Hawtrey's version of it is suffused with a pensive grace which is, perhaps, rather more Virgilian than Homeric; still it is the one version of any part of the Iliad which in some degree reproduces for me the original effect of Homer: it is the best, and it is in hexameters.

This is one of the particular considerations that

Or, tho' they came with the rest in ships that bound thro' the waters, Dare they not enter the fight or stand in the council of Heroes, All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awaken'd? So said she; they long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing, There, in their own dear land, their Father-land, Lacedæmon.

English Hexameter Translations, London, 1847; p. 242.

I have changed Dr. Hawtrey's "Kastor," "Lakedaimon," back to the familiar "Castor," "Lacedemon," in obedience to my own rule that everything odd is to be avoided in rendering Homer, the most natural and least odd of poets. I see Mr. Newman's critic in the National Review urges our generation to bear with the unnatural effect of these rewritten Greek names, in the hope that by this means the effect of them may have to the next generation become natural. For my part, I feel no disposition to pass all my own life in the wilderness of pedantry, in order that a posterity which I shall never see may one day enter an orthographical Canaan; and, after all, the real question is this whether our living apprehension of the Greek world is more checked by meeting in an English book about the Greeks, names not spelt letter for letter as in the original Greek, or by meeting names which make us rub our eyes and call out, "How exceedingly odd!"

The Latin names of the Greek deities raise in most cases the idea of quite distinct personages from the personages whose idea is raised by the Greek names. Hera and Juno are actually, to every scholar's imagination, two different people. So in all these cases the Latin names must, at any inconvenience, be abandoned when we are dealing with the Greek world. But I think it can be in the sensitive imagination of Mr. Grote only, that "Thucydides" raises the idea of a different man from Θουκυδίδης.

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incline me to prefer the hexameter, for translating Homer, to our established metres. There is another. Most of you, probably, have some knowledge of a poem by Mr. Clough, The Bothie of Toper-nafuosich, a long-vacation pastoral, in hexameters. The general merits of that poem I am not going to discuss it is a serio-comic poem, and, therefore, of essentially different nature from the Iliad. Still in two things it is, more than any other English poem which I can call to mind, like the Iliad; in the rapidity of its movement, and the plainness and directness of its style. The thought in this poem is often curious and subtle, and that is not Homeric; the diction is often grotesque, and that is not Homeric. Still, by its rapidity of movement, and plain and direct manner of presenting the thought however curious in itself, this poem, which being as I say a serio-comic poem has a right to be grotesque, is grotesque truly, not, like Mr. Newman's version of the Iliad, falsely. Mr. Clough's odd epithets, "The grave man nick-nam'd Adam," "The hairy Aldrich," and so on, grow vitally and appear naturally in their place; while Mr. Newman's "dapper-greav'd Achaians," and "motley-helmed Hector," have all the air of being mechanically elaborated and artificially stuck in. Mr. Clough's hexameters are excessively, needlessly rough: still, owing to the native rapidity of this measure, and to the directness of style which so well allies itself with it, his composition produces a sense

in the reader which Homer's composition also produces, and which Homer's translator ought to reproduce the sense of having, within short limits of time, a large portion of human life presented to him, instead of a small portion.

Mr. Clough's hexameters are, as I have just said, too rough and irregular; and indeed a good model, on any considerable scale, of this metre, the English trashlator will nowhere find. He must not follow the model offered by Mr. Longfellow in his pleasing and popular poem of Evangeline; for the merit of the manner and movement of Evangeline, when they are at their best, is to be tenderly elegant; and their fault, when they are at their worst, is to be lumbering; but Homer's defect is not lumberingness, neither is tender elegance his excellence. The lumbering effect of most English hexameters is caused by their being much too dactylic*; the translator must learn to use spondees freely. Mr. Clough has done this, but he has not sufficiently observed another rule which the translator cannot follow too strictly; and that is, to have no lines which will not, as it is familiarly said, read themselves. This is of the last importance for rhythms with which the ear of the English public is not thoroughly acquainted. Lord

*For instance; in a version (I believe, by the late Mr. Lockhart) of Homer's description of the parting of Hector and Andromache, there occurs, in the first five lines, but one spondee besides the necessary spondees in the sixth place: in the corresponding five lines of Homer there occur ten. See English Hexameter Translations, 244.

Redesdale, in two papers on the subject of Greek and Roman metres, has some good remarks on the outrageous disregard of quantity in which English verse, trusting to its force of accent, is apt to indulge itself. The predominance of accent in our language is so great, that it would be pedantic not to avail oneself of it; and Lord Redesdale suggests rules which might easily be pushed too far. Still, it is undeniable that in English hexameters we generally force the quantity far too much; we rely on justification by accent with a security which is excessive. But not only do we abuse accent by shortening long syllables and lengthening short ones; we perpetually commit a far worse fault, by requiring the removal of the accent from its natural place to an unnatural one, in order to make our line scan. This is a fault, even when our metre is one which every English reader knows, and when he can see what we want and can correct the rhythm according to our wish; although it is a fault which a great master may sometimes commit knowingly to produce a desired effect, as Milton changes the natural accent on the word Tirésias in the line:

And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old;

and then it ceases to be a fault, and becomes a beauty. But it is a real fault, when Chapman has:

By him the golden-thron'd Queen slept, the Queen of Deities ;

for in this line, to make it scan, you have to take away the accent from the word Queen, on which it

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naturally falls, and to place it on thron'd, which would naturally be unaccented; and yet, after all, you get no peculiar effect or beauty of cadence to reward you. It is a real fault, when Mr. Newman has:

Infatuate! oh that thou wert lord to some other army

for here again the reader is required, not for any special advantage to himself, but simply to save Mr. Newman trouble, to place the accent on the insignificant word wert, where it has no business whatever. But it is a still greater fault, when Spenser has, (to take a striking instance),

Wot ye why his mother with a veil hath covered his face?

for a hexameter; because here not only is the reader causelessly required to make havoc with the natural accentuation of the line in order to get it to run as a hexameter; but also he, in nine cases out of ten, will be utterly at a loss how to perform the process required, and the line will remain a mere monster for him. I repeat, it is advisable to construct all verses so that by reading them naturally—that is, according to the sense and legitimate accent-the reader gets the right rhythm; but, for English hexameters, that they be so constructed is indispensable.

If the hexameter best helps the translator to the Homeric rapidity, what style may best help him to the Homeric plainness and directness? It is the merit of a metre appropriate to your subject, that it in