If, amidst pursuits that should withdraw them from the power of the senses, and from the nar row and selfish gratifications of personal vanity; amidst pursuits that tend to make the past, the distant, and the future preponderate over the present, you perceive the spirits languid, the attention wandering, and the memory employed in recollection, and, in anticipation of frivolous scenes, it will be wise to prepare yourself for a blighted and barren harvest as to mind, with whatever care you may prepare the soil, and however liberally you may sow the seeds of intellectual cultivation. O! lost Honora! it is not possible to speak on this subject, without recollecting the striking proof thy seventeenth year afforded of heart and mind triumphant over juvenile vanity. How incapable was all the unkindness of thy married life to banish the recollection of that letter, written secretly to my mother in the autumn of the year 1770, intreating that she would urge her own ill health, though not at that time worse than usual, to Mr Sneyd, that his consent might be obtained for thy return to Lichfield from Bath, when thou wert, at that instant, the toast of that gay city; where every eye pursued thee with ad * Honora's father. miration, and every tongue with praise! Never can I forget the hazard to which thou didst put thy precious life, by passing those deep waters, that seemed rising to keep us asunder; never the transport with which thou didst bound into the dining-room; the tears of joy from those beautiful eyes, that wet my cheek on our first embrace, after those long three months of anxious absence; leaving us, as thou didst, with every dread prognostic of consumption, and returning in full health, the blessed boon of the Bristol waters. Continually present to my recollection is the delight with which thou didst then first draw thy chair to our domestic hearth, where quiet, affection, and the spirit of intellectual expansion, were the only Lares. How do I love to recal the tender exultation with which thy dear hands were folded and clasped together, for having exchanged balls and plays, and malls and parades, for books and conversation with me, and with a few chosen friends! The triumphs of youth and beauty for the disclosures of the heart and mind, and the voice of adulation for that of sincere affection! Hope cannot present a future joy half so dear as these priceless recollections, lodged beyond the reach of fate, while memory remains to me. My pleasures, during my late excursion to town, were allayed by the regrets I felt for being obliged to decline countless kind invitations, and that from the destined limits of my stay, the extension of which filial duty would not permit. I was honoured by finding several literary parties formed on my account; and they were replete with every gratification to my spirit. I profess no unnatural stoicism to the praises of the learned and ingenious; nor could I listen with an undelighted ear to the warm approbation of my Horatian paraphrases expressed in these circles. The Ode to Phyllis has a domestic, joyous, picturesque festivity, which will interest and please you. Its spirit has wretchedly evaporated in every former translation that has met my eye from Francis and others. I who, like yourself, think the delights of social friendship possess the highest zest, have at least translated that ode con amore. Such hours, and such days of animated preparation, and of vivid enjoyment, you and I have tasted beneath this roof. LETTER XXXIII. TO ARCH-DEACON CLIVE*. Lichfield, June 27, 1786. By my ingenious and learned friends, Mr Grove of Lichfield, and Mr Dewes of Wellsburn, I was first induced to the attempt of giving to some of the most beautiful lyric compositions of Horace, that freedom and air of originality, without which poetry is so little worth. They observed to me, that, always charming, and often sublime as they are, very few indeed have been so translated, as that people, conversant with good English poetry, could bear them as translations; or, not understanding Latin, could like them as poems. They mutually advised me thus, unconscious of each other's counsel, viz.—to read over the prose construction attentively, of those odes whose general idea pleased me, without consulting any previous versification of them; to seize that leading idea; to write upon it freely; to use any allusion, metaphor, or imagery, that might * Resident in Shropshire. strike me as applicable, careless whether or not Horace has applied it, provided it be consistent with the Roman mythology, customs, and manners. Upon this plan, which I have followed, my versions have frequently little pretences to verbal fidelity, though, by some of the first scholars of the age, complimented with possessing the Horatian spirit. My only objection to the style and manner of Horace's lyric poems is, that he leaves too much to the imagination. To leave something to the suppliance of the heart and the fancy, has often the best possible effect; yet that is only where we are sure of their responsibility for the deficience. Nothing that is obscure can be generally interesting; and, whatever amusement Critics may find in their researches into occult meanings, it is always wise in the poet to preclude them from such pastime. Horace, however, did not take that precaution; or rather, perhaps, the lapse of centuries has rendered passages dim which were originally sufficiently luminous. In our time, and in our language, it should be the business of his translator, paraphraser, and imitator, to draw the dark hint into poetic day-light, The Gentleman's Magazine for last month contains some little poetic gems, of exquisite |