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In venturing to follow up my translation of the Odes of Horace by aversion of the Satires and Epistles, I feel that I am in no wayentitled to refer to the former as a justification of my boldness inundertaking the latter. Both classes of works are doubtlessexplicable as products of the same original genius: but they differso widely in many of their characteristics, that success inrendering the one, though greater than any which I can hope to haveattained, would afford no presumption that the translator would befound to have the least aptitude for the other. As a matter of fact,while the Odes still continue to invite translation aftertranslation, the Satires and Epistles, popular as they were amongtranslators and imitators a hundred years ago, have scarcely beenattempted at all since that great revolution in literary taste whichwas effected during the last ten years of the last century and thefirst ten years of the present. Byron's Hints from Horace, Mr.Howes' forgotten but highly meritorious version of the Satires andEpistles, to which I hope to return before long, and a fewexperiments by Mr. Theodore Martin, published in the notes to histranslation of the Odes and elsewhere, constitute perhaps the wholerecent stock of which a new translator may be expected to takeaccount. In one sense this is encouraging: in another dispiriting.The field is not pre-occupied: but the reason is, that generalopinion has pronounced its cultivation unprofitable and hopeless.
No doubt, apart from fluctuations in the taste of the readingpublic, there are special reasons why a version of this portion ofHorace's works should be a difficult, perhaps an impracticableundertaking. It would not be easy to maintain that a Roman satiristwas incapable of adequate representation in English in the face ofsuch an instance to the contrary as Gifford's Juvenal, probably,take it all in all, the very best version of a classic in thelanguage. But though Juvenal has many passages which sufficientlyremind us of Horace, some of them light and playful, others leveland almost flat, these do not form the staple of his Satires: thereare passages of dignified declamation and passionate invective whichsuffer less in translation, and which may be so rendered as to leavea lasting impression of pleasure upon the mind of the reader. LikeHorace, he has an abundance of local and temporary allusions, indealing with which the most successful translator is the one whofails least: unlike Horace, when he quits the local and thetemporary, he generally quits also the language of persiflage, andabandons himself unrestrainedly to feeling. Persiflage, I suppose,even in ordinary life, is much less easy to practise with perfectsuccess than a graver and less artificial mode of speaking, though,perhaps for that very reason, it is apt to be more sought after: thepersiflage of a writer of another nation and of a past age is ofnecessity peculiarly difficult to realize and reproduce. Nothing isso variable as the standard of tast