the Second Book, and forms a maxim to inspire Amphitrions and heroes alike.

'Sed convivatoris, uti ducis, ingenium res Adversæ nudlare solent, celare secundæ.'-II.

viii. 73-4.

But still the cit with languid eye
Just picked a bit, then put it by;
Which with dismay the rustic saw
As, stretched upon some stubbly straw,
He munched at bran and common grits,
Not venturing on the dainty bits.'

-II. vi. 83-9.-Martin, p. 363.

Mr. Martin's rendering of it is happy The expansion of the linesenough to pass into a proverb :

But then the genius of a host,
As of a general, is most

Brought out, when adverse fates assail it,
A course of luck serves but to veil it.'

-Martin, p. 379.*

'Cupiens variâ fastidia cœnâ Vincere tangentis male singula dente superbo,' in the verses italicized is as happy as can be conceived. Now let us turn to Coning

ton:

'He spares not oats nor vetches; in his chaps
Raisins he brings and nibbled bacon scraps,
Hoping by varied dainties to entice
His town bred guest, so delicate and nice,
Who condescended graciously to touch
Thing after thing, but never would take much,
While he, the owner of the mansion, sate
On threshed-out straw, and spelt and darnels
ate.'-Conington, p. 84.

We fear that we have been already too liberal of quotation, to make room for any quotations from the gastronomic satires, as the 2nd, 4th, and 8th of the 2nd Book may be termed. They are amusing to read, as showing that the dogmatism of cooks' oracles is by no means of modern growth, and a reviewer of cookery books might do worse than salt his articles with scraps of the translations before It will hardly do after the former extract; us, which give out the dicta' of the anony-good as it is, and for the most part skilful, mous'officier de bouche' of the 4th Satire, there is a formality about it; and though with all the consequence of Jules Gouffé or the Professor never wrought but on a prinUrban Dubois. The poet, we cannot doubt, ciple and system which he could ably justiwas quizzing the professor when he set down fy, it may be doubted, throughout his translation of the Satires, whether their one sole drawback is not the effort, which he owns to, of compensating the heavy outgoings of translation by trifling additions, in the way of imported point and pungency, to the general sum of liveliness.* Meaning to achieve something of this kind in Englishing the line and a half, which we have cited from the Latin above, he does not seem to us to have quite succeeded.

the words

'Pratensibus optima fungis Natura est: aliis male creditur.'-II. iv. 20. 'To meadow mushrooms give the prize, And trust no others, if you're wise.'

He must have been too country-born and too
good a judge, not to utilize, as his nation
does to this day, the numerous esculent aga-
rics. A little extract from an account of a
feast of a different kind, the country-mouse's
at home,' in the admirable finish of the
6th Satire of Book II., we cannot refrain
from giving-told as it is by each translator
so completely in his own style: Conington
being neat, terse, and very Horatian; Mar-
tin, on the other hand, lively and freer, to
the advantage of his picture, and with no
detriment to fidelity. Here is his 'field-
mouse' doing host:-

'In brief he did not spare his board
Of corn and pease, long coyly stored:
Raisins he brought, and scraps, to boot,
Half gnawed of bacon, which he put
With his own mouth before his guest,
In hopes, by offering his best
In such variety, he might
Persuade him to an appetite.

* Conington's renderings are:

'For 'tis a rule, that wrath is short or long, Just as the combatants are weak or strong.' -I. vii. 10.

But gifts concealed by sunshine are displayed

In hosts, as in commanders, by the shade.'
-II. viii. 73-4.

It must be said, however, that Professor Conington's compensatory principle never betrays him into solecisms as regards the substitution of modern equivalents for ancient allusions. Refined scholarship is the surest guarantee in this respect. Though he assumes such mild licences, as calling a 'scarus' a 'sardine,' and writing 'pounds' for 'sestertia,' he has too much sense of the fitness of things to talk, as he instances Dryden talking in translation, of the 'Louvre of the Sky,' and he would have revolted from the taste of a most recent translator, who has had the courage to render invideat quod et Hermogenes, ego canto,' Singing, that jealous might make a Sims Reeves.' And we commend with confidence to any incepting translator of a classical author, the excellent advice of the Professor in his Preface, pp. xviiixx., as regards 'the patent difficulty of knowing what to do with local and tempo

* See Preface, p. xiv.

6

"Till that prætor, for suffrages vainly intreating,

Discovered and taught, both were excellent eating.'

On the other hand, Mr. Conington's rendering of 'malis ridentem alienis,' II. iii. 72* (a phrase, touching which commentators are at issue), exhibits more grasp than Mr. Martip's; and in passages where the latter has gone slightly astray, the Professor's nice accuracy supervenes to set him right. One snch is

rary customs, allusions, and proverbs.' It | translation ignores. With him, 'Donec vos has this great advantage, that the practical auctor docuit prætorius' is simply, Until a illustration of it is contained within the prætor taught us they were good.' With same cloth covers. Mr. Theodore Martin, on Martin more truly, in spite of circumlocuhis part, is no less careful to avoid sacrifi- tioncing the air and prestige of ancient life and thought, which there is in his original, by unwarrantable modernisms. We hardly call to mind a phrase to which exception can be taken, unless, perhaps, it be the repetition more than once (for once was all very well) of the expression 'thundering réveillé,' to represent knocking vehemently at a door.' It is a mannerism which might well be retrenched, and which one should not care to meet again in the Epistles, which every scholar must hope are in due time to follow Martin's Satires of Horace.' We have said enough to show how very highly we rate these. In a brief In memoriam' to Professor Conington, in the 4th No. of the second volume of the Journal of Philology,' fessor Munro' does not hesitate to say that he believes his translation of the Satires and Epistles of Horace to be on the whole, perhaps, the best and most successful translation of a Classic, that exists in the English language. This is saying much, but, everything considered, hardly too much. Caution would suggest the qualification one of the best,'

or

one of the very best.'

Pro

That which makes it so is the unerring penetration of the original author's sense, of which all lesser scholars are sure now and then to fall

short. In examining both the versions at
the head of this article with an eye to a cor-
rect estimate of the Latin meaning, we have
constantly found each at-one in adopting the
soundest interpretation of a doubtful phrase.
For example, in rendering

'Cum referre negas quali sit quisque parente
Natus, dum ingenuus.'-I. vi. 8,
both accepted Gesner's interpretation of 'in-
genuus,' h.e. ingenuis moribus,' and repu-
diate the other forced and improbable expla-
nation, which Howes makes a faint effort to
recommend by a not very obvious double
entendre.'

'No matter, where, you say, or whence they

rose,

So but their blood in gentle current flows.'

'Missus ad hoc, pulsis, vetus est ut fama, Sabellis,

Quo ne per vacuum Romano incurreret hostis, Sive quod Appula gens, seu quod Lucania bellum

Incuteret violenta : '-II. i. 36,

a passage in which Mr. Martin's translation reads as if sive quod' introduced an alternative cause of the Venusian being located where he was; whereas 'sive' and 'seu,' as Conington sees, do but explain the possible enemies Rome had to fear.

'Planted 'tis said, there in the Samnites' place, To guard for Rome the intermediate space, Lest these or those some day should make a raid

In time of war, and Roman soil invade.' -Conington. Another is where the picture of Ofellus, 'metato in agello '—

'Cum pecore et natis fortem mercede colonum.' —II. ii. 114–115,

really represents him as a tenant to a soldier (an intruding veteran,' Conington puts it), to wit, the Umbrenus, to whom commissioners had meted out the farm of which Ofel

lus had been once owner. Mr. Martin seems to have overlooked this, and to have misunderstood 'mercede' by translating it 'to profit.'

In every such difficulty Conington's version is a safe guide, and it is this, superadded to his taste, discrimination, and not small poetic gift, which goes far to justify Mr. Munro's very high estimate, and to recommend his book to every student of the Satires. Besides the veterans who still cherish their Horace, and love to refresh their memory of his wit and wisdom by draughts not only at the fountain-head, but also at such offsprings' as the translations

In Englishing 'Tricesima Sabbata' (I. ix. 69), we see that both have thoroughly digested the note of Orelli; and in II. ii. 50, the palm of fullest accuracy is due to Mr. Martin, who by a periphrasis has got in the sarcastic joke on Gallonius's failure for the prætorship, which, either because his verse would not admit it or because he saw fit to discre-He'll laugh till scarce you'd think his jaws dit the commentator's gossip, Conington's

his own.'-C.

'Drag him to court, his face all grin

At taking you so finely in.'-M.

maxim or figure of speech, to garnish style or leaven conversation; and, when the book is laid by, the memory will retain so choice a residuum of pleasantries, railleries, and skits at vices and foibles, that the time spent upon it will have been no more wasted than those hours which, if report tell truth, one of our not classically educated public men has bestowed so profitably on Milton. In any wise to recur to the same stanza of 'Childe Harold,' from which we have just

of Conington and Martin, there will be two | hand-will be gleaned many a pleasant hint classes of readers to benefit by those ver- as to minor morals, many a neatly turned sions. First, the young students, to whom in unravelling the poet's sense-depending often on mental supply of connecting links -the accurate, masterly sequence of the argument in Conington's version cannot fail to prove a real boon; while, as life and spirit are the salt of a translation of Horace, and as the knowledge of his Satires will be clearly most imperfect without some perception of these features, the gay, brisk, sparkling verses of Theodore Martin's translation will furnish them with a recipe for throw-quoted above, and to take the liberty of ing life into their presentments of the poet, whether in vivâ voce or on paper. We should like a son of ours to attack the Satires of Horace with an Orelli, flanked on either side by Conington and Martin, and feel sure that then, especially with regard to the most original of the poet's works, he would never be minded to sing with Lord Byron :

'Then farewell, Horace, whom I hated so.'

The other class is the growing one of nonclassical readers, who have sense enough to value on faith the treasures which they find difficulty in unearthing, but from which, not so long ago, statesmen, orators, and good talkers took pride in borrowing or quoting. It is scarce to be expected, or even wished, that in our busy age undue patience should be shown to the man who, give him rope, would quote Horace in season and out of season; yet the power, thriftily husbanded, is no mean one, for there are few better 6 Iman of the world's vade mecums' than the Satires and Epistles. Out of the reading of these even in translation and at second

*To this class we commend the 'Horace, by Theodore Martin,' which forms the sixth volume of the series of Ancient Classics for General Readers,' edited by Mr. Lucas Collins. This volume has been published since the main portion of the foregoing article was written, and is devoted to a general view of the poet's life and writings; whereas we have been considering only a particular portion of the latter. But though we have neither quoted it, nor made use of it, we have no hesitation in saying that the reader, who is wholly, or for the most part, unable to appreciate Horace untranslated, may, with the insight he gains from the lively, bright, and, for its size, exhaustive little volume to which we refer, account himself hereafter familiar with the many-sided charms of the Venusian, and able to enjoy allusions to his life and words, which would otherwise have been a sealed book to him. It will also be found by young students a by no means imperfect introduction to the life and manners of Augustan Rome. We gladly avail ourselves of this opportunity to recommend the other volumes of this useful Series, most of which are executed with discrimination and ability.

transposing the words of another line of it

the mere English reader may learn from two such excellent presentments of Horace's Satires, as those on which we have been dwelling, 'to love,' even though he cannot to the full comprehend his verse,' and to be well content with what is set before him in them:

'E'en though no deeper moralist rehearse
Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art,
Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce,
Awakening without wounding the touched
heart.'*

ART. X.—1. Nipon o Daï Itsi Ran, ou Annales des Empereurs du Japon. Traduites par M. Isaac Titsingh, avec un Aperçu de l'Histoire mythologique du Japon par M. J. Klaproth. Paris, 1834. 2. Nippon: Archiv zur Beschreibung von Japan und dessen Nebenund Schutzländern. Von Ph. Fr. von Siebold. Elberfeld, 1851.

3. Bibliographie japonaise ou Catalogue des Ouvrages Relatifs au Japon qui ont été publiés depuis le XV. Siècle jusqu'à nos Jours. Par M. Léon Pagès. Paris, 1859.

4. The Missionary Life and Labours of Francis Xavier, taken from his own Correspondence, with a Sketch of the General Results of Roman Catholic Missions among the Heathen. By Henry Venn, B.D., Prebendary of St. Paul's. London,

1862.

5. Japan: being a Sketch of the History, Government, and Officers of the Empire. By Walter Dickson. Edinburgh, 1869.

THE Portuguese, as is well known, first brought an European prow into the Indian seas. In 1497, Vasco da Gama doubled the stormy Cape and landed at Callicut on the

*Childe Harold,' IV. lxxvii.