Excerpt from Tentamina: Essays in Translation Into Latin, and Greek Verse
At a time when we hear much of the folly and futility of translating into Latin and Greek verse, it behoves every lover of the art to bear witness to the profit and pleasure he has derived from it.
This can be done by the rank and file, as well as by the Kopvcaioi. And it is with some such thought as this that I venture to publish my collection. Many of the happiest hours of my life have been spent in writing Latin and Greek verse: and if to read these versions gives even a few scholars a tithe of the pleasure it has given me to make them, and stimulates two or three tyros to continue their efforts, I shall be more than content.
I have called my renderings 'Tentamina' advisedly, for no one can be more fully conscious than myself that several of them are not, in the strict sense of the word, translations at all. It is conceivable that an adequate rendering of such pieces as, for instance, Tennyson's Revenge or Walt Whitman's Euthanasia is impossible. It may nevertheless be worth while to attempt (and even to read) a version; and
'The rapture of pursuing
Is the prize the vanquished gain.'
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Tentamina
