In this case, to be sure, the verses are Latin, and the author more
nameless even than Junius; but who knows but some one's turn shall come
next whose verses were at least meant to be English, and whose name
is--Legion? If some translator, charged from the other pole of Dr. Coles's
enthusiasm, should favor us with thirteen Latin versions of some modern
English poems, it would give them a chance of being more generally
intelligible to the laity. Nay, even if such a baker's-dozen of
mediaeval-Latin renderings of Mrs. Browning's last poem--and by this term we
mean, of course, the rather shady Latin of middle-aged men--should be
shuffled together, we are not sure that it would not be a help to the
understanding of the Coptic original. But this, perhaps, is hoping too
much.
In the case of Dr. Coles, how lucky the direction of the superfluous
energy! how wise the humane precaution of Nature! For there is no
destructive agency like a doctor with a hygienic hobby. If your
constitution be a salt or sugar one, he will melt you away with damp sheets
and duckings; if you are as exsanguine as a turnip, his scientific delight
in getting blood out of you will be only heightened. For such erratic
enthusiasms as this of Dr. Coles we want a milder term than monomania.
Something like _monowhimsia_ would do. It is seldom that an oddity takes so
pleasant a turn. He has published a dainty little volume, with a
well-written introduction, giving the history of the "Dies Irae," and an
account of the various versions of it; this is followed by his own thirteen
translations; and an appendix tells us what is meant by a Sequence, has a
page or two on the origin of rhyming Latin, and concludes with the music of
the hymn itself.
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