BOOKS.

PROPER'IlUS.* Mn. CRANSTOUN'S workmanship in this volume shows a satis- factory advance over his previous performances, creditable as these were to his scholarship, command of language, and metrical skill. To say that his translation does not come up to our ideal of what a translation should be is only to repeat a common-place of criticism. Such works may almost be counted on one's fingers. No great work has been so rendered, though several translators have ade-

quately given one of the aspects of a poem, as Pope gave the vis of the Iliad and Conington the romantic interest of the 2Eneid. But there are translators who achieve a success of the second order. Good scholarship, felicity, and above all, in- domitable industry—the industry that rejects a hundred lines till it gets the really satisfactory equivalent—such are the qualities which they possess. Mr. Cranstoun does not always keep up to this level. There is not one of his pieces which might not have been improved. Sometimes he is not sufficiently free—by which word we mean not "careless of his author's meaning," but " unfettered " in his movements—and sometimes not sufficiently faithful. You could not transplant one of the elegies into a book of selec- tions of poetry mid expect that it would pass muster, and you could not put the translation into the hands of a young scholar,

and be sure that it ,would not allow him to miss anything essential of the author's meaning. Much of the book satisfies this last test, but too much of it does not.

Any one examining a translation of Propertius turns, as a matter of course, to the famous epistle or message of Cornelia to Paullus (" Desine, Paulle, meum lacrymis urgere sepulchrum "), and to what is the most beautiful passage in it :—

" Nunc tibi commendo communia pignora natos: Haec cure et cineri spirat innsta meo.

Fungere maternis vicibus pater, ills meornm Omn's erat collo tnrba ferenda tuo.

°scale cum dederis tua flentibus, adjice matris Tots &inns coepit nunc onus ease tuum. Et si quid doliturus eris sine testibus illis; Cum venient, siccis oscula falle genis."

Mr. Cranstoun's rendering is not very happy :— " Paulus, our pledges I commend to thee ;

Burnt in my bones still breathes a mother's care. Discharge a mother's duties, then, for me ; For now thy shoulders all their load must bear.

Kiss them, and kiss them for their mother ; dry Their childish tears; thine all the burden now. Ne'er let them see thee weep or hear thee sigh, But with a smile thy sorrow disavow."

The rendering of the beautiful " siccis oscula falle genis," a most difficult phrase, we must own, is especially inadequate. Nor is Edmund Head's version here much superior, though it is un- questionably so in the other lines :— " Still, Paulus, in my ashes lives one care,—

Our children of their mother are bereft ; The household charge we both were wont to share In undivided weight on thee is left.

Affection's duty now devolves on thee ; Oh! let them not a mother's fondness miss,

But when they clasp thy neck, or climb thy knee,

Add to their sire's caress a mother's kiss.

Be careful, if thou e'er for me shall weep, That they may never mark the tears thus shed."

The concluding couplet is curiously remote from the meaning of the original. Mr. Cranstoun translates :—

" Moribus et coilum patuit ; aim digna merendo Cuj us honoratis ossa vehantur equis," "Heaven waits the pure in heart be mine the prize To rise triumphant to the realms of day,"

—a sonorous couplet for a mural tablet in a church, but quite away from Conielia's thought. "Even heaven," she says, "has

• The Elegies of Sestus Propertius, Translated into English Verse, with Life of the Pod and /ituanative Notes. By James Cranstoun, BA., LL.D. Edinburgh and London : Blackwood and Sons. 1875.

Andes! Classics for English Readers. Second Series. casettes, muses, and Pro- Perithis. By the ROT. James Davies, MA. Edinburgh and London Blackwood and Bons.

by,—

been reached by heroic virtue." Whether this be so or no (and a Roman woman would hardly dream of being ad- mitted to an equal sky with Pollux and Hercules), may I be deemed worthy by my virtue, as I am by my birth [the force im- plied in merendo], of being borne to the tomb by horses splendidly equipped, seems an inadequate ending to our habits of thought, but quite in character with Roman sentiment, which is more than can be said of "the pare in heart" and "rising triumphant to the realms of day."

Another well-known specimen, in which Propertius appears, to use Mr. Davies's phrase, as the "Singer of National Annals and Biography," is the "Epistle of Arethusa to Lycotas," these romantic names standing for 2Elia Galla and Postumus. Here, we think, our translator is much happier. We may give as a specimen lines 29-42 :—

"When eve leads on the dreary night for me, I kiss the arms thou'st left, and think of thee ; Fret if the coverlet uneven go, Or wakeful bird of morn forget to crow.

On winter nights for thee the task I ply, Cut for their shuttles threads of Tyrian dye ; Now try to learn the untamed Araxes' course, How far unwatered runs the Parthian horse ; Pore o'er the painted map each spot to find, And learn the plan of God's omniscient mind; Each frost-numbed region and each sun-brayed land, And gale that blows to dear Italia's strand.

One sister cheers me nurse, with care grown pale, Swears the bad weather keeps thee—idle tale !"

If "learn the plan of God's omniscient mind" for "quails et haee docti sit positura Dei " does not quite satisfy us, it would certainly be difficult to suggest an improvement. Mr. Paky's,—

"Where God hath placed the land and where the sea," avoids the crux of docti, an epithet which we may, without pre- sumption, criticise as very much out of place. But we must try Mr. Cranstoun's quality in the more characteristic elegies, those addressed to Cynthia. We may take as a specimen, which has also, we observe, been quoted by Mr. Davies,- (" Quaeritis undo mihi totiens scribantur amores.")

"You ask me why love-elegy so frequently I follow,

And why my little book of tender trifles only sings ; It is not from Calliope, nor is it from Apollo,

But from my own sweet lady-love my inspiration springs.

If in resplendent purple robe of COB my darling dresses, I'll fill a portly volume with the Coen garment's praise; Or if her truant tresses wreathe her forehead with caresses, The tresses of her queenly brow demand her poet's lays.

Or if, perchance, she strike the speaking lyre with ivory fingers; I marvel how those nimble fingers run the chords along ; Or if above her slumber-drooping eyes a shadow lingers, My tranced mind is sure to find a thousand themes of song.

Or if for love's delightful strife repose awhile be broken, Oh, I could write an Diad of our sallies and alarms; If anything at all she's done—if any word she's spoken— From out of nothing rise at once innumerable charms."

And another, which belongs to the ending, as the former extract does to the beginning of his passion :—

" Now, comrades, push our vessel off from shore,

Draw for your tarn in couples at the oar; Now haul mast-high the lint-white canvas there, And cleave the billow while the breeze is fair.

Adieu, Rome's towers and friends I cherished here I And thou, be what thou wilt, maid once so dear !

For now rude Adria's billows' guest ril ride,

And sue the gods that thunder in the tide, Till on Lechaeum's placid waters' breast, The Ionian crest, my weary bark shall rest.

My feet! speed through the toils that yet remain, Where Corinth's isthmus severs oceans twain ; Then, reached the shores that line Piraeus' bay, I'll climb the slopes of Theseus' weary way.

There with Platonic lore I'll purge my soul ; Sage Epicurus, in thy gardens stroll; O'er grand Demosthenes enraptured sit; And smart Menander, sip thy sparkling wit: Some picture find that may enchant mine eye, Or chiselled work in bronze or ivory; Or lapse of years, or else the severing brine, In some calm nook will heal these wounds of mine ; Or I shall die, by no base love laid low, And biding nature's time, with honour go."

Mr. Cranstoun has prefixed to his translations a well-considered essay on Propertius's life and works, with the criticism of which we find ourselves, for the most part, in agreement. There are both eloquence and truth in the following estimate :—

" While most of his predecessors had attempted different forms of verse, Propertius, with consummate wisdom, confined himself to elegy alone. An avowed imitator of Callimachus and Philetas, he resolved to drink from fresh fountains of song, and to lead down the Greek Muses from the high places of Helicon to Roman choirs and the green banks of Italian streams. And no one who has read him even cursorily requires to be told how powerful an instrument elegiac verse became in his hands, as well for descriptive purposes as for the delineation of the master-passion, in its varied phases of tenderness, ecstasy, grief, jealousy, and despair. In the poetry of pure passion he is second to Catullus alone. He lacks the sweet grace and tender melancholy that lend such an exquisite charm to the elegies of Tibullus, and the easy flow and melodious chime that lead us lovingly along in Ovid ; but his verse has a strength and vigour and sparkle to which they, even in their happiest efforts, can lay no claim. No poet ever more completely threw his soul into the music of his verse : every line reflects the man. Hence his originality is always unquestionable, his utterances sincere, his pathos genuine. His keen and impulsive nature drove him from strain to strain; i■nd the key-notes he struck were marvellous."

On one point we must take leave to differ both from him and from Mr. Davies. Why do they both scout the notion that the poet, after Cynthia's death, formed a lawful union, and became the father of legitimate children ? What Mr. Davies is pleased to speak of as " Pliny's gossip" seems to us very distinct testimony, which no one has a right to treat in so cavalier a fashion. He says of Passennus Paullus, that writing elegies was a family gift with him (gentilicium illi), and that he reckoned Propertius among his ancestors. The circumstances of Propertius's life were probably well known to his countrymen, and it is not more probable that a Roman gentleman would have claimed a descent from a man who was known to have died without offspring, than that an English gentleman in the present day should claim descent from Alexander Pope or William Cowper.

We are conscious of treating with but scant courtesy Mr. Davies's excellent little volume, but we have not space properly to follow him. Catullus has been adequately appreciated, especially of late, by modern taste, but it would not be easy to find elsewhere so just and satisfactory an account of Tibullus and Propertius as Mr. Davies supplies in his admirable chapters. NVc must content ourselves with an extract relating to the latter of the two poets, noting by the way that it is Tibullus and Ovid, not Catullus and Tibullus, who are really the " co-mates" of Propertius :—

" In his poetry he contrasts strongly with his co-mates Catalina and Tibullus. As erotic as the first, he is more refined and less coarse, with- out being less fervent. On the other hand, he can lay no claim to the simplicity and nature-painting of Tibullus, though he introduces into his verse a pregnant and often obscure crowding of forcible thoughts, expressions, and constructions, which justify the epithet that attests his exceptional learning. In strength and vigour of verse he stands pre-eminent, unless it be when he lets this learning have its head too unrestrainedly. And though the verdict of critics would probably be that he is best in the love-elegies, and in the less mythologic portions of these, where pathos fervour, jealous passion supply the changing phases of his constant theme, it may be doubted if some of the more historic and Roman elegies of the fifth book do not supply as fine and memorable a sample of his Muse, which inherited from its native mountains what Dean Merivale designates 'a strength and sometimes a grandeur of language which would have been highly relished in the sterner age of Lucretius.' His life and morality were apparently on the same level as those of his own generation, but if a free-liver, he has the refinement to draw a veil over much that Catalina or Ovid would have laid bare. And though his own attachment was less creditable than constant, that he could enter into and appreciate the beauty of wedded love, and of careful nurture on the elder Roman pattern, will be patent of those who read the lay of Arethusa to Lycotas, or peruse the touching elegy, which crowns the fifth and last of his books, of the dead Cornelia to /Emilins Pauline."

Mr. Davies's encomium on the strength and vigour of his verse is no more than deserved. The force of the Propertian pentameter is a thing standing quite by itself in Roman poetry. It is remark- able how in some of his early elegies, notably in that which describes the death of Hylas, he endeavours to rescue it from the monotonous dissyllabic ending which was then probably be- coming the rule. In his late poems, he seems to have yielded to fashion or necessity.