Whoever loves Homer will like these little books. Mr. Arnold is a man of
large and liberal intelligence, well up with his time; he is critically
inspired, yet himself a poet; his thinking, while ample, is singularly
definite; he has an admirable faculty of minding his own business, doing
what he _can_ do, and speaking where he has a right to speak; his style,
while precise and vigorous, has a charm of composure and naturalness;
and he exhibits such a combination of two-edged critical truth and
intrepidity with perfect temper as is rarely seen. In his first volume
he had been Rhadamanthine upon the translation of Mr. Newman. The latter
replied with asperity. In "Last Words" Mr. Arnold responds in a tone so
pure, so manly and gentle, that the volume should be memorable for this
alone, were there nothing else to recommend it. Let us all hasten to
bless the banns between steel-edged truth and perfect amenity.
Mr. Arnold characterizes Homer as rapid, as plain, direct, and natural
in language, as the same in his thought, and finally as noble, having
the grand manner. A translation must reproduce these features, whatever
it fail to do. Passing existing translations in review, he finds Cowper
slow, Pope artificial, Chapman fanciful, Newman, through the vice of his
theory, ignoble. Some one having pronounced Tennyson eminently Homeric,
Mr. Arnold discusses the relation of the English idyllic to the Ionian
epic poet, and finds him at the opposite pole in respect of simplicity.
As to a vehicle for the translation of Homer, he gives his voice
decidedly in favor of English hexameter, and tries his own hand at that
measure. His success strikes us as respectable, but not eminent. Blank
verse he thinks too slow in movement, and too much opposed in character.
Mr. Tennyson answers this last by translating a passage from Homer into
blank verse, and shows at least that he can make it run like a
race-horse, and that, too, without sacrifice of fineness or of melody.
Right or wrong on these matters, and notwithstanding we confess to
certain sympathies with Mr. Newman, we find in Mr. Arnold's books some
of the pleasantest reading we have seen this many a day, and wish that
for every leisure hour of life a companion so intelligent and liberal,
so cultivated and genuine, so manly and mannerly, might await us.