I have interpreted the word 'Imitations' rather widely. It is quite possible, for example, that Clough never read Vergil's Lines Written in a Lecture-Room(Catalepton V): yet the poem of Clough which I have brought into connexion with this piece is, I think, a truer translation of it than could be found elsewhere. I will venture to hope, again, that I may be readily forgiven for placing beside Statius' famous Invocation to Sleepsix sonnets on a like subject from six English masters of the sonnet-form.

I have to thank the following authors and publishers for permission to reprint copyright pieces: Messrs. G. Bell & Sons (four versions by Calverley, Nos. 67, 82, 145, 149), Prof. D.A. Slater (versions of Lucretius, Nos. 66, 69, and Catullus, No. 97), Messrs. Blackwood (two pieces by the late Sir Theodore Martin, Nos. 92, 136), Prof. Ellis and Mr. John Murray (version of Catullus, No. 85), The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press and the Executors of the late Sir R.C. Jebb (version of Catullus, No. 74), Mr. L.J. Latham and Messrs. Smith Elder (version of Propertius, No. 179, from Mr. Latham's Odes of Horace and Other Verses), Messrs. George Allen (version of Horace from the Ionicaof the late William Cory, No. 148), Mr. John Murray (version of Horace by Mr. Gladstone, No. 126), Dr. T.H. Warren and Mr. John Murray (version of Vergil, No. 110), Mr. James Rhoades and Messrs. Kegan Paul (version of Vergil, No. 119), Mr. W.H. Fyfe (version of Statius, No. 262).

44

By the side of this Epitaph may be placed Pope's Epitaph upon Mrs. Corbet, with Johnson's comment:

HERE rests a woman good without pretence,

Blest with plain reason and with sober sense.

No conquest she, but o'er herself, desired,

No arts essayed but not to be admired.

Passion and pride were to her soul unknown,

Convinced that Virtue only is our own.

So unaffected, so composed a mind,

So firm, yet soft, so strong, yet so refined,

Heaven, as its purest gold, by tortures tried;

The saint sustained it, but the woman died.

'The subject of it', says Johnson, 'is a character not discriminated by any shining or eminent peculiarities: yet that which really makes, though not the splendour, the felicity of life, and that which every wise man will choose for his final and lasting companion in the languor of age, in the quiet of privacy, when he departs weary and disgusted from the ostentatious, the volatile and the vain. Of such a character, which the dull overlook, and the gay despise, it was fit that the value should be made known and the dignity established.'

66

(Beginning at the third paragraph, Illud in his rebus...)

BUT here's the rub. There soon may come a time

You'll count right reason treason and the prime

Of mind the spring of guilt; whereas more oft

In blind Religion are the seeds of crime.

Think how at Aulis to the Trivian Maid

The hero-kings of Greece their homage paid,

The flower of men, whose impious piety

Iphianassa on the altar laid.

Behold the bride! upon her head the crown

Of ritual, that from either cheek let down

An equal streamer. But cold rapture hers

As on her father's face she marked the frown:

A frown of anguish: at his side the men

Of doom, and in their hands, screened from her ken,

Death; and her countrymen shed tears to see

The lamb, poor victim, in the lions' den.

Then dumb with fear, not tongue-tied with delight,

She drooped to earth. What profited it her plight

She was her father's first-born? Not the less

They took her. Death, not Love, ordained the rite.

His were the bridesmen, and the altar his

To which with quaking limbs in fearfulness

Uplifted then, sans song, sans ritual due,

She was brought home—but not to wedded bliss,

A maid, but marred not married, in the spring

Of life and love's sweet prime, to yield the king

A victim, and the fleet fair voyaging:

Such wrongs Religion in her train doth bring.

D.A. Slater.

67

SWEET, when the great sea's water is stirred to his depths by the storm-winds,

Standing ashore to descry one afar-off mightily struggling:

Not that a neighbour's sorrow to you yields dulcet enjoyment:

But that the sight hath a sweetness, of ills ourselves are exempt from.

Sweet too 'tis to behold, on a broad plain mustering, war hosts

Arm them for some great battle, one's self unscathed by the danger:—

Yet still happier this: to possess, impregnably guarded,

Those calm heights of the sages, which have for an origin Wisdom:

Thence to survey our fellows, observe them this way and that way

Wander amidst Life's path, poor stragglers seeking a highway:

Watch mind battle with mind, and escutcheon rival escutcheon:

Gaze on that untold strife, which is waged 'neath the sun and the starlight,

Up as they toil on the surface whereon rest Riches and Empire.

O race born unto trouble! O minds all lacking of eye-sight!

'Neath what a vital darkness, amidst how terrible dangers

Move ye thro' this thing Life, this fragment! Fools that ye hear not

Nature clamour aloud for the one thing only: that, all pain

Parted and passed from the body, the mind too bask in a blissful

Dream, all fear of the future and all anxiety over!

Now as regards man's body, a few things only are needful,

(Few, tho' we sum up all), to remove all misery from him,

Aye, and to strew in his path such a lib'ral carpet of pleasures

That scarce Nature herself would at times ask happiness greater.