[1] I have a
mind to try how it would bear translation; but what metre have we to answer
in feeling to the elegiac couplet of the Greeks?
I greatly prefer the Greek rhythm of the short verse to Ovid's, though,
observe, I don't dispute his taste with reference to the genius of his own
language. Augustus Schlegel gave me a copy of Latin elegiacs on the King of
Prussia's going down the Rhine, in which he had almost exclusively adopted
the manner of Propertius. I thought them very elegant.
[Footnote 1:
Greek:
Paides, Athanaia numphan mian en poka Th_ezais
po_olu ti kai pezi d_e philato tan hetezan,
mateza Teizesiao, kai oupoka ch_ozis egento k.t.l.
v 57, &c.]
* * * * *
You may find a few minute faults in Milton's Latin verses; but you will not
persuade me that, if these poems had come down to us _as_ written in the
age of Tiberius, we should not have considered them to be very beautiful.
* * * * *
I once thought of making a collection,--to be called "The Poetical
Filter,"--upon the principle of simply omitting from the old pieces of
lyrical poetry which we have, those parts in which the whim or the bad
taste of the author or the fashion of his age prevailed over his genius.
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