Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A65118
|
The destruction of Troy, an essay upon the second book of Virgils Æneis. Written in the year, 1636.; Aeneis. Liber 2. English
|
Virgil.; Denham, John, Sir, 1615-1669.
|
1656
(1656)
|
Wing V624; ESTC R796
|
10,153
|
38
|
THE DESTRUCTION OF TROY AN ESSAY UPON THE SECOND BOOK OF VIRGILS AENEIS Written in the year 1636. LONDON Printed for Humphrey Moseley at his shop at the sign of the Princes Arms in S. Pauls Church-yard 1656. THE PREFACE THere are so few Translations which deserve praise that I scarce ever saw any which deserv'd pardon those who travel in that kinde being for the most part so unhappy as to rob others without enriching themselves pulling down the fame of good Authors without raising their own Neither hath any Author been more hardly dealt withal then this our Master and the reason is evident for what is most excellent is most inimitable And if even the worst Authors are yet made worse by their Translators how impossible is it not to do great injury to the best And therefore I have not the vanity to think my Copy equal to the Original nor consequently my self altogether guiltless of what I accuse others but if I can do Virgil less injury then others have done it will be in some degree to do him right and indeed the hope of doing him more right is the onely scope of this Essay by opening this new way of translating this Author to those whom youth leisure and better fortune makes fitter for such undertakings I conceive it a vulgar error in translating Poets to affect being Fidus Interpres let that care be with them who deal in matters of Fact or matters of Faith but whosoever aims at it in Poetry as he attempts what is not required so he shall never perform what he attempts for it is not his business alone to translate Language into Language but Poesie into Poesie and Poesie is of so subtle a spirit that in pouring out of one Language into another it will all evaporate and if a new spirit be not added in the transfusion there will remain nothing but a Caput mortuum there being certain Graces and Happinesses peculiar to every Language which gives life and energy to the words and whosoever offers at Verbal Translation shall have the misfortune of that young Traveller who lost his own language abroad and brought home no other instead of it for the grace of the Latine will be lost by being turned into English words and the grace of the English by being turned into the Latine Phrase And as speech is the apparel of our thoughts so are there certain Garbs Modes of speaking wch vary with the times the fashion of our clothes being not more subject to alteration then that of our speech and this I think Tacitus means by that wch he cals Sermonem temporis istius auribus accommodatum the delight of change being as due to the curiosity of the ear as of the eye and therefore if Virgil must needs speak English it were fit he should speak not onely as a man of this Nation but as a man of this age and if this disguise I have put upon him I wish I could give it a better name sit not naturally and easily on so grave a person yet it may become him better then that Fools-Coat wherein the French and Italian have of late presented him at least I hope it will not make him appear deformed by making any part enormously bigger or less then the life I having made it my principal care to follow him as he made it his to follow Nature in all his proportions Neither have I anywhere offered such violence to his sense as to make it seem mine and not his Where my expressions are not so full as his either our language or my Art were defective but I rather suspect my self but where mine are fuller then his they are but the impressions which the often reading of him hath left upon my thoughts so that if they are not his own conceptions they are at least the results of them and if being conscious of making him speak worse then he did almost in every line I erre in endeavoring sometimes to make him speak better I hope it will be judged an error on the right hand and such an one as may deserve pardon if not imitation ARGUMENT THe first Book speaking of Aeneas his voyage by Sea and how being cast by tempest upon the coast of Carthage he was received by Queen Dido who after the Feast desires him to make the relation of the destruction of Troy which is the Argument of this Book THE DESTRUCTION OF TROY An Essay on the second BOOK of Virgil's Aeneis WHile all with silence and attention wait Thus speaks Aeneas from the bed of State Madam when you command us to review Our Fate you make our old wounds bleed anew And all those sorrows to my sence restore Whereof none saw so much none suffer'd more Not the most cruel of Our conqu'ering Foes So unconcern'dly can relate our woes As not to lend a tear Then how can I Repress the horror of my thoughts which flie The sad remembrance Now th' expiring night And the declining Stars to rest invite Yet since 't is your command what you so well Are pleas'd to hear I cannot grieve to tell By Fate repell'd and with repulses tyr'd The Greeks so many Lives and years expir'd A Fabrick like a moving Mountain frame Pretending vows for their return This Fame Divulges then within the beasts vast womb The choice and flower of all their Troops intomb In view the Isle of Tenedos once high In fame and wealth while Troy remain'd doth lie Now but an unsecure and open Bay Thither by stealth the Greeks their Fleet convey We gave them gone and to Mycenae saild And Troy reviv'd her mourning face unvaild All through th' unguarded Gates with joy resort To see the slighted Camp the vacant Port Here lay Ulysses there Achilles here The Battels joyn'd the Grecian Fleet rode there But the vast Pile th' amazed vulgar views Till they their Reason in their wonder lose And first Tymaete moves urg'd by the Power Of Fate or Fraud to place it in the Tower But Capis and the graver sort thought fit The Greeks suspected Present to commit To Seas or Flames at least to search and bore The sides and what that space contains to ' explore Th' uncertain Multitude with both engag'd Divided stands till from the Tower enrag'd Laocoon ran whom all the crowd attends Crying what desperate Frenzy 's this oh Friends To think them gone Judge rather their retreat But a design their gifts but a deceit For our Destrction 't was contriv'd no doubt Or from within by fraud or from without By force yet know ye not Ulysses shifts Their swords less danger carry then their gifts This said against the Horses side his spear He throws which trembles with inclosed fear Whilst from the hollows of his womb proceed Groans not his own And had not Fate decreed Our Ruine We had fill'd with Grecian blood The Place Then Troy and Priam's Throne had stood Mean while a fetter'd pris'ner to the King With joyful shouts the Dardan