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 bold, 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,—that it 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 following Pope’s example; if his proper aim were to help schoolboys
to construe Homer, he might be right in following Mr Newman’s. But it is
not: his proper aim is, I repeat it yet once more, to reproduce on the
intelligent scholar, as nearly as he can, the general effect of Homer.
When, therefore, Cowper says, ‘My chief boast is that I have adhered
closely to my original’; when Mr Newman says, ‘My aim is to retain every
peculiarity of the original, to be _faithful_, exactly as is the case
with the draughtsman of the Elgin marbles’; their real judge only
replies: ‘It may be so: reproduce then upon us, reproduce the effect of
Homer, as a good copy reproduces the effect of the Elgin marbles’.
When, again, Mr Newman tells us that ‘by an exhaustive process of
argument and experiment’ he has found a metre which is at once the metre
of ‘the modern Greek epic’, and a metre ‘like in moral genius’ to
Homer’s metre, his judge has still but the same answer for him: ‘It may
be so: reproduce then on our ear something of the effect produced by the
movement of Homer’.
But what is the general effect which Homer produces on Mr Newman
himself? because, when we know this, we shall know whether he and his
judges are agreed at the outset, whether we may expect him, if he can
reproduce the effect he feels, if his hand does not betray him in the
execution, to satisfy his judges and to succeed. If, however, Mr
Newman’s impression from Homer is something quite different from that of
his judges, then it can hardly be expected that any amount of labour or
talent will enable him to reproduce for them _their_ Homer.
Mr Newman does not leave us in doubt as to the general effect which
Homer makes upon him. As I have told you what is the general effect
which Homer makes upon me,—that of a most rapidly moving poet, that of a
poet most plain and direct in his style, that of a poet most plain and
direct in his ideas, that of a poet eminently noble,—so Mr Newman tells
us his general impression of Homer. ‘Homer’s style’, he says, ‘is
direct, popular, forcible, quaint, flowing, garrulous’. Again: ‘Homer
rises and sinks with his subject, is prosaic when it is tame, is low
when it is mean’.
I lay my finger on four words in these two sentences of Mr Newman, and I
say that the man who could apply those words to Homer can never render
Homer truly. The four words are these: _quaint_, _garrulous_, _prosaic_,
_low_. Search the English language for a word which does not apply to
Homer, and you could not fix on a better than _quaint_, unless perhaps
you fixed on one of the other three.
Again; ‘to translate Homer suitably’, says Mr Newman, ‘we need a diction
sufficiently antiquated to obtain pardon of the reader for its frequent
homeliness’. ‘I am concerned’, he says again, ‘with the artistic problem
of attaining a plausible aspect of moderate antiquity, while remaining
easily intelligible’. And again, he speaks of ‘the more antiquated style
suited to this subject’. Quaint! antiquated!—but to whom? Sir Thomas
Browne is quaint, and the diction of Chaucer is antiquated: does Mr
Newman suppose that Homer seemed quaint to Sophocles, when he read him,
as Sir Thomas Browne seems quaint to us, when we read him? or that
Homer’s diction seemed antiquated to Sophocles, as Chaucer’s diction
seems antiquated to us? But we cannot really know, I confess, how Homer
seemed to Sophocles: well then, to those who can tell us how he seems to
them, to the living scholar, to our only present witness on this
matter,—does Homer make on the Provost of Eton, when he reads him, the
impression of a poet quaint and antiquated? does he make this impression
on Professor Thompson or Professor Jowett. When Shakspeare says, ‘The
princes _orgulous_’, meaning ‘the proud princes’, we say, ‘This is
antiquated’; when he says of the Trojan gates, that they
With massy staples
And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts
_Sperr_ up the sons of Troy,
we say, ‘This is both quaint and antiquated’. But does Homer ever
compose in a language which produces on the scholar at all the same
impression as this language which I have quoted from Shakspeare? Never
once. Shakspeare is quaint and antiquated in the lines which I have just
quoted; but Shakspeare—need I say it?—can compose, when he likes, when
he is at his best, in a language perfectly simple, perfectly
intelligible; in a language which, in spite of the two centuries and a
half which part its author from us, stops us or surprises us as little
as the language of a contemporary. And Homer has not Shakspeare’s
variations: Homer always composes as Shakspeare composes at his best;
Homer is always simple and intelligible, as Shakspeare is often; Homer
is never quaint and antiquated, as Shakspeare is sometimes.
When Mr Newman says that Homer is garrulous, he seems, perhaps, to
depart less widely from the common opinion than when he calls him
quaint; for is there not Horace’s authority for asserting that ‘the good
Homer sometimes nods’, _bonus dormitat Homerus_? and a great many people
have come, from the currency of this well-known criticism, to represent
Homer to themselves as a diffuse old man, with the full-stocked mind,
but also with the occasional slips and weaknesses of old age. Horace has
said better things than his ‘bonus dormitat Homerus’; but he never meant
by this, as I need not remind anyone who knows the passage, that Homer
was garrulous, or anything of the kind. Instead, however, of either
discussing what Horace meant, or discussing Homer’s garrulity as a
general question, I prefer to bring to my mind some style which is
garrulous, and to ask myself, to ask you, whether anything at all of the
impression made by that style is ever made by the style of Homer. The
mediæval romancers, for instance, are garrulous; the following, to take
out of a thousand instances the first which comes to hand, is in a
garrulous manner. It is from the romance of Richard Cœur de Lion.
Of my tale be not a-wondered!
The French says he slew an hundred
(Whereof is made this English saw)
Or he rested him any thraw.
Him followed many an English knight
That eagerly holp him for to fight
and so on. Now the manner of that composition I call garrulous; everyone
will feel it to be garrulous; everyone will understand what is meant
when it is called garrulous. Then I ask the scholar,—does Homer’s manner
ever make upon you, I do not say, the same impression of its garrulity
as that passage, but does it make, ever for one moment, an impression in
the slightest way resembling, in the remotest degree akin to, the
impression made by that passage of the mediæval poet? I have no fear of
the answer.
I follow the same method with Mr Newman’s two other epithets, _prosaic_
and _low_. ‘Homer rises and sinks with his subject’, says Mr Newman; ‘is
prosaic when it is tame, is low when it is mean’. First I say, Homer is
never, in any sense, to be with truth called prosaic; he is never to be
called low. He does not rise and sink with his subject; on the contrary,
his manner invests his subject, whatever his subject be, with nobleness.
Then I look for an author of whom it may with truth be said, that he
‘rises and sinks with his subject, is prosaic when it is tame, is low
when it is mean’. Defoe is eminently such an author; of Defoe’s manner
it may with perfect precision be said, that it follows his matter; his
lifelike composition takes its character from the facts which it
conveys, not from the nobleness of the composer. In _Moll Flanders_ and
_Colonel Jack_, Defoe is undoubtedly prosaic when his subject is tame,
low when his subject is mean. Does Homer’s manner in the _Iliad_, I ask
the scholar, ever make upon him an impression at all like the impression
made by Defoe’s manner in _Moll Flanders_ and _Colonel Jack_? Does it
not, on the contrary, leave him with an impression of nobleness, even
when it deals with Thersites or with Irus?
Well then, Homer is neither quaint, nor garrulous, nor prosaic, nor
mean: and Mr Newman, in seeing him so, sees him differently from those
who are to judge Mr Newman’s rendering of him. By pointing out how a
wrong conception of Homer affects Mr Newman’s translation, I hope to
place in still clearer light those four cardinal truths which I
pronounce essential for him who would have a right conception of Homer:
that Homer is rapid, that he is plain and direct in word and style, that
he is plain and direct in his ideas, and that he is noble.
Mr Newman says that in fixing on a style for suitably rendering Homer,
as he conceives him, he ‘alights on the delicate line which separates
the _quaint_ from the _grotesque_’. ‘I ought to be quaint’, he says, ‘I
ought not to be grotesque’. This is a most unfortunate sentence. Mr
Newman is grotesque, which he himself says he ought not to be; and he
ought not to be quaint, which he himself says he ought to be.
‘No two persons will agree’, says Mr Newman, ‘as to where the quaint
ends and the grotesque begins’; and perhaps this is true. But, in order
to avoid all ambiguity in the use of the two words, it is enough to say,
that most persons would call an expression which produced on them a very
strong sense of its incongruity, and which violently surprised them,
_grotesque_; and an expression, which produced on them a slighter sense
of its incongruity, and which more gently surprised them, _quaint_.
Using the two words in this manner, I say, that when Mr Newman
translates Helen’s words to Hector in the sixth book,
Δᾶερ ἐμεῖο, κυνὸς κακομηχάνου, ὀκρυοέσσης[10],
O, brother thou of me, who am a mischief-working vixen,
A numbing horror,
he is grotesque; that is, he expresses himself in a manner which
produces on us a very strong sense of its incongruity, and which
violently surprises us. I say, again, that when Mr Newman translates the
common line,
Τὴν δ’ ἠμείβετ’ ἔπειτα μέγας κορυθαίολος Ἕκτωρ,
Great Hector of the motley helm then spake to her responsive,
or the common expression, ἐϋκνήμιδες Ἀχαιοί, ‘dapper-greaved Achaians’,
he is quaint; that is, he expresses himself in a manner which produces
on us a slighter sense of incongruity, and which more gently surprises
us. But violent and gentle surprise are alike far from the scholar’s
spirit when he reads in Homer κυνὸς κακομηχάνου, or κορυθαίολος Ἕκτωρ,
or, ἐϋκνήμιδες Ἀχαιοί. These expressions no more seem odd to him than
the simplest expressions in English. He is not more checked by any
feeling of strangeness, strong or weak, when he reads them, than when he
reads in an English book ‘the painted savage’, or, ‘the phlegmatic
Dutchman’. Mr Newman’s renderings of them must, therefore, be wrong
expressions in a translation of Homer, because they excite in the
scholar, their only competent judge, a feeling quite alien to that
excited in him by what they profess to render.
Mr Newman, by expressions of this kind, is false to his original in two
ways. He is false to him inasmuch as he is ignoble; for a noble air, and
a grotesque air, the air of the address,
Δᾶερ ἐμεῖο, κυνὸς κακομηχάνου, ὀκρυοέσσης,
and the air of the address,
O, brother thou of me, who am a mischief-working vixen,
A numbing horror,
are just contrary the one to the other: and he is false to him inasmuch
as he is odd; for an odd diction like Mr Newman’s, and a perfectly plain
natural diction like Homer’s,—‘dapper-greaved Achaians’ and ἐϋκνήμιδες
Ἀχαιοί,—are also just contrary the one to the other. Where, indeed, Mr
Newman got his diction, with whom he can have lived, what can be his
test of antiquity and rarity for words, are questions which I ask myself
with bewilderment. He has prefixed to his translation a list of what he
calls ‘the more antiquated or rarer words’ which he has used. In this
list appear, on the one hand, such words as _doughty_, _grisly_,
_lusty_, _noisome_, _ravin_, which are familiar, one would think, to all
the world; on the other hand such words as _bragly_, meaning, Mr Newman
tells us, ‘proudly fine’; _bulkin_, ‘a calf’; _plump_, a ‘mass’; and so
on. ‘I am concerned’, says Mr Newman, ‘with the artistic problem of
attaining a plausible aspect of moderate antiquity, while remaining
easily intelligible’. But it seems to me that _lusty_ is not antiquated:
and that _bragly_ is not a word readily understood. That this word,
indeed, and _bulkin_, may have ‘a plausible aspect of moderate
antiquity’, I admit; but that they are ‘easily intelligible’, I deny.
Mr Newman’s syntax has, I say it with pleasure, a much more Homeric cast
than his vocabulary; his syntax, the mode in which his thought is
evolved, although not the actual words in which it is expressed, seems
to me right in its general character, and the best feature of his
version. It is not artificial or rhetorical like Cowper’s syntax or
Pope’s: it is simple, direct, and natural, and so far it is like
Homer’s. It fails, however, just where, from the inherent fault of Mr
Newman’s conception of Homer, one might expect it to fail,—it fails in
nobleness. It presents the thought in a way which is something more than
unconstrained,—over-familiar; something more than easy,—free and easy.
In this respect it is like the movement of Mr Newman’s version, like his
rhythm, for this, too, fails, in spite of some qualities, by not being
noble enough; this, while it avoids the faults of being slow and
elaborate, falls into a fault in the opposite direction, and is
slip-shod. Homer presents his thought naturally; but when Mr Newman has,
A thousand fires along the plain, _I say_, that night were burning,
he presents his thought familiarly; in a style which may be the genuine
style of ballad-poetry, but which is not the style of Homer. Homer moves
freely; but when Mr Newman has,
Infatuate! O that thou wert lord to some other army[11],
he gives himself too much freedom; he leaves us too much to do for his
rhythm ourselves, instead of giving to us a rhythm like Homer’s, easy
indeed, but mastering our ear with a fulness of power which is
irresistible.
I said that a certain style might be the genuine style of ballad-poetry,
but yet not the style of Homer. The analogy of the ballad is ever
present to Mr Newman’s thoughts in considering Homer; and perhaps
nothing has more caused his faults than this analogy,—this popular, but,
it is time to say, this erroneous analogy. ‘The moral qualities of
Homer’s style’, says Mr Newman, ‘being like to those of the English
ballad, we need a metre of the same genius. Only those metres, which by
the very possession of these qualities are liable to degenerate into
_doggerel_, are suitable to reproduce the ancient epic’. ‘The style of
Homer’, he says, in a passage which I have before quoted, ‘is direct,
popular, forcible, quaint, flowing, garrulous: in all these respects it
is similar to the old English ballad’. Mr Newman, I need not say, is by
no means alone in this opinion. ‘The most really and truly Homeric of
all the creations of the English muse is’, says Mr Newman’s critic in
the _National Review_, ‘the ballad-poetry of ancient times; and the
association between metre and subject is one that it would be true
wisdom to preserve’. ‘It is confessed’, says Chapman’s last editor, Mr
Hooper, ‘that the fourteen-syllable verse’ (that is, a ballad-verse) ‘is
peculiarly fitting for Homeric translation’. And the editor of Dr
Maginn’s clever and popular _Homeric Ballads_ assumes it as one of his
author’s greatest and most undisputable merits, that he was ‘the first
who consciously realised to himself the truth that Greek ballads can be
really represented in English only by a similar measure’.
This proposition that Homer’s poetry is _ballad-poetry_, analogous to
the well-known ballad-poetry of the English and other nations, has a
certain small portion of truth in it, and at one time probably served a
useful purpose, when it was employed to discredit the artificial and
literary manner in which Pope and his school rendered Homer. But it has
been so extravagantly over-used, the mistake which it was useful in
combating has so entirely lost the public favour, that it is now much
more important to insist on the large part of error contained in it,
than to extol its small part of truth. It is time to say plainly that,
whatever the admirers of our old ballads may think, the supreme form of
epic poetry, the genuine Homeric mould, is not the form of the Ballad of
Lord Bateman. I have myself shown the broad difference between Milton’s
manner and Homer’s; but, after a course of Mr Newman and Dr Maginn, I
turn round in desperation upon them and upon the balladists who have
misled them, and I exclaim: ‘Compared with you, Milton is Homer’s
double; there is, whatever you may think, ten thousand times more of the
real strain of Homer in
Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides,
And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old,
than in
Now Christ thee save, thou proud portèr,
Now Christ thee save and see[12],
or in
While the tinker did dine, he had plenty of wine[13].
For Homer is not only rapid in movement, simple in style, plain in
language, natural in thought; he is also, and above all, _noble_. I have
advised the translator not to go into the vexed question of Homer’s
identity. Yet I will just remind him that the grand argument—or rather,
not argument, for the matter affords no data for arguing, but the grand
source from which conviction, as we read the _Iliad_, keeps pressing in
upon us, that there is one poet of the _Iliad_, one Homer—is precisely
this nobleness of the poet, this grand manner; we feel that the analogy
drawn from other joint compositions does not hold good here, because
those works do not bear, like the _Iliad_, the magic stamp of a master;
and the moment you have _anything_ less than a masterwork, the
co-operation or consolidation of several poets becomes possible, for
talent is not uncommon; the moment you have _much_ less than a
masterwork, they become easy, for mediocrity is everywhere. I can
imagine fifty Bradies joined with as many Tates to make the New Version
of the Psalms. I can imagine several poets having contributed to any one
of the old English ballads in Percy’s collection. I can imagine several
poets, possessing, like Chapman, the Elizabethan vigour and the
Elizabethan mannerism, united with Chapman to produce his version of the
_Iliad_. I can imagine several poets, with the literary knack of the
twelfth century, united to produce the _Nibelungen Lay_ in the form in
which we have it,—a work which the Germans, in their joy at discovering
a national epic of their own, have rated vastly higher than it deserves.
And lastly, though Mr Newman’s translation of Homer bears the strong
mark of his own idiosyncrasy, yet I can imagine Mr Newman and a school
of adepts trained by him in his art of poetry, jointly producing that
work, so that Aristarchus himself should have difficulty in pronouncing
which line was the master’s, and which a pupil’s. But I cannot imagine
several poets, or one poet, joined with Dante in the composition of his
_Inferno_, though many poets have taken for their subject a descent into
Hell. Many artists, again, have represented Moses; but there is only one
Moses of Michael Angelo. So the insurmountable obstacle to believing the
_Iliad_ a consolidated work of several poets is this: that the work of
great masters is unique; and the _Iliad_ has a great master’s genuine
stamp, and that stamp is _the grand style_.
Poets who cannot work in the grand style instinctively seek a style in
which their comparative inferiority may feel itself at ease, a manner
which may be, so to speak, indulgent to their inequalities. The
ballad-style offers to an epic poet, quite unable to fill the canvas of
Homer, or Dante, or Milton, a canvas which he is capable of filling. The
ballad-measure is quite able to give due effect to the vigour and spirit
which its employer, when at his very best, may be able to exhibit; and,
when he is not at his best, when he is a little trivial, or a little
dull, it will not betray him, it will not bring out his weakness into
broad relief. This is a convenience; but it is a convenience which the
ballad-style purchases by resigning all pretensions to the highest, to
the grand manner. It is true of its movement, as it is _not_ true of
Homer’s, that it is ‘liable to degenerate into doggerel’. It is true of
its ‘moral qualities’, as it is _not_ true of Homer’s, that ‘quaintness’
and ‘garrulity’ are among them. It is true of its employers, as it is
_not_ true of Homer, that they ‘rise and sink with their subject, are
prosaic when it is tame, are low when it is mean’. For this reason the
ballad-style and the ballad-measure are eminently _in_appropriate to
render Homer. Homer’s manner and movement are always both noble and
powerful: the ballad-manner and movement are often either jaunty and
smart, so not noble; or jog-trot and hum-drum, so not powerful.
The _Nibelungen Lay_ affords a good illustration of the qualities of the
ballad-manner. Based on grand traditions, which had found expression in
a grand lyric poetry, the German epic poem of the _Nibelungen Lay_,
though it is interesting, and though it has good passages, is itself
anything rather than a grand poem. It is a poem of which the composer
is, to speak the truth, a very ordinary mortal, and often, therefore,
like other ordinary mortals, very prosy. It is in a measure which
eminently adapts itself to this commonplace personality of its composer,
which has much the movement of the well-known measures of Tate and
Brady, and can jog on, for hundreds of lines at a time, with a level
ease which reminds one of Sheridan’s saying that easy writing may be
often such hard reading. But, instead of occupying myself with the
_Nibelungen Lay_, I prefer to look at the ballad-style as directly
applied to Homer, in Chapman’s version and Mr Newman’s, and in the
_Homeric Ballads_ of Dr. Maginn.
First I take Chapman. I have already shown that Chapman’s conceits are
un-Homeric, and that his rhyme is un-Homeric; I will now show how his
manner and movement are un-Homeric. Chapman’s diction, I have said, is
generally good; but it must be called good with this reserve, that,
though it has Homer’s plainness and directness, it often offends him who
knows Homer, by wanting Homer’s nobleness. In a passage which I have
already quoted, the address of Zeus to the horses of Achilles, where
Homer has,
ἆ δειλώ, τι σφῶϊ δόμεν Πηλῆϊ ἄνακτι
θνητῷ; ὑμεῖς δ’ ἐστὸν ἀγήρω τ’ ἀθανάτω τε!
ἦ ἵνα δυστήνοισι μετ’ ἀνδράσιν ἄλγε’ ἔχητον[14];
Chapman has,
_Poor wretched beasts_, said he,
Why gave we you to a mortal king, when immortality
And incapacity of age so dignifies your states?
Was it to haste[15] the miseries poured out on human fates?
There are many faults in this rendering of Chapman’s, but what I
particularly wish to notice in it is the expression ‘Poor wretched
beasts’ for ἆ δειλώ. This expression just illustrates the difference
between the ballad-manner and Homer’s. The ballad-manner—Chapman’s
manner—is, I say, pitched sensibly lower than Homer’s. The ballad-manner
requires that an expression shall be plain and natural, and then it asks
no more. Homer’s manner requires that an expression shall be plain and
natural, but it also requires that it shall be noble. Ἆ δειλώ is as
plain, as simple as ‘Poor wretched beasts’; but it is also noble, which
‘Poor wretched beasts’ is not. ‘Poor wretched beasts’ is, in truth, a
little over-familiar, but this is no objection to it for the
ballad-manner; it is good enough for the old English ballad, good enough
for the _Nibelungen Lay_, good enough for Chapman’s _Iliad_, good enough
for Mr Newman’s _Iliad_, good enough for Dr Maginn’s _Homeric Ballads_;
but it is not good enough for Homer.
To feel that Chapman’s measure, though natural, is not Homeric; that,
though tolerably rapid, it has not Homer’s rapidity; that it has a
jogging rapidity rather than a flowing rapidity; and a movement familiar
rather than nobly easy, one has only, I think, to read half a dozen
lines in any part of his version. I prefer to keep as much as possible
to passages which I have already noticed, so I will quote the conclusion
of the nineteenth book, where Achilles answers his horse Xanthus, who
has prophesied his death to him[16].
Achilles, far in rage,
Thus answered him:—It fits not thee thus proudly to presage
My overthrow. I know myself it is my fate to fall
Thus far from Phthia; yet that fate shall fail to vent her gall
Till mine vent thousands.—These words said, he fell to horrid deeds,
Gave dreadful signal, and forthright made fly his one-hoofed steeds.
For what regards the manner of this passage, the words ‘Achilles Thus
answered him’, and ‘I know myself it is my fate to fall Thus far from
Phthia’, are in Homer’s manner, and all the rest is out of it. But for
what regards its movement, who, after being jolted by Chapman through
such verse as this,
These words said, he fell to horrid deeds,
Gave dreadful signal, and forthright made fly his one-hoofed steeds,
who does not feel the vital difference of the movement of Homer,
ἦ ῥα, καὶ ἐν πρώτοις ἰάχων ἔχε μώνυχας ἵππο υς?
To pass from Chapman to Dr Maginn. His _Homeric Ballads_ are vigorous
and genuine poems in their own way; they are not one continual falsetto,
like the pinch-beck _Roman Ballads_ of Lord Macaulay; but just because
they are ballads in their manner and movement, just because, to use the
words of his applauding editor, Dr Maginn has ‘consciously realised to
himself the truth that Greek ballads can be really represented in
English only by a similar manner’,—just for this very reason they are
not at all Homeric, they have not the least in the world the manner of
Homer. There is a celebrated incident in the nineteenth book of the
_Odyssey_, the recognition by the old nurse Eurycleia of a scar on the
leg of her master Ulysses, who has entered his own hall as an unknown
wanderer, and whose feet she has been set to wash. ‘Then she came near’,
says Homer, ‘and began to wash her master; and straightway she
recognised a scar which he had got in former days from the white tusk of
a wild boar, when he went to Parnassus unto Autolycus and the sons of
Autolycus, his mother’s father and brethren’[17]. This, ‘really
represented’ by Dr Maginn, in ‘a measure similar’ to Homer’s, becomes:
And scarcely had she begun to wash
Ere she was aware of the grisly gash
Above his knee that lay.
It was a wound from a wild boar’s tooth,
All on Parnassus’ slope,
Where he went to hunt in the days of his youth
With his mother’s sire,
and so on. That is the true ballad-manner, no one can deny; ‘all on
Parnassus’ slope’ is, I was going to say, the true ballad-slang; but
never again shall I be able to read
νίζε δ’ ἄῤ ἆσσον ἴουσα ἄναχθ’ ἑόν· αὐτίκα δ’ ἔγνω
οὐλήν,
without having the destestable dance of Dr Maginn’s
And scarcely had she begun to wash
Ere she was aware of the grisly gash,
jigging in my ears, to spoil the effect of Homer, and to torture me. To
apply that manner and that rhythm to Homer’s incidents, is not to
imitate Homer, but to travesty him.
Lastly I come to Mr Newman. His rhythm, like Chapman’s and Dr Maginn’s,
is a ballad-rhythm, but with a modification of his own. ‘Holding it’, he
tells us, ‘as an axiom, that rhyme must be abandoned’, he found, on
abandoning it, ‘an unpleasant void until he gave a double ending to the
verse’. In short, instead of saying
Good people all with one accord
Give ear unto my _tale_,