HINTS FROM HORACE:

BEING AN ALLUSION IN ENGLISH VERSE TO THE EPISTLE AD PISONES, DE ARTE POETICA," AND INTENDED AS A SEQUEL TO "ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS."

"Ergo fungar vice cotis, acutum

Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi."

HOR. De Arte Poet.

FIELDING'S Amelia.

"Rhymes are difficult things-they are stubborn things, sir."

INTRODUCTION TO HINTS FROM HORACE.

To translate IIorace has hitherto proved an impracticable task. It is comparatively easy to transfer the majestic declamations of Juvenal; but the Horatian satire is cast in a mould of such exquisite delicacyuniting perfect ease with perfect elegance-that no version has at all preserved the lively graces of the original. Notwithstanding some brilliant passages in Pope's and Swift's Imitations, there was little temptation to repeat even that less difficult experiment. A happy adaptation of a modern example to the ancient text could only be fully appreciated by the scholar, and was dearly purchased by the many forced and feeble parallels with which it was conjoined. Lord Byron, who ran a free race with such majestic bounds, moved with a halting gait when he attempted to tread in the footsteps of a precursor. His own opinion was the other way; for estimating the merit by the difficulty of the performance, he rated the "Hints from Horace" extravagantly high. That he forebore to publish them after the success of Childe Harold was from no mistrust of their value, but from feeling, as he states, that he should be "heaping coals of fire upon his head" if he were to put forth a sequel to his juvenile lampoon. He could no longer lift his hand against men who had grasped it in friendship, nor retain in an hour of triumph that literary bitterness which had been mainly excited by the mortification of failure. Nine years afterwards he resolved to print the work with some omissions, and gravely maintained that it excelled the productions of his mature genius. "As far," he said, "as versification goes it is good; and on looking back at what I wrote about that period, I am astonished to see how little I have trained on. I wrote better then than now; but that comes of my having fallen into the atrocious bad taste of the times." The opinion of Mr. Hobhouse that the "Hints" would require "a good deal of slashing" to adapt them to the passing hour, again led Lord Byron to suspend the publication, and the satire first saw the light in 1831, seven years after the author's death. No part of the poem is much above mediocrity, and not a little is below it. The versification, which Lord Byron singles out for praise, has no distinguishing excellence, and was surpassed by his later iambics in every metrical quality,-in majesty, in melody, in freedom, and in spirit. Authors are frequently as bad judges of their own works as men in general are, proverbially, in their own cause, and of all the literary hallucinations upon record there are none which exceed the mistaken preferences of Lord Byron. Shortly after the appearance of "The Corsair" he fancied that "English Bards" was still his masterpiece; when all his greatest works had been produced, he contended that his translation from Pulci was his "grand performance,-the best thing he ever did in his life;" and throughout the whole of his literary career he regarded these "Hints from IIorace" with the fondness which parents are said to feel for their least favoured offspring.

HINTS FROM HORACE.

ATHENS: CAPUCHIN CONVENT, March 12, 1911

WHO would not laugh, if Lawrence, hired to grace
His costly canvass with each flatter'd face,
Abused his art, till Nature, with a blush,
Saw cits grow centaurs underneath his brush?
Or, should some limner join, for show or sale,
A maid of honour to a mermaid's tail?
Or low Dubost1-as once the world has seen--
Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen?
Not all that forced politeness, which defends
Fools in their faults, could gag his grinning friends.
Believe me, Moschus, like that picture seems
The book which, sillier than a sick man's dreams,
Displays a crowd of figures incomplete,
Poetic nightmares, without head or feet.

Peets and painters, as all artists3 know, May shoot a little with a lengthen'd bow; We claim this mutual mercy for our task, And grant in turn the pardon which we ask;

Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam

Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas,
Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum
Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne:
Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici ?
Credite, Pisones, isti tabulæ fore librum
Persimilem, cujus, velut ægri somnia, vans
Fingentur species, ut nec pes, nec caput uni
Reddatur formæ. Pictoribus atque poetis
Quidlibet andendi semper fuit æqua potestas,

Scimus, et hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim:

But make not monsters spring from gentle dams—
Birds breed not vipers, tigers nurse not lambs.

A labour'd, long exordium, sometimes tends
(Like patriot speeches) but to paltry ends;
And nonsense in a lofty note goes down,
As pertness passes with a legal gown:
Thus many a bard describes in pompous strain
The clear brook babbling through the goodly plain:
The groves of Granta, and her Gothic halls,

King's Coll., Cam's stream, stain'd windows, and old walls:
Or, in advent'rous numbers, neatly aims

To paint a rainbow, or the river Thames.+

You sketch a tree, and so perhaps may shine-
But daub a shipwreck like an alehouse sign;
You plan a vase-it dwindles to a pot;

Then glide down Grub-street-fasting and forgot;
Laugh'd into Lethe by some quaint Review,
Whose wit is never troublesome till-true.5

In fine, to whatsoever you aspire, Let it at least be simple and entire.

The greater portion of the rhyming tribe
(Give ear, my friend, for thou hast been a scribe)
Are led astray by some peculiar lure.

I labour to be brief-become obscure;
One falls while following elegance too fast;
Another soars, inflated with bombast;

Sed non ut placidis coëant immitia; non ut
Serpentes avibus geminentur, tigribus agni.
Incoeptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis
Purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter
Assuitur pannus; cum lucus et ara Dianæ,
Et properantis aquæ per amonos ambitus agros,
Aut flumen Rhenum, aut pluvius describitur arcus.
Sed nunc non erat his locus: et fortasse cupressum
Scis simulare: quid hoc, si fractis enatat exspes
Navibus, ære dato qui pingitur? amphora cœpit
Institui; currente rotâ cur urceus exit?
Denique sit quod vis, simplex duntaxat et unum.
Maxima pars vatum, pater, et juvenes patre digni,
Decipimur specie recti. Brevis esse laboro,

Obscurus fio: sectantem levia, nervi

Deficiunt animique: professus grandia, turget:

Too low a third crawls on, afraid to fly,
He spins his subject to satiety;

Absurdly varying, he at last engraves

Fish in the woods, and boars beneath the waves !

Unless your care's exact, your judgment nice,
The flight from folly leads but into vice;
None are complete, all wanting in some part,
Like certain tailors, limited in art.

For galligaskins Slowshears is your man;
But coats must claim another artisan.6
Now this to me, I own, seems much the same
As Vulcan's feet to bear Apollo's frame ;7
Or, with a fair complexion, to expose
Black eyes, black ringlets, but a bottle nose!

Dear authors! suit your topics to your strength,
And ponder well your subject, and its length
Nor lift your load, before you're quite aware
What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.
But lucid Order, and Wit's siren voice,
Await the poet, skilful in his choice;
With native eloquence he soars along,

Grace in his thoughts, and music in his song.

Let judgment teach him wisely to combine With future parts the now omitted line:

Serpit humi, tutus nimium, timidusque procellæ :
Qui variare cupit rem prodigialiter unam,
Delphinum sylvis appingit, fluctibus aprum.

In vitium ducit culpæ fuga, si caret arte.
Emilium circa ludum faber unus et ungues
Exprimet, et molles imitabitur ære capillos;
Infelix operis summa, quia ponere totum
Nesciet. Hunc ego me, si quid componere curem,
Non magis esse velim, quam pravo vivere naso,
Spectandum nigris oculis nigroque capillo.

Sumite materiem vestris, qui scribitis, equam
Viribus; et versate diu quid ferre recusent
Quid valeant humeri. Cui lecta potenter erit res,
Nec facundia deseret hunc nec lucidus ordo.

Ordinis hæc virtus erit et venus, aut ego fallor,
Ut jam nunc dicat, jam nunc debentia dici
Pleraque differat, et præsens in tempus omittat;
Hoc amet, hoc spernat promissi carminis auctor.
In verbis etiam tenuis cautusque serendis: