The argument then in favour of the identity of the Niger and the Zayr, may be summed up in a few words.-There is in North Africa a great river of which nobody knows the end--there is in South Africa another great river of which nobody knows the beginning the river of North Africa flows to the southward—the river in South Africa comes from the northward. When to these facts are superadded the singular phenomenon of the South African river being in a state of flood for six months in the year, when no rain falls to the southward of the line, and consequently can only be supplied from a country to the northward of the line where in those six months the rains prevail; it will hardly be denied that there are at least strong and rational grounds for conjecture, that the Niger and the Zayr are one and the same river-a conjecture which lends additional interest to the pursuit of discovery, and which will not be diminished if it should turn out that the sources of the Zayr and the termination of the Niger have, though unconsciously, long been known.

ART. VII.-Specimens of the Classic Poets, in a chronological Series from Homer to Tryphiodorus, translated into English Verse, and illustrated with Biographical and Critical Notices. By Charles Abraham Elton. 3 vols. London. 1814.

MR. R. ELTON, who has already appeared before the public as a translator of Hesiod, has here undertaken a task of greater variety and extent. The idea, as well as title, of the present work,

servitude, and privileged in the country of which he was a native, in like manner as knights commanders are among us.

I (continues De Barros) knowing these things, and that I might be able to write them with the greater truth, (for the King Don John had, in his time, well investigated the matter,) when in the year 1540, certain ambassadors from the King of Benin came to this kingdom, one of them, who might be a person of about seventy years of age, had a cross of this kind; and upon my questioning him concerning it, he answered according to what I have above written.'

And as in that time, whenever India was mentioned, people always spoke of a very powerful king called Preste John of India, who they said was a Christian; it appeared probable to Don John, that through this prince he might find an entrance into India, because through the religious Abyssinians who visited those parts of Spain, and also from the friars who had gone from hence to Jerusalem, (and whom he had directed to inform themselves concerning this prince,) he had learned that his states were situated in that country which lies beyond Egypt, and which extends to the sea of the south:-the king therefore, with the cosmographers of the kingdom, taking Ptolemy's general table of description of the whole of Africa, with the land marks on the coast, according as they had been placed by the discoverers, and setting off the distance of two hundred and fifty leagues to the east, where, according to the accounts of the Beninians, the states of this Ogané ought to be, they found that this must be the Preste John, as both of them were concealed behind silk curtains, and held the sign of the cross in great veneration; and he (the king) also concluded, that if his ships should follow the direc tion of the coast which they were discovering, they could not fail to arrive at the land where lies the Praso Promontory.'-Barros, Decad I. Book iii. Chap. 4. K 4

may,

may, probably, have been suggested by the chronological selections of English poetry published by Mr. Ellis and Mr. Southey; in its application to classical poetry, or, at least, to classical translation, it seems to be more original. It is always a pleasing and curious study to follow the gradual progress of language and the revolutions of taste; and selections of this kind, when judiciously made, serve, in some degree, the purpose of a cabinet of minerals, and exhibit the writers of a country in their relative characters, as well as in their individual peculiarities. A brick, it is truly said, does not give us a notion of a house; nor does a fragment of schist or whinstone represent the general appearance of the rock; but it is something to know, that the house is not of marble, nor the rock of granite; and thus a few extracts from Homer or Milton, though they may raise no conception of the Iliad or Paradise Lost, will, at least, impress our minds with their distinguishing characteristics.

The ancient poets, from which passages are translated in these volumes, are sixty: thirty-three Greek, and twenty-seven Latin. These comprehend the entire series of what may be termed classical poetry; and of these, about one-fourth exist only in short fragments, or in writings of doubtful authority. But the dramatic poets are excluded from this list; an exclusion for which there seems no adequate reason, since detached scenes, to say nothing of their lyric parts, might supply, at least, as good a conception of Eschylus and Euripides, as insulated passages of Homer or Virgil. On more satisfactory grounds, the various poets whose relics are preserved in the Greek and Latin Anthologies, find no place in Mr. Elton's translations; and the apprehension of encumbering himself with a multitude of authors of a late age and inferior merit, seems to have prompted rather an arbitrary definition of the word' classic,' as distinguishing the pagan from the christian poets.

The present translator has endeavoured to accommodate himself to the different style of his poets, by adopting a variety of measures. We do not, in every instance, perceive the grounds of his choice: but the changes are sufficiently frequent to relieve the reader's attention, and prevent that satiety, which uniformity, especially in translation, is apt to produce. His success is very unequal: many specimens are, in a high degree, brilliant and spirited, while others are cold, stiff, and lagging. In general, we like him better in rhyme than in blank verse, though the arguments in behalf of the latter measure in his Preface may shew that he is of a different opinion. One cause, and probably the main cause, of Mr. Elton's inferiority in blank verse, is a theoretical bias in favour of literal, or, as we should call it, servile translation, with which, of course, it is not so easy to comply under the restrictions of rhyme. The fit standard of a translator is fidelity,' we are told in his Preface, where the

long

long disputed question, as to the propriety of close or loose transla-
tion, is discussed with arguments which it is not necessary to con-
trovert. The truth seems to be, that strict translation best satisfies
the critic; loose translation most pleases the multitude. He who
would escape censure, must avoid deviations, which a reviewer will
detect; he who would obtain popularity must shun dullness, over
which a reader will yawn. And this is founded on a plain matter
of fact, of which every one is aware, though every one cannot ex-
press it so elegantly as Denham: It is not his business alone to
translate language into language, but poesie into poesie; and poesie
is of so subtile a spirit, that in pouring out of one language into an-
other, it will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be not added in the
transfusion, there will remain nothing but a caput mortuum: there
being certain graces and happinesses peculiar to every language,
which give life and energy to the words.' But in blaming literal
translation, executed without regard to this law, we do not, of course,
mean to recommend the opposite error. There is a style of low
and slovenly paraphrase, which commonly indicates a mind too
dull to seize the spirit, or too indolent to grapple with the diffi-
culties of its author. In all translations, to represent the original cha-
racter is the first duty. But he who must lose much of the precision
and gracefulness of language, and even the collocation of words, is
no more to be blamed for replacing them by new graces
of his own
language, than a musical performer for enriching the text of his
composer by touches suggested by his own skill and enthusiasm.
The following stanzas from the first Pythian Ode of Pindar,
may, perhaps, in some degree, appear stiff to an English reader :-
they have, however, considerable merit in representing the severe,
and rather hard manner of that poet.

'The monarch eagle then hangs down
On either side his flagging wing,

And on Jove's sceptre rocks with slumbering head;
Hovering vapours darkling spread

O'er his arch'd beak, and veil his filmy eye:

Thou pour'st a sweet mist from thy string;
And, as thy music's thrilling arrows fly,

He feels soft sleep effuse

From every pore its balmy-stealing dews,

And heaves his ruffled plumes in slumber's extasy.
Stern Mars hath dropp'd his sharp'd and barbed spear;

And starts, and smiles to hear

Thy warbled chaunt, while joy flows in upon his mind:
Thy music's weapons pierce, disarm

The demons of celestial kind,

By Apollo's music-charm,

And accent of the zoned, full-bosom❜d, maids

That haunt Pieria's shades.

:

But

But they whom Jove abhors, with shuddering ear
The voices of the Muses hear;

Whether they range the earth or tossing sea:
Such is that hundred-headed giant, he
Of blessed Gods an enemy,

Typhon, who lies in chasm of Tartarus drear;
To whom Cilicia's legend-fabled cave
His nourish'd being gave:

Now on his shaggy breast

Sicilia's isle and Cuma's sea-girt shore

Are ponderously prest:

And that round pillar of the sky
With congelation hoar,

Ætna, crushes him from high;
While the year rolls slow,
Nurse of keen-encrusted snow.

From forth whose secret caves,
Fountains pure of liquid flame
With rush and roaring came;
And rivers rolling steep in fiery waves

In a stream of whitening smoke,

On glowing ether broke:

And in the dark and dead of night

With pitchy-gathering cloud, and glare of light,

The volleying fire was heard to sweep,

Masses of shiver'd rock with crashing sound
Dash'd midst the sullen ocean's waters deep.
There that Vulcanian dragon casts

His fiery whirlpool blasts,

Blazing in horrid light

On the scared ken of mortal sight;
Far bursting, marvellous to hear,
On the passing traveller's ear.'

All the fragments of Sappho, πιδακος εξ ἱερής ολιγη λίβας, are translated by Mr. Elton, and we think he has been remarkably happy in several; especially in the love-ode, the fire and rapidity of which is lost in the elegant version of Ambrose Philips. Some of the other Greek lyric poets follow, who survive rather in their general fame, than in the broken scraps that have been preserved: Archilochus, Simonides, Bacchylides. Justice is done to the exquisite lamentation of Danae; but the famous hymn upon Harmodius and Aristogiton, ascribed to Callistratus, is very tamely rendered.

The second volume is entirely filled with the Latin poets of the best age, from Lucretius to Ovid. As all these have been before translated, Mr. Elton has perhaps given too great space to their compositions; and the parallel which he thus provokes with so many former writers, is at least adventurous. It is evident, that

the

the selector of detached passages escapes more than half the difficulty, and all the irksomeness which belongs to the department of translation; and has the advantage of chusing his ground, when he enters the list with him who has toiled through the uninteresting details and refractory obscurities of a volume. With this allowance, Mr. Elton stands tolerably fair in a comparative view of translators; and though he certainly does not equal Mr. Sotheby, who is not likely soon to have a rival, in his specimens from Virgil, he does perhaps as much justice to Horace and Tibullus as his predecessors. In his selections from the Satires and Epistles of the former, he has been judicious, we think, in sometimes employing blank verse, the only measure which can suggest to an English reader the easy and negligent style of the Roman moralist. Once indeed there is what appears to us a terrible failure, in consequence of a different metre. Mr. Elton has been deceived by the example of Pope into a notion, that the beautiful satire Hoc erat in votis, is a ludicrous poem, and that it requires a tone of vulgar doggrel in translation. Its real character, on the contrary, is moral and even melancholy sentiment, interspersed with the serious smile of philosophy at human follies. The story of the two mice is told with mock heroic gravity; a style which, if it be classed, in a general way, with the ridiculous, will certainly lose its proper humour by such translation as these lines of Pope: This jelly's rich, this malmsey healing, Pray dip your whiskers and your tail in.

may

Or these of Mr. Elton,

Served dish on dish in course complete,
With entremets prolong'd the treat;
And played the taster with the meat.

Such instances of mistaking the character of his author are however not common with this translator.

We were a little surprised at finding Gallus in the list of Augustan poets. The friend of Virgil, and the subject of that beautiful, though rather fantastic poem, the 10th Eclogue, (the prototype perhaps, or at least a sort of counterpart, of Milton's Lycidas,) did not deserve to have an unclassical scrap of voluptuous poetry, commonly published with the Basia of Secundus, gravely imputed to him. Mr. Elton indeed observes, that the Latinity of the delicate little Ode to Julia, however elegant, has something of a modern cast.' This is moderate and cautious, as four lines of the original will shew.

Conde papillas, conde semi-pomas,
Compresso lacte quæ modo pullulant.
Sinus expansa profert cinnama,
Undique surgunt ex te deliciæ.

We