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Virgil—Publius Vergilius Maro—was born at Andes near Mantua, in the year 70 B.C. His life was uneventful, though he lived in stirring times, and he passed by far the greater part of it in reading his books and writing his poems, undisturbed by the fierce civil strife which continued to rage throughout the Roman Empire, until Octavian, who afterwards became the Emperor Augustus, defeated Antony at the battle of Actium. Though his father was a man of humble origin, Virgil received an excellent education, first at Cremona and Milan, and afterwards at Rome. He was intimate with all the distinguished men of his time, and a personal friend of the Emperor. After the publication of his second work, the Georgics, he was recognized as being the greatest poet of his age, and the most striking figure in the brilliant circle of literary men, which was centred at the Court. He died at Brindisi in the spring of 19 B.C. whilst returning from a journey to Greece, leaving his greatest work, the Aeneid, written but unrevised. It was published by his executors, and immediately took its place as the great national Epic of the Roman people. Virgil seems to have been a man of simple, pure, and loveable character, and the references to him in the works of Horace clearly show the affection with which he was regarded by his friends.

Like every cultivated Roman of that age, Virgil was a close student of the literature and philosophy of the Greeks, and his poems bear eloquent testimony to the profound impression made upon him by his reading of the Greek poets. His first important work, the Eclogues, was directly inspired by the pastoral poems of Theocritus, from whom he borrowed not only much of his imagery but even whole lines; in the Georgics he took as his model the Works and Days of Hesiod, and though in the former case it must be confessed that he suffers from the weakness inherent in all imitative poetry, in the latter he far surpasses the slow and simple verses of the Boeotian. But here we must guard ourselves against a misapprehension. We moderns look askance at the writer who borrows without acknowledgment the thoughts and phrases of his forerunners, but the Roman critics of the Augustan Age looked at the matter from a different point of view. They regarded the Greeks as having set the standard of the highest possible achievement in literature, and believed that it should be the aim of every writer to be faithful, not only to the spirit, but even to the letter of their great exemplars. Hence it was only natural that when Virgil essayed the task of writing the national Epic of his country, he should be studious to embody in his work all that was best in Greek Epic poetry.

It is difficult in criticizing Virgil to avoid comparing him to some extent with Homer. But though Virgil copied Homer freely, any comparison between them is apt to be misleading. A primitive epic, like the Iliad or the Nibelungenlied, produced by an imaginative people at an early stage in its development, telling its stories simply for the sake of story telling, cannot be judged by the same canons of criticism as a literary epic like the Aeneid or Paradise Lost, which is the work of a great poet in an age of advanced culture, and sets forth a great idea in a narrative form. The Greek writer to whom Virgil owes most perhaps, is Apollonius of Rhodes, from whose Argonautica he borrowed the love interest of the Aeneid. And though the Roman is a far greater poet, in this instance the advantage is by no means on his side, for, as Professor Gilbert Murray has so well said, 'the Medea and Jason of the Argonautica are at once more interesting and more natural than their copies, the Dido and Aeneas of the Aeneid. The wild love of the witch-maiden sits curiously on the queen and organizer of industrial Carthage; and the two qualities which form an essential part of Jason—the weakness which makes him a traitor, and the deliberate gentleness which contrasts him with Medea—seem incongruous in the father of Rome.' But though Virgil turned to the Greek epics for the general framework and many of the details of his poem, he always remains master of his materials, and stamps them with the impress of his own genius. The spirit which inspires the Aeneid is wholly Roman, and the deep faith in the National Destiny, and stern sense of duty to which it gives expression, its profoundly religious character and stately and melodious verse, have always caused it to be recognized as the loftiest expression of the dignity and greatness of Rome at her best. But the sympathetic reader will be conscious of a deeper and more abiding charm in the poetry of Virgil. Even in his most splendid passages his verses thrill us with a strange pathos, and his sensitiveness to unseen things—things beautiful and sad—has caused a great writer, himself a master of English prose, to speak of 'his single words and phrases, his pathetic half lines, giving utterance as the voice of Nature herself to that pain and weariness, yet hope of better things, which is the experience of her children in every age.'

The task of translating such a writer at all adequately may well seem to be an almost impossible one; and how far any of the numerous attempts to do so have succeeded, is a difficult question. For not only does the stated ideal at which the translator should aim, vary with each generation, but perhaps no two lovers of Virgil would agree at any period as to what this ideal should be. Two general principles stand out from the mass of conflicting views on this point. The translation should read as though it were an original poem, and it should produce on the modern reader as far as possible the same effect as the original produced on Virgil's contemporaries. And here we reach the real difficulty, for the scholar who can alone judge what that effect may have been, is too intimate with the original to see clearly the merits of a translation, and the man who can only read the translation can form no opinion. However, it seems clear that a prose translation can never really satisfy us, because it must always be wanting in the musical quality of continuous verse. And our critical experience bears this out, since even Professor Mackail with all his literary skill and insight has failed to make his version of the Aeneid more than a very valuable aid to the student of the original. The meaning of the poet is fully expressed, but his music has been lost. That oft-quoted line—

'Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt'

haunts us like Tennyson's

'When unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square,'

and no prose rendering can hope to convey the poignancy and pathos of the original. The ideal translation, then, must be in verse, and perhaps the best way for us to determine which style and metre are most suited to convey to the modern reader an impression of the charm of Virgil, will be to take a brief glance at some of the best-known of the verse translations which have appeared.

The first translation of the Aeneid into English verse was that of Gawin Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld in Scotland, which was published in 1553. It is a spirited translation, marked by considerable native force and verisimilitude, and it was certainly unsurpassed until that of Dryden appeared. In the best passages it renders the tone and feeling of the original with extreme felicity—indeed, all but perfectly. Take for instance this passage from the Sixth Book—

'Thai walking furth fa dyrk, oneth thai wyst

Quhidder thai went, amyd dym schaddowys thar,

Quhar evir is nycht, and nevir lyght dois repar,

Throwout the waist dongion of Pluto Kyng,

Thai voyd boundis, and that gowsty ryng:

Siklyke as quha wold throw thik woddis wend

In obscure licht, quhen moyn may nocht be kenned;

As Jupiter the kyng etheryall,

With erdis skug hydis the hevynnys all

And the myrk nycht, with her vissage gray,

From every thing hes reft the hew away.'

But in spite of its merits, its dialect wearies the modern reader, and gives it an air of grotesqueness which is very alien to the spirit of the Latin. One other sixteenth-century translation deserves notice, as it was written by one who was himself a distinguished poet; namely, the version of the second and fourth books of the Aeneid written by Henry, Earl of Surrey. It gained the commendation of that stern critic Ascham, who praises Surrey for avoiding rhyme, but considers that he failed to 'fully hit perfect and true versifying'; which is hardly a matter for wonder since English blank verse was then in its infancy. But it has some fine passages—notably the one which relates the death of Dido—

'As she had said, her damsell might perceue

Her with these wordes fal pearced on a sword

The blade embrued and hands besprent with gore.

The clamor rang unto the pallace toppe,

The brute ranne throughout al thastoined towne,

With wailing great, and women's shrill yelling,

The roofs gan roare, the aire resound with plaint,

As though Cartage, or thauncient town of Tyre

With prease of entred enemies swarmed full,

Or when the rage of furious flame doth take

The temples toppes, and mansions eke of men.'

Of the translations into modern English, that of Dryden may still be said to stand first, in spite of its lack of fidelity. It owes its place to its sustained vigour, and the fact that the heroic couplet is in the hands of a master. In its way nothing could be better than—

'Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell,

Revengeful cares, and sullen sorrows dwell,

And pale diseases, and repining age—

Want, fear, and famine's unresisted rage,

Here toils and death, and death's half-brother sleep,

Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep.

With anxious pleasures of a guilty mind,

Deep frauds, before, and open force behind;

The Furies' iron beds, and strife that shakes

Her hissing tresses, and unfolds her snakes.'

But though the heroic couplet may have conveyed to Dryden's age something of the effect of the Virgilian hexameter, it does nothing of the kind to us. Probably we are prejudiced in the matter by Pope's Homer.

Professor Conington's translation certainly has spirit and energy, but he was decidedly unfortunate in his choice of metre. To attempt to render 'the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man' by fluent octosyllabics was bound to result in incongruity, as in the following passage, where the sombre warning of the Sibyl to Aeneas becomes merely a sprightly reminder that—

'The journey down to the abyss

Is prosperous and light,

The palace gates of gloomy Dis

Stand open day and night;

But upward to retrace the way

And pass into the light of day,

There comes the stress of labour; this

May task a hero's might.'

The various attempts that have been made to translate the poem in the metre of the original have all been sad failures. And from Richard Stanyhurst, whom Thomas Nash described as treading 'a foul, lumbering, boistrous, wallowing measure, in his translation of Virgil,' down to our own time, no one has succeeded in avoiding faults of monotony and lack of poetical quality. A short extract from Dr. Crane's translation will illustrate this very clearly—

'No species of hardships,

Longer, O maiden, arises before me as strange and unlooked for:

All things have I foreknown, and in soul have already endured them.

One special thing I crave, since here, it is said, that the gateway

Stands of the monarch infernal, and refluent Acheron's dark pool:

Let it be mine to go down to the sight and face of my cherished

Father, and teach me the way, and the sacred avenues open.'

Nor is William Morris' attempt to devise a new metre anything but disappointing. It is surprising that so delightfully endowed a poet should have so often missed the music of Virgil's verse as he has done in his translation, and the archaisms with which his work abounds, though they might be suitable in a translation of Homer, are only a source of irritation in the case of Virgil.

For the best metre to use we must look in a different direction. Virgil made use of the dactylic hexameter because it was the literary tradition of his day that epics should be written in that metre. In the same way it might be argued, the English tradition points to blank verse as the correct medium. This may be so, but its use demands that the translator should be as great a poet as Virgil. Had Tennyson ever translated the Aeneid, it would doubtless have been as nearly faultless as any translation could be, as is shown by the version of Sir Theodore Martin, which owes so much of its stately charm to its close adherence to the manner of Tennyson. A typical passage is the description of Dido's love for Aeneas—

'Soothsayers, ah! how little do they know!

Of what avail are temples, vows, and prayers,

To quell a raging passion? All the while

A subtle flame is smouldering in her veins,

And in her heart a silent aching wound.

* * * * *

Now Dido leads

Aeneas round the ramparts, to him shows

The wealth of Sidon, all the town laid out,

Begins to speak, then stops, she knows not why.

Now, as day wanes, the feast of yesterday

She gives again, again with fevered lips

Begs for the tale of Troy and all its woes,

And hangs upon his lips, who tells the tale.

Then, when the guests are gone and in her turn

The wan moon pales her light, and waning stars

Persuade to sleep, she in her empty halls

Mourns all alone, and throws herself along

The couch where he had lain: though he be gone

Far from her side, she hears and sees him still.'

Of the merits of the present translation the reader will judge for himself; but it may perhaps be said of the usual objections urged against the Spenserian stanza—that it is cumbrous and monotonous, and presents difficulties of construction—that the two former criticisms will be just or the reverse, according to the skill of the writer, while it is quite possible that the last is really an advantage, for the intricate machinery imposes a restraint on careless or hasty composition. And finally we must turn a deaf ear, even to so high an authority as Matthew Arnold, when he says that it is not suited to the grand manner. When he said this he cannot have remembered either the lament of Florimell in the Faerie Queene or the conclusion of Childe Harold.

J. P. MAINE.

Edward Fairfax Taylor, whose translation of the Aeneid is now published, was descended from the Taylors of Norwich, a family well known for their culture and intellectual gifts. He was the only son of John Edward Taylor, himself an accomplished German and Italian scholar, and the first translator of the Pentamerone into English, who lived at Weybridge near his aunt, Mrs. Sarah Austin. Brought up among books, young Taylor early showed an intense love for classical literature, and soon after going to Marlborough he began the present translation as a boy of sixteen. His admiration for Spenser led him to adopt the Spenserian stanza, and in the preface to his translation of the first two books he gives detailed reasons for considering it peculiarly well adapted for the Aeneid. He was a favourite pupil of the late Dr. Bradley, Dean of Westminster, at that time headmaster of Marlborough, and who much wished that he should follow in the footsteps of 'that brilliant band of Marlborough men,' as they have been called, who at that time, year after year, gained the Balliol scholarship. But circumstances made him decide otherwise, and in 1865 he passed the necessary examination for a clerkship in the House of Lords. The long vacations gave him time to continue this labour of love, and in the intervals of much other literary work, and in spite of ill health, he completed the translation of the twelve books of the Aeneid. He looked forward to re-editing it and bringing it out when he should have retired from his work in the House of Lords, but this day never came, and he died from heart disease in January 1902. His was a singularly charming disposition, and he was beloved by all who knew him; while the courage and patience with which he bore ever-increasing suffering, and the stoicism he showed in fulfilling his duties in the House of Lords, have left a deep impression on all his friends.

L. M.

The Edisso Princeps, of Virgil is that printed at Rome by Sweynham and Pannartz. It was not dated, but it is almost certain that it was printed before the Venice folio edition of V. de Spira, which was issued in 1470. The best modern critical editions of the text are those of Ribbeck (4 vols. 1895) and F. A. Hirtzel (Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, 1900). Of the editions containing explanatory notes, that of Conington and Nettleship, revised by Haverfield, is the standard English commentary. That of A. Sidgwick (2 vols. Cambridge) is more elementary, but will be found valuable. Those of Kennedy (London, 1879) and of Papillon and Haigh (Oxford, 2 vols. 1890–91) may also be referred to.

Virgil was first introduced to English readers by William Caxton in 1490. But his Eneydos was based, not on the Aeneid itself, but on a French paraphrase, the liure des eneydes, printed at Lyons in 1483.

The best modern prose translations are those of Mackail (London, 1885) and Conington (London, 1870).

The following is a list of the more important verse translations of the Aeneid which have appeared. The name of the translator, and the date at which his translation appeared, are given:—Gawin Douglas, 1553 (see Introduction); Henry, Earl of Surrey, 1557 (Books II. and IV. only); J. Dryden, 1697; C. R. Kennedy, 1861; J. Conington, 1866; W. Morris, 1876; W. J. Thornhill, 1886; Sir Charles Bowen, 1887 (Books I.-VI. only); J. Rhoades, 1893 (Books I.-VI. only); Sir Theodore Martin, 1896 (Books I.-VI. only); T. H. D. May, 1903; E. Fairfax Taylor, 1903.

Students of Virgil would also do well to consult Sellar, Poets of the Augustan Age (Oxford, 1883), and Nettleship, Introduction to the Study of Vergil.