Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T20:30:31.575Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Wordsworth on Virgil, Georgics 4.228–30

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Duncan Wu
Duncan Wu
Affiliation:
St Catherine's College, Oxford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

When Wordsworth was eighteen he embarked on a series of translations from Virgil's Georgics. All that survives of them today is a series of rough drafts and jottings, among which is a short note in which he attempts to resolve the well-known crux at 4.228–30

Suppose we read it thus – ‘prius haustu parcus aquarum / Ora fove, etc.’ – and construe it thus:

First sparingly steep the mouth (‘ora’) of the hive in water (‘haustu … aquarum’).

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , December 1990 , pp. 561
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The Wordsworthian material in this article is hitherto unpublished, and is taken from notebooks now at the Wordsworth Library, Grasmere. I am grateful to the Chairman and Trustees of the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere, for permission to present it here.

2 This may have been suggested by Joseph Warton's translation of The Georgics, which Wordsworth was consulting:

When of its sweet the dome thou would'st deprive.

Diffuse warm-spirted water thro' the hive …

(Warton, , Georgics 4.267–8Google Scholar)

3 Dale, F. R., ‘Virgil, Georgics iv. 228–30’, CR 5 (1955), 14–15Google Scholar.

4 The Georgics of Virgil: A Critical Survey (Cambridge, 1969), p. 266Google Scholar.

5 Virgil: The Georgics I–IV, ed. Thomas, Richard F. (2 vols., Cambridge, 1988), ii. 189Google Scholar.