students. The severest course of education gone through by arts' students is not to be compared with the labour required of candidates for medical degrees. One cannot help being surprised that a general Union of college societies has never yet been attempted. The advantages of combination are so obvious that, apart from the successful examples in the older universities, it is difficult to understand how they have been so long overlooked. Take, for instance, debating societies. Now the usefulness of these societies increases almost proportionately with their size. To make a speech to an audience of a dozen or even twenty men is a little ludicrous, but to address a meeting of one or two hundred is a capital exercise. Moreover, college debating societies are apt to be one-sided, simply re-echoing the tone of the place. When it is known beforehand what the vote will be, there is not much spur to eloquence. But a large Union, recruited from colleges representing all varieties of opinion, would be free from this drawback, and the speaker would really feel some inducement to do his best to convince his audience. Similar remarks will apply with more or less force to other societies, but as it is proposed to devote separate papers to each kind, this hint will be sufficient for the present. It must be borne in mind, however, that the identity and individuality of the clubs and societies in connexion with the various colleges will in no way be destroyed by such a Union. They will remain, like the medical societies, in precisely the same condition as before. The object of the Union is not to supersede the college societies, but to supplement their deficiencies, and to extend the intercourse which they promote among students of the same college to students of different colleges. But a Union could scarcely exist without some local habitation. This would no doubt give rise to difficulties, but only such as a little thought and patience would soon clear away. And if it is remembered how much more importance is popularly ascribed to a visible building than to a mere name, London students may perhaps be tempted to make the experiment by taking temporary rooms for the purposes of a club-house. But this is a proposal which must be thoroughly discussed before any active steps are taken, and the pages of this magazine will be freely open for any suggestions on this and kindred subjects. It may be asked, what benefit London students will derive from the system here advocated. The answer is—a very great increase in the pleasurableness of their student life. This is a result which none can afford to despise. In these days of incessant labour, anything in the shape of innocent recreation should be heartily welcomed. No available means of increasing happiness ought willingly to be lost. And if any student still clings to the belief that sociable habits are inconsistent with hard work, let him try the experiment. If it is unsuccessful, he need not continue it. But if, on the contrary, he finds that it has the effect of making his working hours more productive, then perhaps there will be room for another motive to make itself felt. The first thing for every student to consider is his own advancement; but having secured that, he may reasonably be expected to desire the advancement of his class. At the present time, this object cannot be better attained than by the removal of those social deficiencies which form perhaps the greatest drawback to student life in London. ON METRICAL TRANSLATION. By HENRY WARD FORTESCUE. In the almost innumerable attempts, more or less successful, which have been made in modern times at the translation into the English tongue of verses or metrical pieces in foreign languages, two systems of procedure seem to have been struggling for pre-eminence, the one of which was admitted to have the best of it for several centuries, while the other has been chiefly in vogue during the last few years. In the first method the rhythm is subordinated to the sense, and it is considered sufficient to present to the modern reader an elegant paraphrase in some familiar English metre-decked often with the modern trick of terminal consonance, or rhyme-of the poetical images conveyed in the original work. Thus, the Homer of Pope, Chapman, or Lord Derby; the Virgil of Dryden; the Horace of Francis and others, resemble the originals only in reproducing the sense, with a very faint and distant approach to the metre. If we would picture to ourselves the justice of such a reproduction, we should imagine one of the grand songs of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Mallet, or Shenstone reproduced in French Alexandrines, or the Italian ottava rima. Translations of this sort may be very good poems in their way; but they are English poems, and do not to any extent convey the force and meaning of the originals. The thesis which I desire to maintain is just this, that there can be no good translation, no rendering which fully conveys the mind and intention of the author-which does not reproduce the metre or rhythm in which he wrote. A true translation of Homer or Virgil should be in hexameters; and if we are ambitious of translating Horace, we should imitate in English, as exactly as we can, the countless windings and turnings of Horatian metre. Many poets of our day have taken up with this theory. They have striven-and amongst them the Poet Laureate has most successfully striven to prove to us that it is by no means impossible to imitate in English the Sapphic, the Alcaic, the Choriambic, and Asclepiadean verse. Our language is so elastic that we can do anything with it. I need scarcely observe that in our rugged words accent takes the place of quantity. This metrical translation, coupled with as rigid an adherence as is possible under the circumstances to the meaning of the text, is the second form of translation referred to just now. It is, I think, the only true method of translation, and, when it is not possible, we cannot pretend to translation, but only to a paraphrase an English poem, somewhat faintly resembling the Greek, Latin, French, or German original. The later translators of the Odes of Horace have, most of them, proceeded on this principle-that the metre should be respected as well as the sense. They have been content, however, with an approximation to this metre, and have not attempted to reproduce it exactly. The latest of them, a contributor to a monthly contemporary, seemed a man so able and scholarly, that I was led to expect great things by his first article I confess to some disappointment in the translations of the Odes of Horace, which he produced in the May number. I find in them no true Sapphics, or Alcaics, but the very lamest approach in English to the wondrously varied metres of the Roman bard. : A translation from any poem in a foreign language should have the exact ring of the original, or it cannot reproduce it. A translation of a Sapphic ode should be in English Sapphics— of an Alcaic composition in English Alcaics. Whatever may be said to the contrary, I believe that English Sapphics, Alcaics, Choriambics, and all the other varieties of Horatian metre, are quite possible in English. Two things must be borne in mind in comparing an English translation of this kind with the original. The one is that the English words must be read just as they would be spoken in common conversation, without any violence or straining. They should thus fall rightly into the rhythm or metre. The other is, that the Greek or Latin metre should be rightly appreciated. We should discard from our minds the vicious habit of our schoolboy days, when we were taught to commit three false quantities at least in every line of the Sapphic, and as many in the Alcaic verse. We must not suppose the "Weary Knifegrinder" of Canning, or the poems of Dr. Watts, to be models of the Sapphic metre, which they only distantly resemble, none of them having the dactyl in the middle which is characteristic of the rhythm. We must read the Greek and Latin right, and read the English right, before we can fairly compare the one with the other. I subjoin, as a beginning of such strict metrical translations, for the criticism, if not for the edification of the readers of this journal, specimens of the rendering into English of three of the most typical of the "Odes" of Horace. Trembled peoples, fearing return of direful Fishy tribes up high on the banks entangled, Haunts where erst the doves in their nests were pairing; Breasting the billows. Men of Rome will list when the sword is sharpened, |