The moon is Homer's and Shakspeare's moon, as well as the one we look at. The sun comes out of his chamber in the east, with a sparkling eye," rejoicing like a bridegroom." The commonest thing becomes like Aaron's rod, that budded. Pope called up the spirits of the Cabala to wait upon a lock of hair, and justly gave it the honours of a constellation; for he has hung it, sparkling for ever, in the eyes of posterity. A common meadow is a sorry thing to a ditcher or a coxcomb; but by the help of it's dues from imagination and the love of nature, the grass brightens for us, the air soothes us, we feel as we did in the daisied hours of childhood. It's verdures, it's sheep, it's hedge-row elms, all these, and all else which sight, and sound, and association can give it, are made to furnish a treasure of pleasant thoughts. Even brick and mortar are vivified, as of old, at the harp of Orpheus. A metropolis becomes no longer a mere collection of houses or of trades. It puts on all the grandeur of it's history, and it's literature; it's towers, and rivers; it's art, and jewelry, and foreign wealth; it's multitude of human beings all intent upon excitement, wise or yet to learn; the huge and sullen dignity of it's canopy of smoke by day; the wide gleam upwards of its lighted lustre at nighttime; and the noise of it's many chariots, heard, at the same hour, when the wind sets gently towards some quiet suburb.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

We will consider the suggestion respecting a List of Books; though our Correspondent will see, in our present Number, one reason among others, which must at least prevent us from being in a hurry on the subject.

MOTTOES.—Are the Mottoes in question heraldic ones; or any others already existing?

The Verses of B. and of W. B. W, have their graces and other merits; but we are obliged to be so chary in this Department, that they must think as kindly as they can of our omitting them.

Orders received by the Newsmen, by the Booksellers, and by the Publisher, JOSEPH APPLEYARD, No. 19, Catherine-street, Strand,-Price 2d.

Printed by C. H. REYNELL, No. 45, Broad-street, Golden-square, London.

THE INDICATOR.

There he arriving round about doth flie,
And takes survey with busie curious eye:
Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly.

SPENSER.

No. XXV.-WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29th, 1820.

HOOLE'S AND FAIRFAX'S TASSO.

By far the best-known translation of the Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso, is Mr. Hoole's. It has appeared, and still appears, in editions of all sizes; and is gathered as a matter of course into collections of the British Poets. The sole reason of this is, not that Mr. Hoole translated the work, but that his original was Tasso. It is the name of Tasso, solely, that has carried him on from generation to generation, like a corpse attached to the immortal spirit of the Italian, and making it dull with the burden.

The re-publication, in various quarters, of the finer translation by Fairfax, will doubtless help to detach one idea from the other; but as Mr. Hoole's version has also been often reprinted of late, and as Fairfax himself presents some difficulties in the way of popularity; a few observations on the two works may not be useless in furthering the public interests of poetry.

Hoole is a singular example of the popularity which a man may ob tain by taking up a great author to translate, with whom he has nothing in common, and merely subserving to the worst taste of the times. Some readers put faith in the imposture from the mere name of the original, some from a deference to the translator's knowledge of Italian; some from the recommendation of any living author who has talent in any thing, some from a real wish to be acquainted with a great poet; some from national self-love; some from indolence of various kinds, many from the habit of acquiescing in any thing after their own fashion, and many more because the rest have done so before them. Yet many of these, with whatever sincerity they have praised the original author, would have thought no higher of him than of some middle writers of their own country, as indeed has frequently been the case; and others, who have undertaken to agree with the lovers of his native language in their enthusiasm about his pathos and dignity, or his vivacity, naivete, &c. would have owned, if they had the courage, what

a dull fellow they could not help thinking him. The rest, who really loved and understood poetry, Italian or English, could only sit still and wonder at all this, preferring, at the risk of being thought foolish or pedantic, the old obsolete translators of Shakspeare's time, when our language," saith Mr. Hoole, was in it's rudiments." It was lucky however for this gentleman, that he had the period he wrote in almost all to himself. There was not a single real poet surviving, except Cowper.-Gray, Armstrong, Akenside, Collins, Churchill,-every body was gone who was likely to detect him publicly; and the age, in every respect, was then in the fullness of it's poetical em ptiness. The French school was in it's last weedy exuberance. The apprentices and their mistresses, in their pretty transparent Acrostic masks, walked forth by hundreds to meet each other in Poet's Corner in the magazines; and as nobody knew any thing about poetry, except that it had to repeat "ingenious" common-places, to rhyme upon heart, impart, love, prove, &c., and to pause, as Pope did, upon the fourth and fifth syllables, every body could write poetry, and admit it in others: Pope, whose real merits they did not understand after all, was the greatest poet that ever lived; next to him were Goldsmith, and Collins, and Gray, the two latter however very little understood; then, or perhaps before them, was Dr. Johnson, whom our master at school gave us as a poetical model: then came, in their respective circles, though at due distance, Mr. Jenkins, Mr. Tomkins, or Mr. Hipkins, who wrote lines on the beautiful Miss Y. of Bristol, or the charming Miss Z. of Fish Street Hill; and nothing was wanting to make such a person as Mr. Hoole a great and popular writer with these gentlemen and ladies, but that he should write a great quantity of verses; which he accordingly did.

That Dr. Johnson should speak a good word for Mr. Hoole, much less write a dedication for him, is not surprising; though what a poet must he be, who goes to another to write a dedication for him! Johnson was in the habit of writing dedications for those who were conscious of not being good turners of a prose paragraph, and who wished to approach the great with a proper one; and Mr. Hoole, it seems, was among these modest persons, though he did not scruple to approach Tasso and Ariosto with his poetry. The dedication, which is to the late Queen, and which expresses a wish that Tasso had lived in a happier time and experienced from the descendants of the House of Este, a more liberal and potent patronage," is elegant and to the purpose. The good word is a mere word, and very equivocal besides. Johnson, who is now pretty generally understood not to have been so good a critic in poetry as he was strong in general understanding, and justly eminent in some respects, might have been very capable of ap plauding a translation upon Mr. Hoole's principles; but it is more than to be suspected, that he would have desired a higher order of workmanship out of the manufactory. Hoole was a pitch too low for his admiration, though it appeared he had private qualities sufficient to secure his good wishes; and even those, there is good reason to conclude, could not have prevented a feeling of contempt for a translator of great poets, who could come to him for a dedication.

When Boswell, in one of his maudlin fits of adulation, affected to consider something with Goldsmith's name to it as supplied by the Doctor, the latter could not restrain his scorn; and said, that Goldsmith would no more come to him for a paragraph, than he would to be fed with a pap-spoon. And it is curious to observe, after all, how and in what place Johnson has said his good word for our translator. It is at the end of the Life of Waller, and amounts to this coy prophecy ;that Fairfax's work, "after Mr. Hoole's translation, will not soon be reprinted."

Mr. Hoole indeed, with superfluous ingenuity, has contrived to let us know, by other means than his translation, how totally unfit he was for the task. He came to it with an ignorance of all real poetry, that of his own country not excepted. After telling us that "Fairfax's version is in stanzas that cannot be read with pleasure by the generality of those who have a taste for English poetry," that it is “irksome in such a degree, as to surmount curiosity, and more than counterbalance all the beauty of expression and sentiment to be found in that work," and that, as a proof of all this," it appears scarcely to have been read at all," he adds, "I do not flatter myself that I have excelled Fairfax, except in my measure and versification, and even of these the principal recommendation is that they are modern, and better adapted to the ear of all readers of English poetry, except of the very few who have acquired a taste for the phrases and cadences of those times, when our verse, if not our language was in it's rudiments:" that is to say, at the close of our very greatest age both in poetry and prose. So little did Mr. Hoole know what he was about, either in poetry, or the versification of it, that while in the course of his translation he was elaborately doing or undoing something now and then, in order to mingle a little of Dryden with Pope, he forgot, or was not aware, that Dryden himself professed to have learnt part of his versi fication from Fairfax.

In our first INDICATOR we gave a specimen of the way in which a common-place writer would translate Shakspeare, and melt down his fine things into nothings. The reader might take that specimen alone, as giving a full, true, and particular account of the merits of Mr. Hoole as a translator of Tasso. And we will beg him still to keep it in mind, or to refer to it, as saving us the necessity of many extracts; for it is not a pleasant task to dwell upon the demerits of any body, We will just give a comparative specimen or two of the old and modern version of Tasso, and then take our leave of Mr. Hoole, to indulge ourselves with a few more words upon Fairfax and translation.

Edward Fairfax led a life which a brother poet might envy. He was of a distinguished family, the same as that of Fairfax the Parliament General; and having an estate of his own, and the greater estates of leisure and genius, he passed the whole of his days at a seat in the Forest of Knaresborough, in the bosom of his family, and in the cultivation of poetry. He appears to have had all, and more than a poet wants, tranquillity, a fortune beyond competence, books, rural scenes, and an age that could understand him. He flourished just at the close of that golden period, that height and strong summer-time of

our poetry, when language, wisdom, and imagination were alike at their noblest, and thoughts were poured forth as profusely as words have been since. He was inclined to the music of verse; and the age was full of music, of every species; he was of a romantic and most probably superstitious turn of mind*; and popular superstitions were still more in favour than during the preceding era ;-he had perhaps something of the indolence of a man of fortune; and in the course of his Italian luxuries, he met with a poet, whose tendencies were like his own, and who was great enough to render the task of translation honourable as well as delightful.

He accordingly produced a version of Tasso, which we do not say is equal to the original, or at all exempt from errors which a future translator (always provided he is a poet too) may avoid; but which we nevertheless do not hesitate to pronounce the completest translation, and most like it's original, of any we have ever seen.— We will open our extracts with that famous blast of the trumpet, which has been so echoed in all countries, and which Voltaire quotes to shew what the Italian language can do in the way of grandeur.

Chiama gli abitator de l'ombre eterne

Il ranco suon de la tartarea tromba,
Treman lo spaziose atre caverne,
E l'aer cieco a quel romor rimbomba:
Ne si stridendo mai da le superne
Regioni del cielo il folgor piomba:
Ne si scossa gia mai trema la terra,
Quando i vaporf in sen gravida serra.

This is certainly nothing like the talk about; but Mr. Hoole would

Lib. 4. st. 3.

tinsel" which Boileau ventured to have made it so if he could. This is his translation. He begins with making the trumpet convene the deyils. It is Pluto at Home,-or sending a court circular.

The trumpet now with hoarse resounding breath
Convenes the spirits in the shades of death;
The hollow cayerns tremble at the sound;
The air re-echoes to the noise around;
Not louder terrors shake the distant pole,

When through the skies the rattling thunders roll;
Not greater tremors heave the labouring carth,
When vapours, pent within, contend for birth.

HooLE, Book. 4, v. 17.

Fairfax, though he translates, the concluding couplet rather from Virgil than Tasso, lets loose a spirit worthy of both poets. Observe the fine taste with which he has managed to preserve the double rhymes, that make the original so resounding.

The drearie trumpet blew a dreadful blast,

And rombled through the lands and kingdomes under,
Through wastness wide it roar'd, and hollowes vast,
And fill'd the deepe with horror, feare, and wonder;

He wrote a treatise on Dæmonology, which was founded on "" occurrences in his own family," and is still somewhere in MS. If King James knew this, it must have been an additional incitement to his patronage of the Jerusalem, the second edition of which was printed at his desire.