literature to its perfect conclusion, and although there can never be an
ultimate translation of either Iliad or Odyssey, as each successive age
is sure to find pleasure in rendering the two poems in its own manner and
according to its own canons of taste, still it is not too much to say
that Mr. Morris's version will always be a true classic amongst our
classical translations. It is not, of course, flawless. In our notice
of the first volume we ventured to say that Mr. Morris was sometimes far
more Norse than Greek, nor does the volume that now lies before us make
us alter that opinion. The particular metre, also, selected by Mr.
Morris, although admirably adapted to express 'the strong-winged music of
Homer,' as far as its flow and freedom are concerned, misses something of
its dignity and calm. Here, it must be admitted, we feel a distinct
loss, for there is in Homer not a little of Milton's lofty manner, and if
swiftness be an essential of the Greek hexameter, stateliness is one of
its distinguishing qualities in Homer's hands. This defect, however, if
we must call it a defect, seems almost unavoidable, as for certain
metrical reasons a majestic movement in English verse is necessarily a
slow movement; and, after all that can be said is said, how really
admirable is this whole translation! If we set aside its noble qualities
as a poem and look on it purely from the scholar's point of view, how
straightforward it is, how honest and direct! Its fidelity to the
original is far beyond that of any other verse-translation in our
literature, and yet it is not the fidelity of a pedant to his text but
rather the fine loyalty of poet to poet.
When Mr. Morris's first volume appeared many of the critics complained
that his occasional use of archaic words and unusual expressions robbed
his version of the true Homeric simplicity. This, however, is not a very
felicitous criticism, for while Homer is undoubtedly simple in his
clearness and largeness of vision, his wonderful power of direct
narration, his wholesome sanity, and the purity and precision of his
method, simple in language he undoubtedly is not. What he was to his
contemporaries we have, of course, no means of judging, but we know that
the Athenian of the fifth century B.C. found him in many places difficult
to understand, and when the creative age was succeeded by the age of
criticism and Alexandria began to take the place of Athens as the centre
of culture for the Hellenistic world, Homeric dictionaries and glossaries
seem to have been constantly published. Indeed, Athenaeus tells us of a
wonderful Byzantine blue-stocking, a precieuse from the Propontis, who
wrote a long hexameter poem, called Mnemosyne, full of ingenious
commentaries on difficulties in Homer, and in fact, it is evident that,
as far as the language is concerned, such a phrase as 'Homeric
simplicity' would have rather amazed an ancient Greek. As for Mr.
Morris's tendency to emphasise the etymological meaning of words, a point
commented on with somewhat flippant severity in a recent number of
Macmillan's Magazine, here Mr. Morris seems to us to be in complete
accord, not merely with the spirit of Homer, but with the spirit of all
early poetry. It is quite true that language is apt to degenerate into a
system of almost algebraic symbols, and the modern city-man who takes a
ticket for Blackfriars Bridge, naturally never thinks of the Dominican
monks who once had their monastery by Thames-side, and after whom the
spot is named. But in earlier times it was not so. Men were then keenly
conscious of the real meaning of words, and early poetry, especially, is
full of this feeling, and, indeed, may be said to owe to it no small
portion of its poetic power and charm. These old words, then, and this
old use of words which we find in Mr. Morris's Odyssey can be amply
justified upon historical grounds, and as for their artistic effect, it
is quite excellent. Pope tried to put Homer into the ordinary language
of his day, with what result we know only too well; but Mr. Morris, who
uses his archaisms with the tact of a true artist, and to whom indeed
they seem to come absolutely naturally, has succeeded in giving to his
version by their aid that touch, not of 'quaintness,' for Homer is never
quaint, but of old-world romance and old-world beauty, which we moderns
find so pleasurable, and to which the Greeks themselves were so keenly
sensitive.
As for individual passages of special merit, Mr. Morris's translation is
no robe of rags sewn with purple patches for critics to sample. Its real
value lies in the absolute rightness and coherence of the whole, in the
grand architecture of the swift, strong verse, and in the fact that the
standard is not merely high but everywhere sustained. It is impossible,
however, to resist the temptation of quoting Mr. Morris's rendering of
that famous passage in the twenty-third book of the epic, in which
Odysseus eludes the trap laid for him by Penelope, whose very faith in
the certainty of her husband's return makes her sceptical of his identity
when he stands before her; an instance, by the way, of Homer's wonderful
psychological knowledge of human nature, as it is always the dreamer
himself who is most surprised when his dream comes true.
Thus she spake to prove her husband; but Odysseus, grieved at heart,
Spake thus unto his bed-mate well-skilled in gainful art:
'O woman, thou sayest a word exceeding grievous to me!
Who hath otherwhere shifted my bedstead? full hard for him should it
be,
For as deft as he were, unless soothly a very God come here,
Who easily, if he willed it, might shift it otherwhere.
But no mortal man is living, how strong soe'er in his youth,
Who shall lightly hale it elsewhere, since a mighty wonder forsooth
Is wrought in that fashioned bedstead, and I wrought it, and I alone.
In the close grew a thicket of olive, a long-leaved tree full-grown,
That flourished and grew goodly as big as a pillar about,
So round it I built my bride-room, till I did the work right out
With ashlar stone close-fitting; and I roofed it overhead,
And thereto joined doors I made me, well-fitting in their stead.
Then I lopped away the boughs of the long-leafed olive-tree,
And shearing the bole from the root up full well and cunningly,
I planed it about with the brass, and set the rule thereto,
And shaping thereof a bed-post, with the wimble I bored it through.
So beginning, I wrought out the bedstead, and finished it utterly,
And with gold enwrought it about, and with silver and ivory,
And stretched on it a thong of oxhide with the purple dye made bright.
Thus then the sign I have shown thee; nor, woman, know I aright
If my bed yet bideth steadfast, or if to another place
Some man hath moved it, and smitten the olive-bole from its base.'
These last twelve books of the Odyssey have not the same marvel of
romance, adventure and colour that we find in the earlier part of the
epic. There is nothing in them that we can compare to the exquisite
idyll of Nausicaa or to the Titanic humour of the episode in the Cyclops'
cave. Penelope has not the glamour of Circe, and the song of the Sirens
may sound sweeter than the whizz of the arrows of Odysseus as he stands
on the threshold of his hall. Yet, for sheer intensity of passionate
power, for concentration of intellectual interest and for masterly
dramatic construction, these latter books are quite unequalled. Indeed,
they show very clearly how it was that, as Greek art developed, the epos
passed into the drama. The whole scheme of the argument, the return of
the hero in disguise, his disclosure of himself to his son, his terrible
vengeance on his enemies and his final recognition by his wife, reminds
us of the plot of more than one Greek play, and shows us what the great
Athenian poet meant when he said that his own dramas were merely scraps
from Homer's table. In rendering this splendid poem into English verse,
Mr. Morris has done our literature a service that can hardly be
over-estimated, and it is pleasant to think that, even should the
classics be entirely excluded from our educational systems, the English
boy will still be able to know something of Homer's delightful tales, to
catch an echo of his grand music and to wander with the wise Odysseus
round 'the shores of old romance.'
The Odyssey of Homer. Done into English Verse by William Morris, Author
of The Earthly Paradise. Volume II. (Reeves and Turner.)
SIR CHARLES BOWEN'S VIRGIL
(Pall Mall Gazette, November 30, 1887.)
Sir Charles Bowen's translation of the Eclogues and the first six books
of the AEneid is hardly the work of a poet, but it is a very charming
version for all that, combining as it does the fine loyalty and learning
of a scholar with the graceful style of a man of letters, two essential
qualifications for any one who would render in English verse the
picturesque pastorals of Italian provincial life, or the stately and
polished epic of Imperial Rome. Dryden was a true poet, but, for some
reason or other, he failed to catch the real Virgilian spirit. His own
qualities became defects when he accepted the task of a translator. He
is too robust, too manly, too strong. He misses Virgil's strange and
subtle sweetness and has but little of his exquisite melody. Professor
Conington, on the other hand, was an admirable and painstaking scholar,
but he was so entirely devoid of literary tact and artistic insight that
he thought that the majesty of Virgil could be rendered in the jingling
manner of Marmion, and though there is certainly far more of the mediaeval
knight than of the moss-trooper about AEneas, even Mr. Morris's version
is not by any means perfect. Compared with professor Conington's bad
ballad it is, of course, as gold to brass; considered simply as a poem it
has noble and enduring qualities of beauty, music and strength; but it
hardly conveys to us the sense that the AEneid is the literary epic of a
literary age. There is more of Homer in it than of Virgil, and the
ordinary reader would hardly realise from the flow and spirit of its
swinging lines that Virgil was a self-conscious artist, the Laureate of a
cultured Court. The AEneid bears almost the same relation to the Iliad
that the Idylls of the King do to the old Celtic romances of Arthur. Like
them it is full of felicitous modernisms, of exquisite literary echoes
and of delicate and delightful pictures; as Lord Tennyson loves England
so did Virgil love Rome; the pageants of history and the purple of empire
are equally dear to both poets; but neither of them has the grand
simplicity or the large humanity of the early singers, and, as a hero,
AEneas is no less a failure than Arthur. Sir Charles Bowen's version
hardly gives us this peculiar literary quality of Virgil's verse, and,
now and then, it reminds us, by some awkward inversion, of the fact that
it is a translation; still, on the whole, it is extremely pleasant to
read, and, if it does not absolutely mirror Virgil, it at least brings us
many charming memories of him.
The metre Sir Charles Bowen has selected is a form of English hexameter,
with the final dissyllable shortened into a foot of a single syllable
only. It is, of course, accentual not quantitative, and though it misses
that element of sustained strength which is given by the dissyllabic
ending of the Latin verse, and has consequently a tendency to fall into
couplets, the increased facility of rhyming gained by the change is of no
small value. To any English metre that aims at swiftness of movement
rhyme seems to be an absolute essential, and there are not enough double
rhymes in our language to admit of the retention of this final
dissyllabic foot.
As an example of Sir Charles Bowen's method we would take his rendering
of the famous passage in the fifth Eclogue on the death of Daphnis:
All of the nymphs went weeping for Daphnis cruelly slain:
Ye were witnesses, hazels and river waves, of the pain
When to her son's sad body the mother clave with a cry,
Calling the great gods cruel, and cruel the stars of the sky.
None upon those dark days their pastured oxen did lead,
Daphnis, to drink of the cold clear rivulet; never a steed
Tasted the flowing waters, or cropped one blade in the mead.
Over thy grave how the lions of Carthage roared in despair,
Daphnis, the echoes of mountain wild and of forest declare.
Daphnis was first who taught us to guide, with a chariot rein,
Far Armenia's tigers, the chorus of Iacchus to train,
Led us with foliage waving the pliant spear to entwine.
As to the tree her vine is a glory, her grapes to the vine,
Bull to the horned herd, and the corn to a fruitful plain,
Thou to thine own wert beauty; and since fate robbed us of thee,
Pales herself, and Apollo are gone from meadow and lea.
'Calling the great gods cruel, and cruel the stars of the sky' is a very
felicitous rendering of 'Atque deos atque astra vocat crudelia mater,'
and so is 'Thou to thine own wert beauty' for 'Tu decus omne tuis.' This
passage, too, from the fourth book of the AEneid is good:
Now was the night. Tired limbs upon earth were folded to sleep,
Silent the forests and fierce sea-waves; in the firmament deep
Midway rolled heaven's stars; no sound on the meadow stirred;
Every beast of the field, each bright-hued feathery bird
Haunting the limpid lakes, or the tangled briary glade,
Under the silent night in sleep were peacefully laid:
All but the grieving Queen. She yields her never to rest,
Takes not the quiet night to her eyelids or wearied breast.
And this from the sixth book is worth quoting:
'Never again such hopes shall a youth of the lineage of Troy
Rouse in his great forefathers of Latium! Never a boy
Nobler pride shall inspire in the ancient Romulus land!
Ah, for his filial love! for his old-world faith! for his hand
Matchless in battle! Unharmed what foemen had offered to stand
Forth in his path, when charging on foot for the enemy's ranks
Or when plunging the spur in his foam-flecked courser's flanks!
Child of a nation's sorrow! if thou canst baffle the Fates'
Bitter decrees, and break for a while their barrier gates,
Thine to become Marcellus! I pray thee bring me anon
Handfuls of lilies, that I bright flowers may strew on my son,
Heap on the shade of the boy unborn these gifts at the least,
Doing the dead, though vainly, the last sad service.'
He ceased.
'Thine to become Marcellus' has hardly the simple pathos of 'Tu Marcellus
eris,' but 'Child of a nation's sorrow' is a graceful rendering of 'Heu,
miserande puer.' Indeed, there is a great deal of feeling in the whole
translation, and the tendency of the metre to run into couplets, of which
we have spoken before, is corrected to a certain degree in the passage
quoted above from the Eclogues by the occasional use of the triplet, as,
elsewhere, by the introduction of alternate, not successive, rhymes.
Sir Charles Bowen is to be congratulated on the success of his version.
It has both style and fidelity to recommend it. The metre he has chosen
seems to us more suited to the sustained majesty of the AEneid than it is
to the pastoral note of the Eclogues. It can bring us something of the
strength of the lyre but has hardly caught the sweetness of the pipe.
Still, it is in many points a very charming translation, and we gladly
welcome it as a most valuable addition to the literature of echoes.
Virgil in English Verse. Eclogues and AEneid I.-VI. By the Right Hon.
Sir Charles Bowen, one of Her Majesty's Lords Justices of Appeal. (John
Murray.)
LITERARY AND OTHER NOTES--II
(Woman's World, December 1887.)
Lady Bellairs's Gossips with Girls and Maidens contains some very
interesting essays, and a quite extraordinary amount of useful
information on all matters connected with the mental and physical
training of women. It is very difficult to give good advice without
being irritating, and almost impossible to be at once didactic and
delightful; but Lady Bellairs manages very cleverly to steer a middle
course between the Charybdis of dulness and the Scylla of flippancy.
There is a pleasing intimite about her style, and almost everything that
she says has both good sense and good humour to recommend it. Nor does
she confine herself to those broad generalisations on morals, which are
so easy to make, so difficult to apply. Indeed, she seems to have a
wholesome contempt for the cheap severity of abstract ethics, enters into
the most minute details for the guidance of conduct, and draws out
elaborate lists of what girls should avoid, and what they should
cultivate.
Here are some specimens of 'What to Avoid':--
A loud, weak, affected, whining, harsh, or shrill tone of voice.
Extravagancies in conversation--such phrases as 'Awfully this,'
'Beastly that,' 'Loads of time,' 'Don't you know,' 'hate' for
'dislike,' etc.
Sudden exclamations of annoyance, surprise, or joy--often dangerously
approaching to 'female swearing'--as 'Bother!' 'Gracious!' 'How
jolly!'
Yawning when listening to any one.
Talking on family matters, even to your bosom friends.
Attempting any vocal or instrumental piece of music that you cannot
execute with ease.
Crossing your letters.
Making a short, sharp nod with the head, intended to do duty for a
bow.
All nonsense in the shape of belief in dreams, omens, presentiments,
ghosts, spiritualism, palmistry, etc.
Entertaining wild flights of the imagination, or empty idealistic
aspirations.
I am afraid that I have a good deal of sympathy with what are called
'empty idealistic aspirations'; and 'wild flights of the imagination' are
so extremely rare in the nineteenth century that they seem to me
deserving rather of praise than of censure. The exclamation 'Bother!'
also, though certainly lacking in beauty, might, I think, be permitted
under circumstances of extreme aggravation, such as, for instance, the
rejection of a manuscript by the editor of a magazine; but in all other
respects the list seems to be quite excellent. As for 'What to
Cultivate,' nothing could be better than the following:
An unaffected, low, distinct, silver-toned voice.
The art of pleasing those around you, and seeming pleased with them,
and all they may do for you.
The charm of making little sacrifices quite naturally, as if of no
account to yourself.
The habit of making allowances for the opinions, feelings, or
prejudices of others.
An erect carriage--that is, a sound body.
A good memory for faces, and facts connected with them--thus avoiding
giving offence through not recognising or bowing to people, or saying
to them what had best been left unsaid.
The art of listening without impatience to prosy talkers, and smiling
at the twice-told tale or joke.
I cannot help thinking that the last aphorism aims at too high a
standard. There is always a certain amount of danger in any attempt to
cultivate impossible virtues. However, it is only fair to add that Lady
Bellairs recognises the importance of self-development quite as much as
the importance of self-denial; and there is a great deal of sound sense
in everything that she says about the gradual growth and formation of
character. Indeed, those who have not read Aristotle upon this point
might with advantage read Lady Bellairs.
Miss Constance Naden's little volume, A Modern Apostle and Other Poems,
shows both culture and courage--culture in its use of language, courage
in its selection of subject-matter. The modern apostle of whom Miss
Naden sings is a young clergyman who preaches Pantheistic Socialism in
the Free Church of some provincial manufacturing town, converts
everybody, except the woman whom he loves, and is killed in a street
riot. The story is exceedingly powerful, but seems more suitable for
prose than for verse. It is right that a poet should be full of the
spirit of his age, but the external forms of modern life are hardly, as
yet, expressive of that spirit. They are truths of fact, not truths of
the imagination, and though they may give the poet an opportunity for
realism, they often rob the poem of the reality that is so essential to
it. Art, however, is a matter of result, not of theory, and if the fruit
is pleasant, we should not quarrel about the tree. Miss Naden's work is
distinguished by rich imagery, fine colour, and sweet music, and these
are things for which we should be grateful, wherever we find them. In
point of mere technical skill, her longer poems are the best; but some of
the shorter poems are very fascinating. This, for instance, is pretty:
The copyist group was gathered round
A time-worn fresco, world-renowned,
Whose central glory once had been
The face of Christ, the Nazarene.
And every copyist of the crowd
With his own soul that face endowed,
Gentle, severe, majestic, mean;
But which was Christ, the Nazarene?
Then one who watched them made complaint,
And marvelled, saying, 'Wherefore paint
Till ye be sure your eyes have seen
The face of Christ, the Nazarene?'
And this sonnet is full of suggestion:
The wine-flushed monarch slept, but in his ear
An angel breathed--'Repent, or choose the flame
Quenchless.' In dread he woke, but not in shame,
Deep musing--'Sin I love, yet hell I fear.'
Wherefore he left his feasts and minions dear,
And justly ruled, and died a saint in name.
But when his hasting spirit heavenward came,
A stern voice cried--'O Soul! what dost thou here?'
'Love I forswore, and wine, and kept my vow
To live a just and joyless life, and now
I crave reward.' The voice came like a knell--
'Fool! dost thou hope to find again thy mirth,
And those foul joys thou didst renounce on earth?
Yea, enter in! My heaven shall be thy hell.'
Miss Constance Naden deserves a high place among our living poetesses,
and this, as Mrs. Sharp has shown lately in her volume, entitled Women's
Voices, is no mean distinction.
Phyllis Browne's Life of Mrs. Somerville forms part of a very interesting
little series, called 'The World's Workers'--a collection of short
biographies catholic enough to include personalities so widely different
as Turner and Richard Cobden, Handel and Sir Titus Salt, Robert
Stephenson and Florence Nightingale, and yet possessing a certain
definite aim. As a mathematician and a scientist, the translator and
populariser of La Mecanique Celeste, and the author of an important book
on physical geography, Mrs. Somerville is, of course, well known. The
scientific bodies of Europe covered her with honours; her bust stands in
the hall of the Royal Society, and one of the Women's Colleges at Oxford
bears her name. Yet, considered simply in the light of a wife and a
mother, she is no less admirable; and those who consider that stupidity
is the proper basis for the domestic virtues, and that intellectual women
must of necessity be helpless with their hands, cannot do better than
read Phyllis Browne's pleasant little book, in which they will find that
the greatest woman-mathematician of any age was a clever needlewoman, a
good housekeeper, and a most skilful cook. Indeed, Mrs. Somerville seems
to have been quite renowned for her cookery. The discoverers of the
North-West Passage christened an island 'Somerville,' not as a tribute to
the distinguished mathematician, but as a recognition of the excellence
of some orange marmalade which the distinguished mathematician had
prepared with her own hands and presented to the ships before they left
England; and to the fact that she was able to make currant jelly at a
very critical moment she owed the affection of some of her husband's
relatives, who up to that time had been rather prejudiced against her on
the ground that she was merely an unpractical Blue-stocking.