Gellifloivres sweete,
And the Cullambynes : let vs haue the Wynesops,
With the Coronation that among the loue laddes
wontes to be worne much.
Daffadowndillies all a long the ground strowe,
And the Cowslyppe with a prety paunce let heere lye.
Kyngcuppe and Lillies so beloude of all men
and the deluceflowre.
There are many faults in these verses ; over quaint-
nesses of language, constructions impossible in English,
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? PREFACE. xiii
quantities of doubtful correctness, harsh elisions, for
Webbe has tried even elisions. Yet, if I may trust
my judgment, all of them can still be read with plea-
sure ; the sapphics may almost be called a success.
This is even more true of metres, where these faults
are less perceptible or more easily avoided, for in-
stance, Asclepiads. Take the verses on solitariness,
Arcadia, B. II. fin.
O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness !
O how much I do like your solitariness !
Where man's mind hath a freed consideration
Of goodness to receive lovely direction.
or the hen decasyllabics immediately preceding,
Reason tell me thy minde, if here be reason,
In this strange violence, to make resistance,
Where sweet graces erect the stately banner.
It is obvious that a very little more trouble would
have converted these into very perfect and very
pleasing poems. Had Sir Philip Sidney written every
asclepiad on the model of Where man's mind hath a
freed consideration, every hendecasyllable like Where
sweet graces erect the stately banner, the adjustment of
accent and quantity thus attained might, I think, have
induced greater poets than he to make the experiment
on a larger scale. But neither he nor his contem-
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? xiv PREFACE.
poraries were permitted to grasp as a principle a
regularity which they sometimes secured by chance ;
nor, so far as I am aware, have the various revivals of
ancient metre in this country or Germany in any case
consistently carried out the whole theory, without
which the reproduction is partial, and cannot look
for a more than partial success. Even the four
specimens given in the posthumous edition of dough's
poems, two of them elegiac, one alcaic, one in
hexameters, though professedly constructed on a
quantitative basis, and, in one instance (Trunks the
forest yielded, with gums ambrosial oozing, <&c. ) com-
bining legitimate quantity (in which accent and
position are alike observed) with illegitimate (in
which position is observed, but accent disregarded)
into a not unpleasing rhythm, cannot be considered as
more than imperfect realizations of the true positional
principle. Tennyson's three specimens are, at least
in English, still unique. It is to be hoped that he
will not suffer them to remain so. Systems of Gly-
conics and Asclepiads are, if I mistake not, easily
manageable, and are only thought foreign to the
genius of our language because they have never been
written on strict principles of art by a really great
master.
What, then, are the rules on which such rhythms
become possible? They are, briefly, these: (i) ac-
cented syllables, as a general rule, are long, though
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? PREFACE. xv
some syllables which count as long need not be
accented, as in
All that on earth' 's leas blooms, what blossoms Thessaly nursing,
blossoms, though only accented on the first syllable,
counts for a spondee, the shortness of the second o
being partly helped out by the two consonants which
follow it; partly by the fact that the syllable is in
thesi ; (2) the laws of position are to be observed,
according to the general rules of classical prosody :
(a) dactyls terminating in a consonant like beautiful,
bounteous, or ending in a double vowel or a diphthong
like all of you, surely may, come to thee, must be
followed by a word beginning with a vowel or y or h ;
dactyls terminating in a vowel or y, like slippery,
should be followed, except in rare cases, by words
beginning with a consonant; trochees, whether com-
posed of one word or more, should, if ending in a
consonant, be followed by a vowel, if ending in
the vowel a, by a consonant, thus, planted around
not pla? tted beneath, Aurora the sun's not Aurora
a sun's (see however, Ixiv. 253), but unto a wood, any
again, sorry at all, you be amused, (b) Syllables made
up of a vowel followed by two or more consonants,
each of which is distinctly heard in pronunciation, as
long, sins, part, band, waits, souls, ears, must, heart,
bright, strength, end, and, rapt, hers, dealt, moment,
bosoms, answers, mountains, bearest, tumbling, giving,
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? xvi PREFACE.
coming, harbour/;;^, dimcu/t, imminenf, stratagems,
utterance, happiest, tremblingly, can never rank as
short, even if unaccented and followed by a vowel,
h or y. Thus, to go back to Longfellow's line,
This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
forest, murmuring, pines and the, are all inadmissible.
But where a vowel is followed by two consonants, one
of which is unheard or only heard slightly, as in accuse,
sh#//, awemble, dissemble, kindm, compass, affect,
appear, annoy, or when the second or third con-
sonant is a liquid, as in betray, beslime, besmear, depress,
dethrone, agree, the vowel preceding is so much more
short than long as to be regularly admissible as short,
rarely admissible as long. On this principle I have
allowed disorderly, tendntlSss, heavenly, to rank as
dactyls.
These rules are after all only an outline, and per-
haps can never be made more. It will be observed
that they are more negative than positive. The reason
of this is not far to seek. The main difference between
my verses and those of other contemporary writers
the one point on which I claim for myself the merit
of novelty is the strict observance throughout of the
rules of position. But the strict observance of posi-
tion is in effect the strict avoidance of unclassical
collocations of syllables : it is almost wholly negative.
To illustrate my meaning I will instance the poems
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? PREFACE. xvii
written in pure iambics, the Phaselus ille and Quis hoc
potest uidere. Heyse translates the first line of the
former of these poems by
Die Gahotte, die ihr schauet, Hebe Herrn,
and this would be a fair representation of a pure
iambic line, according to the views of most German
and most English writers. Yet not only is Die no short
syllable, but ihr, itself long, is made more hopelessly
long by preceding three consonants in schauet, just as
the last syllable of schauet, although in itself short,
loses its right to stand for a true short in being
followed by the first consonant of liebe. My own
translation,
The puny pinnace yonder you, my friends, discern,
whatever its defects, is at least a pretty exact repre-
sentation of a pure iambic line. xxix. 6-8, are thus
translated by Heyse :
Und jener soil in Uebermuthes Ueberfltiss
Von einem Bett zum andern in die Runde gehn ?
by me thus,
Shall he in 6'er-assumption, 6 'er --repletion he,
Sedately saunter every dainty couch along?
The difference is purely negative ; I have bound
myself to avoid certain positions forbidden by the
laws of ancient prosody. To some I may seem to
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? xviii PREFACE.
have lost in vigour by the process ; yet I believe the
sense of triumph over the difficulties of our language,
the satisfaction of approaching in a novel and per-
ceptibly felt manner one of those excellences which,
as much as anything, contributes to the per-
manent charm of Catullus, his dainty versification,
will more than compensate for any shortcomings
which the difficulty of the task has made inevitable.
The same may be said of the elaborately artificial
poem to Camerius (c. lv. ), and the almost unapproach-
able Attis (c. Ixiii. ). Here, at least half the interest
lies in the varied turns of the metre ; if these can be
represented with anything like faithfulness, the gain
in exactness of prosody is enough, in my judgment,
to counterbalance the possible loss of freedom in
expression.
There is another circumstance which tends to
make modern rules of prosody necessarily negative.
Quantity, in English revivals of ancient metre, depends
not only on position, but on accent. But accent
varies greatly in different words ; heavy level ever
cometh any, have the same accent as empty evil either
boometh penny ; but the first syllable in the former
set of words is lighter than in the latter. Hence,
though accented, they may, on occasion, be con-
sidered and used as short ; as, on the same principle,
dolorotis stratagem echoeth family, usually dactyls,
may, on occasion, become tribrachs. But how lay
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? PREFACE. xix
\
down any positive rule in a matter necessarily so fluc-
tuating? We cannot. All we can do is to refuse
admission as short syllables to any heavier accented
syllable. Here, then, much must be left to individual
discretion. My translation of the Attis will best
show my own feeling in the matter. But I am fully
aware that in this respect I have fallen far short of
consistency. I have made any sometimes short,
more often long ; to, usually short, is lengthened in
Ixi. 26, Ixvii. 19, Ixviii. 143; with is similarly long,
though not followed by a consonant, in Ixi. 36 ; given
is long in xxviii. 7, short in xi. 17, Ixiv. 213; are is
short in Ixvii. 14 ; and more generally many syllables
allowed to pass for short in the Attis are elsewhere
long. Nor have I scrupled to forsake the ancient
quantity in proper names ; following Heyse, I have
made the first syllable of Verona short in xxxv. 3,
Ixvii. 34, although it retains its proper quantity in
Ixviii. 27. Again, Pheneos is a dactyl in Ixviii. in,
while Satrachus is an anapaest in xcv. 5. In many
of these instances I have acted consciously ; if the
writers of Greece and Rome allowed many syllables
to be doubtful, and almost as a principle avoid per-
fect uniformity in the quantity of proper names, a
greater freedom may not unfairly be claimed by their
modern imitators. If Catullus could write Pharsaliam
coeunt, Pharsdlia regna frequentant, similar license
may surely be extended to me. I believe, indeed,
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? xx PREFACE.
that nothing in my translation is as violent as the
double quantity just mentioned in Catullus ; but if
there is, I would remind my readers of Goethe's
answer to the boy who told him he had been guilty of
a hexameter with seven feet, and applying the re-
mark to any seeming irregularities in my own transla-
tion would say, Lass die Bestie stehen.
It would not be difficult to swell this Preface by
enlarging on the novelty of the attempt, and indirectly
panegyrising my own undertaking. I doubt whether
any real advantage would thus be gained. If I have
merely produced an elaborate failure, however much
I might expatiate on the principles which guided me,
my work would be an elaborate failure still. I shall
therefore say no more, and shall be contented if I
please the, even in this classically trained country, too
limited number of readers who can really hear with
their ears if, to use the borrowed language of a great
poet, I succeed in making myself vocal to the intelli-
gent alone.
? ?
