Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/22

 new aspects of Virgil's poetical genius. The commentary was full of ability, subtle analysis, and solid sense. But, unlike his contemporary Munro, at Cambridge, Conington was contented with a side view of the advances which were being made in Latin scholarship on the continent, and showed at the same time a curious indifference to points of history and antiquities.

It must, however, be said that the general feeling in Oxford, and indeed in England, at this time, was singularly apathetic in regard to such matters. The party of progress in Oxford took more interest in reforms of organisation than in the advancement of knowledge. Conington from circumstances and temperament was essentially one of them. He was anxious always to address the general public, and to interest it in what interested himself. But, making all these deductions, there can be no doubt that during the fifteen years of his professorship Conington based the study of Latin in Oxford on a new foundation. Not only by his written works, but by the sympathetic contact which he was careful to keep up with the most promising undergraduates, he gave a powerful stimulus to the progress of learning and literary culture in England.

Conington had always had a great love for translation, believing strongly in its efficacy as a means of bringing out the meaning of the original. Haupt remarked that ‘translation was the death of understanding,’ meaning that it is very seldom that a modern word is an exact equivalent for a Greek or Latin one. But Conington had his own theory of translation. Inaccurate he could not be, but he would add something in the English which was not strictly in the Latin, in order to produce the effect which he thought the Latin suggested. Early in the years of his professoriate he had translated Persius, for the benefit of his class, into prose; and he did the same with Virgil while lecturing and commenting on that author, reading his rendering book by book in the form of public lectures. During the last six years of his life he devoted himself much more seriously to translation than he had ever done before. In 1863 he published a verse translation of the ‘Odes of Horace,’ and in 1866 the ‘Æneid’ in the ballad metre of Scott. In the same year the death of his friend Mr. Worsley, the author of the admirable ‘Odyssey’ in Spenserian measure, turned his attention to a new field. Worsley had completed a version of the first twelve books of the ‘Iliad,’ and Conington, with the full approval of his dying friend, undertook to finish the work. The completed ‘Iliad’ was published in 1868, and in 1869, almost at the time of Conington's death, appeared the ‘Satires,’ ‘Epistles,’ and ‘Ars Poetica’ of Horace, done into the Popian couplet.

These translations were, as a rule, executed with great rapidity. Conington learnt long passages by heart, and often translated them at odd moments, during walks or in bed, only transcribing them when ready for press. He had great rhetorical facility, and his translations always show vigour, ability, and ready command of good English, often, too, much feeling for poetry; but he was not a poet, and the creative touch is wanting in his work. Again, he wrote too quickly for perfection, and was content to leave unexpunged a good deal of prosy and commonplace English.

Of these versions, the ballad translation of the ‘Æneid,’ a very questionable though very clever tour de force, was by far the most popular. The ‘Odes of Horace’ won the approval of many men of taste and scholarship; but probably the best, the most finished, and most poetical was the last, the ‘Satires’ and ‘Epistles’ of Horace. Taken as a whole, there can be no doubt that these translations increased the public interest in Latin literature.

The translations formed the most attractive part of his professorial lectures; but they were far from being the most valuable part of his instruction to those who wished to learn. His most important courses were upon Persius, on Plautus, on Virgil, and on Latin prose and verse. His ‘Persius’ was published after his death by the Clarendon Press (1872). In the learning and analytic power of his commentaries the students found stores of information and ample matter for thought. His lectures on Latin verse deserve special notice on account of the thoroughness of their method. He always began with an analysis of the piece of English set, comparing it sentence by sentence with any passages of the Latin classics which occurred to him as similar either in spirit or expression, and taking special care to point out anything modern or unclassical, and to show the nearest approximation to it which was likely to have occurred to a Roman poet. The remainder of the hour he took up with reading out and criticising a selection of the best pieces sent in by the pupils; the whole concluding with a dictation of his own rendering. The last part of the lecture, though dry, was serviceable; but the pre-eminently original and suggestive portion was the preliminary analysis. To a student fresh from school it was a new light to have set before him, by one whose memory was stored with reminiscences of the best Latin and English