entirely un-Homeric movement to this simple passage, describing the fires of the Trojan camp outside of Troy; but the following lines, in that very highlywrought passage where the horse of Achilles answers his master's reproaches for having left Patroclus on the field of battle, are equally un-Homeric: For not through sloth or tardiness on us Aught chargeable, have Ilium's sons thine arms Slew, for the glory of the chief of Troy. Here even the first inversion, "have Ilium's sons thine arms Stript from Patroclus' shoulders," gives the reader a sense of a movement not Homeric; and the second inversion, "a God him contending in the van Slew," gives this sense ten times stronger. Instead of moving on without check, as in reading the original, the reader twice finds himself, in reading the translation, brought up and checked. Homer moves with the same simplicity and rapidity in the highly-wrought as in the simple passage. It is in vain that Cowper insists on his fidelity: "my chief boast is that I have adhered closely to my original: ""the matter found in me, whether the reader like it or not, is found also in Homer; and the matter not found in me, how much soever the reader may admire it, is found only in Mr. Pope." To suppose that it is fidelity to an original to give its matter, unless you at the same time give its manner; or, rather, to suppose that you can really give its matter at all, unless you can give its manner, is just the mistake of our pre-Raphaelite school of painters, who do not understand that the peculiar effect of nature resides in the whole and not in the parts. So the peculiar effect of a poet resides in his manner and movement, not in his words taken separately. It is well known how conscientiously literal is Cowper in his translation of Homer. It is well known how extravagantly free is Pope; So let it be! Portents and prodigies are lost on me: that is Pope's rendering of the words, Ξάνθε, τί μοι θάνατον μαντεύεαι ; οὐδέ τί σε χρή· * Xanthus, why prophesiest thou my death to me? thou needest not at all. yet, on the whole, Pope's translation of the Iliad is more Homeric than Cowper's, for it is more rapid. Pope's movement, however, though rapid, is not of the same kind as Homer's; and here I come to the real objection to rhyme in a translation of Homer. It is commonly said that rhyme is to be abandoned in a translation of Homer, because "the exigences of rhyme," to quote Mr. Newman, "positively forbid faithfulness;" because "a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme," to quote Cowper, "is impossible." This, however, is merely an acci * Iliad, xix, 420. dental objection to rhyme. If this were all, it might be supposed that if rhymes were more abundant, Homer could be adequately translated in rhyme. But this is not so; there is a deeper, a substantial objection to rhyme in a translation of Homer. It is, that rhyme inevitably tends to pair lines which in the original are independent, and thus the movement of the poem is changed. In these lines of Chapman, for instance, from Sarpedon's speech to Glaucus, in the twelfth book of the Iliad: O friend, if keeping back Would keep back age from us, and death, and that we might not wrack In this life's human sea at all, but that deferring now We shunn'd death ever,- - nor would I half this vain valour show, Nor glorify a folly so, to wish thee to advance; But since we must go, though not here, and that besides the chance Propos'd now, there are infinite fates, &c. here the necessity of making the line, Nor glorify a folly so, to wish thee to advance; rhyme with the line which follows it, entirely changes and spoils the movement of the passage. Ουτε κεν αὐτὸς ἐνὶ πρώτοισι μαχοίμην ουτε κε σὲ στέλλοιμι μάχην ἐς κυδιάνειραν * Neither would I myself go forth to fight with the foremost, says Homer; there he stops, and begins an opposed movement: *Iliad, xii, 324. νῦν δ ̓ ἔμπης γὰρ κῆρες ἐφεστᾶσιν θανάτοιο But for a thousand fates of death stand close to us always this line, in which Homer wishes to go away with the most marked rapidity from the line before, Chapman is forced, by the necessity of rhyming, intimately to connect with the line before. But since we must go, though not here, and that besides the chancethe moment the word chance strikes our ear, we are irresistibly carried back to advance and to the whole previous line, which, according to Homer's own feeling, we ought to have left behind us entirely, and to be moving farther and farther away from. Rhyme certainly, by intensifying antithesis, can intensify separation, and this is precisely what Pope does; but this balanced rhetorical antithesis, though very effective, is entirely un-Homeric. And this is what I mean by saying that Pope fails to render Homer, because he does not render his plainness and directness of style and diction. Where Homer marks separation by moving away, Pope marks it by antithesis. No passage could show this better than the passage I have just quoted, on which I will pause for a moment. Robert Wood, whose Essay on the Genius of Homer is 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 of this passage a striking story. He says that in 1762, at the end of the Seven Years' War, being then Under-Secretary of State, he was directed to wait upon the President of the Council, Lord 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: ὦ πέπον, εἰ μὲν γὰρ πόλεμον περὶ τόνδε φυγόντε ἔσσεσθ', οὔτε κεν αὐτὸς ἐνὶ πρώτοισι μαχοίμην,* νῦν δ ̓ ἔμπης γὰρ Κῆρες ἐφεστᾶσιν θανάτοιο His Lordship repeated the last word several times with a calm and determinate resignation; and after a serious pause of some minutes, he desired to hear the Treaty read, to which he listened with great attention, and recovered spirits enough to declare the approbation of a dying statesman (I use his own *These are the words on which Lord Granville "dwelled with particular emphasis." с |