that is, the “babe on whom the parent never smiled, no god ever deemed worthy of his board, no goddess of her bed”--in other words, he can never enjoy the rewards of a hero like Hercules; but there is neither sense nor skill, and something very like a serious grammatical error, in “Who knows not the smile of a parent, Neither the board of a god nor the bed of a goddess is worthy.” But to turn from comparative trifles. No one who reads this version of the _Eclogues_ can doubt that Sir Osborne Morgan has proved his point, that the English hexameter, when skilfully used, is the measure best adapted for reproducing Virgil’s music in English. The following passage (_Ec._ VII. 45-48) is happily turned; let us place the original beside the translation:-- “Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba, Et quæ vos rarâ viridis tegit arbutus umbrâ, Solstitium pecori defendite: jam venit æstas Torrida, jam læto turgent in palmite gemmæ.” “Moss-grown fountains and sward more soft than the softest of slumbers, Arbutus tree that flings over both its flickering shadows, Shelter my flock from the sun. Already the summer is on us, Summer that scorches up all! See the bud on the glad vine is swelling.” Again (_Ec._ X. 41-48):-- “Serta mihi Phyllis legeret, cantaret Amyntas: Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori, Hic nemus: hic ipso tecum consumerer ævo. Nunc insanus amor duri me Martis in armis Tela inter media atque adversos detinet hostes: Tu procul a patriâ--nec sit mihi credere tantum!-- Alpinas, ah dura, nives et frigora Rheni Me sine sola vides.” “Phyllis would gather me flowers and Amyntas a melody chant me; Cool is the fountain’s wave and soft is the meadow, Lycoris; Shady the grove! Here with thee I would die of old age in the greenwood. Mad is the lust of war, that now in the heart of the battle Chains me where darts fall fast, and the charge of the foemen is fiercest, Far, far away from your home--Oh, would that I might not believe it-- Lost amid Alpine snows or the frozen desolate Rhineland, Lonely without me you wander.” Many other felicitous passages might be quoted; indeed, there is no Eclogue without them; but the translator is not sure-footed, and, if he occasionally illustrates the hexameter in its excellence, he illustrates, unhappily too often, some of its worst defects. Two qualities are indispensable to the success of this measure in English. Our language, unlike the classical languages, being accentual and not quantitative, if the long syllable is not represented where the stress naturally falls, and the short syllables where it does not fall, the effect is sometimes grotesque, sometimes distressing, and always unsatisfactory. Nothing, for example, could be worse in their various ways than the following:--