Joseph Trapp

Joseph Trapp (1679 – 1747) was an English clergyman, academic, poet and pamphleteer.

Quotes

Adjectis istiusmodi notis nitori paginae detractum fore existimavimus.
- The elegance of the page would be diminished by notes.
  - Preface to Praelectiones Poeticae (1711)
  - The translation into English is given in Evelyn Tribble's "‘Like a Looking-Glas in the Frame’: From the Marginal Note to the Footnote", in The Margins of the Text, ed. D. C. Greetham (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), p. 232, as reported in William W. E. Slights's Managing Readers (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2001), p. 8

Death, judgment, heaven, and hell! Think, Christians, think!
You stand on vast eternity's dread brink.
Faith and repentance, piety and prayer!
Despise this world, the next be all your care.
Thus while my tomb the solemn silence breaks,
And to the eye this cold dumb marble speaks,
Though dead I preach, if ever with ill success,
Living I strove the important truths to press,
Your precious, your immortal souls to save;
Hear me, at least, oh, hear me from my grave.
- Epigraph written by Dr. Trapp for his own tombstone, as reported in John Hackett's Select and Remarkable Epitaphs (1757), p. 91

The Preface to The Aeneis of Virgil (1718)

The art and triumph of poetry are in nothing more seen and felt than in moving the passions.
- p. i

However poetry may have been dishonoured by the follies of some and the vices of others, the abuse or corruption of the best things being always the worst, it will notwithstanding be ever regarded, as it ever has been, by the wisest and most judicious of men as the very flower of human thinking, the most exquisite spirit that can be extracted from the wit and learning of mankind.
- p. i

Poetry itself being the music of thoughts and words, as music is the poetry of sounds.
- p. ii

He who says he values no translation of this or that poem because he understands the original, has indeed no true relish, that is, in effect, no true understanding of either.
- p. xxxix

If some gentlemen are resolved that blank verse shall be prose, they have my free leave to enjoy their saying, provided I may have theirs to think they mean nothing by it, unless they can prove that rhyme is essential to metre; consequently that the Goths and monks were the first inventers of verse, and that Homer and Virgil, as well as Milton, wrote nothing but prose.
- p. xlvi

Where you most admire Mr. Dryden, you see least of Virgil.

His versification here, as everywhere else, is generally flowing and harmonious, and a multitude of beauties of all kinds are scattered through the whole. But then, besides his often grossly mistaking his author's sense, as a translator he is extremely licentious. Whatever he alledges to the contrary in his preface, he makes no scruple of adding or retrenching as his turn is best served by either. In many places, where he shines most as a poet he is least a translator, and where you most admire Mr. Dryden, you see least of Virgil.
- pp. xlix–l; on John Dryden's translation of Virgil's Aeneid.

Of mine the world will and ought to be judge, whatever I say or think, and its judgment in these matters is never erroneous.
- p. l

Translations

The Aeneis of Virgil, Translated Into Blank Verse (1718–1720)

Volume I (1718)

Arms and the man I sing who first from Troy
Came to the Italian and Lavinian shores,
Exiled by fate; much tossed on land and sea
By power divine and cruel Juno's rage;
Much too in war he suffered, till he reared
A city and to Latium brought his gods:
Whence sprung the Latin progeny, the kings
Of Alba, and the walls of towering Rome.
- Book I, lines 1–5, pp. 1–2

Her Amazonian files with lunar shields
Penthesilea leads, and in the midst
Of thousand storms, beneath her naked pap
Her golden belt she buckles, warlike maid,
And, though a virgin, dares engage with men.
- Book I, lines 584–588, pp. 30–31

If Helenus has any skill,
If any faith, and if Apollo right
Inspires his prophet: one thing, goddess-born,
One thing, above the rest, I will advise,
and oft repeat it: with religious prayer
First Juno's deity adore; to her
Pay willing sacrifices, and with vows,
Suppliant, overpower the mighty queen of heaven.
- Book III, lines 552–559, p. 127

Aurora, from Tithonus' saffron bed
Now rising, sprinkled over the world with light.
- Book VI, lines 779–780, p. 184

Two gates of sleep there are: the one of horn,
Through which with ease the real phantoms pass;
With polished elephant the other shines,
Through which the manes send false dreams to light.
- Book VI, lines 1149–1152, p. 309

Volume II (1720)

Here, in the brakes and savage dens of beasts,
He nursed his daughter from the dugs of mares,
Milking their teats into her tender lips.
Soon as the infant first with doubtful feet
Could press the ground, her little hands he filled
With pointed darts, and on her shoulder hung
A bow and quiver. No soft caul of gold
Her tresses strains; nor flows her waving gown:
Instead of these a tiger's horrid hide
Hangs from her head, and over her back descends.
Darts with her tender hand even then she threw;
And, whirling round her head a sounding sling,
Struck a Strymonian crane, or snow-white swan.
- Book XI, lines 754–766, pp. 729–730

To him the wind with doubtful terror wafts
The mingled noise: hoarse murmurs of distress
And clamours from the city pierce his ears.
Ah me! what sounds confused, what cries disturb
The town? Why rush the clamours from the walls?
He said; and, with his coursers' reins repressed,
In dumb amaze stood listening.
- Book XII, lines 797–803, p. 793

Confounded with the crowd of various thoughts,
And stiffening with amaze, the hero stood,
In silence deep: within his bosom boils
Disdainful shame, and grief to madness wrought,
And love inflamed with rage, and conscious worth.
- Book XII, lines 860–864, p. 796

The Works of Virgil: Translated Into English Blank Verse (1731–1735)

As when, complaining in melodious groans,
Sweet Philomel, beneath a poplar shade,
Mourns her lost young, which some rough village hind
Observing, from their nest, unfledged, has stole:
She weeps all night; and, perched upon a bough,
With plaintive notes repeated fills the grove.
- Volume I (1731), Georgics, Book IV, lines 619–624, p. 237

When in her turn the moon obscure withdraws
Her light, and setting stars persuade to sleep:
Lonely she pines within the empty court,
Lies on the couch which just before []he left;
Him absent, absent still she hears and sees.
- Volume II (1731), Aeneid, Book IV, lines 111–115, p. 232

Explanatory Notes

Some beauties are the more so, for not being capable of explanation. I feel it, though I cannot account for it.
- The Aeneis of Virgil, Translated Into Blank Verse, Vol. I (1718), "Remarks upon the Second Book", p. 339

A man cannot command his own motions while he reads this; the very verses are alive; and the reader is transported out of himself.
- The Aeneis of Virgil, Translated Into Blank Verse, Vol. II (1720), "Remarks upon the Twelfth Book", p. 942

Attributed

The king, observing with judicious eyes
The state of both his universities,
To Oxford sent a troop of horse, and why?
That learned body wanted loyalty;
To Cambridge books, as very well discerning
How much that loyal body wanted learning.
- Epigram "by an Oxonian", sent from Oxford to Cambridge, as quoted in John Nichols's Biographical and Literary Anecdotes (1782), p. 462
- Context: "Lines written on George I's donation of the Bishop of Ely's Library to the University of Cambridge" (in 1715), as reported in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, ed. Elizabeth M. Knowles (1999), p. 781
- Compare:
  - The king to Oxford sent a troop of horse,
    For Tories own no argument but force;
    With equal skill to Cambridge books he sent,
    For Whigs admit no force but argument.
    - William Browne's impromptu reply, standing up "for the honor of Cambridge, of which he was a graduate", according to Henry Philip Dodd's The Epigrammatists (1870), p. 310; also quoted in Nichols's Anecdotes (1782), p. 462.
    - Samuel Johnson's opinion of this answer is given in Hester Thrale's Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786), p. 40: "Mr. Johnson did him the justice to say, it was one of the happiest extemporaneous productions he ever met with; though he once comically confessed, that he hated to repeat the wit of a Whig urged in support of Whiggism."

Quotes about Trapp

Read the commandments, Trapp, translate no further;
For there 'tis written, Thou shalt do no murder.
- Abel Evans, as quoted by Edward Young in Love of Fame (1728)

His book may continue its existence as long as it is the clandestine refuge of schoolboys.
- Samuel Johnson on Trapp's translation of Virgil, in Lives of the English Poets (1781), 'The Life of Dryden'

To Dr. Trapp's unrhymed version of the Augustan Epic [...] I am disposed to attribute much more praise than it has been its fortune to obtain. Trapp was a scholar and a critic; and, fully possessing the sense of his author, he has communicated it, at all times, in flowing numbers, and, occasionally, in poetic diction. His notes discover accurate learning; and his prefaces contain much erudite and tasteful criticism. To any reader, unversed in the Roman language and desirous of becoming acquainted with Virgil, I would recommend Trapp as his instructor: for in the volumes of the Oxford professor is to be found a greater mass of Virgilian information than can be obtained from any other single work in our language.
- Charles Symmons, Preface (February 9th, 1816) to the first edition of Symmons's translation of The Æneis of Virgil, in Vol. I of its second edition (1820), p. 54

Better than Virgil? Yes—perhaps—
But then, by Jove, 'tis Dr. Trapp's!
- "Epigram of a contemporary wit, on being told that a certain nobleman wrote verses which were better than Virgil", as reported and quoted in Blackwood's Magazine, Vol. CI (January 1867), p. 37
- Background provided in John Duncombe's Letters (2nd edition, Vol. I, 1773, p. 99): Richard Glover's Leonidas "had been written some years, and yet the author was, at the time of its publication [in 1737], only 24. The town was so divided in opinion about this poem at its first appearance, that some preferred it to Homer and Milton, while others placed it on a level with Quarles. To one who said 'it was better than Virgil,' a gentleman replied extempore" with the epigram above.

External links

Wikipedia

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Joseph Trapp

The Preface to the Aeneis of Virgil (1718) by Joseph Trapp at Project Gutenberg