The Works of Alexander Pope Part 12

Dryden's Fables came out about that time,[1] which occasioned the translations from Chaucer. They were first separately printed in Miscellanies by J. Tonson and B. Lintot, and afterwards collected in the quarto edition of 1717. The Imitations of English Authors, which are added at the end, were done as early; some of them at fourteen or fifteen years old; but having also got into Miscellanies, we have put them here together to complete this juvenile volume.[2]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: In the year 1700. They were the most popular of Dryden's works, and were in the hands of every reader when Pope was learning his art.]

[Footnote 2: This advertis.e.m.e.nt was first prefixed by Pope to vol. iii.

of his works, 8vo, 1736. The contents of the "juvenile volume" were The Temple of Fame, Sappho to Phaon, Vertumnus and Pomona, The Fable of Dryope, The first book of Statius's Thebais, January and May, The Wife of Bath's Prologue, and the Imitations of English Poets. Pope apologises for printing the Imitations by saying that they had got into Miscellanies, which is an insinuation that the pieces had found their way to the press without his consent. It was he himself who published them. They are inserted in the present edition among the minor poems.]

THE

FIRST BOOK OF STATIUS:

HIS

THEBAIS.

TRANSLATED IN THE YEAR 1703.

The translator hopes he need not apologise for his choice of this piece, which was made almost in his childhood. But finding the version better upon review than he expected from those years, he was easily prevailed on to give it some correction, the rather because no part of this author (at least that he knows of) has been tolerably turned into our language.[1]--POPE.

It was in his childhood only that Pope could make choice of so injudicious a writer as Statius to translate. It were to be wished that no youth of genius were suffered ever to look into Statius, Lucan, Claudian, or Seneca the tragedian,--authors who, by their forced conceits, by their violent metaphors, by their swelling epithets, by their want of a just decorum, have a strong tendency to dazzle, and to mislead inexperienced minds, and tastes unformed, from the true relish of possibility, propriety, simplicity, and nature. Statius had undoubtedly invention, ability, and spirit; but his images are gigantic and outrageous, and his sentiments tortured and hyperbolical. One cannot forbear reflecting on the short duration of a true taste in poetry among the Romans. From the time of Lucretius to that of Statius was no more than about one hundred and forty-seven years; and if I might venture to p.r.o.nounce so rigorous a sentence, I would say, that the Romans can boast of but eight poets who are unexceptionably excellent,--namely, Terence, Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Phaedrus.

These only can be called legitimate models of just thinking and writing.

Succeeding authors, as it happens in all countries, resolving to be original and new, and to avoid the imputation of copying, become distorted and unnatural. By endeavouring to open an unbeaten path, they deserted simplicity and truth; weary of common and obvious beauties, they must needs hunt for remote and artificial decorations.

It is plain that Pope was not blind to the faults of Statius, many of which he points out with judgment and truth, in a letter to Mr.

Cromwell, written in 1708{9}. After this censure of Statius's manner, it is but justice to add, that in the Thebais there are many strokes of a strong imagination; and, indeed, the picture of Amphiaraus, swallowed up suddenly by a chasm that opened in the ground, is truly sublime.--WARTON.

Statius was a favourite writer with the poets of the middle ages. His bloated magnificence of description, gigantic images, and pompous diction suited their taste, and were somewhat of a piece with the romances they so much admired. They neglected the gentler and genuine graces of Virgil, which they could not relish. His pictures were too correctly and chastely drawn to take their fancies; and truth of design, elegance of expression, and the arts of composition, were not their object.--T. WARTON.

In this translation there are some excellent pa.s.sages, particularly those pointed out by Dr. Warton--"O father Phoebus," v. 829, and the exquisite lines descriptive of evening, "'Twas now the time," &c., 474; but some of the most striking images are omitted, some added, and some misunderstood. Let us however confess, that the versification is truly wonderful, considering the age of the author. It would be endless to point out more particularly occasional errors and inaccuracies, in a composition which can be considered no otherwise than as an extraordinary specimen of versification, before the writer's judgment and taste were matured.--BOWLES.

According to the information which Pope gave to Spence, he commenced an epic poem at thirteen, and wrote four books of about a thousand verses each.[2] As his taste and judgment improved, he discovered the crudeness of his early flights, and for a while he almost relinquished his attempts at original composition, "My first taking to imitating," he said, "was not out of vanity, but humility. I saw how defective my own things were; and I endeavoured to mend my manner by copying good strokes from others."[3] "In my rambles through the poets," he said again, "when I met with a pa.s.sage or story that pleased me more than ordinary, I used to endeavour to imitate it, or translate it into English; and this gave rise to my imitations published so long after."[4] In speaking of Pope's youthful efforts, Spence uses the word "imitation" as synonymous with "translation." "Some of his first exercises," he says, "were _imitations_ of the stories that pleased him most in Ovid, or any other poet that he was reading. I have one of these original exercises now by me in his own hand. It is the story of Acis and Galatea, from Ovid; and was _translated_ when he was but fourteen years old."[5] Pope appears to have sometimes employed the term imitation with the same lat.i.tude, and probably meant by it that he endeavoured to imitate, in the English turn of expression, the distinctive beauties of the original Latin or Greek.

"In the scattered lessons I used to set myself," he said, "I translated above a quarter of the Metamorphoses, and that part of Statius which was afterwards printed with the corrections of Walsh."[6] The notion, in which Bowles and others acquiesced, that the published translations are a true index of Pope's skill at fourteen, will not bear investigation.

Of the Metamorphoses he brought out only two little fragments, which appeared many years later, when they had undergone a thorough revision.

The rest of the ma.n.u.script would not have been sacrificed if the version had been fit for the public eye without the toil of recasting it.

Spence, who possessed the Acis and Galatea, did not think it worth printing as a specimen of Pope's boyish abilities, even when the curiosity respecting his works was at its height. The suppression of all his early pieces, which had not been submitted to a subsequent renovation, is a plain proof of their inferiority. The first translation which he gave to the world was the "Episode of Sarpedon, from the twelfth and sixteenth books of Homer's Iliads." This, and his Pastorals, appeared together, in May, 1709, in Tonson's Sixth Miscellany, and Pope was then twenty-one.

The fragment from Homer included the speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus. "It has," said the poet, "been rendered in English by Sir John Denham, after whom the translator had not the vanity to attempt it for any other reason, than that the episode must have been very imperfect without so n.o.ble a part of it." Denham at that period had a much more brilliant reputation than he afterwards retained, and though Pope adopted the language of humility, he must have felt an inward pride in the consciousness that he had distanced so famous a name. His great superiority did not admit of a question, and he must have been well aware that it was his interest to invite a comparison. The specimen was shown in ma.n.u.script to Trumbull, who, in his admiration, urged Pope to give a complete translation of the Iliad. The exhortations of Trumbull did not bear fruit till 1713. "I cannot," Pope wrote to him in the November of that year, "deny myself the pleasure of acquainting you how great a proof I have given of my deference to your opinion and judgment, which has at last moved me to undertake the translation of Homer. I can honestly say Sir William Trumbull was not only the first that put this into my thoughts, but the princ.i.p.al encourager I had in it, and though now almost all the distinguished names of quality or learning in the nation have subscribed to it, there is not one of which I am so proud as of yours." When the first volume of the translation appeared in 1715, Pope paid his acknowledgments in the Preface to the eminent men who had specially patronised the work. Not only does he make no mention of Trumbull, but he professes to have yielded to the counsel of a greater authority, and says, "Mr. Addison was the first whose advice determined me to undertake the task." Either the statement in the Preface, or the statement in the letter must be inaccurate, though both Addison and Trumbull may have recommended the scheme.

The "Episode of Sarpedon" is now incorporated in the complete translation to which it led the way. It was not till three years after he had published the fragment from Homer that Pope brought out his translations from the Latin, of which the most ambitious is his version of the first book of the Thebais. He told Spence that in his boyhood "he liked extremely a translation of a part of Statius by some very bad hand." This work bore the t.i.tle of "An Essay upon Statius, or the five first books of P. P. Statius his Thebais. Done into English verse by T[homas] S[tephens], London, 1648." The verse into which Stephens did his author was for the most part rugged and prosaic, but a few pa.s.sages are happily turned, and his successor did not disdain to borrow some lines and phrases from him. The princ.i.p.al advantage, however, to Pope of Stephens's attempt was that it enabled him to interpret the original; for his cla.s.sical education had been defective, and it is clear from his own account, that he could not, without a.s.sistance, have construed the Thebais correctly. At eight years of age he was taught his accidence by a priest.[7] He afterwards went to a couple of small schools, where "he lost what he had gained" from his first instructor.[8] "When I came," he said, "from the last of them, all the acquisition I had made was to be able to construe a little of Tully's Offices."[9] For a few months he had another priest for his tutor, and was then left, between twelve and thirteen, to his own resources.[10] The foundation was slight, and he proceeded to raise upon it a hasty superstructure. "I did not," he said, "follow the grammar, but rather hunted in the authors for a syntax of my own; and then began translating any parts that pleased me, particularly in the best Greek and Latin poets. I got the languages by hunting after the stories in the several poets I read, rather than read the books to get the language."[11] He, on another occasion, told Spence that he thought himself the better in some respects for not having had a regular education, since it caused him to read for the sense, whereas schoolboys were taught to read for words.[12] The process was fatal to scholarship.

Ignorant, in a great degree, of the rules and idioms of the Latin tongue, it was impossible he should translate with ease or accuracy. But his peculiar training doubtless favoured the early development of his poetic powers. He devoted his boyish years, when the mind was most pliable, to the cultivation of his art, and this incessant practice of versification from childhood was the cause of his precocious excellence.

Pope's admiration for Statius continued throughout his later boyhood, and he preferred him to "all the Latin poets, by much, next to Virgil."[13] He soon began to turn the Thebais into English, and he affirms that his version of the first book was made in 1703. In a note to his letter to Cromwell of Jan. 22, 1709, he placed it earlier still, and declares that it was "done when the author was but fourteen years old." These statements convey an erroneous impression. It appears from the correspondence with Cromwell that more than one-third of the translation was not in existence by January, 1709, when Pope was in his twenty-first year. The piece was not published till 1712, when it came out in Lintot's Miscellany, and the poet at that period was twenty-four.

The portions which were not recently translated, were newly corrected, and the whole represents the powers of the man who completed the task, and not of the boy who commenced it.

The translation of the first book of the Thebais must be more highly estimated as a specimen of versification than as an adequate representation of the original. The harmony and phraseology of particular pa.s.sages are delicious, and verse and language throughout are polished in a high degree. There is one pervading exception to Pope's metrical skill. He has recourse incessantly to an unnatural order of words, and especially he produces his rhymes by placing the verb after the noun it ought to precede. Of this license Dryden says, "We were whipped at Westminster if we used it twice together. I should judge him to have little command of English whom the necessity of a rhyme should force upon this rock, though sometimes it cannot easily be avoided."

Pope availed himself of the false construction with a freedom which seriously deforms and enfeebles much of his poetry. He fell into the error before he had discrimination to perceive the blemish, and when his judgment was more mature habit had reconciled him to the distortion.

Warton has not exaggerated the defects of Statius, but he has underrated his merits. The descriptions in the Thebais are vivid, and abound in picturesque circ.u.mstances, and natural traits of character. Pope's translation is more vague. His narrative is less perspicuous, less dramatic, less spirited, and less life-like than the original. "There are numberless particulars blameworthy in our author," Pope wrote to Cromwell, "which I have tried to soften in the version."[14] He was not successful in this attempt. Where he departs from his text he seldom tempers an extravagance, and has more often rejected a beauty, or smoothed it down into insipidity. His juvenile taste was for polished generalities, and he shunned circ.u.mstantial nature. He had still less relish for primitive simplicity, and he thought that some of the incidents in the Thebais were too humble to be endured.

"When Statius," he says, "comes to the scene of his poem, and the prize in dispute between the brothers, he gives us a very mean opinion of it,--_pugna est de paupere regno_--very different from the conduct of his master, Virgil, who at the entrance of his poem informs the reader of the greatness of his subject."[15] Pope was led astray by the equivocal meaning of a word. There is no connection between the greatness of a kingdom, and the greatness of a theme for poetic purposes. The poverty of Scotland did not detract from the tragic grandeur of Macbeth. When the fugitive princes in the Thebais quarrel in the vestibule, where they have taken shelter from the storm, and fight with their fists, Pope confused the narrative by omitting the whole account as inconsistent with epic dignity, and sacrificed the characteristics of the original to a.s.similate the manners to modern usages. If his criticisms had been well founded he should yet have kept to his text. "The sense of an author," says Dryden, "is, generally speaking, to be sacred and inviolable. If the fancy of Ovid be luxuriant, it is his character to be so; and, if I retrench it, he is no longer Ovid. It will be replied that he receives advantage by this lopping of his superfluous branches; but I rejoin that a translator has no such right. When a painter copies from the life, I suppose he has no privilege to alter features and lineaments, under pretence that his picture will look better; perhaps the face which he has drawn would be more exact if the eyes or nose were altered; but it is his business to make it resemble the original." Pope has rendered a few pa.s.sages with equal beauty and truth, but on the whole the antique colouring, the dramatic traits, and picturesque details are very imperfectly preserved.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: This brief introduction is from Lintot's Miscellany. In the edition of his works in 1736 Pope omitted the final clause which follows the word "correction."]

[Footnote 2: Singer's Spence, p. 209, 211.]

[Footnote 3: Spence, p. 211.]

[Footnote 4: Spence, p. 146.]

[Footnote 5: Spence, p. 214.]

[Footnote 6: Spence, p. 210.]

[Footnote 7: Spence, p. 214.]

[Footnote 8: Spence, p. 146.]

[Footnote 9: Spence, p. 204.]

[Footnote 10: Spence, p. 146.]

[Footnote 11: Spence, p. 146, 196.]

[Footnote 12: Spence, p. 211.]

[Footnote 13: Spence, p. 209, 211.]

[Footnote 14: Pope to Cromwell, June 10, 1709.]

[Footnote 15: Pope to Cromwell, Jan. 22, 1709.]

ARGUMENT

Oedipus, King of Thebes, having by mistake slain his father Laius, and married his mother Jocasta, put out his own eyes, and resigned the realm to his sons, Eteocles and Polynices. Being neglected by them, he makes his prayer to the Fury Tisiphone, to sow debate betwixt the brothers.

They agree at last to reign singly, each a year by turns, and the first lot is obtained by Eteocles. Jupiter, in a council of the G.o.ds, declares his resolution of punishing the Thebans, and Argives also, by means of a marriage betwixt Polynices and one of the daughters of Adrastus, king of Argos. Juno opposes, but to no effect, and Mercury is sent on a message to the shades, to the ghost of Laius, who is to appear to Eteocles, and provoke him to break the agreement. Polynices in the meantime departs from Thebes by night, is overtaken by a storm, and arrives at Argos, where he meets with Tydeus, who had fled from Calydon, having killed his brother. Adrastus entertains them, having received an oracle from Apollo that his daughters should be married to a boar and a lion, which he understands to be meant of these strangers, by whom the hides of those beasts were worn, and who arrived at the time when he kept an annual feast in honour of that G.o.d. The rise of this solemnity he relates to his guests, the loves of Phoebus and Psamathe, and the story of Choroebus. He inquires, and is made acquainted with their descent and quality. The sacrifice is renewed, and the book concludes with a hymn to Apollo.