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Translations and Imitations.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE following Translations were selected from many others done by the Author in his youth; for the most part indeed but a sort of Exercises, while he was improving himself in the languages, and carried by his early bent to Poetry to perform them rather in verse than prose. Mr. Dryden's Fables came out by that time, 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 to 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.

[Dryden's Fables were published in 1699, when Pope was only eleven years of age. The earliest of Pope's translations appears to have been that of the first book of Statius, part of which, as he states, was done when he was fourteen, but when republishing it he affixed to it the date 1703, when he was in his fifteenth year. We know also from his correspondence with Cromwell that about 140 lines of his translation of Statius were not added until 1709. Indeed, most of these dates are loosely given and are often contradictory of one another. That the young poet was not insensible to the faults of Statius-his vicious inflated style and want of nature-we learn from his correspondence. His fancy had been captivated by the bold figures and swelling numbers of the Roman poet; and Statius had another recommenda tion-he had been less poached upon by the crowd of translators and imitators who then filled the shelves of Tonson and Lintot. These gentlemen made Ovid chiefly their victim; and in Tonson's third Miscellany we find no less than six translations from Ovid's Love Elegies "done into English" by Henry Cromwell. Statius had, therefore, to a certain extent, the charm of novelty, though greatly inferior as a poet. One cannot forbear reflecting," observes Warton, 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 147 years; and, if I might venture to pronounce so rigorous a sentence, I would say that the Romans can boast of but eight poets who are unexceptionably excellent: namely, Terence, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Phædrus. These only can be called legitimate models of just thinking and writing. Succeeding authors, as it happens in all

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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 desert simplicity and truth; weary of common and obvious beauties they must needs hunt for remote and artificial decorations. Thus was it that the age of Demetrius Phalerus succeeded that of Demosthenes, and the false relish of Tiberius's court the chaste one of Augustus." The faults here enumerated by Warton are concentrated in the Thebaid of Statius; for his subject relating to funeral obsequies and games, so conspicuous in Homer and Virgil, he was compelled, in order to be original, to invent novel circumstances and adopt a different style.]

THE FIRST BOOK OF STATIUS'S THEBAIS.

TRANSLATED IN THE YEAR MDCCIII.

ARGUMENT.

EDIPUS, king of Thebes, having by mistake slain his father Laius, and married his mother Jocasta, put out his own eyes, and resigned his 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 gods, 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 mean time 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 god. The rise of this solemnity he relates to his guests, the loves of Phoebus and Psamathe, and the story of Chorobus. He inquires and is made acquainted with their descent and quality: The sacrifice is renewed, and the book concludes with a hymn to Apollo.

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 than he expected, he gave it some correction a few years afterwards.

FRATERNAL rage, the guilty Thebes' alarms,

The alternate reign destroyed by impious arms,
Demand our song; a sacred fury fires

My ravish'd breast, and all the Muse inspires.
O Goddess, say, shall I deduce my rhymes
From the dire nation in its early times,
Europa's rape, Agenor's stern decree,

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And Cadmus searching round the spacious sea?
How with the serpent's teeth he sow'd the soil,
And reap'd an iron harvest of his toil?

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Or how from joining stones the city sprung?
While to his harp divine Amphion sung?
Or shall I Juno's hate to Thebes resound,
Whose fatal rage th' unhappy monarch found?
The sire against the son his arrows drew,
O'er the wide fields the furious mother flew,
And while her arms a second hope contain,

Sprung from the rocks and plunged into the main.
But wave whate'er to Cadmus may belong,

And fix, O Muse! the barrier of thy song

At Edipus-from his disasters trace

The long confusions of his guilty race:

Nor yet attempt to stretch thy bolder wing,

And mighty Cæsar's conquering eagles sing;
How twice he tamed proud Ister's rapid flood,

While Dacian mountains stream'd with barbarous blood;

Twice taught the Rhine beneath his laws to roll,
And stretch'd his empire to the frozen pole,
Or long before with early valour strove,
In youthful arms to assert the cause of Jove.
And thou, great heir of all thy father's fame,
Increase of glory to the Latian name!

Oh bless thy Rome with an eternal reign,
Nor let desiring worlds entreat in vain.

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What though the stars contract their heavenly space,

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And crowd their shining ranks to yield thee place;
Though all the skies, ambitious of thy sway,
Conspire to court thee from our world away;

Though Phoebus longs to mix his rays with thine,

And in thy glories more serenely shine;

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Though Jove himself no less content would be,

To part his throne and share his heaven with thee:
Yet stay, great Cæsar! and vouchsafe to reign

O'er the wide earth, and o'er the watery main ;
Resign to Jove his empire of the skies,
And people Heaven with Roman deities.

The time will come, when a diviner flame
Shall warm my breast to sing of Cæsar's fame:
Meanwhile permit, that my preluding Muse
In Theban wars an humbler theme may choose:
Of furious hate surviving death, she sings,
A fatal throne to two contending kings,

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And funeral flames, that parting wide in air
Express the discord of the souls they bear:
Of towns dispeopled, and the wandering ghosts
Of kings unburied in the wasted coasts;

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When Dirce's fountain blushed with Grecian blood,

And Thetis, near Ismenos' swelling flood,
With dread beheld the rolling surges sweep,
In heaps, his slaughtered sons into the deep.
What hero, Clio! wilt thou first relate?
The rage of Tydeus, or the Prophet's fate?
Or how with hills of slain on every side,
Hippomedon repell'd the hostile tide?

Or how the youth with every grace adorn'd,1
Untimely fell, to be for ever mourn'd?
Then to fierce Capaneus thy verse extend,
And sing with horror his prodigious end.

Now wretched Edipus, deprived of sight,
Led a long death in everlasting night;
But while he dwells where not a cheerful ray
Can pierce the darkness, and abhors the day,
The clear reflecting mind presents his sin

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In frightful views, and makes it day within;
Returning thoughts in endless circles roll,
And thousand furies haunt his guilty soul.
The wretch then lifted to th' unpitying skies
Those empty orbs from whence he tore his eyes,

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Whose wounds, yet fresh, with bloody hands he strook,
While from his breast these dreadful accents broke :

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"Ye gods! that o'er the gloomy regions reign, Where guilty spirits feel eternal pain;

Thou, sable Styx! whose livid streams are roll'd
Through dreary coasts, which I, though blind, behold;
Tisiphone, that oft hast heard my prayer,

Assist, if Edipus deserve thy care!

If you received me from Jocasta's womb,

And nursed the hope of mischiefs yet to come:

If leaving Polybus, I took my way

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To Cyrrha's temple, on that fatal day,

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90

When by the son the trembling father died,

Where the three roads the Phocian fields divide :

1 Parthenopeus.

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