Now with spent flock tired shepherds hie Flocks, herds, and houses, whirls in one. Lord of Himself and blest shall prove, [41 He who can boast from day to day, 'Pour o'er the Pole! what's come and [XLIX. Fortuna saevo laeta negotio, et Nunc mihi, nunc alii benigna. Laudo manentem: si celeres quatit [LIII. 1.] I propose as an alternative rendering what follows below: Tyrrhenian progeny of kings! In unstooped cask a mellow brew I hesitated, and chopped and changed a long time, as my printers can too well attest, between the two readings, Birth of Tyrrhenian' and 'Tyrrhenian, birth of'; and yet it is as certain as any proposition in Euclid can be that the former is the proper order of the words. The latter, it is true, has in its favour a closer correspondence with the original, and the fact of the initial T being a crisper and grander opening sound than the B; but this Me then, upborne on pair-oared craft, Safe through the tossed Aegean, waft. cannot outweigh the double objection,-1st, of the bin 'birth' following the n in Tyrrhenian,' contrary to the laws of Anastomosis; and, 2nd, of the number and measure of Tyrrhe' being to the number and measure of Tyrrhenian birth of re,' as 1:3; whereas, in the contrary order, the corresponding ratio is as 2:3, -which latter, by the principles of Symptosis (here applying to the clash or congruence of the open ē sounds) is preferable, especially at the opening of the piece, as being less suggestive of subdivision of measure. I use the word clash here in no bad sense (for which the word jar or jangle may be reserved), but to signify generally the relation between two sounds strongly recalling each other, which may be agreeable or offensive (scarcely ever neutral) according to the circumstances in which it occurs. When agreeable, for want of a better term, a clash may provisionally be styled a congruence, when offensive, a jar. Thus, ex. gr., rhymes and alliterations (properly employed) are of the nature of clashes. It is worth noticing, that a similar struggle for survivorship of the fittest occurs in the second line of my version. On synectic (syzygetic) grounds, ' stirred' (by virtue of its stirring r's) would be preferable to 'stooped,' but the latter word, besides expressing the precise action of bending down the cask to get the liquor out of it, is chromatically preferable, by virtue of the colorific (and also slightly syzygetic) value of its pure vowel sound. Moreover, the pin stooped' has a fair syzygetic value as corroborative of the B in birth, and precursory to the p in 'pressed,' which itself preconises and ushers in a well-sustained and glittering p syzygy in the two succeeding stanzas. 11.] I do not know what authority Forcellini has for interpreting verso to mean turned or tilted up. I think I have seen amphorae in a cellar to one of the houses in Pompeii, the natural way of bringing which out for use would be by turning them round in contact with the wall against which they lean. Conington and Newman by their renderings of Non ante verso, 'unbroached,' 'unop'd,' appear to adopt Forcellini's explanation, and are of course much more likely to be right than I am-if they have sufficiently weighed the point.* IV.] A sly hit at Maecenas' notorious foible for hair-washes. 4.] See Suetonius, Aug. 86, referred to in Smith's Classical Dictionary' (art. Maecenas), and note the word uvpoßpexeîs applied by Augustus to Maecenas' cincinnos. vi.] I believe the application of semper to udum or contempleris to have been consciously left ambiguous by the Poet. A similar remark applies to plerumque, and to the construction of the whole of the first line of the 4th stanza. This kind of ambiguity or amphibolism is no blemish, but, on the contrary, a source of gain as giving greater fulness to the conception: the mind seizes upon the same word successively in different connections without pausing to decide upon which is intended, so that there is no interruption of continuity, the one irremissible sin of lyrical composition, the sole purpose of which is, through the ear and the intellect, twin channels of the soul, to bring the hearer into emotional sympathy with the composer. Conington's rendering of semper-udum by never dried seems to me singularly infelicitous: an undried * Since the above was in print, Professor Key has kindly furnished me with a passage from Plautus' 'Stichus,' v. 4. 39, which he reads, 'Namque edepol quam inde subito vel cadus vorti potest!' which serves to settle the question, and proves that the common rendering of verso is correct. plain, besides being an unusual form of speech, suggests rather the idea of rheumatism and dampness than that of freshness and coolness, which was evidently in the poet's mind. VIII.] The three places named would be seen in succession (in a sort of irregular arc of a circle) from Maecenas' Belvedere, as he turned his gaze further and further away from Horace's farm: an ethical and geographical refutation (if any were needed) of the gratuitous substitution (adopted by Anthon, and Tate before him, and mentioned without reprobation by Conington) of Ut for Ne in the 6th line. I abstain from referring to the cacophony of this preposterous misreading, and the pernicious rupture of the resumption (after the usual agreeable break in a single fourth line) of the beautiful syzygy of n sounds. One mischief attending the introduction of printing is the depravation of the phonetic judgment of verse consequent upon the appeal being transferred from the ear to the eye. To request a friend to turn his back upon the place of one's abode would be a very Irish way of inviting him to pay a visit to his (the inviter's) part of the country. Any who object to the bifid rendering of CONTEMPLERIS may substitute so for still in 6 and alway for survey in 8. IX.] The continuity of sense makes it, I think, natural to understand copia as referring to some (I do not say what) form of vastness, as, ex. gr., the tiresome extent of the Rue de Rivoli or the interminable Champs Elysées in Paris. Plenty, abundance, or luxury appears to me rather incongruous with what immediately follows. I felt half inclined, upon a sort of cy-près principle (taking sound and sense into simultaneous account), to substitute loathed profusion for palling plenty.* *Since the above was in print, I became unable to resist the phonetic seduction of the words 'loathed profusion,' which are so advantageous as regards time, melody, and imitative effect, and accordingly incorporated them in the text. I believe fastidiosus admits of two principal meanings-that which conceives disgust, i.e. nice, delicate, squeamish, fastidious; and that which produces disgust. The former meaning in this connection would imply a personification of copia, which does not seem quite suited to the context; and between causing loathing and being loathed the difference is not so very wide. Whilst in the act of meditating on the sound and meaning of the words fastidiosam copiam, a splendid Yorkshire pie, the gift of a kind and generous friend in the North, was placed upon my luncheon table, and the meaning of the words in a moment became clear; for the fulness of the contents occasioned in me such a sympathetic sense of repletion, that I was unable to touch a mouthful, and finally quartered it out untasted among my friends and neighbours, by whom it was gratefully appreciated. I felt, too, at the same time, how well the unctuous, saponaceous sound of the words |