the meaning. "Full measure, and running over," seems to "MEDEA. Qui nil potest sperare, desperet nihil. "MEDEA. Medea superest! hic mare et terras vides, • Medea. Nurse. Full oft affliction proves that hope is vain. • Nurse. - Perfidious Jason scorns, and hostile Colchis Rejects her fugitive. What now remains? Medea. The lost, the scorn'd Medea! ocean's wave, Bow at my name and tremble.' "Hie Have not our readers judged? We will request their attention, then, for a moment. Even in the alternate iambics, before Medea's burst of exultation, much of the spirit appears to us not adequately displayed by the translator: but in that burst, how does the Roman transcend the Englishman! "Medea superest!" The lost, the scorned Medea!' mare et terras vides." Ocean's wave, and earth's wide orb is mine !'-Is mine how flat and nerveless ! « Ferrumque, et ignes." I hurl the lightnings,—I lift th' avenging steel· Bathos perfect. "Et Deos, et fulmina," Th' infernal gods bow at my name, and tremble:'-"the devils believe, and tremble."— Now, in the name of the gods, and all their thunders, why this borrowed periphrasis? Not to mention that "Ferrumque et ignes" are plain fire and sword; and that "Deos et fulmina," which nobly end the climax in the original, are, as we have hinted, neither more nor less than "the gods and all their thunders!" We should not have exerted this our right of close questioning, (our readers, we hope, will not call it cross-examining,) if Mr. Wheelwright had not challenged a sort of comparison with Corneille in this very passage. Now really "Le Grand Corneille," who, as an imitator, to say the most, (when we oppose him to a professed translator) had much ampler license for inserting his own thoughts, has been closer, it appears to us, even if considered as a translator, in his copy from Seneca on the present occasion. We quote the passage, after Mr. Wheelwright: "Oui, tu vois en moi seule et le fer et la flamme, Et la terre et la mer, et l'enfer et les cieux, Et le sceptre des Rois, et le foudre des Dieux." This indeed is poetry. "Le sceptre des Rois" may be engrafted, perhaps, from the following passage, but it is admirably engrafted; and we wonder how Mr. Wheelwright could preface such a quotation by saying, in allusion to his own version, Corneille, in his Médée, of which several scenes are almost literally translated from Seneca, is not more concise.' "Sub judice lis est." We had marked many passages for similar censure throughout this translation: but we shall be satisfied with again admonishing Mr. W. of his sin of verbiage; and with quoting an instance of another species of offence, namely sheer idleness, into which he too often falls. It is impossible that even a maiden author could imagine the following lines to be poetical. They close the Medea. What a finale! JASON (to MEDEA, when carried off in her winged Chariot.) "Per alta vade spatia sublimi ætheris : Testare nullos esse, qua veheris, deos." Here we must remark that a very obvious illustration from Martial might have occurred to Mr. W. (" nullos esse Deos," &c.) and we must add that his notes display but a meagre stock of parallel passages; though this is almost the only species of commentary which he professes to give. Moreover, we cannot always admire his taste. He panegyrizes, for instance, a passage in Glover's Medea, as a beautiful apostrophe,' which begins thus: "Blast his perfidious head, vindictive lightnings :" -but de gustibus, &c.-The mode of reasoning adopted in one of the notes (in which a passage from the poems attributed to Rowley is adduced as closely parallel to a speech in Macbeth) does not strike us as particularly ingenious. In the first place, we do not think that the closeness of the parallel is very clearly made made out: (see the note, pages 183, 4, 5. vol. i.) but, for the sake of argument, allowing it to be so, what are we to say of the subjoined remark? If Chatterton's story is to be believed, Shakspere never saw the poems attributed to Rowley. I need not draw the inference.' Let us draw the inference. Chatter ton's story is not to be believed. He forged the passage in question from a loose (not a studied') imitation of Macbeth*.We are not clear, on revising the passage, that we thoroughly understand what Mr. Wheelwright means by Chatterton's story:'-but the reference which we have made will enable the reader to decide. We now come to the Octavia; a play, with all its faults, of which the subject redeems it from that listlessness of perusal which never fails to accompany the twice-told tales of the mythology. This subject, we need not remind our classical readers, is that of the repudiation of Octavia by Nero, and his marriage with Poppaa. The occurrences of this period' (as the translator observes, for we cannot exactly say the same occurrences) have been dramatized by two celebrated modern authors. The Britannicus of Racine is, perhaps, his happiest effort; and the fragment of Agrippina, by Gray, does indeed make us regret that we have no farther opportunity of judging what that great poet's classical taste would have enabled him to execute for the honour of the English drama. We cannot help thinking, as the strain would doubtless have been of much "higher mood" than that which inspired the Caractacus and Elfrida, that Gray would have effected something towards reconciling our lawless taste to the more correct models of composition: but, so ample is the field for discussion which this view opens before us, that we must be content for the present with a glance of it, and return to Mr. Wheelwright.We know not why he talks of Gray's fragment of a tragedy under the same title, having before mentioned only the Octavia and the Britannicus: but we conclude that this was a lapsus calami; especially as we read, in the notes to the Medea, a quotation from Gray's Agrippina. The version of the Octavia is much better finished than that of the Medea: probably it was executed last; and indeed it bears evident marks of increased facility in composition. We augur well from this circumstance. Would Mr. Wheelwright practise still farther, and give us all the plays of Seneca, (only attending to the double caution administered above, against verbiage and carelessness,) we doubt not that we should have * We beg to refer those of our readers who are yet interested in this question to our last sketch of it, page 35. Vol. Íxi. N.S. Number for January 1810. the the pleasing task of recording his manifest improvement; and of thanking him for supplying a desideratum in English Litera ture. Out of the many successful passages in the Octavia, we select the following; of which both the original and the translation appear to us very beautiful. In her wretched state of desertion, Octavia exclaims, "Quis mea dignè deflere potest Mala? que lacrymis nostris questus Gutture mæstum fundere murmur." Act 5. Surely this may be modestly compared with the famous complaint of the Nightingale in Virgil; or with any of those numerous classical passages on the same subject, which were so well collected in that anonymous pamphlet which overturned the celebrated Charles Fox's untenable hypothesis concerning the antient notion of the "Sweet bird that shuns the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy." Let us now listen to the translator: What tears are worthy to deplore my fate? Ah! that her wings were mine- then would I fly And every haunt of sanguinary man. Then, hanging lonely in the vacant grove, Upon some slender branch, I would pour forth The next passage, which we shall present to our readers, is one of a different character; one in which the translator has, we think, shewn himself as capable of preserving the vigour and animation of his original, as its occasional pathos. Poppæa, in the fourth act, comes out of the bridal chamber, in extreme agitation and alarm, and returns the following answer to the anxious inquiries of her nurse; *This is one of the closest classical parallels which we recollect to the touching exclamation in the Psalms, "O that I had wings like a dove." "Con "Confusa tristi proxima noctis metu Aut 'Confus'd with dread The indolence of these three terminations is censurable enough, unless indeed "repetition be the soul" of passion as well as of poetry. |