Page:Rape of Prosperine - Claudian (1854).djvu/8

iv preference by a dictum, which I find in "Notes Theological and Political, by the late S.T. Coleridge," to the effect that—"Claudian throughout would bear translation better than any of the ancients."

There are three versions of the "Raptus," with which I am acquainted, those of Digges, Hawkins, and Strutt—and, with a ready acknowledgment of many good points occurring in them all, I have felt that something remained to be done for Claudian, and offer the present contribution towards an object which doubtless is still far from being attained. The first, that of Digges, published in 1617, is a curious, and, I believe, a scarce book. There are many terse and nervous lines in it, but it sins grievously in the way of amplification, the author spinning occasionally two or three couplets out of one word of his original. I give the opening sentence of his Preface, as a specimen of his quaint style.

"Gentle reader, I present to thy view the three first Books of Claudian de Raptu Proserpinæ in an English version: a work how pleasing it may prove I know not; since of my author Scaliger saith, he was materiâ ignobiliore oppressus—but—addidit de ingenio quantum defuit materiæ—which wit the translator's harshness of style may (haply) have diminished."

I have not thought it necessary to append any notes to a Poem so purely mythological. They would have been only a transcript of the pages of