Though ev'ry charm forsake your fading frame,

Yet let your modesty remain the same.

Conceal whatever may distaste excite;

Let your dress please, attractive, clean, and neat:
Dress not your person in your consort's sight;
When dressing, you offend-when drest, invite.
Half-drest, in her short petticoat, I view'd,

By chance, the nymph who had my heart subdu'd;

In this disguise so lost was ev'ry charm.

It turn'd to ridicule her beauteous form.

Is this the virgin, to myself I said,

Who can so charm me in full dress array'd?" &c. &c.

To draw a comparison between Ovid and our bard, we may observe, that as one performance of the former was styled Tristia from the subject, so this production may derive the same title from the execution, and be justly denominated Marriott's Tristia.

XIV-BARRETT'S OVID'S EPISTLES.

[From the Critical Review, 1759. "Ovid's Epistles translated into English Verse; with critical Essays and Notes. Being part of a Poetical and Oratorial Lecture, read in the Grammar-School of Ashford, in Kent; and calculated to initiate Youth in the first rudiments of Taste. By Stephen Barrett, Master of the said School." 8vo.]

THE praise which is every day lavished upon Virgil, Horace, or Ovid, is often no more than an indirect method the critic takes to compliment his own discernment. Their works have long been considered as models of beauty; to praise them now is only to show the conformity of our taste to theirs; it tends not to advance their reputation, but to promote our own. Let us then

dismiss, for the present, the pedantry of panegyric; Ovid needs it not, and we are not disposed to turn encomiasts on ourselves.

It will be sufficient to observe, that the multitude of translators which have attempted this poet, serves to evince the number of his admirers; and their indifferent success, the difficulty of equalling his elegance or his ease.

Dryden, ever poor, and ever willing to be obliged, solicited the assistance of his friends for a translation of these epistles. It was not the first time his miseries obliged him to call in happier bards to his aid; and to permit such to quarter their fleeting performances on the lasting merit of his name. This eleemosynary translation, as might well be expected, was extremely unequal, frequently unjust to the poet's meaning, almost always so to his fame. It was published without notes; for it was not at that time customary to swell every performance of this nature with comment and scholia. The reader did not then choose to have the current of his passions interrupted, his attention every moment called off from pleasure only, to be informed why he was so pleased. It was not then thought necessary to lessen surprise by anticipation, and, like some spectators we have met at the play-house, to take off our attention from the performance, by telling, in our ear, what will follow next.

Since this united effort, Ovid, as if born to misfortune, has undergone successive metamorphoses, being sometimes transposed by schoolmasters unacquainted with English, and sometimes transversed by ladies who knew no Latin: thus he has alternately worn the dress of a pedant or a rake; either crawling in humble prose, or having his hints explained into unbashful meaning. Schoolmasters, who knew all that was in him, except his graces, give the names of places and towns at full length, and he moves along stiffly in their literal versions, as the man who, as we are told in the Philosophical Transactions, was afflicted with

an universal anchylosis. His female imitators, on the other hand, regard the dear creature only as a lover; express the delicacy of his passion by the ardor of their own; and if now and then he is found to grow a little too warm, and perhaps to express himself a little indelicately, it must be imputed to the more poignant sensations of his fair admirers. In a word, we have seen him stripped of all his beauties in the versions of Stirling and Clark, and talk like a debauchee in that of Mrs.

but the sex should ever be sacred from criticism; perhaps the ladies have a right to describe raptures, which none but themselves can bestow.

A poet, like Ovid, whose great beauty lies rather in expression than sentiment, must be necessarily difficult to translate. A fine sentiment may be conveyed several different ways, without impairing its vigor; but a sentence delicately expressed, will scarcely admit the least variation without losing beauty. The performance before us will serve to convince the public, that Ovid is more easily admired than imitated. The translator, in his notes, shows an ardent zeal for the reputation of his poet. It is possible, too, he may have felt his beauties; however, he does not seem possessed of the happy art of giving his feelings expression. If a kindred spirit, as we have often been told, must animate the translator, we fear the claims of Mr. Barrett wil. never receive a sanction in the heraldry of Parnassus.

His intentions, even envy must own, are laudable; nothing less than to instruct boys, schoolmasters, grown gentlemen, the public, in the principles of taste (to use his own expression), both by precept and example. His manner it seems is, "to read a course of poetical lectures to his pupils one night in the week; which, beginning with this author, running through select pieces

* [Mrs. Elizabeth Keene; who had recently published a translation of Dido's Epistle to Æneas.]

of our own, as well as the Latin and Greek writers, and ending with Longinus. contributes no little towards forming their taste." No little! reader, observe that, from a person so perfectly master of the force of his own language: what may not be expected from his comments on the beauties of another?

But, in order to show in what manner he has executed these intentions, it is proper he should first march in review as a poet. We shall select the first epistle that offers, which is that from Penelope to Ulysses, observing beforehand, that the whole translation is a most convincing instance, that English words may be placed in Latin order, without being wholly unintelligible. Such forced transpositions serve at once to give an idea of the translator's learning, and of difficulties surmounted.

"This, still your wife, my ling'ring lord! I send;

Yet be your answer personal, not penn'd."

These lines seem happily imitated from Taylor, the waterpoet, who has it thus:

"To thee, dear Ursula, these lines I send,

Not with my hand, but with my heart, they're penn'd."

But not to make a pause in the reader's pleasure, we proceed:

"Sunk now is Troy, the curse of Grecian dames!

(Her king, her all, a worthless prize!) in flames.

O had by storms (his fleet to Sparta bound)

Th' adult'rer perish'd in the mad profound!"

Here seems some obscurity in the translation: we are at a loss to know what is meant by the mad profound. It can certainly mean neither Bedlam nor Fleet-ditch; for though the epithet mad might agree with one, or profound with the other, yet when united they seem incompatible with either. The profound has frequently been used to signify bad verses; and poets are sometimes said

to be mad who knows but Penelope wishes that Paris might have died in the very act of rhyming; and as he was a shepherd, it is not improbable to suppose but that he was a poet also.

"Cold in a widow'd bed I ne'er had lay,

Nor chid with weary eyes the ling'ring day."

Lay for lain, by the figure ginglimus. Our translator makes frequent use of this figure.

Nor the protracted nuptials to avoid,

By night unravell'd what the day employ'd.
When have not fancied dangers broke my rest?
Love, tim'rous passion! rends the anxious breast.
In thought I saw you each fierce Trojan's aim,
Pale at the mention of bold Hector's name!

Ovid makes Penelope shudder at the name of Hector. Our translator, with great propriety, transfers the fright from Penelope to Ulysses himself: it is he who grows pale at the name of Hector; and well indeed he might; for Hector is represented by Ovid, somewhere else, as a terrible fellow, and Ulysses as little better than a poltroon.

"Whose spear when brave Antilochus embrued,

By the dire news awoke, my fear renew'd.

Clad in dissembled arms Patroclus died:

And, "Oh the fate of stratagem!" I cried.

Tlepolemus, beneath the Lycian dart,

His breath resign d, and rous'd afresh my smart.

Thus, when each Grecian press'd the bloody field,

Cold icy horrors my fond bosom chill'd."

Here we may observe how epithets tend to strengthen the force of expression. First, her horrors are cold, and so far Ovid seems to think also; but the translator adds, from himself, the epithet icy, to show that they are still colder :-a fine climax of frigidity!