Non mihi respondent veteres in carmina vires. Efficite ut redeat: vates quoque vestra redibit. 239 234 240 Munera; quid laceras pectora nostra mora? Solve ratem: Venus orta mari, mare præftet eunti. Aura dabit cursum; tu modo folve ratem. Alas! the Muses now no more inspire, 230 No more your groves with my glad fongs shall ring, 236 240 245 Poor Sappho dies while careless Phaon stays. NOTES. 250 O launch VER. 236. My Phaon] Fenton translated this epistle, but with a manifeft inferiority to Pope. He added an original poem of his own, an epistle of Phaon to Sappho; which appears to be one of the feeblest in the collection of his poems, among which some are truly excellent. WARTON. Ipse gubernabit residens in puppe. Cupido: (Non tamen invenies, cur ego digna fuga.) 255 [O faltem miferæ, Crudelis, epistola dicat: Ut mihi Leucadiæ fata petantur aquæ.] 1 O launch thy bark, fecure of prosp'rous gales; 256 NOTES. VER. 253. Cupid for thee) This image is very inferior to the original, as it is more vague and general: the picture in the original is strikingly beautiful. The circumstances which make it so, are omitted by Pope: " Ipfe gubernabit residens in puppe Cupido, This would form a beautiful subject for Mr. Flaxman, who has made such correct, elegant, and classical drawings for Homer. THIS Epiftle is translated by Pope with elegance, and much excels any Dryden translated in the volume he published; several of which were done by some " of the mob of gentlemen that wrote with ease;" that is, Sir C. Scroop, Caryl, Pooly, Wright, Tate, Buckingham, Cooper, and other careless rhymers. Lord Somers tranflated Dido to Æneas, and Ariadne to Theseus. A good tranflation of these epiftles is as much wanted as one of Juvenal; for out of fixteen satires of that poet, Dryden himself translated but fix. We can now boast of happy translations in verse of almost all the great poets of antiquity, whilst the French have been poorly contented with only profe tranflations of Homer and Horace; which, says Cervantes, can no more resemble the original than the wrong fide of tapestry can reprefent the right. The inability of the French tongue to express many Greek or Roman ideas with facility and grace is here visible; but the Italians have Horace translated by Pallavacini, Theocritus by Ricolotti and Salvini, Ovid by Anguillara, the Æneid, admirably well, in blank verse, by Annibal Caro, and the Georgics, in blank verse also, by Daniello, and Lucretius by Marchetti. One of the most learned commentaries on any classic is that of Mezeriac on the epistles of Ovid. It seems strange he should have employed so much labour on such a writer. The very best life of Æfop is also by Mezeriac; a book so scarce, that neither Bentley nor Bayle had feen it when they first wrote on Efop. It was reprinted in the Memoires de Literature of M. de Sallengre 1717, tom. i. p. 87. This is the author whom Malherbe, with his ufual bluntness, asked, when he published his edition of Diophantus, "If it would lessen the price of bread?" There was a very early tranflation of the epistles of Ovid afcribed to Shakespear, which error, like many others, has been rectified by that able and accurate enquirer, Dr. Farmer, who has shewn that they were translated by Thomas Heywood, and inferted in his Britaine's Troy, 1609. One of the best imitations of Ovid is a Latin epistle of the Count Balthafar Castiglione, author of the celebrated Courtier, addressed to his abfent wife. WARTON. Dr. |