Pope has grandly directed our eyes to the night-imagery, we owe him gratitude. Cowper, on the whole, is good, forcible; but owing to some rather commonish words, we fear not sufficiently dignifiedfor Apollo. "March'd in his anger," is raw-recruitish ; though raw recruits are often formidable fellows; and "told of his approach," is very prosaic. After it, only think of Milton's "far off his coming shone!" The attempt at imitative harmony or discord in the singular line about "dreadsounding, bounding," we confess we like-but liking is not loving, nor loving admiring, nor admiring astonishment, nor astonishment exultation. Sotheby is excellent-but not all we hoped he might have been-with all these bell-rocks and beacon lights-to show him his path on the waters. "Kindled at the word," is sudden and sharp, but quaint and incorrect. "Then Phoebus stayed," has the same merit and the same demerit. We do not like the repetition of " dart" in "shaft." "Immedicable wound" and "inevitable dart," have a sameness of sound not satisfactory to our ears at the close of lines so near each other-nor is there anything answering to either epithet in Homer. "Dire was the twanging of the silver bow," is admirable in its almost literal simplicity. "Corse lay on corse, to fire succeeded fire, And death unwearied fed the funeral pyre," are in themselves two strong lines-but are they both equal in power and glory, to No. αἰεὶ δὲ πυραὶ νεκύων καίοντο θαμειαί ; There is one half-line in the original of which we have yet said nothing-and which loses its identity in some of these translations, and scarcely preserves it in others. What effect does it produce on your imagination? ὁ δ ̓ ἤμε νυκτὶ ἐοικώς· Old Chapman renders it—rightly so far, for so far literally— "Like the night he ranged the host." Dryden "Black as a stormy night, he ranged around The tents." Pope 66 Breathing revenge, a sudden night he spread, which last line we have already abused. Tickel, idiotically as we said "In clouds he flew, conceal'd from mortal sight." Cowper, best of all, and perfectly— and Sotheby “Like night he came ;” "As the God descended, dark as night," —which is not so good as Cowper, only because not literally Homer. We ask you again, what effect does it produce in your imagination? Not surely that of night over the whole skynot utter concealment of the God in a darkness not appertaining to himself, but in which he is merely enshrouded, as are the heavens and earth? No, no, no, that cannot have been intended by Homer. But Homer, we think, in the inspiration of his religious awe, suddenly saw Apollo, the very God of Light, changing in the passion-the agony of rage-into an Apparition the reverse, the opposite, of his own lustrousness, --undergoing a dreadful Transfiguration. It was not as if Day became Night, but that the God of Day was wrathchanged into the Night God-almost as if Apollo had become Pluto. Milton must have understood the image so, for he has transferred it not the change-but the image itself, to his most dreadful personage, "Black it stood as night,"-in the daylight you know, and therefore was that Foul Blotch so terrible. Try then each translation separately, by this the test of truth, and judge for yourself which is good, which bad, and which indifferent. We should like to hear your opinion. Meanwhile, before we proceed to another passage, only hear old Hobbes, who, perhaps you may not know it, translated the Iliad and the Odyssey. "His poetry, as well as Ogilvie's " (which we have never chanced to see), says Pope truly, “is too mean for criticism." "His prayer was granted by the Deity; Who with his silver bow and arrows keen, In likeness of the sable Night unseen." In this stealthiness there seems to us something meanly sus picious. True, that in Scripture we read of death coming like a thief in the night-but that was not said for the sake of sublimity, but to show us how we are, in our imagined deepest home-felt security, unsafe from that murderous wretch Death, or Williams.1 But Homer, being a heathen, meant no uncivil scorn of Apollo, whereas Hobbes converts him into a cracksman. "His bow and quiver both behind him hung, The arrows chink as often as he jogs!" We come now to that immortal quarrel "Betwixt Atrides, king of men, and Thetis' godlike son ;' and are thankful to learn that we ourselves have never felt tempted, by a rash ambition, to dare to try to translate it. Never did Wrath so naturally, we may say rightfully,speaking of chiefs who were anything but Christian-flame up, from a single spark into a roaring flame, within magnanimous hearts. Ere yet he knew what Chryses was about to divulge as the cause of the Plague-unless, indeed, he had a sort of presaging forethought, that it somehow or other regarded the king-Achilles, by promising the priest immunity from all punishment, placed himself in the spirit and posture of a foe to Agamemnon. That Atrides should have been smitten with sudden rage against the supplicant Father, we cannot wonder; for we soon have his own word for it, that Chryseïs2 was now as dear, that is, dearer to him than ever had been Clytemnestra in her golden and virgin days. Kings, heroic and unheroic, are seldom subjects to right reason; and, in his towering passion with the slow-footed Chryses, his looks could have been none of the sweetest towards the swift-footed Achilles. That fiercest of the fierce took him up at once, on his first tyrannical deviation from justice-thence instant revenge threatened not vainly by him whose will was lawthe pride of unmatched power in one, conflicting with the more than pride of the invincible valour of the other-the indignation of habitual dignity on this side, watching the character of the rage of natural passionateness on that―till each seemed equally the fount of the stormy light that redly 1 The perpetrator of several murders in London in 1812. 2 Chryseïs-daughter of Chryses, the priest of Apollo. Agamemnon (Atrides) had refused the ransom which her father offered; and hence Apollo had sent the plague upon the Greek camp. discoloured the countenances of both heroes-and king and prince shone and shook alike in the perturbation of their savage spirits, the intolerant and untamed sons of headstrong and headlong nature. Is it not amazing to think of it, after we lay down this dramatic scene, how Homer, without any apparent effort, has kept up, throughout all the furious injustice of these heroes to each other, such strong sympathy with both, that though sometimes shaken, it is never broken; and that, during the course of the quarrel, though assuredly our hearts beat faster and louder towards Achilles, they ever and anon go half over to the side of Agamemnon? He swore but to deprive his antagonist of that blessing of which himself was about to be, as he thought, robbed-the enjoyment of love and beauty. What signifies right, or the observance or violation of right, when disappointment, which in the soul of a king is equal to a subject's despair, has darked conscience and corrupted will, and seeks refuge in revenge? And what signifies bloodthirsty heroism, that has been exulting in victorious fields of death, to the soul in which it has burned, when its sweetest meed is ravished out of its embrace, the light of woman's eyes, and the fragrance of woman's bosom, that had captivated the conqueror, and bound him within his night-tent, in divinest thraldom, the slave of a slave? Patriotism, glory, fealty, are all overpowered by pride raging in the sense of degradation, injustice, and wrong, done to it, openly beneath the sun, and before all eyes; and down is flung the goldstudded sceptre on the earth, that the clash may ratify the oath sworn to Jove, that never more shall the hand that swayed it draw the sword, though the hero-slaughtering Hector should drive Greece to her ships, and Troy be triumphant over her flying sons. Is not this a Quarrel indeed of demigods, and who could have sung it but Homer? We cannot quote all the translations of the progress of this Wrath up to the intervention of Minerva, and therefore we shall quote none of them-but go to the passage in which the goddess reveals herself to the goddess-born, and so far calms the roar within his soul, as does a sudden lull for a while that of the sea. Agamemnon has just said—as Dryden makes him say, "Briseïs shall be mine.' 1 Briseïs had been assigned to Achilles. CHAPMAN. 1 "Thetis' son at this stood vext, his heart Bristled his bosom, and two ways drew his discursive part, If from his thigh his sharp sword drawn, he should make room about Atrides' person, slaughtering him, or sit his anger out, And curb his spirit. While these thoughts strived in his blood and mind, And he his sword drew, down from heaven Athenia stoop'd, and shined About his temples, being sent by the ivory-wristed queen, Saturnia, who out of her heart had ever loving been, And careful of the good of both. She stood behind, and took To him appearance; not a man of all the rest could see. DRYDEN. "At this the impatient hero sourly smiled; |