I proceeded to the translation of the twelfth book of Ovid's METAMORPHOSES, because it contains, among other things, the causes, the beginning and ending, of the Trojan war. Here I ought in reason to have stopped; but the speeches of Ajax and Ulysses lying next in my way, I could not balk them. When I had compassed them, I was so taken with the former part of the fifteenth book, which is the masterpiece of the whole Metamorphoses, that I enjoined myself the pleasing task of rendering it into English. And now I found, by the number of my verses, that they began to swell into a little volume; which gave me an occasion of looking backward on some beauties of my author, in his former books: there occurred to me the Hunting of the Boar, CINYRAS and MYRRHA, the good-natured story of BAUCIS and PHILEMON, with the rest, which I hope I have translated closely enough, and given them the same turn of verse which they had in the original; and this I may say, without vanity, is not the talent of every poet. He who has arrived the nearest to it, is the ingenious and learned Sandys, the best versifier of the former age; if I may properly call it by that name, which was the former part of this concluding century. For Spencer and Fairfax' both flourished in the reign 4 4 In a former work our author has spoken less respectfully of Sandys. See p. 282. 5 Very little is known of Edward Fairfax, the celebrated translator of GODFREY OF BULLOIGNE. He was of Queen Elizabeth; great masters in our lan-, guage, and who saw much farther into the beauties of our numbers, than those who immediately followed them. Milton was the poetical son of Spencer, and Mr. Waller of Fairfax; for we have our lineal descents and clans, as well as other families. Spencer more than once insinuates, that the soul of Chaucer was transfused into his body; natural son of Sir Thomas Fairfax, father of the first Lord Fairfax, and according to Wood, lived at Newhall, in the parish of Oteley, in the county of York. Neither the time of his birth or death has been ascertained. Beside his translation of Tasso's poem, which first appeared in folio in 1600, he left some pieces in manuscript, particularly twelve Eclogues, one of which was published in the MUSES' LIBRARY, 8vo. 1737. It is to be regretted that the rest should have been so long withheld from the publick. Mr. Pope appears to have been fond of this notion. He observed to Mr. Spence (as the latter informs us in his ANECDOTES,) that “ Michael Drayton was one of the imitators of Spencer, and Fairfax another. Milton, in his first pieces, is an evident follower of Spencer too; in his famous ALLEGRO and PENSEROSO, and some others. "Carew (a bad Waller,) Waller himself, and Lord Lansdown, are all of one school; as Sir John Suckling, Sir John Mennis, and Prior, are of another. "Crashaw is a worse sort of Cowley; he was a follower too of Petrarch and Marino, but most of Marino. He and Cowley were good friends; and the latter has a good copy of verses on his death.-About his pitch were Stanley, (the author of THE OPINIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS,) Randolph, though rather superior, and Sylvester, though rather of a lower form. years and that he was begotten by him two hundred after his decease. Milton has acknowledged to me, that Spencer was his original; and many Cartwright and Bishop Corbet are of this class of poets; and Ruggle, the author of the COUNTER-SCUFFLE, might be admitted among them.-Herbert is lower than Crashaw, Sir John Beaumont higher, and Donne a good deal so." It appears from Ruffhead's Life of Pope, that he once intended to write " a Discourse on the Rise and Progress of English Poetry, as it came from the Provencial Poets," and had classed them according to their several schools and successions in the following order: CC ÆRA I. RYMER, 2d part, pag. 65, 66, 67, 77. Petrarch, 78. Catal. of Provençals. [Poets.] Chaucer's Visions. Romaunt of the T. Occleve, Walter de Mapes, Earl of Surrey, Sir Philip Sydney, G. Gascoyne, Translator of Ariosto's Mirror of Magistrates, Lord Buckhurst's Induction, Gorboduck-[original of good tragedy; -Seneca his model]. ÆRA II. SPENCER, Col. Clout, from the School of Ariosto and Petrarch, translated from Tasso. besides myself have heard our famous Waller own, that he derived the harmony of his numbers from W. Brown's Pastorals, Ph. Fletcher's Purple Island, Alabaster, Piscatory Eclogues, S. Daniel, Sir Walter Ralegh, Milton's Juvenilia. Heath. Habington. Edw. Fairfax, Harrington. Cowley, Davenant, Sir John Davis, Cleiveland, Crashaw, Bishop Corbet, Lord Falkland. Here are several mistakes. The first paragraph under Æra II. is unintelligible. We have no English poem by Alabaster. Golding, I believe, translated nothing from the Italian. Sir John Davies and Drayton wrote nearly as soon as Donne. Carew and T. Carey are the same person; and Thomas Carew, the person meant, had published nothing, when Waller wrote his first poem. There is no poet of the name of Baynal. The person meant, I suspect, was-Tho. Randal, in which way the name of the GODFREY OF BULLOIGNE, which was turned into English by Mr. Fairfax. But to return. Having done with Ovid for this time, it came into my mind, that our old English poet, Chaucer, in many things resembled him, and that with no disadvantage on the side of the modern author, as I shall endeavour to prove when I compare them; and as I am, and always have been, studious to promote the honour of my native country, so I soon resolved to put their merits to the trial, by turning some of the Canterbury Tales into our language, as it is now refined; for by this means, both the poets being set in the same light, and dressed in the same English habit, story to be compared with story, a certain judgment may be made betwixt them by the reader, without obtruding my opinion on him. Or if I seem partial to my countryman and predecessor in the laurel, the friends of antiquity are not few; and besides many of the learned, Ovid has almost all the beaux, and the whole fair sex, his declared patrons. Perhaps I have assumed somewhat more to myself than they allow me, because I have adventured to sum up the evidence; but the readers are the jury, and their privilege remains entire, to decide according to the merits of the cause; or, if they please, to bring it to another hearing before some other court. In the mean time, to follow the thread of my discourse, (as thoughts, accord Randolph, the poet, was often written in the last century; and Pope might not have known that Randolph, whom he before mentioned, and Tho. Randal, were the same person. |