University of Virginia Library

“NEWS FROM PARNASSUS.”

GENERAL DIX AND PRIVATE MILES AS RIVAL POETS
AND SCHOLARS.

General Dix, as should be well known to every
one, is an extremely elegant classical scholar, who
has carried forward with him through all the
varied and valuable labors of his public life an
unfading love and continual study of those great
masters of antiquity by whose precepts and upon
whose model his own pure and noble mind was
originally formed. Let any one who seeks to
know the value of such an education contrast the
dignity, urbanity, and stainless integrity which
have marked the life of this gentleman with the
far different qualities for which too many of our
public men are alone to be distinguished, and we
think a full answer will be given to the too common,
though vulgar and senseless inquiry: “Of
what practical use are classical attainments?”
This, however, is a digression; and now to the
origin of these rival translations by General Dix,
commanding Department of the East, and Private
O'Reilly, the orderly who stood outside his door,
of the famous Thirtieth Ode of the Third Book of
Horace.

A lady of illustrious name, who lives at Baltimore,
and who is herself a very elegant Latin
scholar—as in what other matters is she not elegant?—wrote
to General Dix requesting him to
furnish for her album an English rendering of the
ode in question: an ode, she added, “with the
confident promise of which, as she felt assured, he
must deeply sympathize.”

As prompt in replying to the calls of gallantry
as of duty, and peculiarly anxious to oblige a lady
who has so many and such great claims on the
admiration of all who know her—the General
seized the first leisure ten minutes he could find
and knocked off the following extremely literal,
and yet extremely elegant, translation:

This translation completed, the General immediately
touched his bell and ordered an orderly to
“send in O'Reilly, without delay”—the General
doing but little in the classics or belles-lettres without
the sanction, or at least the knowledge, of that
ripe though humble authority.

“Miles,” said the General, as the boy himself
stood before him in the first position of a soldier:
“Miles, my boy, in the republic of letters there
are no distinctions of shoulder-straps or crossbelts.
Unlimber yourself, therefore; take a seat
for a few minutes, and tell me what you think of
this rendering.”

Here the General handed to O'Reilly the still
wet copy of his translation, and briefly told him
how it came to be written—reading an extract

containing the request for it from the madame's
letter.

“Well, my good fellow,” continued the General,
as Miles, having read the lines twice, handed them
back to him in silence, “what do you find wrong
in them, or what do you think about them?
Come, be frank; you know it is not the first time
you have given your opinion boldly.”

The boy shuffled uneasily a moment, and then
murmured in a brogue, unusually broad, something
to the effect that, under no possible circumstances,
could it be right for a private in the ranks to tell
his Major-General Commanding that he “was
making a judy of himself;” which, let us add, as
a general proposition, is undoubtedly as true as
preaching. The translation was all right in itself:
wonderfully literal, and yet wonderfully elegant.
But the General was obtuse, or over-modest; and
clearly showed, in his exact rendering, that he
missed the delicate compliment which the madame
had intended.

This in substance: for the speaker stammered
badly, and his brogue was a broader brogue than
ever.

“Explain yourself more clearly, Miles,” said
the amused General, leaning back in his chair.
“Don't hurry yourself; take time:” for it was
now long after office-hours—in fact, near ten
o'clock at night.

Miles answered, blushingly, that, if his honor's
generalship would give him a pen and liberty to
sit at Major Joline's table for ten minutes, he'd
try explain to the best of his ability—and sure,
the best of men could do no more—what his (the
boy's) idea was of the true purpose contained in
the madame's request.

This consent being accorded—after half-anhour's
hard head-scratching, Miles reappeared out
of the next room, his face radiant with smiles,
and a much-blotted page of foolscap in his
extended hand. “This, General,” he said, “is
my own poor notion of the kind of paraphrase
the madame had in her mind:”

“There, General,” said the private, as he concluded
the last line of the last stanza: “That's
my idea of what the madame meant by her
request. Everybody knows the Hudson, while
nobody knows the `violens Aufidus.' Everybody
understands your `shoot him on the spot' order,
at the commencement of the war; while the merit
of having been the first to wed the `æolium
Carmen ad Italos modos' is something for which
neither the madame, nor any sensible man or
woman in the present day, can well be imagined
to care a single brass farthing. At any rate,”
added Miles, as he resumed the first position of a
soldier, and saluted stiffly before turning to quit
the room; “at any rate, General, I'm willing to
leave it to the madame herself, whether she doesn't
like my free-and-easy paraphrase a sight better
than your exact translation.”

The madame, on having the matter referred to
her, declined to express any preference—saying,
indeed, that both were good in their respective
ways. But it is to be remarked, that, while the
General's lines live in her album, where she is
fond of showing them to the initiated, it is her
habit, in telling the story, to quote from memory,

and without reference to the book, the more lively
version of the old ode contained in O'Reilly's
paraphrase.