reader with the true Homeric spirit. | a whole clause is inserted to make up The adoption of any rhyming metre in- the couplet: bitter arrows shot." volves the danger of undue amplifica-Loudly clanged the bow of silver, as the tion, and the still more mischievous temptation to introduce modern sentiment. But if the many forms of metre, Spenserian, Hexameter, Hendecasy!labic, chosen by Mr. Worsley, Dean Alford, and others, may leave us in some doubt as to the metre best fitted for a version of the Odyssey, the more general consent of translators has given a preference to blank verse for the Iliad. We therefore hope that we have seen the last of Homeric translations in hexameters, which are hexameters only in name. The anapæstic jingle which runs through them all, carries with it its own condemnation: the rhymed heroic metre involves an amount of amplification to which the requirements of the Spenserian stanza are as nothing. With reference to this class of rhymed versions of Homer, Mr. Gladstone's translation of the First Book of the Iliad into the trochaic metre, of fifteen syllables to the line, raises some new questions: but it is confessedly an experiment which must be carried out on a larger scale before these questions can be conclusively answered. The metre is admirably suited to the English language, and Mr. Gladstone handles it with not a little of the force and skill which Mr. Tennyson exhibits in Locksley Hall but a metre which is magnificent in a ballad may become monotonous and cumbersome in an epic poem. His version is both vigorous and musical, but in the short compass of a few hundred lines it betrays some of the worst faults of all rhyming translations. To meet the demands of the metre, Mr. Gladstone has been obliged not merely to amplify but to invent new facts. Chryses listens to the roar of the sea, instead of walking along the beach; the Achæans see the sails filling with the wind, and hear the boom of the waves as they dash against the sides of the ship. Apollo sweeps along, not like night, but like the nightfall; and this is not the idea expressed by the words VVKTì tolkw5. The morning is νυκτὶ ἐοικώς. said (477) to dawn upon the coast, merely because Odysseus and his companions are returning "to the great Achæan host." When Phoebus shoots his dart, A graver objection arises from the unHomeric air thus thrown over many passages of the poem. There is something almost grotesque in the notion of the ambrosial locks" starting from the temples" of Zeus, when he bows his head in assent to the prayer of Thetis. The poet, it is true, says that Olympus was shaken, but he does not say that the mountain "reeled beneath him, root and summit, rock and sod." Blank verse is not likely to betray a translator into exaggerations, which, almost more than mere inaccuracies, are likely to give the English a false idea of the original. The capabilities of English blank verse are great; the objections which may be urged against it are, in comparison, trifling. We therefore agree with Lord Derby in his choice of a metre; and we think that for the purpose of translating Homer he has adopted a style of peculiar excellence. But on another disputed point we entertain considerable doubt of the wisdom of his decision. It is certainly a concession-and a hard concessionto the inferior taste and scholarship of former times, and to the habits of diction still current in this country, to have retained the Latin names of the Homeric divinities, and still more those of the tribes and races mentioned in the Iliad, in preference to their true and original designations. The practice of arriving at the Greek language and mythology through the Latin, which has prevailed for so many ages, renders many of the Greek names unfamiliar to a modern eye. Hera, Ares, and Hephaestus are not the Juno, Mars, and Vulcan of our youth; and when Mr. Grote in his history rightly bestowed to these beings their proper appellations (which fre quently have an important philological significance), he incurred some charge of pedantry. There is a point, difficult to hit or to avoid, at which a man who sets everybody else right, and declares war on established usage, however ridiculous it may be, becomes a pedant: that is, until he has brought other people round to his opinion. Upon the whole, however, we could wish that Lord Derby had made the experiment, as Mr. Worsley has done with success in his translation of the Odyssey. By a happy inconsistency he has preserved the Greek Hermes and Pallas in place of the Latin Mercury and Minerva: Aphrodite is a more poetical name than Venus, Zeus than Jupiter, and with the aid of the best writers and scholars, the mythological terminology of Greece might be gradually brought back to the true standard. Indeed some progress has already been made in the right direction at the Universities. We now proceed to introduce to the reader some specimens of Lord Derby's performance, and we shall do so in the way of comparison with similar passages from the translation of Mr. Wright, and a short fragment recently published by the Poet-Laureate. In Mr. Wright's version, as in that of Lord Derby, there is great force, beauty, and pathos. His fidelity to the original is on the whole more strict: but Lord Derby's translation is more equable, and far more free from words and sentences which have nothing but metre to distinguish them from flat and insipid prose. Such phrases in Mr. Wright's Iliad constantly break the flow of passages in which everything depends on perfect smoothness as well as sustained vigor. Thus the outburst of passion, in which the pent-up wrath of Achilles finds utterance, becomes by comparison tame under Mr. Wright's treatment: "Oh! clothed in shamelessness! oh, sordid soul, How canst thou hope that any Greek for thee Will brave the toils of travel or of war? With Troy's brave sons that brought me They never did me wrong: they never drove For Menelaus and for thee, ingrate, The sordidness of Agamemnon's soul has vanished from Mr. Wright's version, while a single image has taken the place of the far more beautiful, because more indefinite, epithet which Lord Derby has carefully preserved in his shadowy mountains. Here, as in Homer, we have the vagueness which brings before the mind not only the long shadows cast by the everlasting hills on the plains which lie stretched at their feet, but the shade which sleeps beneath the deep forest or in the dells which the sun has never pierced, the interchange of light and darkness on the rugged mountain sides, or the mantle of mist which forms in unearthly majesty. wraps their Lord Derby has rightly felt that in of Homer, there must be some amplificaan attempt to reproduce the great epic tion, and some little insertion of new matter. We do not care, therefore, to notice slight changes or inaccuracies. Achilles may not perhaps say to Aga We are conscious of doing Lord Derby some injustice by thus taking a mere fragment from his text. Let us rather turn to the exquisite passage in which, with all the simplicity of the Homeric poet, Andromache tell us the tale of her early sorrows, and with all his tenderness Hector seeks to comfort her: "Think not, dear wife, that by such thoughts as these My heart has ne'er been wrung; but I should blush To face the men and long-robed dames of Troy, If like a coward I could shun the fight. Nor could my soul the lessons of my youth So far forget, whose boast it still has been In the fore front of battle to be found, Charged with my father's glory and mine own. Yet in my inmost soul too well I know, The day must come when this our sacred Troy And Priam's race and Priam's royal self Shall in one common ruin be o'erthrown. But not the thoughts of Troy's impending fate, Nor Hecuba's, nor royal Priam's woes, Nor loss of brethren, numerous and brave, By hostile hands laid prostrate in the dust, So deeply wring my heart as thoughts of thee, Thy days of freedom lost." (Bk. vi. 1. 528.) A better ground of comparison is furnished by a passage from Homer, which Mr. Tennyson has inserted in the appendix to his latest volume of poems. These lines of the Poet-Laureate have a stamp of individuality and power upon them which belong to the highest order of genius: "So Hector said, and sea-like roared his host. Then loosed their sweating horses from the yoke, And each beside his chariot bound his own: And oxen from the city, and goodly sheep In haste they drove, and honey-hearted wine And bread from out the houses brought, and heaped Their firewood, and the winds from off the plain Rolled the rich savor far into the heaven. And these all night upon the bridge of war Sat glorying; many a fire before them blazed, As when in heaven the stars about the moon Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid, And every height comes out, and jutting peak, And valley, and the immeasurable heavens Break open to their highest, and all the stars Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart. So many a fire between the ships and stream Of Xanthus blazed, before the towers of A thousand on the plain; and close by each Hard by their chariots, waiting for the With such a translation we do not willingly find fault. If by comparing the roar of the Trojan host to that of the sea Mr. Tennysom has introduced what is not here in the original, the comparison may be found elsewhere. If the beautiful look of the stars scarcely brings out the force of the Greek epithet aptπрεжÉα, if the intransitive use of the verb gladden" is peculiar, and if the bridge (or ridge) of war is a somewhat obscure phrase, it is but fair to admit that such lines of Pope may be very fine; but if blemishes are not easily avoided. The Mr. Tennyson's motes are to be closely scrutinized, Pope can scarcely be admitted to a hearing. Homer says nothing in this place of the moon as a "refulgent lamp of night" or of "vivid planets" (by an astronomy quite as incomprehensible to himself as to us) "rolling round her throne; the " * "" we look in vain for dark trees," or for "the conscious swain" yellower verdure shed over the blessing "the useful light" which comes from the blue vault of heaven. The verthis passage can only serve to warn sion given by Mr. Arnold † of part of others from the rocks on which, in spite of his appreciation of Homer and his perfectly pure English, he has nevertheless made shipwreck; and the following " *Lord Derby is, we think, more happy in rendering it the pass of war." Mr. Norgate, in another recent translation, which is strangely unreadable, has given the true meaning, but with his usual ruggedness he speaks of "the gangways of the battle." It is quite a mistake to suppose, as some critics of Lord Derby's translation have supposed, that лóλεμоio уépνoat is a proverbial The war rages on either side, but the space bephrase in Homer for the thickest of the fight. neath the bridge answers to the water which separates two pieces of land. This is self-evident on comparing the present passage with II. iv. 371. Lectures on Homer, p. 93. translation by Mr. Wright, though better, is but feeble: "All night upon the field the Trojans sate, Proudly elate, their watchfires blazing near, As when in heaven around the silver moon Bright shine the stars, and every wind is hushed, When pointed rock, high crag, and distant wood Stand out revealed; and opening from beneath The immeasurable ether bursts to view, And all the stars are seen; and gladness fills The shepherd's heart; so, lit by Trojan hands, In front of Ilion, glowed full many a fire Between the stream of Xanthus and the ships. There on the plain a thousand watchfires blazed, And in the light of every burning pile Sate fifty men, while near the chariots stood Their coursers, champing barley and white oats, Till rose the orient Morn on golden throne." Compare, for example, in the first two lines of the passage, the words, "Sate upon the field," "proudly elate," with Tennyson's grand expression, "Upon the bridge of war ""sat glorying." The secret of true poetic diction is to give an imperishable stamp and visible character to each scene. Lord Derby's line, "Full of proud hopes, upon the pass All night they camped," of war As when in heaven around the glittering moon The stars shine bright amid the breathless air, And every crag and every jutting peak Stands boldly forth, and every forest glade. Ev'n to the gates of heaven is opened wide The boundless sky; shines each particular star Distinct; joy fills the gazing shepherd's heart; So bright, so thickly scattered o'er the plain Before the walls of Troy, between the ships And Xanthus' stream, the Trojans' watchfires blazed. A thousand fires burnt brightly, and round each Sat fifty warriors in the ruddy glare; With store of provender before them laid, Barley and rye, the tethered horses stood Beside the cars, and waited for the morn." (Bk. viii. 1. 643.) Lord Derby has rightly avoided any comparison of the Trojan host to the sea, star brings out the full force of appεñéа. and the particular distinction of each If he has failed to render exactly the words which tell of the sudden clearing of the sky, his failure is shared by Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Wright, while Mr. Norgate's usual ruggedness neutralizes the effect of his accuracy. Not a few among the readers of this translation may be tempted to think that Lord Derby's care has been chiefly devoted to a finished rendering of the Homeric similes; but that his happiest efforts are not confined to such passages is amply proved by the truly splendid lines which describe the onset of Hector on the defences of the Achæans with the huge rock in his hands, at the close of the Twelfth Book of the Iliad: "Close to the gate he stood, and planting firm His foot to give his arm its utmost power, Full on the middle dashed the mighty mass. The hinges both gave way: the ponderous He sprang the gods except, no power That onset; blazed his eyes with lurid fire. No doubt even here it would be possible to fasten on a few expressions which do not strictly represent those of the original. Homer speaks of Hector not as wishing to give his arm its utmost power, but as anxious that his weapon should not fall short of its mark, and again he describes the hinges not merely as giving way, but as torn off by the force of the blow. But these are really no defects, while the lines bring before us the marvellous succession of terrific images, each heightening the effect of that which has gone before, until we feel that no other English translation has thus enabled us to enter into the full spirit of Homer himself. Of all the splendid incidents in the Iliad few are more magnificent than the arming of Achilles : and the original has lost little of its power, its grace, and its beauty in Lord Derby's hands: “Thick as the snow-flakes that from heaven descend Before the sky-born Boreas' chilling blast, So thick outpouring from the ships, the Of armed men, Achilles in the midst, The godlike chief, in dazzling arms arrayed. : His teeth were gnashing audibly his eye Blazed with the light of fire; but in his heart Was grief unbearable." The breastplate wrought by Hephaestus in the far-off Eastern land covers his broad chest; his silver-studded sword is flung over his shoulder. From his vast shield there gleams "A light refulgent as the full-orbed moon; Or as to seamen o'er the wave is borne The watch-fire's light, which high among the hills Some shepherd kindles in his lonely fold, So from Achilles' shield bright, richly wrought, The light was thrown. The weighty helm he raised And placed it on his head; the plumèd helm Shone like a star, and waved the hairs of gold, Thick set by Vulcan in the gleaming crest. Then all the arms Achilles proved, to know If well they fitted to his graceful limbs. Like wings they seemed to lift him from the ground." (Bk. xix. 1. 432.) In the struggle which immediately follows, gods and men, powers human and superhuman, are mingled together in one wild turmoil. In Mr. Grote's judgment the idea of such a conflict led the poet to indulge in fantastic conceptions which are either bewildering or oppressive: but there is a point of view from which this mighty battle becomes the most wonderful portion of the Iliad, and throws a singular light on the origin of the poem. But the uncouthness of the images, if uncouth they be, nowhere breaks the even flow and sustained vigor of Lord Derby's translation. From the struggle, in which the river complains that his " lovely stream is filled with dead, and cannot pour its current to the sea,' we are carried to the last fight, at the close of which we see Achilles trampling on the corpse of the bravest and best of all the Ilian heroes: |
