deserves mention in this connection, for it was in no sense a translation of the Æneid; although its fine descriptions of rural scenery, and vivid portrayals of combats, as well as noble sentiments, made it popular at the time, though variously estimated by critics.

But the honor of the first poetical version, in English, of the Æneid at all worthy the name must be accorded to Gawin Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld, Scotland, issued in 1553. This was, as it professed to be, a fairly close, and certainly spirited, rendering of the original, of the entire Eneid not only, but of the so-called 13th Book, added by Maphæus Vegius; but, while regarded as English, it is in the broad Scotch dialect, scarcely intelligible now to those familiar only with modern English. Its literary excellence was evinced by its winning its way to popularity at once, and retaining it during that and the succeeding century, notwithstanding its dialectic peculiarities, and the appearance of other and vernacular versions.

The second noteworthy attempt at a metrical version in English of any part of the Æneid was in 1557, by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who translated the 2d and 4th Books into blank verse, a meter invented by himself, but which has since taken such high rank in English versification. This was a work of much literary ability; but unfortunately his public duties prevented him from carrying it to completion. It is still by many highly prized for its closeness to the original, being a line by line translation, and for its vigorous and pure English diction.

The next poetic version in English was that by Thomas Phaer, of the first seven Books, issued the following year, 1558, in an entirely different, though analogous, meter, which speedily became popular, and was adopted by George Chapman in his celebrated translation of Homer's Iliad issued in 1596. Encouraged by the favorable reception of his work, Phaer applied himself to its completion; but he was able to carry it only as far as to "the first third of the 10th Book," when death interrupted his labors. It was, however, subsequently taken up and completed, in the same style and meter, by Thomas Twyne, M. D., including the Vegian addition, now no longer admitted as worthy a place by the side of

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Virgil's inimitable epic. Numerous editions of Phaer's translation we issued, and its fidelity and smooth versification give it still a high stan ing in the estimate of scholars

But that was a transitional period, as well in its poetry as in t English language itself; and poets seem, both in originals and in trar lations, to have invented, or adapted, forms of verse to suit their o tastes; but, following in the wake of Chaucer, all hitherto appear to ha adopted the iambic verse, as was the case in each of the above-mention versions of the Eneid, each being different from the others, but all iam in structure. But now came of a sudden a signal innovation, not inde in classic, but in traditional usage. Scarcely a decade had passed, sin the issue of Phaer's and Twyne's completed version, when there appear a work which was destined to a notoriety far beyond the innovato anticipations; and which at once became the target, rightly or wrong on which critics, with remarkable persistency, seemed to regard the selves at liberty to practice their keonest archery. It was on the 20th June, 1582, as stated by himself, that Richard Stanyhurst published "T first four Bookes of Virgil's Æneis, translated into English historic verse," a singular combination of pentameter and hexameter, usual however, classed with the latter. This was a venture in disregard already established meters, which, while it proved a puzzle to the criti leaving them in doubt, from its peculiarities, as to whether it was intend as a burlesque, or an honest effort at a literal rendering of the clas poet's verse in its original measure, evoked a general onslaught of unsp ing, almost savage, criticism, which, for persistency, and evident int at annihilating its object, has rarely been paralleled in literature. T years after its publication, Thomas Nash-no slight critic in his day thus opens the assault: "Mr. Stanyhurst, though otherwise learn trod a foul, lumbering, boisterous, wallowing measure in his translati of Virgil." One hundred years later, Thomas Warton, in his History English Poetry, echoing the same note, writes: "In his choice measure, he (Stanyhurst) is more unfortunate than his predecessors, a in other respects succeeded worse." A hundred years or more still lat

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Robert Southey, the poet-wedded, as were all the poets and critics of his day, to iambics, as if intent on squelching him as a pest-asserts: "As Chaucer has been called the well of English undefiled, so might Stanyhurst be denominated the common sewer of the language." Poor Stanyhurst! How little he realized the odium which the seemingly unwarranted temerity of his innovation would, for fully two hundred years, evoke. Nor is the ban, imposed so long ago upon the effort to revive a classic meter, even yet wholly lifted. Its practicability, and advisability, have been again and again discussed, and that by some of the ablest scholars, but with usually an adverse verdict. The poet-artist C. P. Cranch, in the Preface to his admirable blank-verse version of the Æneid, issued 1872, covers almost two pages in canvassing this much-debated question of translating the classic epics of Greece and Rome in what he styles "these quaint and trailing six-footers;" and closes with the remark: "The difficulty of sustaining to the end, in hexameter, a poem so varied in thought and action as the Æneid, is a consideration which might well make the most gifted rhythmical artist shrink from the task; a task tenfold greater, if it be a main object with him to keep close to the literal phrasing of the text." This is simply a reiteration of an older decision, many times repeated with honest intentions by the masters of criticism in the past. With such reiterated intimidations, ancient and modern, warning against it, it hardly need occasion wonder that not a single hexametrical version of the Æneid (as far as the writer is aware) exists in the English language; and, if the Virgilian Catalogue of the British Museum may be relied upon as a true exponent of facts in the case, only one has ever been even attempted; but that one grappling with precisely what the poet C. P. Cranch has signaled as so formidable, if not impossible, a "task." In 1865 there was published in London, in small, pamphlet-like form, an edition of "The Æneid in English Hexameters, by W. Grist, Head-master of Central Hill Collegiate School, Upper Norwood." The author, however, as if to forestall what seemed an impending storm of adverse criticism, states distinctly in his Preface, that the task was undertaken solely "to assist his own pupils in the work of translating