ADVERTISEMENT.

The following Translations were selected from many others done by the Author in his youth; for the most part, indeed, but a sort of exercises, while he was improving himself in the languages, and carried by his early bent to poetry to perform them rather in verse than prose. Mr. Dryden's "Fables" came out about that time, which occasioned the Translations from Chaucer. They were first separately printed in Miscellanies by J. Tonson and B. Lintot, and afterwards collected in the quarto edition of 1717. The "Imitations of English Authors," which are added to the end, were done as early, some of them at fourteen or fifteen years old; but having also got into Miscellanies,1 we have put them here together to complete this juvenile volume.2P.-("Works," vol. iii. ed. of 1736.)

1

Pope implies that they were printed without his consent, but this was not the case. He published them himself.

2 This volume contained the poems which follow, as far as page 136.

Edipus, King of Thebes, having by mistake slain his father Laius, and married his mother Jocasta, put out his own eyes, and resigned his realm to his sons, Eteocles and Polynices. Being neglected by them, he makes his prayer to the fury Tisiphone, to sow debate betwixt the brothers. They agree at last to reign singly, each a year by turns, and the first lot is obtained by Eteocles. Jupiter, in a council of the gods, declares his resolution of punishing the Thebans and Argives also, by means of a marriage betwixt Polynices and one of the daughters of Adrastus, King of Argos. Juno opposes, but to no effect; and Mercury is sent on a message to the shades, to the ghost of Laius, who is to appear to Eteocles, and provoke him to break the agreement. Polynices, in the meantime, departs from Thebes by night, is overtaken by a storm, and arrives at Argos, where he meets with Tydeus, who had fled from Calydon, having killed his brother. Adrastus entertains them, having received an oracle from Apollo that his daughters should be married to a boar and a lion, which he understands to be meant of these strangers, by whom the hides of those beasts were worn, and who arrived at the time when he kept an annual feast in honour of that god. The rise of this solemnity he relates to his guests, the loves of Phoebus and Psamathe, and the story of Chorobus. He inquires and is made

acquainted with their descent and quality. The sacrifice is renewed, and the book concludes with a hymn to Apollo.

The translator hopes he need not apologise for his choice of this piece, which was made almost in his childhood. But finding the version better than he expected from those years, he was easily prevailed on to give it some correction, the rather because no part of this author (at least that he knows of) has been tolerably turned into our language.—P.

RATERNAL rage, the guilty Thebes' alarms,

The alternate reign destroyed by impious arms,

5

ΙΟ

Demand our song; a sacred fury fires
My ravished breast, and all the Muse inspires.
O goddess, say, shall I deduce my rhymes
From the dire nation in its early times,
Europa's rape, Agenor's stern decree,
And Cadmus searching round the spacious sea?
How with the serpent's teeth he sowed the soil,
And reaped an iron harvest of his toil?
Or how from joining stones the city sprung,
While to his harp divine Amphion sung?
Or shall I Juno's hate to Thebes resound,
Whose fatal rage the unhappy monarch found?
The sire against the son his arrows drew,
O'er the wide fields the furious mother flew,
And while her arms a second hope contain,
Sprung from the rocks and plunged into the
main.

15

20

But waive whate'er to Cadmus may belong, And fix, O Muse! the barrier of thy song At Edipus-from his disasters trace The long confusions of his guilty race: Nor yet attempt to stretch thy bolder wing, And mighty Cæsar's conquering eagles sing; 24 How twice he tamed proud Ister's rapid flood,

While Dacian mountains streamed with barbarous blood;

Twice taught the Rhine beneath his laws to roll,

And stretched his empire to the frozen pole,
Or long before with early valour strove,
In youthful arms to assert the cause of Jove. 30
And thou, great heir of all thy father's fame,
Increase of glory to the Latian name!
Oh bless thy Rome with an eternal reign,
Nor let desiring worlds entreat in vain.

What though the stars contract their heavenly

space,

35

And crowd their shining ranks to yield thee

place;

Though all the skies, ambitious of thy sway, Conspire to court thee from our world away; Though Phoebus longs to mix his rays with thine,

40

And in thy glories more serenely shine; Though Jove himself no less content would be, To part his throne and share his heaven with

thee:

Yet stay, great Cæsar! and vouchsafe to reign
O'er the wide earth, and o'er the watery main ;
Resign to Jove his empire of the skies,
And people heaven with Roman deities.

45

The time will come, when a diviner flame Shall warm my breast to sing of Cæsar's fame: Meanwhile permit, that my preluding Muse In Theban wars an humbler theme may choose: Of furious hate surviving death, she sings, 51 A fatal throne to two contending kings, And funeral flames that, parting wide in air, Express the discord of the souls they bear: Of towns dispeopled, and the wandering ghosts Of kings unburied in the wasted coasts;

56

When Dirce's fountain blushed with Grecian

blood,

66

And Thetis, near Ismenos' swelling flood,
With dread beheld the rolling surges sweep,
In heaps, his slaughtered sons into the deep. 60
What hero, Clio! wilt thou first relate?
The rage of Tydeus, or the Prophet's fate?
Or how with hills of slain on every side,
Hippomedon repelled the hostile tide ?
Or how the youth with every grace adorned,'
Untimely fell, to be for ever mourned?:
Then to fierce Capaneus thy verse extend,
And sing with horror his prodigious end.
Now wretched Edipus, deprived of sight,
Led a long death in everlasting night;
But while he dwells where not a cheerful ray
Can pierce the darkness, and abhors the day,
The clear reflecting mind presents his sin
In frightful views, and makes it day within;
Returning thoughts in endless circles roll, 75
And thousand furies haunt his guilty soul:
The wretch then lifted to the unpitying skies
Those empty orbs from whence he tore his eyes,
Whose wounds, yet fresh, with bloody hands he
strook,

70

While from his breast these dreadful accents broke.

80

"Ye gods! that o'er the gloomy regions

reign,

Where guilty spirits feel eternal pain;

Thou, sable Styx! whose livid streams are

rolled

Through dreary coasts, which I, though blind,

behold;

Tisiphone, that oft hast heard my prayer,

1 Parthenopaus.-P.

85