Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
, chapter 8:
They conversed of things I had never heard of; of nations and times past; of countries far away; of secrets of nature discovered or guessed at: they spoke of books: how many they had read! What stores of knowledge they possessed! Then they seemed so familiar with French names and French authors: but my amazement reached its climax when Miss Temple asked Helen if she sometimes snatched a moment to recall the Latin her father had taught her, and taking a book from a shelf, bade her read and construe a page of Virgil; and Helen obeyed, my organ of veneration expanding at every sounding line.
We always hear about the Brontë sisters, but they had a less well known brother who was an accomplished Latinist. Patrick Branwell Brontë translated the first book of Horace's Odes
, including this hymn to the divine sister and brother Diana and Apollo (Ode
Virgins, sing the Virgin Huntress;
Youths, the youthful Phoebus, sing;
Sing Latona, she who bore them
Dearest to the eternal King:
Sing the heavenly maid who roves
Joyous, through the mountain groves;
She who winding waters loves;
Let her haunts her praises ring!
Sing the vale of Peneus' river
Sing the Delian deity;
The shoulder glorious with its quiver;
And the Lyre of Mercury.
From our country, at our prayer —
Famine, plague, and tearful war
These, benign, shall drive afar
To Persias plains or Britains sea.
Dianam tenerae dicite virgines,
intonsum, pueri, dicite Cynthium
dilectam penitus Iovi;
vos laetam fluviis et nemorum coma,
quaecumque aut gelido prominet Algido,
nigris aut Erymanthi
silvis aut viridis Gragi;
vos Tempe totidem tollite laudibus
natalemque, mares, Delon Apollinis
fraternaque umerum lyra.
Hic bellum lacrimosum, hic miseram famem
pestemque a populo et principe Caesare in
Persas atque Britannos
vestra motus aget prece.