Not halfe se dreadful noise the tempests cast, FAIRFAX, B. 4. st. 3. We must not, however, take up our room with the original ItaJian. The next passage we shall quote is a celebrated one also, of a different description,-that of the angel descending on Mount Lebapon ;—but it is all the same to Mr. Hoole, Refulgent rays his beauteous locks enfold; White are his nimble wings, and edg'd with gold: Thus stood the angelic power prepared for flight, There closed his plumes, and made his first descent. HOOLE, B. 1. v. 107. This closing couplet is a sad misrepresentation of the original, where the angel is described, on his first touch of the mountain, as balancing himself on his wings. When Mr. Hoole takes leaves of his author, it is for want of strength to accompany him; when Fairfax does it, it is to lead you into some beautiful corner of his own fancy, It is thus he renders the passage: Of silver wings he tooke a shining paire, Thus clad he cut the splieares and circles faire, And the pure skies with sacred feathers clift. On Libanon at first his foot he set, And shooke his wings with roarie May-dewes wet. FAIRFAX, B. 1. st. 14. The most striking part of the beautiful choral stanza describing the chaunting of the army is totally omitted in Hoole's version. We suppose he thought the remainder sufficient, and so indeed his reader will think. So pass the tuneful band with cadence sweet, HOOLE, B. 11. v. 77. Hither the armies went, and chanted shrill, It seem'd some quire (that sung with art and skill) FAIRFAX, B. 11. st. 11. Another specimen of Mr. Hoole, and we have done with him. It is his close of the bird's song in book the sixteenth. He ceas'd; th' approving choir with joy renew Again in pairs the cooing turtles bill, The feather'd nations take their amorous fill. And all the leafy tenants of the field. The earth and streams one soul appears to move, Here is not the faintest resemblance of the intense though airy volup- He ceast; and as approoving all he spoke, The quire of birds their heavenly tunes renew; It seem'd the land, the sea, and heav'n above, FAIRFAX, B. 16. st. 16. But It This is even superior, we think, to the original. It is the quinta pars nectaris, and makes the senses swim aside on their own faintness. is like the perfection of a chrystal summer's day, made a little languid with. noon, and seeming to have a sparkling and airy consciousness about it that vents itself in odorous whispers. The reader will observe in the foregoing specimens of Hoole, how a bad translator takes refuge from the real feelings of his author in vagueness and cant phrases. As he has no feeling of his own, he resorts, when any thing is mentioned, not to the thing itself, but to the terms in which it has been mentioned by the writers with whom he is most familiar. He does not translate his author's thoughts, but his words; or rather, he attempts only to do even that; for on that very account, he does neither. To feel either properly, is to feel both. We are greatly tempted to make many more extracts from Fairfax; but we must restrain ourselves. In further illustration of what we' have said about the lines which he has inserted of his own, or altered to his own ideas, and the sympathy which he still keeps up with his author's feelings, we will just refer to his calling Armida, when she sets off, (4. v. 27.) the Syrians' "night-ambling dame," to the two lines (2. v. 26.) in which he calls Sophronia in the hands of the malefactors a "dumb" and "silver dove ;"-to the neighing of the horses, and clattering of arms, (1. v. 73.) which, he says, Pursue the echo over dale and downe; to the description of Armida (4. v. 29.) in which, with a little overmixture of conceit, yet beautiful, he tells us, The marble goddesse, set at Gnidos naked, She seem'd, were she uncloath'd, or that awaked; and to the issuing forth of the devils (4. v. 18.) which as the stanza is almost entirely his own as well as a fine one, and crowded with his favourite love of dæmonology, we shall quote entire :— Before his words the tyrant ended had, The faults of Fairfax are partly his own, and partly those of the period then commencing. They consist in too great a license of inversion; occasional crampness and obscurity; an over tendency to contrast; and in a singular fondness for occupying a line here and there either with epithets almost synonimous, or with a marked detail of nouns, which close his stanza like palisadoes; as for instance, The soil was gentle, smooth, soft, delicate- Yet we are not sure, whether this kind of repetition does not fall in sometimes with a certain gentle and continuous beauty. It is clear, at any rate, that the Italians, from a feeling of that sort, gave rise to it themselves, though Fairfax has carried it to an excess. Petrarch and his followers sometimes heap a line with descriptive nouns or adjectives; and that delightful wild fellow Pulci seems to take a pleasure even in repeating a multitude of notes of interrogation, and beginning a whole stanza or more with the same word. The over-tendency to contrast may also be traced to the Italians, especially as Marino was now becoming admired in England, and every body had not strength to resist his crowding syrens like Milton. The other faults are perhaps owing to Fairfax's having chosen to abide by the stanza of the original; for not being so great a master of his native language as Spenser, who with his additional line seemed to defy difficulty in this respect, and too often to no purpose, he hampered himself with the great recurrence of rhymes, which suits Italian much better than English. He was also, though by no means the literal translator which Hume has made him, naturally anxious in general to get the sense of his original into the same compass, which hampered him farther; and the result of all this, joined no doubt to a natural inferiority in his own genius, however true a one, is, that he is not equal to his original in the easier part of his majesty,-in his clearness, which is like that of an Italian atmosphere,—and in a certain virgin sweetness, "casta melodia soave;"-in short, he is inferior, generally speaking, in simplicity. But, on the other hand, he has great beauties. If he roughened the music of Tasso a little, he still kept it music, and beautiful music ;some of his stanzas indeed give the sweetness of the original with the still softer sweetness of an echo; and he blew into the rest some noble organ-like notes, which perhaps the original is too deficient in. He can be also quite as stately and solemn in feeling ;--he is as fervid in his devotion, as earnest and full of ghastly apprehension in his supernatural agency, as wrapt up in leafiness in his sylvan haunts, as luxuriant and alive to tangible shapes in his voluptuousness. He feels the elements and varieties of his nature, like a true poet; and his translation has consequently this special mark of all true poetry, translated or original,--that when the circumstances in the story or description alter, it gives us a proper and pervading sense of the alteration. The surfaces are not all coloured alike, as in a bad and monotonous picture. We have no silken armour, as in Pope's eternal enamel ; nor iron silks, as in Chapman (who is perhaps the only other various translator nevertheless); nor an everlasting taste of chips instead of succulence, as in the Ariosto of Harrington. We repeat, however, that the reader must not expect a perfect version in Fairfax, much less at the outset. Tasso himself, in eur opinion, does not well warm you into his work till after several books; but set out resolutely with him or his translator, or with both, get past some cold looking places, and scratch through a few of Fairfax's roughnesses and obscurities, and you come upon a noble territory, full of the romantic and the sweet, of stately and of lovely shapes, of woods, waters, and sunny pleasures, with drearier seclusions apart, and fields of sonorous battle. We do not wonder that Collins was fond of this author and his translator, since Johnson has told us, in that piece of prose music of his, that he loved fairies, genii, and monsters,❞—that "he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, and to repose by the waterfalls of Elysium." Collins has given Fairfax a high and proud eulogy in his ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands. Speaking of Tasso, he says, How have I sat, when piped the pensive wind, And then he goes on in a strain of softness and luxury, that seem irritated from the countryman he is praising. Yet Collins, be it observed, was an accomplished scholar, and quite conversant with the merits of the original. Indeed that was one great cause of his eulogy. Waller, who appears to have known Italian, and Dryden who undoubtedly did so, were both great admirers of Fairfax. Waller professed to have "derived the harmony of his numbers" from him; and so did Dryden, if a reported speech of his to the Duke of Buckingham is to be taken for granted. He gives him high praise at any rate, and joins him with Spenser as "great masters in our language." But his greatest title to regard on the score of authority comes from Milton, who when he bor rowed from Tasso, took care to look at Fairfax also, and to add now and then something from him by the way. The Editor will be happy to take up both of the subjects mentioned by J. C. He had already intended to write upon the latter; and the other will fall in excellently with the spirit of his little work. Orders received by the Newsmen, by the Booksellers, and by the Publisher, Joseph Appleyard, Printed by Joseph Appleyard, No. 19, Catherine-street, Strand.-Price od, THE INDICATOR. There he arriving round about doth flie, No. XXVI.-WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5th, 1820. DEATHS OF LITTLE CHILDREN. A GRECIAN philosopher being asked why he wept for the death of his son, since the sorrow was in vain, replied, "I weep on that very account." And his answer became his wisdom. It is only for sophists to pretend that we, whose eyes contain the fountains of tears, need never give way to them. It would be unwise not to do so on some occasions. Sorrow unlocks them in her balmy moods. The first bursts may be bitter and overwhelming; but the soil, on which they pour, would be the worse without them. They refresh the fever of the soul, the dry misery, which parches the countenance into furrows, and renders us liable to our most terrible " flesh-quakes." There are sorrows, it is true, so great, that to give them some of the ordinary vents is to run a hazard of being overthrown. These we must rather strengthen ourselves to resist; or bow quietly and drily down in order to let them pass over us, as the traveller does the wind of the desart. But where we feel that tears would relieve us, it is false philosophy to deny ourselves at least that first refreshment; and it is always false consolation to tell people that because they cannot help a thing, they are not to mind it. The true way is, to let them grapple with the unavoidable sorrow, and try to win it into gentleness by a reasonable yielding. There are griefs so gentle in their very nature, that it would be worse than false heroism to refuse them a tear. Of this kind are the deaths of infants. Particular circumstances may render it more or less advisable to indulge in grief for the loss of a little child; but in general, parents should be no more advised to repress their first tears on such an occasion, than to repress their smiles towards a child surviving, or to indulge in any other sympathy. It is an appeal to the same gentle tenderness; and such appeals are never made in vain. The end of them is an acquittal from the harsher bonds |