Like
them it is full of felicitous modernisms, of exquisite literary echoes
and of delicate and delightful pictures; as Lord Tennyson loves England
so did Virgil love Rome; the pageants of history and the purple of empire
are equally dear to both poets; but neither of them has the grand
simplicity or the large humanity of the early singers, and, as a hero,
AEneas is no less a failure than Arthur. Sir Charles Bowen's version
hardly gives us this peculiar literary quality of Virgil's verse, and,
now and then, it reminds us, by some awkward inversion, of the fact that
it is a translation; still, on the whole, it is extremely pleasant to
read, and, if it does not absolutely mirror Virgil, it at least brings us
many charming memories of him.

The metre Sir Charles Bowen has selected is a form of English hexameter,
with the final dissyllable shortened into a foot of a single syllable
only. It is, of course, accentual not quantitative, and though it misses
that element of sustained strength which is given by the dissyllabic
ending of the Latin verse, and has consequently a tendency to fall into
couplets, the increased facility of rhyming gained by the change is of no
small value. To any English metre that aims at swiftness of movement
rhyme seems to be an absolute essential, and there are not enough double
rhymes in our language to admit of the retention of this final
dissyllabic foot.

As an example of Sir Charles Bowen's method we would take his rendering
of the famous passage in the fifth Eclogue on the death of Daphnis:

All of the nymphs went weeping for Daphnis cruelly slain:
Ye were witnesses, hazels and river waves, of the pain
When to her son's sad body the mother clave with a cry,
Calling the great gods cruel, and cruel the stars of the sky.
None upon those dark days their pastured oxen did lead,
Daphnis, to drink of the cold clear rivulet; never a steed
Tasted the flowing waters, or cropped one blade in the mead.
Over thy grave how the lions of Carthage roared in despair,
Daphnis, the echoes of mountain wild and of forest declare.
Daphnis was first who taught us to guide, with a chariot rein,
Far Armenia's tigers, the chorus of Iacchus to train,
Led us with foliage waving the pliant spear to entwine.
As to the tree her vine is a glory, her grapes to the vine,
Bull to the horned herd, and the corn to a fruitful plain,
Thou to thine own wert beauty; and since fate robbed us of thee,
Pales herself, and Apollo are gone from meadow and lea.

'Calling the great gods cruel, and cruel the stars of the sky' is a very
felicitous rendering of 'Atque deos atque astra vocat crudelia mater,'
and so is 'Thou to thine own wert beauty' for 'Tu decus omne tuis.' This
passage, too, from the fourth book of the AEneid is good:

Now was the night.