himself all respect, though he too, like Pope, fails to render Homer. In that tonic speech of Sarpedon, of which I have said so much, Homer, you may remember, has: εἰ μὲν γὰρ, πόλεμον περὶ τόνδε φυγόντε, αἰεὶ δὴ μέλλοιμεν ἀγήρω τ' ἀθανάτω τε ἔσσεσθ' if, indeed, but once this battle avoided, We were for ever to live without growing old and immortal Chapman cannot be satisfied with this, but must add a fancy to it: if keeping back Would keep back age from us, and death, and that we might not wrack In this 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: τί σφῶϊ δόμεν Πηλῆϊ ἀνάκτι θνητῷ; ὑμεῖς δ ̓ ἐστὸν ἀγήρω τ ̓ ἀθανάτω τε· * Why gave we you to royal Peleus, to a mortal? but ye are without Chapman sophisticates this into : Why gave we you t' a mortal king, when immortality 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 * Iliad, xvii, 443. time, when the battle is ended," Chapman sophisticates this into: When, with blood, for this day's fast observ'd, revenge shall yield Our heart satiety, bring us off. In Hector's famous speech, again, at his parting from Andromache, Homer makes him say: "Nor does my own heart so bid me," (to keep safe behind the walls)," since I have learned to be staunch always, and to fight among the foremost of the Trojans, busy on behalf of my father's great glory, and my own." In Chapman's hands this becomes: The spirit I first did breathe * 66 Did never teach me that; much less, since the contempt of death Was settled in me, and my mind knew what a worthy was, Whose office is to lead in fight, and give no danger 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: " ἔσσεται ἦμαρ, ὅτ ̓ ἄν ποτ' ὀλώλῃ Ιλιος ἱρή. Chapman makes this: And such a stormy day shall come, in mind and soul I know, When sacred Troy shall shed her tow'rs, for tears of overthrow. I might go on for a better illustration ever, but I could not give you than this last, of what I mean *Iliad, vi, 444. sion. by saying that the Elizabethan poet fails to render Homer because he cannot forbear to interpose a play of thought between his object and its expresChapman translates his object into Elizabethan, as Pope translates it into the Augustan of Queen Anne; both convey it to us through a medium. Homer, on the other hand, sees his 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 dressing, eating, drinking, harnessing, travelling, 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 common-place, must not be ignoble. I have shown you how translators of Homer fail by wanting rapidity, by wanting simplicity of style, by wanting plainness of thought: in a second lecture I will show you how a translator fails by wanting nobility. II. I MUST repeat what I said in beginning, that the translator of Homer ought steadily to keep in mind where lies the real test of the success of his translation, what judges he is to try to satisfy. He is to try to satisfy scholars, because scholars alone have the means of really judging him. A scholar may be a pedant, it is true, and then his judgment will be worthless; but a scholar may also have poetical feeling, and then he can judge him truly; whereas all the poetical feeling in the world will not enable a man who is not a scholar to judge him truly. For the translator is to reproduce Homer, and the scholar alone has the means of knowing that Homer who is to be reproduced. He knows him but imperfectly, for he is separated from him by time, race, and language; but he alone knows him at all. Yet people speak as if there were two real tribunals in this matter the scholar's tribunal, and that of the general public. They speak as if the scholar's judgment was one thing, and the general public's judgment another; both with their shortcomings, both with their liability to error; but both to be regarded by the translator. The translator who makes verbal literalness his chief care "will," says a writer in the National Review whom I have already quoted, "be appreciated by the scholar accustomed to test a translation rigidly by comparison with the original, to look perhaps with excessive care to finish in detail rather than boldness and general effect, and find pardon even for a version that seems bare and bald, so it be scholastic and faithful." But, if the scholar in judging a translation looks to detail rather than to general effect, he judges it pedantically and ill. The appeal, however, lies not from the pedantic scholar to the general public, which can only like or dislike Chapman's version, or Pope's, or Mr. Newman's, but cannot judge them; it lies from the pedantic scholar to the scholar who is not pedantic, who knows that Homer is Homer by his general effect, and not by his single words, and who demands but one thing in a translation shall, as nearly as possible, reproduce for him the general effect of Homer. This, then, remains the one proper aim of the translator: to reproduce on the intelligent scholar, as nearly as possible, the general effect of Homer. Except so far as he reproduces this, he loses his labour, even though he may make a spirited Iliad of his own, like Pope, or translate Homer's Iliad word for word, like Mr. Newman. If his proper aim were to stimulate in any manner possible the general public, he might be right in - that it |