But, although a student of English Literature be ignorant of
Greek and Latin as languages, may he not have Greek and Latin
literature widely opened to him by intelligent translations? The
question has often been asked, but I ask it again. May not _some_
translations open a door to him by which he can see them through
an atmosphere, and in that atmosphere the authentic ancient gods
walking: so that returning upon English literature he may
recognise them there, too, walking and talking in a garden of
values? The highest poetical speech of any one language defies,
in my belief, translation into any other. But Herodotus loses
little, and North is every whit as good as Plutarch.
Sigh no more, ladies; ladies, sigh no more!
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never
Suppose that rendered thus:
I enjoin upon the adult female population ([Greek: gynaikes]),
not once but twice, that there be from this time forward, a total
cessation of sighing. The male is, and has been, constantly
addicted to inconstancy, treading the ocean and the mainland
respectively with alternate feet.
That, more or less, is what Paley did upon Euripides, and how
would you like it if a modern Greek did it upon Shakespeare? None
the less I remember that my own first awed surmise of what Greek
might mean came from a translated story of Herodotus--the story
of Cleobis and Biton--at the tail of an old grammar-book, before
I had learnt the Greek alphabet; and I am sure that the instinct
of the old translators was sound; that somehow (as Wordsworth
says somewhere) the present must be balanced on the wings of the
past and the future, and that as you stretch out the one you
stretch out the other to strength.
X
There is no derogation of new things in this plea I make
specially to you who may be candidates in our School of English.
You may remember my reading to you in a previous lecture that
liberal poem of Cory's invoking the spirit of 'dear divine
Comatas,' that
Two minds shall flow together, the English and the Greek.
Well, I would have your minds, as you read our literature, reach
back to that Dorian shepherd through an atmosphere--his made
ours--as through veils, each veil unfolding a value. So you will
recognise how, from Chaucer down, our literature has panted after
the Mediterranean water-brooks. So through an atmosphere you will
link (let me say) Collins's "Ode to Evening," or Matthew Arnold's
"Strayed Reveller" up to the 'Pervigilium Veneris,' Mr Sturge
Moore's "Sicilian Vine-dresser" up to Theocritus, Pericles'
funeral oration down to Lincoln's over the dead at Gettysburg.
And as I read you just now some part of an English oration in the
Latin manner, so I will conclude with some stanzas in the Greek
manner. They are by Landor--a proud promise by a young writer,
hopeful as I could wish any young learner here to be. The title--
_Corinna, from Athens, to Tanagra_
Tanagra! think not I forget
Thy beautifully storied streets;
Be sure my memory bathes yet
In clear Thermodon, and yet greets
The blithe and liberal shepherd-boy,
Whose sunny bosom swells with joy
When we accept his matted rushes
Upheav'd with sylvan fruit; away he bounds, and blushes.
A gift I promise: one I see
Which thou with transport wilt receive,
The only proper gift for thee,
Of which no mortal shall bereave
In later times thy mouldering walls,
Until the last old turret falls;
A crown, a crown from Athens won,
A crown no god can wear, beside Latona's son.
There may be cities who refuse
To their own child the honours due,
And look ungently on the Muse;
But ever shall those cities rue
The dry, unyielding, niggard breast,
Offering no nourishment, no rest,
To that young head which soon shall rise
Disdainfully, in might and glory, to the skies.
Sweetly where cavern'd Dirce flows
Do white-arm'd maidens chaunt my lay,
Flapping the while with laurel-rose
The honey-gathering tribes away;
And sweetly, sweetly Attic tongues
Lisp your Corinna's early songs;
To her with feet more graceful come
The verses that have dwelt in kindred breasts at home.
O let thy children lean aslant
Against the tender mother's knee,
And gaze into her face, and want
To know what magic there can be
In words that urge some eyes to dance,
While others as in holy trance
Look up to heaven: be such my praise!
Why linger? I must haste, or lose the Delphic bays.
[Footnote 1: The Works of Lucian of Samosata: translated
by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler (Introduction, p. xxix).
Oxford, Clarendon Press.]
[Footnote 2: "The Training of the Imagination": by James
Rhoades. London, John Lane, 1900.]
[Footnote 3: Landor: "Æsop and Rhodopè."]