"The singular epithet woonpηs, applied to a column, may perhaps be understood by calling to mind the draperies which occur in ancient statues, which fall to the ground so as to hide the feet, and are almost fluted like a Doric column. The Doric column has no base or foot; and its flutings seem to have borne an analogy to the folds of a robe. The massiveness of the Doric, in which alone this feature occurs, may be also an idea conveyed in the present instance. It was not uncommon for buildings in the east to be supported by a single central column."

After this ingenious reasoning, we should really like much to know whether the translator of the Agamemnon, if he should exercise his new art on the Seven against Thebes, would insist on translating Todшxeç öμμa (v. 605,) a swift-footed eye? To judge from the whole style of his present production, he certainly would do so, and, what is more, would defend the translation by some extremely ingenious and altogether original argument, that would surprise Æschylus and the Athenians, could they hear it, as much as our modern Linwoods and Liddells. But we forbear to press this matter farther. The extreme into which Mr. Sewell's over-curious philological niceness has led him, is evidently a much safer one for the student than the vague style of milk and water dilution in which too many of our English translators, from Potter downwards, have indulged; and if he will only use a little moderation in the craft, and discard rhyme, (which he plainly cannot manage,) there can be no doubt that his talents are capable of producing translations from the most difficult of the Greek classics, that may not only prove of admirable use in educating the young, but be productive of great pleasure and profit to scholars of the most advanced growth.

Mr. Conington's translation is a work of a totally different stamp. He seems to have proposed to himself as a maxim the "Medio tutissimus ibis " of Horace, and to have been studious of presenting to the English reader a rhythmical translation, equally remote from the profuse decoration of Symmons, and the cramped literalness of Sewell. And herein, certainly, he has got upon the right track; for the translator's art is everywhere full of discretion and compromise; and no single principle, as Mr. Sewell seems to have thought, will carry him on triumphantly through every difficulty. And, upon a review of his whole work, we must say also, he has succeeded admirably in most places, and would assuredly have succeeded better in all, had he not been too anxious to maintain everywhere the Ger

man line for line system, and thus cramped in some degree that manly freedom, and elastic vigour, without which the most exact measured verse is only prose in chains. The line for line system which the Germans cultivate with such particularity, is a very useful practical check against that unlicensed expansion, and capricious interpolation, in which our English translators have delighted to indulge. But it is a principle altogether inadequate to meet the difficulty of many, and those precisely the most important cases; cases where the translator's languagelike the English-is less flexible and pregnant than the language from which the translation is made, and where, of course, the translator must fall on some device to prop up the feebleness of his instrument. Examples of this kind are continually occurring in a big-mouthed author like Eschylus. Take this line, for instance,

μηδὲ

Χαμαιπετὲς βόαμα προςχάνης ἐμοί.ν. 894.

Thus rendered by Conington,

"Scream to me from the ground with open mouth.”

This is feeble; nor is it easy to imagine how, without resolving the compound words, and giving the whole line a new turn and a greater expansion, the full force of the two words XaμaiTεTÈÇ, and прooɣávy can be given. One may, indeed, say with Sewell in a single line,

πετὲς, προσχάνης

"Gape thou upon me an earth-grovelling howl."

But this, though both literal and strong, is, like many of Mr. Sewell's accented passages, grotesque; and we are, therefore, not unwilling to fall back on Mr. Symmons' expansion of three lines,

Ope not the mouth to me, nor cry amain,
As at the footstool of a man o' the east,

Prone on the ground; so stoop not thou to me."

For, though such a licentious style as this is in the general case the furthest possible removed from the character of a just translation, yet it is precisely in such a passage as the present, that a translator, using a less flexible language, must use expansion of some kind, and sometimes may do so with the most admirable effect. Of Mr. Conington's general style, the following lines may be taken as a favourable specimen :

"This year is the tenth since to plead their right
'Gainst Priam with arms in the court of fight,

Two monarchs of throned and sceptred reign,
Vicegerents of Zeus, the Atridæ twain,
Led from this coast their warlike host,
With a thousand vessels to cross the main ;
From their soul fierce battle crying,

As parent vultures at heart deep stung
With a wandering grief for their late lost young,
On the steerage broad of their oary flight,
Wheel over their nests on the tree's dim height;
For it is not there, their nursling care,

In the cradle safely lying.

But there is who sits on a throne above,
An Apollo, a Pan, or perchance a Jove,
And he lists to the shrill, the embittered cry
Of the tenants who dwelt in his realm of sky,
And Erinnys is sped, with her slow sure tread,

To o'ertake the offenders flying."—v. 40–60.

The superiority of these lines, in point of music, to the same passage quoted above from Mr. Sewell, will be evident to the most unpractised ear. Or take the following:

"O royal Zeus, and befriending night,
Who hast brought these shows of bravery-
Whose hand on the tower of Ilium flung
So mighty a net, that nor old nor young
Could o'erleap the encircling barrier-height
Of the toils of public slavery!

'Tis to mighty Zeus that the praise I owe;
To the stranger's god, who the deed hath wrought,
Keeping bent on Paris so long his bow,

That the shaft, when it flew, was not sent for nought;
Not launched too soon, nor beyond the moon,

In the pride of idle bravery.

""Tis Zeus hath struck them thus severely,
So much may man unravel clearly;
As he planned it, so he wrought.
Yet there once was one who said
That the immortals take no thought
Of the men, whose daring tread
Doth their sacred shrines despite :
Wretch, of bold irreverent tongue!
Impious! truly was he sprung

From power that breathes out war beyond all right,—
Power, that dares what none may dare-

Power, whose houses great and fair

Teem with vast stores far o'er Discretion's height.
Clear from sorrow be my part,

Portion sweet for prudent heart;

For wealth has no munition

For the man whose gorged ambition
Spurns at the shrine of Law Divine

To save him from perdition."-v. 346–374.

These lines are even better than the preceding; combining, as they do, all that graceful freedom which is of the essence of true poetry, with an accuracy of verbal transference far beyond what English translators hitherto have been in the custom of regarding as within the range of their duty. But it is not always that Mr. Conington, by the fusing power of rhythmical genius, moulds his materials into such a fine harmonious homogeneousness. On the contrary, we see but too plainly sometimes how his rhyme has been acting mechanically, and driving him, in the face of his own expressed conviction, into a wrong path. Take, for instance, his version of the concluding lines of the last strophe of the opening chorus, describing the sacrifice of Iphigenia,

"When at length the prayer was done,
The father gave the priests command,
As 'twere some kid's above the altar stone,
To lift her form from where they found her
Fallen with her robes all streaming round her,

Body and soul alike o'erthrown,

And bear her raisingly,

Binding those beauteous lips, whose bitter cry
The house of Atreus else had banned,

With cruel thongs' speech-stifling power.

There as she shed to earth her saffron shower,
Her glancing eyes' too tender dart

Struck pity to each slayer's heart.

She stood as in a painting, calm and meek,

As though in act to speak.

For oft aforetime had she raised the lay

Amidst her sire's gay halls, and purely chaste,

The glad carousals of the festive-day,

With love's sweet singing graced."

Taken as a whole, this is a good version; but what a sad blot on beauty's cheek is that saffron shower! A reader who does not know the Greek (and such a reader is the best judge in such a matter,) cannot suppose otherwise in the connection than that Iphigenia is represented here as weeping saffron tears! This lamentable nonsense Mr. Conington has perpetrated, being led astray by rhyme, which, when it is not the most obedient of servants, is wont to be the most cruel of masters. As to the real meaning of the passage, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt. The xpóxou Bapás, " tinctures of saffron," is merely a poetical turn for "a saffron-tinctured robe." This Symmons, Linwood, and Mr. Connington himself, have seen and declared plainly enough; but this is not only the only passage where Mr. C. has failed to give in his translation, the result of his notes, stamped as they generally are with a discrimination and a judgment truly admirable. We shall add two other passages where Mr. Conington has allowed a cheap rhyme to filch away one of the most beautiful expressions in a most beautiful passage. Describing the voluptuous, deceitful beauty of Helen, the poet says,-v. 719,

παραυτὰ, δ ̓ ἐλθεῖν εἰς Ιλίου πόλιν

λέγοιμ ̓ ἂν φρόνημα μὲν νηνέμου γαλάνας
ἀκασκαῖον δ ̓ ἄγαλμα πλούτου

μαλθακὸν ὀμμάτων βέλος

δηξίθυμον ἔρωτος ἄνθος.

And Mr. Conington—

"And so shall I say to Ilion's tower,

There came a sweet face like summer skies;

A fair gentle image of rich wealth,

The arrow of men's eyes,

Love's soul-consuming flower."

This is not only feeble, but false. Of all the beautiful expressions in this richly studded passage, φρόνημα νηνέμου γαλάνας, is precisely that which enthusiastic admirers of the passage will least tolerate to see omitted, or metamorphosed. In the next line paλdaxov, a most important word, is omitted; and, on the whole, we are inclined to think that this is just another of those passages of which we have already spoken, where the genuine old English translator of Dryden's school, with his bold breadth of touch, and "sort of paraphrase," is like to come off better