Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845

"And lusty thoughtès full of gret longinge."

Is this hypercriticism? It is the only criticism that can be tolerated betwixt two such rivals as Chaucer and Wordsworth. The scales that weigh poetry should turn with a grain of dust, with the weight of a sunbeam, for they weigh spirit. Or is it saying that Wordsworth has not done his work as well as it was possible to be done? Rather it is inferring, from the failure of the work in his hand, that he and his colleagues have attempted that which was impossible to be done. We will not here hunt down line by line. We put before the reader the means of comparing verse with verse. We have, with 'a thoughtful heart of love,' made the comparison, and feel throughout that the modern will not, cannot, do justice to the old English. The quick sensibility which thrills through the antique strain deserts the most cautious version of it. In short, we fall back upon the old conviction, that verse is a sacred, and song an inspired thing; that the feeling, the thought, the word, and the musical breath spring together out of the soul in one creation; that a translation is a thing not given in rerum natura; consequently that there is nothing else to be done with a great poet saving to leave him in his glory.

And our friend John Dryden? Oh, he is safe enough; for the new translators all agree that his are no translations at all of Chaucer, but original and excellent poems of his own.

A language that is half Chaucer's, and half that of his renderer, is in great danger to be the language of nobody. But Chaucer's has its own energy and vivacity which attaches you, and as soon as you have undergone the due transformation by sympathy, carries you effectually with it. In the moderate versions that are best done, you miss this indispensable force of attraction. But Dryden boldly and freely gives you himself, and along you sweep, or are swept rejoicingly along. "The grand charge to which his translations are amenable," says Mr Horne, "is, that he acted upon an erroneous principle." Be it so. Nevertheless, they are among the glories of our poetical literature. Mr Horne's, literal as he supposes them to be, are unreadable. He, too, acts on an erroneous principle; and his execution betrays throughout the unskilful hand of a presumptuous apprentice. But he has "every respect for the genius, and for every thing that belongs to the memory, of Dryden;" and thus magniloquently eulogizes his most splendid achievement: – "The fact is, Dryden's version of the 'Knight's Tale' would be most appropriately read by the towering shade of one of Virgil's heroes, walking up and down a battlement, and waving a long, gleaming spear, to the roll and sweep of his sonorous numbers."

notes

1

Letters and Despatches of John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough, from 1702 to 1712. Edited by Sir George Murray, G.C.B., Master-General of the Ordnance, &c. 3 vols. London, 1845.

2

"Marlborough," says Swift, "is as voracious as hell, and as ambitious as the devil. What he desires above every thing is to be made commander-in-chief for life, and it is to satisfy his ambition and his avarice that he has opposed so many intrigues to the efforts made for the restoration of peace."

3

"During the interval between the liberation of Marlborough and the death of Queen Mary, we find him, in conjunction with Godolphin and many others, maintaining a clandestine intercourse with the exiled family. On the 2d May 1694, only a few days before he offered his services to King William, he communicated to James, through Colonel Sackville, intelligence of an expedition then fitting out, for the purpose of destroying the fleet in Brest harbour." – Coxe's Marlborough, i. 75. "Marlborough's conduct to the Stuarts," says Lord Mahon, "was a foul blot on his memory. To the last he persevered in those deplorable intrigues. In October 1713, he protested to a Jacobite agent he would rather have his hands cut off than do any thing to prejudice King James." – Mahon, i. 21-22.

4

"Galli turpe esse ducunt frumentum manu quærere; itaque armati alienos agros demetunt." – Cæsar.

5

Despatches, 21st September 1702.

6

Despatches, 23d October 1702.

7

Memorial, 24th August 1703. —Despatches, i. 165.

8

Marlborough was much chagrined at being interrupted in his meditated decisive operations by the States-General, on this occasion. On the 6th September, he wrote to them: – "Vos Hautes Puissances jugeront bien par le camp que nous venons de prendre, qu'on n'a pas voulu se résoudre à tenter les lignes. J'ai été convaincu de plus en plus, depuis l'honneur que j'ai eu de vous écrire, par les avis que j'ai reçu journellement de la situation des ennemis, que cette entreprise n'était pas seulement practicable, mais même qu'on pourrait en espérer tout le succès que je m'étais proposé: enfin l'occasion en est perdue, et je souhaite de tout mon cœur qu'elle n'ait aucune fâcheuse suite, et qu'on n'ait pas lieu de s'en repentir quand il sera trop tard." – Marlborough aux Etats Généraux; 6 Septembre 1703. Despatches, i. 173.

9

"Ce matin j'ai appris par une estafette que les ennemis avaient joint l'Electeur de Bavière avec 26,000 hommes, et que M. de Villeroi a passé la Meuse avec la meilleure partie de l'armée des Pays Bas, et qu'il poussait sa marche en toute diligence vers la Moselle, de sorte que, sans un prompt sécours, l'empire court risque d'être entièrement abimé." – Marlborough, aux Etats Généraux; Bonn, 2 Mai 1704. Despatches, i. 274.

10

The following was the composition of these two corps, which will show of what a motley array the Allied army was composed: —

11

This pencil note is still preserved at Blenheim.

12

French – Bat. 82. Squad. 146. Allies – Bat. 66. Squad. 160. At 500 to a battalion, and 150 to a squadron, this gives a superiority of 5900 to the French.

13

Marl., Desp. i. 402-409.

14

Cardonnell, Desp. to Lord Harley, 25th Sept. 1704, Desp. i. 410. By intercepted letters it appeared the enemy admitted a loss of 40,000 men before they reached the Rhine. Marlborough to the Duke of Shrewsbury, 28th Aug. 1704, Desp. i. 439.

15

The holograph letter of the Emperor, announcing this honour, said, with equal truth and justice – "I am induced to assign to your highness a place among the princes of the empire, in order that it may universally appear how much I acknowledge myself and the empire to be indebted to the Queen of Great Britain, who sent her arms as far as Bavaria at a time when the affairs of the empire, by the defection of the Bavarians to the French, most needed that assistance and support: – And to your Grace, likewise, to whose prudence and courage, together with the bravery of the forces fighting under your command, the two victories lately indulged by Providence to the Allies are principally attributed, not only by the voice of fame, but by the general officers in my army who had their share in your labour and your glory." – The Emperor Leopold to Marlborough, 28th August 1704. —Desp. i. 538.

16

Marlborough to Mr Secretary Harley, 16th Dec. 1704. —Desp. i. 556.

17

Marlborough to Mr Hill at Turin, 6th Feb. 1705. —Desp. i. 591.

18

Lord Chesterfield's Letters, Lord Mahon's edition, i. 221-222.

19

Being constantly almost an absentee from London, and very often from other great cities, so as to command oftentimes no favourable opportunities for overlooking the great mass of public journals, it is possible enough that other slanders of the same tenor may have existed. I speak of what met my own eye, or was accidentally reported to me – but in fact all of us are exposed to this evil of calumnies lurking unseen – for no degree of energy, and no excess of disposable time, would enable any one man to exercise this sort of vigilant police over all journals. Better, therefore, tranquilly to leave all such malice to confound itself.

20

Harper.

21

St Elian.– A saint of Wales. There is a well bearing his name; one of the many of the holy wells, or Ffynnonan, in Wales. A man whom Mr Pennant had affronted, threatened him with this terrible vengeance. Pins, or other little offerings, are thrown in, and the curses uttered over them.

22

In the "History of the Gwyder Family," it is stated, that some members of a leading family in the reign of Henry VII., being denounced as "Llawrnds," murderers, (from Llawrnd, red or bloody hand,) and obliged to fly the country, returned at last, and lived long disguised, in the woods and caves, being dressed all in green; so that "when they were espied by the country people, all took them for the "Tylwyth Têg, the fair family," and straight ran away.