vation, well calculated to fascinate a young and poetical mind, like that of Persius. Its extravagances were but the distorted images of sublime truths. Such tenets are to philosophy what fabulous legends are to history. Truth indeed shines through them, but half concealed, and by imperfect glimpses; and it is in this dim light that poetry loves to reside. Nor ought we, in characterising Persius, to omit what is perhaps the most pleasing feature of his writings, the views which they occasionally afford us of his own personal disposition, of his warmth of heart, and sincerity of attachment.

Of the present translator's qualifications for his task we need say little. The translator of Juvenal, the first classical satirist of the age, the merciless castigator of the Della Cruscan frateruity, cannot be supposed deficient either in the talent or the disposition for satire. On the other hand, with few exceptions, there appears to be little in common, as to opinions or predilections, between Persius and his translator. Of the three classes into which satirists may be divided, the sarcastic, the indignant, and what for want of a better term we may call the Horatian, Mr. Gifford, we think, belongs to the first more than to either of the others. He bears more resemblance to Pope and Boileau than to any of the Roman satirists.

The translation is ushered in by a Preface, critical and biographical. Of the labors of his predecessors, Mr. Gifford speaks with a liberality of praise which is very exemplary. We shall extract part of his observations.

It cannot, I think, be affirmed, that a new translation of Persius is much wanted: we are already possessed of several; of various degrees of merit, indeed, but all exhibiting strong claims on the public favor. Brewster is familiar to every scholar. I had not looked into him since I left Exeter College; but the impression he then made on my mind was very powerful, and certainly of the most pleasing kind. I thought him, indeed, paraphrastic, unnecessarily minute in many unimportant passages, somewhat too familiar for his author, and occasionally ungraceful in his repetition of trivial words and phrases; but the general spirit, accuracy, and freedom of his version commanded my highest admiration,— which a recent perusal has not contributed, in any perceptible degree, to diminish. Dryden, of whom I should have spoken first, is beyond my praise. The majestical flow of his verse, the energy and beauty of particular passages, and the admirable purity and simplicity which pervade much of his language, place him above the hope of rivalry, and are better calculated to generate despair than to excite emulation,

But Dryden is sometimes negligent and sometimes unfaithful: he wanders with licentious foot, careless alike of his author and his reader; and seems to make a wanton sacrifice of his own learning. It is impossible to read a page of his translation without perceiving that he was intimately acquainted with the original; and yet every page betrays a disregard of its sense. By nature Dryden was eminently gifted for a

translator of Persius; he had much of his austerity of manner, and his closeness of reasoning-yet, by some unaccountable obliquity, he has missed those characteristic qualities so habitual to him, and made the poet flippant and inconsequential.

I come now to Sir W. Drummond. This is a work of great elegance; spirited and poetical, and polished into a degree of smoothness seldom attained. But Sir William Drummond declares, that his object was 'rather to express his author's meaning clearly than to translate his words or to copy his manner servilely.' How he wishes these expressions to be understood, he has explained in a subsequent passage, which I shall take the liberty of laying before the reader.

'What Dryden judged too rude for imitation, the critics of the present day will probably think I have been prudent in not copying. I have generally, therefore, followed the outline; but I have seldom ventured to employ the colouring of Persius. When the coarse metaphor, or the extravagant hyperbole debases, or obscures the sense of the original, I have changed, or even omitted it; and where the idiom of the English language required it, I have thought myself justified in abandoning the literal sense of my author.' Pref. p. x.

I am somewhat inclined to suspect that Sir W. Drummond's opinion of the critics of the present day' is not altogether ill founded. In proportion, therefore, as he has gratified them, I shall be found to displease them; having freely encountered what he so sedulously avoided, and, with one or two exceptions merely, followed the original through all its coarseness and extravagance, and represented with equal fidelity, the outline, and the filling up, of the picture.'

But, it will naturally be asked, if a new translation be not much wanted, why is the present intruded on the public? I am not one of those who think that the successful execution of a work should totally preclude every future attempt to rival or surpass it; for this would be to introduce an apathy and dejection fatal to all progressive excellence. The field of literature happily admits of various species of contention; and to excel in the humblest of them, is to possess some degree of merit, and to prefer some claim (however slight) to public favor. He who cannot attain the richness and harmony of Dryden, may yet hope to surpass him in fidelity; and though the spirit and freedom of Brewster may not be easily outgone, his conciseness and poetical feeling have not much to intimidate a competitor of ordinary endowments.

But to come closer to the question,—I endeavored (I know not with what success) to translate Persius as his immediate follower had been translated; I hoped that to a fidelity equal to that of the most scrupulous of my predecessors, I might be found to unite a certain degree of vigor, and to atone for a defect of poetical merit by conciseness and perspicuity. When I speak of fidelity, however, let it be observed, in justice to myself, that I carry the import of this word somewhat further than is usually done. I translate for the English reader, and do not think it sufficient to give him a loose idea of the original; but as fair and perfect a transcript

'Two other translations of Persius have appeared; but as they were not published before the present version was finished, they do not come under my judgment. I may add, however, that the last of the two, by Mr. Howes, is a work of singular merit. The other, which I have not been fortunate enough to procure, is said to be a poor performance. 1817.

of it as the difference of language will admit: at the same time it will, I trust, appear that I have not, in any instance, fallen into barbarisms, or violated the idiom of my own country.

It will be readily admitted, that I have not adopted the most easy mode of translation; since, not content with giving the author's sense, I have entered as far as it was in my power, into his feelings, and exhibited as much of his manner, nay of his language, (i. e. his words,) as I possibly could. Expressions which have been usually avoided as not germane to our tongue, are here hazarded, for the simple purpose of bringing Persius, as he wrote, before the unlearned reader; who may be assured that he will find, in few versions, as much of the original as in the present:for this, of course, he must take my affirmation;-nor is this all; for I have given him no more than the original: all that will be found here, is to be found in Persius.

The error here ascribed, by implication, to Sir W. Drummond, is one into which translators of modern times have been apt to fall, that of rendering a writer whose language is bold, and whose versification is free, in a style of ornamented and polished diction, and smooth and equable versification. A kindred error indeed pervades half the classical translations of the last and present century, from Pope's Homer to Hodgson's Juvenal, and Sir William's own Lucretius. If Mr. Gifford himself has now and then committed this error in the present version, it is on occasions where a contrary style of translating is the least requisite; as in the opening of the sixth Satire, and perhaps the address to Cornutus in the fifth. Dryden is well characterised in the above extract. What we have observed of Dryden's Æneid on a former occasion, may be applied with greater or less justice to all his translations. They are not representatives of the original; but they are themselves originals, and excellent in their kind. At the expense of much of the characteristic beauty of the originals, he infuses a new manner and spirit of his own. We miss the sprightliness of Ovid, the lofty melodies of Virgil, the tessellated diction of Horace, the energetic simplicity of Lucretius, and the dignity of Juvenal; but we are repaid for them by an ease which, amidst much mistranslation, negligence, and coarseness, still delights, an all-pervading vivacity, a flow of happy language, and an exuberance of fancy which sometimes by its intrusion mars the beauty of the original, and sometimes comes in aid of its tameness.2

No. XLII. p. 288, in a review of Dr. Symmons's Translation of the Eneid.

2 1 We recommend, to the readers of the Roman satirists, Dryden's Preface to his translations of Juvenal and Persius. The comparison between Juvenal and Horace, and indeed the whole of the latter part of the Introduction, is characterised by that union of critical acumen with liveliness of illustration, which renders Dryden's prefaces so delightful.

These remarks are followed by a well written view of the life and character of Persius, and a candid statement of his literary merits and defects. The obscurity so much complained of in his compositions Mr. Gifford attributes, partly to the intricacies of his doctrine, and his adoption of the vicious style of the masters of his school, and partly to the dramatic form in which much of his satire is couched.' His conciseness, indeed, whether, natural to his genius, or borrowed from the Porch, renders his purport frequently indistinct. He never allows his thoughts full play; they are cooped up in too narrow a space, and become obscure by confinement, like the case of pent air, or the sullen heat of a furnace. Juvenal's indignation, on the contrary, moves with the breadth and sweep of a torrent, and like a torrent, clears away impediments before it. We agree with Mr. Gifford, however, in the observation (in which he is preceded by Owen) that the difficulties of Persius have been exaggerated.

Our scanty limits forbid us to expatiate further on the various topics touched on in the Preface. We shall content ourselves with recommending it to the attention of the reader. Among other interesting matter, it contains some observations, by the Rt. Hon. J. Hookham Frere, on the passage in Sat. v. (1. 2224) beginning Verba toga sequeris,' and intended by Persius' as a definition of his own style; from which we shall only extract the following:

The apparent confusion of metaphors in this passage is a strong proof that it consists of terms in familiar use; an analysis of our common discourse would exhibit an assemblage of the strangest and most incoherent images, which nevertheless pass unnoticed without ever shocking our taste or perplexing the fancy.

The fact is, that expressions metaphorical in their origin, by dint of uniform and constant use, cease at last to retain their metaphorical cha-. racter, and remain in the general mass of language as simple signs to express those ideas which they were originally intended to illustrate.

In this predilection for the dramatic manner of writing, Cowper re-' sembles Persius. The introduction of the sage erudite' with nose 'terribly arched and aquiline,' in the 3d book of the Task, is in the spirit of the varicosi centuriones,' &c. So also the apostrophe of Lo-, thario, and the theological discussion in the poem of Hope. Another peculiarity of Cowper's is common to him with Juvenal-the starting off, on a sudden hint, to a new topic, and returning to the main subject at the interval of three or four lines. Thus in Juvenal's invective against Nero, Sat. VIII. he breaks out into the digressive questions, Quid enim Virginius armis,' &c. For a parallel instance in Cowper, see the concluding lines of the description of the Sicilian earthquake, in the 2d book of the Task. Paley has noticed a similar peculiarity in St. Paul.

Of the general merits of Mr. Gifford's translation, our readers will in some measure be able to judge from the extracts which we shall subjoin. It appears to us, both in its excellencies and defects, to resemble the author's version of Juvenal. Among the latter, however, we ought in justice to observe that we do not reckon the freedom, and occasional roughness, of the versification, which we agree with the author in considering as appropriate and characteristic.

In perusing the first Satire, it was impossible not to bear in mind the piquant imitation in the Baviad; a recollection which, as may be supposed, subtracted somewhat from our pleasure. The commencement is as follows:

Alas, for man! how vain are all his cares!

And oh! what bubbles, his most grave affairs!
'Tush! who will read such thread-bare—- ?'

This to me?

'Not one, by Jove.' Not one? Well! two, or three;

Or rather-none: a piteous case, in truth!'

Why piteous? lest Polydamas, forsooth,

And Troy's proud dames, pronounce my merits fall
Beneath their Labeo's! I can bear it all.

Nor should my friend, though still, as fashion sways,
The purblind town conspire to sink or raise,
Determine, as her wavering beam prevails,
And trust his judgment to her coarser scales.
O! not abroad for vague opinion roam;
The wise man's bosom is his proper home:

And Rome is "What? Ah, might the truth be told!—
And, sure it may, it must.—

When I behold

What fond pursuits have form'd our prime employ,
Since first we dropt the play-things of the boy,

To gray maturity, to this late hour,

When every brow frowns with Censorial power,
Then, then-O yet suppress this carping mood.'

Impossible:-I could not, if I wou'd;

For nature framed me of satiric mould,

And spleen, too petulant to be controll'd.

The allusion in the following note is sufficiently obvious; of its justice the reader must judge for himself.

Sat. 1. 1. 137. There are, who hunt out, &c.] The literary taste of the Roman people seems not to have improved as rapidly as some of their best writers desired. Though furnished with correcter models, they continued to look back with fondness to the early specimens of art; and the obstinacy of their attachment to the writings of Pacuvius, Accius, Lucilius, &c. furnished the critics of the Augustan age with perpetual subjects of complaint. The fretfulness of Horace on this subject has been already noticed. His querulous remonstrances, however, had no effect: and, after a lapse of three-score years, the same complaint is reproduced in stronger language. But the warmth of our author is better