Note 54 — Chapter XI
Reading edition
It is surprising that this fault should meet even with approbation from so judicious a critic as Denham. In the preface to his translation of the second book of the Æneid he says: “As speech is the apparel of our thoughts, so there are certain garbs and modes of speaking which vary with the times; the fashion of our clothes being not more subject to alteration, than that of our speech: and this I think Tacitus means by that which he calls Sermonem temporis istius auribus accommodatum, the delight of change being as due to the curiosity of the ear as of the eye: and therefore, if Virgil must needs speak English, it were fit he should speak, not only as a man of this nation, but as a man of this age.” The translator’s opinion is exemplified in his practice.
Infandum, Regina, jubes renovare dolorem.
“Madam, when you command us to review Our fate, you make our old wounds bleed anew.”
Of such translation it may with truth be said, in the words of Francklin,
Thus Greece and Rome, in modern dress array’d, Is but antiquity in masquerade.