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ON TRANSLATING HOMER 
 
EONDON 
 
 PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO, 
 
 NEW-STEEET SQUAEE 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER 
 
 THEEE LECTURES 
 
 GIVEN AT OXFOED 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD, M.A. 
 
 PEOFESSOB OP T?OETEY IN THE UNIVEESITT OF OXFOED, A>D 
 FORMEELT FELLOW OF OEIEL COLLEGE 
 
 LONDON 
 
 LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, AND ROBERTS 
 
 1861 
 
Nimquamne reponam 
 
ON TRANSLATING HOMER, 
 
 It has more than once been suggested to me that I 
 should translate Homer. That is a task for which I 
 have neither the time nor the courage ; but the sug- 
 gestion led me to regard yet more closely a poet whom 
 I had already long studied, and for one or two years 
 the works of Homer were seldom out of my hands. 
 The study of classical literature is probably on the 
 decline ; but, whatever may be the fate of this study 
 in general, it is certain that as instruction spreads 
 and the number of readers increases, attention will 
 be more and more directed to the poetry of Homer, 
 not indeed as part of a classical course, but as the 
 most important poetical monument existing. Even 
 within the last ten years two fresh translations of the 
 Iliad have appeared in England : one by a man of 
 great ability and genuine learning. Professor New- 
 man ; the other by Mr. Wright, the conscientious 
 and painstaking translator of Dante. It may safely 
 J be asserted that neither of these works will take rank 
 
 B 
 
 to 
 
2 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 as the standard translation of Homer ; that the task 
 of rendering him will still be attempted by other 
 translators. It may perhaps be possible to render 
 to these some service, to save them some loss of 
 labour, by pointing out rocks on which their prede- 
 cessors have split, and the right objects on which a 
 translator of Homer should fix his attention. 
 
 It is disputed, what aim a translator should pro- 
 pose to himself in dealing with his original. Even 
 this preliminary is not yet settled. On one side it is 
 said, that the translation ought to be such " that the 
 reader should, if possible, forget that it is a transla- 
 tion at all, and be lulled into the illusion that he is 
 reading an original work; something original," (if the 
 translation be in English), " from an English hand." 
 The real original is in this case, it is said, " taken as 
 a basis on which to rear a poem that shall affect our 
 countrymen as the original may be conceived to have 
 affected its natural hearers," On the other hand, 
 Mr. Newman, who states the foregoing doctrine only 
 to condemn it, declares that he " aims at precisely 
 the opposite : to retain every peculiarity of the ori- 
 ginal, so far as he is able, with the greater care the 
 more foreign it may ha.ppen to be ; " so that it may 
 ** never be forgotten that he is imitating, and imi- 
 tating in a different material," The translator's 
 ** first duty," says Mr. Newman, " is a historical one ; 
 to be faithful.''^ Probably both sides would agree 
 that the translator's " first duty is to be faithful ; '* 
 
LECTURE I. 3 
 
 but the question at issue between them is^ in what 
 faithfulness consists. 
 
 My one object is to give practical advice to 
 a translator ; and I shall not the least concern my- 
 self with theories of translation as such. But I 
 advise the translator not to try " to rear on the basis 
 of the Iliad, a poem that shall affect our coun- 
 trymen as the original may be conceived to have 
 affected its natural hearers ; " and for this simple 
 reason, that we cannot possibly tell how the Iliad 
 " affected its natural hearers." It is probably meant 
 merely that he should try to affect Englishmen power- 
 fully, as Homer affected Greeks powerfully ; but this 
 direction is not enough, and can give no real guidance. 
 For all great poets affect their hearers powerfully, 
 but the effect of one poet is one thing, that of another 
 poet another thing : it is our translator's business to 
 reproduce the effect of Homer, and the most powerful 
 emotion of the unlearned English reader can never 
 assure him whether he has ^^eproduced this, or whe- 
 ther he has produced something else. So, again, he 
 may follow Mr. Newman's directions, he may try to 
 be " faithful," he may " retain every peculiarity of 
 his original ; " but who is to assure him, who is to 
 assure Mr, Newman himself, that, when he has done 
 this, he has done that for which Mr. Newman enjoins 
 this to be done, " adhered closely to Homer's manner 
 and habit of thought ? " Evidently the translator 
 needs some more practical directions than these. No 
 
 B 2 
 
4 .ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 one can tell him how Homer affected the Greeks ; 
 but there are those who can tell him how Homer 
 affects them. These are scholars ; who possess, at 
 the same time with knowledge of Greek, adequate 
 poetical taste and feeling. No translation will seem 
 to them of much worth compared with the original ; 
 but they alone can say, whether the translation pro- 
 duces more or less the same effect upon them as the 
 original. They are the only competent tribunal in 
 this matter : the Greeks are dead ; the unlearned 
 Englishman has not the data for judging ; and no 
 man can safely confide in his own single judgment of 
 his own work. Let not the translator, then, trust to 
 his notions of what the ancient Greeks would have 
 thought of him ; he will lose himself in the vague. 
 Let him not trust to what the ordinary English reader 
 thinks of him ; he will be taking the blind for his 
 guide. Let him not trust to his own judgment of 
 his own work ; he may be misled by individual 
 caprices. Let him ask how his work affects those 
 who both know Greek and can appreciate poetry; 
 whether to read it gives the Provost of Eton, or Pro- 
 fessor Thompson at Cambridge, or Professor Jowett 
 here in Oxford, at all the same feeling which to read 
 the original gives them. I consider that when Bent- 
 ley said of Pope's translation, " it was a pretty poem, 
 but must not be called Homer," the work, in spite of 
 all its power and attractiveness, was judged. 
 
 'D-tav 6 (jypovifJLOs optasLsv — "as the judicious would 
 
LECTURE I. 5 
 
 determine " — that is a test to which everyone pro- 
 fesses himself willing to submit his works. Unhap- 
 pily, in most cases, no two persons agree as to who 
 " the judicious " are. In the present case, the am- 
 biguity is removed : I suppose the translator at one 
 with me as to the tribunal to which alone he should 
 look for judgment; and he has thus obtained a 
 practical test by which to estimate the real success of 
 his work. How is he to proceed, in order that his 
 work, tried by this test, may be found most success- 
 ful ? 
 
 First of all, there are certain negative counsels 
 which I will give him. Homer has occupied men's 
 minds so much, such a literature has arisen about 
 him, that everyone who approaches him should re- 
 solve strictly to limit himself to that which may 
 directly serve the object for which he approaches him. 
 I advise the translator to have nothing to do with the 
 questions, whether Homer ever existed ; whether the 
 poet of the Iliad be one or many; whether the Iliad be 
 one poem or an Achilleis and an Iliad stuck together ; 
 whether the Christian doctrine of the Atonement is 
 shadowed forth in the Homeric mythology ; whether 
 the Groddess Latona in any way prefigures the Virgin 
 Mary, and so on. These are questions which have 
 been discussed with learning, with ingenuity, nay, 
 with genius ; but they have two inconveniences ; one 
 general for all who approach them, one particular 
 for the translator. The general inconvenience is, 
 
 B 3 
 
6 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 that there really exist no data for determining them. 
 The particular inconvenience is, that their solution by 
 the translator, even were it possible, could be of no 
 benefit to his translation. 
 
 I advise him, again, not to trouble himself with 
 constructing a special vocabulary for his use in trans- 
 lation ; with excluding a certain class of English 
 words, and with confining himself to another class, 
 in obedience to any theory about the peculiar qual- 
 ities of Homer's style. Mr. Newman says that " the 
 entire dialect of Homer being essentially archaic, 
 that of a translator ought to be as much Saxo-Norman 
 as possible, and owe as little as possible to the 
 elements thrown into our language by classical learn- 
 ing." Mr. Newman is unfortunate in the observance 
 of his own theory; for I continually find in his 
 translation words of Latin origin, which seem to me 
 quite alien to the simplicity of Homer: "responsive," 
 for instance, which is a favourite word of Mr. New- 
 man, to represent the Homeric d/jLSL^ofMsvos : 
 
 Great Hector of the motley helm thus spake to her responsive. 
 But thus respo'iisively to him spake god-like Alexander. 
 
 And the word " celestial," again, in the grand address 
 of Zeus to the horses of Achilles, 
 
 You, who are born celestial, from Eld and Death exempted ! 
 
 seems to me in that place exactly to jar upon the 
 feeling as too bookish. But, apart from the question 
 
LECTUEE I. 7 
 
 of Mr. Newman's fidelity to his own theory, such a 
 theory seems to me both dangerous for a translator 
 and false in itself. Dangerous for a translator ; be- 
 cause, wherever one finds such a theory announced, 
 (and one finds it pretty often), it is generally followed 
 by an explosion of pedantry ; and pedantry is of all 
 things in the world the most un-Homeric. False in 
 itself; because, in fact, we owe to the Latin element 
 in our language most of that very rapidit}^ and clear 
 decisiveness by which it is contradistinguished from 
 the Grerman, and in sympathy with the languages of 
 Greece and Eome : so that to limit an English trans- 
 lator of Homer to words of Saxon origin is to de- 
 prive him of one of his special advantages for trans- 
 lating Homer. In Voss's well-known translation of 
 Homer, it is precisely the qualities of his Grerman 
 language itself, something heavy and trailing both 
 in the structure of its sentences and in the words of 
 which it is composed, which prevent his translation, 
 in spite of the hexameters, in spite of the fidelity, 
 from creating in us the impression created by the 
 Grreek. Mr. Newman's prescription, if followed, 
 would just strip the English translator of the advan^ 
 tage which he has over Voss. 
 
 The frame of mind in which we approach an 
 author influences our correctness of appreciation of, 
 him ; and Homer should be approached by a trans- 
 lator in the simplest frame of mind possible. Modern 
 sentiment tries to make the ancient not less than 
 
 B 4 
 
8 ON TRAIS^SLATING HOMER. 
 
 the modern world its own ; but against modern 
 sentiment in its applications to Homer the trans- 
 lator, if he would feel Homer truly — and unless he 
 feels him truly, how can he render him truly ? — 
 cannot be too much on his guard. For example : 
 the writer of an interesting article on English trans- 
 lations of Homer, in the last number of the National 
 Review, quotes, I see, with admiration, a criticism of 
 Mr. Ruskin on the use of the epithet (j)vaL^oo9, 
 *• life-giving," in that beautiful passage, in the third 
 book of the Iliad, which follows Helen's mention of 
 her brothers Castor and Pollux as alive, though they 
 were in truth dead : 
 
 vjQ (puTO' TOVQ 3' r]h] KcireyjEv (pvai^ooQ ala 
 iv AaKE^aifxovL avdi, (plXtj kv Trarpidi yalr], 
 
 " The poet," says Mr. Ruskin, " has to speak of 
 the earth in sadness ; but he will not let that sadness 
 affect or change his thought of it. 'No; though 
 Castor and Pollux be dead, yet the earth is our 
 mother still, — fruitful, life-giving." This is just a 
 specimen of that sort of application of modern sen- 
 timent to the ancients, against which a student, who 
 wishes to feel the ancients truly, cannot too resolutely 
 defend himself. It reminds one, as, alas ! so much 
 of Mr. Ruskin's writing reminds one, of those words 
 of the most delicate of living critics : " Comme tout 
 genre de composition a son ecueil particulier, celui 
 
 * Iliad, iii. 243. 
 
LECTURE I. 9 
 
 du genre romanesque^ dest le faux.^'' The reader 
 may feel moved as he reads it ; but it is not the less 
 an example of " le faux " in criticism ; it is false. 
 It is not true, as to that particular passage, that 
 Homer called the earth (j^vat^oos because, '^ though 
 he had to speak of the earth in sadness, he would 
 not let that sadness change or affect his thought of 
 it," but consoled himself by considering that " the 
 earth is our mother still, — fruitful, life-giving." It 
 is not true, as a matter of general criticism, that 
 this kind of sentimentality, eminently modern, in- 
 spires Homer at all. "From Homer and Polygnotus 
 I every day learn more clearly," says Groethe, " that 
 in our life here above ground we have, properly 
 speaking, to enact Hell* :" — if the student must ab- 
 solutely have a key-note to the Iliad, let him take 
 this of Groethe, and see what he can do with it ; it 
 will not, at any rate, like the tender pantheism of 
 Mr. Euskin, falsify for him the whole strain of 
 Homer. 
 
 These are negative counsels ; I come to the posi- 
 tive. When I say, the translator of Homer should 
 above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities 
 of his author : — that he is eminently rapid ; that he 
 is eminently plain and direct both in the evolution 
 of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, 
 both in his syntax and in his words; that he is 
 eminently plain and direct in the substance of his 
 
 * Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe, vi, 230. 
 
10 ON TRANSLATIJ^-G HOMEH. 
 
 thouglit, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, 
 finally, that he is eminently noble ; — I probably seem 
 to be saying what is too general to be of much 
 service to anybody. Yet it is strictly true that, for 
 want of duly penetrating themselves with the first- 
 named quality of Homer, his rapidity, Cowper and 
 Mr. Wright have failed in rendering him ; that, 
 for want of duly appreciating the second-named 
 quality, his plainness and directness of style and 
 diction. Pope and Mr. Sotheby have failed in ren- 
 dering him ; that for want of appreciating the third, 
 his plainness and directness of ideas. Chapman has 
 failed in rendering him ; while for want of appre- 
 ciating the fourth, his nobleness, Mr. Newman, who 
 has clearly seen some of the faults of his prede- 
 cessors, has yet failed more conspicuously than any 
 of them. 
 
 Coleridge says, in his strange language, speaking of 
 the union of the human soul with the divine essence, 
 that this takes place. 
 
 Whene'er the mist, which stands 'twixt God and thee, 
 Defsecates to a pure transparency ; 
 
 and so, too, it may be said of that union of the 
 translator with his original, which alone can produce 
 a good translation, that it takes place when the mist 
 which stands between them — the mist of alien modes 
 of thinking, speaking, and feeling on the translator's 
 part — " defsecates to a pure transparency," and dis- 
 
LECTURE I. 11 
 
 appears. But between Cowper and Homer — (Mr. 
 Wright repeats in the main Cowper's manner, as 
 Mr. Sotheby repeats Pope's manner, and neither Mr. 
 Wright's translation nor Mr. Sotheby's has, I must 
 be forgiven for saying, any proper reason for exist- 
 ing) — between Cowper and Homer there is inter- 
 posed the mist of Cowper's elaborate Miltonic manner, 
 entirely alien to the flowing rapidity of Homer ; be- 
 tween Pope and Homer there is interposed the mist of 
 Pope's literary artificial manner, entirely alien to the 
 plain naturalness of Homer's manner ; between Chap- 
 man and Homer there is interposed the mist of the 
 fancifulness of the Elizabethan age, entirely alien to 
 the plain directness of Homer's thought and feeling ; 
 while between Mr. Newman and Homer is inter- 
 posed a cloud of more than ^g3rptian thickness — 
 namely, a manner, in Mr. Newman's version, eminently 
 ignoble, while Homer's manner is eminently noble. 
 I do not despair of making all these propositions 
 clear to a student who approaches Homer wdth a free 
 mind. First, Homer is eminently rapid, and to this 
 rapidity the elaborate movement of Miltonic blank 
 verse is alien. The reputation of Cowper, that most 
 interesting man and excellent poet, does not depend 
 on his translation of Homer ; and in his preface to 
 the second edition, he himself tells us that he felt — 
 he had too much poetical taste not to feel — on re- 
 turning to his own version after six or seven years, 
 " more dissatisfied with it himself than the most diffi- 
 
12 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 cult to be pleased of all his judges." And he was 
 dissatisfied with it for the right reason — that "it 
 seemed to him deficient in the grace of ease,^^ Yet 
 he seems to have originally misconceived the manner 
 of Homer so much, that it is no wonder he rendered 
 him amiss. '' The similitude of Milton's manner to 
 that of Homer is such," he says, " that no person 
 familiar with both can read either without being re- 
 minded of the other ; and it is in those breaks and 
 pauses to which the numbers of the English poet 
 are so much indebted both for their dignity and 
 variety, that he chiefly copies the Grecian." It would 
 be more true to say : " The unlikeness of Milton's 
 manner to that of Homer is such, that no person 
 familiar with both can read either without being 
 struck with his difference from the other ; and it is 
 in his breaks and pauses that the English poet is 
 most unlike the Grecian." 
 
 The inversion and pregnant conciseness of Milton 
 or Dante are, doubtless, most impressive qualities of 
 style ; but they are the very opposites of the direct- 
 ness and flowingness of Homer, which he keeps alike 
 in passages of the simplest narrative, and in those of 
 the deepest emotion. Not only, for example, are 
 these lines of Cowper un-Homeric : 
 
 So numerous seem'd those fires the banks between 
 Of Xanthus, blazing, and the fleet of Greece 
 In prospect all of Troy ; 
 
 where the position of the word " blazing " gives an 
 
LECTURE I. 13 
 
 entirely un-Homeric movement to this simple pas- 
 sage, describing the fires of the Trojan camp outside 
 of Troy ; but the following lines, in that very highly- 
 wrought passage where the horse of Achilles answers 
 his master's reproaches for having left Patroclus on 
 the field of battle, are equally un-Homeric : 
 
 For not through, sloth or tardiness on us 
 Aught chargeable, have Ilium's sons thine arms 
 Stript from Patroclus' shoulders ; but a God 
 Matchless in battle, oiFspring of bright-hair' d 
 Latona, him contending in the van 
 Slew, for the glory of the chief of Troy. 
 
 Here even the first inversion, " have Ilium's sons 
 thine arms Stript from Patroclus' shoulders," gives 
 the reader a sense of a movement not Homeric ; and 
 the second inversion, " a God him contending in 
 the van Slew," gives this sense ton times stronger. 
 Instead of moving on without check, as in reading 
 the original, the reader twice finds himself, in read- 
 ing the translation, brought up and checked. Homer 
 moves with the same simplicity and rapidity in the 
 highly-wrought as in the simple passage. 
 
 It is in vain that Cowper insists on his fidelity : 
 "my chief boast is that I have adhered closely to 
 my original : " — " the matter found in me, whether the 
 reader like it or not, is found also in Homer ; and the 
 matter not found in me, how much soever the reader 
 may admire it, is found only in Mr. Pope." To 
 suppose that it is fidelity to an original to give its 
 
14 ON TRAIs'SLATING HOMER. 
 
 matter, unless you at the same time give its manner ; 
 or, rather, to suppose that you can really give its 
 matter at all, unless you can give its manner, is just 
 the mistake of our pre-Eaphaelite school of painters, 
 who do not understand that the peculiar effect of 
 nature resides in the whole and not in the parts. So 
 the peculiar effect of a poet resides in his manner 
 and movement, not in his words taken separately. 
 It is well known how conscientiously literal is Cowper 
 in his translation of Homer. It is well known how 
 extravagantly free is Pope : 
 
 So let it be! 
 Portents and prodigies are lost on me : 
 
 that is Pope's rendering of the words, 
 
 SdvOe, TL fioi davaroi' fjiavreveai ; ovdi ti ae XPV'* 
 Xanthus, why prophesiest thou my death to me ? thou needest not at all : 
 
 yet, on the whole. Pope's translation of the Iliad is 
 more Homeric than Cowper's, for it is more rapid. 
 
 Pope's movement, however, though rapid, is not 
 of the same kind as Homer's ; and here I come to 
 the real objection to rhyme in a translation of 
 Homer. It is commonly said that rhyme is to be 
 abandoned in a translation of Homer, because " the 
 exigences of rhyme," to quote Mr. Newman, " posi- 
 tively forbid faithfulness ; " because " a just traasla- 
 tion of any ancient poet in rhyme," to quote Cowper, 
 " is impossible." This, however, is merely an acci- 
 
 * Iliad, xix, 420. 
 
LECTURE I, 15 
 
 dental objection to rhyme. If this were all, it might 
 be supposed that if rhymes were more abundant, 
 Homer could be adequately translated in rhyme. 
 But this is not so ; there is a deeper, a substantial ob- 
 jection to rhyme in a translation of Homer. It is, 
 that rhyme inevitably tends to pair lines which in 
 the original are independent, and thus the move- 
 ment of the poem is changed. In these lines of 
 Chapman, for instance, from Sarpedon's speech to 
 Glaucus, in the twelfth book of the Iliad : 
 
 friend, if keeping back 
 Would keep back age from us, and death, and that we might not wrack 
 In this life's human sea at all, but that deferring now 
 We shunn'd death ever, — nor would I half this vain valour show, 
 Nor glorify a folly so, to wish thee to advance ; 
 But since we must go, though not here, and that besides the chance 
 Propos'd now, there are infinite fates, &c. 
 
 here the necessity of making the line, 
 
 Nor glorify a folly so, to wish thee to advance ; 
 
 rhyme with the line which follows it, entirely changes 
 and spoils the movement of the passage. 
 
 "OvTE KEV avTOQ EvX 7rp6)TOiffi fia^oifxriy 
 ovTE KE (TE ffTeWoifii fJiaxr]V eg KVCiarEipaV* 
 
 Neither would I myself go forth to fight with the foremost, 
 Nor would I urge thee on to enter the glorious battle : 
 
 says Homer ; there he stops, and begins an oppossd 
 movement : 
 
 * Iliad, xii, 324. 
 
16 ON TKANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 vvy 3' — efnrrjQ yap Krjpeg t^forao-iv Qavaroio — 
 But — for a thousand fates of death stand close to us always — 
 
 this line, in which Homer wishes to go away with 
 the most marked rapidity from the line before, 
 Chapman is forced, by the necessity of rhyming, 
 intimately to connect with the line before. 
 
 But since we must go, though not here, and that besides the chance — 
 
 the moment the word chance strikes our ear, we are 
 irresistibly carried back to advance and to the whole 
 previous line, which, according to Homer's own feel- 
 ing, we ought to have left behind us entirely, and to 
 be moving farther and farther away from. 
 
 Ehyme certainly, by intensifying antithesis, can 
 intensify separation, and this is precisely what Pope 
 does ; but this balanced rhetorical antithesis, though 
 very effective, is entirely un-Homeric. And this is 
 what I mean by saying that Pope fails to render 
 Homer, because he does not render his plainness 
 and directness of style and diction. Where Homer 
 marks separation by moving away. Pope marks it 
 by antithesis. No passage could show this better 
 than the passage I have just quoted, on which I 
 will pause for a moment. 
 
 Eobert Wood, whose Essay on the Genius of 
 Homer is mentioned by Groethe as one of the books 
 which fell into his hands when his powers were first 
 developing themselves, and strongly interested him, 
 
LECTUEE I. 17 
 
 relates of this passage a striking story. He says 
 that in 1762, at the end of the Seven Years' War, 
 being then Under-Secretary of State, he was directed 
 to wait upon the President of the Council, Lord 
 Grranville, a few days before he died, with the pre- 
 liminary articles of the Treaty of Paris. " I found 
 him," he continues, "so languid, that I proposed 
 postponing my business for another time ; but he 
 insisted that I should stay, saying, it could not pro- 
 long his life to neglect his duty ; and repeating the 
 following passage out of Sarpedon's speech, he dwelled 
 with particular emphasis on the third line, which 
 recalled to his mind the distinguishing part he had 
 taken in public affairs : 
 
 <y TTETTOv, el fiev yap TroXefioy Trepi Tov^e 0uyoi'r£ 
 
 alel di] luiWoifxey ayr/pw r aQavaru) re 
 
 t(T(TE(Td\ ovTt Key a h T 6 g eyl 7rpu)T0i(Ti jxay^oi iir] v* 
 
 ovTE KB (re areWoifii jua^r/v eg Kvdiareipav' 
 
 vvv 3' — i.^rrr]g yap Krjpeg ecpeorrdtrty davaroto 
 
 fjivpiaij ag ovk ecrri (pvyeXy f^poroy ou^' viraXv^ai — 
 
 %oney. 
 
 His Lordship repeated the last word several times 
 with a calm and determinate resignation ; and after 
 a serious pause of some minutes, he desired to hear 
 the Treaty read, to which he listened with great 
 attention, and recovered spirits enough to declare the 
 approbation of a dying statesman (I use his own 
 
 * These are the words on which Lord Grranville •' dwelled with 
 particular emphasis." 
 
18 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 words) * on the most glorious war, and most honour- 
 able peace, this nation ever saw.' " * 
 
 I quote this story, first, because it is interesting as 
 exhibiting the English aristocracy at its very height 
 of culture, lofty spirit, and greatness, towards the 
 middle of the last century. I quote it, secondly, 
 because it seems to me to illustrate GToethe's saying 
 which I mentioned, that our life, in Homer's view of 
 it, represents a conflict and a hell; and it brings 
 out, too, what there is tonic and fortifying in this 
 doctrine. I quote it, lastly, because it shows that the 
 passage is just one of those in translating which Pope 
 will be at his best, a passage of strong emotion and 
 oratorical movement, not of simple narrative or 
 description. 
 
 Pope translates the passage thus : 
 
 Could all our care elude the gloomy grave 
 "Which claims no less the fearful than the hrave, 
 For lust of fame I should not vainly dare 
 In fighting fields, nor urge thy soul to war : 
 But since, alas ! ignoble age must come, 
 Disease, and death's inexorable doom ; 
 The life which others pay, let us bestow, 
 And give to fame, what we to nature owe. 
 
 Nothing could better exhibit Pope's prodigious 
 talent ; and nothing, too, could be better in its own 
 way. But, as Bentley said, " You must not call it 
 Homer.'' One feels that Homer's thought has passed 
 through a literary and rhetorical crucible, and come 
 
 * Robert Wood, Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of 
 Homer, London, 17 75; p. vii. 
 
LECTURE I. 19 
 
 out highly intellectualised ; come out in a form 
 which strongly impresses us, indeed, but which no 
 longer impresses us in the same way as when it was 
 uttered by Homer. The antithesis of the last two 
 lines : 
 
 The life which others pay, let us bestow, 
 And give to fame, what we to nature owe : 
 
 is excellent, and is just suited to Pope's heroic couplet; 
 but neither the antithesis itself, nor the couplet which 
 conveys it, is suited to the feeling or to the movement 
 of the Homeric tofizv. 
 
 A literary and intellectualised language is, however, 
 in its own way well suited to grand matters ; and 
 Pope, with a language of this kind and his own ad- 
 mirable talent, comes off well enough as long as he 
 has passion, or oratory, or a great crisis, to deal with. 
 Even here, as I have been pointing out, he does not 
 render Homer; but he and his style are in themselves 
 strong. It is when he comes to level passages, pas- 
 sages of narrative or description, that he and his style 
 are sorely tried, and prove themselves weak. A per- 
 fectly plain direct style can of course convey the 
 simplest matter as naturally as the grandest ; indeed, 
 it must be harder for it, one would say, to convey a 
 grand matter worthily and nobly, than to convey a 
 common matter, as alone such a matter should be 
 conveyed, plainly and simply. But the style of Eas- 
 selas is incomparably better fitted to describe a sage 
 philosophising than a soldier lighting his camp-fire. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 The style of Pope is not the style of Kasselas ; but it 
 is equally a literary style, equally unfitted to describe 
 a simple matter with the plain naturalness of Homer. 
 Every one knows the passage at the end of the 
 eighth book of the Iliad, where the fires of the Trojan 
 encampment are likened to the stars. It is very far 
 from my wish to hold Pope up to ridicule, so I shall 
 not quote the commencement of the passage, which 
 in the original is of great and celebrated beauty, and 
 in translating which Pope has been singularly and 
 notoriously unfortunate. But the latter part of the 
 passage, where Homer leaves the stars, and comes to 
 the Trojan fires, treats of the plainest, most matter- 
 of-fact subject possible, and deals with this, as Homer 
 always deals with every subject, in the plainest and 
 most straightforward style. " So many in number, 
 between the ships and the streams of Xanthus, shone 
 forth in front of Troy the fires kindled by the Trojans. 
 There were kindled a thousand fires in the plain ; and 
 by each one there sate fifty men in the light of the 
 blazing fire. And the horses, munching white barley 
 and rye, and standing by the chariots, waited for the 
 bright-throned Morning.* 
 
 In Pope's translation, this plain story becomes the 
 following : 
 
 So many flames before proud Ilion blaze, 
 
 And brighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays : 
 
 The long reflections of the distant fires 
 
 Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires. 
 
 * Iliad, viii, 560. 
 
LECTURE I. 21 
 
 A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild, 
 And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field. 
 Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend, 
 Whose umber'd arms, by fits, thick flashes send ; 
 Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn, 
 And ardent warriors wait the rising morn. 
 
 It is for passages of this sort, which, after all, form 
 the bulk of a narrative poem, that Pope's style is so 
 bad. In elevated passages he is powerful, as Homer 
 is powerful, though not in the same way; but in plain 
 narrative, where Homer is still powerful and delight- 
 ful. Pope, by the inherent fault of his style, is inef- 
 fective and out of taste. Wordsworth says somewhere, 
 that wherever Virgil seems to have composed " with 
 his eye on the object," Dryden fails to render him. 
 Homer invariably composes "with his eye on the 
 object," whether the object be a moral or a material 
 one : Pope composes with his eye on his style, into 
 which he translates his object, whatever it is. That, 
 therefore, which Homer conveys to us immediately. 
 Pope conveys to us through a medium. He aims at 
 turning Homer's sentiments pointedly and rhetori- 
 cally; at investing Homer's description with orna- 
 ment and dignity. A sentiment may be changed by 
 being put into a pointed and oratorical form, yet 
 may still be very effective in that form; but a 
 description, the moment it takes its eyes off that 
 which it is to describe, and begins to think of orna- 
 menting itself, is worthless. 
 
 Therefore, I say, the translator of Homer should 
 
 c 3 
 
2i2 OX TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 penetrate himself with a sense of the plainness and 
 directness of Homer's style ; of the simplicity with 
 which Homer's thought is evolved and expressed. He 
 has Pope's fate before his eyes, to show him what a 
 divorce may be created even between the most gifted 
 translator and Homer by an artificial evolution of 
 thought and a literary cast of style. 
 
 Chapman's style is not. artificial and literary like 
 Pope's, nor his movement elaborate and self-retarding 
 like the Miltonic movement of Cowper. He is plain- 
 spoken, fresh, vigorous, and to a certain degree, 
 rapid ; and all these are Homeric qualities. I cannot 
 say that I think the movement of his fourteen-syllable 
 line, which has been so much commended, Homeric ; 
 but on this point I shall have more to say by and 
 bye, when I come to speak of Mr. Newman's metrical 
 exploits. But it is not distinctly anti-Homeric, like the 
 movement of Milton's blank verse ; and it has a ra- 
 pidity of its own. Chapman's diction, too, is generally 
 good, that is, appropriate to Homer ; above all, the 
 syntactical character of his style is appropriate. 
 With these merits, what prevents his translation from 
 being a satisfactory version of Homer ? Is it merely 
 the want of literal faithfulness to his original, imposed 
 upon him, it is said, by the exigences of rhyme ? 
 Has this celebrated version, which has so many ad- 
 vantages, no other and deeper defect than that ? Its 
 author is a poet, and a poet, too, of the Elizabethan 
 age; the golden age of English literature as it is 
 
LECTUEE I. 23 
 
 called, and on the whole truly called ; for, whatever 
 be the defects of Elizabethan literature, (and they are 
 great), we have no development of our literature to 
 compare with it for vigour and richness. This age, 
 too, showed what it could do in translating, by pro- 
 ducing a master-piece, its version of the Bible. 
 
 Chapman's translation has often been praised as 
 eminently Homeric. Keats's fine sonnet in its honour 
 ever3^one knows ; but Keats could not read the original, 
 and therefore could not really judge the translation. 
 Coleridge, in praising Chapman's version, says at the 
 same time, "it will give you small idea of Homer." 
 But the grave authority of Mr. Hallam pronounces 
 this translation to be " often exceedingly Homeric ; " 
 and its latest editor boldly declares, that by what, 
 with a deplorable style, he calls "his own innative 
 Homeric genius," Chapman "has thoroughly identified 
 himself with Homer ; " and that " we pardon him 
 even for his digressions, for they are such as we feel 
 Homer himself would have written." 
 
 I confess that I can never read twenty lines of 
 Chapman's version without recurring to Bentley's 
 cry, " This is not Homer I " and that from a deeper 
 cause than any unfaithfulness occasioned by the fetters 
 of rhyme. 
 
 I said that there were four things which eminently 
 distinguished Homer, and with a sense of which 
 Homer's translator should penetrate himself as fully 
 
 c 4 
 
24 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 as possible. One of these four things was, the plain- 
 ness and directness of Homer's ideas. I have just 
 been speaking of the plainness and directness of his 
 style ; but the plainness and directness of the contents 
 of his style, of his ideas themselves, is not less re- 
 markable. But as eminently as Homer is plain, so 
 eminently is the Elizabethan literature in general, 
 and Chapman in particular, fanciful. Steeped in hu- 
 mours and fantasticality up to its very lips, the 
 Elizabethan age, newly arrived at the free use of the 
 human faculties after their long term of bondage and 
 delighting to exercise them freely, suffers from its own 
 extravagance in this first exercise of them, can hardly 
 bring itself to see an object quietly or to describe it 
 temperately. Happily, in the translation of the Bible, 
 the sacred character of their original inspired the 
 translators with such respect, that they did not dare to 
 give the rein to their own fancies in dealing with it. 
 But, in dealing with works of profane literature, in 
 dealing with poetical works above all, which highly 
 stimulated them, one may say that the minds of the 
 Elizabethan translators were too active; that they 
 could not forbear importing so much of their own, 
 and this of a most peculiar and Elizabethan character, 
 into their original, that they effaced the character of 
 the original itself. 
 
 Take merely the opening pages to Chapman's 
 translation, the introductory verses, and the dedica- 
 tions. You will find : 
 
LECTUKE I. 25 
 
 An Anagram of the name of our Dread Prince, 
 My most gracious and sacred Maecenas, 
 Henry Prince of "Wales, 
 Our Sunn, Heyr, Peace, Life: 
 
 Henry, son of James the First, to whom the work is 
 dedicated. Then comes an address, 
 
 To the sacred Fountain of Princes, 
 Sole Empress of Beauty and Virtue, Anne Queen 
 Of England, &c. 
 
 All the Middle Age, with its grotesqueness, its 
 conceits, its irrationality, is still in these opening 
 pages ; they by themselves are sufficient to indicate 
 to us what a gulf divides Chapman from the " clear- 
 est-soul'd " of poets, from Homer ; almost as great 
 a gulf as that which divides him from A^oltaire. 
 Pope has been sneered at for saying that Chapman 
 writes " somewhat as one might imagine Homer him- 
 self to have written before he arrived at years of 
 discretion." But the remark is excellent : Homer 
 expresses himself like a man of adult reason, Chapman 
 like a man whose reason has not yet cleared itself. For 
 instance, if Homer had had to say of a poet, that he 
 hoped his merit was now about to be fully established 
 in the opinion of good judges, he was as incapable of 
 saying this as Chapman says it — " Though truth in 
 her very nakedness sits in so deep a pit, that from 
 Gades to Aurora, and Granges, few eyes can sound her, 
 I hope yet those few here will so discover and con- 
 firm that the date being out of her darkness in this 
 
2"6 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 morning of our poet, he shall now gird his temples 
 with the san" — -I say, Homer was as incapable of 
 saying this in that manner, as Voltaire himself woitM 
 have been. Homer, indeed, has actually an affinity 
 with Voltaire in the unrivalled clearness and straight- 
 forwardness of his thinking ; in the way in which he 
 keeps to one thought at a time, and puts that 
 thought forth in its complete natural plainness, instead 
 of being led away from it by some fancy striking him 
 in connection with it, and being beguiled to wander 
 off with this fancy till his original thought, in its 
 natural reality, knows him no more. What could 
 better show us how gifted a race was this Greek 
 race? The same member of it has not only the 
 power of profoundly touching that natural heart of 
 humanity which it is Voltaire's weakness that he 
 cannot reach, but can also address the understanding 
 with all Voltaire's admirable simplicity and ration- 
 ality. 
 
 My limits will not allow me to do more than 
 shortly illustrate, from Chapman's version of the 
 Iliad, what I mean when I speak of this vital differ- 
 ence between Homer and an Elizabethan poet in 
 the quality of their thought; between the plain 
 simplicity of the thought of the one, and the curious 
 complexity of the thought of the other. As in 
 Pope's case, I carefully abstain from choosing pas- 
 sages for the express purpose of making Chapman 
 appear ridiculous ; Chapman, like Pope, merits in 
 
LECTURE I. 27 
 
 himself all respect, though he too, like Pope, fails to 
 render Homer. 
 
 In that tonic speech of Sarpedon, of which I have 
 said so much. Homer, you may remember, has : 
 
 £1 fiev yap, tv6\e}xov Trepl tov^e ^vyovre, 
 als\ Zi] ^iWoi^EV ayr/pw r* aQavaTio re 
 iaaead^ — 
 
 if, indeed, but once this battle avoided, 
 "We were for ever to live without growing old and immortal — 
 
 Chapman cannot be satisfied with this, but must add 
 a fancy to it : 
 
 if keeping back 
 Would keep back age from us, and death, and that we might not wrack 
 In this lifers human sea at all ; 
 
 and so on. Again ; in another passage which I have 
 before quoted, where Zeus says to the horses of 
 Peleus : 
 
 Ti (r({>uii Zofitv UrjXfj'i arciKTi 
 Qvr]T(o ; vfJLELQ Z'iarov ayrfpu r adavaro) re** 
 
 Why gave we you to royal Peleus, to a mortal? but ye are without 
 old age, and immortal ; 
 
 Chapman sophisticates this into : 
 
 Why gave we you t' a mortal king, when immortality 
 And incapacity of age so dignifies your states ? 
 
 Again ; in the speech of Achilles to his horses, where 
 Achilles, according to Homer, says simply, "Take 
 heed that ye bring your master safe back to the host 
 of the Danaans, in some other sort than the last 
 * Hiad, xvii, 443. 
 
28 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 time, when the battle is ended," Chapman sophisti- 
 cates this into : 
 
 When, with blood, for this day's fast observed, revenge shall yield 
 Our heart satiety, bring us off. 
 
 In Hector's famous speech, again, at his parting from 
 Andromache, Homer makes him say : " Nor does 
 my own heart so bid me," (to keep safe behind the 
 walls), " since I have learned to be staunch always, 
 and to fight among the foremost of the Trojans, busy 
 on behalf of my father's great glory, and my own." * 
 In Chapman's hands this becomes : 
 
 The spirit I first did breathe 
 Did never teach me that ; much less, since the contempt of death 
 "Was settled in me, and my mind knew what a worthy was, 
 Whose office is to lead in fight, and give no danger fass 
 Without improvement. In this fire must Hector's trial shine : 
 Here must his country, father, friends, be in him made divine. 
 
 You see how ingeniously Homer's plain thought is 
 tormented, as the French would say, here. Homer 
 goes on : " For well I know this in my mind and in 
 my heart, the day will be, when sacred Troy shall 
 perish : " 
 
 eff(T£Tai iifxap, or ixv hot 6k6)\r}"l\ioQ Ipfj. 
 Chapman makes this : 
 
 And such a stormy day shall come, in mind and soul I know, 
 When sacred Troy shall shed her towers, for tears of overthrow. 
 
 I might go on for ever, but I could not give you 
 a better illustration than this last, of what I mean 
 
 * Hi ad, vi, 444. 
 
LECTUKE I. ^9 
 
 by saying that the Elizabethan poet fails to render 
 Homer because he cannot forbear to interpose a 
 play of thought between his object and its expres- 
 sion. Chapman translates his object into Eliza- 
 bethan, as Pope translates it into the Augustan 
 of Queen Anne ; both convey it to us through a 
 medium. Homer, on the other hand, sees his ob- 
 ject and conveys it to us immediately. 
 
 And yet, in spite of this perfect plainness and 
 directness of Homer's style, in spite of this perfect 
 plainness and directness of his ideas, he is eminently 
 noble; he works as entirely in the grand style, he 
 is as grandiose, as Phidias, or Dante, or Michael 
 Angelo. This is what makes his translators despair. 
 " To give relief," says Cowper, " to prosaic subjects," 
 (such as dressing, eating, drinking, harnessing, 
 travelling, going to bed), that is, to treat such sub- 
 jects nobly, in the grand style, "without seeming 
 unreasonably tumid, is extremely difficult." It is 
 difficult, but Homer has done it; Homer is precisely 
 the incomparable poet he is, because he has done it. 
 His translator must not be tumid, must not be arti- 
 ficial, must not be literary ; true : but then also he 
 must not be common-place, must not be ignoble. 
 I have shown you how translators of Homer fail by 
 wanting rapidity, by wanting simplicity of style, by 
 wanting plainness of thought : in a second lecture I 
 will show you how a translator fails by wanting 
 nobility. 
 
30 , ON TRANSLATmG HOMEK. 
 
 11. 
 
 I MUST repeat what I said in beginning, tliat the 
 translator of Homer ought steadily to keep in mind 
 where lies the real test of the success of his transla- 
 tion, what judges he is to try to satisfy. He is to 
 try to satisfy scholars, because scholars alone have 
 the means of really judging him. A scholar may be 
 a pedant, it is true, and then his judgment will be 
 worthless ; but a scholar may also have poetical feel- 
 ing, and then he can judge him truly ; whereas all 
 the poetical feeling in the world will not enable a 
 man who is not a scholar to judge him truly. For 
 the translator is to reproduce Homer, and the scholar 
 alone has the means of knowing that Homer who is 
 to be reproduced. He knows him but imperfectly, 
 for he is separated from him by time, race, and lan- 
 guage ; but he alone knows him at all. Yet people 
 speak as if there were two real tribunals in this 
 matter — the scholar's tribunal, and that of the general 
 public. They speak as if the scholar's judgment was 
 one thing, and the general public's judgment an- 
 other ; both with their shortcomings, both with their 
 liability to error; but both to be regarded by the 
 
LECTUEE II. 3J 
 
 translator. The translator who makes verbal literal- 
 ness his chief care " will," says a writer in the 
 National Eeview whom I have already quoted, " be 
 appreciated by the scholar accustomed to test a 
 translation rigidly by comparison with the original, 
 to look perhaps with excessive care to finish in 
 detail rather than boldness and general effect, and 
 find pardon even for a version that seems bare and 
 bald, so it be scholastic and faithful." But, if the 
 scholar in judging a translation looks to detail rather 
 than to general effect, he judges it pedantically 
 and ill. The appeal, however, lies not from the 
 pedantic scholar to the general public, which can 
 only like or dislike Chapman's version, or Pope's, or 
 Mr. Newman's, but cannot judge them ; it lies from 
 the pedantic scholar to the scholar who is not pe- 
 dantic, who knows that Homer is Homer by his 
 general effect, and not by his single words, and who 
 demands but one thing in a translation — that it 
 shall, as nearly as possible, reproduce for him the 
 general effect of Homer. This, then, remains the one 
 proper aim of the translator : to reproduce on the 
 intelligent scholar, as nearly as possible, the general 
 effect of Homer. Except so far as he reproduces 
 this, he loses his labour, even though he may make 
 a spirited Iliad of his own, like Pope, or translate 
 Homer's Iliad word for word, like Mr. Newman. 
 If his proper aim were to stimulate in any manner 
 possible the general public, he might be right in 
 
32 OiST TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 following Pope's example ; if Ms proper aim were to 
 help schoolboys to construe Homer, he might be 
 right in following Mr. Newman's. But it is not : his 
 proper aim is, I repeat it yet once more, to repro- 
 duce on the intelligent scholar, as nearly as he can, 
 the general effect of Homer. 
 
 When, therefore, Cowper says, " My chief boast is 
 that I have adhered closely to my original ; " when 
 Mr. Newman says, "My aim is to retain every 
 peculiarity of the original, to be faithful, exactly as 
 is the case with the draughtsman of the Elgin 
 marbles;" their real judge only replies: "It may 
 be so ; reproduce then upon us, reproduce the effect 
 of Homer, as a good copy reproduces the effect of 
 the Elgin marbles." 
 
 When, again, Mr. Newman tells us that " by an 
 exhaustive process of argument and experiment " 
 he has found a metre which is at once the metre of 
 " the modern Grreek epic," and a metre " like in 
 moral genius " to Homer's metre, his judge has still 
 but the same answer for him : " It may be so ; re- 
 produce then on our ear something of the effect 
 produced by the movement of Homer." 
 
 But what is the general effect which Homer pro- 
 duces on Mr. Newman himself? because, when we 
 know this, we shall know whether he and his judges 
 are agreed at the outset, whether we may expect 
 him, if he can reproduce the effect he feels, if his 
 hand does not betray him in the execution, to 
 
LECTURE II. 33 
 
 satisfy his judges and to succeed. If, however, Mr. 
 Newman's impression from Homer is something quite 
 different from that of his judges, then it can hardly 
 be expected that any amount of labour or talent will 
 enable him to reproduce for them their Homer. 
 
 Mr. Newman does not leave us in doubt as to the 
 general effect which Homer makes upon him. As I 
 have told you what is the general effect which Homer 
 makes upon me — that of a most rapidly moving poet, 
 that of a poet most plain and direct in his style, that 
 of a poet most plain and direct in his ideas, that of a 
 poet eminently noble — so Mr. Newman tells us his 
 general impression of Homer. " Homer's style," he 
 says, "is direct, popular, forcible, quaint, flowing, 
 garrulous." Again ; " Homer rises and sinks with 
 his subject, is prosaic when it is tame, is low when it 
 is mean." 
 
 I lay my finger on four words in these two sen- 
 tences of Mr. Newman, and I say that the man who 
 could apply those words to Homer can never render 
 Homer truly. The four words are these ; quaint, 
 garrulous, 'prosaic, low. Search the English lan- 
 guage for a word which does not apply to Homer, 
 and you could not fix on a better than quaint, unless 
 perhaps you fixed on one of the other three. 
 
 Again ; " to translate Homer suitably," says Mr. 
 Newman, " we need a diction sufficiently antiquated 
 to obtain pardon of the reader for its frequent home- 
 liness." " I am concerned," he says again, " with the 
 
 D 
 
34 ON TEANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 artistic problem of attaining a plausible aspect of 
 moderate antiquity, while remaining easily intelligi- 
 ble." And, again, he speaks of " the more antiquated 
 style suited to this subject." Quaint ! antiquated! — 
 but to whom ? Sir Thomas Browne is quaint, and the 
 diction of Chaucer is antiquated : does Mr. Newman 
 suppose that Homer seemed quaint to Sophocles, when 
 he read him, as Sir Thomas Browne seems quaint to 
 us, when we read him ? or that Homer's diction 
 seemed antiquated to Sophocles, as Chaucer's diction 
 seems antiquated to us ? But we cannot really know, 
 I confess, how Homer seemed to Sophocles: well then, 
 to those who can tell us how he seems to them, to the 
 living scholar, to our only present witness on this 
 matter — does Homer make on the Provost of Eton, 
 when he reads him, the impression of a poet quaint 
 and antiquated ? does he make this impression on 
 Professor Thompson, or Professor Jowett? When 
 Shakspeare says, " The princes orgulous,^^ meaning 
 " the proud princes," we say, " This is antiquated ; " 
 when he says of the Trojan gates, that they. 
 
 With massy staples 
 And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts 
 8;perr up the sons of Troy — 
 
 we say, " This is both quaint and antiquated." But 
 does Homer ever compose in a language which pro- 
 duces on the scholar at all the same impression as this 
 language which I have quoted from Shakspeare ? 
 Never once. Shakspeare is quaint and antiquated in 
 
LECTURE II. 35 
 
 the lines which I have just quoted ; but Shakspeare, 
 need I say it ? can compose, when he likes, when he 
 is at his best, in a language perfectly simple, per- 
 fectly intelligible ; in a language which, in spite of 
 the two centuries and a half which part its author 
 from us, stops us or surprises us as little as the lan- 
 guage of a contemporary. And Homer has not 
 Shakspeare's variations : Homer always composes as 
 Shakspeare composes at his best ; Homer is always 
 simple and intelligible, as Shakspeare is often ; Homer 
 is never quaint and antiquated, as Shakspeare is some- 
 times. 
 
 When Mr. Newman says that Homer is garrulous, 
 he seems, perhaps, to depart less widely from the 
 common opinion than when he calls him quaint ; for 
 is there not Horace's authority for asserting that 
 " the good Homer sometimes nods," bonus dormitat 
 Homerus f and a great many people have come, from 
 the currency of this well-known criticism, to re- 
 present Homer to themselves as a diffuse old man, 
 with the full-stocked mind, but also with the occa- 
 sional slips and weaknesses, of old age. Horace has 
 said better things than his "bonus dormitat Homerus;" 
 but he never meant by this, as I need not remind 
 anyone who knows the passage, that Homer was gar- 
 rulous, or anything of the kind. Instead, however, 
 of either discussing what Horace meant, or discussing 
 Homer's garrulity as a general question, I prefer to 
 bring to my mind some style which is garrulous, and 
 
 D 2 
 
36 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 to ask myself, to ask you, whether anything at all of 
 the impression made by that style, is ever made by 
 the style of Homer. The mediseval romancers, for 
 instance, are garrulous ; the following, to take out of 
 a thousand instances the first which comes to hand, 
 is in a garrulous manner. It is from the romance of 
 Eichard Coeur de Lion : 
 
 Of my tale be not a-wondered ! 
 
 The Frencli says lie slew an hundred 
 
 ("Whereof is made this English saw) 
 
 Or he rested him any thraw. 
 
 Him followed many an English knight 
 
 That eagerly holp him for to fight — 
 
 and so on. Now the manner of that composition I 
 call garrulous ; everyone will feel it to be garrulous ; 
 everyone will understand what is meant when it is 
 called garrulous. Then I ask the scholar — does 
 Homer's manner ever make upon you, I do not say, 
 the same impression of its garrulity as that passage, 
 but does it make, ever for one moment, an impres- 
 sion in the slightest way resembling, in the remotest 
 degree akin to, the impression made by that passage 
 of the mediaeval poet? I have no fear of the 
 answer. 
 
 I follow the same method with Mr. Newman's two 
 other epithets, prosaic, and low, " Homer rises and 
 sinks with his subject," says Mr. Newman; '4s prosaic 
 when it is tame, is low when it is mean." First I 
 say. Homer is never, in any sense, to be with truth 
 
LECTUEE II. 37 
 
 called prosaic ; he is never to be called lojv. He 
 does not rise and sink with his subject; on the con- 
 trary, his manner invests his subject, v^hatever his 
 subject be, with nobleness. Then I look for an author 
 of whom it may with truth be said, that he " rises 
 and sinks with its subject, is prosaic when it is tame, 
 is low when it is mean." Defoe is eminently such 
 an author ; of Defoe's manner it may with perfect 
 precision be said, that it follows his matter ; his 
 lifelike composition takes its character from the facts 
 which it conveys, not from the nobleness- of the 
 composer. In Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack, 
 Defoe is undoubtedly prosaic when his subject is 
 tame, low when his subject is mean. Does Homer's 
 manner in the Iliad, I ask the scholar, ever make 
 upon him an impression at all like the impression 
 made by Defoe's manner in Moll Flanders and 
 Colonel Jack? Does it not, on the contrary, leave 
 him with an impression of nobleness, even when it 
 deals with Thersites or with Irus ? 
 
 Well then, Homer is neither quaint, nor garrulous, 
 nor prosaic, nor mean ; and Mr. Newman, in seeing 
 him so, sees him differently from those who are to 
 judge Mr. Newman's rendering of him. By point- 
 ing out how a wrong conception of Homer affects 
 Mr. Newman's translation, I hope to place in still 
 clearer light those four cardinal truths which I pro- 
 nounce essential for him who would have a right 
 conception of Homer ; that Homer is rapid, that he 
 
 D 3 
 
38 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 is plain and direct in word and style, that he is plain 
 and direct in his ideas, and that he is noble. 
 
 Mr. Newman says that in fixing on a style for 
 suitably rendering Homer, as he conceives him, he 
 "alights on the delicate line which separates the 
 quaint from the grotesque.'^ "I ought to be quaint," 
 he says, " I ought not to be grotesque." This is a 
 most unfortunate sentence. Mr. Newman is gro- 
 tesque, which he himself says he ought not to be ; 
 and he ought not to be quaint, which he himself says 
 he ought to be. 
 
 " No two persons will agree," says Mr. Newman, 
 "as to where the quaint ends and the grotesque 
 begins ; " and perhaps this is true. But, in order to 
 avoid all ambiguity in the use of the two words, it is 
 enough to say, that most persons v/ould call an ex- 
 pression which produced on them a very strong 
 sense of its incongruity, and which violently surprised 
 them, grotesque ; and an expression, which produced 
 on them a slighter sense of its incongruity, and which 
 more gently surprised them, quaint Using the two 
 words in this manner, I say, that when Mr. Newman 
 translates Helen's words to Hector in the sixth book, 
 
 AdfjO Ejuelo, KvroQ KaKOfxrtyavoV) oKpvoiffffrjQ* — 
 
 0, brother thou of me, who am a mischief- working vixen, 
 A numbing horror — 
 
 he is grotesque ; that is, he expresses himself in a 
 ♦ Hiad, Yi, 344. 
 
LECTURE II. m 
 
 manner which produces on us a very strong sense of 
 its incongruity, and which violently surprises us. I 
 say, again, that when Mr. Newman translates the 
 common line, 
 
 T17J' ^ iifxeiljeT eTTSLTa fxeyag KopvdaioXoQ"EKriop — 
 Great Hector of the motley helm then spake to her responsive — 
 
 or the common expression £VKvr]iJbihss^A')(aLOL, "dapper- 
 greav'd Achaians" — he is quaint; that is, he expresses 
 himself in a manner which produces on us a slighter 
 sense of incongruity, and which more gently surprises 
 us. But violent and gentle surprise are alike far from 
 the scholar's spirit when he reads in Homer kvvos 
 KaKOiJLrj')(avov, or, KopvOaloXos "ISiKTcop, or, ivKv^fjUtEss 
 ^Ar)(aLoL These expressions no more seem odd to 
 him than the simplest expressions in English. He 
 is not more checked by any feeling of strangeness, 
 strong or weak, when he reads them, than when he 
 reads in an English book "the painted savage," or, 
 "the phlegmatic Dutchman." Mr. Newman's ren- 
 derings of them must, therefore, be wrong expressions 
 in a translation of Homer ; because they excite in 
 the scholar, their only competent judge, a feeling 
 quite alien to that excited in him by what they pro- 
 fess to render. 
 
 Mr. Newman, by expressions of this kind, is false to 
 his original in two ways. He is false to him inasmuch 
 
 d4 
 
40 ON TRANSLATING HOMEE. 
 
 as he is ignoble ; for a noble air, and a grotesque air, 
 the air of the address, 
 
 Aa£jO Efieio, fcvibg KaKOf.ir]\avov^ oKpvoiaarjQ—m 
 
 and the air of the address, 
 
 0, brother thou of me, who am a mischief-working vixen, 
 A numbing horror — 
 
 are just contrary the one to the other: and he is false 
 to him inasmuch as he is odd ; for an odd diction 
 like Mr. Newman's, and a perfectly plain natural 
 diction like Homer's — " dapper-greav'd Achaians " 
 and EVKvrjiiihss ^K'^aioi — are also just contrary the one 
 to the other. Where, indeed, Mr. Newman got his 
 diction, with whom he can have lived, what can be 
 his test of antiquity and rarity for words, are ques- 
 tions which I ask myself with bewilderment. He 
 has prefixed to his translation a list of what he calls 
 " the more antiquated or rarer words " which he has 
 used. In this list appear, on the one hand, such 
 words as doughty, grisly, lusty, noisome, ravin, which 
 are familiar, one would think, to all the world ; on 
 the other hand, such words as hragly, meaning, 
 Mr. Newman tells us, " proudly fine ; " hulhin, " a 
 calf;" jolump, "amass;" and so on. "I am con- 
 cerned," says Mr. Newman, " with the artistic pro- 
 blem of attaining a plausible aspect of moderate 
 antiquity, while remaining easily intelligible." But 
 it seems to me that lusty is not antiquated; and 
 
LECTL'KE II. 41 
 
 that hragly is not a word readil}^ understood. That 
 this word, indeed, and bulkin, may have " a plausible 
 aspect of moderate antiquity," I admit ; but that they 
 are " easily intelligible," I deny. 
 
 Mr. Newman's syntax has, I say it with pleasure, 
 a much more Homeric cast than his vocabulary ; his 
 syntax, the mode in which his thought is evolved, 
 although not the actual words in which it is ex- 
 pressed, seems to me right in its general character, 
 and the best feature of his version. It is not arti- 
 ficial or rhetorical like Cowper's syntax or Pope's : 
 it is simple, direct, and natural, and so far it is like 
 Homer's. It fails, however, just where, from the in- 
 herent fault of Mr. Newman's conception of Homer, 
 one might expect it to fail — it fails in nobleness. It 
 presents the thought in a way which is something 
 more than unconstrained — over-familiar ; something 
 more than easy — free and easy. In this respect it 
 is like the movement of Mr. Newman's version, like 
 his rhythm ; for this, too, fails, in spite of some good 
 qualities, by not being noble enough ; this, while it 
 avoids the faults of being slow and elaborate, falls 
 into a fault in the opposite direction, and is slip-shod. 
 Homer presents his thought naturally ; but when Mr. 
 Newman has, 
 
 A thousand fires along the plain, I sa^, that night were burning — 
 
 he presents his thought familiarly ; in a style which 
 may be the genuine style of ballad -poetry, but which 
 
42 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 is not the style of Homer. Homer moves freely ; 
 but when Mr. Newman has, 
 
 Infatuate ! oh that thou wert lord to some other army * — 
 
 he gives himself too much freedom ; he leaves us too 
 much to do for his rhythm ourselves, instead of 
 giving to us a rhythm like Homer's, easy indeed, 
 but mastering our ear with a fulness of power which 
 is irresistible. 
 
 I said that a certain style might be the genuine 
 style of ballad-poetry, but yet not the style of 
 Homer. The analogy of the ballad is ever present 
 to Mr. Newman's thoughts in considering Homer; 
 and perhaps nothing has more caused his faults than 
 this analogy — this popular, but, it is time to say, 
 this erroneous analogy. " The moral qualities of 
 Homer's style," says Mr. Newman, "being like to 
 those of the English ballad, we need a metre of the 
 same genius. Only those metres, which by the very 
 possession of these qualities are liable to degenerate 
 into doggerel, are suitable to reproduce the ancient 
 epic." " The style of Homer," he says in a passage 
 which I have before quoted, "is direct, popular, 
 
 * From the reproachful answer of Ulysses to Agamemnon, who 
 had proposed an abandonment of their expedition. This is one of 
 the "tonic " passages of the Iliad, so I quote it : 
 
 Ah, unworthy king, some other inglorious army 
 Should' st thou command, not rule over us, whose portion for ever 
 Zeus hath made it, from youth right up to age, to be winding 
 Skeins of grievous wars, till every soul of us perish. 
 
 Iliadt xiv, 84. 
 
LECTUEE II. 43 
 
 forcible, quaint, flowing, garrulous: in all these 
 respects it is similar to the old English ballad." 
 Mr. Newman, I need not say, is by no means alone in 
 this opinion. " The most really and truly Homeric 
 of all the creations of the English muse is," says 
 Mr. Newman's critic in the National Eeview, "the 
 ballad-poetry of ancient times ; and the association 
 between metre and subject is one that it would be 
 true wisdom to preserve." "It is confessed," says 
 Chapman's last editor, Mr. Hooper, "that the four- 
 teen-syllable verse," (that is, a ballad-verse), " is pe- 
 culiarly fitting for Homeric translation." And the 
 editor of Dr. Maginn's clever and popular Homeric 
 Ballads assumes it as one of his author's greatest and 
 most indisputable merits, that he was "the first 
 who consciously realised to himself the truth that 
 Grreek ballads can be really represented in English 
 only by a similar measure." 
 
 This proposition that Homer's poetry is ballad- 
 poetry, analogous to the well-known ballad-poetry 
 of the English and other nations, has a certain small 
 portion of truth in it, and at one time probably 
 served a useful purpose, when it was employed to 
 discredit the artificial and literary manner in which 
 Pope and his school rendered Homer. But it has 
 been so extravagantly over-used, the mistake which 
 it was useful in combating has so entirely lost the 
 public favour, that it is now much more important 
 to insist on the large part of error contained in it. 
 
44 ON TEANSLATING HOMEE. 
 
 than to extol its small part of truth. It is time to 
 say plainly that, whatever the admirers of our old 
 ballads may think, the supreme form of epic poetry, 
 the genuine Homeric mould, is not the form of the 
 Ballad of Lord Bateman. I have myself shown 
 the broad difference between Milton's manner and 
 Homer's ; but, after a course of Mr. Newman and 
 Dr. Maginn, I turn round in desperation upon them 
 and upon the balladists who have misled them, and I 
 exclaim : " Compared with you, Milton is Homer's 
 double; there is, whatever you may think, ten 
 thousand times more of the real strain of Homer 
 in, 
 
 Blind Thamyris, and blind Mgeonides, 
 And Tiresias, and Phineiis, prophets old — > 
 
 than in. 
 
 Now Christ thee save, thou proud porter, 
 Now Christ thee save and see * — 
 
 or in. 
 
 While the tinker did dine, he had plenty of wine."t 
 
 For Homer is not only rapid in movement, simple 
 in style, plain in language, natural in thought ; he 
 is also, and above all, noble. I have advised the 
 translator not to go into the vexed question of 
 Homer's identity. Yet I will just remind him, that 
 the grand argument — or rather, not argument, for 
 
 * From the ballad of King Estmere, in Percy's Eeliques of Ancient 
 English Poetry; i, 69 ; (edit, of 1767). 
 t Beliques; i, 241. 
 
LECTURE II. 45 
 
 the matter affords no data for arguing, but the 
 grand source from which conviction, as we read the 
 Iliad, keeps pressing in upon us, that there is one poet 
 of the Iliad, one Homer — is precisely this nobleness 
 of the poet, this grand manner ; we feel that the 
 analogy drawn from other joint compositions does 
 not hold good here, because those works do not 
 bear, like the Iliad, the magic stamp of a master ; 
 and the moment you have anything less than a 
 masterwork, the co-operation or consolidation of 
 several poets becomes possible, for talent is not 
 uncommon; the moment you have much less than 
 a masterwork, they become easy, for mediocrity is 
 eveiywhere. I can imagine fifty Bradies joined with 
 as many Tates to make the New Version of the 
 Psalms. I can imagine several poets having con- 
 tributed to any one of the old English ballads in 
 Percy's collection. I can imagine several poets, pos- 
 sessing, like Chapman, the Elizabethan vigour and 
 the Elizabethan mannerism, united with Chapman to 
 produce his version of the Iliad. I can imagine 
 several poets, with the literary knack of the twelfth 
 century, united to produce the Nibelungen Lay in 
 the form in which we have it — a work which the 
 Grermans, in their joy at discovering a national epic 
 of their own, have rated vastly higher than it de- 
 serves. And lastly, though Mr. Newman's translation 
 of Homer bears the strong mark of his own idio- 
 syncracy, yet I can imagine Mr. Newman and a 
 
46 0^ TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 school of adepts trained by him in his art of poetry, 
 jointly producing that work, so that Aristarchus 
 himself should have difficulty in pronouncing which 
 line was the master's, and which a pupil's. But I 
 cannot imagine several poets, or one poet, joined with 
 Dante in the composition of his " Inferno," though 
 many poets have taken for their subject a descent 
 into Hell. Many artists, again, have represented 
 Moses; but there is only one Moses of Michael 
 .Angelo. So the insurmountable obstacle to be- 
 lieving the Iliad a consolidated work of several poets 
 is this — that the work of great masters is unique; 
 and the Iliad has a great master's genuine stamp, 
 and that stamp is the grand style. 
 
 Poets who cannot work in the grand style, in- 
 stinctively seek a style in which their comparative in- 
 feriority may feel itself at ease, a manner which may 
 be, so to speak, indulgent to their inequalities. The 
 ballad-style offers to an epic poet, quite unable to 
 fill the canvas of Homer, or Dante, or Milton, a 
 canvas which he is capable of filling. The ballad- 
 measure is quite able to give due effect to the vigour 
 and spirit which its employer, when at his very best, 
 may be able to exhibit ; and, when he is not at his 
 best, when he is a little trivial, or a little dull, it will 
 not betray him, it will not bring out his weaknesses 
 into broad relief. This is a convenience ; but it is 
 a convenience which the ballad-style purchases by 
 resigning all pretensions to the highest, to the grand 
 
LECTUKE II. 47 
 
 manner. It is true of its movement, as it is not true 
 of Homer's, that it is "liable to degenerate into 
 doggerel." It is true of its " moral qualities," as it 
 is not true of Homer's, that " quaintness " and " gar- 
 rulity " are among them. It is true of its employers, 
 as it is not true of Homer, that they " rise and sink 
 with their subject, are prosaic when it is tame, are 
 low when it is mean." For this reason the ballad- 
 style and the ballad-measure are eminently map- 
 propriate to render Homer. Homer's manner and 
 movement are alwa3^s both noble and powerful : the 
 ballad-manner and movement are often either jaunty 
 and smart, so not noble; or jog-trot and humdrum, 
 so not powerful. 
 
 The Nibelungen Lay affords a good illustration of 
 the qualities of the ballad-manner. Based on grand 
 traditions, which had found expression in a grand 
 lyric poetry, the German epic poem of the Nibelungen 
 Lay, though it is interesting, and though it has good 
 passages, is itself anything rather than a grand 
 poem. It is a poem of which the composer is, to 
 speak the truth, a very ordinary mortal, and often, 
 therefore, like other ordinary mortals, very prosy. It 
 is in a measure which eminently adapts itself to this 
 commonplace personality of its composer, which has 
 much the movement of the well-known measures of 
 Tate and Brady, and can jog on, for hundreds of 
 lines at a time, with a level ease which reminds one 
 of Sheridan's saying that easy writing may be often 
 
48 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 such hard reading. But, instead of occupying my- 
 self with the Nibehmgen Lay, I prefer to look at the 
 ballad-style as directly applied to Homer, in Chap- 
 man's version and Mr. Newman's, and in the Homeric 
 Ballads of Dr. Maginn. 
 
 First I take Chapman. I have already shown that 
 Chapman's conceits are un-Homeric, and that his 
 rhyme is un-Homeric ; I will now show how his 
 manner and movement are un-Homeric. Chapman's 
 diction, I have said, is generally good ; but it must 
 be called good with this reserve, that, though it has 
 Homer's plainness and directness, it often offends 
 him who knows Homer by wanting Homer's noble- 
 ness. In a passage which I have already quoted, 
 the address of Zeus to the horses of Achilles, where 
 Homer has, 
 
 d OeiXii), Ti a(pG)"L d6[xep Tlr}\rj'i avuKTi 
 dyrjT^ ; vfielg 3' ecrrov ayf]pu) r adavaru) re' 
 7] iVa Zv(TTi]voi.aL juer' avZpaaLv aXye e^rjroy,* 
 
 Chapman has, 
 
 *' Poor wretched beasts," said he, 
 " Wliy gave we you to a mortal king, when immortality 
 And incapacity of age so dignifies your states ? 
 Was it to haste f the miseries pour'd out on human fates ? " 
 
 There are many faults in this rendering of Chap- 
 man's, but what I particularly wish to notice in 
 it is the expression "Poor wretched beasts," for 
 
 * Iliad, xvii, 443. 
 
 t All the editions which I have seen have " haste," but the right 
 reading must certainly be " taste." 
 
LECTURE II. 49 
 
 a BslXco, This expression just illustrates the differ- 
 ence between the ballad-manner and Homer's. The 
 ballad-manner — Chapman's manner — is, I say, pitched 
 sensibly lower than Homer's. The ballad-manner re- 
 quires that an expression shall be plain and natural, 
 and then it asks no more. Homer's manner requires 
 that an expression shall be plain and natural, but 
 it also requires that it shall be noble. 'A SscXoo is 
 as plain, as simple as " Poor wretched beasts ; " but 
 it is also noble, which " Poor wretched beasts " is not. 
 " Poor wretched beasts " is, in truth, a little over- 
 familiar : but this is no objection to it for the ballad- 
 manner ; it is good enough for the old English ballad, 
 good enough for the Nibelungen Lay, good enough 
 for Chapman's Iliad, good enough for Mr. Newman's 
 Iliad, good enough for Dr. Maginn's Homeric Ballads ; 
 but it is not good enough for Homer. 
 
 To feel that Chapman's measure, though natural, 
 is not Homeric ; that, though tolerably rapid, it has 
 not Homer's rapidity ; that it has a jogging rapidity 
 rather than a flowing rapidity; and a movement 
 familiar rather than nobly easy, one has only, I 
 think, to read half a dozen lines in any part of his 
 version. I prefer to keep as much as possible to 
 passages which I have already noticed, so I will 
 quote the conclusion of the nineteenth book, where 
 Achilles answers his horse Xanthus, who has pro- 
 phesied his death to him : * 
 
 * Iliad, xix, 419. 
 
 E 
 
50 OX TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 Achilles, far in rage, 
 Thus answer'd him : — It fits not thee thus proudly to presage 
 My overthrow. I know myself it is my fate to fall 
 Thus far from Phthia ; yet that fate shall fail to vent her gall 
 Till mine vent thousands. — These words said, he fell to horrid deeds, 
 Gave dreadful signal, and forthright made fly his one-hoof d steeds. 
 
 For what regards the manner of this passage, the 
 words " Achilles Thus answer'd him," and " I know 
 myself it is my fate to fall Thus far from Phthia," 
 are in Homer's manner, and all the rest is out of it. 
 But for what regards its movement : who, after being 
 jolted by Chapman through such verse as this: 
 
 These words said, he fell to horrid deeds. 
 Gave dreadful signal, and forthright made fly his one-hoof d steeds — 
 
 who does not feel the vital difference of the move- 
 ment of Homer — 
 
 ?l pa, Koi EV TrpujTOiQ idx,(t>v t^e ficSw^ag 'iTrirovQ ? 
 
 To pass from Chapman to Dr. Maginn. His 
 Homeric Ballads are vigorous and genuine poems in 
 their own way ; they are not one continual falsetto, 
 like the pinchbeck Roman Ballads of Lord Macaulay ; 
 but just because they are ballads in their manner and 
 movement, just because, to use the words of his 
 applauding editor, Dr, Maginn has '^ consciously 
 realised to himself the truth that Grreek ballads can 
 be really represented in English only by a similar 
 manner" — just for this very reason they are not at 
 all Homeric, they have not the least in the world 
 the manner of Homer. There is a celebrated in- 
 
LECTURE II. 51 
 
 cident in the nineteenth book of the Odyssey, the 
 recognition by the old nurse Eurycleia of a scar on 
 the leg of her master Ulysses, who has entered his 
 own hall as an unknown wanderer, and whose feet 
 she has been set to wash. *'Then she came near," 
 says Homer, " and began to wash her master ; and 
 straightway she recognised a scar which he had got 
 in former days from the white tusk of a wild boar, 
 when he went to Parnassus unto Autolycus and the 
 sonsof Autolycus, his mother's father and brethren."* 
 This, "really represented" by Dr. Maginn, in "a*, 
 measure similar " to Homer's, becomes : 
 
 And scarcely had she begun to wa&h 
 Ere she was aware of the grisly gash 
 
 Above his knee that lay. ! 
 
 It was a wound from a wild-boar's tooth, 
 All on Parnassus' slope, 
 
 Where he went to hunt in the days of his youth 
 With his mother's sire — 
 
 and so on. That is the true ballad-manner, no one- 
 can deny ; " all on Parnassus' slope " is, I was going 
 to say, the true ballad-slang ; but never again shall 
 I be able to read, 
 
 vi^E S'ap' aaaov "tovaa ava^0' koV avrUa h^syvcj 
 
 Gv\t]P' 
 
 without having the detestable dance of Dr. Maginn*s, 
 
 And scarcely had she begun to wash 
 Ere she was aware of the grisly gash — 
 
 , xix, 392. 
 £ 2 
 
52 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 jigging in my ears, to spoil the effect of Homer, and 
 to torture me. To apply that manner and that 
 rhythm to Homer's incidents, is not to imitate Homer, 
 but to travesty him. 
 
 Lastly I come to Mr. Newman. His rhythm, like 
 Chapman's and Dr. Maginn's, is a ballad-rhythm, 
 but with a modification of his own. " Holding it," 
 he tells us, " as an axiom, that rhyme must be 
 abandoned," he found, on abandoning it, "an un- 
 pleasant void until he gave a double ending to the 
 verse." In short, instead of saying. 
 
 Good people all with one accord 
 Giye ear unto my tale — 
 
 Mr. Newman would say. 
 
 Good people all with one accord 
 Give ear unto my 
 
 A recent American writer* gravely observes that 
 for his countrymen this rhythm has a disadvantage 
 in being like the rhythm of the American national 
 air " Yankee Doodle," and thus provoking ludicrous 
 associations. " Yankee Doodle " is not our national 
 air : for us, Mr. Newman's rhythm has not this disad- 
 vantage. He himself gives us several plausible reasons 
 why this rhythm of his really ought to be successful : 
 let us examine how far it is successful. 
 
 Mr. Newman joins to a bad rhythm so bad a 
 
 * Mr. Marsh, in his Lectures on the English Language, New York, 
 1860 ; p. 520. 
 
LECTURE II. 53 
 
 diction, that it is difficult to distinguish exactly 
 
 whether in any given passage it is his words or his 
 
 measure which produces a total impression of such 
 
 an unpleasant kind. But with a little attention we 
 
 may analyse our total impression, and find the share 
 
 which each element has in producing it To take 
 
 the passage which I have so often mentioned, Sar- 
 
 pedon's speech to Glaucus. Mr. Newman translates 
 
 this as follows : 
 
 gentle friend! if thou and I, from this encounter 'scaping, 
 
 Hereafter might for ever be from Eld and Death exempted 
 
 As heav'nly gods, not I in sooth would fight among the foremost, 
 
 Nor lieflj thee would I advance to man-ennobling battle. 
 
 Now, — sith ten thousand shapes of Death do any-gait pursue us 
 
 Which never mortal may evade, though sly of foot and nimble; — 
 
 Onward ! and glory let us earn, or glory yield to some one. — 
 
 Could all our care elude the gloomy grave 
 Which claims no less the fearful than the brave — 
 
 I am not going to quote Pope's version over again, 
 but I must remark in passing, how much more, 
 with all Pope's radical difference of manner from 
 Homer, it gives us of the real effect of, 
 
 el fXEV yap, TroXsjioy Trepl Tovde (pvyovre — 
 
 than Mr. Newman's lines. And now, why are Mr. 
 Newman's lines faulty ? They are faulty, first, because 
 as a matter of diction, the expressions " gentle 
 friend," "eld," "in sooth," "liefly," "advance," «'man- 
 ennobling," "sith," "any-gait," and "sly of foot," 
 are all bad; some of them worse than others, but 
 
 E 3 
 
54 OX TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 all bad : that is, they all of them as here used 
 excite in the scholar, their sole judge — excite, I will 
 boldly affirm, in Professor Thompson or Professor 
 Jowett — a feeling totally different from that excited 
 in them by the words of Homer which these ex- 
 pressions profess to render. The lines are faulty, 
 secondly, because, as a matter of rhythm, any and 
 every line among them has to the ear of the same 
 judges, (I affirm it with equal boldness), a movement 
 as unlike Homer's movement in the corresponding 
 line as the single words are unlike Homer's words. 
 *'OvT£ KS as cniXkoLfJbi fid^r)v is Kvhiavsipav — *^ Nor 
 liefly thee would I advance to man-ennobling battle " 
 — for whose ear do those two rhythms produce im- 
 pressions of, to use Mr. Newman's own words, 
 " similar moral genius ? " 
 
 ' I will by no means make search in Mr. Newman's 
 version for passages likely to raise a laugh ; that 
 search, alas ! would be far too easy. I will quote but 
 one other passage from him, and that a passage where 
 the diction is comparatively inoffensive, in order that 
 disapproval of the words may not unfairly heighten 
 disapproval of the rhythm. The end of the nine- 
 teenth book, the answer of Achilles to his horse 
 Xanthus, Mr. Newman gives thus : 
 
 " Chesnut ! why bodest death to me ? from thee this was not needed. 
 Myself right surely know also, that 'tis my doom to perish, 
 From mother and from father dear apart, in Troy ; but never 
 Pause will I make of war, until the Trojans be glutted." 
 He spake, and yelling, held afront the single-hoofed horses. 
 
LECTURE II. 55 
 
 Here Mr. Newman calls Xanthiis Chesnut, indeed, 
 as lie calls Balius Spotted, and Podarga Spry- 
 foot; whicli is as if a Frenchman were to call Miss 
 Nightingale Madlle, Rossignol, or Mr. Bright M, 
 Glair, And several other expressions, too — "yell- 
 ing," "held afront," "single-hoofed" — leave, to say 
 the very least, much to be desired. Still, for Mr. New- 
 man, the diction of this passage is pure. All the 
 more clearly appears the profound vice of a rhythm, 
 which, with comparatively few faults of words, can 
 leave a sense of such incurable alienation from 
 Homer's manner as, " Myself right surely know also 
 that 'tis my doom to perish " — compared with the, 
 sv vv rot olSa koL amos, 6 jjlol fiopos ivdaS' oKsaOai, 
 — of Homer. 
 
 But so deeply-seated is the difference between the 
 ballad-manner and Homer's, that even a man of the 
 highest powers, even a man of the greatest vigour of 
 spirit and of true genius — the Coryphseus of balladists. 
 Sir Walter Scott— fails with a manner of this kind to 
 produce an effect at all like the effect of Homer. 
 " I am not so rash," declares Mr. Newman, " as to 
 say that if freedom be given to rhyme as in Walter 
 Scott's poetry" — Walter Scott, "by far the most 
 Homeric of our poets," as in another place he calls him 
 — "a genius may not arise who will translate Homer 
 into the melodies of Marmion." " The truly classical 
 and the truly romantic," says Dr. Maginn, "are 
 one; the moss-trooping Nestor reappears in the mosS' 
 
 £ 4 
 
56 OX TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 trooping heroes of Percy's Eeliques ; " and a descrip- 
 tion by Scott, which he quotes, he calls " graphic and 
 therefore Homeric." He forgets our fourth axiom — 
 that Homer is not only graphic; he is also noble, and 
 has the grand style. Human nature under like 
 circumstances is probably in all ages much the same; 
 and so far it may be said that " the truly classical 
 and the truly romantic are one ; " but it is of little 
 use to tell us this, because we know the human 
 nature of other ages only through the representations 
 of them which have come down to us, and the 
 classical and the romantic modes of representation 
 are so far from being " one," that they remain eter- 
 nally distinct, and have created for us a separation 
 between the two worlds which they respectively repre- 
 sent. Therefore to call Nestor the " moss-trooping 
 Nestor " is absurd, because, though Nestor may 
 possibly have been much the same sort of man as 
 many a moss-trooper, he has yet come to us through 
 a mode of representation so unlike that of Percy's 
 Keliques, that, instead of " reappearing in the moss- 
 trooping heroes " of these poems, he exists in our 
 imagination as something utterly unlike them, and 
 as belonging to another world. So the Grreeks in 
 Shakspeare's Troilus and Cressida are no longer the 
 Greeks whom we have known in Homer, because 
 they come to us through a mode of representation 
 of the romantic world. But I must not forget Scott. 
 I suppose that when Scott is in what may be 
 
LECTURE II. 57 
 
 called full ballad-swing, no one will hesitate to pro- 
 nounce his manner neither Homeric, nor the grand 
 manner. When he says, for instance, 
 
 I do not rhyme to that dull elf 
 Who cannot image to himself — * 
 
 and so on, any scholar will feel that this is not 
 Homer's manner. But let us take Scott's poetry at 
 its best ; and when it is at its best, it is undoubtedly 
 very good indeed : 
 
 Tunstall lies dead upon the field, 
 
 His life-blood stains the spotless shield : 
 
 Edmund is down — my life is reft — 
 
 The Admiral alone is left. 
 
 Let Stanley charge with spur of fire — 
 
 With Chester charge, and Lancashire, 
 
 FuU upon Scotland's central host, 
 
 Or victory and England's lost.f 
 
 That is, no doubt, as vigorous as possible, as spirited 
 as possible ; it is exceedingly fine poetry. And still 
 I say, it is not in the grand manner, and therefore it 
 is not like Homer's poetry. Now, how shall I make 
 him who doubts this feel that I say true ; that these 
 lines of Scott are essentially neither in Homer's 
 style, nor in the grand style ? I may point out to 
 him that the movement of Scott's lines, while it is 
 rapid, is also at the same time what the French call 
 saccade, its rapidity is "jerkj^;" whereas Homer's 
 rapidity is a flowing rapidity. But this is something 
 external and material; it is but the outward and 
 
 * Marmion, canto vi, 38. f Marmion, canto vi, 29. 
 
58 OX TEANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 visible sign of an inward and spiritual diversity. I 
 may discuss what, in the abstract, constitutes the 
 grand style ; but that sort of general discussion never 
 much helps our judgment of particular instances. I 
 may say that the presence or absence of the grand style 
 can only be spiritually discerned ; and this is true, but 
 to plead this looks like evading the difficulty. My 
 best way is to take eminent specimens of the grand 
 style, and to put them side by side with this of 
 Scott. For example, when Homer says : 
 
 otWa, (piXoc, dave kol arv' rirj oXvfvpEai ovtojq ; 
 Kardare Koi YlciTpoickoQ, onep aio ttoXXov a.jjLELvu)v * — 
 
 that is in the grand style. When Virgil says : 
 
 Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem ; 
 Fortunam ex aliisf — 
 
 that is in the grand style. When Dante says : 
 
 Lascio lo fele, et vo pei dolci pomi 
 Promessi a me per lo verace Duca ; 
 Ma fino al centro pria convien ch' io tomi \ — 
 
 that is in the grand style. When Milton says : 
 
 * "Be content, good friend, die also tliou ! why lamentest thou 
 thyself on this wise? Patroclus, too, died, who was a far better 
 than thou." — Eiad, xxi, 106. 
 
 t " From me, young man, learn nobleness of soul and true effort ; 
 learn success from others." — JEneid, xii, 435. 
 
 J "I leave the gall of bitterness, and I go for the apples of sweet- 
 ness promised unto me by my faithful Guide ; but far as the centre 
 it behoyes me first to fall." — Hell, xvi, 61. 
 
LECTURE II. 59 
 
 His form had not yet lost 
 All her original brightness, nor appear' d 
 Less than archangel min'd, and the excess 
 Of glory obscur'd * — 
 
 that, finally, is in the grand style. Now let any one, 
 after repeating to himself these four passages, repeat 
 again the passage of Scott, and he will perceive that 
 there is something in style which the four first have 
 in common, and which the last is without ; and this 
 something is precisely the grand manner. It is no 
 disrespect to Scott to say that he does not attain to 
 this manner in his poetry ; to say so, is merely to 
 say that he is not among the five or six supreme poets 
 of the world. Among these he is not ; but, being a 
 man of far greater powers than the ballad-poets, he 
 has tried to give to their instrument a compass and 
 an elevation which it does not naturally possess, in 
 order to enable him to come nearer to the effect of 
 the instrument used by the great epic poets — an in- 
 strument which he felt he could not truly use — and 
 in this attempt he has but imperfectly succeeded. 
 The poetic style of Scott is — (it becomes necessary to 
 say so when it is proposed to " translate Homer into 
 the melodies of Marmion " ) — it is, tried by the 
 highest standards, a bastard epic style ; and that is 
 why, out of his own powerful hands, it has had so 
 little success. It is a less natural, and therefore a 
 less good style, than the original ballad-style ; while 
 
 * Paradise Lost, i, 591. 
 
GO ON TKANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 it shares with the ballad-style the inherent incapacity 
 of rising into the grand style, of adequately rendering 
 Homer. Scott is certainly at his best in his battles. 
 Of Homer you could not say this ; he is not better in 
 his battles than elsewhere ; but even between the 
 battle-pieces of the two there exists all the difference 
 which there is between an able work and a master- 
 piece. 
 
 Tunstall lies dead upon the field, 
 His life-blood stains the spotless shield : 
 Edmund is down — my life is reft — 
 The Admiral alone is left. — 
 
 — " For not in the hands of Diomede the son of Tydeus 
 rages the spear, to ward off destruction from the 
 Danaans ; neither as yet have I heard the voice of 
 the son of Atreus, shouting out of his hated mouth ; 
 but the voice of Hector the slayer of men bursts 
 round me, as he cheers on the Trojans ; and they 
 with their yellings fill all the plain, overcoming the 
 Achaians in the battle." — I protest that, to m}^ feel- 
 ing. Homer's performance, even through that pale and 
 far-off shadow of a prose translation, still has a hun- 
 dred times more of the grand manner about it, than 
 the original poetry of Scott. 
 
 Well, then, the ballad-manner and the ballad- 
 measure, whether in the hands of the old ballad 
 poets, or arranged by Chapman, or arranged by Mr. 
 Newman, or, even, arranged by Sir Walter Scott, 
 cannot worthily render Homer. And for one reason: 
 
LECTURE II. 61 
 
 Homer is plain, so are they ; Homer is natural, so 
 are they; Homer is spirited, so are they; but Homer 
 is sustainedly noble, and they are not. Homer and 
 they are both of them natural, and therefore touching 
 and stirring ; but the grand style, which is Homer's, 
 is something more than touching and stirring; it 
 can form the character, it is edifying. The old 
 English balladist may stir Sir Philip Sidney's heart 
 like a trumpet, and this is much : but Homer, but 
 the few artists in the grand style, can do more ; they 
 can refine the raw natural man, they can transmute 
 him. So it is not without cause that I say, and say 
 again, to the translator of Homer : " Never for a 
 moment suffer yourself to forget our fourth funda- 
 mental proposition. Homier is nohle.^'' For it is 
 seen how large a share this nobleness has in pro- 
 ducing that general effect of his, which it is the 
 main business of a translator to reproduce. 
 
 I shall have to try your patience yet once more 
 upon this subject, and then my task will be com- 
 pleted. I have shown what the four axioms respect- 
 ing Homer which I have laid down, exclude, what 
 they bid a translator not to do ; I have still to show 
 what they supply, what positive help they can give 
 to the translator in his work. I will even, with 
 their aid, myself try my fortune with some of those 
 passages of Homer which I have already noticed ; 
 not indeed with any confidence that I more than 
 others can succeed in adequately rendering Homer, 
 
62 ON TEANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 but in the hope of satisfying competent judges, in 
 the hope of making it clear to the future translator, 
 that I at any rate follow a right method, and that, 
 in coming short, I come short from weakness of 
 execution, not from original vice of design. This 
 is why I have so long occupied myself with Mr. 
 Newman's version; that, apart from all faults of 
 execution, his original design was wrong, and that 
 he has done us the good service of declaring that 
 design in its naked wrongness. To bad practice he 
 has prefixed the bad theory which made the practice 
 bad ; he has given us a false theory in his preface, 
 and he has exemplified the bad effects of that false 
 theory in his translation. It is because his starting- 
 point is so bad that he runs so badly ; and to save 
 others from taking so false a starting-point, may be 
 to save them from running so futile a course. 
 
 Mr. Newman, indeed, says in his preface, that if 
 any one dislikes his translation, ^' he has his easy 
 remedy ; to keep aloof from it." But Mr. Newman 
 is a writer of considerable and deserved reputation ; 
 he is also a Professor of the University of London, 
 an institution which by its position and by its merits 
 acquires every year greater importance. It would 
 be a very grave thing if the authority of so eminent 
 a Professor led his students to misconceive entirely 
 the chief work of the Grreek world ; that work which, 
 whatever the other works of classical antiquity have 
 to give us, gives it more abundantly than they all. 
 
LECTURE II. 63 
 
 The eccentricity, too, the arbitrariness, of which 
 Mr. Newman's conception of Homer offers so signal 
 an example, are not a peculiar failing of Mr. New- 
 man's own ; in varying degrees, they are the great 
 defect of English intellect, the great blemish of 
 English literature. Our literature of the eighteenth 
 century, the literature of the school of Dryden, 
 Addison, Pope, Johnson, is a long reaction against 
 this eccentricity, this arbitrariness : that reaction 
 perished by its own faults, and its enemies are left 
 once more masters of the field. It is much more 
 likely that any new English version of Homer will 
 have Mr. Newman's faults than Pope's. Our present 
 literature, which is very far, certainly, from having 
 the spirit and power of Elizabethan genius, yet has 
 in its own way these faults, eccentricity and arbitra- 
 riness, quite as much as the Elizabethan literature 
 ever had. They are the cause that, while upon 
 none, perhaps, of the modern literatures has so great 
 a sum of force been expended as upon the English 
 literature, at the present hour this literature, re- 
 garded not as an object of mere literary interest but 
 as a living intellectual instrument, ranks only third 
 in European effect and importance among the 
 literatures of Europe ; it ranks after the literatures 
 of France and Grermany. Of these two literatures, 
 as of the intellect of Evirope in general, the main 
 effort, for now many years, has been a critical effort; 
 the endeavour, in all branches of knowledge — theo- 
 
64 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 logy, philosophy, history, art, science — to see the 
 object as in itself it really is. But, owing to the 
 presence in English literature of this eccentric and 
 arbitrary spirit, owing to the- strong tendency of 
 English writers to bring to the consideration of their 
 object some individual fancy, almost the last thing 
 for which one would come to English literature is 
 just that verji thing which now Europe most desires 
 — criticism. It is useful to notice any signal mani- 
 festation of those faults, which thus limit and impair 
 the action of our literature. And therefore I have 
 pointed out, how widely, in translating Homer, a 
 man even of real ability and learning may go astray, 
 unless he brings to the study of this clearest of poets 
 one quality in which our English authors, with all 
 their great gifts, are apt to be somewhat wanting — 
 simple lucidity of mind. 
 
LECTURE III. 65 
 
 III. 
 
 Homer is rapid in his movementj Homer is plain in 
 his words and style, Homer is simple in his ideas, 
 Homer is noble in his manner. Cowper renders him 
 ill because he is slow in his movement, and elaborate 
 in his style; Pope renders him ill because he is 
 artificial both in his style and in his words; Chapman 
 renders him ill because he is fantastic in his ideas ; 
 Mr. Newman renders him ill because he is odd 
 in his words and ignoble in his manner. All four 
 translators diverge from their original at other points 
 besides those named ; but it is at the points thus 
 named that their divergence is greatest. For in- 
 stance, Cowper's diction is not as Homer's diction, nor 
 his nobleness as Homer's nobleness; but it is in 
 movement and grammatical style that he is most 
 unlike Homer. Pope's rapidity is not of the same 
 sort as Homer's rapidity, nor are his plainness of ideas 
 and his nobleness as Homer's plainness of ideas and 
 nobleness : but it is in the artificial character of his 
 style and diction that he is most unlike Homer. 
 Chapman's movement, words, style, and manner, are 
 often far enough from resembling Homer's movement, 
 
6Q ON TKANSLATIJN^G HOMER. 
 
 words, style, and manner ; but it is the fantasticality 
 of his ideas which puts him farthest from resembling 
 Homer. Mr. Newman's movement, grammatical 
 style, and ideas, are a thousand times in strong con- 
 trast with Homer's ; still it is by the oddness of his 
 diction and the ignobleness of his manner that he con- 
 trasts with Homer the most violently. 
 
 Therefore the translator must not say to himself: 
 " Cowper is noble. Pope is rapid. Chapman has a good 
 diction, Mr. Newman has a good cast of sentence ; I 
 will avoid Cowper's slowness. Pope's artificiality, 
 Chapman's conceits, Mr. Newman's oddity ; I will take 
 Cowper's dignified manner. Pope's impetuous move- 
 ment, Chapman's vocabulary, Mr. Newman's syntax, 
 and so make a perfect translation of Homer." Un- 
 doubtedly in certain points the versions of Chapman, 
 Cowper, Pope, and Mr. Newman, all of them have 
 merit ; some of them very high merit, others a lower 
 merit; but even in these points they have none of them 
 precisely the same kind of merit as Homer, and there- 
 fore the new translator, even if he can imitate them in 
 their good points, will still not satisfy his judge the 
 scholar, who asks him for Homer and Homer's kind of 
 merit, or, at least, for as much of them as it is possible 
 to give. 
 
 So the translator really has no good model before 
 him for any part of his work, and has to invent every- 
 thing for himself. He is to be rapid in movement, 
 plain in speech, simple in thought, and noble ; and 
 
LECTURE III. . 67 
 
 how lie is to be either rapid, or plain, or simple, or 
 noble, no one yet has shown him. I shall try to-day 
 to establish some practical suggestions which may 
 help the translator of Homer's poetry to comply with 
 the four grand requirements which we make of him. 
 
 His version is to be rapid ; and of course, to make 
 a man's poetry rapid, as to make it noble, nothing 
 can serve him so much as to have, in his own nature, 
 rapidity and nobleness. It is the spirit that quick- 
 eneth ; and no one will so well render Homer's swift- 
 flowing movement as he who has himself something 
 of the swift-moving spirit of Homer. Yet even this 
 is not quite enough. Pope certainly had a quick and 
 darting spirit, as he had, also, real nobleness ; yet 
 Pope does not render the movement of Homer. To 
 render this the translator must have, besides his 
 natural qualifications, an appropriate metre. 
 
 I have sufficiently shown why I think all forms of 
 our ballad-metre unsuited to Homer. It seems to 
 me to be beyond question that, for epic poetry, only 
 three metres can seriously claim to be accounted 
 capa,ble of the grand style. Two of these will at 
 once occur to every one — the ten-syllable, or so-called 
 heroic, couplet, and blank verse. I do not add to 
 these the Spenserian stanza, although Dr. Maginn, 
 whose metrical eccentricities I have already criticised, 
 pronounces this stanza the one right measure for a 
 translation of Homer. It is enough to observe, that 
 if Pope's couplet, with the simple system of corre- 
 
 V 2 
 
68 ON TKANSLATmG HOMER. 
 
 spondences that its rhymes introduce, changes the 
 movement of Homer, in which no such correspond- 
 ences are found, and is therefore a bad measure for a 
 translator of Homer to employ, Spenser's stanza, with 
 its far more intricate system of correspondences, must 
 change Homer's movement far more profoundly, and 
 must therefore be for the translator a far worse mea- 
 sure than the couplet of Pope. Yet I will say, at 
 the same time, that the verse of Spenser is more 
 fluid, slips more easily and quickly along, than the 
 verse of almost any other English poet. 
 
 By this the northern waggoner had set 
 His seven-fold team behind the steadfast star 
 That was in ocean waves yet never wet, 
 But firm is fixt, and sendeth light from far 
 To all that in the wide deep wandering are * ; 
 
 one cannot but feel that English verse has not 
 often moved with the fluidity and sweet ease of these 
 lines. It is possible that it may have been this 
 quality of Spenser's poetry which made Dr. Maginn 
 think that the stanza of The Faery Queen must be a 
 good measure for rendering Homer. This it is not : 
 Spenser's verse is fluid and rapid, no doubt, but there 
 are more ways than one of being fluid and rapid, and 
 Homer is fluid and rapid in quite another way than 
 Spenser. Spenser's manner is no more Homeric than 
 is the manner of the one modern inheritor of Spenser's 
 beautiful gift ; the poet, who evidently caught from 
 
 * The Faery Queen, Canto ii, Stanza 1. 
 
LECTURE III. 69 
 
 Spenser his sweet and easy-slipping movement, and 
 who has exquisitely employed it ; a Spenserian genius, 
 nay, a genius by natural endowment richer pro- 
 bably than even Spenser ; that light which shines so 
 unexpected and without fellow in our century, an 
 Elizabethan born too late, the early lost and ad- 
 mirably gifted Keats. 
 
 I say then that there are really but three metres 
 — the ten-syllable couplet, blank verse, and a third 
 metre which I will not yet name, but which is neither 
 the Spenserian stanza nor any form of ballad-verse 
 — between which, as vehicles for Homer's poetry, the 
 translator has to make his choice. Every one will at 
 once remember a thousand passages in which both 
 the ten-syllable couplet and blank verse prove them- 
 selves to have nobleness. Undoubtedly the movement 
 and manner of this ; 
 
 Still raise for good the supplicating voice, 
 
 But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice — 
 
 are noble. Undoubtedly, the movement and manner 
 
 of this ; 
 
 High on a throne of royal state, which far 
 Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind — 
 
 are noble also. But the first is in a rhymed metre ; 
 and the unfitness of a rhymed metre for rendering 
 Homer I have already shown. I will observe, too, 
 that the fine couplet which I have quoted comes out 
 of a satire, a didactic poem ; and that it is in didactic 
 
 F 3 
 
70 OX TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 poetry that the ten-syllable couplet has most success- 
 fully essayed the grand style. In narrative poetry 
 this metre has succeeded best when it essayed a 
 sensibly lower style, the style of Chaucer, for in- 
 stance ; whose narrative manner, though a very good 
 and sound manner, is certainly neither the grand 
 manner nor the manner of Homer. 
 
 The rhymed ten-syllable couplet being thus ex- 
 cluded, blank verse offers itself for the translator's 
 use. The first kind of blank verse which naturall}'' 
 occurs to us is the blank verse of Milton, which has 
 been employed, with more or less modification, by 
 Mr. Gary in translating Dante, by Cowper and by Mr. 
 Wright in translating Homer. How noble this metre 
 is in Milton's hands, how completely it shows itself 
 capable of the grand, nay of the grandest, style, I 
 need not say. To this metre, as used in the Paradise 
 Lost, our country owes the glory of having produced 
 one of the only two poetical works in the grand style 
 which are to be found in the modern languages ; the 
 Divine Comedy of Dante is the other. England and 
 Italy here stand alone ; Spain, France and Grermany 
 have produced great poets, but neither Calderon, nor 
 Corneille, nor Schiller, nor even Goethe, has pro- 
 duced a body of poetry in the true grand style, in 
 the sense in which the style of the body of Homer's 
 poetry, or Pindar's, or Sophocles's, is grand. But 
 Dante has, and so has Milton ; and in this respect 
 Milton possesses a distinction which even Shakspeare, 
 
LECTUEE III. 71 
 
 undoubtedly the supreme poetical power in our lite- 
 rature, does not share with him. Not a tragedy of 
 Shakspeare but contains passages in the worst of all 
 styles, the affected style; and the grand style, although 
 it may be harsh, or obscure, or cumbrous, or over- 
 laboured, is never affected. In spite, therefore, of 
 objections which may justly be urged against the plan 
 and treatment of the Paradise Lost, in spite of its 
 possessing, certainly, a far less enthralling force of 
 interest to attract and to carry forward the reader 
 than the Iliad or the Divine Comedy, it fully dese;»:ves, 
 it can never lose, its immense reputation; foi, like 
 the Iliad and the Divine Comedy, nay in some 
 respects to a higher degree than either of them, it is 
 in the grand style. 
 
 But the grandeur of Milton is one thing, and the 
 grandeur of Homer is another. Homer's movement, 
 I have said again and again, is a flowing, a rapid 
 movement; Milton's, on the other hand, is a laboured, 
 a self-retarding movement. In each case, the move- 
 ment, the metrical cast, corresponds with the mode 
 of evolution of the thought, with the syntactical cast, 
 and is indeed determined by it. Milton charges him- 
 self so full with thought, imagination, knowledge, that 
 his style will hardly contain them. He is too full-stored 
 to show us in much detail one conception, one piece 
 of knowledge ; he just shows it to us in a pregnant 
 allusive way, and then he presses on to another ; and 
 all this fulness, this pressure, this condensation, this 
 
 r 4 
 
72 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 self-constraint, enters into his movement, and makes 
 it what it is — noble, but difficult and austere. Homer 
 is quite different ; he says a thing, and says it to the 
 end, and then begins another, while Milton is trying 
 to press a thousand things into one. So that whereas, 
 in reading Milton, you never lose the sense of labor- 
 ious and condensed fulness, in reading Homer you 
 never lose the sense of flowing and abounding ease. 
 With Milton line runs into line, and all is straitly 
 bound together : with Homer line runs off from line, 
 and all hurries away onward. Homer begins, Mrjvtv 
 dsiBs, Ssd — at the second word announcing the pro- 
 posed action : Milton begins : 
 
 Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
 Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste 
 Brought death into the world, and all our woe, 
 With loss of Eden, till one greater Man 
 Restore us, and regain the blissful seat. 
 Sing, heavenly muse — 
 
 so chary of a sentence is he, so resolute not to let it 
 escape him till he has crowded into it all he can, that 
 it is not till the thirty-ninth word in the sentence that 
 he will give us the key to it, the word of action, the 
 verb. Milton says: 
 
 O for that warning voice, which he, who saw 
 The Apocalypse, heard cry in heaven aloud — 
 
 he is not satisfied, unless he can tell us, all in one sen- 
 tence, and without permitting himself to actually men- 
 tion the name, that the man who had the warning voice 
 
LECTURE III. 73 
 
 was the same man who saw the Apocalypse. Homer 
 would have said, "0 for that warning voice, which 
 John heard " — and if it had suited him to say that 
 John also saw the Apocalypse, he would have given 
 us that in another sentence. The effect of this allu- 
 sive and compressed manner of Milton is, I need not 
 say, often very powerful ; and it is an effect which 
 other great poets have often sought to obtain much in 
 the same way : Dante is full of it, Horace is full of 
 it ; but wherever it exists, it is always an un-Homeric 
 effect. " The losses of the heavens," says Horace, 
 " fresh moons speedily repair ; we, when we have 
 gone down where the pious ^neas, where the rich 
 Tullus, and Ancus are — pulvis et umbra sumus.^^* 
 He never actually says where we go to ; he only in- 
 dicates it by saying that it is that place where 
 JEneas, Tullus, and Ancus, are. But Homer, when 
 he has to speak of going down to the grave, says de- 
 nitely : is^UXvaiov irsBlov — dOdparoi Trs/ji'xlrovo-cvli 
 — " The immortals shall send thee to the Elysian 
 plain ;" and it is not till after he has definitely said 
 this, that he adds, that it is there that the abode of 
 departed worthies is placed: o6t ^avOo^ 'VaSafjuavOvs — 
 " Where the yellow-hair'd Rhadamanthus is." Again ; 
 Horace, having to say that punishment sooner or later 
 overtakes crime, says it thus : 
 
 Raro antecedentem scelestum 
 Deseruit pede Poena claudo. J 
 
 * Odes, IV, vii, 13. f Odyssey, iv, 563. \ Odes, III, ii, 31. 
 
74 0^^ TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 The thought itself of these lines is familiar enough 
 to Homer and Hesiod; but neither Homer nor 
 Hesiod, in expressing it, could possibly have so 
 complicated its expression as Horace complicates it, 
 and purposely complicates it, by his use of the word 
 deseruit. I say that this complicated evolution of 
 the thought necessarily complicates the movement 
 and rhythm of a poet ; and that the Miltonic blank 
 verse, of course the first model of blank verse 
 which suggests itself to an English translator of 
 Homer, bears the strongest marks of such compli- 
 cation, and is therefore entirely unfit to render 
 Homer. 
 
 If blank verse is used in translating Homer, it 
 must be a blank verse of which English poetry, 
 naturally swayed much by Milton's treatment of this 
 metre, offers at present hardly any examples. It 
 must not be Cowper's blank verse, who has studied 
 Milton's pregnant manner with such effect, that, 
 having to say of Mr. Throckmorton that he spares 
 his avenue, although it is the fashion with other 
 people to cut down theirs, he says that Benevolus 
 " reprieves The obsolete prolixity of shade." It must 
 not be Mr. Tennyson's blank verse. 
 
 For all experience is an arch, wlieretkro' 
 
 Gleams that nntraTell'd world, whose distance fades 
 
 For ever and for ever, as we gaze — 
 
 it is no blame to the thought of those lines, which 
 belongs to another order of ideas than Homer's, but 
 
LECTURE III. 75 
 
 it is true, that Homer would certainly have said 
 of them, " It is to consider too curiously to consider 
 so." It is no blame to their rhythm, which belongs 
 to another order of movement than Homer's, but it 
 is true, that these three lines by themselves take 
 up nearly as much time as a whole book of the 
 Iliad. No ; the blank verse used in rendering 
 Homer must be a blank verse of which perhaps the 
 best specimens are to be found in some of the most 
 rapid passages of Shakspeare's plays — a blank verse 
 which does not dovetail its lines into one another, 
 and which habitually ends its lines with mono- 
 syllables. Such a blank verse might no doubt be 
 very rapid in its movement, and might perfectly 
 adapt itself to a thought plainly and directly evolved ; 
 and it would be interesting to see it well applied 
 to Homer. But the translator who determines to 
 use it, must not conceal from himself tliat in order 
 to pour Homer into the mould of this metre, he will 
 have entirely to break him up and melt him down, 
 with the hope of then successfully composing him 
 afresh ; and this is a process which is full of risks. 
 It may, no doubt, be the real Homer that issues 
 new from it; it is not certain beforehand that it 
 cannot be the real Homer, as it is certain that from 
 the mould of Pope's couplet or Cowper's Miltonic 
 verse it cannot be the real Homer that will issue ; 
 still, the chances of disappointment are great. The 
 result of such an attempt to renovate the old poet 
 
76 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 may be an ^son ; but it may also, and more pro- 
 bably will, be a Pelias. 
 
 When I say this, I point to the metre which 
 seems to me to give the translator the best chance 
 of preserving the general effect of Homer — that third 
 metre which I have not yet expressly named, the 
 hexameter. I know all that is said against the use 
 of hexameters in English poetry ; but it comes only 
 to this, that, among us, they have not yet been used 
 on any considerable scale with success. Solvitur 
 ambulando : this is an objection which can best 
 be met by 'producing good English hexameters. 
 And there is no reason in the nature of the English 
 language why it should not adapt itself to hexameters 
 as well as the German language does; nay, the 
 English language, from its greater rapidity, is in itself 
 better suited than the German for them. The hexa- 
 meter, whether alone or with the pentameter, pos- 
 sesses a movement, an expression, which no metre 
 hitherto in common use amongst us possesses, and 
 which I am convinced English poetry, as our mental 
 wants multiply, will not always be content to forego. 
 Applied to Homer, this metre affords to the trans- 
 lator the immense support of keeping him more 
 nearly than any other metre to Homer's movement ; 
 and, since a poet's movement makes so large a part 
 of his general effect, and to reproduce this general 
 effect is at once the translator's indispensable busi- 
 ness and so difficult for him, it is a great thing to 
 
LECTURE III. 77 
 
 have this part of your model's general effect already 
 given you in your metre, instead of having to get 
 it entirely for yourself. 
 
 These are general considerations ; but there are 
 also one or two particular considerations which con- 
 firm me in the opinion that for translating Homer 
 into English verse the hexameter should be used. 
 The most successful attempt hitherto made at render- 
 ing Homer into English, the attempt in which 
 Homer's general effect has been best retained, is an 
 attempt made in the hexameter measure. It is a 
 version of the famous lines in the third book of the 
 Iliad, which end with that mention of Castor and 
 Pollux from which Mr. Euskin extracts the senti- 
 mental consolation already noticed by me. The 
 author is the accomplished Provost of Eton, Dr. 
 Hawtrey; and this performance of his must be my 
 excuse for having taken the liberty to single him out 
 for mention, as one of the natural judges of a trans- 
 lation of Homer, along with Professor Thompson and 
 Professor Jowett, whose connection with Greek litera- 
 ture is official. The passage is short ; * and Dr. 
 
 * So short, that I quote it entire : 
 
 Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-ey'd sons of Achaia ; 
 Known to me well are the faces of all ; their names I remember ; 
 Two, two only remain, whom I see not among the commanders, 
 Castor fleet in the car — Polydeukes brave with the cestus — 
 Own dear brethren of mine — one parent lov'd us as infants. 
 Are they not here in the host, from the shores of lov'd Lacedsemon, 
 
78 OiS" TEA^'SLATING HOMEE. 
 
 Hawtrey's version of it is suffused with a pensive 
 grace which is, perhaps, rather more Virgilian than 
 Homeric; still it is the one version of any part of 
 the Iliad which in some degree reproduces for me 
 the original effect of Homer : it is the best, and it is 
 in hexameters. 
 
 This is one of the particular considerations that 
 
 Or, tho' they came with the rest in ships that bound thro' the waters, 
 Dare they not enter the fight or stand in the council of Heroes, 
 All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awaken' d ? 
 
 So said she ; — they long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing. 
 There, in their own dear land, their Father -land, Lacedgemon, 
 
 English Hexameter Translations, London, 1847; p. 242. 
 
 I have changed Dr. Hawtrey's " Kastor," " Lakedaimon," back to 
 the familiar " Castor," " Lacedemon," in obedience to my own rule that 
 everything odd is to be avoided in rendering Homer, the most natural 
 and least odd of poets. I see Mr. Newman's critic in the National 
 Eeview urges our generation to bear with the uunatviral effect of 
 these rewritten Grreek names, in the hope that by this means the 
 effect of them may have to the next generation become natural. 
 For my part, I feel no disposition to pass all my own life in the 
 wilderness of pedantry, in order that a posterity which I shall never 
 see may one day enter an orthographical Canaan ; and, after all, the 
 real question is this — whether our living apprehension of the Greek 
 world is more checked by meeting in an English book about the 
 Greeks, names not spelt letter for letter as in the original Greek, or 
 by meeting names which make us rub our eyes and call out, " How 
 exceedingly odd ! " 
 
 The Latin names of the Greek deities raise in most cases the idea 
 of quite distinct personages from the personages whose idea is raised 
 by the Greek names. Hera and Juno are actually, to every scholar's 
 imagination, two different people. So in all these cases the Latin 
 names must, at any inconvenience, be abandoned when we are deal- 
 ing with the Greek world. But I think it can be in the sensitive 
 imagination of Mr. Grote only, that "Thucydides" raises the idea 
 of a different man from <dovKvUdr]s. 
 
LECTUKE III. 79 
 
 incline me to prefer the hexameter, for translating 
 Homer, to our established metres. There is another. 
 Most of you, probably, have some knowledge of a 
 poem by Mr. Clough, The Bothie of Toper-na- 
 fuosich, a long- vacation pastoral, in hexameters. 
 The general merits of that poem I am not going to 
 discuss : it is a serio-comic poem, and, therefore, of 
 essentially different nature from the Iliad. Still in 
 two things it is, more than any other English poem 
 which I can call to mind, like the Iliad; in the 
 rapidity of its movement, and the plainness and 
 directness of its style. The thought in this poem is 
 often curious and subtle, and that is not Homeric ; 
 the diction is often grotesque, and that is not Homeric. 
 Still, by its rapidity of movement, and plain and 
 direct manner of presenting the thought however 
 curious in itself, this poem, w^hich being as I say a 
 serio-comic poem has a right to be grotesque, is 
 grotesque truly, not, like Mr. Newman's version of the 
 \\i2idL, falsely, Mr. Clough's odd epithets, " The grave 
 man nick-nam'd Adam," " The hairy Aldrich," and so 
 on, grow vitally and appear naturally in their place; 
 while Mr. Newman's "dapper-greav'd Achaians," 
 and " motley-helmed Hector," have all the air of be- 
 ing mechanically elaborated and artificially stuck in. 
 Mr. Clough's hexameters are excessively, needlessly 
 rough : still, owing to the native rapidity of this 
 measure, and to the directness of style which so well 
 allies itself with it, his composition produces a sense 
 
80 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 in the reader which Homer's composition also pro- 
 duces, and which Homer's translator ought to repro- 
 duce — the sense of having, within short limits of 
 time, a large portion of human life presented to him, 
 instead of a small portion. 
 
 Mr. Clough's hexameters are, as I have just said, 
 too rough and irregular ; and indeed a good model, 
 on any considerable scale, of this metre, the English 
 trasnlator will nowhere find. He must not follow the 
 model offered by Mr. Longfellow in his pleasing and 
 popular poem of Evangeline; for the merit of the 
 manner and movement of Evangeline, when they are 
 at their best, is to be tenderly elegant; and their 
 fault, when they are at their worst, is to be lumber- 
 ing ; but Homer's defect is not lumberingness, neither 
 is tender elegance his excellence. The lumbering 
 effect of most English hexameters is caused by 
 their being much too dactylic * ; the translator must 
 learn to use spondees freely. Mr. Clough has done 
 this, but he has not sufficiently observed another rule 
 which the translator cannot follow too strictly ; and 
 that is, to have no lines which will not, as it is 
 familiarly said, read themselves. This is of the last 
 importance for rhythms with which the ear of the 
 English public is not thoroughly acquainted. Lord 
 
 * For instance ; in a version (I believe, by the late Mr. Lockhart) 
 of Homer's description of the parting of Hector and Andromache, 
 there occurs, in the first five lines, but one spondee besides the neces- 
 sary spondees in the sixth place : in the corresponding five lines of 
 Homer there occur ten. See English Hexameter Translations, 244. 
 
LECTURE III. 81 
 
 Redesdale, in two papers on the subject of Greek and 
 Eoman metres, has some good remarks on the out- 
 rageous disregard of quantity in which English verse, 
 trusting to its force of accent, is apt to indulge itself. 
 The predominance of accent in our language is so 
 great, that it would be pedantic not to avail oneself 
 of it ; and Lord Redesdale suggests rules which might 
 easily be pushed too far. Still, it is undeniable that 
 in English hexameters we generally force the quantity 
 far too much ; we rely on justification by accent with 
 a security which is excessive. But not only do we 
 abuse accent by shortening long syllables and length- 
 ening short ones ; we perpetually commit a far worse 
 fault, by requiring the removal of the accent from its 
 natural place to an unnatural one, in order to make 
 our line scan. This is a fault, even when our metre 
 is one which every English reader knows, and when 
 he can see what we want and can correct the rhythm 
 according to our w4sh ; although it is a fault which 
 a great master may sometimes commit knowingly to 
 produce a desired effect, as Milton changes the 
 natural accent on the word Tiresias in the line ; 
 
 And Tiresias and Phiueus, prophets old ; 
 
 and then it ceases to be a fault, and becomes a beauty. 
 But it is a real fault, when Chapman has : 
 
 By him the golden-thron'd Queen slept, the Queen of Deities ; 
 
 for in this line, to make it scan, you have to take 
 away the accent from the word Queen, on which it 
 
 G 
 
82 0^ TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 naturally falls, and to place it on throned, which 
 would naturally be unaccented ; and yet, after all, 
 you get no peculiar effect or beauty of cadence to 
 reward you. It is a real fault, when Mr. Newman has : 
 
 Infatuate ! oh that thou wert lord to some other army — 
 
 for here again the reader is required, not for any 
 special advantage to himself, but simply to save 
 Mr. Newman trouble, to place the accent on the 
 insignificant word wert, where it has no business 
 whatever. But it is a still greater fault, when 
 Spenser has, (to take a striking instance). 
 
 Wot ye why his mother with a veil hath covered his face ? 
 
 for a hexameter ; because here not only is the reader 
 causelessly required to make havoc with the natural 
 accentuation of the line in order to get it to run as 
 a hexameter ; but also he, in nine cases out of ten, 
 will be utterly at a loss how to perform the process re- 
 quired, and the line will remain a mere monster for 
 him. I repeat, it is advisable to construct all verses 
 so that by reading them naturally — that is, according 
 to the sense and legitimate accent — the reader gets 
 the right rhythm ; but, for English hexameters, that 
 they be so constructed is indispensable. 
 
 If the hexameter best helps the translator to the 
 Homeric rapidity, what style may best help him to 
 the Homeric plainness and directness? It is the 
 merit of a metre appropriate to your subject, that it in 
 
LECTURE III. 83 
 
 some degree suggests and carries with itself a style 
 appropriate to the subject; the elaborate and self- 
 retarding style, which comes so naturally when your 
 metre is the Miltonic blank verse, does not come 
 naturally with the hexameter ; is, indeed, alien to 
 it. On the other hand, the hexameter has a natural 
 dignity which repels both the jaunty style and the 
 jog-trot style, to both of which the ballad-measure 
 so easily lends itself. These are great advantages ; 
 and perhaps it is nearly enough to say to the trans- 
 lator who uses the hexameter that he cannot too re- 
 ligiously follow, in style, the inspiration of his metre. 
 He will find that a loose and idiomatic grammar 
 — a grammar which follows the essential rather 
 than the formal logic of the thought — allies itself 
 excellently with the hexameter; and that, while 
 this sort of grammar ensures plainness and natural- 
 ness, it by no means comes short in nobleness. It 
 is difficult to pronounce certainly what is idiomatic 
 in the ancient literature of a language which, though 
 still spoken, has long since entirely adopted, as 
 modern Grreek has adopted, modern idioms. Still 
 one may, I think, clearly perceive that Homer's 
 grammatical style is idiomatic — that it may even be 
 called, not improperly, a loose grammatical style.* 
 
 * See for instance, in the Iliad, tlie loose construction of oa-re, xvii, 
 658; that otHSoiro, xvii, 681; that of o'/re, xviii, 209; and the elliptical 
 construction at xix, 42, 43 ; also the idiomatic construction of kywy oSe 
 Trapaffx"!', xix, 140. These instances are all taken within a range of 
 a thousand lines : any one may easily multiply them for himself. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 ON TKANSLATING HOMEE. 
 
 Examples, however, of what I mean by a loose 
 grammatical style, will be of more use to the trans- 
 lator if taken from English poetry than if taken 
 from Homer. I call it, then, a loose and idiomatic 
 grammar which Shakspeare uses in the last line of 
 the following three : 
 
 He's here in double trust: 
 First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, 
 Strong both against the deed — 
 
 or in this : 
 
 "Wit, whither wilt ? 
 
 What Shakspeare means is perfectly clear, clearer, 
 probably, than if he had said it in a more formal 
 and regular manner ; but his grammar is loose and 
 idiomatic, because he leaves out the subject of the 
 verb " wilt " in the second passage quoted, and 
 because, in the first, a prodigious addition to the 
 sentence has to be, as we used to say in our old 
 Latin grammar days, understood, before the word 
 " both " can be properly parsed. So, again. Chap- 
 man's grammar is loose and idiomatic where he 
 says : — 
 
 Even share hath he that keeps his tent, and he to field doth go — 
 
 because he leaves out, in the second clause, the 
 relative which in formal writing would be required. 
 But Chapman here does not lose dignity by this 
 idiomatic way of expressing himself, any more than 
 Shakspeare loses it by neglecting to confer on "both" 
 
LECTURE III. 85 
 
 the blessings of a regular government : neither loses 
 dignity, but each gives that impression of a plain, 
 direct, and natural mode of speaking, which Homer, 
 too, gives, and which it is so important, as I say, 
 that Homer's translator should succeed in giving. 
 Cowper calls blank verse "a style farther removed 
 than rhyme from the vernacular idiom, both in the 
 language itself and in the arrangement of it ; " and 
 just in proportion as blank verse is removed from 
 the vernacular idiom, from that idiomatic style which 
 is of all styles the plainest and most natural, blank 
 verse is unsuited to render Homer. 
 
 Shakspeare is not only idiomatic in his grammar or 
 style, he is also idiomatic in his words or diction ; 
 and here, too, his example is valuable for the trans- 
 lator of Homer. The translator must not, indeed, 
 allow himself all the liberty that Shakspeare allows 
 himself; for Shakspeare sometimes uses expressions 
 which pass perfectly well as he uses them, because 
 Shakspeare thinks so fast and so powerfully, that in 
 reading him we are borne over single words as by a 
 mighty current ; but, if our mind were less excited — 
 and who may rely on exciting our mind like Shaks- 
 peare? — they would check us. " To grunt and sweat 
 under a weary load;" — that does perfectly well where 
 it comes in Shakspeare; but if the translator of Homer, 
 who will hardly have wound our minds up to the pitch 
 at which these words of Hamlet find them, were to 
 employ, when he has to speak of one of Homer's 
 o 3 
 
^6 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 heroes under the load of calamity, this figure of 
 "grunting" and "sweating," we should say, He 
 Neivmanises, and his diction would offend us. For 
 he is to be noble ; and no plea of wishing to be plain 
 and natural can get him excused from being this : 
 only, as he is to be also, like Homer, perfectly simple 
 and free from artificiality, and as the use of idiomatic 
 expressions undoubtedly gives this effect *, he should 
 be as idiomatic as he can be without ceasing to be 
 noble. Therefore the idiomatic language of Shaks- 
 peare — such language as, " prate of his where- 
 about ; " " jump the life to come ; " " the damnation 
 of his taking -off ; " " his quietus make with a bare 
 bodkin " — should be carefully observed by the trans- 
 lator of Homer, although in every case he will have 
 to decide for himself whether the use, by him, of 
 Shakspeare's liberty, will or will not clash with his 
 indispensable duty of nobleness. He will find one 
 English book and one only, where, as in the Iliad 
 itself, perfect plainness of speech is allied with per- 
 fect nobleness ; and that book is the Bible. No one 
 could see this more clearly than Pope saw it : " This 
 
 * Our knowledge of Homer's G-reek is hardly such as to enable us to 
 pronounce quite confidently what is idiomatic in his diction, and what 
 is not, any more than in his grammar; but I seem to mj'self clearly to 
 recognise an idiomatic stamp in such expressions as ToAuireueti' tto- 
 \4fiovs, xiv, 86 ; <t)dos eV vrjeaaiu 0'^r?s, xvi, 94 ; rty' o'lo affiraaicos avrSip 
 •ydvv Kdjii^peiv, xix, 71 ; KXoTOTreieip, xix, 149 ; and many others. The 
 first-quoted expression, ToKvireveiy dpyaA4ovs noXe/xovs, seems to me to 
 have just about the same degree of freedom as the ^^jump the life to 
 come," or the '* shuffle ojf this mortal coil," of Shakspeare. 
 
LECTURE III. 87 
 
 pure and noble simplicity," he says, " is nowhere in 
 such perfection as in the Scripture and Homer : " yet 
 even with Pope a woman is a " fair," a father is a 
 " sire," and an old man a " reverend sage," and so 
 on through all the phrases of that pseudo- Augustan, 
 and most unbiblical, vocabulary. The Bible, how- 
 ever, is undoubtedly the grand mine of diction for 
 the translator of Homer ; and, if he knows how to 
 discriminate truly between what will suit him and 
 what will not, the Bible may afford him also in- 
 valuable lessons of style. 
 
 I said that Homer, besides being plain in style 
 and diction, was plain in the quality of his thought. 
 It is possible that a thought may be expressed with 
 idiomatic plainness, and yet not be in itself a plain 
 thought. For example, in Mr. Clough's poem, 
 already mentioned, the style and diction is almost 
 always idiomatic and plain, but the thought itself 
 is often of a quality which is not plain ; it is curious. 
 But the grand instance of the union of idiomatic 
 expression with curious or difficult thought is in 
 Shakspeare's poetry. Such, indeed, is the force and 
 power of Shakspeare's idiomatic expression, that it 
 gives an effect of clearness and vividness even to a 
 thought which is imperfect and incoherent; for 
 instance, when Hamlet says. 
 
 To take arms against a sea of troubles — 
 
 the figure there is undoubtedly most faulty, it by 
 
 G 4 
 
83 ON TEANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 no means runs on four legs ; but the thing is said 
 so freely and idiomatically, that it passes. This, 
 however, is not a point to which I now want to call 
 your attention ; I want you to remark, in Shakspeare 
 and others, only that which we may directly apply 
 to Homer. I say, then, that in Shakspeare the 
 thought is often, while most idiomatically uttered, 
 nay, while good and sound in itself, yet of a quality 
 which is curious and difficult ; and that this quality 
 of thought is something entirely un-Homeric. For 
 example, when Lady Macbeth says, 
 
 / Memory, the warder of the brain, 
 Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason 
 A limbeck only — ") 
 
 this figure is a perfectly sound and correct figure, no 
 doubt ; Mr. Knight even calls it a " happy " figure ; 
 but it is a difficult figure : Homer would not have 
 used it. Again, when Lady Macbeth says. 
 
 When you durst do it, then you were a man ; 
 And, to be more than what you were, you would 
 Be so much more the man — ^\ 
 
 the thought in the two last of these lines is, when 
 you seize it, a perfectly clear thought, and a fine 
 thought ; but it is a curious thought : Homer would 
 not have used it. These are favourable instances of 
 the union of plain style and words with a thought 
 not plain in quality ; but take stronger instances of 
 this union — let the thought be not only not plain in 
 quality, but highly fanciful ; and you have the 
 
LECTURE III. 89 
 
 Elizabethan conceits : you have, in spite of idiomatic 
 style and idiomatic diction, everything which is most 
 un-Homeric; you have such atrocities as this of 
 Chapman : 
 
 Fate shall fail to vent her gall 
 Till mine vent thousands. 
 
 I say, the poets of a nation which has produced 
 such a conceit as that, must purify themselves seven 
 times in the fire before they can hope to render 
 Homer. They must expel their nature with a fork, 
 and keep crying to one another night and day : 
 "Homer not only moves rapidly, not only speaks 
 idiomatically ; he is, also, free from fancifulness.^'' 
 
 So essentially characteristic of Homer is his plain- 
 ness and naturalness of thought, that to the preserva- 
 tion of this in his own version the translator must 
 without scruple sacrifice, where it is necessary, verbal 
 fidelity to his original, rather than run any risk of pro- 
 ducing, by literalness, an odd and unnatural effect. The 
 double epithets so constantly occurring in Homer 
 must be dealt with according to this rule : these 
 epithets come quite naturally in Homer's poetry ; in 
 English poetry they, in nine cases out of ten, come, 
 when literally rendered, quite unnaturally. I will not 
 now discuss why this is so, I assume it as an indisputa- 
 ble fact that it is so; that Homer's fispoircov dvOpcoircov 
 comes to the reader as something perfectly natural, 
 while Mr. Newman's " voice-dividing mortals " comes 
 to him as something perfectly unnatural. Well then, 
 as it is Homer's general effect which we are to repro- 
 
90 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 duce, it is to be false to Homer to be so verbally faithful 
 to him as that we lose this effect : and by the English 
 translator Homer's double epithets must be, in many 
 places, renounced altogether ; in all places where they 
 are rendered, rendered by equivalents which come na- 
 turally. Instead of rendering Ssrt TavvirsirXs by Mr. 
 Newman's "Thetis trailing-rob'd," which brings to one's 
 mind long petticoats sweeping a dirty pavement, the 
 translator must render the Grreek by English words 
 which come as naturally to us as Milton's words when 
 he says, " Let gorgeous Tragedy With sceptred pall 
 come sweeping by." Instead of rendering fMcowx^as 
 LTTTTovs by Chapman's " one-hoof 'd steeds," or Mr. 
 Newman's " single-hoofed horses," he must speak of 
 horses in a way which surprises us as little as Shak- 
 speare surprises us when he says, " Gallop apace, you 
 fiery-footed steeds." Instead of rendering /jLs\L7]Bsa 
 Ov/jlov by " life as honey pleasant," he must character- 
 ise life with the simple pathos of Grray's " Warm pre- 
 cincts of the cheerful day." Instead of converting 
 iroLOP as s7ro9 <j)vysv spKos oBovrcov ; into the portentous 
 remonstrance, "Betwixt the outwork of thy teeth 
 what word hath slipt ? " he must remonstrate in 
 English as straightforward as this of St. Peter, "Be 
 it far from thee. Lord, this shall not be unto thee ; " 
 or as this of the disciples, " What is this that he 
 saith, a little while ? we cannot tell what he saith." 
 Homer's Grreek, in each of the places quoted, reads 
 as naturally as any of those English passages ; the 
 
LECTURE III. 91 
 
 expression no more calls away the attention from the 
 sense in the Grreek than in the English. But when, 
 in order to render literally in English one of Homer's 
 double epithets, a strange unfamiliar adjective is 
 invented — such as "voice-dividing" for fxipo-y^rs — an 
 improper share of the reader's attention is necessarily 
 diverted to this ancillary word, to this word which 
 Homer never intended should receive so much 
 notice ; and a total effect quite different from 
 Homer's is thus produced. Therefore Mr. Newman, 
 though he does not purposely import, like Chapman, 
 conceits of his own into the Iliad, does actually im- 
 port them ; for the result of his singular diction is to 
 raise ideas, and odd ideas, not raised by the corre- 
 sponding diction in Homer; and Chapman himself does 
 no more. Cowper says, " I have cautiously avoided 
 all terms of new invention, with an abundance of 
 which persons of more ingenuity than judgment have 
 not enriched our language but encumbered it ; " and 
 this criticism so exactly hits the diction of Mr. New- 
 man, that one is irresistibly led to imagine his present 
 appearance in the flesh to be at least his second. 
 
 A translator cannot well have a Homeric rapidity, 
 style, diction, and quality of thought, without at the 
 same time having what is the result of these in 
 Homer — nobleness. Therefore I do not attempt to 
 lay down any rules for obtaining this effect of noble- 
 ness — the effect, too, of all others the most impal- 
 pable, the most irreducible to rule, and which most 
 
92 ON TEANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 depends on the individual personality of the artist. 
 So I proceed at once to give you, in conclusion, one 
 or two passages in which I have tried to follow those 
 principles of Homeric translation which I have laid 
 down. I give them, it must be remembered, not as 
 specimens of perfect translation, but as specimens of 
 an attempt to translate Homer on certain principles ; 
 specimens which may very aptly illustrate those prin- 
 ciples by falling short, as well as by succeeding. 
 
 I take first a passage of which I have already 
 spoken, the comparison of the Trojan fires to the 
 stars. The first part of that passage is, I have said, of 
 splendid beauty ; and to begin with a lame version of 
 that, would be the height of imprudence in me. It 
 is the last and more level part with which I shall 
 concern myself. I have already quoted Cowper's 
 version of this part in order to show you how unlike 
 his stiff and Miltonic manner of telling a plain story 
 is to Homer's easy and rapid manner : 
 
 So numerous seem'd those fires the bank between 
 Of Xanthus, blazing, and the fleet of Greece, 
 In prospect all of Troy — 
 
 I need not continue to the end. I have also quoted 
 Pope's version of it, to show you how unlike his ornate 
 and artificial manner is to Homer's plain and natural 
 manner : 
 
 So many flames before proud Ilion blaze. 
 
 And brighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays ; 
 
 The long reflections of the distant fires 
 
 Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires — 
 
LECTUEE III. 93 
 
 and much more of the same kind. I want to show 
 you that it is possible, in a plain passage of this sort, 
 to keep Homer's simplicity without being heavy and 
 dull ; and to keep his dignity without bringing in 
 pomp and ornament. "As numerous as are the stars 
 on a clear night," says Homer, 
 
 So shone forth, in front of Troy, by the bed of Xanthus, 
 
 Between that and the ships, the Trojans' numerous fires. 
 
 In the plain there were kindled a thousand fires : by each one 
 
 There sate fifty men, in the ruddy light of the fire : 
 
 By their chariots stood the steeds, and champ' d the white barley 
 
 While their masters sate by the fire, and waited for Morning. — 
 
 Here, in order to keep Homer's effect of perfect 
 plainness and directness, I repeat the word " fires " 
 as he repeats Trvpd, without scruple; although in a 
 more elaborate and literary style of poetry this recur- 
 rence of the same word would be a fault to be avoided. 
 I omit the epithet of Morning, and, whereas Homer 
 says that the steeds " waited for Morning," I prefer 
 to attribute this expectation of Morning to the master 
 and not to the horse. Very likely in this particular, 
 as in any other single particular, I may be wrong : 
 what I wish you to reriiark is my endeavour after 
 absolute plainness of speech, my care to avoid anj^hing 
 which may the least check or surprise the reader, 
 whom Homer does not check or surprise. Homer's 
 lively personal familiarity with war, and with the war- 
 horse as his master's companion, is such that, as it 
 seems to me, his attributing to the one the other's 
 
94 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 feelings comes to us quite naturally ; but, from a poet 
 without this familiarity, the attribution strikes as a 
 little unnatural ; and therefore, as everything the least 
 unnatural is un-Homeric, I avoid it. 
 
 Again; in the address of Zeus to the horses of 
 Achilles, Cowper has : 
 
 Jove saw their grief with pity, and his brows 
 Shaking, within himself thus, pensive, said. 
 
 " Ah hapless pair ! wherefore by gift divine 
 Were ye to Peleus given, a mortal king, 
 Yourselves immortal and from age exempt ? " 
 
 There is no want of dignity here, as in the versions 
 of Chapman and Mr. Newman, which I have already 
 quoted ; but the whole effect is much too slow. Take 
 Pope : 
 
 Nor Jove disdain' d to cast a pitying look 
 While thus relenting to the steeds he spoke. 
 " Unhappy coursers of immortal strain ! 
 Exempt from age and deathless now in vain ; 
 Did we your race on mortal man bestow 
 Only, alas ! to share in mortal woe ? " 
 
 Here there is no want either of dignity or rapidity, 
 but all is too artificial. "Nor Jove disdained," for 
 instance, is a very artificial and literary way of 
 rendering Homer's words, and so is, " coursers of im- 
 mortal strain." 
 
 MvpojjLerio h' apa rw ye Idcor, eXerjcre Kpoviojv — 
 
 And with pity the son of Saturn saw them bewailing. 
 And he shook his head, and thus address'd his own bosom : 
 " Ah, unhappy pair, to Peleus why did we give you, 
 
LECTURE III. 95 
 
 To a mortal ? but ye are without old age and immortal. 
 Was it that ye, with man, might have your thousands of sorrows ? 
 For than man, indeed, there breathes no wretcheder creature, 
 Of all living things, that on earth are breathing and moving." 
 
 Here I will observe that the use of " own," in the 
 second line, for the last syllable of a dactyl, and the 
 use of " To a," in the fourth, for a complete spondee, 
 though they do not, I think, actually spoil the run of 
 the hexameter, are yet undoubtedly instances of that 
 over-reliance on accent, and too free disregard of 
 quantity, which Lord Eedesdale visits with just re- 
 prehension.* 
 
 I now take two longer passages in order to try my 
 
 * It must be remembered, however, that, if we disregard quantity 
 too much in constructing English hexameters, we also disregard 
 accent too much in reading Greek hexameters. We read every 
 Greek dactyl so as to make a pure dactyl of it ; but, to a Greek, the 
 accent must have hindered many dactyls from sounding as pure 
 dactyls. When we read ai6\os Ittttos, for instance, or alyidxo lo, 
 the dactyl in each of these cases is made by us as pure a dactyl as 
 " Tityre," or "dignity;" but to a Greek it was not so. To him 
 aUXos must have been nearly as impure a dactyl as " death-destin'd " 
 is to us; and alyi6x nearly as impure as the " dress'd his own" of 
 my text. Nor, I think, does this right mode of pronouncing the two 
 words at all spoil the run of the line as a hexameter. The effect of 
 al6\\os %mros, (or something like that,) though not our effect, is 
 not a disagreeable one. On the other hand, Kopv9ai6\os as a paroxy- 
 tonon, although it has the respectable authority of JJddell and Scott's 
 Lexicon, (following Heyne), is certainly wrong ; for then the word 
 cannot be pronounced without throwing an accent on the first sylla- 
 ble as well as the third, and fieyas Kop^v0ai6Wo-> "Ektoj/j would 
 have been to a Greek as intolerable an ending for an hexameter line, 
 as " accurst orpkankood-destin' d houses " would be to us. The 
 best authorities, accordingly, accent KopvOaioAos as a proparoxytonon. 
 
96, ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 method more fully; but I still keep to passages 
 which have already come under our notice. I quoted 
 Chapman's version of some passages in the speech of 
 Hector at his parting with Andromache. One as- 
 tounding conceit will probably still be in your re- 
 membrance ; 
 
 When sacred Troy shall shed her tow' rs for tears of overthrow ■— 
 
 as a translation of or av iror oXcoXy *'TXlos Iprj. I 
 will quote a few lines which may give you, also, the 
 key-note to the Anglo-Augustan manner of render- 
 ing this passage, and to the Miltonic manner of 
 rendering it. What Mr. Newman's manner of render- 
 ing it would be, you can by this time sufficiently 
 imagine for yourselves. Mr. Wright — to quote for 
 once from his meritorious version instead of Cowper's, 
 whose strong and weak points are those of Mr. 
 Wright also — Mr. Wright begins his version of this 
 passage thus : 
 
 All these thy anxious cares are also mine, 
 Partner belov'd ; but how could I endure 
 The scorn of Trojans and their long-rob' d wives, 
 Should they behold their Hector shrink from war, 
 And act the coward's part? Nor doth my soul 
 Prompt the base thought. 
 
 JEx jpede Herculem : you see just what the manner 
 is. Mr. Sotheby, on the other hand, (to take a 
 disciple of Pope instead of Pope himself), begins 
 thus : 
 
LECTURE III. 97 
 
 " What moves thee, moves my mind," brave Hector said, 
 " Yet Troy's upbraiding scorn I deeply dread, 
 
 If^ like a slave, where chiefs with chiefs engage, 
 
 The warrior Hector fears the war to wage. 
 
 Not thus my heart inclines." 
 
 From that specimen, too, you can easily divine what, 
 with such a manner, will become of the whole passage. 
 But Homer has neither : 
 
 What moves thee, moves my mind — 
 nor has he : 
 
 All these thy anxious cares are also mine. 
 'H Kal e/Jiol rade Trdyra fxiKeif yvvai.' ctXXa jiaX alviog — 
 
 that is what Homer has, that is his style and move- 
 ment, if one could but catch it, Andromache, as 
 you know, has been entreating Hector to defend Troy 
 from within the walls, instead of exposing his life, 
 and, with his own life, the safety of all those dearest 
 to him, by fighting in the open plain. Hector 
 replies : 
 
 Woman, I too take thought for this ; but^then I bethink me 
 What the Trojan men and Trojan women might murmur, 
 If like a coward I skulk' d behind, apart from the battle. 
 Norwould my own heart let me; my heart, which has bid me be valiant 
 Always, and always fighting among the first of the Trojans, 
 Busy for Priam's fame and my own, in spite of the future. 
 For that day will come, my soul is assur'd of its coming, 
 It will come, when sacred Troy shall go to destruction, 
 Troy, and warlike Priam too, and the people of Priam. 
 And yet not that grief, which then will be, of the Trojans, 
 
 H 
 
98 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 Moves me so mucli — not Hecuba's grief, nor Priam my father's, 
 
 Nor my brethren's, many and brave, who then will be lying 
 
 In the bloody dust, beneath the feet of their foemen — 
 
 As thy grief, when, in tears, some brazen-coated Aehaian 
 
 Shall transport thee away, and the day of thy freedom be ended. 
 
 Then, perhaps, thou shalt work at the loom of another, in Argos, 
 
 Or bear pails to the well of Messei's, or Hypereia, 
 
 Sorely against thy will, by strong Necessity's order. 
 
 And some man may say, as he looks and sees thy tears falling : 
 
 See, the wife of Hector, that great pre-eminent captain 
 
 Of the horsemen of Troy, in the day they fought for their city. 
 
 So some man will say ; and then thy grief will redouble 
 
 At thy want of a man like me, to save thee from bondage. 
 
 But let me be dead, and the earth be mounded above me, 
 
 Ere 1 hear thy cries, and thy captivity told of. 
 
 The main question, whether or no this version 
 reproduces for him the movement and general effect 
 of Homer better than other versions * of the same 
 passage, I leave for the judgment of the scholar. 
 But the particular points, in which the operation of 
 my own rules is manifested, are as follows. In the 
 second line I leave out the epithet of the Trojan 
 women, sKKsaL'rri'Tfkovs, altogether. In the sixth line 
 I put in five words, '^ in spite of the future," which 
 are in the original by implication only, and are not 
 there actually expressed. This I do, because Homer, 
 as I have before said, is so remote from one who reads 
 him in English, that the English translator must 
 
 * Dr. Hawtrey^also has translated this passage ; but here, he 
 has not, I think, been so successful as in his " Helen on the walls of 
 Troy." 
 
LECTURE III. 99 
 
 be even plainer, if possible, and more unambiguous 
 than Homer himself; the connection of meaning 
 must be even more distinctly marked in the trans- 
 lation than in the original. For in the Greek 
 language itself there is something which brings one 
 nearer to Homer, which gives one a clue to his 
 thought, which makes a hint enough; but in the 
 English language this sense of nearness, this clue, 
 is gone ; hints are insufficient, everything must be 
 stated with full distinctness. In the ninth line 
 Homer's epithet for Priam is ivfjifjuskio)^-" armed with 
 good ashen spear," say the dictionaries ; '' ashen- 
 speared," translates Mr. Newman, following his own 
 rule to "retain every peculiarity of his original" — I 
 say, on the other hand, that iv/xfjusXcQ) has not the 
 effect of a " peculiarity " in the original while 
 " ashen-speared " has the effect of a " peculiarity " in 
 English ; and " warlike " is as marking an equivalent 
 as I dare give for sv/jlimsXIco, for fear of disturbing 
 the balance of expression in Homer's sentence. In 
 the fourteenth line, again, I translate ^^Xko'^itcopwv 
 by "brazen-coated:" Mr. Newman, meaning to be 
 perfectly literal, translates it by " brazen-cloak'd," 
 an expression which comes to the reader oddly and 
 unnaturally, while Homer's word comes to him quite 
 naturally ; but I venture to go as near to a literal 
 rendering as " brazen-coated," because a " coat of 
 brass" is familiar to us all from the Bible, and 
 
 B 2 
 
100 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 familiar, too, as distinctly specified in connection 
 with the wearer. Finally, let me farther illustrate 
 from the twentieth line the value which I attach, 
 in a question of diction, to the authority of the 
 Bible. The word "pre-eminent" occurs in that 
 line : I was a little in doubt whether that was not 
 too bookish an expression to be used in rendering 
 Homer, as I can imagine Mr. Newman to have been 
 a little in doubt whether his " responsively accosted," 
 for d/jbSi^o/ubsvos irpoasc^rj, was not too bookish an ex- 
 pression. Let us both, I say, consult our Bibles : Mr. 
 Newman will nowhere find in his Bible that David, for 
 instance, " responsively accosted Groliath ; " but I do 
 find in mine that " the right hand of the Lord hath 
 \h.e jpre-emineiice f^ and forthwith I use ^^pre-eminent" 
 without scruple. My Bibliolatry is perhaps excessive ; 
 and no doubt a true poetic feeling is the Homeric 
 translator's best guide in the use of words; but 
 where this feeling does not exist, or is at fault, I 
 think he cannot do better than take for a mechanical 
 guide Cruden's Concordance. To be sure, here as 
 elsewhere, the consult er must know how to consult — 
 must know how very slight a variation of word or 
 circumstance makes the difference between an au- 
 thority in his favour and an authority which gives 
 him no countenance at all : for instance, the " Grreat 
 simpleton I " (for fjLsya vrjirios) of Mr. Newman, and 
 the " Thou fool ! " of the Bible, are something alike ; 
 but " Thou fool ! " is very grand, and " Great simple- 
 
LECTURE III. 101 
 
 ton ! " is an atrocity. So, too, Chapman's " Poor 
 wretched beasts " is pitched many degrees too low ; 
 but Shakspeare's " Poor venomous fool. Be angry and 
 despatch ! " is in the grand style. 
 
 One more piece of translation, and I have done. 
 I will take the passage in which both Chapman and 
 Mr. Newman have already so much excited our 
 astonishment, the passage at the end of the nine- 
 teenth book of the Iliad, the dialogue between 
 Achilles and his horse Xanthus, after the death of 
 Patroclus. Achilles begins : 
 
 "Xanthus and Balius "both, ye far-fara'd seed of Podarga! 
 See that ye bring your master home to the host of the Argives 
 In some other sort than your last, when the battle is ended ; 
 And not leave him behind, a corpse on the plain, like Patroclus." 
 
 Then, from beneath the yoke, the fleet horse Xanthus address' d him : 
 Sudden he bow'd his head, and aU his mane, as he bow'd it, 
 Stream'd to the ground by the yoke, escaping from under the collar; 
 And he was given a voice by the white-arm' d Groddess Hera. 
 
 " Truly, yet this time will we save thee, mighty Achilles ! 
 But thy day of death is at hand ; nor shall we be the reason — 
 No, but the will of Heaven, and Fate's invincible power. 
 For by no slow pace or want of swiftness of ours 
 Did the Trojans obtain to strip the arms from Patroclus ; 
 But that prince among Gods, the son of the lovely-hair' d Leto, 
 Slew him fighting in front of the fray, and glorified Hector- 
 But, for us, we vie in speed with the breath of the West- Wind, 
 Which, men say, is the fleetest of winds ; 'tis thou who art fated 
 To lie low in death, by the hand of a Grod and a Mortal." 
 
 Thus far he ; and here his voice was stopped by the Furies. 
 Then, with a troubled heart, the swift Achilles address' d him : 
 
 "Why dost thou prophesy so my death to me, Xanthus ? It needs not. 
 
102 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 I of myself know well, that here I am destin'd to perish, 
 Far from my father and mother dear : for all that, I will not 
 Stay this hand from %ht, till the Trojans are utterly routed." 
 
 So he spake, and drove with a cry his steeds into battle. 
 
 Here the only particular remark which I will make 
 is, that in the fourth and eighth line the grammar is 
 what I call a loose and idiomatic grammar; in writing 
 a regular and literary style, one would in the fourth 
 line have to repeat, before "leave," the words "that 
 ye " from the second line, and to insert the word 
 " do ; " and in the eighth line one would not use such 
 an expression as " he was given a, voice." But I will 
 make one general remark on the character of my own 
 translations, as I have made so many on that of the 
 translations of others. It is, that over the graver 
 passages there is shed an air somewhat too strenuous 
 and severe, by comparison with that lovely ease and 
 sweetness which Homer, for all his noble and mascu- 
 line way of thinking, never loses. 
 
 Here I stop. I have said so much, because I think 
 that the task of translating Homer into English verse 
 both will be re-attempted, and may be re-attempted 
 successfully. There are great works composed of 
 parts so disparate, that one translator is not likely to 
 have the requisite gifts for poetically rendering all of 
 them. Such are the works of Shakspeare, and 
 Groethe's Faust ; and these it is best to attempt to 
 render in prose only. People praise Tieck and 
 
LECTURE III. 103 
 
 Sclilegel's version of Shakspeare C I, for my part^ 
 would sooner read Shakspeare in the French prose 
 translation, and that is saying a great deal; but in 
 the Grerman poets' hands Shakspeare so often gets, 
 especially where he is humorous, an air of what the 
 French call niaiserie! and can anything be more 
 un-Shakspearian than that ?) Again ; Mr. Hayward's 
 prose translation of the first part of Faust — so good 
 that it makes one regret Mr. Hayward should have 
 abandoned the line of translation for a kind of litera- 
 ture which is, to say the least, somewhat slight — is 
 not likely to be surpassed by any translation in verse. 
 But poems like the Iliad, which, in the main, are in 
 one manner, may hope to find a poetical translator 
 so gifted and so trained as to be able to learn that 
 one manner, and to reproduce it. Only, the poet 
 who would reproduce this must cultivate in himself 
 a G-reek virtue by no means common among the 
 moderns in general, and the English in particular — 
 moderation. For Homer has not only the English 
 vigour, he has the Grreek grace ; and when one observes 
 the boisterous, rollicking way, in which his English 
 admirers — even men of genius, like the late Professor 
 Wilson — love to talk of Homer and his poetry, one 
 cannot help feeling that there is no very deep com- 
 munity of nature between them and the object of 
 their enthusiasm. "It is very well, my good friends," 
 I always imagine Homer saying to them, if he could 
 hear them : " you do me a great deal of honour, but 
 
104 ON TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 somehow or other you praise me too like barbarians." 
 For Homer's grandeur is not the mixed and turbid 
 grandeur of the great poets of the north, of the 
 authors of Othello and Faust ; it is a perfect, a lovely- 
 grandeur. Certainly his poetry has all the energy 
 and power of the poetry of our ruder climates ; but 
 it has, besides, the pure lines of an Ionian horizon, 
 the liquid clearness of an Ionian sky. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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