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Canon 87Old Vibennius of all your bath-rogues is the first;Nor less noted his boy for unnatural lust:The hands of the former are ever rapacious,The latter’s posterior is full as voracious:Then, o why don’t ye both into banishment go,And deservedly wander in deserts of woe?Not a soul but the fathers mean rapines must tell;And thou, son, canst no longer thy hairy breech sell.(Nott 1795:I, 90–91)Nott’s translation deviated from English literary and moral values inseveral ways. Not only did he choose to include the Latin text andtranslate the sexual references, but his choices (“unnatural lust,”“posterior,” “breech”) render the Latin quite closely (“cinaede,” “culo,”“natis”), refusing the traditional free method and thus minimizing therisk of euphemism and expurgation. Nott’s translation is equally un-English in being no more than intermittently fluent. The text opens witha false rhyme (“first”/“lust”). The twelve-syllable line, a departure fromthe pentameter standard, is metrically irregular and rather cumbersome,handled effectively only in the second couplet. And the syntax iselliptical, inverted, or convoluted in fully half of the lines.Nott’s violations against moral and stylistic propriety are alsoapparent when his translations are juxtaposed to Lamb’s. Bothtranslated Catullus’s apology for his love poetry, but their treatmentsof the opening lines are significantly different:Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,qui me ex versiculis meis putastis,quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.I’ll treat you as ’tis meet, I swear,Notorious pathics as ye are!Aurelius, Furius! who arraignAnd judge me by my wanton strain.(Nott 1795:I, 51)And dare ye, Profligates, arraignThe ardour of my sprightly strain,And e’en myself asperse?(Lamb 1821:I, 35)