... He [the translator of Homer] will find one English book and one
only, where, as in the _Iliad_ itself, perfect plainness of speech is
allied with perfect nobleness; and that book is the Bible. No one could
see this more clearly than Pope saw it: 'This pure and noble
simplicity,' he says, 'is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scripture
and Homer': yet even with Pope a woman is a 'fair', a father is a
'sire', and an old man a 'reverend sage', and so on through all the
phrases of that pseudo-Augustan, and most unbiblical, vocabulary. The
Bible, however, is undoubtedly the grand mine of diction for the
translator of Homer; and, if he knows how to discriminate truly between
what will suit him and what will not, the Bible may afford him also
invaluable lessons of style.--M. ARNOLD. _On Translating Homer._