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126 The Translator’s Invisibilitysense to produce a transparent poem, but they also assumed thatHorace would have agreed:Now and then Professor Newman surprises us with a grateful [sic]flow of verse:—“Me not the enduring SpartaNor fertile-soil’d Larissa’s plainSo to the heart has smittenAs Anio headlong tumbling,Loud-brawling Albuneia’s grot,Tiburnus’ groves and orchardsWith restless rivulets streaming.”There is something of the rush of cool waters here. But what wouldHorace say, if he could come to life, and find himself singing the twostanzas subjoined?—“Well of Bandusia, as crystal bright,Luscious wine to thee with flowers is due;To-morrow shall a kidThine become, who with horny frontBudding new, designs amours and war.Vainly: since this imp o’ the frisky herdWith life-blood’s scarlet gushSoon shall curdle thy icy pool.”This is hard to read, while the Latin is as pleasant to the ear as thefountain which it brings before us to the imagination.(London Quarterly Review 1858:193)The reviewers’ negative evaluations rested on a contradiction thatrevealed quite clearly the domestic cultural values they privileged. Incalling for a rhymed version, they inscribed the unrhymed Latin textwith the verse form that dominated current English poetry whileinsisting that rhyme made the translation closer to Horace. Thereviewers were articulating a hegemonic position in English literaryculture, definitely slanted toward an academic elite: Horace’s text canbe “pleasant to the ear” only for readers of Latin. Yet this academicreading was also presented in national cultural terms, with thereviewers assimilating Horace to traditional English prosody: