rendering as 'brazen-coated,' because a coat of brass' is familiar to us all from the Bible, and familiar, too, as distinctly specified in connexion with the wearer. Finally, let me farther illustrate from the twentieth line the value which I attach, in a question of diction, to the authority of the Bible. The word 'pre-eminent' occurs in that line; I was a little in doubt whether that was not too bookish an expression to be used in rendering Homer, as I can imagine Mr. Newman to have been a little in doubt whether his responsively accosted,' for åμeißóμevos poσéon, was 10 not too bookish an expression. Let us both, I say, consult our Bibles Mr. Newman will nowhere find it in his Bible that David, for instance, responsively accosted Goliath ; but I do find in mine that the right hand of the Lord hath the pre-eminence;' and forthwith I use ' pre-eminent without scruple. My Bibliolatry is perhaps excessive; and no doubt a true poetic feeling is the Homeric translator's best guide in the use of words; but where this feeling does not exist, or is at fault, I think he cannot do better than take for a mechanical guide Cruden's Con- 20 cordance. To be sure, here as elsewhere, the consulter must know how to consult-must know how very slight a variation of word or circumstance makes the difference between an authority in his favour, and an authority which gives him no countenance at all; for instance, the Great simpleton!' (for μéya výπios) of Mr. Newman, and the Thou fool!' of the Bible, are something alike but Thou fool!' is very grand, and Great simpleton ! is an atrocity. So, too, Chapman's Poor wretched beasts' is pitched many degrees too low; but Shakspeare's 'Poor 30 venomous fool, Be angry and despatch!' is in the grand style. 6 6 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-fam'd seed of Podarga! 40 Then, from beneath the yoke, the fleet horse Xanthus address'd him : Sudden he bow'd his head, and all his mane, as he bow'd it, Stream'd to the ground by the yoke, escaping from under the collar; And he was given a voice by the white-arm'd Goddess Hera. Truly, yet this time will we save thee, mighty Achilles ! Did the Trojans obtain to strip the arms from Patroclus ; Thus far he; and here his voice was stopped by the Furies. 'Why dost thou prophesy so my death to me, Xanthus ? It needs not. I of myself know well, that here I am destin'd to perish, 20 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. Here the only particular remark which I will make is, that in the fourth and eighth line the grammar is what I call a loose and idiomatic grammar; in writing a regular and literary style, one would in the fourth line have to repeat, before 'leave', the words 'that ye' from the second line, and to insert the word 'do'; and in the eighth line one would not use such an expression as he was given a voice.' 30 But I will make one general remark on the character of my own translations, as I have made so many on that of the translations of others. It is, that over the graver passages there is shed an air somewhat too strenuous and severe, by comparison with that lovely ease and sweetness which Homer, for all his noble and masculine way of thinking, never loses. Here I stop. I have said so much, because I think that the task of translating Homer into English verse both will be re-attempted, and may be re-attempted successfully. 40 There are great works composed of parts so disparate, that one translator is not likely to have the requisite gifts for poetically rendering all of them. Such are the works of Shakspeare, and Goethe's Faust; and these it is best to attempt to render in prose only. People praise Tieck and Schlegel's version of Shakspeare: I, for my part, would sooner read Shakspeare in the French prose translation, and that is saying a great deal; but in the German poets' hands Shakspeare so often gets, especially where he is humorous, an air of what the French call niaiserie! and can anything be more un-Shakspearian than that? Again; Mr. Hayward's prose translation of the first part of Faustso 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 10 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 vigour, he has the Greek grace; and when one observes the boisterous, rollicking way in which his English admirers-even men 20 of genius, like the late Professor Wilson-love to talk of Homer and his poetry, one cannot 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 honour, 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 30 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 horizon, the liquid clearness of an Ionian sky. HOMERIC TRANSLATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE A REPLY TO MATTHEW ARNOLD, ESQ. BY FRANCIS W. NEWMAN A TRANSLATOR OF THE ILIAD |