By this the storm grew loud apace:
The waterwraith was shrieking,
And in the scowl of heav’n each face
Grew dark as they were speaking.
Whether I use this metre well or ill, I maintain that it is essentially
a noble metre, a popular metre, a metre of great capacity. _It is
essentially the national ballad metre_, for the double rhyme is an
accident. Of _course_ it can be applied to low, as well as to high
subjects; else it would _not_ be popular: it would _not_ be ‘of a like
moral genius’ to the Homeric metre, which was available equally for the
comic poem _Margites_, for the precepts of Pythagoras, for the pious
prosaic hymn of Cleanthes, for the driest prose of a naval
catalogue[39], in short, _for all early thought_. Mr Arnold appears to
forget, though he cannot be ignorant, that prose-composition is later
than Homer, and that in the epical days every initial effort at prose
history was carried on in _Homeric doggerel_ by the Cyclic poets, who
traced the history of Troy _ab ovo_ in consecutive chronology. I say, he
is merely inadvertent, he cannot be ignorant, that the Homeric _metre_,
like my metre, subserves prosaic thought with the utmost facility; but I
hold it to be, not indavertence, but blindness, when he does not see
that Homer’s τὸν δ’ ἀπαμειβόμενος is a line of as thoroughly unaffected
_oratio pedestris_ as any verse of Pythagoras or Horace’s Satires. But
on diction I defer to speak, till I have finished the topic of metre.
I do not say that any measure is faultless. Every measure has its
foible: mine has that fault which every uniform line must have; it is
liable to monotony. This is evaded of course, as in the hexameter or
rather as in Milton’s line, first, by varying the cæsura, secondly, by
varying certain feet, within narrow and well understood limits, thirdly,
by irregularity in the strength of accents, fourthly, by varying the
weight of the unaccented syllables also. All these things are needed,
_for the mere sake of breaking uniformity_. I will not here assert that
Homer’s many marvellous freedoms, such as ἑκηβόλου Ἀπόλλωνος, were
dictated by this aim, like those in the _Paradise Lost_; but I do say,
that it is most unjust, most unintelligent, in critics, to produce
_single_ lines from me, and criticize them as rough or weak, instead of
examining them and presenting them as part of _a mass_. How would
Shakspeare stand this sort of test? nay, or Milton? The metrical laws of
a long poem cannot be the same as of a sonnet: single verses are organic
elements of a great whole. A crag must not be cut like a gem. Mr Arnold
should remember Aristotle’s maxim, that popular eloquence (and such is
Homer’s) should be broad, rough and highly coloured, like scene
painting, not polished into delicacy like miniature. But I speak now of
metre, not yet of diction. In _any_ long and popular poem it is a
mistake to wish every line to conform severely to a few types; but to
claim this of a translator of _Homer_ is a doubly unintelligent
exaction, when Homer’s own liberties transgress all bounds; many of them
being feebly disguised by later double spellings, as εἵως, εἷος,
invented for his special accommodation.
The Homeric verse has a rhythmical advantage over mine in less rigidity
of cæsura. Though the Hexameter was made out of two Doric lines, yet no
division of sense, no pause of the voice or thought, is exacted between
them. The chasm between two English verses is deeper. Perhaps, on the
side of syntax, a _four + three_ English metre drives harder towards
monotony than Homer’s own verse. For other reasons, it lies under a like
disadvantage, compared with Milton’s metre. The secondary cæsuras
possible in the four feet are of course less numerous than those in the
five feet, and the three-foot verse has still less variety. To my taste,
it is far more pleasing that the short line recur less regularly; just
as the parœmiac of Greek anapæsts is less pleasant in the Aristophanic
tetrameter, than when it comes frequent but not expected. This is a main
reason why I prefer Scott’s free metre to my own; yet, without rhyme, I
have not found how to use his freedom. Mr Arnold wrongly supposes me to
have overlooked his main and just objections to rhyming Homer; viz. that
so many Homeric lines are intrinsically made for isolation. In p. ix of
my Preface I called it a fatal embarrassment. But the objection applies
in its full strength only against Pope’s rhymes, not against Walter
Scott’s.
Mr Gladstone has now laid before the public his own specimens of Homeric
translation. Their dates range from 1836 to 1859. It is possible that he
has as strong a distaste as Mr Arnold for my version; for he totally
ignores the archaic, the rugged, the boisterous element in Homer. But as
to metre, he gives me his full suffrage. He has lines with four accents,
with three, and a few with two; not one with five. On the whole, his
metre, his cadences, his varying rhymes, are those of Scott. He has more
trochaic lines than I approve. He is truthful to Homer on many sides;
and (such is the delicate grace and variety admitted by the rhyme) his
verses are more pleasing than mine. I do not hesitate to say, that if
_all_ Homer could be put before the public in the same style equally
well with his best pieces, a translation executed on my principles could
not live in the market at its side; and certainly I should spare my
labour. I add, that I myself prefer the former piece which I quote to my
own, even while I see his defects: for I hold that his graces, at which
I cannot afford to aim, more than make up for his losses. After this
confession, I frankly contrast his rendering of the two noblest passages
with mine, that the reader may see, what Mr Arnold does not show, my
weak and strong sides.