Note 11 — INTRODUCTION TO THOMAS FLATMAN.

It is no doubt rather unfortunate that Flatman should have left us so many Horatian translations. For the one thing needful—except in a very few pieces where Horace outgoes himself in massive splendour, and so can be outgone further by more of this, as in Dryden's magnificent version of Tyrrhena regum—the one thing needful in translating Horace is something of his well-known and 'curious' urbane elegance. And this was the very quality which perhaps no Restoration poet—certainly not Flatman—could give. The 'dash of vulgarity'11 which Mr. Bullen has too truly stigmatized affects nearly all of them except when transported by passion (which is nowhere in Horace); or fighting hard in a mood of satiric controversy which is quite different from his pococurantism; or using a massive rhetoric which is equally absent from him. The consequence is that what Flatman gives us is not Horace at all; and is not good Flatman. The 'Canidia' pieces, as one would expect, are about the best, and they are not very good.