PREFACE 10 THE TRANSLATION OF OVID'S EPISTLES. * THE Life of Ovid being already written in our language, before the translation of his Metamorphoses, will not presume so far upon myself, to think I can add any thing to Mr Sandys his undertaking. † * Published in 8vo, in 1680. This version was made by several hands. See introductory remarks on Dryden's Translations. Johnson gives the following account of the purpose of Dryden's preface: "In 1680, the epistles of Ovid being translated by the poets of the time, it was necessary (says Dr Johnson) to introduce them by a preface; and Dryden, who on such occasions was regularly summoned, prefixed a discourse upon translation, which was then struggling for the liberty it now enjoys. Why it should find any difficulty in breaking the shackles of verbal interpretation, which must for ever debar it from elegance, it would be difficult to conjecture, were not the power of prejudice every day observed. The authority of Jonson, Sandys, and Holiday, had fixed the judgement of the nation; and it was not easily believed that a better way could be found than they had taken, though Fanshaw, Denham, Waller, and Cowley, had tried to give examples of a different practice." + George Sandys' Translation of Ovid was published in folio, in 1626. The English reader may there be satisfied, that he flourished in the reign of Augustus Cæsar; that he was extracted from an ancient family of Roman knights; that he was born to the inheritance of a splendid fortune;* that he was designed to the study of the law, and had made considerable progress in it, before he quitted that profession, for this of poetry, to which he was more naturally formed. The cause of his banishment is unknown; because he was himself unwilling further to provoke the emperor, by ascribing it to any other reason than what was pretended by Augustus, which was, the lasciviousness of his Elegies, and his Art of Love. † It is true, they are not to be excused in the severity of manners, as being able to corrupt a larger empire, if there were any, than that of Rome; yet this may be said in behalf of Ovid, that no man has ever treated the passion of love with so much delicacy of thought, and of expression, or searched into the nature of it more philosophically than he. And the emperor, who condemned him, had as little reason as another man to punish that fault with so much severity, if at least he were the author of a certain epigram, which is ascribed to him, relating to the cause of the first civil war betwixt himself and Mark Antony the triumvir, which is more ful * Ovid was born in the year of Rome 711, and died in 771 of the same æra. The poet himself plainly intimates as much in an epistle to Fabius Maximus, where he represents himself as accusing Love of being the cause of his exile: O puer! exilii, decepto causa magistro. The deity replies to this charge, by alluding to the secret cause some than any passage I have met with in our poet. To pass by the naked familiarity of his expressions to Horace, which are cited in that author's life, I need only mention one notorious act of his, in taking Livia to his bed, when she was not only married, but with child by her husband then living. But deeds, it seems, may be justified by arbitrary power, when words are questioned in a poet. There is another guess of the grammarians, as far from truth as the first from reason; they will have him banished for some favours, which they say he received from Julia, the daughter of Augustus, whom they think he celebrates under the name of Corinna in his Elegies; but he, who will observe the verses which are made to that mistress, may gather from the whole contexture of them, that Corinna was not a woman of the highest quality. If Julia were then married to Agrippa, why should our poet make his petition to Isis for her safe delivery, and afterwards condole her miscarriage; which, for aught he knew, might be by her own husband? Or, indeed, how durst he be so bold to make the least discovery of such a crime, which was no less than capital, especially committed against a person of Agrippa's rank? Or, if it were before her marriage, he would surely have been more discreet, than to have published an accident which must have been fatal to them both. But what most confirms me against this opinion, is, of his banishment, for which the loosness of his verses furnished only an ostensible reason: -Juro· Nil nisi concessum nos te didicisse magistro, Utque hoc, sic utinam cetera defendere possis, * Martial, lib. XI, epig. 21. |