Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

fact, what is called an outsider is often the best winner for him, as in that case he pockets all the bets he has made against those horses which gentlemen and their friends have fancied. There is, however, too often what is called the book-horse,' in some of the great races, in which more than one party are concerned. What the term book-horse' implies, we need not explain further than by saying, that it would signify little were he really a book, and not a horse:-the animal with the best blood in England in his veins, and the best jockey on his back, shall have no more chance to win, if backed heavily to lose, than a jackass.*

We

* As we well know that a huge fortune was made in the betting ring, by a certain person now deceased, who could neither read nor write, and that one of the heaviest betters of the present day is in the same state of blessed ignorance, we may safely conclude that if these two persons ever heard of fractional arithmetic, they could know no more of it than of the division of logarithms. Nevertheless, the probability of events can only be found by such help; and even then, as far as racing is concerned, although the adept in this part of the mathematician's art may be able to ascertain the precise odds that may be given or received, so as to provide against loss, yet he will find that, to be certain to win, advantage must be taken of all chances more favourable than the precise odds. In fact, it will be by advantageous bets on particular events, that he will have a balance in his favour, at the winding up of his book, and it would avail him little to work for no profit. The main point, however, on which it is indispensably necessary to keep the eye in betting, is, in a series of different events, the exact odds to be readily had on every individual event: and having made a round of these engagements, as opinion fluctuates, opportunities will offer themselves where great advantage may be gained.

It is on a plurality of events that figures must be resorted to, the chances on which must be put to the test of arithmetical solution. As everything may be understood which man is permitted to know, a few lessons from the schoolmaster will furnish this, and we now give the following simple examples, which are easily understood, and generally applicable. And let us add, that to a betting man, who speculates largely, the difference of half a point in the precise odds may win or lose a large fortune in the course of a few years.

Examples-Two horses are about to start. The betting on one is even, and the odds on the other is 6 to 4. What odds must B bet A that he does not name both the winners? The expression for the former is, and for the latter ; but is equal to, therefore say—

[blocks in formation]

hence the odds is 7 to 3. B, therefore, lays A 7 to 3 that he does not name both winners, and then hedges as follows:-As 37. is the sum to which he has staked his 7., he lays that sum even, that A wins; and on the other event he lays 6 to 4, (the odds in the example,) the same way. Now A wins both, and receives of B 71.; but B wins 31. on the former by hedging, and 47. on the latter, which is equal to what he has lost to A. It is here obvious, that had B, in hedging, been enabled to have made better bets-for instance, could he have done better than by taking an even 37. on the first event, and had greater odds than 6 to 4 on the latter, he might have won, but could not have lost.

On the same two events, what odds may B lay A that the latter does not lose both? Set down for the former, and the latter will now be; but is equal to ; therefore, it will be—

1

2
X =
2 5

2

; and 10 10

[blocks in formation]

hence the odds is 8 to 2 = 4 to 1.

Proof

We now dismiss this subject, with no probability of our ever returning to it. Although the perusal of Xenophon might have made Scipio a hero, we have not the slightest intention of manufacturing jockeys by any effort of our pen; and yet we wish we had touched on these matters sooner. But why so? Is it that we would rather have been Livy, to have written on the grandeur of Rome, than Tacitus, on its ill-fated decline? It may be so; for we are loth to chronicle, in any department, our country's dispraise; but we are not without the reflection, that we might have done something towards preventing the evils we have had to deplore, by exposing the manner in which they have accumulated and thriven. That there are objections to racing, we do not deny, as, indeed, there are to most of the sports which have been invented for the amusement of mankind, and few of which can gratify pure benevolence; but when honourably conducted, we consider the turf as not more objectionable than most others, and it has one advantage over

Proof by hedging-B begins to hedge, by betting an even 17. on the first event, which A winning, he wins. On the subsequent event, B takes the odds, 3 to 2, which A winning, he also wins. Thus he receives 47., which pays the 4 to 1 he betted on A, losing both events.

Upon two several events, even betting on the one, and 7 to 4 in favour of A on the other; what odds may B lay against A winning both? The one, as before, is, and the other is represented by:

7 7 11 22

Then X =

thus 15 to 7 is the odds.

; and 22 - 7 = 15:

Proof by hedging-The sum against which B laid his odds is 7; therefore he begins by laying 77. on the first event; which, as A wins, he wins. On the next event, he lays 14 to 8, or twice 7 to twice 4, as per terms of question, which he also wins; making together 7 and 815, the odds he had laid with, and lost to A. Upon the same two events, what odds may B bet A, that the latter does not lose both? Set down for the former, for the latter;

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

therefore, 18 to 49 to 2 is the odds.

Proof by hedging-B bets first the sum to which he has laid his odds, namely 27., which he wins; and then, taking 7 to 4 on the second event, he wins 2 + 7 = 9, which pays the 97. he lost to A; and had more favourable odds been offered, B must have been a winner without risk of losing.

When three distinct events are pending, on the first of which the betting is even; on the second, 3 to 2 in favour of A, and the third 5 to 4; what odds should B lay A, that the latter does not name all the winners? The first is expressed by, the second by, and the third by :

1 3
5

Therefore, X X 59 = (by cancelling) }; and 6-15:

hence the odds is 5 to 1.

Proof by hedging-B begins to hedge by betting an even 27., that A wins the first event; he then bets the odds on the next, viz., (3 to 2)2=1 to 1. B also bets the odds on the third event, viz. (5 to 4) 22 to 2. Now A wins all three; therefore, B wins 2+1+257, which pays what he lost to A. The odds that A did not lose these three events would be 41 to 4.

=

almost

almost all now in any measure of fashionable repute :-it diffuses its pleasures far and wide. The owner of race-horses cannot gratify his passion for the turf, without affording delight to thousands upon thousands of the less fortunate of his countrymen. This is no trivial feature in the case, now that shooting is divided between the lordly battue and the prowl of the poacher,and that fox-hunting is every day becoming more and more a piece of exclusive luxury, instead of furnishing the lord, the squire, and the yeoman, with a common recreation, and promoting mutual goodwill among all the inhabitants of the rural district.

ART. V. The Inferno of Dante.

WE

[ocr errors]

Translated by Ichabod

Charles Wright, A. M. London. 8vo. 1833.

E have, on various occasions, expressed our high opinion of the translation of the Divine Comedy executed in our own time by Mr. Cary. To say that it was on all points superior to every preceding English version of that extraordinary poem, would have been little praise: they had all been execrable-it was really excellent. Mr. Cary understood his author as well perhaps as any Englishman did at the period of his labours-and he gave us a transcript, almost always clear, generally vigorous, and in many passages indicative of warm poetical feeling in the mind of the interpreter. We speak of the substance of Dante :-of his peculiar manner, as distinct-as unlike any other-in many respects as nobly original as that of Homer or of Shakspeare—the version, masterly as it was, certainly conveyed, as a whole, no approach to a likeness. The measure alone in which Cary wrote rendered this almost impossible. The sweeping, long-drawn-out harmony of good English blank verse could reflect no livelier impression of the compact, terse, if we may so call it sculptural precision of Dante's terza rima, than Pope's heroic couplets of Homer's hexameters; and when Cary, in the desire to come closer to Dante, flung away the guiding echo of his Milton, he produced an effect positively disagreeable. Tercets, without the grace of cæsura, and the varieties of interlinked lines, in the absence of rhyme, are indeed unmelodious monsters.

The attempt to introduce the terza rima itself as an English measure, often unsuccessfully hazarded in our earlier times, has been repeated, since Mr. Cary published his book, by a great master of versification; but although Lord Byron seems to have thought very highly of the execution of his Prophecy of Dante and his translation of an Episode in the Inferno, the public taste has not in the main ratified his judgment. The Prophecy' has the air

[ocr errors]

of

[ocr errors]

of a translation, quite as much as the Francesca'-perhaps more So. Its effect to the ear is stiff, hard, laboured-and we venture to say, it has been less read, and is now more nearly forgotten, than any other production of Lord Byron's mature years ever will be. After that failure, we think few will doubt that terza rima is essentially unfit for our adoption. We have indeed such a paucity of perfect rhymes in our language, and imperfect rhymes have now become so distasteful, so offensive, that it may be doubted whether a serious poem of considerable length ought ever again to be attempted in any measure requiring a multiplicity of assonances except indeed the noble Spenserian stanza, in the case of which there is a prescriptive privilege to employ occasionally archaic rhymes, together with what is even of greater importance— a strain of amplification and redundancy such as would not now be tolerated in any other form of English versification. We speak of serious poetry-in ludicrous verse, the more jingle the betterthe search for the rhymes is pretty sure to multiply the jokes: indeed every one sees, in Don Juan, that nine times out of ten the rhyme suggested the thought—and all this is well; the bizarre, the grotesque, the incongruous, being excellent materials and instruments for the jester. It is true that Don Juan contains several fragments of pure high poetry, superior perhaps to anything in the rest of the author's writings;-and that in these the demands of the verse have been met at no expense of beauty or of dignity. But we much doubt if any art could achieve a continuous grave poem, as long as the shortest canto of Don Juan, in English ottava rima, without leaving, ever and anon, a painful impression of unnecessary difficulties inefficiently encountered.

But will any hand ever execute a translation of any long poem, at once closely faithful and buoyantly energetic, in any English measure that requires rhyme at all? We suspect not: as yet certainly we have had no such example. The poet is he who feels more intensely than other men, and expresses his feelings more vividly and great are the difficulties which the most skilful poet must overcome before he can succeed in presenting his feelings in rhyme, without dislocating them from the natural order in which they evolved themselves in his own mind-which order being disturbed, they lose, pro tanto, the power of com manding our sympathy. He can soar higher than we, but unless we can follow him through every winding of his flight, we lose our interest in him as a nobler self; we stare at, but do not feel with him; the link between us is gone. How hard then must be the task of re-presenting, not only in a new language, but amidst the fetters of jingle, the thoughts and feelings of another man, in their natural sequence of original development! We are not sure

that

that the difficulty has ever been completely overcome, even in a fragment. The poet who grapples in this way with the conceptions of another poet, cuts the knot by recasting them in his own mind, and producing, as a translation, what is in fact a new poem of his own-little more than the key-note borrowed; such are the highest examples of rhymed poetical translation in our language,—Dryden's specimens from Lucretius and Juvenal; and such essentially is the Iliad of Pope. These great masters, if they cannot adhere to the order of images in the model before them, are capable of inventing another order equally natural as that, or nearly so; and the effect is infinitely more powerful and delightful than the closest transcript of all the materiel of the finest poem in the world, executed by one who, not being himself a master, or fixing his eye on closeness as the sine qua non, cannot, or does not, furnish any equivalent for that original arrangement which rhyme renders it all but impossible for him to preserve. The merely English reader will derive a much livelier notion of Juvenal's spirit from the daring rivalries of Dryden-or the majestic pathos of the Vanity of Human Wishes,' than from Mr. Gifford's happiest translations.

[ocr errors]

The original poet himself, in his attention to the mechanical details of versification, is but too apt to lose sight of the order in which his conceptions were really drawn out within his breast―(for no man thinks in verse-least of all in rhyme); and hence the copious admixture of the false, which disturbs the impression of almost every poetical piece in the world-we are not afraid to say of every modern one of comprehensive dimensions. We know few studies so interesting and instructive as that of the various readings of a true poet-we mean the ascertained successive readings of the poet himself, not the syllable strife of commentators. How seldom do

*

they fail to confirm the truth of Dr. Johnson's remark, that it is one of the hardest things in the world to alter the language of a passage without injuring the thought; a remark which ought to render us merciful critics indeed when we approach any fair specimen of poetical translation—of all other kinds of composition that in which the possible praise bears the smallest proportion to its inherent difficulty and labour.

The most cursory perusal of Mr. Wright's Inferno will satisfy every one that, had there been no Cary, this work would have been a valuable addition to the English library. But with every disposition to encourage any gentleman in an elegant pursuit, it is our duty to ask, in how far, Cary's volumes being

*We recommend, especially, to the young lover of such researches, the comparison of some of Wordsworth's ballads, as originally published, with the late collective edition of that great author's miscellaneous poetry.

« ElőzőTovább »