Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/103

Rh is simple and clear, the verse easy and natural, and the story appropriate to the style. Goldsmith says "it is incontestably one of the finest pieces in any language."

The "Pervigilium Veneris" is translated in easy and flowing versification, though too paraphrastical; yet few persons perhaps would have transferred its beauties more successfully; for the delicacy, and select brevity of its expression, would baffle any attempt to exactness of imitation. In one or two places, Parnell appears to me to have missed the meaning, as

When shall I sing, as the swallow is now singing? When will my spring arrive, 'quando ver veniet meum!' Parnell however writes thus,

In the Batrachomuomachia, Parnell has preserved the mock dignity of the original; without ever stepping beyond the limits of a just propriety. The great defect of his version arises from his not having translated the Greek names of the combatants, which are formed with considerable humour, and this omission renders the English poem comparatively flat.

I am not sure whether the critics have decided as to the time in which this burlesque poem was. written; or how they have accounted for its having