flat imitations of the ancients instead of having a smack of the original.
I have been inclining to the belief that Terence, Virgil, and Horace have
done damage to the Latin language, or at least to our taste; just as Pope
was the ruin of English poetry so long as he was allowed to dictate the
style and cadences. In Plautus, Lucretius, and Catullus the language has a
flexibility and the metres a freedom which (as I think) academicians and
schoolmasters have not duly appreciated, and which ought to impart to us
(when we _do_ do anything so absurd as to write foreign verses) a freedom
at which we have not generally aimed. As to metre, I think it really a
_folly_ to insist on Horace's restrictions, which are entirely his own,
being neither found in the Greek, which he copied, nor in Catullus; and
which made the problem of _translation_ so much harder (and he did not
translate), that one has to sacrifice too much. I think we ought to
construct our metres by selection from the Greek, just as Catullus or
Horace did, not imitate them slavishly. I send you one specimen of my
translation, to ask whether so many as seven lines together the same is
_too monotonous_. If there were only four or five it would be as one of
Catullus's. I dare say you have the original....

"With truest regards to you all,
"Your cordial friend,

"F. W. Newman."


Pulszky, the friend of Kossuth and also of Francis Newman, was a Hungarian
author, politician, and patriot. In 1848 he was serving under Esterhazy in
some Government post; but when he was suspected of revolutionizing in his
native country, he took refuge in England. Pulszky went with Kossuth later
to America. In 1852 he was condemned to death by the Austrian Government,