‘A thousand fires along the plain,I say, that night were gleaming’.
‘A thousand fires along the plain,I say, that night were gleaming’.
‘A thousand fires along the plain,I say, that night were gleaming’.
‘A thousand fires along the plain,I say, that night were gleaming’.
He says: ‘This may be the genuine style of ballad poetry, but it isnotthe style of Homer’. I reply; my use of expletives is moderate indeed compared to Homer’s. Mr Arnold writes, as if quite unaware that such words as the intensely prosaic ἄÏα, and its abbreviations ἂÏ, ῥα, with τοι, τε, δὴ, μάλα, ἦ, ἦ ῥα νυ, πεÏ, overflow in epic style; and that a pupil who has mastered the very copious stock of Attic particles, is taken quite aback by the extravagant number in Homer. Our expletives are generally more offensive, because longer. My principle is, to admit only such expletives asadd energy, and savour of antiquity. To the feeble expletives of mean ditties I am not prone. I once heard from an eminent counsellor the first lesson of young lawyers, in the following doggerel:
He who holds his lands in fee,Need neither quake nor quiver:For I humbly conceive, look ye, do ye see?He holds his lands for ever.
He who holds his lands in fee,Need neither quake nor quiver:For I humbly conceive, look ye, do ye see?He holds his lands for ever.
He who holds his lands in fee,Need neither quake nor quiver:For I humbly conceive, look ye, do ye see?He holds his lands for ever.
He who holds his lands in fee,
Need neither quake nor quiver:
For I humbly conceive, look ye, do ye see?
He holds his lands for ever.
The ‘humbly conceiving’ certainly outdoes Homer. Yet if the poet had chosen (as hemighthave chosen) to make Polydamas or Glaucus say:
á½ÏƒÏ„ις á¼Ï€ÎµÏ„Ïάφθη Ï„Îμενος πίστει βασιλῆος,φημί τοι, οὗτος á¼€Î½á½´Ï Î¿á½”Ï„â€™ á¼‚Ï Ï„ÏÎμει οὔτε φοβεῖται·δὴ μάλα Î³Î¬Ï á¿¥Î± ἑὰς κÏατÎοι κεν á¼ÏƒÎ±Î¹á½²Î½ á¼€ÏοÏÏας:
á½ÏƒÏ„ις á¼Ï€ÎµÏ„Ïάφθη Ï„Îμενος πίστει βασιλῆος,φημί τοι, οὗτος á¼€Î½á½´Ï Î¿á½”Ï„â€™ á¼‚Ï Ï„ÏÎμει οὔτε φοβεῖται·δὴ μάλα Î³Î¬Ï á¿¥Î± ἑὰς κÏατÎοι κεν á¼ÏƒÎ±Î¹á½²Î½ á¼€ÏοÏÏας:
á½ÏƒÏ„ις á¼Ï€ÎµÏ„Ïάφθη Ï„Îμενος πίστει βασιλῆος,φημί τοι, οὗτος á¼€Î½á½´Ï Î¿á½”Ï„â€™ á¼‚Ï Ï„ÏÎμει οὔτε φοβεῖται·δὴ μάλα Î³Î¬Ï á¿¥Î± ἑὰς κÏατÎοι κεν á¼ÏƒÎ±Î¹á½²Î½ á¼€ÏοÏÏας:
á½ÏƒÏ„ις á¼Ï€ÎµÏ„Ïάφθη Ï„Îμενος πίστει βασιλῆος,
φημί τοι, οὗτος á¼€Î½á½´Ï Î¿á½”Ï„â€™ á¼‚Ï Ï„ÏÎμει οὔτε φοβεῖται·
δὴ μάλα Î³Î¬Ï á¿¥Î± ἑὰς κÏατÎοι κεν á¼ÏƒÎ±Î¹á½²Î½ á¼€ÏοÏÏας:
I rather think the following would be a fair prose rendering: ‘Whoso hath been entrusted with a demesne under pledge with the king (I tell you); this man neither trembleth (you see) nor feareth: for (look ye!) he (verily) may hold (you see) his lands for ever’.
Since Mr Arnold momentarily appeals to me on the chasm between Attic and Homeric Greek, I turn the last piece into a stylefar lesswidely separated from modern English than Homer from Thucydides.
Dat mon, quhich hauldeth Kyngis-afLondis yn féo, niver(I tell ’e) feereth aught; sith heeDoth hauld hys londis yver.
Dat mon, quhich hauldeth Kyngis-afLondis yn féo, niver(I tell ’e) feereth aught; sith heeDoth hauld hys londis yver.
Dat mon, quhich hauldeth Kyngis-afLondis yn féo, niver(I tell ’e) feereth aught; sith heeDoth hauld hys londis yver.
Dat mon, quhich hauldeth Kyngis-af
Londis yn féo, niver
(I tell ’e) feereth aught; sith hee
Doth hauld hys londis yver.
I certainly donotrecommend this style to a translator, yet it would have its advantage. Even with a smaller change of dialect it would aid us over Helen’s self-piercing denunciation, ‘approaching to Christian penitence’, as some have judged it.
Quoth she, I am a gramsome bitch,If woman bitch may bee.
Quoth she, I am a gramsome bitch,If woman bitch may bee.
Quoth she, I am a gramsome bitch,If woman bitch may bee.
Quoth she, I am a gramsome bitch,
If woman bitch may bee.
But in behalf of the poet I must avow: when one considers how dramatic he is, it is marvellous how little in him can offend.For this very reason he is above needing tender treatment from a translator, but can bear faithful rendering, not only better than Shakspeare but better than Pindar or Sophocles.
When Mr Arnold denies that Homer is ever prosaic or homely, his own specimens of translation put me into despair of convincing him; for they seem to me a very anthology of prosaic flatness. Phrases, which are not in themselves bad, if they were elevated by something in the syntax or rhythm distinguishing them from prose, become in him prose out-and-out. ‘To Peleus why did we give you, to a mortal’? ‘In the plaintherewere kindled a thousand fires; by each onetheresate fifty men’. [At least he might have left out the expletive.] ‘By their chariots stood the steeds, and champed the white barley; while their masters sate by the fire and waited for morning’. ‘Us, whose portion for ever Zeus has made it, from youthright upto age, to be winding skeins of grievous wars, tillevery soul of usperish’. The words which I here italicize, seem to me below noble ballad. What shall I say of ‘I bethink me what the Trojan men and Trojan women might murmur’. ‘Sacred Troy shallgo to destruction’. ‘Or bear pails to the well of Messeϊs’. ‘See, the wife of Hector, that great pre-eminent captain of the horsemen of Troy,in the day they foughtfor their city’, for, ‘who wascaptain in the dayon which——’. ‘Let me be dead and the earth be mounded (?) above me, ere I hear thy cries, and thy captivity[49]told of’. ‘By no slow pace or want of swiftnessof ours[50]did the Trojansobtain to stripthe arms of Patroclus’. ‘Here I am destined to perish, far from my father and mother dear;for all that, I will not’, etc. ‘Dare they not enter the fight, or stand in the council of heroes,allfor fear of the shame and thetaunts my crimehas awakened?’ One who regards all this to be high poetry,—emphatically ‘noble’,—may well thinkτὸν δ’ ἀπαμειβόμενοςor ‘with him there came forty black galleys’, or the broiling of the beef collops, to be such. When Mr Arnold regards ‘no want of swiftness ofours’; ‘for all that’, in the sense of nevertheless; ‘allfor fear’,i.e.because of the fear;notto be prosaic: my readers, however ignorant of Greek, will dispense with further argument from me. Mr Arnold’s inability to discern prose in Greek is not to be trusted.
But I see something more in this phenomenon. Mr Arnold is an original poet; and, as such, certainly uses a diction far more elevated than he here puts forward to represent Homer. He calls his Homeric dictionplainandsimple. Interpreting these words from the contrast of Mr Arnold’s own poems, I claim his suffrage as on my side, that Homer is often in a style much lower than what the moderns esteem to be poetical. But I protest, that he carries itvery muchtoo far, and levels the noblest down to the most negligent style of Homer. The poet isnotalways so ‘ignoble’, as the unlearned might infer from my critic’s specimens. He never drops so low as Shakspeare; yet if he were as sustained as Virgil or Milton, he would with it lose his vast superiority over these, his rich variety. That the whole first book of the Iliad is pitched lower than the rest, though it has vigorous descriptions, is denoted by the total absence of simile in it: for Homer’s kindling is always indicated by simile. The second book rises on the first, until the catalogue of ships, which (as if to atone for its flatness) is ushered in by five consecutive similes. In the third and fourth books the poet continues to rise, and almost culminates in the fifth; but then seems to restrain himself, lest nothing grander be left for Achilles. Although I do not believe in a unity of authorship between the Odyssey and the Iliad, yet in the Iliad itselfI see such unity, that I cannot doubt its negligences to be from art. (The monstrous speech of Nestor in the 11th book is a case by itself. About 100 lines have perhaps been added later, for reasons other than literary.) I observe that just before the poet is about to bring out Achilles in his utmost splendour, he has three-quarters of a book comparatively tame, with a ridiculous legend told by Agamemnon in order to cast his own sins upon Fate. If Shakspeare introduces coarse wrangling, buffoonery, or mean superstition, no one claims or wishes this to be in a high diction or tragic rhythm; and why should anyone wish such a thing from Homer or Homer’s translator? I find nothing here in the poet to apologize for; but much cause for indignation, when the unlearned public is misled by translators or by critics to expect delicacy and elegance out of place. But I beg the unlearned to judge for himself whether Homercanhave intended such lines as the following for poetry, and whether I am bound to make them any better than I do.
Then visiting he urged each man with words,Mesthles and Glaucus and Medon and ThersilochusAnd Asteropæus and Deisenor and HippothoüsAnd Phorkys and Chromius and Ennomus the augur.
Then visiting he urged each man with words,Mesthles and Glaucus and Medon and ThersilochusAnd Asteropæus and Deisenor and HippothoüsAnd Phorkys and Chromius and Ennomus the augur.
Then visiting he urged each man with words,Mesthles and Glaucus and Medon and ThersilochusAnd Asteropæus and Deisenor and HippothoüsAnd Phorkys and Chromius and Ennomus the augur.
Then visiting he urged each man with words,
Mesthles and Glaucus and Medon and Thersilochus
And Asteropæus and Deisenor and Hippothoüs
And Phorkys and Chromius and Ennomus the augur.
He has lines in plenty as little elevated. If they came often in masses, it would be best to translate them into avowed prose: but since gleams of poetry break out amidwhat is flattest, I have no choice but to imitate Homer in retaining a uniform, but easy and unpretending metre. Mr Arnold calls my metre ‘slip-shod’: if it can rise into grandeur when needful, the epithet is a praise.
Of course I hold the Iliad to begenerallynoble and grand. Very many of the poet’s conceptions were grand to him, mean to us: especially is he mean and absurd in scenes of conflict between the gods. Besides, he is disgusting and horrible occasionally in word and thought; as when Hecuba wishes to ‘cling on Achilles and eat up his liver’; when (as Jupiter says) Juno would gladly eat Priam’s children raw; when Jupiter hanged Juno up and fastened a pair of anvils to her feet; also in the description of dreadful wounds, and the treatment which (Priam says) dogs give to an old man’s corpse. The descriptions of Vulcan and Thersites are ignoble; so is the mode of mourning for Hector adopted by Priam; so is the treatment of the populace by Ulysses, which does but reflect the manners of the day. I am not now blaming Homer for these things; but I say no treatment can elevate the subject; the translator must not be expected to make noble what is not so intrinsically.
If anyone think that I am disparaging Homer, let me remind him of the horrid grossnesses of Shakspeare, which yet arenot allowed to lessen our admiration of Shakspeare’s grandeur. The Homer of the Iliad is morally pure and often very tender; but to expect refinement and universal delicacy of expression in that stage of civilization is quite anachronistic and unreasonable. As in earlier England, so in Homeric Greece, even high poetry partook of the coarseness of society. This was probably inevitable, precisely because Greek epic poetry was sonatural.
Mr Arnold says that I make Homer’s noblenesseminently ignoble. This suggests to me to quote a passage, not because I think myself particularly successful in it, but because the poet is evidently aiming to be grand, when his mightiest hero puts forth mighty boastings, offensive to some of the gods. It is the speech of Achilles over the dead body of Asteropæus (Iliad 21, 184). Whether I make it ignoble, by my diction or my metre, the reader must judge.
Lie as thou art. ’Tis hard for thee     to strive against the childrenOf overmatching Saturn’s son,     tho’ offspring of a River.Thou boastest, that thy origin     is from a Stream broad-flówing;I boast, from mighty Jupiter     to trace my first beginning.A man who o’er the Myrmidons     holdeth wide rule, begat me,Peleus; whose father Æacus     by Jupiter was gotten.Rivers, that trickle to the sea,     than Jupiter are weaker;So, than the progeny of Jove,     weaker a River’s offspring.Yea, if he aught avail’d to help,     behold! a mighty RiverBeside thee here: but none can fight     with Jove, the child of Saturn.Not royal Acheloïus     with him may play the equal.Nor e’en the amplebosom’d strength     of deeply-flowing Ocean:Tho’ from his fulness every Sea     and every River welleth,And all the ever-bubbling springs     and eke their vasty sources.Yet at the lightning-bolt of Jove     doth even Ocean shudder,And at the direful thunder-clap,     when from the sky it crasheth.
Lie as thou art. ’Tis hard for thee     to strive against the childrenOf overmatching Saturn’s son,     tho’ offspring of a River.Thou boastest, that thy origin     is from a Stream broad-flówing;I boast, from mighty Jupiter     to trace my first beginning.A man who o’er the Myrmidons     holdeth wide rule, begat me,Peleus; whose father Æacus     by Jupiter was gotten.Rivers, that trickle to the sea,     than Jupiter are weaker;So, than the progeny of Jove,     weaker a River’s offspring.Yea, if he aught avail’d to help,     behold! a mighty RiverBeside thee here: but none can fight     with Jove, the child of Saturn.Not royal Acheloïus     with him may play the equal.Nor e’en the amplebosom’d strength     of deeply-flowing Ocean:Tho’ from his fulness every Sea     and every River welleth,And all the ever-bubbling springs     and eke their vasty sources.Yet at the lightning-bolt of Jove     doth even Ocean shudder,And at the direful thunder-clap,     when from the sky it crasheth.
Lie as thou art. ’Tis hard for thee     to strive against the childrenOf overmatching Saturn’s son,     tho’ offspring of a River.Thou boastest, that thy origin     is from a Stream broad-flówing;I boast, from mighty Jupiter     to trace my first beginning.A man who o’er the Myrmidons     holdeth wide rule, begat me,Peleus; whose father Æacus     by Jupiter was gotten.Rivers, that trickle to the sea,     than Jupiter are weaker;So, than the progeny of Jove,     weaker a River’s offspring.Yea, if he aught avail’d to help,     behold! a mighty RiverBeside thee here: but none can fight     with Jove, the child of Saturn.Not royal Acheloïus     with him may play the equal.Nor e’en the amplebosom’d strength     of deeply-flowing Ocean:Tho’ from his fulness every Sea     and every River welleth,And all the ever-bubbling springs     and eke their vasty sources.Yet at the lightning-bolt of Jove     doth even Ocean shudder,And at the direful thunder-clap,     when from the sky it crasheth.
Lie as thou art. ’Tis hard for thee     to strive against the children
Of overmatching Saturn’s son,     tho’ offspring of a River.
Thou boastest, that thy origin     is from a Stream broad-flówing;
I boast, from mighty Jupiter     to trace my first beginning.
A man who o’er the Myrmidons     holdeth wide rule, begat me,
Peleus; whose father Æacus     by Jupiter was gotten.
Rivers, that trickle to the sea,     than Jupiter are weaker;
So, than the progeny of Jove,     weaker a River’s offspring.
Yea, if he aught avail’d to help,     behold! a mighty River
Beside thee here: but none can fight     with Jove, the child of Saturn.
Not royal Acheloïus     with him may play the equal.
Nor e’en the amplebosom’d strength     of deeply-flowing Ocean:
Tho’ from his fulness every Sea     and every River welleth,
And all the ever-bubbling springs     and eke their vasty sources.
Yet at the lightning-bolt of Jove     doth even Ocean shudder,
And at the direful thunder-clap,     when from the sky it crasheth.
Mr Arnold has in some respects attacked me discreetly; I mean, where he has said that which damages me with his readers, and yet leaves me no possible reply. What is easier than for one to call another ignoble? what more damaging? what harder to refute? Then when he speaks of my ‘metrical exploits’ how can I be offended? to what have I to reply? His words are expressive either of compliment or of contempt; but in either case are untangible. Again: when he would show how tender he has been of my honour, and how unwilling to expose my enormities, he says:p.57: ‘I will by no means search in Mr Newman’s version for passages likely to raise a laugh: that search,alas!would be far too easy’;I find the pity which the wordalas!expresses, to be very clever, and very effective against me. But, I think, he was not discreet, but very unwise, in making dogmatic statements on the ground of erudition, many of which I have exposed; and about which much more remains to be said than space will allow me.
In his denial that Homer is ‘garrulous’, he complains that so many think him to be ‘diffuse’. Mr Arnold, it seems, is unaware of that very prominent peculiarity; which suits ill even to Mr Gladstone’s style. Thus, where Homer said (and I said) in a passage quoted above, ‘people that havea voice in their bosom’, Mr Gladstone has only ‘speakingmen’. I have noticed the epithetshaggyas quaint, in ‘His heart in his shaggy bosom was divided’, where, in a moral thought, a physical epithet is obtruded. But even if ‘shaggy’ be dropped, it remains diffuse (and characteristically so) to say ‘myheart in my bosomis divided’, for ‘I doubt’. So—‘I will speak whatmy heart in my bosombids me’. So, Homer makes men thinkκατὰ φÏÎνα καὶ κατὰ θυμὸν, ‘in their heartand mind’; and deprives them of ‘mind and soul’. Also: ‘this appeared to himin his mindto be the best counsel’. Mr Arnold assumes tones of great superiority; but every school-boy knows that diffuseness is a distinguishing characteristic of Homer. Again, thepoet’s epithets are often selected by their convenience for his metre; sometimes perhaps even appropriated for no other cause. No one has ever given any better reason why Diomedes and Menelaus are almost exclusively calledβοὴν ἀγαθὸς, except that it suits the metre. This belongs to the improvisatore, the negligent, the ballad style. The wordá¼Ï‹Î¼Î¼ÎµÎ»Î¯Î·Ï‚, which I with others render ‘ashen-speared’, is said of Priam, of Panthus, and of sons of Panthus. Mr Arnold rebukes me,p.106, for violating my own principles. ‘I say, on the other hand, thatεá½Î¼Î¼ÎµÎ»Î¯Ï‰hasnotthe effect[51]of a peculiarity in the original, while “ashen-spearedâ€hasthe effect of a peculiarity in the English: and “warlike†is as marking an equivalent as I dare give forá¼Ï‹Î¼Î¼ÎµÎ»Î¯Ï‰,for fear of disturbing the balance of expressionin Homer’s sentence’. Mr Arnold cannot write a sentence on Greek, without showing an ignorance hard to excuse in one who thus comes forward as a vituperating censor.Warlikeis a word current in the lips and books of all Englishmen:á¼Ï‹Î¼Î¼ÎµÎ»Î¯Î·Ï‚is a wordneverused, never, I believe, in all Greek literature, by anyone but Homer. If he does but turn to Liddell and Scott, he will see their statement, that the Atticformεá½Î¼ÎµÎ»Î¯Î±Ï‚is only to be found in grammars. He is here, as always, wrong in his facts. The word is most singular in Greek; more singular by far than ‘ashen-spear’d’ in English, because it is more obscure, as is its special application to one or two persons: and in truth I have doubted whether we any better understand Eumelian Priam than Gerenian Nestor.—Mr Arnold presently imputes to me the opinion thatχιτὼνmeans ‘a cloak’,which he does not dispute; but if I had thought it necessary to be literal, I must have renderedχαλκοχίτωνεςbrazen-shirted. He suggests to me the rendering ‘brazen-coated’, which I have used inIl.4, 285 and elsewhere. I have also used ‘brazen-clad’, and I now prefer ‘brazen-mail’d’. I here wish only to press that Mr Arnold’s criticism proceeds on a false fact. Homer’s epithet wasnota familiar word at Athens (in any other sense than as Burns or Virgil may be familiar to Mr Arnold), but was strange, unknown even to their poets; hence his demand that I shall use a word already familiar in English poetry is doubly baseless. The later poets of Greece have plenty of words beginning withχαλκο-; but this one word is exclusively Homer’s.—Everything that I have now said, may be repeated still more pointedly concerningá¼Ï‹ÎºÎ½Î·Î¼á¿–δες, inasmuch as directing attention to leg-armour is peculiarly quaint. No one in all Greek literature (asfar as I know) names the word but Homer; and yet Mr Arnold turns on me with his ever reiterated, ever unsupported, assertions and censures, of course assuming that ‘the scholar’ is with him. (I have no theory at hand, to explain why he regards his own word to suffice without attempt at proof.) The epithet is intensely peculiar; and I observe that Mr Arnold has not dared to suggest a translation. It is clear to me that he is ashamed of my poet’s oddities; and has no mode of escaping from them but by bluntly denying facts. Equally peculiar to Homer are the wordsκυδιάνειÏα, τανÏπεπλοςand twenty others, equally unknown to Attic the peculiar compoundμελιήδης(adopted from Homer by Pindar), about all which he carps at me on false grounds. But I pass these, and speak a little more at length aboutμÎÏοπες.
Will the reader allow me to vary these tedious details, by imagining a conversation between the Aristophanic Socrates and his clownish pupil Strepsiades. I suppose the philosopher to be instructing him in the higher Greek, Homer being the text.
Soc.Now Streppy, tell me whatμÎÏοπες ἄνθÏωποιmeans?
Strep.Let me see:μÎÏοπες? that must mean ‘half-faced’.
Soc.Nonsense, silly fellow: think again.
Strep.Well then:μÎÏοπες, half-eyed, squinting.
Soc.No; you are playing the fool: it is not our ὀπ inὄψις, ὄψομαι, κάτοπτÏον, but another sort of ὀπ.
Strep.Why, you yesterday told me thatοἴνοπαwas ‘wine-faced’, andαἴθοπα‘blazing-faced’, something like ourαἰθίοψ.
Soc.Ah! well: it is not so wonderful that you go wrong. It is true, there is alsoνῶÏοψ, στÎÏοψ, ἦνοψ. Those might mislead you:μÎÏοψis rather peculiar. Now cannot you think of any characteristic of mankind, whichμÎÏοπεςwill express. How do men differ from other animals?
Strep.I have it! I heard it from your young friend Euclid.ÎœÎÏοψ á¼ÏƒÏ„ὶν ἄνθÏωπος, ‘man is a cooking animal’.
Soc.You stupid lout! what are you at? what do you mean?
Strep.Why,μÎÏοψ, fromμείÏω, I distribute,ὄψονsauce.
Soc.No, no:ὄψονhas the ὀψ, with radical immovable ς in it; but here ὀπ is the root, and ς is movable.
Strep.Now I have got it;μείÏω, I distribute,ὀπὸν, juice, rennet.
Soc.Wretched man! you must forget your larder and your dairy, if ever you are to learn grammar.—Come Streppy: leave rustic words, and think of the language of the gods. Did you ever hear of the brilliant goddess Circe and of herὄπα καλὴν?
Strep.Oh yes; Circe and her beautiful face.
Soc.I told you,no! you forgetful fellow. It isANOTHERὀπ. Now I will ask you in a different way. Do you know why we call fishesἔλλοπες?
Strep.I suppose, because they are cased in scales.
Soc.That is not it. (And yet I am not sure. Perhaps the fellow is right, after all.) Well, we will not speak any more ofἔλλοπες. But did you never hear in Euripides,οá½Îº ἔχω γεγωνεῖν ὄπα? What does that mean?
Strep.‘I am not able to shout out,ὦ πόποι’.
Soc.No, no, Streppy: but Euripides often uses ὄπα. He takes it from Homer, and it is akin to á¼Ï€, not toourὀπ and much less to πόποι. What doesἔπηmean?
Strep.It means such lines as the diviners sing.
Soc.So it does in Attic, but Homer uses it forῥήματα, words; indeed we also sometimes.
Strep.Yes, yes, I do know it. All is right.
Soc.I think you do: well, andὂψmeans a voice,φωνὴ.
Strep.How you learned men like to puzzle us! I often have heardὀπι, ὄπαin the Tragedies, but never quite understood it. What a pity they do not sayφωνὴwhen they meanφωνή.
Soc.We have at last made one step. Now what isμÎÏοψ? μÎÏοπες ἄνθÏωποι.
Strep.ΜείÏω, I divide,ὄπα, φωνὴν, voice; ‘voice-dividing’: whatcanthat mean?
Soc.You have heard a wild dog howl, and a tame dog bark: tell me how they differ.
Strep.The wild dog gives a long longoo-oo, which changes like a trumpet if you push your hand up and down it; and the tame dog saysbow, wow, wow, like two or three panpipes blown one after another.
Soc.Exactly; you see the tame dog is humanized: hedivides his voiceinto syllables, as men do. ‘Voice-dividing’ means ‘speaking in syllables’.
Strep.Oh, how clever you are!
Soc.Well then, you understand; ‘Voice-dividing’ meansarticulating.
Mr Arnold will see in the Scholiast on Iliad 1, 250, precisely this order of analysis forμÎÏοπες. It seems to me to give not a traditional but a grammatical explanation. Be that as it may, it indicates that a Greek had to pass throughexactly the same processin order to expoundμÎÏοπες, as an Englishman to get sense out of ‘voice-dividing’. The word is twice used by Æschylus, who affects Homeric words, and once by Euripides (Iph. T.) in the connectionπολÎσιν μεÏόπων, where the very unusual IonismπολÎσινshows in how Homeric a region is the poet’s fancy. No other word ending in οψ exceptμÎÏοψcan be confidently assigned to the root ὂψ, a voice.ἮνοψinHomer (itself of most uncertain sense and derivation) is generally referred to the other ὄψ. The sense ofἔλλοψagain[52]is very uncertain. Every way thereforeμÎÏοψis ‘odd’ and obscure. The phrase ‘articulating’ is utterly prosaic and inadmissible.Vocalis rather too Latinized for my style, and besides, is apt to meanmelodious. The phrase ‘voice-dividing’ is indeed easier to us than μÎÏοπες can have been to the Athenians, because we all know whatvoicemeans, but they had to be taught scholastically whatὄπαmeant; nor would easily guess that ὂψ inμÎÏοψhad a sense, differing from ὂψ in(á¼€)στÎÏοψ οἶνοψ, αἶθοψ, αἶθίοψ, νῶÏοψ (ἦνοψ), χάÏοψ. Finally, sinceμÎÏοπεςis only found in the plural, it remains an open question, whether it does not mean ‘speaking various languages’. Mr Arnold will find that Stephanus and Scapula treat it as doubtful, though Liddell and Scott do not name the second interpretation. I desired to leave in the English all the uncertainty of the Greek: but my critic is unencumbered with such cares.
Hitherto I have been unwillingly thrown into nothing but antagonism to Mr Arnold, who thereby at least adds tenfold value to his praise, and makes me proud when hedeclares that thestructureof my sentences is good and Homeric. For this I give the credit to my metre, which alone confers on me this cardinal advantage. But in turn I will compliment Mr Arnold at the expense of some other critics. He does know, and they do not, the difference offlowingandsmooth. A mountain torrent is flowing, but often very rough; such is Homer. The ‘staircases of Neptune’ on the canal of Languedoc are smooth, but do not flow: you have to descend abruptly from each level to the next. It would be unjust to say absolutely, that such is Pope’s smoothness; yet often, I feel, this censure would not be too severe. The rhyme forces him to so frequent a change of the nominative, that he becomes painfully discontinuous, where Homer is what Aristotle calls ‘long-linked’. At the same time, in our language, in order to impart a flowing style, good structure does not suffice. A principle is needed, unknown to the Greeks; viz. the natural divisions of the sentence oratorically, must coincide with the divisions of the verse musically. To attain thisalwaysin a long poem, is very difficult to a translator who is scrupulous as to tampering with the sense. I have not always been successful in this. But before any critic passes on me the general sentence that I am ‘deficient in flow’, let him count up the proportion of instances in which hecan justly make the complaint, and mark whether they occur in elevated passages.
I shall now speak of the peculiarities of my diction, under three heads: 1. old or antiquated words; 2. coarse words expressive of outward actions, but having no moral colour; 3. words of which the sense has degenerated in modern days.
1. Mr Arnold appears to regard what isantiquatedasignoble. I think him, as usual, in fundamental error. In general the nobler words come from ancient style, and in no case can it be said that old words (as such) are ignoble. To introduce such terms aswhereat,therefrom,quoth,beholden,steed,erst,anon,anent, into the midst of style which in all other respects is modern and prosaic, would be like to that which we often hear from half-educated people. The want of harmony makes us regard it as low-minded and uncouth. From this cause (as I suspect) has stolen into Mr Arnold’s mind the fallacy, that the words themselves are uncouth[53].But the words are excellent, if only they are in proper keeping with the general style.—Now it is very possible, that in some passages, few or many, I am open to the charge of having mixed old and new style unskilfully; but I cannot admit that the old words (as such) are ignoble. No one speaks of Spenser’s dialect, nay, nor of Thomson’s; although with Thomson it was assumed, exactly as by me, but to a far greater extent, and without any such necessity as urges me. As I have stated in my preface, a broad tinge of antiquity in the style is essential, to make Homer’s barbaric puerilities and eccentricities less offensive. (Even Mr Arnold would admit this, if he admitted myfacts: but he denies that there is anything eccentric, antique, quaint, barbaric in Homer: that is hisonlyway of resisting my conclusion.) If Mr Gladstone were able to give his valuable time to work out an entire Iliad in his refined modern style, I feel confident that he would find it impossible to deal faithfully with the eccentric phraseology and with the negligent parts of the poem. I have the testimony of an unfriendly reviewer, that I am the first andonlytranslator that has dared to give Homer’s constant epithets and not concealhis forms of thought: of course I could not have done this in modern style. The lisping of a child is well enough from a child, but is disgusting in a full-grown man. Cowper and Pope systematically cut out from Homer whatever they cannot makestately, and harmonize with modern style: even Mr Brandreth often shrinks, though he is brave enough to sayox-eyed Juno. Who then can doubt the extreme unfitness of their metre and of their modern diction? My opposers never fairly meet the argument. Mr Arnold, when most gratuitously censuring my mild rendering ofκυνὸς κακομηχάνου ὀκÏυοÎσσης,does not dare to suggest any English for it himself. Even Mr Brandreth skips it. It is not merely offensive words; but the purest and simplest phrases, as a man’s ‘dear life’, ‘dear knees’, or his ‘tightly-built house’, are a stumbling-block to translators. No stronger proof is necessary, or perhaps is possible, than these phenomena give, that to shed an antique hue over Homer is of first necessity to a translator: without it,injusticeis done both to the reader and to the poet. Whether I have managed the style well, is a separate question, and is matter of detail. I may have sometimes done well, sometimes ill; but I claim that my critics shall judge me from a broader ground, and shall not pertinaciously go on comparing my version with modern style, and condemning me as(what they are pleased to call)inelegantbecause it is not like refined modern poetry, when it specially avoids to be such. They never deal thus with Thomson or Chatterton, any more than with Shakspeare or Spenser.
There is no sharp distinction possible between the foreign and the antiquated in language. What is obsolete with us, may still live somewhere: as, what in Greek is called Poetic or Homeric, may at the same time be living Æolic. So, whether I take a word from Spenser or from Scotland, is generally unimportant. I do not remember more than four Scotch words, which I have occasionally adopted for convenience; viz. Callant, young man; Canny, right-minded; Bonny, handsome; to Skirl, to cry shrilly. A trochaic word, which I cannot get in English, is sometimes urgently needed. It is astonishing to me that those who ought to know both what a large mass of antique and foreign-sounding words an Athenian found in Homer, and how many Doric or Sicilian forms as well as Homeric words the Greek tragedianson principlebrought into their songs, should make the outcry that they do against my very limited use of that which has an antique or Scotch sound. Classical scholars ought to set their faces against the double heresy, of trying to enforce, that foreign poetry, however various, shall be all rendered into one English dialect, and that this shall, in order of wordsand in diction, closely approximate to polished prose. From an Oxford Professor I should have expected the very opposite spirit to that which Mr Arnold shows. He ought to know and feel that one glory of Greek poetry is its great internal variety. He admits the principle that old words are a source of ennoblement for diction, when he extols the Bible as his standard: for surely he claims no rhetorical inspiration for the translators. Words which have come to us in a sacred connection, no doubt, gain a sacred hue, but they must not be allowed to desecrate other old and excellent words. Mr Arnold informs his Oxford hearers that ‘his Bibliolatry is perhaps excessive’. So the public will judge, if he say thatwench,whore,pate,pot,gin,damn,busybody,audience,principality,generation, are epical noble words because they are in the Bible, and thatlief,ken,in sooth,grim,stalwart,gait,guise,eld,hie,erst, are bad, because they are not there. Nine times out of ten, what are called ‘poetical’ words, are nothing but antique words, and are made ignoble by Mr Arnold’s doctrine. His very arbitrary condemnation ofeld,lief,in sooth,gait,gentle friendin one passage of mine as ‘bad words’, is probably due to his monomaniac fancy that there is nothing quaint and nothing antique in Homer. Excellent and noble as are these words which he rebukes, excellent even for Æschylus,I should doubt the propriety of using them in the dialogue of Euripides; on the level of which he seems to think Homer to be.
2. Our language, especially the Saxon part of it, abounds with vigorous monosyllabic verbs, and dissyllabic frequentatives derived from them, indicative of strong physical action. For these words (which, I make no doubt, Mr Arnold regards as ignoble plebeians), I claim Quiritarian rights: but I do not wish them to displace patricians from high service. Such verbs assweat,haul,plump,maul,yell,bang,splash,smash,thump,tug,scud,sprawl,spank, etc., I hold (in their purely physical sense) to be eminently epical: for the epic revels in descriptions of violent action to which they are suited. Intense muscular exertion in every form, intense physical action of the surrounding elements, with intense ascription or description of size or colour;—together make up an immense fraction of the poem. To cut out these words is to emasculate the epic. Even Pope admits such words. My eye in turning his pages was just now caught by: ‘They tug, they sweat’. Who will say that ‘tug’, ‘sweat’ are admissible, but ‘bang’, ‘smash’, ‘sputter’ are inadmissible? Mr Arnold resents my saying that Homer is often homely. He is homely expressly because he is natural. The epical diction admits both the gigantesque andthe homely: it inexorably refuses the conventional, under which is comprised a vast mass of what some wrongly call elegant. But while I justify the use of homely words in a primary physical, I depreciate them in a secondary moral sense. Mr Arnold clearly is dull to this distinction, or he would not utter against me the following taunt,p.91:
‘To grunt and sweat under a weary loaddoes perfectly well where it comes in Shakspeare: but if the translator of Homer, who will hardly have wound up our minds to the pitch at which these words of Hamlet find them, were to employ, when he has to speak of Homer’s heroes under the load of calamity, this figure of “grunting†and “sweatingâ€, we should say,He Newmanizes’.
Mr Arnold here not only makes a mistake, he propagates a slander; as if I had ever used such words asgruntandsweatmorally. If Homer in the Iliad spoke of grunting swine, as he does of sweating steeds, so should I. As the coarse metaphors here quoted from Shakspeare are utterly opposed to Homer’s style, to obtrude them on him would be a gross offence. Mr Arnold sends his readers away with the belief that this is my practice, though he has not dared to assert it. Ibearsuch coarseness in Shakspeare, not because I am ‘wound up to a high pitch’ by him, ‘borne away by a mighty current’ (which Mr Arnold, with ingenious unfairness to me, assumes to becertain in a reader of Shakspeare and all but impossible in a reader of Homer), but because I know, that in Shakspeare’s time all literature was coarse, as was the speech of courtiers and of the queen herself. Mr Arnold imputes to me Shakspeare’s coarseness, from which I instinctively shrink; and when his logic leads to the conclusion, ‘he Shakspearizes’, he with gratuitous rancour turns it into ‘he Newmanizes’.
Some words which with the Biblical translators seem to have been noble, I should not now dare to use in the primitive sense. For instance, ‘His iniquity shall fall upon his ownpate’. Yet I thinkpatea good metaphorical word and have used it of the sea-waves, in a bold passage,Il.13, 795:
Then ón rush’d théy, with weight and mass     like to a troublous whirlwind,Which from the thundercloud of Jove     down on the campaign plumpeth,And doth the briny flood bestir     with an unearthly uproar:Then in the everbrawling sea     full many a billow splasheth,Hollow, and bald with hoarypate,     one racing after other.
Then ón rush’d théy, with weight and mass     like to a troublous whirlwind,Which from the thundercloud of Jove     down on the campaign plumpeth,And doth the briny flood bestir     with an unearthly uproar:Then in the everbrawling sea     full many a billow splasheth,Hollow, and bald with hoarypate,     one racing after other.
Then ón rush’d théy, with weight and mass     like to a troublous whirlwind,Which from the thundercloud of Jove     down on the campaign plumpeth,And doth the briny flood bestir     with an unearthly uproar:Then in the everbrawling sea     full many a billow splasheth,Hollow, and bald with hoarypate,     one racing after other.
Then ón rush’d théy, with weight and mass     like to a troublous whirlwind,
Which from the thundercloud of Jove     down on the campaign plumpeth,
And doth the briny flood bestir     with an unearthly uproar:
Then in the everbrawling sea     full many a billow splasheth,
Hollow, and bald with hoarypate,     one racing after other.
Is there really no ‘mighty current’ here, to sweep off petty criticism?
I have a remark on the strong physical word ‘plumpeth’ here used. It is fundamentally Milton’s, ‘plump down he drops ten thousand fathom deep’;plumbandplumpin this sense are clearly the sameroot. I confess I have not been able to find theverbin an old writer, though it is so common now. Old writers do not say ‘to plumb down’, but ‘todropplumb down’. Perhaps in a second edition (if I reach to it), I may alter the words to ‘plumb ... droppeth’, on this ground; but I do turn sick at the mawkishness of critics, one of whom, who ought to know better, tells me that the wordplumpreminds him ‘of the crinolined hoyden of a boarding-school’!! If he had said, ‘It is too like the phrase of a sailor, of a peasant, of a schoolboy’, this objection would be at least intelligible. However: the word is intended to express theviolent impact of a body descending from aloft, and itdoesexpress it.
Mr Arnold censures me for representing Achilles asyelling. He is depicted by the poet as in the most violent physical rage, boiling over with passion and wholly uncontrouled. He smacks his two thighs at once; he rolls on the ground,μÎγας μεγαλωστὶ; he defiles his hair with dust; he rends it; he grinds his teeth; fire flashes from his eyes; but—he may not ‘yell’, that would not becomme il faut! We shall agree, that in peace nothing so becomes a hero as modest stillness; but that ‘Peleus’ son, insatiate of combat’, full of the fiercest pent-up passion, should vent a little of it in ayell, seems to me quite in place. That the Greekἰάχωνis not necessarily to be sorendered, I am aware; but it is a very vigorous word, likepealandshriek; neither of which would here suit. I sometimes render itskirl: but ‘battle-yell’ is a received rightful phrase. Achilles is not a stately Virgilianpius Æneas, but is a far wilder barbarian.
After Mr Arnold has laid upon me the sins of Shakspeare, he amazes me by adding,p.92: ‘The idiomatic language of Shakspeare, such language as “prate of hiswhereaboutâ€, “jumpthe life to comeâ€, “the damnation of histaking-offâ€, “quietus makewith a bare bodkinâ€, should be carefully observed by the translator of Homer; although in every case he will have to decide for himself, whether the use, by him, of Shakspeare’s liberty, will or will not clash with his indispensable duty of nobleness’.
Of the Shakspearianisms here italicized by Mr Arnold, there is not one which I could endure to adopt. ‘His whereabout’, I regard as the flattest prose. (The wordprateis a plebeian which I admit in its own low places; but how Mr Arnold can approve of it, consistently with his attacks on me, I do not understand.) Damnation and Taking-off (for Guilt and Murder), and Jump, I absolutely reject; and ‘quietus make’ would be nothing but an utterly inadmissiblequotationfrom Shakspeare.Jumpas an active verb is to me monstrous, butJumpis just the sort of modern prose word whichis not noble.Leap,Bound, for great action,Skip,Frisk,Gambolfor smaller, are all good.
I have shown against Mr Arnold—(1) that Homer was out-and-out antiquated to the Athenians, even when perfectly understood by them; (2) that his conceptions, similes, phraseology and epithets are habitually quaint, strange, unparalleled in Greek literature; and pardonable only to semibarbarism; (3) that they are intimately related to his noblest excellences; (4) that many words are so peculiar as to be still doubtful to us; (5) I have indicated that some of his descriptions and conceptions are horrible to us, though they are not so to his barbaric auditors; (6) that considerable portions of the poem are not poetry, but rhythmical prose like Horace’s Satires, and are interesting to us not as poetry but as portraying the manners or sentiments of the day. I now add (7) what is inevitable in all high and barbaric poetry, perhaps in all high poetry, many of his energetic descriptions are expressed incoarse physical words. I do not here attempt proof, for it might need a treatise: but I give one illustration;Il.13, 136,ΤÏῶες Ï€Ïοὒτυψαν ἀολλÎες. Cowper, misled by theignis fatuusof ‘stateliness’, renders it absurdly
The pow’rs of Iliumgave the first assault,Embattledclose;
The pow’rs of Iliumgave the first assault,Embattledclose;
The pow’rs of Iliumgave the first assault,Embattledclose;
The pow’rs of Iliumgave the first assault,
Embattledclose;
but it is strictly, ‘The Trojansknocked-forward(or, thumped,butted, forward) in close pack’. The verb is too coarse for later polished prose, and even the adjective is very strong (packed together). I believe, that ‘Forward inpackthe Troianspitch’d’, would not be really unfaithful to the Homeric colour; and I maintain that ‘Forward in mass the Troians pitch’d’, would be an irreprovable rendering.
Dryden in this respect is in entire harmony with Homeric style. No critic deals fairly with me in isolating any of these strong words, and then appealing to his readers whether I am not ignoble. Hereby he deprives me of theἀγὼν, the ‘mighty current’ of Mr Arnold, and he misstates the problem; which is, whether the word is suitable,thenandthere, for the work required of it, as the coalman at the pit, the clown in the furrow, the huntsman in the open field.
3. There is a small number of words not natural plebeians, but patricians on which a most unjust bill of attainder has been passed, which I seek to reverse. On the first which I name, Mr Arnold will side with me, because it is a Biblical word,wench. In Lancashire I believe that at the age of about sixteen a ‘girl’ turns into ‘a wench’, or as we say ‘a young woman’. In Homer, ‘girl’ and ‘young woman’ are alike inadmissible; ‘maid’ or ‘maiden’ will not always suit, and ‘wench’ is thenatural word. I do not know that I have used it three times, but I claim a right of using it, and protest against allowing the heroes of slang to deprive us of excellent words by their perverse misuse. If the imaginations of some men are always in satire and in low slang, so much the worse for them: but the more we yield to such demands, the more will be exacted. I expect, before long, to be told thatbrickis an ignoble word, meaning a jolly fellow, and thatsell,cutare out of place in Homer. My metre, it seems, is inadmissible with some, because it is the metre of Yankee Doodle! as if Homer’s metre were not that of the Margites. Every noble poem is liable to be travestied, as the Iliad and Æschylus and Shakspeare have been. Every burlesque writer uses the noble metre, and caricatures the noble style. Mr Arnold says, I must not render τανÏπεπλος ‘trailing-rob’d’, because it reminds him of ‘long petticoats sweeping a dirty pavement’. What a confession as to the state of his imagination! Why not, of ‘a queen’s robe trailing on a marble pavement’? Did he never read