III

Homer is rapid in his movement, Homer is plain in his words and style, Homer is simple in his ideas, Homer is noble in his manner. Cowper renders him ill because he is slow in his movement, and elaborate in his style; Pope renders him ill because he is artificial both in his style and in his words; Chapman renders him ill becausehe is fantastic in his ideas; Mr Newman renders him ill because he is odd in his words and ignoble in his manner. All four translators diverge from their original at other points besides those named; but it is at the points thus named that their divergence is greatest. For instance, Cowper’s diction is not as Homer’s diction, nor his nobleness as Homer’s nobleness; but it is in movement and grammatical style that he is most unlike Homer. Pope’s rapidity is not of the same sort as Homer’s rapidity, nor are his plainness of ideas and his nobleness as Homer’s plainness of ideas and nobleness: but it is in the artificial character of his style and diction that he is most unlike Homer. Chapman’s movement, words, style, and manner, are often far enough from resembling Homer’s movement, words, style, and manner; but it is the fantasticality of his ideas which puts him farthest from resembling Homer. Mr Newman’s movement, grammatical style, and ideas, are a thousand times in strong contrast with Homer’s; still it is by the oddness of his diction and the ignobleness of his manner that he contrasts with Homer the most violently.

Therefore the translator must not say to himself: ‘Cowper is noble, Pope is rapid, Chapman has a good diction, Mr Newman has a good cast of sentence; I will avoid Cowper’s slowness, Pope’s artificiality, Chapman’sconceits, Mr Newman’s oddity; I will take Cowper’s dignified manner, Pope’s impetuous movement, Chapman’s vocabulary, Mr Newman’s syntax, and so make a perfect translation of Homer’. Undoubtedly in certain points the versions of Chapman, Cowper, Pope, and Mr Newman, all of them have merit; some of them very high merit, others a lower merit; but even in these points they have none of them precisely the same kind of merit as Homer, and therefore the new translator, even if he can imitate them in their good points, will still not satisfy his judge, the scholar, who asks him for Homer and Homer’s kind of merit, or, at least, for as much of them as it is possible to give.

So the translator really has no good model before him for any part of his work, and has to invent everything for himself. He is to be rapid in movement, plain in speech, simple in thought, and noble; andhowhe is to be either rapid, or plain, or simple, or noble, no one yet has shown him. I shall try to-day to establish some practical suggestions which may help the translator of Homer’s poetry to comply with the four grand requirements which we make of him.

His version is to be rapid; and of course, to make a man’s poetry rapid, as to make it noble, nothing can serve him so much as to have, in his own nature, rapidity and nobleness.It is the spirit that quickeneth;and no one will so well render Homer’s swift-flowing movement as he who has himself something of the swift-moving spirit of Homer. Yet even this is not quite enough. Pope certainly had a quick and darting spirit, as he had, also, real nobleness; yet Pope does not render the movement of Homer. To render this the translator must have, besides his natural qualifications, an appropriate metre.

I have sufficiently shown why I think all forms of our ballad-metre unsuited to Homer. It seems to me to be beyond question that, for epic poetry, only three metres can seriously claim to be accounted capable of the grand style. Two of these will at once occur to everyone,—the ten-syllable, or so-calledheroic, couplet, and blank verse. I do not add to these the Spenserian stanza, although Dr Maginn, whose metrical eccentricities I have already criticised, pronounces this stanza the one right measure for a translation of Homer. It is enough to observe that if Pope’s couplet, with the simple system of correspondences that its rhymes introduce, changes the movement of Homer, in which no such correspondences are found, and is therefore a bad measure for a translator of Homer to employ, Spenser’s stanza, with its far more intricate system of correspondences, must change Homer’s movement far more profoundly, and must therefore be for the translatora far worse measure than the couplet of Pope. Yet I will say, at the same time, that the verse of Spenser is more fluid, slips more easily and quickly along, than the verse of almost any other English poet.

By this the northern wagoner had setHis seven-fold team behind the steadfast starThat was in ocean waves yet never wet,But firm is fixt, and sendeth light from farTo all that in the wide deep wandering are[25].

By this the northern wagoner had set

His seven-fold team behind the steadfast star

That was in ocean waves yet never wet,

But firm is fixt, and sendeth light from far

To all that in the wide deep wandering are[25].

One cannot but feel that English verse has not often moved with the fluidity and sweet ease of these lines. It is possible that it may have been this quality of Spenser’s poetry which made Dr Maginn think that the stanza ofThe Faery Queenmust be a good measure for rendering Homer. This it is not: Spenser’s verse is fluid and rapid, no doubt, but there are more ways than one of being fluid and rapid, and Homer is fluid and rapid in quite another way than Spenser. Spenser’s manner is no more Homeric than is the manner of the one modern inheritor of Spenser’s beautiful gift,—the poet, who evidently caught from Spenser his sweet and easy-slipping movement, and who has exquisitely employed it; a Spenserian genius, nay, a genius by natural endowment richer probably than even Spenser; that light which shines so unexpectedly and without fellow in our century, an Elizabethan born toolate, the early lost and admirably gifted Keats.

I say then that there are really but three metres,—the ten-syllable couplet, blank verse, and a third metre which I will not yet name, but which is neither the Spenserian stanza nor any form of ballad-verse,—between which, as vehicles for Homer’s poetry, the translator has to make his choice. Everyone will at once remember a thousand passages in which both the ten-syllable couplet and blank verse prove themselves to have nobleness. Undoubtedly the movement and manner of this,

Still raise for good the supplicating voice,But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice,

Still raise for good the supplicating voice,

But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice,

are noble. Undoubtedly, the movement and manner of this:

High on a throne of royal state, which farOutshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,

High on a throne of royal state, which far

Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,

are noble also. But the first is in a rhymed metre; and the unfitness of a rhymed metre for rendering Homer I have already shown. I will observe too, that the fine couplet which I have quoted comes out of a satire, a didactic poem; and that it is in didactic poetry that the ten-syllable couplet has most successfully essayed the grand style. In narrative poetry this metre has succeeded best when it essayed a sensibly lower style, the style of Chaucer, for instance; whose narrative manner, though a very good andsound manner, is certainly neither the grand manner nor the manner of Homer.

The rhymed ten-syllable couplet being thus excluded, blank verse offers itself for the translator’s use. The first kind of blank verse which naturally occurs to us is the blank verse of Milton, which has been employed, with more or less modification, by Mr Cary in translating Dante, by Cowper, and by Mr Wright in translating Homer. How noble this metre is in Milton’s hands, how completely it shows itself capable of the grand, nay, of the grandest, style, I need not say. To this metre, as used in theParadise Lost, our country owes the glory of having produced one of the only two poetical works in the grand style which are to be found in the modern languages; theDivine Comedyof Dante is the other. England and Italy here stand alone; Spain, France, and Germany, have produced great poets, but neither Calderon, nor Corneille, nor Schiller, nor even Goethe, has produced a body of poetry in the true grand style, in the sense in which the style of the body of Homer’s poetry, or Pindar’s, or Sophocles’s, is grand. But Dante has, and so has Milton; and in this respect Milton possesses a distinction which even Shakspeare, undoubtedly the supreme poetical power in our literature, does not share with him. Not a tragedy of Shakspeare but contains passages in the worst of all styles, theaffected style; and the grand style, although it may be harsh, or obscure, or cumbrous, or over-laboured, is never affected. In spite, therefore, of objections which may justly be urged against the plan and treatment of theParadise Lost, in spite of its possessing, certainly, a far less enthralling force of interest to attract and to carry forward the reader than theIliador theDivine Comedy, it fully deserves, it can never lose, its immense reputation; for, like theIliadand theDivine Comedy, nay, in some respects to a higher degree than either of them, it is in the grand style.

But the grandeur of Milton is one thing, and the grandeur of Homer is another. Homer’s movement, I have said again and again, is a flowing, a rapid movement; Milton’s, on the other hand, is a laboured, a self-retarding movement. In each case, the movement, the metrical cast, corresponds with the mode of evolution of the thought, with the syntactical cast, and is indeed determined by it. Milton charges himself so full with thought, imagination, knowledge, that his style will hardly contain them. He is too full-stored to show us in much detail one conception, one piece of knowledge; he just shows it to us in a pregnant allusive way, and then he presses on to another; and all this fulness, this pressure, this condensation, this self-constraint, enters into his movement, andmakes it what it is,—noble, but difficult and austere. Homer is quite different; he says a thing, and says it to the end, and then begins another, while Milton is trying to press a thousand things into one. So that whereas, in reading Milton, you never lose the sense of laborious and condensed fulness, in reading Homer you never lose the sense of flowing and abounding ease. With Milton line runs into line, and all is straitly bound together: with Homer line runs off from line, and all hurries away onward. Homer begins, Μῆνιν ἄειδε, Θεά,—at the second word announcing the proposed action: Milton begins:

Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruitOf that forbidden tree, whose mortal tasteBrought death into the world, and all our woe,With loss of Eden, till one greater ManRestore us, and regain the blissful seat,Sing, heavenly muse.

Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,

Sing, heavenly muse.

So chary of a sentence is he, so resolute not to let it escape him till he has crowded into it all he can, that it is not till the thirty-ninth word in the sentence that he will give us the key to it, the word of action, the verb. Milton says:

O for that warning voice, which he, who sawThe Apocalypse, heard cry in heaven aloud.

O for that warning voice, which he, who saw

The Apocalypse, heard cry in heaven aloud.

He is not satisfied, unless he can tell us, all in one sentence, and without permitting himself to actually mention the name, thatthe man who had the warning voice was the same man who saw the Apocalypse. Homer would have said, ‘O for that warning voice, whichJohnheard’—and if it had suited him to say that John also saw the Apocalypse, he would have given us that in another sentence. The effect of this allusive and compressed manner of Milton is, I need not say, often very powerful; and it is an effect which other great poets have often sought to obtain much in the same way: Dante is full of it, Horace is full of it; but wherever it exists, it is always an un-Homeric effect. ‘The losses of the heavens’, says Horace, ‘fresh moons speedily repair; we, when we have gone down where the pious Æneas, where the rich Tullus and Ancus are,—pulvis et umbra sumus[26]’. He never actually sayswherewe go to; he only indicates it by saying that it is that place where Æneas, Tullus, and Ancus are. But Homer, when he has to speak of going down to the grave, says, definitely,ἐς Ἐλύσιοv πεδιον—ἀθάνατοι πέμψουσιν[27],—‘The immortals shall send theeto the Elysian plain’; and it is not till after he has definitely said this, that he adds, that it is there that the abode of departed worthies is placed:ὅθι ξανθὸς Ῥαδάμανθυς—‘Where the yellow-haired Rhadamanthus is’. Again; Horace,having to say that punishment sooner or later overtakes crime, says it thus:

Raro antecedentem scelestumDeseruit pede Pœna claudo[28].

Raro antecedentem scelestum

Deseruit pede Pœna claudo[28].

The thought itself of these lines is familiar enough to Homer and Hesiod; but neither Homer nor Hesiod, in expressing it, could possibly have so complicated its expression as Horace complicates it, and purposely complicates it, by his use of the worddeseruit. I say that this complicated evolution of the thought necessarily complicates the movement and rhythm of a poet; and that the Miltonic blank verse, of course the first model of blank verse which suggests itself to an English translator of Homer, bears the strongest marks of such complication, and is therefore entirely unfit to render Homer.

If blank verse is used in translating Homer, it must be a blank verse of which English poetry, naturally swayed much by Milton’s treatment of this metre, offers at present hardly any examples. It must not be Cowper’s blank verse, who has studied Milton’s pregnant manner with such effect, that, having to say of Mr Throckmorton that he spares his avenue, although it is the fashion with other people to cut down theirs, he says that Benevolus ‘reprievesthe obsolete prolixity of shade’. It must not be Mr Tennyson’s blank verse.

For all experience is an arch, wherethroughGleams that untravelled world, whose distance fadesFor ever and for ever, as we gaze.

For all experience is an arch, wherethrough

Gleams that untravelled world, whose distance fades

For ever and for ever, as we gaze.

It is no blame to the thought of those lines, which belongs to another order of ideas than Homer’s, but it is true, that Homer would certainly have said of them, ‘It is to consider too curiously to consider so’. It is no blame to their rhythm, which belongs to another order of movement than Homer’s, but it is true that these three lines by themselves take up nearly as much time as a whole book of theIliad. No; the blank verse used in rendering Homer must be a blank verse of which perhaps the best specimens are to be found in some of the most rapid passages of Shakspeare’s plays,—a blank verse which does not dovetail its lines into one another, and which habitually ends its lines with monosyllables. Such a blank verse might no doubt be very rapid in its movement, and might perfectly adapt itself to a thought plainly and directly evolved; and it would be interesting to see it well applied to Homer. But the translator who determines to use it, must not conceal from himself that in order to pour Homer into the mould of this metre, he will have entirely to break him up and melt him down, with the hope of then successfully composinghim afresh; and this is a process which is full of risks. It may, no doubt, be the real Homer that issues new from it; it is not certain beforehand that it cannot be the real Homer, as it is certain that from the mould of Pope’s couplet or Cowper’s Miltonic verse it cannot be the real Homer that will issue; still, the chances of disappointment are great. The result of such an attempt to renovate the old poet may be an Æson; but it may also, and more probably will be a Pelias.

When I say this, I point to the metre which seems to me to give the translator the best chance of preserving the general effect of Homer,—that third metre which I have not yet expressly named, the hexameter. I know all that is said against the use of hexameters in English poetry; but it comes only to this, that, among us, they have not yet been used on any considerable scale with success.Solvitur ambulando: this is an objection which can best be met byproducinggood English hexameters. And there is no reason in the nature of the English language why it should not adapt itself to hexameters as well as the German language does; nay, the English language, from its greater rapidity, is in itself better suited than the German for them. The hexameter, whether alone or with the pentameter, possesses a movement, an expression, whichno metre hitherto in common use amongst us possesses, and which I am convinced English poetry, as our mental wants multiply, will not always be content to forgo. Applied to Homer, this metre affords to the translator the immense support of keeping him more nearly than any other metre to Homer’s movement; and, since a poet’s movement makes so large a part of his general effect, and to reproduce this general effect is at once the translator’s indispensable business and so difficult for him, it is a great thing to have this part of your model’s general effect already given you in your metre, instead of having to get it entirely for yourself.

These are general considerations; but there are also one or two particular considerations which confirm me in the opinion that for translating Homer into English verse the hexameter should be used. The most successful attempt hitherto made at rendering Homer into English, the attempt in which Homer’s general effect has been best retained, is an attempt made in the hexameter measure. It is a version of the famous lines in the third book of theIliad, which end with that mention of Castor and Pollux from which Mr Ruskin extracts the sentimental consolation already noticed by me. The author is the accomplished Provost of Eton, Dr Hawtrey; and this performance of his must be my excuse forhaving taken the liberty to single him out for mention, as one of the natural judges of a translation of Homer, along with Professor Thompson and Professor Jowett, whose connection with Greek literature is official. The passage is short[29]; and DrHawtrey’s version of it is suffused with a pensive grace which is, perhaps, rather more Virgilian than Homeric; still it is the one version of any part of theIliadwhich in some degree reproduces for me the original effect of Homer: it is the best, and it is in hexameters.

This is one of the particular considerations that incline me to prefer the hexameter, for translating Homer, to our established metres. There is another. Most of you, probably, have some knowledge of a poem by Mr Clough,The Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich, a long-vacation pastoral, in hexameters. The general merits of that poem I am not going to discuss: it is a serio-comicpoem, and, therefore, of essentially different nature from theIliad. Still in two things it is, more than any other English poem which I can call to mind, like theIliad: in the rapidity of its movement, and the plainness and directness of its style. The thought of this poem is often curious and subtle, and that is not Homeric; the diction is often grotesque, and that is not Homeric. Still by its rapidity of movement, and plain and direct manner of presenting the thought however curious in itself, this poem, which, being as I say a serio-comic poem, has a right to be grotesque, is grotesquetruly, not, like Mr Newman’s version of theIliad,falsely. Mr Clough’s odd epithets, ‘The grave man nicknamed Adam’, ‘The hairy Aldrich’, and so on, grow vitally and appear naturally in their place; while Mr Newman’s ‘dapper-greaved Achaians’, and ‘motley-helmed Hector’, have all the air of being mechanically elaborated and artificially stuck in. Mr Clough’s hexameters are excessively, needlessly rough; still owing to the native rapidity of this measure, and to the directness of style which so well allies itself with it, his composition produces a sense in the reader which Homer’s composition also produces, and which Homer’s translator ought tore-produce,—the sense of having, within short limits of time, a large portion of human life presented to him, instead of a small portion.

Mr Clough’s hexameters are, as I have just said, too rough and irregular; and indeed a good model, on any considerable scale, of this metre, the English translator will nowhere find. He must not follow the model offered by Mr Longfellow in his pleasing and popular poem ofEvangeline; for the merit of the manner and movement ofEvangeline, when they are at their best, is to be tenderly elegant; and their fault, when they are at their worst, is to be lumbering; but Homer’s defect is not lumberingness, neither is tender elegance his excellence. The lumbering effect of most English hexameters is caused by their being much too dactylic[30]; the translator must learn to use spondees freely. Mr Clough has done this, but he has not sufficiently observed another rule which the translator cannot follow too strictly; and that is, to have no lines which will not, as it is familiarly said,read themselves. This is of the last importance for rhythms with which the ear of the English public is not thoroughly acquainted. Lord Redesdale, in two papers on the subject of Greek and Roman metres, has some good remarks onthe outrageous disregard of quantity in which English verse, trusting to its force of accent, is apt to indulge itself. The predominance of accent in our language is so great, that it would be pedantic not to avail oneself of it; and Lord Redesdale suggests rules which might easily be pushed too far. Still, it is undeniable that in English hexameters we generally force the quantity far too much; we rely on justification by accent with a security which is excessive. But not only do we abuse accent by shortening long syllables and lengthening short ones; we perpetually commit a far worse fault, by requiring the removal of the accent from its natural place to an unnatural one, in order to make our line scan. This is a fault, even when our metre is one which every English reader knows, and when we can see what we want and can correct the rhythm according to our wish; although it is a fault which a great master may sometimes commit knowingly to produce a desired effect, as Milton changes the natural accent on the wordTiresiasin the line:

And Tíresias and Phineus, prophets old;

and then it ceases to be a fault, and becomes a beauty. But it is a real fault, when Chapman has:

By him the golden-throned Queen slept, the Queen of Deities;

for in this line, to make it scan, you have to take away the accent from the wordQueen, on which it naturally falls, and to place it onthroned, which would naturally be unaccented; and yet, after all, you get no peculiar effect or beauty of cadence to reward you. It is a real fault, when Mr Newman has:

Infatuate! O that thou wert lord to some other army—

for here again the reader is required, not for any special advantage to himself, but simply to save Mr Newman trouble, to place the accent on the insignificant wordwert, where it has no business whatever. But it is still a greater fault, when Spenser has (to take a striking instance):

Wot ye why his mother with a veil hath covered his face?

for a hexameter; because here not only is the reader causelessly required to make havoc with the natural accentuation of the line in order to get it to run as a hexameter; but also he, in nine cases out of ten, will be utterly at a loss how to perform the process required, and the line will remain a mere monster for him. I repeat, it is advisable to constructallverses so that by reading them naturally—that is, according to the sense and legitimate accent,—the reader gets the right rhythm; but, for English hexameters,that they be so constructed is indispensable.

If the hexameter best helps the translator to the Homeric rapidity, what style may best help him to the Homeric plainness and directness? It is the merit of a metre appropriate to your subject, that it in some degree suggests and carries with itself a style appropriate to the subject; the elaborate and self-retarding style, which comes so naturally when your metre is the Miltonic blank verse, does not come naturally with the hexameter; is, indeed, alien to it. On the other hand, the hexameter has a natural dignity which repels both the jaunty style and the jog-trot style, to both of which the ballad-measure so easily lends itself. These are great advantages; and, perhaps, it is nearly enough to say to the translator who uses the hexameter that he cannot too religiously follow, in style, the inspiration of his metre. He will find that a loose and idiomatic grammar—a grammar which follows the essential rather than the formal logic of the thought—allies itself excellently with the hexameter; and that, while this sort of grammar ensures plainness and naturalness, it by no means comes short in nobleness. It is difficult to pronounce, certainly, what is idiomatic in the ancient literature of a language which, though still spoken, has long since entirely adopted, as modern Greek has adopted,modern idioms. Still one may, I think, clearly perceive that Homer’s grammatical style is idiomatic,—that it may even be called, not improperly, a loose grammatical style[31]. Examples, however, of what I mean by a loose grammatical style, will be of more use to the translator if taken from English poetry than if taken from Homer. I call it, then, a loose and idiomatic grammar which Shakspeare uses in the last line of the following three:

He’s here in double trust:First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,Strong both against the deed;

He’s here in double trust:

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

Strong both against the deed;

or in this:—

Wit,whither wilt?

What Shakspeare means is perfectly clear, clearer, probably, than if he had said it in a more formal and regular manner; but his grammar is loose and idiomatic, because he leaves out the subject of the verb ‘wilt’ in the second passage quoted, and because, in the first, a prodigious addition to the sentence has to be, as we used to say in our old Latin grammar days,understood, before the word ‘both’ can be properlyparsed. So, again, Chapman’s grammar is loose and idiomatic where he says,

Even share hath he that keeps his tent, andhe to fielddoth go,

because he leaves out, in the second clause, the relative which in formal writing would be required. But Chapman here does not lose dignity by this idiomatic way of expressing himself, any more than Shakspeare loses it by neglecting to confer on ‘both’ the blessings of a regular government: neither loses dignity, but each gives that impression of a plain, direct, and natural mode of speaking, which Homer, too, gives, and which it is so important, as I say, that Homer’s translator should succeed in giving. Cowper calls blank verse ‘a style further removed than rhyme from the vernacular idiom, both in the language itself and in the arrangement of it’; and just in proportion as blank verse is removed from the vernacular idiom, from that idiomatic style which is of all styles the plainest and most natural, blank verse is unsuited to render Homer.

Shakspeare is not only idiomatic in his grammar or style, he is also idiomatic in his words or diction; and here too, his example is valuable for the translator of Homer. The translator must not, indeed, allow himself all the liberty that Shakspeare allows himself; for Shakspeare sometimes uses expressions which pass perfectly wellas he uses them, because Shakspeare thinks so fast and so powerfully, that in reading him we are borne over single words as by a mighty current; but, if our mind were less excited,—and who may rely on exciting our mind like Shakspeare?—they would check us. ‘To grunt and sweat under a weary load’;—that does perfectly well where it comes in Shakspeare; but if the translator of Homer, who will hardly have wound our minds up to the pitch at which these words of Hamlet find them, were to employ, when he has to speak of one of Homer’s heroes under the load of calamity, this figure of ‘grunting’ and ‘sweating’ we should say,He Newmanises, and his diction would offend us. For he is to be noble; and no plea of wishing to be plain and natural can get him excused from being this: only, as he is to be also, like Homer, perfectly simple and free from artificiality, and as the use of idiomatic expressions undoubtedly gives this effect[32], he should be as idiomatic as he canbe without ceasing to be noble. Therefore the idiomatic language of Shakspeare—such language as, ‘prate of hiswhereabout’; ‘jumpthe life to come’; ‘the damnation of histaking-off’; ‘hisquietus makewith a barebodkin’—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. He will find one English book and one only, where, as in theIliaditself, 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.

I said that Homer, besides being plain in style and diction, was plain in the quality of his thought. It is possible that a thought may be expressed with idiomatic plainness,and yet not be in itself a plain thought. For example, in Mr Clough’s poem, already mentioned, the style and diction is almost always idiomatic and plain, but the thought itself is often of a quality which is not plain; it iscurious. But the grand instance of the union of idiomatic expression with curious or difficult thought is in Shakspeare’s poetry. Such, indeed, is the force and power of Shakspeare’s idiomatic expression, that it gives an effect of clearness and vividness even to a thought which is imperfect and incoherent; for instance, when Hamlet says,

To take arms against a sea of troubles,

the figure there is undoubtedly most faulty, it by no means runs on four legs; but the thing is said so freely and idiomatically, that it passes. This, however, is not a point to which I now want to call your attention; I want you to remark, in Shakspeare and others, only that which we may directly apply to Homer. I say, then, that in Shakspeare the thought is often, while most idiomatically uttered, nay, while good and sound in itself, yet of a quality which is curious and difficult; and that this quality of thought is something entirely un-Homeric. For example, when Lady Macbeth says:

Memory, the warder of the brain,Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reasonA limbeck only,

Memory, the warder of the brain,

Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason

A limbeck only,

this figure is a perfectly sound and correct figure, no doubt; Mr Knight even calls it a ‘happy’ figure; but it is adifficultfigure: Homer would not have used it. Again, when Lady Macbeth says,

When you durst do it, then you were a man;And, to be more than what you were, you wouldBe so much more the man,

When you durst do it, then you were a man;

And, to be more than what you were, you would

Be so much more the man,

the thought in the two last of these lines is, when you seize it, a perfectly clear thought, and a fine thought; but it is acuriousthought: Homer would not have used it. These are favourable instances of the union of plain style and words with a thought not plain in quality; but take stronger instances of this union,—let the thought be not only not plain in quality, but highly fanciful: and you have the Elizabethan conceits; you have, in spite of idiomatic style and idiomatic diction, everything which is most un-Homeric; you have such atrocities as this of Chapman:

Fate shall fail to vent her gallTill mine vent thousands.

Fate shall fail to vent her gall

Till mine vent thousands.

I say, the poets of a nation which has produced such conceit as that, must purify themselves seven times in the fire before they can hope to render Homer. They must expel their nature with a fork, and keep crying to one another night and day: ‘Homer not only moves rapidly, not only speaks idiomatically; he is, also,free from fancifulness’.

So essentially characteristic of Homer is his plainness and naturalness of thought, that to the preservation of this in his own version the translator must without scruple sacrifice, where it is necessary, verbal fidelity to his original, rather than run any risk of producing, by literalness, an odd and unnatural effect. The double epithets so constantly occurring in Homer must be dealt with according to this rule; these epithets come quite naturally in Homer’s poetry; in English poetry they, in nine cases out of ten, come, when literally rendered, quite unnaturally. I will not now discuss why this is so, I assume it as an indisputable fact that it is so; that Homer’sμερόπων ἀνθρώπωνcomes to the reader as something perfectly natural, while Mr Newman’s ‘voice-dividing mortals’ comes to him as something perfectly unnatural. Well then, as it is Homer’s general effect which we are to reproduce, it is to be false to Homer to be so verbally faithful to him as that we lose this effect: and by the English translator Homer’s double epithets must be, in many places, renounced altogether; in all places where they are rendered, rendered by equivalents which come naturally. Instead of renderingθέτι τανύπεπλεby Mr Newman’s ‘Thetis trailing-robed’, which brings to one’s mind long petticoats sweeping a dirty pavement, the translator must render the Greek by English words which come as naturallyto us as Milton’s words when he says, ‘Let gorgeous Tragedy With sceptred pall come sweeping by’. Instead of renderingμώνυχας ἵππουςby Chapman’s ‘one-hoofed steeds’, or Mr Newman’s ‘single-hoofed horses’, he must speak of horses in a way which surprises us as little as Shakspeare surprises when he says, ‘Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds’. Instead of renderingμελιηδέα θυμόνby ‘life as honey pleasant’, he must characterise life with the simple pathos of Gray’s ‘warm precincts of the cheerful day’. Instead of convertingποῖόν σε ἔπoς φύγεν ἔρκος ὀδόντων;into the portentous remonstrance, ‘Betwixt the outwork of thy teeth what word hath split’? he must remonstrate in English as straightforward as this of St Peter, ‘Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee’; or as this of the disciples, ‘What is this that he saith, a little while? we cannot tell what he saith’. Homer’s Greek, in each of the places quoted, reads as naturally as any of those English passages: the expression no more calls away the attention from the sense in the Greek than in the English. But when, in order to render literally in English one of Homer’s double epithets, a strange unfamiliar adjective is invented,—such as ‘voice-dividing’ forμέρψς,—an improper share of the reader’s attention is necessarily diverted to this ancillary word, to this word which Homer never intendedshould receive so much notice; and a total effect quite different from Homer’s is thus produced. Therefore Mr Newman, though he does not purposely import, like Chapman, conceits of his own into theIliad, does actually import them; for the result of his singular diction is to raise ideas, and odd ideas, not raised by the corresponding diction in Homer; and Chapman himself does no more. Cowper says: ‘I have cautiously avoided all terms of new invention, with an abundance of which persons of more ingenuity than judgment have not enriched our language but encumbered it’; and this criticism so exactly hits the diction of Mr Newman that one is irresistibly led to imagine his present appearance in the flesh to be at least his second.

A translator cannot well have a Homeric rapidity, style, diction, and quality of thought, without at the same time having what is the result of these in Homer,—nobleness. Therefore I do not attempt to lay down any rules for obtaining this effect of nobleness,—the effect, too, of all others the most impalpable, the most irreducible to rule, and which most depends on the individual personality of the artist. So I proceed at once to give you, in conclusion, one or two passages in which I have tried to follow those principles of Homeric translation which I have laid down. I give them, it must be remembered, not as specimens ofperfect translation, but as specimens of an attempt to translate Homer on certain principles; specimens which may very aptly illustrate those principles by falling short as well as by succeeding.

I take first a passage of which I have already spoken, the comparison of the Trojan fires to the stars. The first part of that passage is, I have said, of splendid beauty; and to begin with a lame version of that would be the height of imprudence in me. It is the last and more level part with which I shall concern myself. I have already quoted Cowper’s version of this part in order to show you how unlike his stiff and Miltonic manner of telling a plain story is to Homer’s easy and rapid manner:

So numerous seemed those fires the bank betweenOf Xanthus, blazing, and the fleet of Greece,In prospect all of Troy—

So numerous seemed those fires the bank between

Of Xanthus, blazing, and the fleet of Greece,

In prospect all of Troy—

I need not continue to the end. I have also quoted Pope’s version of it, to show you how unlike his ornate and artificial manner is to Homer’s plain and natural manner:

So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,And brighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays;The long reflections of the distant firesGleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires,

So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,

And brighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays;

The long reflections of the distant fires

Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires,

and much more of the same kind. I want to show you that it is possible, in a plain passage of this sort, to keep Homer’s simplicity without being heavy and dull; and to keep his dignity without bringing in pompand ornament. ‘As numerous as are the stars on a clear night’, says Homer,

So shone forth, in front of Troy, by the bed of Xanthus,Between that and the ships, the Trojans’ numerous fires.In the plain there were kindled a thousand fires: by each oneThere sat fifty men, in the ruddy light of the fire:By their chariots stood the steeds, and champed the white barleyWhile their masters sat by the fire, and waited for Morning.

So shone forth, in front of Troy, by the bed of Xanthus,

Between that and the ships, the Trojans’ numerous fires.

In the plain there were kindled a thousand fires: by each one

There sat fifty men, in the ruddy light of the fire:

By their chariots stood the steeds, and champed the white barley

While their masters sat by the fire, and waited for Morning.

Here, in order to keep Homer’s effect of perfect plainness and directness, I repeat the word ‘fires’ as he repeats πυρά without scruple; although in a more elaborate and literary style of poetry this recurrence of the same word would be a fault to be avoided. I omit the epithet of Morning, and whereas Homer says that the steeds ‘waited for Morning’, I prefer to attribute this expectation of Morning to the master and not to the horse. Very likely in this particular, as in any other single particular, I may be wrong: what I wish you to remark is my endeavour after absolute plainness of speech, my care to avoid anything which may the least check or surprise the reader, whom Homer does not check or surprise. Homer’s lively personal familiarity with war, and with the war-horse as his master’s companion, is such that, as it seems to me, his attributing to the one the other’s feelingscomes to us quite naturally; but, from a poet without this familiarity, the attribution strikes as a little unnatural; and therefore, as everything the least unnatural is un-Homeric, I avoid it.

Again, in the address of Zeus to the horses of Achilles, Cowper has:

Jove saw their grief with pity, and his browsShaking, within himself thus, pensive, said.‘Ah hapless pair! wherefore by gift divineWere ye to Peleus given, a mortal king,Yourselves immortal and from age exempt?’

Jove saw their grief with pity, and his brows

Shaking, within himself thus, pensive, said.

‘Ah hapless pair! wherefore by gift divine

Were ye to Peleus given, a mortal king,

Yourselves immortal and from age exempt?’

There is no want of dignity here, as in the versions of Chapman and Mr Newman, which I have already quoted: but the whole effect is much too slow. Take Pope:

Nor Jove disdained to cast a pitying lookWhile thus relenting to the steeds he spoke.‘Unhappy coursers of immortal strain!Exempt from age and deathless now in vain;Did we your race on mortal man bestowOnly, alas! to share in mortal woe?’

Nor Jove disdained to cast a pitying look

While thus relenting to the steeds he spoke.

‘Unhappy coursers of immortal strain!

Exempt from age and deathless now in vain;

Did we your race on mortal man bestow

Only, alas! to share in mortal woe?’

Here there is no want either of dignity or rapidity, but all is too artificial. ‘Nor Jove disdained’, for instance, is a very artificial and literary way of rendering Homer’s words and so is, ‘coursers of immortal strain’.

Back to Index Next