Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὅς μάλα πολλὰ....
Footnote 63:
Substantially, however, in the question at issue between Mr Munro and
Mr Spedding, I agree with Mr Munro. By the italicized words in the
following sentence, ‘The rhythm of the Virgilian hexameter depends
entirely on _cæsura_, _pause_, and a due arrangement of words’, he has
touched, it seems to me, in the constitution of this hexameter, the
central point which Mr Spedding misses. The accent, or _heightened
tone_, of Virgil in reading his own hexameters, was probably far from
being the same thing as the accent or _stress_ with which we read
them. The general effect of each line, in Virgil’s mouth, was probably
therefore something widely different from what Mr Spedding assumes it
to have been: an ancient’s accentual reading was something which
allowed the metrical beat of the Latin line to be far more perceptible
than our accentual reading allows it to be.
On the question as to the _real_ rhythm of the ancient hexameter, Mr
Newman has in his _Reply_ a page quite admirable for force and
precision. Here he is in his element, and his ability and acuteness
have their proper scope. But it is true that the _modern_ reading of
the ancient hexameter is what the modern hexameter has to imitate, and
that the English reading of the Virgilian hexameter is as Mr Spedding
describes it. Why this reading has not been imitated by the English
hexameter, I have tried to point out in the text.
Footnote 64:
Such a minor change I have attempted by occasionally shifting, in the
first foot of the hexameter, the accent from the first syllable to the
second. In the current English hexameter, it is on the first. Mr
Spedding, who proposes radically to subvert the constitution of this
hexameter, seems not to understand that anyone can propose to modify
it partially; he can comprehend revolution in this metre, but not
reform. Accordingly he asks me how I can bring myself to say,
‘_Bé_tween that and the ships’, or ‘_Thére_ sat fifty men’; or how I
can reconcile such forcing of the accent with my own rule, that
‘hexameters must _read themselves_’. Presently he says that he cannot
believe I do pronounce these words so, but that he thinks I leave out
the accent in the first foot altogether, and thus get a hexameter with
only five accents. He will pardon me: I pronounce, as I suppose he
himself does, if he reads the words naturally, ‘Be_tween_ that and the
ships’, and ‘There _sát_ fifty men’. Mr Spedding is familiar enough
with this accent on the second syllable in Virgil’s hexameters; in ‘et
_té_ montosæ’, or ‘Ve_ló_ces jaculo’. Such a change is an attempt to
relieve the monotony of the current English hexameter by occasionally
altering the position of one of its accents; it is not an attempt to
make a wholly new English hexameter by habitually altering the
position of four of them. Very likely it is an unsuccessful attempt;
but at any-rate it does not violate what I think is the fundamental
rule for English hexameters, that may be such as to _read themselves_
without necessitating, on the reader’s part, any non-natural
putting-on or taking-off accent. Hexameters like these of Mr
Longfellow,
‘In that delightful land which is washed by the Delaware’s
waters’,
and,
‘As if they fain would appease the Dryads, whose haunts they
molested’,
violate this rule; and they are very common. I think the blemish of Mr
Dart’s recent meritorious version of the _Iliad_ is that it contains
too many of them.
Footnote 65:
As I welcome another more recent attempt in stanza,—Mr Worsley’s
version of the _Odyssey_ in Spenser’s measure. Mr Worsley does me the
honour to notice some remarks of mine on this measure: I had said that
its greater intricacy made it a worse measure than even the
ten-syllable couplet to employ for rendering Homer. He points out, in
answer, that ‘the more complicated the correspondences in a poetical
measure, the less obtrusive and absolute are the rhymes’. This is
true, and subtly remarked; but I never denied that the single shocks
of rhyme in the couplet were more _strongly felt_ than those in the
stanza; I said that the more frequent recurrence of the same rhyme, in
the stanza, necessarily made this measure more _intricate_. The stanza
repacks Homer’s matter yet more arbitrarily, and therefore changes his
movement yet more radically, than the couplet. Accordingly, I imagine
a nearer approach to a perfect translation of Homer is possible in the
couplet, well managed, than in the stanza, however well managed. But
meanwhile Mr Worsley, applying the Spenserian stanza, that beautiful
romantic measure, to the most romantic poem of the ancient world;
making this stanza yield him, too (what it never yielded to Byron),
its treasures of fluidity and sweet ease; above all, bringing to his
task a truly poetical sense and skill, has produced a version of the
_Odyssey_ much the most pleasing of those hitherto produced, and which
is delightful to read.
For the public this may well be enough, nay, more than enough; but for
the critic even this is not yet quite enough.
Footnote 66:
I speak of poetic genius as employing itself upon narrative or
dramatic poetry,—poetry in which the poet has to go out of himself and
to create. In lyrical poetry, in the direct expression of personal
feeling, the most subtle genius may, under the momentary pressure of
passion, express itself simply. Even here, however, the native
tendency will generally be discernible.
Footnote 67:
‘And I have endured—the like whereof no soul upon the earth hath yet
endured—to carry to my lips the hand of him who slew my
child’.—_Iliad_, xxiv. 505.
Footnote 68:
‘Nay and thou too, old man, in times past wert, as we hear,
happy’.—_Iliad_, xxiv. 543. In the original this line, for mingled
pathos and dignity, is perhaps without a rival even in Homer.
Footnote 69:
’For so have the gods spun our destiny to us wretched mortals,—that we
should live in sorrow; but they themselves are without
trouble’.—_Iliad_, xxiv. 525.
Footnote 70:
‘_I_ wept not: so of stone grew I within:—_they_ wept’.—_Hell_,
xxxiii. 49 (Carlyle’s Translation, slightly altered).