] the
miseries
poured out on human
fates?
fates?
Universal Anthology - v02
We, lightly drifting the blue waves among,
Soon in our course such interval attain
As that the ear might catch the Sirens' song.
Nor did the swift ship moving through the main
Escape them, while they sang this sweet soul-piercing strain :
" Hither, Odysseus, great Achaian name, Turn thy swift keel and listen to our lay; Since never pilgrim near these regions came
In black ship, on the azure fields astray,
THE SIRENS, SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.
But heard our sweet voice ere he sailed away, And in his joy passed on with ampler mind.
We know what labors were in ancient day Wrought in wide Troia, as the gods assigned ;
We know from land to land all toils of mankind. "
While their sweet music took my spirit thus.
I with drawn brows made signal for release ;
But Perimedes and Eurylochus
Bind me yet faster and the cords increase, Nor for my passion would the seamen cease
Their rowing. When no more the Sirens' song Thrilled the deep air, and on my soul came peace,
My trusty mariners unsealed ere long
Their ears, and from my limbs unwound the cordage strong.
When we had left the island in our lee,
I looked, and straight in front toward heaven uprolled
Smoke, and the noises of a roaring sea,
So that with terror every heart sank cold, And from the feeble fingers' trembling hold
Each oar dropt, whirring in the downward flood. Dead paused the ship, no longer now controlled
By slantless oar-blades ; and I passed and stood Near each, and thus essayed to calm his fearful mood :
" Friends, we are not in dangers all unlearned, Nor have we lighted on a vaster woe
Than when the Cyclops, who all justice spurned, Held us immured, disdaining to let go
His captive guests. Yet verily even so
This mind and arm a great deliverance wrought. And surely at this hour I feel, I know,
That we shall yet live to recount in thought
These labors. Come, take heart, obey me as ye ought,
" Lean to your oars and the wild breakers sweep, If haply Zeus vouchsafe our souls to spare.
Thou, steersman, in thy breast this mandate keep, Since of the hollow ship thou hast chief care — And at thy will dost wield her here and there :
Hold her well clear of this smoke-clouded sea, And hug the adverse rock, lest unaware
We to the whirling gulf drift violently,
And thou o'erwhelm us all in dire calamity. " . . .
THE SIRENS, SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.
I my illustrious mail assuming now,
Holding in each hand a long-shafted spear,
Move to the black ship's bulwark near the prow, First on that side expecting to appear Rock-lurking Scylla, destined soon to bear
Such dread disaster to my comrades brave. Nor yet could I discern her anywhere,
Though still my tired eyes straining glances gave, And pored both far and deep to pierce her murky cave.
We groaning sailed the strait. Here Scylla lay, And there divine Charybdis, with huge throat
Gorging salt waves, which when she cast away
She spurned with hisses (as when fire makes hot Some caldron) and the steamy froth upshot
Wide o'er both rocks. But when she gorged again, Drunk with abysmal gurglings, one might note
The dark sands of the immeasurable main
Gleam iron-blue. The rocks loud-bellowing roared amain.
We pale with dread stared at her, fearing death. But ravenous Scylla from the hollow bark
Six of our bravest comrades at a breath
Seized with her six necks. Turning round I mark Their forms quick vanishing toward the cavern dark,
And feet and fingers dangling in mid air ;
Yea, and my ear each several voice could mark
Which for the last time shrieked, with no one there To help them — on my name they called in wild despair.
As when some fisher, angling in the deep, Casts with a long rod for the smaller fry
Baits and a bull's horn, from some jutting steep, And hurls the snared prey to the land close by Gasping, so these were to the rocks on high
Drawn gasping, and the monster gorged them down, Stretching their hands with a loud bitter cry
Toward me their captain. This was my grief's crown. Never in all my toils like anguish have I known.
vol. n. — 10
146 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. By MATTHEW ARNOLD.
[Matthew Arnold: English poet, essayist, and critic; born at Laleham, December 24, 1822; died at Liverpool, April 15, 1888. He was professor of poetry at Oxford, 1857-1867. He was government inspector of schools for nearly forty years. His earliest published works were his prize poems, " Alaric at Rome," written at Rugby, and "Cromwell," written at Oxford. His poeti cal works include " The Strayed Reveler, and Other Poems " (1848) ; " Emped- ocles on Etna" (1853); "Merope," a tragedy (1857); "New Poems" (1868). His prose essays include "Lectures on Celtic Literature," and "Lectures on Translating Homer," "Culture and Anarchy," "Literature and Dogma," and " Discourses on America. "]
I. Pope's Translation.
Homer's verses were some of the first words which a young Athenian heard. He heard them from his mother or his nurse before he went to school ; and at school, when he went there, he was constantly occupied with them. So much did he hear of them that Socrates proposes, in the interests of morality, to have selections from Homer made, and placed in the hands of mothers and nurses, in his model republic ; in order that, of an author with whom they were sure to be so perpetually conver sant, the young might learn only those parts which might do them good. His language was as familiar to Sophocles, we may be quite sure, as the language of the Bible is to us.
Nay, more. Homer's language was not, of course, in the time of Sophocles, the spoken or written language of ordinary life, any more than the language of the Bible, any more than the language of poetry, is with us : but for one great species of composition — epic poetry — it was still the current language ; it was the language in which every one who made that sort of poetry composed. Every one at Athens who dabbled in epic poetry, not only understood Homer's language, — he possessed it. He possessed it as every one who dabbles in poetry with us pos sesses what may be called the poetical vocabulary, as distin guished from the vocabulary of common speech and of modern prose :
for spoke, aye for ever, don for put on, charmed for charmed, and thousands of others. "
I mean, such expressions as perchance for perhaps, spake
Robert Wood, whose
Essay on the Genius of Homer
"
is
words)
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
147
mentioned by Goethe as one of the books which fell into his hands when his powers were first developing themselves, and strongly interested him, relates 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 Granville, a few days before he died, with the preliminary 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 prolong 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.
" <3iriirov, tt pjtv yap TroXtfiov irtpl rovSe <pvy6vrc,
alti p-eXXoi/iev ayqput r adavaru> re
iaataff ovre kcv avros ivl irpiiroiat p. a\oip. r)V, ovtc <t <rt ortAAotjiu pAyyyv KvBidvupav
vvv — ip-mis yap Krjpv; i<pctrra<riv Oavdroio — fivpuu, as ovk fori tftvyiiv f3porov, ova' vira\v£ai lo/uy.
His lordship repeated the last words several times with calm and determinate resignation and after 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 dying statesman use his own
on the most glorious war, and most honorable peace, this nation ever saw. '"
quote this story, first, because interesting as exhibit ing the English aristocracy at its very height of culture, lofty spirit, and greatness, towards the middle of the last century.
quote it, secondly, because seems to me to illustrate Goethe's saying, that our life, in Homer's view of it, represents conflict and hell and brings out, too, what there tonic and forti fying in this doctrine. quote it, lastly, because shows that the passage just one of those in translating which Pope will be at his best, passage of strong emotion and oratorical move ment, not of simple narrative or description.
Could all our care elude the gloomy grave Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
Pope translates the passage thus —
:
it is
is a
a
I
I
'
; 8*
, Stj
it
I
it
a
;
is
(I
a
it
a
a
is
'
148 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
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 out highly intellectualized ; 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
suited to the feeling or to the movement 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 very far from my wish to hold Pope up to ridicule, so shall not quote the commencement of the pas sage, which in the original of great and celebrated beauty, and in translating which Pope has been singularly and notori ously 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 thousand fires in the plain and by each one there sat 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 follow ing —
So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,
And brighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays
;
:
;
is is
a
it,
I
is
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 149
The long reflections of the distant fires
Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires.
A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,
And shoot a shady luster o'er the field.
Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,
Whose umbered 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 pas sages he is powerful, as Homer is powerful, though not in the same way ; but in plain narrative, where Homer is still power ful and delightful, Pope, by the inherent fault of his style, is ineffective 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 com poses "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 con veys to us through a medium. He aims at turning Homer's sentiments pointedly and rhetorically ; at investing Homer's description with ornament 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 ornamenting itself, is worthless.
Therefore, I say, the translator of Homer should 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.
II. Chapman's Version.
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
150 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
line, which has been so much commended, Homeric : but it is not distinctly anti-Homeric, like the movement of Milton's blank verse ; and it has a rapidity of its own. Chapman's dic tion, 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 advantages, 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 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 vigor and richness. This age, too, showed what it could do in translating, by producing a masterpiece, its version of the Bible.
Chapman's translation has often been praised as eminently Homeric. Keats' fine sonnet in its honor every 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 ! " and that from a deeper cause than any unfaithful ness occasioned by the fetters of rhyme.
I said that there were four things which eminently distin guished Homer, and with a sense of which Homer's translator should penetrate himself as fully as possible. One of these four things was the plainness 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 remarkable. But as eminently as Homer is plain, so eminently is the Elizabethan literature in general, and Chapman in particular, fanciful.
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 151
Steeped in humors 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 dedications. You will find —
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, etc.
All the Middle Age, with its grotesqueness, its conceits, its irrationality, is still in these opening pages : they by them selves are sufficient to indicate to us what a gulf divides Chap man from the " clearest-souled " of poets, from Homer ; almost as great a gulf as that which divides him from Voltaire. Pope has been sneered at for saying that Chapman writes " somewhat as one might imagine Homer himself 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
152 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
says it, — " Though truth in her very nakedness sits in so deep a pit, that from Gades to Aurora, and Ganges, 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 morning of our poet, he shall now gird his temples with the sun," — I say, Homer was as incapable of saying this in that manner, as Voltaire himself would have been. Homer, indeed, has actually an affinity with Voltaire in the unrivaled 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 com plete 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 rationality.
My limits will not allow me to do more than shortly illus trate, from Chapman's version of the Iliad, what I mean when I speak of this vital difference between Homer and an Eliza bethan 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 passages for the express purpose of making Chapman appear ridiculous ; Chapman, like Pope, merits in himself all respect, though he too, like Pope, fails to render Homer.
if indeed, but once this battle avoided, We were forever to live without growing old and immortal.
Chapman cannot be satisfied with this, but must add a fancy
to it
not wrack
In this life's human sea at all;
and so on. Again : in another passage which I have before quoted, where Zeus says to the horses of Peleus,
In that tonic speech of Sarpedon, of which I have said so much, Homer, you may remember, has —
y; keeping back
Would keep back age from us, and death, and that we might
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 153
Why gave we you to royal Peleus, to a mortal ? but ye are with out old age, and immortal.
Chapman sophisticates this into —
Why gave we you t' a mortal king, when immortality And incapacity ofage so dignifies your states 9
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 time, when the battle is ended," Chapman sophisticates 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 Androm ache, Homer makes him say : " Nor does my own heart so bid me " (to keep safe behind the walls), " since I have learned to be stanch 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 hand 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, Wfiose office is to lead in fight, and give no danger pass 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. " 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 forever, but I could not give you a better illus tration than this last, of what I mean by saying that the Eliza bethan 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 Elizabethan, as Pope translates it into the Augustan of Queen Anne ; both convey
154 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
it to us through a medium. Homer, on the other hand, sees his object 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 dress ing, eating, drinking, harnessing, traveling, going to bed), — that is, to treat such subjects 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 artificial, must not be literary ; true : but then also he must not be commonplace, must not be ignoble.
III. Ballad Verse.
" The most really and truly Homeric of all the creations of the English muse is," says Mr. Newman's critic in the National Review, " the ballad poetry of ancient times ; and the associa tion between meter and subject is one that it would be true wisdom to preserve. " " It is confessed," says Chapman's last editor, Mr. Hooper, " that the fourteen-syllable verse " (that is, a ballad verse) " is peculiarly 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 undisputable merits, that he was "the first who consciously realized to himself the truth that Greek ballads can be really represented in English only by a similar measure. "
This proposition that Homer's poetry is ballad poetry, analo gous 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 dis credit 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 favor, that it is now much more impor tant to insist on the large part of error contained in than to extol its small part of truth. It time to say plainly that, whatever the admirers of our old ballads may think, the su
is
it,
or in —
Now Christ thee save and see,
While the tinker did dine, he had plenty of wine.
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
155
preme form of epic poetry, the genuine Homeric mold, 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 Maeonides, And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old,
than in —
Now Christ thee save, thou proud porter,
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 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 master work, the cooperation or consolidation of several poets becomes possible, for talent is not uncommon ; the moment you have much less than a master work, they be come easy, for mediocrity is everywhere.
I can imagine fifty Bradys joined with as many Tates to make the New Version of the Psalms. I can imagine several poets having contributed to any one of the old English ballads in Percy's collection. I can imagine several poets, possessing, like Chapman, the Elizabethan vigor 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 Germans, in their joy at discovering a national epic of their
156 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
own, have rated vastly higher than it deserves. And lastly, though Mr. Newman's translation of Homer bears the strong mark of his own idiosyncrasy, yet I can imagine Mr. Newman and a 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. 1 Many artists, again, have represented Moses ; but there is only one Moses of Michael Angelo. So the insurmountable obstacle to believing 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 instinctively seek a style in which their comparative inferiority 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 un able 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 vigor 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 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 "garrulity" 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 inappropriate to render Homer. Homer's manner and movement are always 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 quali
ties of the ballad manner. Based on grand traditions, which
v
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 157
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 Sheri dan's saying that easy writing may be often such hard reading. But, instead of occupying myself with the Nibelungen Lay, I prefer to look at the ballad style as directly applied to Homer, in Chapman's version and Mr. Newman's, and in the " Homeric Ballads " of Dr. Maginn.
First I take Chapman. I have already shown that Chap man's conceits are un-Homeric, and that his rhyme is un-
I will now show how his manner and movement are
Homeric ;
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 nobleness. In a passage which I have already quoted, the address of Zeus to the horses of Achilles, Chapman has —
" Poor wretched beasts," said he,
" Why gave we you to a mortal king, when immortality
And incapacity of age so dignifies your states ?
Was it to haste [taste ?
] the miseries poured out on human
fates? "
There are many faults in this rendering of Chapman's, but what I particularly wish to notice in it is the expression " Poor wretched beasts. " 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 requires 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 SctXto is as plain, as simple, as "Poor wretched beasts"; but it is also noble, which " " Poor wretched beasts " is not. " Poor wretched beasts in truth, little over-familiar, but this no objec
is,
a
is
158 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
tion 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. New man'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 prophesied his death to him.
Achilles, far in rage,
Thus answered 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-hoofed
steeds.
For what regards the manner of this passage, the words " Achilles Thus answered 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 *^8'
These words said, he fell to horrid deeds, Gave dreadful signal, and forthright made fly his one-
hoofed steeds, —
who does not feel the vital difference of the movement 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 vigor 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 iffreedom 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
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 159
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-trooping heroes of Percy's ' Reliques ' ; " and a description 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.
I suppose that when Scott is in what may be called full ballad swing, no one will hesitate to pronounce 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 lifeblood 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, Full upon Scotland's central host,
Or victory and England's lost.
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 saccadS, its rapidity is " jerky " ; whereas Homer's rapidity is a flowing rapidity. But this is something external and material ; it is but the outward and 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 par ticular 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
160 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
to put them side by side with this of Scott. For example, when Homer says, —
Be content, good friend, die also thou ! why lamentest thou thy self on this wise ? Patroclus too died, who was a far better than thou, —
that is in the grand style. When Virgil says, —
From me, young man, learn nobleness of soul and true effort : learn success from others, —
that is in the grand style. When Dante says, —
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 center it behooves me first to fall, —
that is in the grand style. When Milton says, —
His form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined, and the excess Of glory obscured, —
that, finally, is in the grand style. Now let any one, after re peating 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 with out ; and this something is precisely the grand manner. It is no disrespect to Scott to say that he does not attain to this man ner 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 instrument which he felt he could not truly use, — and in this attempt he has but imperfectly suc ceeded. 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
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 161
less good style, than the original ballad style ; while 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 masterpiece.
Tunstall lies dead upon the field,
His lifeblood 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 my feeling, Homer's performance, even through that pale and far-off shadow of a prose translation, still has a hundred 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 : 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 Eng lish 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 fundamental proposition, Homer is noble. " For it is seen how large a share this nobleness has in producing that general effect of his, which it is the main business of a translator to reproduce.
VOL. II. — 11
162 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. IV. The Tkue Principles.
Homer is rapid in his movement, 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 be cause he is artificial both in his style and in his words ; Chap man 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 instance, 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 rapid ity is not of the same sort as Homer's rapidity, nor are his plain ness 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 move ment, words, style, and manner are often far enough from resembling Homer's movement, 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 contrast with Homer's ; still it is by the oddness of his diction and the ignobleness of his manner that he contrasts with Homer the most violently. "
Therefore the translator must not say to himself:
is noble, Pope is rapid, Chapman has a good diction, Mr. New man has a good cast of sentence; I will avoid Cowper's slow ness, Pope's artificiality, Chapman's conceits, Mr. Newman's oddity; I will take Cowper's dignified manner, Pope's impetu ous movement, Chapman's vocabulary, Mr. Newman's syntax, and so make a perfect translation of Homer. " Undoubtedly 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 therefore 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.
Cowper
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 163
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 nobleness, — the effect, too, of all others the most impalpable, the most irreducible to rule, and which most depends on the individual personality of the artist. So I pro ceed at once to give you, in conclusion, one or two passages in which I have tried to follow those principles of Homeric transla tion which I have laid down. I give them, it must be remem bered, not as specimens of perfect translation, but as specimens of an attempt to translate Homer on certain principles ; speci mens which may very aptly illustrate those principles 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 seemed 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,
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 sim plicity 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.
164 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
In the plain there were kindled a thousand fires ; by each one There sat fifty men, in the ruddy light of the fire :
By their chariots stood the steeds, and champed the white barley While their masters sat 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 irvpd, with out scruple ; although in a more elaborate and literary style of poetry this recurrence 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 remark is my endeavor after absolute plainness of speech, my care to avoid anything which may the least check or surprise the reader, whom Homer does not check or surprise. Homer's lively per sonal familiarity with war, and with the war horse as his mas ter's companion, is such that, as it seems to me, his attributing to the one the other's 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 Chap man and Mr. Newman, which I have already quoted ; but the whole effect is much too slow. Take Pope : —
Nor Jove disdained 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 I 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
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
165
artificial and literary way of rendering Homer's words, and so is "coursers of immortal strain. "
And with pity the son of Saturn saw them bewailing,
And he shook his head, and thus addressed his own bosom : —
" Ah, unhappy pair, to Peleus why did we give you,
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 overreliance on accent, and too free disregard of quantity, which Lord Redesdale visits with just reprehension.
I now take two longer passages in order to try my 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 Androm ache. One astounding conceit will probably still be in your remembrance, —
When sacred Troy shall shed her towers for tears of overthrow.
I will quote a few lines which may give you also the keynote to the Anglo-Augustan manner of rendering this passage, and to the Miltonic manner of rendering it. What Mr. Newman's manner of rendering it would be, you can by this time suffi ciently 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 beloved ; but how could I endure
The scorn of Trojans and their long-robed wives, Should they behold their Hector shrink from war, And act the coward's part ? Nor doth my soul Prompt the base thought.
Ex pede 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 : —
166
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
" 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 nor has he
What moves thee, moves my mind, — All these thy anxious cares are also mine.
'H kcu t/xoi to&c rravra fuXo, yvvca ' dAAa fxaX ohms, —
that is what Homer has, that is his style and movement, 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 skulked behind, apart from the battle. Nor would 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 assured 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, Moves me so much — 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 Achaian 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 Messeis, 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 ofHector, that great preeminent captain
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 167
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 I 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, i\iceo-nreir\ov<;, 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 be even plainer, if possible, and more unambiguous than Homer himself ; the connection of meaning must be even more distinctly marked in the translation than in the original. For in the Greek language itself there is something which brings one nearer to Homer, which gives one a clew to his thought, which makes a hint enough : but in the English language this sense of nearness, this clew, is gone ; hints are insufficient, everything must be stated with full distinctness.
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 nineteenth 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-famed 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 ad dressed him :
Sudden he bowed his head, and all his mane, as he bowed it, Streamed to the ground by the yoke, escaping from under the
collar ;
And he was given a voice by the white-armed Goddess Hera.
"Truly, yet this time will we save thee, mighty Achilles t But thy day of death is at hand ; nor shall we be the reason —
168 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
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-haired 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 God and a Mortal. "
Thus far he ; and here his voice was stopped by the Furies. Then, with a troubled heart, the swift Achilles addressed him :
" Why dost thou prophesy so my death to me, Xanthus ? It needs not.
I of myself know well, that here I am destined to perish,
Far from my father and mother dear : for all that I will not Stay this hand from fight, till the Trojans are utterly routed. "
So he spake, and drove with a cry his steeds into battle.
There are also one or two particular considerations which confirm me in the opinion that for translating Homer into English verse the hexameter should be used. The most suc cessful attempt hitherto made at rendering 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 the mention of Castor and Pollux. 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 translation of Homer, along with Professor Thomp son and Professor Jowett, whose connection with Greek litera ture is official. The passage is short : 1 and Dr. Hawtrey's version of it is suffused with a pensive grace which is perhaps rather more Virgilian than Homeric; still it is the one ver
1 " Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed 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, — Polydeuces brave with the cestus, —
Own dear brethren of mine, — one parent loved us as infants.
Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved LacedEemon,
Or, though they came with the rest in ships that bound through 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 awakened ?
So said she : — they long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing, There, in their own dear land, their Fatherland, Lacedaemon.
English Hexameter Translations; London, 1847; p. 212.
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 169
sion 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.
Here I stop. I have said so much, because I think that the task of translating Homer into English verse both will be reattempted, and may be reattempted successfully. There are great works composed of parts so disparate that one trans lator is not likely to have the requisite gifts for poetically rendering all of them. Such are the works of Shakespeare, and Goethe's " Faust " ; and these it is best to attempt to ren der in prose only. People praise Tieck and Schlegel's version of Shakespeare : I, for my part, would sooner read Shakespeare in the French prose translation, and that is saying a great deal ; but in the German poets' hands Shakespeare so often gets, especially where he is humorous, an air of what the French call niaiserie! and can anything be more un-Shakespearean than that ? Again : Mr. Hay ward'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 literature 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 Greek virtue by no means common among the moderns in general, and the English in particular, — moderation. For Homer has not only the English vigor, he has the Greek grace ; and when one observes the bolstering, rollicking way in which his English admirers — even men of genius, like the late Pro fessor Wilson — love to talk of Homer and his poetry, one can not help feeling that there is no very deep community 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 honor, but 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 hori zon, the liquid clearness of an Ionian sky.
170 HECTOR, PARIS, HELEN, ANDROMACHE.
HECTOR, PARIS, HELEN, ANDROMACHE. By GEORGE CHAPMAN.
[Geobgb Chapman, English poet of the age of Elizabeth, James I. , and Charles I. , was born in 1559, and graduated at Cambridge. He was very slow in development: his first poem, "The Shadow of Night," was published at thirty-five, and his first play, "The Blind Beggar of Alexandria," at thirty-nine, when also appeared the first part (remodeled later) of his translation of the Hiad, his one living work.
Soon in our course such interval attain
As that the ear might catch the Sirens' song.
Nor did the swift ship moving through the main
Escape them, while they sang this sweet soul-piercing strain :
" Hither, Odysseus, great Achaian name, Turn thy swift keel and listen to our lay; Since never pilgrim near these regions came
In black ship, on the azure fields astray,
THE SIRENS, SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.
But heard our sweet voice ere he sailed away, And in his joy passed on with ampler mind.
We know what labors were in ancient day Wrought in wide Troia, as the gods assigned ;
We know from land to land all toils of mankind. "
While their sweet music took my spirit thus.
I with drawn brows made signal for release ;
But Perimedes and Eurylochus
Bind me yet faster and the cords increase, Nor for my passion would the seamen cease
Their rowing. When no more the Sirens' song Thrilled the deep air, and on my soul came peace,
My trusty mariners unsealed ere long
Their ears, and from my limbs unwound the cordage strong.
When we had left the island in our lee,
I looked, and straight in front toward heaven uprolled
Smoke, and the noises of a roaring sea,
So that with terror every heart sank cold, And from the feeble fingers' trembling hold
Each oar dropt, whirring in the downward flood. Dead paused the ship, no longer now controlled
By slantless oar-blades ; and I passed and stood Near each, and thus essayed to calm his fearful mood :
" Friends, we are not in dangers all unlearned, Nor have we lighted on a vaster woe
Than when the Cyclops, who all justice spurned, Held us immured, disdaining to let go
His captive guests. Yet verily even so
This mind and arm a great deliverance wrought. And surely at this hour I feel, I know,
That we shall yet live to recount in thought
These labors. Come, take heart, obey me as ye ought,
" Lean to your oars and the wild breakers sweep, If haply Zeus vouchsafe our souls to spare.
Thou, steersman, in thy breast this mandate keep, Since of the hollow ship thou hast chief care — And at thy will dost wield her here and there :
Hold her well clear of this smoke-clouded sea, And hug the adverse rock, lest unaware
We to the whirling gulf drift violently,
And thou o'erwhelm us all in dire calamity. " . . .
THE SIRENS, SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.
I my illustrious mail assuming now,
Holding in each hand a long-shafted spear,
Move to the black ship's bulwark near the prow, First on that side expecting to appear Rock-lurking Scylla, destined soon to bear
Such dread disaster to my comrades brave. Nor yet could I discern her anywhere,
Though still my tired eyes straining glances gave, And pored both far and deep to pierce her murky cave.
We groaning sailed the strait. Here Scylla lay, And there divine Charybdis, with huge throat
Gorging salt waves, which when she cast away
She spurned with hisses (as when fire makes hot Some caldron) and the steamy froth upshot
Wide o'er both rocks. But when she gorged again, Drunk with abysmal gurglings, one might note
The dark sands of the immeasurable main
Gleam iron-blue. The rocks loud-bellowing roared amain.
We pale with dread stared at her, fearing death. But ravenous Scylla from the hollow bark
Six of our bravest comrades at a breath
Seized with her six necks. Turning round I mark Their forms quick vanishing toward the cavern dark,
And feet and fingers dangling in mid air ;
Yea, and my ear each several voice could mark
Which for the last time shrieked, with no one there To help them — on my name they called in wild despair.
As when some fisher, angling in the deep, Casts with a long rod for the smaller fry
Baits and a bull's horn, from some jutting steep, And hurls the snared prey to the land close by Gasping, so these were to the rocks on high
Drawn gasping, and the monster gorged them down, Stretching their hands with a loud bitter cry
Toward me their captain. This was my grief's crown. Never in all my toils like anguish have I known.
vol. n. — 10
146 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. By MATTHEW ARNOLD.
[Matthew Arnold: English poet, essayist, and critic; born at Laleham, December 24, 1822; died at Liverpool, April 15, 1888. He was professor of poetry at Oxford, 1857-1867. He was government inspector of schools for nearly forty years. His earliest published works were his prize poems, " Alaric at Rome," written at Rugby, and "Cromwell," written at Oxford. His poeti cal works include " The Strayed Reveler, and Other Poems " (1848) ; " Emped- ocles on Etna" (1853); "Merope," a tragedy (1857); "New Poems" (1868). His prose essays include "Lectures on Celtic Literature," and "Lectures on Translating Homer," "Culture and Anarchy," "Literature and Dogma," and " Discourses on America. "]
I. Pope's Translation.
Homer's verses were some of the first words which a young Athenian heard. He heard them from his mother or his nurse before he went to school ; and at school, when he went there, he was constantly occupied with them. So much did he hear of them that Socrates proposes, in the interests of morality, to have selections from Homer made, and placed in the hands of mothers and nurses, in his model republic ; in order that, of an author with whom they were sure to be so perpetually conver sant, the young might learn only those parts which might do them good. His language was as familiar to Sophocles, we may be quite sure, as the language of the Bible is to us.
Nay, more. Homer's language was not, of course, in the time of Sophocles, the spoken or written language of ordinary life, any more than the language of the Bible, any more than the language of poetry, is with us : but for one great species of composition — epic poetry — it was still the current language ; it was the language in which every one who made that sort of poetry composed. Every one at Athens who dabbled in epic poetry, not only understood Homer's language, — he possessed it. He possessed it as every one who dabbles in poetry with us pos sesses what may be called the poetical vocabulary, as distin guished from the vocabulary of common speech and of modern prose :
for spoke, aye for ever, don for put on, charmed for charmed, and thousands of others. "
I mean, such expressions as perchance for perhaps, spake
Robert Wood, whose
Essay on the Genius of Homer
"
is
words)
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
147
mentioned by Goethe as one of the books which fell into his hands when his powers were first developing themselves, and strongly interested him, relates 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 Granville, a few days before he died, with the preliminary 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 prolong 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.
" <3iriirov, tt pjtv yap TroXtfiov irtpl rovSe <pvy6vrc,
alti p-eXXoi/iev ayqput r adavaru> re
iaataff ovre kcv avros ivl irpiiroiat p. a\oip. r)V, ovtc <t <rt ortAAotjiu pAyyyv KvBidvupav
vvv — ip-mis yap Krjpv; i<pctrra<riv Oavdroio — fivpuu, as ovk fori tftvyiiv f3porov, ova' vira\v£ai lo/uy.
His lordship repeated the last words several times with calm and determinate resignation and after 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 dying statesman use his own
on the most glorious war, and most honorable peace, this nation ever saw. '"
quote this story, first, because interesting as exhibit ing the English aristocracy at its very height of culture, lofty spirit, and greatness, towards the middle of the last century.
quote it, secondly, because seems to me to illustrate Goethe's saying, that our life, in Homer's view of it, represents conflict and hell and brings out, too, what there tonic and forti fying in this doctrine. quote it, lastly, because shows that the passage just one of those in translating which Pope will be at his best, passage of strong emotion and oratorical move ment, not of simple narrative or description.
Could all our care elude the gloomy grave Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
Pope translates the passage thus —
:
it is
is a
a
I
I
'
; 8*
, Stj
it
I
it
a
;
is
(I
a
it
a
a
is
'
148 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
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 out highly intellectualized ; 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
suited to the feeling or to the movement 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 very far from my wish to hold Pope up to ridicule, so shall not quote the commencement of the pas sage, which in the original of great and celebrated beauty, and in translating which Pope has been singularly and notori ously 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 thousand fires in the plain and by each one there sat 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 follow ing —
So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,
And brighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays
;
:
;
is is
a
it,
I
is
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 149
The long reflections of the distant fires
Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires.
A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,
And shoot a shady luster o'er the field.
Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,
Whose umbered 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 pas sages he is powerful, as Homer is powerful, though not in the same way ; but in plain narrative, where Homer is still power ful and delightful, Pope, by the inherent fault of his style, is ineffective 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 com poses "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 con veys to us through a medium. He aims at turning Homer's sentiments pointedly and rhetorically ; at investing Homer's description with ornament 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 ornamenting itself, is worthless.
Therefore, I say, the translator of Homer should 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.
II. Chapman's Version.
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
150 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
line, which has been so much commended, Homeric : but it is not distinctly anti-Homeric, like the movement of Milton's blank verse ; and it has a rapidity of its own. Chapman's dic tion, 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 advantages, 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 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 vigor and richness. This age, too, showed what it could do in translating, by producing a masterpiece, its version of the Bible.
Chapman's translation has often been praised as eminently Homeric. Keats' fine sonnet in its honor every 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 ! " and that from a deeper cause than any unfaithful ness occasioned by the fetters of rhyme.
I said that there were four things which eminently distin guished Homer, and with a sense of which Homer's translator should penetrate himself as fully as possible. One of these four things was the plainness 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 remarkable. But as eminently as Homer is plain, so eminently is the Elizabethan literature in general, and Chapman in particular, fanciful.
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 151
Steeped in humors 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 dedications. You will find —
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, etc.
All the Middle Age, with its grotesqueness, its conceits, its irrationality, is still in these opening pages : they by them selves are sufficient to indicate to us what a gulf divides Chap man from the " clearest-souled " of poets, from Homer ; almost as great a gulf as that which divides him from Voltaire. Pope has been sneered at for saying that Chapman writes " somewhat as one might imagine Homer himself 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
152 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
says it, — " Though truth in her very nakedness sits in so deep a pit, that from Gades to Aurora, and Ganges, 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 morning of our poet, he shall now gird his temples with the sun," — I say, Homer was as incapable of saying this in that manner, as Voltaire himself would have been. Homer, indeed, has actually an affinity with Voltaire in the unrivaled 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 com plete 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 rationality.
My limits will not allow me to do more than shortly illus trate, from Chapman's version of the Iliad, what I mean when I speak of this vital difference between Homer and an Eliza bethan 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 passages for the express purpose of making Chapman appear ridiculous ; Chapman, like Pope, merits in himself all respect, though he too, like Pope, fails to render Homer.
if indeed, but once this battle avoided, We were forever to live without growing old and immortal.
Chapman cannot be satisfied with this, but must add a fancy
to it
not wrack
In this life's human sea at all;
and so on. Again : in another passage which I have before quoted, where Zeus says to the horses of Peleus,
In that tonic speech of Sarpedon, of which I have said so much, Homer, you may remember, has —
y; keeping back
Would keep back age from us, and death, and that we might
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 153
Why gave we you to royal Peleus, to a mortal ? but ye are with out old age, and immortal.
Chapman sophisticates this into —
Why gave we you t' a mortal king, when immortality And incapacity ofage so dignifies your states 9
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 time, when the battle is ended," Chapman sophisticates 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 Androm ache, Homer makes him say : " Nor does my own heart so bid me " (to keep safe behind the walls), " since I have learned to be stanch 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 hand 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, Wfiose office is to lead in fight, and give no danger pass 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. " 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 forever, but I could not give you a better illus tration than this last, of what I mean by saying that the Eliza bethan 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 Elizabethan, as Pope translates it into the Augustan of Queen Anne ; both convey
154 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
it to us through a medium. Homer, on the other hand, sees his object 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 dress ing, eating, drinking, harnessing, traveling, going to bed), — that is, to treat such subjects 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 artificial, must not be literary ; true : but then also he must not be commonplace, must not be ignoble.
III. Ballad Verse.
" The most really and truly Homeric of all the creations of the English muse is," says Mr. Newman's critic in the National Review, " the ballad poetry of ancient times ; and the associa tion between meter and subject is one that it would be true wisdom to preserve. " " It is confessed," says Chapman's last editor, Mr. Hooper, " that the fourteen-syllable verse " (that is, a ballad verse) " is peculiarly 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 undisputable merits, that he was "the first who consciously realized to himself the truth that Greek ballads can be really represented in English only by a similar measure. "
This proposition that Homer's poetry is ballad poetry, analo gous 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 dis credit 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 favor, that it is now much more impor tant to insist on the large part of error contained in than to extol its small part of truth. It time to say plainly that, whatever the admirers of our old ballads may think, the su
is
it,
or in —
Now Christ thee save and see,
While the tinker did dine, he had plenty of wine.
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
155
preme form of epic poetry, the genuine Homeric mold, 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 Maeonides, And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old,
than in —
Now Christ thee save, thou proud porter,
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 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 master work, the cooperation or consolidation of several poets becomes possible, for talent is not uncommon ; the moment you have much less than a master work, they be come easy, for mediocrity is everywhere.
I can imagine fifty Bradys joined with as many Tates to make the New Version of the Psalms. I can imagine several poets having contributed to any one of the old English ballads in Percy's collection. I can imagine several poets, possessing, like Chapman, the Elizabethan vigor 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 Germans, in their joy at discovering a national epic of their
156 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
own, have rated vastly higher than it deserves. And lastly, though Mr. Newman's translation of Homer bears the strong mark of his own idiosyncrasy, yet I can imagine Mr. Newman and a 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. 1 Many artists, again, have represented Moses ; but there is only one Moses of Michael Angelo. So the insurmountable obstacle to believing 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 instinctively seek a style in which their comparative inferiority 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 un able 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 vigor 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 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 "garrulity" 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 inappropriate to render Homer. Homer's manner and movement are always 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 quali
ties of the ballad manner. Based on grand traditions, which
v
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 157
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 Sheri dan's saying that easy writing may be often such hard reading. But, instead of occupying myself with the Nibelungen Lay, I prefer to look at the ballad style as directly applied to Homer, in Chapman's version and Mr. Newman's, and in the " Homeric Ballads " of Dr. Maginn.
First I take Chapman. I have already shown that Chap man's conceits are un-Homeric, and that his rhyme is un-
I will now show how his manner and movement are
Homeric ;
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 nobleness. In a passage which I have already quoted, the address of Zeus to the horses of Achilles, Chapman has —
" Poor wretched beasts," said he,
" Why gave we you to a mortal king, when immortality
And incapacity of age so dignifies your states ?
Was it to haste [taste ?
] the miseries poured out on human
fates? "
There are many faults in this rendering of Chapman's, but what I particularly wish to notice in it is the expression " Poor wretched beasts. " 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 requires 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 SctXto is as plain, as simple, as "Poor wretched beasts"; but it is also noble, which " " Poor wretched beasts " is not. " Poor wretched beasts in truth, little over-familiar, but this no objec
is,
a
is
158 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
tion 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. New man'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 prophesied his death to him.
Achilles, far in rage,
Thus answered 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-hoofed
steeds.
For what regards the manner of this passage, the words " Achilles Thus answered 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 *^8'
These words said, he fell to horrid deeds, Gave dreadful signal, and forthright made fly his one-
hoofed steeds, —
who does not feel the vital difference of the movement 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 vigor 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 iffreedom 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
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 159
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-trooping heroes of Percy's ' Reliques ' ; " and a description 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.
I suppose that when Scott is in what may be called full ballad swing, no one will hesitate to pronounce 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 lifeblood 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, Full upon Scotland's central host,
Or victory and England's lost.
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 saccadS, its rapidity is " jerky " ; whereas Homer's rapidity is a flowing rapidity. But this is something external and material ; it is but the outward and 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 par ticular 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
160 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
to put them side by side with this of Scott. For example, when Homer says, —
Be content, good friend, die also thou ! why lamentest thou thy self on this wise ? Patroclus too died, who was a far better than thou, —
that is in the grand style. When Virgil says, —
From me, young man, learn nobleness of soul and true effort : learn success from others, —
that is in the grand style. When Dante says, —
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 center it behooves me first to fall, —
that is in the grand style. When Milton says, —
His form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined, and the excess Of glory obscured, —
that, finally, is in the grand style. Now let any one, after re peating 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 with out ; and this something is precisely the grand manner. It is no disrespect to Scott to say that he does not attain to this man ner 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 instrument which he felt he could not truly use, — and in this attempt he has but imperfectly suc ceeded. 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
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 161
less good style, than the original ballad style ; while 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 masterpiece.
Tunstall lies dead upon the field,
His lifeblood 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 my feeling, Homer's performance, even through that pale and far-off shadow of a prose translation, still has a hundred 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 : 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 Eng lish 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 fundamental proposition, Homer is noble. " For it is seen how large a share this nobleness has in producing that general effect of his, which it is the main business of a translator to reproduce.
VOL. II. — 11
162 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. IV. The Tkue Principles.
Homer is rapid in his movement, 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 be cause he is artificial both in his style and in his words ; Chap man 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 instance, 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 rapid ity is not of the same sort as Homer's rapidity, nor are his plain ness 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 move ment, words, style, and manner are often far enough from resembling Homer's movement, 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 contrast with Homer's ; still it is by the oddness of his diction and the ignobleness of his manner that he contrasts with Homer the most violently. "
Therefore the translator must not say to himself:
is noble, Pope is rapid, Chapman has a good diction, Mr. New man has a good cast of sentence; I will avoid Cowper's slow ness, Pope's artificiality, Chapman's conceits, Mr. Newman's oddity; I will take Cowper's dignified manner, Pope's impetu ous movement, Chapman's vocabulary, Mr. Newman's syntax, and so make a perfect translation of Homer. " Undoubtedly 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 therefore 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.
Cowper
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 163
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 nobleness, — the effect, too, of all others the most impalpable, the most irreducible to rule, and which most depends on the individual personality of the artist. So I pro ceed at once to give you, in conclusion, one or two passages in which I have tried to follow those principles of Homeric transla tion which I have laid down. I give them, it must be remem bered, not as specimens of perfect translation, but as specimens of an attempt to translate Homer on certain principles ; speci mens which may very aptly illustrate those principles 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 seemed 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,
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 sim plicity 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.
164 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
In the plain there were kindled a thousand fires ; by each one There sat fifty men, in the ruddy light of the fire :
By their chariots stood the steeds, and champed the white barley While their masters sat 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 irvpd, with out scruple ; although in a more elaborate and literary style of poetry this recurrence 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 remark is my endeavor after absolute plainness of speech, my care to avoid anything which may the least check or surprise the reader, whom Homer does not check or surprise. Homer's lively per sonal familiarity with war, and with the war horse as his mas ter's companion, is such that, as it seems to me, his attributing to the one the other's 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 Chap man and Mr. Newman, which I have already quoted ; but the whole effect is much too slow. Take Pope : —
Nor Jove disdained 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 I 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
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
165
artificial and literary way of rendering Homer's words, and so is "coursers of immortal strain. "
And with pity the son of Saturn saw them bewailing,
And he shook his head, and thus addressed his own bosom : —
" Ah, unhappy pair, to Peleus why did we give you,
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 overreliance on accent, and too free disregard of quantity, which Lord Redesdale visits with just reprehension.
I now take two longer passages in order to try my 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 Androm ache. One astounding conceit will probably still be in your remembrance, —
When sacred Troy shall shed her towers for tears of overthrow.
I will quote a few lines which may give you also the keynote to the Anglo-Augustan manner of rendering this passage, and to the Miltonic manner of rendering it. What Mr. Newman's manner of rendering it would be, you can by this time suffi ciently 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 beloved ; but how could I endure
The scorn of Trojans and their long-robed wives, Should they behold their Hector shrink from war, And act the coward's part ? Nor doth my soul Prompt the base thought.
Ex pede 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 : —
166
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
" 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 nor has he
What moves thee, moves my mind, — All these thy anxious cares are also mine.
'H kcu t/xoi to&c rravra fuXo, yvvca ' dAAa fxaX ohms, —
that is what Homer has, that is his style and movement, 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 skulked behind, apart from the battle. Nor would 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 assured 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, Moves me so much — 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 Achaian 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 Messeis, 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 ofHector, that great preeminent captain
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 167
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 I 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, i\iceo-nreir\ov<;, 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 be even plainer, if possible, and more unambiguous than Homer himself ; the connection of meaning must be even more distinctly marked in the translation than in the original. For in the Greek language itself there is something which brings one nearer to Homer, which gives one a clew to his thought, which makes a hint enough : but in the English language this sense of nearness, this clew, is gone ; hints are insufficient, everything must be stated with full distinctness.
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 nineteenth 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-famed 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 ad dressed him :
Sudden he bowed his head, and all his mane, as he bowed it, Streamed to the ground by the yoke, escaping from under the
collar ;
And he was given a voice by the white-armed Goddess Hera.
"Truly, yet this time will we save thee, mighty Achilles t But thy day of death is at hand ; nor shall we be the reason —
168 PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION.
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-haired 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 God and a Mortal. "
Thus far he ; and here his voice was stopped by the Furies. Then, with a troubled heart, the swift Achilles addressed him :
" Why dost thou prophesy so my death to me, Xanthus ? It needs not.
I of myself know well, that here I am destined to perish,
Far from my father and mother dear : for all that I will not Stay this hand from fight, till the Trojans are utterly routed. "
So he spake, and drove with a cry his steeds into battle.
There are also one or two particular considerations which confirm me in the opinion that for translating Homer into English verse the hexameter should be used. The most suc cessful attempt hitherto made at rendering 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 the mention of Castor and Pollux. 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 translation of Homer, along with Professor Thomp son and Professor Jowett, whose connection with Greek litera ture is official. The passage is short : 1 and Dr. Hawtrey's version of it is suffused with a pensive grace which is perhaps rather more Virgilian than Homeric; still it is the one ver
1 " Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed 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, — Polydeuces brave with the cestus, —
Own dear brethren of mine, — one parent loved us as infants.
Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved LacedEemon,
Or, though they came with the rest in ships that bound through 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 awakened ?
So said she : — they long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing, There, in their own dear land, their Fatherland, Lacedaemon.
English Hexameter Translations; London, 1847; p. 212.
PRINCIPLES OF HOMERIC TRANSLATION. 169
sion 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.
Here I stop. I have said so much, because I think that the task of translating Homer into English verse both will be reattempted, and may be reattempted successfully. There are great works composed of parts so disparate that one trans lator is not likely to have the requisite gifts for poetically rendering all of them. Such are the works of Shakespeare, and Goethe's " Faust " ; and these it is best to attempt to ren der in prose only. People praise Tieck and Schlegel's version of Shakespeare : I, for my part, would sooner read Shakespeare in the French prose translation, and that is saying a great deal ; but in the German poets' hands Shakespeare so often gets, especially where he is humorous, an air of what the French call niaiserie! and can anything be more un-Shakespearean than that ? Again : Mr. Hay ward'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 literature 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 Greek virtue by no means common among the moderns in general, and the English in particular, — moderation. For Homer has not only the English vigor, he has the Greek grace ; and when one observes the bolstering, rollicking way in which his English admirers — even men of genius, like the late Pro fessor Wilson — love to talk of Homer and his poetry, one can not help feeling that there is no very deep community 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 honor, but 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 hori zon, the liquid clearness of an Ionian sky.
170 HECTOR, PARIS, HELEN, ANDROMACHE.
HECTOR, PARIS, HELEN, ANDROMACHE. By GEORGE CHAPMAN.
[Geobgb Chapman, English poet of the age of Elizabeth, James I. , and Charles I. , was born in 1559, and graduated at Cambridge. He was very slow in development: his first poem, "The Shadow of Night," was published at thirty-five, and his first play, "The Blind Beggar of Alexandria," at thirty-nine, when also appeared the first part (remodeled later) of his translation of the Hiad, his one living work.
