THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 61 then a few of the by-ways. Mr. Browning ling of Admetus's story, and Ixion (Jocoseria), used to know every inch of one highway with its conversion of the transgressor with all its associated by-ways, and never into a newer and more human Prometheus. set his foot on any other highway in the But also there is a word in Gerard de Loiresse same region. If he had been a zoologist, he {Parleyings) for those who might think that would have known all about lions and no- we must go back to myths for all our poetry. thing about tigers. Of course, this is no dis- Outlying stories that he found in his great paragement to his greatness. His true field researches are worked up in EcJietlos and was not learning but life. Only, why could Pfieidippides. He is still constant to the he not have read some Plato ? Our wistful Aeschylus of his youth, and especially to fancy cannot help framing some shadow of the PrometJieus, and to these he adds Pindar the transformed Republic and interpreted and Homer, quoting all three in Roman P/taedrus, for which we could have spared, letters in the midst of his verse. From perhaps, the refutation of Bubb Doding- Homer he is led to consider the ' Homeric ton and the divagations of the Famille question,' and uses it characteristically to Miranda. show forth in allegory the religious edu- Besides interpreting Greek tragedy, he cation of mankind (Asolando, Developments). translated it. The translations of the Alceslis In this period, for the first time in his life, (in Balaustion) and the Hercules Furens (in he begins to add Latin to Greek. He ex- Aristophanes's Apology) and the Agamemnon pands three playful lines of Virgil into the are interesting, because they show us what weird and pathetic mystery of Pan and Luna works he loved and what his theory of trans- (Dramatic Idylls, II.). He refers three times lation was. It is doubtful whether it to Juvenal (once in Pacchiorotto, twice in would have been a safe theory for any trans- Pietro of Abano), (if I am right in so inter- lator ; certainly it was not a safe theory for preting ' Sylla cuts a figure, leaving off Mr. Browning. To translate word for word dictating,' and ' while the half-mooned boot and yet into beautiful verse, a translator . we boast'). But his pre-eminent Latin poet must have an ear filled and a mind pre- is Horace. Time after time he quotes him, occupied with minute effects and delicate and incorporates his Latin into the verse experiments in language ; in short, he must (' You've wine, manhood's master ! Well, be something that Mr. Browning never was. ' rectius si quid Novistis impertite !' Wait Moreover, he cared for the main matter too the event,' where I cannot free my mind much to satisfy this fastidious generation in from a gruesome suspicion of impertite). respect of ' settling Iwttis business' and The final fruit of his Latin reading is ' properly basing oun.' In short, these trans- Imperante Augusto (Asolando), of which lations represent his play, not his work. nothing less can be said than that it might After the Agamemnon (1877) he did not stand in Men and Women. Whether the write on the Greek drama again. But the subject-citizens of Augustus spoke exactly impulse of his great Greek period remained. like this is as indifferent as the question His later volumes are full of both Greek whether Cardinal Wiseman defended himself subjects and Greek references. One thing like Bishop Blougram, or Andrea del Sarto that he has learned, from his own interpret- felt himself dragged back from immortality ing of Euripides, is a new interest in myth- by his wife. We may not have the situa- ology. (' A myth may teach. Only, who tion as the Romans conceived it, but we better would expound it thus Must be Euri- have it as they would have conceived it, if pides, not Aeschylus.' Parleyings, Mandevitte.) they had had a poet great enough to show Besides smaller references, there are the pro- them how. logue to the Parleyings, with its rehand- T. C. SNOW.
To the EDITOR of the CLASSICAL REVIEW. DEAR SIR, The enclosed lines, addressed to Mr. Robert Browning, and accompanying a little volume of Greek verse, were very graciously received by him last summer, and may on that account have some interest for your readers at the present time. LEWIS CAMPBELL. fl /jutKOLpi, OOTIS TravTos avOpunrov fw.0a>v ^d /JUKTOdiv olov i£avr\ei f3iov
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