that the translation is the same, in a few slightly varied the one from the other, and in others it is totally different, in words, character, and rhythm-so far at least as the several versions of one original can differ.

I will now take the noble Collect for the sixth Sunday after Pentecost in the Latin Office and that of the seventh Sunday after Trinity in the English Service, and compare by parallelism the English version of Mr. Burns with that of our own Common Prayer, prefixing the original Latin from which ours was taken, as it stands for the same seventh Sunday after Trinity in the Sarum Missal of 1528; and which is word for word the same as that from which the version of Mr. Burns is made:

quæ sunt nutrita custodias, may preserve in us what Keep us in the same,

Thou hast nourished,

In Mr. Sibthorpe's 'Office for the Holy Communion,' &c. [4to., London; Hamilton and Bird, Islington, 1844] this Collect is that appointed for the eighth Sunday after Pentecost, our seventh Sunday after Trinity, and stands worded as in the Book of Common Prayer.

Now, notwithstanding the proverbial uncertainty of all judicial decision, it would seem to me most probable that in this case almost all men, capable of judging, would determine that the entire spirit of the Latin original, in the matters both of sound and sense, was more really observed, and represented with greater truth, in the Common Prayer than in the Vesper Book version, capital as that, for a literal version, undoubtedly is. And this excellence becomes more striking still when it is recollected that the words "pietatis studio," in the last clause but one of the Collect, conveyed to the minds of the compilers of the Common Prayer the meaning brought out in their version of the Collect, namely, "the earnestness of Thy affection towards us," that is "Thy great mercy," rather than that contained in the version of the Vesper Book, "the fervour of our devotion" towards Thee.

I have ventured, somewhat out of the record perhaps, to give this illustration, since it serves so clearly to explain my own idea on the subject of translations generally, and to indicate with complete exactness my desire in this of the Agamemnon in particular. The interpretation of the Collect is correct, and the rhythm that conveys it perfect. And "this regard to rhythm," says Mr. Singleton, in the preface to his Works of Virgil in English Rhythm (vol. i. p. vii.), "formed a marked feature in the literary greatness of the [sixteenth as well as of the] seventeenth century. The compilers of the Book of Common Prayer, Charles I., Dr. South, Bishop Taylor, and many others, are striking examples of it: while in later times Dr. Johnson by its aid thundered

forth his most telling periods." It is mournfully manifest from the run of our modern occasional state services that this spirit and power of rhythm is dead, or very soundly slumbering in those high places "the Whispering Galleries" of the Church, where such services are now wont to be put together—those ergastula ecclesiastica, or ecclesiasticalia, as Drs. Parr and S. Bloomfield might have called them, whose music is anything but melody.

From what has been said will be gathered the principles of unlicentious freedom on which I would base all endeavours at rhythmical and metrical translation. Of the manner in which I have sought to carry out those principles it may be as well to say a few words.

When as quite a boy I read Robert Bland's translations from the Greek Anthology, I remember being very much struck by some few versions of his from Sophocles and Euripides in the common English tensyllable couplet-that wonderful measure which, from the time of Chaucer downward through Dryden, even in some of his original plays, and through Pope, in almost all his works, to Byron and our own days, has ever been the most popular with the bulk of English readers of translations. It struck me as being most apposite to the purpose of representing the measured beauty of the Greek. It was in fact no innovation in measure. It was the common decasyllabic line, only

tagged," as Milton called it, and so tacked to another or others of the same class. It seemed the measure most likely to convey the beauty of the original without exaggeration, and to maintain it without flatness or

feebleness. Indeed Mr. Bland's own words may well be cited here:-" It has always appeared to me that the true spirit of their [the Greek tragedians'] poetry might be more nearly attained by adopting the sonorous and majestic couplet which Dryden wished to introduce on the English stage, and which, however unsuitable to the purpose of representing violent and sudden emotion?], is peculiarly well adapted as the vehicle both of declamatory passion and of pathetic sweetness." (p. 240, Greek Anthology, 1813.)

It will be observed that Mr. Bland is here simply introducing his own "Extracts from the Grecian Drama," which he incorporated with his "Collections from the Anthology." I too am speaking of rhymed decasyllabics only in the case of versions of Greek plays, and not by any means urging their adoption as the common measure of original tragedy and comedy. In the words of Dryden, from whose wonderful 'Essay on Dramatic Poetry' I would willingly cite more largely than I may: "I need not go so far to prove that rhyme as it succeeds to all other offices of Greek and Latin verse, so especially to this of plays, since the custom of nations at this day confirms it; and sure the universal consent of the most civilized parts of the world ought in this, as it doth in other customs, to include the rest." (Dryden's Dramatic Works, vol. i. p. lxxxviii. Tonson, 1735.)

Artistically speaking, the use and employment of rhyme in the action part of a Greek play seems to me analogous to the recitative of an opera, the Greek drama being in this particular distinguishable from the English in that it is musically constructed, while ours is, notwith

standing exceptions, essentially oratorical or declamatory. The Greeks sang where we speak. If the choruses were rendered in the measures of 'Queen Mab' or 'Thalaba,' or as much of the chorus stands in the 'Samson Agonistes,' or as Mr. Blackie has turned the Choral Songs of the 'Prometheus' throughout, and of the 'Hepta' in part, or as Mr. Fox has translated those of the 'Agamemnon' itself, then of course the verse of the other portions could consistently be left blank; but certainly the one, when rhymed as well as rhythmical, seems fairly supported by the rest in the same array. The Greek chorus is not, like the songs in 'As You Like It,' for instance, or the ‘Midsummer Night's Dream,' or even like those in the "solemn music" in Cymbeline,' an insertion ad libitum, but an absolute part and portion of the very play itself; if not of the action in its strictest sense, yet of that which incorporates and embodies the action, and gives it its oneness and integrity. There is therefore no reason why it should be regarded, although of a different measure, yet as of a different kind, or treated as being of another and altogether dissimilar class.

6

In fact, with reference, not of course to the iambic, but to our unrhymed lyric metres generally-notwithstanding the beauty of Milton's 'Pyrrha,' and the sweetness of Collins's Ode to Evening,' and the cleverness of Dean Milman's Me fabulosa,' and of one or two other poems of the same unrhymed lyric characterI am free to confess that if you are not to have rhyme, you had better have a well-cadenced rhythmical prose diction like that of the Bible, or Macpherson's 'Ossian,' only broken into lines like Coleridge's trans